Twitter Marketing: Is it Right for Your Brand?

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Twitter has proven to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for certain brands. It can be a great platform to increase awareness, engage with customers, and grow your business, but it isn’t right for everyone. Each social network is unique in its targeting, reach, and overall marketing abilities. When making the decision whether or not a specific platform is right for your business, an analysis of both yourself and the platform needs to be done.

What to consider before marketing your business on Twitter: 

Are you B2C or B2B? 

This is one of the most important factors that should go into developing a social media marketing strategy. In general, those searching on social media are at the very top of the sales funnel, but there are exceptions. Twitter is usually best for B2C companies, but it can work for B2B companies with the appropriate tactics. It’s becoming a central discovery hub for consumers, making it a great platform for displaying expertise, products, and creativity. News, retail, e-commerce, fashion, finance, travel, hospitality, sports, health and wellness are some of the top performing industries on Twitter. 

Who is your audience? 

This is the number one thing that should be considered before deciding to join any social media platform. If your ideal audience is millennials, Twitter is a strong choice, as 40% use it. As age increases, the percentage of use decreases. 27% of 30 – 49 year olds are users and 21% of 50 – 64 year olds are users. That doesn’t necessarily mean Twitter is a bad platform for reaching an older audience. It just means your actual strategy on Twitter would be different. It’s also important to note that 42% of users access the site daily. 

What is your brand’s persona? 

Establishing a well-defined brand voice is essential for Twitter strategy. Brand voice should be original, convey a message, reflect core values, and resonate with your audience in a personal way. Companies that convey their Twitter account in a lighthearted way generally have a leg up than those that keep it serious. Twitter users are most encouraging, engaging, and creative of all other social networks. Content that’s fun, snarky, and relaxed will always perform better on this platform. This also goes into deciding whom will be doing the tweeting for your company. It is possible to have more than one person running the account, but it’s essential to make sure they’re all in sync. 

What is your overall social media goal? 

If you only want to use Twitter to gain followers, promote yourself, and don’t care about what others have to say, it’s probably not the platform for you. This isn’t an account you can just put on autopilot. Regular engagement and interaction is vital for Twitter success. Scheduling tweets and never checking back is a huge missed opportunity. To maximize reach and keep your audience engaged it’s essential to check activity often, retweet relevant content, and jump in on trending conversations. Twitter is best for building relationships with customers, as it’s one of the most personable social platforms. Many companies utilize it for customer service inquiries, as it’s the best means of contact for many reasons. There are no hold times, it’s more informal, it’s public, and it’s in real time. Companies have the opportunity to respond to complaints immediately, which means problems can be solved that much faster. Since other users can see this happen as well, it showcases excellent customer service and may even save you from repeating them in the future. 

Final Thoughts 

Twitter can be a great platform for marketing and presents unique opportunities for both companies and customers, though it’s not for everyone. It’s simple to use, but takes frequent attention. Finally, it’s important to note that Twitter, just as all social media, is not an ultimate marketing solution. It should be used as a tactic, working in conjunction with other tools to support your overall marketing strategy. 

How We Can Help 

At Onimod Global we are experts in social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do here, or contact us today here.

How To Drive Event Engagement With Social Media

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Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to use in a variety of campaigns, especially in event promotion. This tool has not only changed the ways people promote events, but it has also changed how influencers and consumers can engage with brands and events associated with them. Social media marketing strategies allow for an open conversation between a brand and the consumer, and this is one of the most crucial steps in ensuring a successful event with high engagement.

Whether your event is a corporate event, an influencer party, a festival or concert, social media marketing can be a driving factor in your success if used correctly. Here are several ways you can use social media to drive engagement before, during, and after your event.

 

Pre-Event

 

Content Strategy 

In the initial stages of event planning, you will want to have a rough outline of social media content for the months, weeks, or days leading up to your event. Your company may already have an existing content plan in place for event management, but it is always in your best interest to customize the strategy to your specific event.

Social media content should be centered around the concept of your event, and all of your posts should match the tone, whether that be serious or more creative. Anything you create should also drive consumers to a landing page for sign-ups, donations, or anything related to the promotion of your event. Be sure to include educational pieces about featured speakers, sponsors, and any topics the event will be covering.

 

Influencer Involvement 

Get your sponsors and speakers involved! Most times influencers will be excited to help you push your event on social media, especially if they are a featured speaker. Create graphics and other messages that are easy to share on all social platforms, and also create content specifically related to sponsors that they can easily share as well.

