Tag Archive for: Digital Marketing

5 Key Elements for Local Digital Marketing Success

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Small businesses can face many growth challenges, such as limited resources, budget constraints, competition, staffing challenges, etc. It can be tough to figure out ways to set yourself apart from other businesses and achieving overall success. Executing a full range of local digital marketing techniques can be a game changer for many companies. Local digital marketing helps connect businesses where customers reside and interact. The opportunity to compete and provide outstanding customer service, are reachable through digital marketing strategies. 

We’re going to discuss the 5 key campaign elements that can deliver an effective local marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. 

1. Manage All Online Listings 

Clean data and accurate listings are essential for overall digital marketing success. Every mention of your business on the internet is a ‘citation.’ You want to make sure all of this information is accurate. Otherwise you run the risk of not being able to be found easily. Even minor discrepancies you might not think of can have an impact on your results. You can prevent discrepancies by claiming every local listing and providing accurate information to search engines and online directories. Specifically Google, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps and Bing. 

You should include as much information in your listings as possible, such as product descriptions, services, hours of operation, deals, promotions, accepted payment types, photos, etc. Accurate and consistent data helps drive search engine rankings, making it that much easier for prospects to find your business. 

2. Local SEO 

Local SEO is fairly similar to listing management. Complete, accurate and consistent updates to listings are critical for high search engine rankings. Algorithms continue to drive more relevant results based on user location. Meaning it’s even more crucial to optimize local landing pages with location information. 

You can locally optimize your landing pages by:

  • Localizing title tags to include city and state names.
  • Optimize meta descriptions to include product categories. 
  • Implement localized schema markup for your business name, number and address.
  • Localize URL structures to include street names and product categories. 
  • Include hours, directions and local descriptions in on-page business content. 

3. Reputation Management

It stays true that people trust people. Ratings and reviews have a significant impact on potential buyers. On average, consumers read up to 10 reviews before fully trusting a business. The most effective way to increase your reviews is by simply asking your customers to write them. You can make this easy for them by including a button that offers one-click access to writing a review. It’s common to offer incentives or contests for those that leave reviews, but you have to be careful when doing so. Google and Yelp prohibit businesses from offering money, products or services for writing reviews. It’s important that the reviews are authentic, as consumers can be skeptical. Meaning when a negative review comes through, it should be managed but not deleted. Best practice includes replying to their comment and apologizing that they did not have a positive experience and ask them to contact you privately to resolve any further issues. This way other people see that you’re not ignoring them, but you don’t want to continue the conversation in public. 

4. Paid Search and Social 

In any digital marketing strategy, incorporating paid efforts is essential. This becomes even more important when it comes to local campaigns. Customize your messages based on the location of your ads to become personally relevant to those that will see them. Local search and social can be used to capitalize on regions where business is strongest or become a lever that can supplement marketing in underperforming regions to increase awareness and improve sales. For more tips on successfully taking your paid digital marketing strategy local, click here. 

5. Specialized Landing Pages

Along with customizing ads for certain locations, the landing pages they’re attached to should also be customized and optimized for mobile. Most often, consumers are on the go and looking for local solutions. Local landing pages should be simple yet comprehensive, including your business name, address, phone number, hours, products, services, etc. Effective landing pages have a responsive design with title tags and descriptive schema to send information to search engines. For further tips on creating a high converting landing page, click here. 

More from Onimod Global

Needing some assistance in any area of digital marketing?  Contact us! We are experts in all things digital marketing including SEM, Web Dev, Automation, Analytics, and much more. Learn more about what we do here, or keep up to date with all things digital marketing on our news page. 

Tips to Keep Your Marketing Emails from Getting Flagged as Spam

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When you put a lot of effort into creating your email marketing strategy, it can be frustrating looking at the stats and seeing that a large amount of your messages end up in spam. A report from Return Path revealed that spam filters are more rigorous than ever, with one in five emails failing to reach the inbox. This can be very concerning, especially when email marketing is a large part of your overall strategy. But there are a number of things you can do to help prevent your emails from getting marked as spam by filters and consumers. 

Build Your Own Email List and Regularly Clean it Up 

If you’re buying email lists and sending content to people who never signed up to receive them, your chances of ending up in the spam folder skyrocket. The average office worker receives 121 emails daily, meaning it’s unlikely they’ll waste time opening unwanted messages. It may take more time, but organically building up your email list will be much more effective in the long run. 

