Marketing tips that really take the biscuit!

What can a biscuit tell you about marketing? 🍪🤔 One of the biggest mistakes I have seen is a brand spreading itself too thinly by rushing into setting up multiple social channels due to FOMO (fear of missing out - should I be on Twitter, Insta, Facebook etc...) or external pressures - perhaps someone else within the organisation saying "we should be on X, Y, Z". 

What will likely happen is they'll get stuck in a rut trying to work out what to post across all of these channels then they'll inevitably leave some (or in some cases all) of the channels to go quiet - que a tumbleweed any time now.

A much better strategy is to really think about your audience, what channels they are using and go there. Better to do one channel really well than ten terribly. So back to the biscuit (feat Lanark's own Border Biscuits no less!), this is a wee trick to help you think about the purpose of the many different social channels...

📍 Facebook - I like biscuits! Please join my community group of fellow biscuit lovers and we can discuss all things biscuity.

📍 Instagram - Here are some super fancy (filtered obviously) photos of homemade, artisan biscuits placed neatly beside a steaming coffee mug. Designed to make your mouth water and make your hand reach for the biscuit tin! 

📍 Twitter - Let me update you on my current status of eating a biscuit. Perhaps we could get into a debate about the BEST biscuit ever. Do you have a biscuit-fuelled complaint? (not enough chocolate on your digestive) Head this way...

📍 Pinterest - Take a look at my biscuit recipe or why not try decorating your own biscuit tin. I'm very proud of my inspirational kitchen boards!

📍 LinkedIn - My skills include biscuit eating and for your perusal here is some information about my biscuit business. 

📍 YouTube - Go behind the scenes at a biscuit factory and see how these biscuits are made or watch me do a live biscuit unboxing.

📍 Google+ - Searching for information on my biscuit business? Here you go! 

📍 Snapchat - Want this biscuit? Sorry I ate it and it's gone! 

📍 Tiktok - Apparently there's a new biscuit eating challenge. Jenga with kit kats - all the rage.

So, who really fancies a biscuit now? Get in touch if you'd like to discuss which social channels you should be using. FYI a jammy wagon wheel would be fantastic, thanks!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

melissareilly3@gmail.com

The 80 / 20 rule in social media marketing

Is it a cake or a meringue? 🤔 No you're right, it's a cake! 🍰 So turns out I'm using food for another marketing analogy, which seems to help explain the point and make me hungry in equal measure. 

I'm sharing a photo of this tasty looking swiss roll to help describe the 80/20 rule when it comes to your social media marketing. First of all, marketing is annoying. You are trying to invade someone's personal (digital) space to get your message across and encourage action. To do this well, you have to 'sandwich' your sales message between valuable content. Here is where the 80/20 comes in. 80% of the posts from your business social media feed should be *valuable content*, with only 20% being sales posts. 

Depending on your audience, there could be a huge variety of posts as to what is 'valuable' to them. This could be posts that:

- Entertain them (funny videos / memes)

- Inform them (industry articles / videos / infographics)

- Intrigue them (your story / behind the scenes, throwbacks etc)

- Inspire them (pretty photos, quotes)

- Excite them (competitions, giveaways)

- Shock them (topical causes / stats)

Basically, for every 'sales' post you share - you want to share around 3/4 posts of non-sales, valuable content that will appeal to your audience, make them trust/like your brand more and ultimately, be more likely to buy from you when they see the next sales post. 

If you overdo the jam (the sales posts!) you run the risk of coming across as a pushy salesman, annoying, repetitive and users will either unfollow your brand, unlike your page or simply skim past your posts without any recognition. 

Get in touch if you're looking for ideas of types of 'valuable' content you can share with your audience.

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

melissareilly3@gmail.com

Social media content: don't be a copy cat!

 

When you're managing multiple social media channels and time is tight, it can be very tempting to create a post on one channel, say Facebook, and then simply copy and paste the exact same image and text onto other channels. We are all guilty of it and I'll be the first to hold my hand up and admit I've done this in the past!