Sharing, in this case, is caring for the success of your event. Be sure that any social content you post and push to consumers is readily available to share among event attendees. Don’t under-estimate the power of social share, this will increase your visibility with little to no cost associated.

A great strategy would be to invite a sponsor or influencer to take over your Instagram account or do a Facebook Live feed. It’s a place for your own followers to get excited about the event that you’re hosting, and it also gives the fans or followers of the influencer a chance to be directed to your page for more information on what they are sharing.

 

The Day-of

 

Vlog

Especially if this is event is annual, creating excitement around the event for years to come will be based out of any content and footage you have from years past. Occasionally, this may not be allowed depending on the privacy or overall tone of the event. However, if your company allows you to do so and it makes sense in your content strategy to create footage for the upcoming years, we absolutely recommend filming as much as possible.

 

Live Stream or Social 

This is an example of a live Twitter feed wall shared by Social Media Today, which are typically big hits at any conference or event. Common tools that will help you build a live-feed for your event are: TweetBeam, Twitterfall, Twubs, and HootFeed from Hootsuite.

 

Live Updates On Your Social Networks

Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are perfect platforms for this strategy. A unique content idea you could do at a convention would be to interview guest attendees on your company Instagram or Snapchat story. Tweeting live updates from the event is also a great way to interact with any attendee using the event hashtag that you create. This will allow you to retweet easily, and Instagram also has the new feature of being able to share photos on Instagram stories with credit to the user.

 

Post-Event

 

Gratitude Via Social Platforms

The content strategy doesn’t end at the event, the really successful conventions and events will always take it one step farther. Here are where the opportunities to engage with your attendees with give you the maximum value of social media marketing. Starting with gratitude, it will always go a long way to thank speakers, sponsors, and guests via social media to ensure they know that their presence was appreciated by your company. This will in turn help you build bonds and gain lifetime customers.

 

Creating Promotion For Next Year

Now that you have all of this material and content, it is time for your social team to get to work on compiling a promotion video or more social content for next year’s event. This can include testimonials from this year’s attendees, quotes from speakers and sponsors, and any footage of your guests having a great time!

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

How to Effectively Market Your Brand to Spring Break Travelers

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Each year, thousands of college students pour into the city of Chicago for spring break. Although the city is not as warm as other popular destinations, it does provide plenty of activities for spring breakers to participate in.

All of these extra people mean extra business for you. Make sure to capitalize on this huge event by optimizing your marketing efforts toward spring breakers.

Merchandising

A perfect way to attract students on spring break is to offer them free merchandise. As college students, they are very willing to accept anything that does not cost money.

This allows you an opportunity to get students interested in your brand, and to vicariously promote your brand to other spring breakers in the area. As a rule of thumb, always put your logo on every single piece of promotional material in order to maximize brand awareness. Enlarging this logo is also a good idea so you can be sure to make it stand out.

This method may seem a bit simplistic and perhaps even outdated, but we can assure you that you will see a response from travelers if you incentivise them with a cheap t-shirt or pair of sunglasses.

Facebook

During spring break, visibility is key. This does not necessarily mean to be visible physically such as with billboards and promotional merchandise. You can also generate an incredible amount of traffic to your business by utilizing online advertising strategies and platforms.

Facebook is an incredible resource for all companies that are looking to directly target a detailed group of people. The Facebook ads manager tools allow you to refine your target audience based on current and previous locations. You can also use a multitude of other keywords or phrases to put your ads in front of ideal consumers. This makes it so simple for you to precisely target college students from out of town that are now within a close proximity to your business.

The other major benefit is that Facebook ads are also highly cost effective. If you create a week-long campaign to drive people to your website, you are likely to generate conversions for mere pennies on the dollar!

Twitter

The strategy behind Twitter ads is very similar to that of Facebook ads, but Twitter is not quite as successful at generating leads. However, Twitter is absolutely ideal for achieving better brand awareness. If you do not possess a prime location that receives a lot of walk-by traffic, then you could be missing out on substantial potential profits.

With Twitter, you can make sure that students on spring break are seeing your business, even if they are not clicking on the ad. Even on a subconscious level, consumers are more likely to interact with a brand that they recognize than with one that they do not. Now go ahead and get your brand out there!