Once you have a good size list built up, it’s important to manage it. Some recipients will naturally unsubscribe from your emails, but others will just start ignoring them. This will lower your engagement rate and make you seen as less favorable by the ISPs. This ultimately means your emails will more likely go to the spam folder. You can combat against this by regularly looking at your stats and removing unengaged users, bounced emails and role email addresses. 

Make it Clear Who the Email is From and What it’s About 

Most companies have multiple email addresses within their domain, depending on the size. You don’t want to change the sender field too often. Try to stick with the one that works best with promotional messages and avoid odd names, such as donotreply@yourdomain.com or 123456@yourdomain.com. Build trust with your recipients, meaning you don’t want to confuse them with using a variety of sender addresses or unprofessional ones. Try to either stick with a person’s name or your company name. 

Once you’ve made it clear who the email is from, make it clear what it’s about. This means avoiding spammy subject lines. Don’t want to try to trick recipients into opening your email by starting your subject line with “FWD:” or “RE:” implying there was previous communication. You also shouldn’t use click bait, such as telling them they’ve won a prize if they haven’t. Try to find something catchy and compelling that peaks curiosity, yet still gives enough information that recipients aren’t confused about what the email is. 

Use a Reputable Program 

A sign spam filters keep a lookout for is an IP address associated with the sending email address and see if there are any spam complaints associated with it. If there are, then even legitimate email addresses can get flagged due to association. To ensure this doesn’t happen to your emails, always use a reputable provider. All the top providers take steps to prevent spammers from using their platforms. They also have built in features to help avoid other common spam triggers, such as not including a physical address or using a sending email address that looks suspicious. There are thousands of marketing automation and email marketing companies out there, so just do research before deciding on one. 

Follow the Laws Governing Email Marketing

It’s always beneficial to be aware of the laws that govern digital marketing communications. Specifically, the CAN-SPAM Act, which outlines the practices you must use when sending commercial emails. There are some harsh penalties for sending spam emails, so you should be aware of what are considered spam emails. The CAN-SPAM Act defines spam as any message that are sent:

  • To a recipient without permission. 
  • Without including a mailing address. 
  • With a deceptive subject line. 
  • Without including a way for the recipient to opt-out. 

Most modern email marketing programs ensure you comply with the mailing address and opt-out by default, but you should be careful about subject lines and sending emails to those who didn’t sign up for them. 

Send Valuable Content 

At the core of any successful marketing campaign, is value. You shouldn’t be sending emails just to send them or to try to hit a quota. This causes engagement to suffer. When you send emails that don’t resonate with recipients, it’s unlikely it will get opened and more likely it will land in spam. One study found that the top reason why emails get reported as spam is because the brand sent irrelevant or too many emails. 

Before you start drafting an email, ask yourself these questions: 

  1. Is this new or urgent information? 
  2. When was the last time I sent an email about this? Was it recently?
  3. Do all my subscribers need to know this information or only a segment?
  4. If I received this email would I find it valuable? 

Takeaways 

Email marketing is an essential part of an effective strategy, but if your messages are getting flagged as spam, they’re just going to waste. The key is to identify why your emails are getting flagged and how to avoid this going forward. Keep in mind that the higher your email engagement is, the more likely your next email will end up where intended and not in a spam folder. 

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Google Brings Lead Forms To YouTube

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Google has been testing lead form ad extensions in Search campaigns since last fall.   The new feature works very similarly to lead generation ads on other platforms, where users submit their contact information in a form – to show interest in a product or service.

This extension will be available in Display campaigns later this year, Google noted in its announcement Wednesday, August 5th.

Google has expanded the field options available for collection since it initially started testing lead forms. Previously, you could collect information such as name, email, phone number and postal code. Now advertisers have the option to collect city, state, country as well as business contact information, including company name, job title, work email, work phone.

Next, you will see the options to have questions to your form based on pre-set questions set by vertical.       

One example of a question you can add could be under Real estate. An advertiser could opt to add “What price range are you looking for” to the lead form.

Some important key insights to keep in mind about lead form ad extensions from Search Engine Land:

  • Engagement with lead forms won’t be attributed to actions users subsequently take on your site.
  • They are not available to advertisers in sensitive verticals or sub-verticals.
  • Segment the performance report by “click” and “conversion type” to see lead form click and submission/conversion data.
  • Engagement with lead forms won’t show up in Analytics because users never arrive on your site.