There are two issues with this, firstly you may have completely different audiences following you on different channels - and the message that strikes a chord with one of them could mean nothing to the other. The second is that when you copy/paste posts on the SAME platform but through different account channels, it's extremely obvious to users as - if they 'like' and 'follow' both of your pages - they could see the exact same post coming in succession from both of your pages, which can appear lazy. 

Ask yourself - why does my umbrella (overarching) brand have multiple Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or Instagram accounts etc?

If the answer is that you have different audiences interested in different things, you need to step away from CTRL + V and tailor the message consistently across each individual channel. This can be as simple as tweaking the format of the sentences, or using a slightly different opening line - perhaps using a rhetorical question which piques the interest of that individual audience. Mixing up the emojis used (or removing them) can change the 'tone' of the post! Within the post's image, you could use a different lead image for each account channel or if posting a mini album of photos (2-4 images) mix up the order they appear in.

Thanks for reading! 

Melissa

Melissareilly3@gmail.com

Increase the reach of your Organic Facebook posts

Many of us Facebook page managers are searching for ways to increase the 'organic' reach of our Facebook posts. By 'organic' I mean posts on Facebook that you don't pay to promote, that are initially shown to people who have liked your page. Over the past couple of years Facebook has become more and more clever about monetising the platform and is now making it incredibly difficult for page's posts to be seen by their fans, without any paid promotion. For example, your page might have 1,000 likes - but it's more than likely that around 10% of these people are actually seeing anything you post. When you pay to promote your Facebook posts this can be to people who like your page, their friends or anyone on Facebook that you select through a range of (very specific!) targeting options. 

That being said, there are a few tricks you can utilise to try and increase your 'organic reach' and how many people see your Facebook posts without getting your wallet out to pay to promote the posts. 

Use Photos and FACEBOOK Videos

Facebook likes it when you use visual content and will give posts that use photographs, or videos in particular a higher organic reach. If you're planning on posting a video then you're much better to upload the video directly to Facebook, rather than sharing a YouTube link. 

Watch your timing
Your posts are most likely to be seen by more of your fans if you share content whilst they are actually online. This will vary by page, but I find it tends to be based around meal times or when people are commuting - breakfast, lunch time, dinner and then around 8pm also seems to be a popular time for my pages. 

Like your own posts

This might sound strange, but Facebook will show content to more people if it already thinks it is valuable and interesting. To kick start this I always 'like' posts from my page and then my personal account. If you work for an organisation you can encourage staff to like your page and actively 'like' content and also share if they're feeling extra nice!

Post links in the comments

Facebook is less likely to show content if it thinks it's overtly 'salesy'. To minimise how much it looks like you're trying to sell something in your posts, I always include any links in the comments - instead of in the actual caption area. 

Ask people to like / comment / share

Another way to increase your reach is to get people engaged with your posts. You can do this by including questions in your post captions, asking people to 'like' the post or 'share' the post - in a light hearted way only! 

Share Instagram images

Something I've discovered recently is that Facebook LOVES when you share Instagram images. Might be something to do with the fact that it purchased the platform in 2012! This is also a great way to share user generated content on your Facebook page, by searching Instagram for people sharing photos of your products, location, shop - you get the picture. 

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear if you have any tips on how to increase your organic reach!

Melissa

@_Melissa247
Page manager for New Lanark World Heritage Site and Stella & Dot by Melissa Reilly

How to write better tweets - some quick tips!

I don't know about you, but I mostly use Twitter on my phone and hardly ever log into the actual website. When I'm scrolling through my timeline of tweets I start at the most recent and go right back until I see the last tweet I read - skimming past most of them and only focusing on a few that grab my attention and actually clicking the link on even fewer of them. This got me thinking about why certain tweets stood out more than others, and what about them made me want to engage with them - may this be replying, RT'ing, clicking through...yadda yadda!

From investigating my timeline, and what I've picked up from working in Social Media over the past two years I've thought up some quick tips you can use to write better tweets that are really easy to implement and should help your tweets stand out in the ever-changing twitter timeline!