More From Onimod Global

To learn more about the digital marketing industry, please visit the Onimod blog today! Our content creation specialists regularly produce up-to-date content so that you remain current on digital marketing methods and strategies.

A few of our most recent articles include: The Importance of Google My Business for Local SEO Rankings, How to Build Customer Loyalty That Drives Search Traffic, 4 Statistics That Should Impact Your 2018 Online Marketing Strategy, and much more!

4 Social Media Predictions For 2018

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The dynamic of social media is constantly changing and 2018 has the potential to be an important year for social media. After analyzing an article from Marketing Land written by Laura Collins, there are some interesting changes that could happen in the world of social media. Listed below are some social media predictions the article points out that could have major implications on the future of the industry.

1. Instagram’s Continued Dominance
2017 was an incredible year for Instagram in terms of revenues, user engagement, and a rapidly growing user base. Instagram is continuing to innovate already in 2018 in ways that are attractive to their users and advertisers. The Marketing Land article mentions how Instagram announced last month that there is a new capability to incorporate hashtags. “Advertisers could pay to target followers of particular hashtags, or perhaps appear in the top posts section for those relevant to their business.” This hashtag integration could ultimately take the platform to new heights if utilized correctly and just like last year, 2018 could be another big year for Instagram.

2. Twitter Revamp
It’s not a surprise that Twitter has been struggling to compete in recent years with the other social media giants for ad revenue. There was very slow growth in 2017 especially and the article predicts that 2018 is “sink or swim” for Twitter’s future. It hasn’t even been a month in 2018 so far and Twitter is already making steps towards changing their ad offerings. The article mentions how new “premium video content partnerships designed to turn the platform into a destination for high-quality entertainment. Its new pre-roll and mid-roll ads will offer advertisers brand-safe inventory with high visibility standards and a chance to target people who are highly engaged and predisposed to view video content.”

3. Snapchat Revenue on the Rise
Although it was reported that 2017 was not Snapchat’s best year, there were still major strides made from the mobile based social media giant. The article points out how Snapchat is learning from their mistakes and they “recently released a pixel to address accusations of a lack of transparency or ability to measure ROI.” There is also talks of a “total redesign of the app as a response to older users reportedly struggling navigating the interface.” Ultimately, the prediction being made for 2018 is that Snapchat will become more flexible for their users and advertisers, and then see ad revenue growth from a more diverse group as a result.

4. Live Streaming Becoming the “Go-to” Option
The drastic increase of live streaming viewership has definitely caught the attention of major social media platforms. It is now a mainstream aspect of most social media channels, as brands have been utilizing live streams to capture the attention of followers. An article from Entrepreneur predicts that in 2018 “more brands will begin to realize the power of live streaming, and will incorporate it into their monthly content plans to help attract a larger following.” Moreover, the importance of live streaming can’t be overlooked by organizations and those who are not using the feature correctly or at all will fall behind.

Contact Us
For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

5 Notable Social Media Stats So Far in 2017

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2017 has been an interesting year so far in the world of social media, with some surprising stats and trends. Facebook remains a giant, Instagram is making strides, and Snapchat is utilizing augmented reality to its advantage. Some of the social media stats listed below are from Lauren Johnson’s Article in Adweek that caught our attention.

1. Snapchat and Augmented Reality
Snapchat has recently launched its augmented reality lenses to the public, which now allows users and brands to create their own animated figures and filters. This has given Snapchat an advantage when it comes to the amount of daily content created. According to the Adweek Article, “Snapchat expects 1 trillion photos to be taken with the app this year, which equates to 31,720 snaps every second.” Over 30,000 snaps per second in the year of 2017 is a mind boggling statistic and it will be interesting to see where Snapchat goes in 2018.

2. Facebook Usage Remains Massive
Although other messaging applications such as Twitter, Kik, and Snapchat are experiencing plenty of usage, Facebook still continues to dominate the “messaging empire.” According to the article, “Facebook announced that 17 billion video chats have been sent via messenger in 2017, which doubles the number in 2016. People have also sent 1.7 billion emojis on a daily basis thus far in 2017.” Moreover, Facebook is dominating the social media industry in many aspects and this trend will most likely continue through the next year.