  

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

YouTube Marketing: How to Kickstart Your Strategy

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With over 2 billion worldwide active users, YouTube is the top choice for video marketing. But, with being the clear-cut winner comes a lot of competition. There are now more than 50 million content creators pumping out videos daily. With over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute, you are now tasked with figuring out how to make your content stand out among the crowd. 

Whether you’re just starting out on YouTube or trying to improve your strategy, here are few tips to kickstart your marketing strategy. 

Find what content performs best among your audience. 

You can’t be successful on YouTube if your plan is to upload a video and just sit and wait for viewers to find it themselves. With loads of other options, your content and channel has to stand out. 

The best way to do this is by creating fresh, original and entertaining content. Start by researching what works and what doesn’t. By knowing the trends and what’s popular among your audience, you can improve your content. The more effort you put into researching your audience and what they enjoy, the more insights you’ll have to use to assist you in creating your own content.

Pick catchy thumbnails and titles. 

It’s no secret that to get more clicks on your video, it’s necessary to spark your viewers curiosity right off the bat. This requires something that can quickly grab people’s attention, while communicating what the video is about. Your thumbnail and title ultimately play the largest role in this. Your chosen title and thumbnail work together to build a viewer’s anticipation by giving a glimpse of the video, so making them eye-catching is essential. 

Here are some tips on creating a thumbnail that stands out: 

  • Use an image of the most exciting part of your video. 
  • Set the size to 1280 x 720 px (16:9)
  • Create a title that gives the thumbnail context. 
  • Include an attractive background.

Here are some additional tips on creating a clickable title: 

  • Include popular keywords. 
  • Consider using a question your viewers may be asking or searching. 
  • Make it concise and on-topic – aka don’t use click-bait or misleading titles.  

Optimize your content with YouTube SEO.

One of the most essential aspects of marketing on YouTube that many aren’t aware of is SEO. Oftentimes people only think of using SEO when it comes to Google or other search engines. With such a large number of daily users, combined with billions of content being uploaded everyday, YouTube is almost another Google, but for strictly videos. SEO is essential to prevent your videos from just getting lost in the massive sea of content. 

So, how do you go about optimizing your videos? With the use of tags, keywords, running A/B tests, staying on top of your statistics and researching competitors’ statistics. This can be a lot, especially when you’re just getting started, but there are a number of tools that can help, such as: 

Not only can this help your content rank higher on YouTube, but on Google as well. Google has started favoring video content when it comes to search results. Meaning if you’re video is ranking well on YouTube, Google will want to make it easier to find and share.

Create a schedule and stick to it. 

To be successful and drive engagement on YouTube you need to have a strong presence. This requires regular uploads, meaning at least once a week. This is because the number of videos being uploaded on YouTube continues to increase. To prevent yourself from getting lost among the crowd, you have to keep up. 

Consistently uploading may be more work, but it’s extremely beneficial. It brings more engagement, more subscribers and more feedback, allowing you to improve and enhance your content delivery quickly. 

We recommend creating a monthly calendar with your video topics, titles, tags, keywords and any other details you find helpful. If you have time, you could even create multiple videos in one sitting, so you don’t have to rush to create them each week. 

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips for Hosting a Successful Virtual Event

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In the midst of the pandemic, it seems unlikely large events or gatherings will be happening anytime soon. Many organizations and businesses are either forced to cancel their events altogether, or take it virtual. Social media platforms and online applications have a medium to host events ranging from conferences, interactive, entertainment, online gigs, talks, and a lot more. A year or two back we were still talking about the future and potential of events taking place online, but it seems the current state of the world sped up that process. 

Hosting virtual events can seem straightforward, but making them engaging, entertaining and overall successful isn’t so simple. To create an impactful and successful online event takes a few key strategies and tactics, we’re going to discuss six. 

1. Timing is Important 

This goes further than just the length of the event, but also the date and time of day of the event. Before settling on a date, make sure it isn’t competing with any major holiday or other event. If it’s an international event, you should also consider time zones.

You should also think carefully about the time of day you choose to start your event. It’s common for people to choose lunch time, thinking they’ll catch people on break or in between tasks. While in the office this is usually the case, times are different. With people working from home they may need to tend to their kids during lunch or taking a break from their work space themselves. Because of the flexibility, many people will tune into webinars and workshops while doing menial work tasks that don’t take much focus. 