• Use images! As Twitter now allows you to automatically see a preview of images in your timeline you should include images to make your tweets stand out, enhance your message and generally make them appear more attractive to users. A rectangle format of around 600 x 300px should work best for this!

• Keep tweets to around 120 characters or less so that users can RT your tweets without cutting the end off, pretty much. Writing shorter snappier tweets will also encourage you to use smarter language to make your point - a wee trip to thesaurus never hurts!

• Use clear Call To Actions (CTAs) -  What do you want your reader to do? If you have a specific link you want them to click then I've found that using clear & simple CTAs will drive clicks. Such as: Click here to....., Find out more....., Enter here......

• Keep links separate - When you add an image and another link to a tweet the image link will automatically be added to the end. To save users getting confused as to what they should click, try and add the other URL link nearer the start of the tweet.

• Shorten your URLs - talking about links, nobody likes to see a huge screed of text as a link so make the best use of your 140 characters and shorten your URLs using a service like bit.ly - you can even use this to track click throughs. 

• Use relevant hashtags - Don't go overboard or use them just for the sake of it. I mainly use hashtags to link up tweets & join in the conversation with a specific event, TV programme or film - or if I'm feeling particularly devilish I use them to convey the feeling/mood of the tweet that you can't really form into a sentence, like #exciting #BringItOn (does that make sense?)

• Talk to people -  and attract their attention by writing as if you are actually talking to them. This is as easy as using words like you (The top make-up looks you should try this Spring: [link]), and asking rhetorical or actual questions. (if you want to start a conversation with users or get their opinion on something)

• Tweet at the right time - there's no point tweeting if nobody is going to be around to read it. I've seen loads of reports on 'the best time to tweet' but I don't think there is a hard and fast solution for everyone that if you tweet at 9.06am you'll get 1 million zillion RT's. I think that, depending on your audience, it's fairly obvious when most people will be online scrolling through their tweets. 7am-9am: during the morning commute, 12pm - 2pm: Lunchtime and an obligatory phone check, 5pm - 6.30pm: hometime (woohoo!) 10pm-11pm: bed time and one last glance to check you haven't missed anything! .......and yes, that is pretty much a rough timeline of a day in my life :) 

Do you have any tips for writing more engaging tweets? Comment below! 

Thanks for reading, Melissa x

If you liked this post, then please feel free to share it - Tweet

Follow @_Melissa247

Melissa on Google+

A - Z of Social Media in 2013!

2013 has been a ground breaking year for Social Media: records have been broken; billion dollar offers have been made (and refused) and new standards have been set for 2014 and beyond. We've seen users from across the world uniting in the face of tradegy & loss, and over 8 million people tuned in to watch Felix Baumgartner make that death defying jump.....even the Oxford Dictionary got on board, with everyone's favourite photo the 'Selfie' being named the Word of the Year. 

There are a number of top/the best/coolest 'Social Media in 2013' lists flying around just now, so I thought I'd pull together some of the most interesting elements into the A - Z of Social Media in 2013. (which seemed like a good idea until I got to X....) 

In a bid to overcome the decline in album sales through streaming sites like Spotify and Deezer, Beyonce surprised fans on December 13th by announcing on her Instagram channel that she was releasing a Visual Album of 14 songs and 17 videos on itunes. The album was sold as one continuous piece of music & video, meaning fans couldn't download individual tracks - however, this didn't appear to scupper the desire with 80,000 copies selling within the first 3 hours and 365,000 copies sold by the end of Day 1. 



In 2013 San Francisco, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Social Media users across the world came together to help BatKid (aka Miles Scott) superhero dreams come true. Miles is in remission from Leukemia and had always dreamed of fighting crime in Gotham and driving the Batmobile - and for one day this was made possible! Over 11,000 volunteers and citizens lined the Streets of San Francisco taking photos, blogging and tweeting - resulting in an explosion of the use of #SFBatkid and @SFbatKid online.

#FollowFriday RT @SFWish: Here he comes!!!! #SFBatkid pic.twitter.com/pMn3gRHcLo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 15, 2013

In 2013 we seen Social Media go to infinity and beyond thanks to Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield. From aboard the International Space Station he took photos, vlogged, tweeted and also recorded his famous rendition of Bowie's 'Space Oddity' - for the first time giving earth-dwellers a fascinating inside look at what really goes on 220 miles up!