3. Retailers Choosing Instagram Over Snapchat
Instagram adopting the “stories” feature has greatly helped the social media channel in terms of attracting retailers. According to a study from L2 Gartner, “1,400 social posts were analyzed from retailers like TJ Maxx and Marshalls, and it was discovered that Instagram stories made up 95% of the brands social posts.” This is huge for Instagram as their story feature usage in 2016 only accounted for “39% of social posts.”

4. GIF Histeria
The use of GIFs (graphic interchange format) so far in 2017 has been astounding. The article reports that “300 million people have used 2 billion GIFs every day in 2017 thus far.” The use of GIFs is mainly seen within the social media platforms of Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pintrest, and Facebook. The use of GIFS doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon and even looks to increase in the future.

5. Instagram Reaching Millennials
It’s no surprise that Instagram’s popularity is growing, especially with millennials. According to a survey conducted by the Bustle Digital Group, “81 percent out of the 1,000 millennials interviewed claimed social media is the most effective way to reach them. From that group, 40 percent said Instagram is the best way to reach them.” Ultimately, Instagram has been making major strides in 2017 and expect the social media giant to even increase their market share in 2018.

Contact Us: For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

Was Twitter’s 280 Character Limit Increase Enough to Turn a Profit?

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There were many comments and concerns in the wake of Twitter’s most recent update of a doubled character limit. We here at Onimod Global gave our two cents on the update in our article, “Twitter Launches New 280 Character Limit: Good or Bad Move?”

But the real question is, was it enough to make the platform profitable? The answers can be found in the latest quarterly report from Twitter.

Bad Reactions

As to be expected, no one really liked the switch from 140 characters to 280. One article from Adweek shared the opinions of many disgruntled users like Lou Paskalis who said, “This will pretty much end Twitter if instituted. Really really bad idea!”

Opposition like Lou’s was very common around the Twitter-sphere and beyond. Selena Larson of CNN Tech expressed her disagreement in her article “More is less: The case against 280 character tweets”.

Larson highlighted the thoughts of users and how many feel that the 140 limit actually helped make them more concise and creative. Haught Tromp agreed with this logic by saying, “It can be intellectually challenging but creatively stimulating to fit words in a confined space.”

New Quarterly Report

The much anticipated Q3 report from Twitter has finally been released. Many were waiting upon this report to see if the increased character limit would be enough to give Twitter the positive results the platform was looking for in its bottom line.

Well, the results are in. An article from techcrunch.com summarized Twitter’s quarterly report. At a glance, it appears that Twitter has outdone itself.

Originally, the company projected revenues of $586.73 million but actually reported revenues of $590 million. Although this is an improvement from the previous quarter, the $590 million is still 4% lower than they were in Q3 of last year.

In addition to these quarterly statistics, Twitter also shared some bad news about their monthly active users.

They released the following statement about the MAU issue: “We discovered that since the fourth quarter of 2014 we had included users of certain third-party applications as Twitter MAUs that should not have been considered MAUs,” Twitter noted. “These third-party applications used Digits, a software development kit of our now-divested Fabric platform, that allowed third-party applications to send authentication messages via SMS through our systems, which did not relate to activity on the Twitter platform. The table below presents the impact for the periods beginning in the fourth quarter of 2016. Due to our data retention policies, we do not have data to reconcile periods prior to the fourth quarter of 2016, but our estimates suggest the prior period adjustments are smaller than those in the fourth quarter of 2016.”

Conclusion

Many Twitter staff members had hoped for the platform to see an increase in engagement from users with their new 280 character limit. Now that the data has been gathered and finalized, we can see its true results.

Although Twitter was able to temporarily increase their engagement rates and revenues, there are still huge problems on the horizon for the social media platform that we will come to see in future months.

Twitter Launches New 280 Character Limit: Good or Bad Move?

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Twitter has recently announced that a character limit change is official – tweets can now contain up to 280 characters, but not for every user yet. It’s an interesting and risky move, as the 140 character limit is what Twitter has always been known for and is a major way they differentiate themselves from their social media competitors. According to an article from Market Land, this would mark the “biggest change to Twitter since its founding in 2006 and the biggest risk yet by the company to increase its user base.” This post will explore the potential benefits and disadvantages that could come along with an increased character limit.