Lastly, think about the actual length of your event. It really depends on context and audience. But as a general rule of thumb, an hour is a good time to aim for. You risk losing peoples’ attention going any longer and risk trying to cram too much information into anything less.

2. Choose the Right Platform 

When it comes to software to use to host your event, you’re not scarce for choices. You should think about your event type, as well as your audience demographic. Not every platform is apt for everyone. What Millennials prefer, Gen X may not. Gen X likes platforms that are quick and easy to access, while mature audiences usually prefer something with a login process and more security. Consider how easy it is for viewers to engage, comment or ask questions on the platform you use as well. 

It’s also important to think about where your audience will be viewing from. Not all platforms play well on mobile, but some are more suitable for informal gatherings rather than corporate events. So, depending on your type of event, you may want to look into social media platforms, like Instagram or Tik Tok. 

3. Promotion is Key 

To reach a real audience and let them know your event is happening, putting a real budget behind promotion is essential. There’s no way for people to know until you use online platforms to talk about what you’re organizing. There are many other companies organizing similar events. Use advertising to tell people what makes you stand out from the competition. Here are some tips to get started: 

  • Promote the top talent you have speaking/performing at your event. 
  • Utilize keywords to optimize SEO. 
  • Market through influencers, popular social channels and the event page itself. 
  • Create eye-catching designs and creatives. 
  • Put out a mailer blast. 

Leading up to the event, don’t forget to remind people it’s happening. Given the popularity of online events right now, it’s easy for people to forget they’ve signed up for it. Send out email reminders the day before and of the event that includes location, time and login information, as well as posting on your social channels as well. 

4. Provide Incentives 

A great way to stand out among the mass of virtual events taking place right now is by providing some sort of incentive for attendees. Consider having a draw or the best answers/questions win some sort of merchandise, anyway to increase value to customers. 

5. Engage with Attendees

Presenting interesting content is only half of virtual events. To be successful attendees need to feel involved and be engaged, otherwise they’ll forget it even happened. Involve viewers in the form of polls, games, surveys, Q&A’s, etc. Let them ask live questions during the webinar and let them be seen by others. You can also create a chat for attendees to interact with each other. Some events even go as far as splitting viewers off into their own groups to be able to see and talk with one another. It’s really all about creating an effective and intimate virtual connection.

6. Be Prepared for Technical Issues 

Technical problems are the bane of every virtual event, and just working with technology in general. They’re only more likely to occur at the current time with unprecedented demands on the broadband network. Glitches can always happen, so just be prepared. Have another team member on standby in case the speaker’s Wifi or computer falters and they’re no longer able to present. 

Also, you can’t assume attendees are experienced in using video conferencing technology. So, if there’s a “mute all” option, you should make sure that’s activated as people join. This can help avoid confusion, distraction or people talking over the presenter. Also be sure to have your computer on “Do Not Disturb” mode if you’re doing a screen share, to ensure no private notifications pop up during the event. 

Final Thoughts 

Virtual events actually have many benefits. They give more people the chance to attend, as there’s no traveling fees, easier to organize and are great for repurposed content. With the way the world and digital landscape is moving, they’re only going to get more popular. Now is the best time to start to learn how to navigate different platforms and get comfortable! 

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

SEO Tips for Beginners

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It’s no secret that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be extremely beneficial to a website’s and business’s overall success. But getting there can be complex, especially for beginners, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. A simple Google search for “SEO” returns almost 500 million results, which is more information than anyone could read in a lifetime. On top of that much of the information is now either out-of-date or not relevant. In reality, there are quite a few simple things you can start with to begin a highly effective SEO strategy. Here are 5 SEO tips for beginners. 

Research and use relevant keywords

It makes sense that keywords are key when it comes to SEO success. Think about what your audience would be searching for on your website. What is their search intent? What are they really looking for? Understanding search intent is extremely beneficial when it comes to planning site content and your SEO approach. 

There are a number of tools and strategies to use to ensure we get a good selection of keywords together. Start by brainstorming potential keywords. Just simply write down everything that is relevant., such as services you offer, products you have, close locations, etc. You can also use a keyword research tool to help you identify new keywords. Google offers a tool that forms part of its Ads PPC service, but there are other providers that offer free and paid variations. Lastly, do your own keyword searches on search engines. When you do a search in a search bar, there will be a list of suggestions at the bottom of the page. You can add any relevant suggestions to your list. 

Optimize titles and meta descriptions

Now that you have your keyword list, you can use them to optimize your titles, descriptions and other forms of content. You want to get keywords into the title of pages, but in a natural way. Remember that these show up in search results, so aim to clearly indicate what the page is about and entice users to click on it. Try to include where, what and who if possible. 

Next we want to optimize the meta description. A page’s description doesn’t have as big of an impact on SEO, but it can still help. The meta description should explain the content on your page and further convince a user to click. 

Optimize for mobile

Almost 60% of searches are done from a mobile device. Google favors sites that are mobile friendly. Back in 2019, Google declared that “mobile-first indexing will be enabled by default for all new, previously unknown to Google Search, websites.” This means Google now crawls the mobile versions of sites first, before desktop various. And eventually, Google won’t index your site at all if it isn’t mobile friendly. So how do you go about optimizing your site for mobile? Here are some quick tips: 

  • Keep page load time down 
  • Make reading and navigation easy 
  • Make it responsive to smaller screen size, meaning there’s no pinching or zooming required

Create content, then optimize it

You don’t want to start your content by picking out your keywords and massaging content to match. Write content you’d like to read, things that are interesting, useful, fun and engaging; then optimize the content for SEO. Once you’ve fully written the content, go back and pick out places to insert keywords. Don’t forget to also optimize: 

  • Titles 
  • Descriptions 
  • Header tags 
  • Images 

Build relevant links

Link building carries a bad reputation due to marketers that use black hat strategies for SEO. But when done correctly, link building is extremely helpful when it comes to driving visibility, especially for competitive keywords. Developing this requires having the right kind of links pointing to your site. These links help Google and other search engines determine your relative importance and to order search results using these metrics. Google has commented on this point by saying, 

“Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

This can be the most difficult part of SEO, but there are some strategies to use to gain safe backlinks to help improve your visibility in search results. You can utilize highly credible directory sites, as well as a competitor link analysis to help identify new link opportunities. 

Final Thoughts

Having success with SEO isn’t something you can do overnight. It can take months and even years to create a site and content strategy that a search engine will favor. Often with SEO it is 20% of the effort that will get you 80% of the results and for most small businesses this is a great starting point that will help your site be more visible in organic search.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

 

Audience Context: Why It Matters

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Your content is most likely catered to audience personas, as it should be. All marketers rely on an outlined demographic of the audience you have targeted as potential customers. However, there is no way for a persona to account for your audience context – what is a real person experiencing at the exact moment they see your content?

In a perfect world, 100% of your content would be catered specifically to every potential customer. Thankfully, there are tools we can use to get a better idea of the customer’s headspace to match up with the audience context.

Keyword Planners

Often times keyword planners are used as a crutch to plug in a few key topics and phrases, and overload on content to increase your organic traffic. We advise to rather think of keyword planners as tools to help understand the specific language your readers are using. Focus on the phrases that pose as questions, and answer those questions in your content to give immediate value to your readers.

Google Trends

Once you have your group of keywords and key phrases, enter them into Google Trends to see what else you can learn about people using those search terms. This step will help you to match up your content to fit your audience context. Look into geographic locations, and the time of day, month, or year people access information and searches increase.

Popular Content

Try googling the question you are trying to answer in your content, and see what else is currently out there. Use this to see if you can do a better job explaining the question at hand or fill in missing gaps of information.

 

Now step one is complete. You know what challenges your potential customers are facing. Now for step 2, which is understanding how your customers feel about their challenges and utilize effective emotional writing to strike a chord with this audience.

Show Audience Context, Don’t Tell

The most simple mistake to make when writing emotional content to engage your audience is telling them that you’re doing it. Don’t tell the reader how they feel. Instead, imagine how they would prefer to feel and give them that. Audience context is all about resonating with the reader without exposing your intention.

Resonate, Don’t Exploit

When it comes to audience context, you should evoke, not exploit, emotion in people. It’s quite simple to exploit intense emotions of fear, anger, agitation in our audiences in order to sell. We advise against this strategy and encourage you to instead show the reader you understand their emotions and maybe even share them.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips to Grow your Small Business Through Social Media

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The value of social media for businesses continues to grow, especially in light of COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allows for businesses to maintain connections with existing customers and extend their reach to new audiences. With over 2 billion worldwide users, everyone knows social media has now become a crucial part of an overall business strategy. But as a small business, joining social media effectively can be easier said than done. Let’s take a look at 5 ways you can start using social media to grow your small business. 