Potential Benefits:
Introducing a doubled character limit (280 compared to 140) has the potential be a beneficial move for Twitter moving forward. One possible benefit of a larger character limit is that it would allow users to “better express themselves,” according to the Marketing Land article. This is a legitimate reason as a restricted character limit has forced users to limit what they’re trying to say. A 280 limit would also decrease the “loopholes” of tweeting such as screenshots of longer text and the annoying threads that appear on timelines. Another important point to mention is the increased opportunity this presents for Twitter’s advertising platform. An expanded character limit gives advertisers an opportunity to create more appealing ads, and as a result this could lead to more ad revenue for Twitter in the long run.

The Marketing Land article also quotes Aliza Rosen (Twitter’s Product Manager) stating that “Twitter is hoping fewer tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to tweet.” Ultimately, Twitter’s overall goal of increasing the character limit appears to be focused on making it easier for everyone to tweet and reducing the frustrations that come along with character limits.

Potential Drawbacks:
Based on all of the potential benefits above, the expanded 280 character limit seems like a brilliant idea. However, there could be some possible drawbacks of having larger character limits. A clear negative of moving away from the 140 characters is that Twitter would now be steering away from their core idea that has differentiated themselves from other social media competition. The article states that Twitter’s original thought behind the 140 character limit was “replicating the length of a text message would make the social network more inviting to people to post thoughts on the fly from their phones.”

Another disadvantage that could come along with expanding the character limit is an increase in spam. There would be nothing worse then scrolling through a timeline of spam accounts or reading 280 character tweets from irrelevant sources. In the end, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Twitter’s new 280 character limit moving forward. Based on outside research and analysis, it appears to us that the potential benefits of an increased character limit would outweigh the possible disadvantages.

Contact Us:
For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

5 Ways to Increase your Organization’s Impact on Twitter

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Consistently posting on a business Twitter account may start to feel like a meaningless and repetitive task, yet it’s important to build a brand and keep audiences engaged. According to Marketing Land, there are “currently over 300 million monthly active users on Twitter, with 50% of these users being more likely to be consumers of the brands they follow.” Therefore, your company’s Twitter activity must be a priority and listed below are a few ways to maximize your impact on the social media giant.

1. Interact with your Audience:
It’s very easy to ignore or forget about replies and direct messages from followers. Keeping track and replying in a timely manner will make your audience feel important and connected to your brand. It’s also a facet that will set you apart from other company Twitter accounts. Look at Jimmy John’s for instance, they take pride in interacting with their customers and have gained a large following on Twitter as a result (476K followers). Ultimately, if you go the “extra mile” when it comes to interacting with followers you will get noticed.

2. Follow Trends and Hashtags:
This concept may seem like a simple task, yet many business accounts either ignore or forget to utilize hashtags and trends that Twitter has to offer. The major benefit of paying attention to trends is more visibility. We’re not suggesting to overuse hashtags, but implementing at least 2-3 per tweet will have a positive effect on your impressions, interactions, and overall visibility. #MondayMotivation or #FridayFeeling for example are two frequently trending hashtags that can easily be inserted in tweets to catch more eyeballs.

3. “Follow and Retweet for a Chance to Win”:
This is one of the most common Twitter strategies in the game, but don’t underestimate it’s effectiveness. If you’re a frequent Twitter user you probably encounter these tweets all the time. It’s simple, fun, and an effective way to build relationships with current and future consumers while growing followers at the same time. Although many users may unfollow your account if they don’t win anything, your tweet will still produce a ton of impressions and enhance brand awareness.

4. Allocate Time into Profile:
As simple as this idea sounds, many companies don’t put in enough time and effort to their Twitter profiles. Depending on the industry, tweeting at least 3-5 times per week will show consistency. Inactivity for long periods of time can be a turnoff for potential consumers. Even paying attention to simple aspects like your profile images, bio, and likes can have a major impact on your brand’s image. Setting up a schedule each week for when, what, and how much to tweet is one easy way to maintain a consistent Twitter presence.

5. Don’t Solely Focus on Products/Services:
It’s obvious that Twitter and social media in general is a large marketplace for product/service promotion, but followers don’t like being bombarded with product information. This could potentially make your account look like a scammer and you will lose followers as a result. One idea for producing content is to pay close attention to how competitors use their Twitter and make note of which types of posts draw the most engagement. Another idea is to interact about what’s happening within your community. Essentially, the overall concept with tweeting content is to be as relevant as possible to your audience’s interests.

Follow Us: If you enjoy reading our content be sure to give us a follow at @OnimodGlobal or visit our website at www.onimodglobal.com. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the digital marketing world!