1. If you can’t create, curate. 

Posting consistent content is one of the most important factors that goes into increasing engagement. If you can’t create new content on your own, curate other’s content. Tools such as Pocket, Flipboard and Feedly allow you to curate useful, relevant content from other sources and share due credits. We recommend posting a minimum of twice per week and a maximum of 5, depending on your content type and industry. 

2. Use video to keep your audience engaged and growing. 

Nowadays, visual content is key. Algorithms have changed and evolved to actually preferring video content over all other forms. Going even further, 72% of consumers prefer videos over manuals to decide on a buy. There are numerous types of video content you can create to keep your audience engaged and growing. Consider sharing behind-the-scenes looks at your business, product launches, how-to’s, service examples, etc. 

3. Involve your followers. 

Finding ways to directly involve your followers in your content is another way to maximize engagement. Consider making quizzes, polls, giveaways and contests.  Many brands will create giveaways and contests and require those that enter to like, comment or share their posts with their friends. This is a simple and effective way to drastically increase your awareness among your followers and a larger audience. 

4. Utilize hashtags. 

Hashtags are one of the best ways to improve your searchability,  gain more awareness and expand the reach of your content. This goes beyond just creating your own hashtags. Find trending hashtags that are pertinent for your business: 

  • For your subject matter: #HowTo’s, #Hacks, #DIYS 
  • For your industry: #Food, #Fashion, #Auto 
  • For your audience: #StartUp, #WannaBeChef, #FitnessFreaks 

Research what’s trending among your audience and find a relevant way to involve yourself into the conversation. 

5. Reach out to influencers. 

Influencer marketing is a great way for new and small businesses to gain traction amongst a large audience. Influencers are now seen as more trusted, relatable and popular than celebrities. Consumers turn to them more for advice on what products to buy, services to use, brands to trust, etc. There are a number of tools that can help you research who the best influencers are in your industry and make it easier for you to reach out and connect with them. 

Final Thoughts

To be successful on social media it’s ultimately about giving value to your audience, whether that be through educating or entertaining. Users are constantly being bombarded with massive amounts of content and ads everyday. Meaning you have to find ways to bring value to them and differentiate yourself from the competition. Strategies will differ based on your industry and audience, but these 5 tactics are a great way for anyone to get started. If you need further assistance in social media marketing, or any other area of digital marketing, contact us today! 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

Tips on Managing Negative Social Media Comments

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Social media is a unique public environment that has its own culture and expectations. And at some point in social media managing, you’ll have to deal with negative comments on your brand’s page or posts. While some of these comments may be from blatant trolls, others will be clear criticism of your product or service. It’s important to know how to effectively deal with these comments. Here are 5 tips on how to manage negative comments on your social media. 

Don’t ignore or delete. 

The worst thing a brand can do is ignore their negative comments. This can aggravate the commenter even further and may lead them to continue to leave negative comments in more places. This can also look bad to other users and existing customers. You want to remain transparent with your audience. Deleting messages rather than addressing them head-on conveys that you might have something to hide. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t remain true for all negative comments. If a comment is inappropriate, offensive or derogatory, it should be deleted. To make this decision, exercise your own judgement or refer to your organization’s code of conduct. 

If it’s your fault, apologize sincerely. 

The saying goes, “the customer is always right.” Even if you disagree with their point of view, it’s still best to apologize. This is the first step in resolving a conflict. Keep a calm, cool and sincere tone throughout the conversation. When someone is bashing something you’re passionate about, this can be difficult, but it’s crucial to not let your emotions get in front of professionalism. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to admit fault for something you had no control over. If that’s the case of the complaint, lead with something like, “We’re sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with your experience.” This shows you still care, but doesn’t recognize that you or a team member did anything wrong. 

Take offline if necessary. 

It’s best practice to resolve the conflict privately. Try to shift the conversation off of social media to another place. Whether this be through direct messenger, email, over the phone, etc. After you apologize, close the response by asking the customer to contact you through one of the mentioned forms of private communication. You never want to get in a further argument in the comments for others to see. Depending on the issue, the customer may write dozens more negative replies, which can reflect poorly on your brand. 

Be personable. 

No one likes their frustrations to be met with automated replies. This also looks bad to anyone else that reads the conversation on social. It’s beneficial to have a plan for negative comments, but you want to personalize the message as much as possible. This shows real empathy, authenticity and sincerity. You want to show that you really do care about your customers. See the following conversation between Delta and a customer. 

source:https://www.socialpilot.co/

It’s evident that these messages were written by a real person and are not automations. They effectively communicate with the customer and show that they genuinely want to help. 

Be timely. 

Timeliness is key with negative comments. Most users expect a response within 2 hours. If necessary, follow up with the relevant departments to give your customer a satisfactory answer. Word travels fast on social media, which is also why it’s so important to respond quickly. A slow response can make it seem like you don’t care or are ignoring the complaint, both which can quickly damage a company’s reputation. 

Be sure to consistently monitor your reputation throughout the day, whether it be through Google Alerts or other social listening tools. This will help to ensure no negative messages go unnoticed. 

Final Thoughts

Negative comments are unavoidable, but if managed the right way they can actually do more for your brand than positive ones. Responding to positive comments is easy. Dealing with negative comments is how you show company integrity, sincerity and personability. This is where long-term customer loyalty stems from. So if you want your company to succeed, watch what people are saying about your brand on social media. React to all the comments you get and be attentive to the problems of your customers.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Facebook Ads Boycott: Why Marketers Are Pulling Their July Ad Spend

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The list of companies planning to suspend their Facebook ads for the month of July continues to grow. This boycott stemmed from Facebook’s inaction to address hate speech on its platform. 

A civil rights coalition, which includes the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the NAACP, launched the #StopHateforProfit campaign last week when it called on major corporations to put a pause on advertising on Facebook to send a message to the platform that its lack of action is not going to be tolerated. Within a few days The North Face, REI, Patagonia and a few others were the first big-name brands to join the stand. 

So what is this boycott all about and should you get behind the movement? 

Where This All Started

Social networking platforms have been under fire over the past year for allowing false statements made by politicians, the president in particular, to be published with no consequence. These types of campaigns stem all the way back to the election of 2016, with Trump and Clinton. More recently, the main focus of the push came from the president’s recent comments on the BLM protests, which Facebook chose to leave up in the matter of public interest. 

Activists have been pushing for Facebook to follow Twitter’s lead and draw a definitive line on hate speech that cannot be crossed in on-platform discussion, even by the president. Quickly following Trump’s post, Twitter prevented users from viewing the tweet without reading a brief notice that the post glorified violence. Twitter further tightened restrictions on the messages from Trump and the White House by blocking users from liking or replying to them. A few days later Twitter added their first fact-checking labels to Trump’s election-related tweets as well.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on other hand did not feel the same way about censoring the president’s posts. Zuckerberg says Trump’s posts did not violate Facebook’s policy and will remain online, uncensored. 

They ultimately decided to leave the post up because the company’s position is that it “should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote. 

The Boycott 

Last week the NAACP and the ADL officially announced their #StopHateForProfitCampaign with a full page ad in the Los Angeles Times. The campaign was meant to target advertisers, specifically big-name brands. Just two days later, The North Face tweeted, “We’re in. We’re out @Facebook #StopHateForProfit.” The North Face’s commitment applies to ads on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, the brand said in a statement, though it will continue to create organic content on Instagram. The list now expands to: 

  • REI 
  • Upwork 
  • Patagonia 
  • Dashlane 
  • Magnolia Pictures 
  • Eddie Bauer 
  • Arc’teryx
  • Ben & Jerrys 
  • Eileen Fisher 

What Will Happen to Facebook? 

It’s not a massive wave of advertisers yet, which means it won’t hurt Facebook in a revenue sense. But it will have perceptual impacts, and could spark more backlash from the platform’s partners and users. Facebook has already admitted that it has a deepening ‘trust deficit’ with ad partners, which it will need to address. The company has already been seeing a slowdown in ads due to the impacts of COVID-19 and the recession. If the list of big names continues to grow, Facebook will have no choice but to listen. 

What Should You Do? 

The decision to join in on this movement is a more personal one. If you support the #StopHateforProfit campaign and feel that it’s important to use your voice as a business, this is the perfect way to do that. On the other hand, this isn’t about calling out or judging marketers whose business relies on Facebook advertisement. For many joining in, this is a very low-risk decision, but for others it’s not financially justifiable. 

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.