In February 2013 a strange phenomenon swept across the internet in a flurry of onesies, masks and questionable dance moves. The Original DO THE HARLEM SHAKE video was uploaded and subsequently replicated by thousands of users - with a number of notable organisations getting involved like NASA, the Norwegian Army and the Miami HEAT NBA team. 

E News! had a real EEEK moment when they used a photo of the wrong 'Ian Watkins' in their article about the Welsh rock band Lostprophets and their lead singer's guilty plea. They actually used a photo of 'H' from Steps who is now taking legal action against the US website, who have been said to 'deeply regret' the mistake. It just goes to show that you need to be a bit more careful when using Google Images to identify someone unless you want another case of mistaken identity...(Nelson Mandela and Morgan Freeman?)









At the end of November news of the Fast & Furious film series actor Paul Walker and his friend Roger Rodas' untimely death in a car accident became one of the most talked about moments of the year on Twitter. Hundreds of thousands of fans, fellow actors and organisations took to the social networking site to express their grief and offer consolation. The tweet from Paul's management was one of the most responded to tweets from the entire year, with almost 400,000 RTs.

It's with a heavy heart that we must confirm Paul Walker passed away today in a tragic car accident...MORE: http://t.co/9hDuJMH99M - #TeamPW
— Paul Walker (@RealPaulWalker) December 1, 2013

Beware what you post on your Facebook page, Big Brother is watching you....or they are trying to! In the summer Facebook published its Global Government Requests Report for the first 6 months of 2013 which showed that during this time period the U.S Government made the most requests for information on Facebook users, with 11-12K total requests on over 21K individual users & accounts. Apart from the U.S other top Governments requesting data were the UK, India, Germany, Italy and France. 

Another event of the summer was the introduction #Hashtags to Facebook - to the dismay of many users. A hashtag is a word superseded by a # - thus turning the word into a clickable link to all other posts using this hashtag. Originally used on Twitter, hashtags are now becoming globally used across multiple social networking sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Vine - and are being integrated into TV, film and print to create fully linked-up marketing campaigns. 






2013 was a busy year for Instagram - the photo sharing platform that makes our photos look so much cooler. In April the platform was bought by Facebook for $1bn and in June it launched its video sharing feature which lets users take 15 second videos & apply filters to them. This new feature appeared to rival Twitter's 'Vine' which saw a 40% drop in video shares in June. 

Introducing Video on Instagram from Instagram on Vimeo.


Cuppa Jo? Listen up caffeine lovers, in October Starbucks launched #TweetaCoffee - this allows you to gift a friend a $5 Starbucks gift card with just a tweet! Simply link up your account then tweet @Tweetacoffee to [your friends handle] and add personal message if you like - they are then sent a link to their e-giftcard! Nothing says I love you like a Caramel Macchiato, right? It'll be interesting to see how other retailers use this functionality in the year ahead.















Kerching! On the 7th of November Twitter entered the Stock Market under the name of 'TWTR' with stocks selling at $45.10, or 73 percent above its $26 IPO price. This opening price valued Twitter at $31 Billion. 








Glee actress and singer Lea Michelle's tweet with a photo and her late boyfriend Cory Monteith was one the most retweeted post on Twitter in 2013 with fans showing their support through just under 400,000 RTs. 

Thank you all for helping me through this time with your enormous love & support. Cory will forever be in my heart. pic.twitter.com/XVlZnh9vOc
— Lea Michele (@msleamichele) July 29, 2013

On 15 April the Boston Marathon finish line was hit by two bombs in quick succession. Journalists and members of the public took to Twitter to spread news of the event, with the first tweet being sent seconds after the event happened. Talk of the tragedy continued to dominate Twitter throughout the week with keywords Boston, #bostonstrong, Boston Marathon and #prayforboston being used millions of times throughout the week. (Boston used around 6 million times on the 15th alone) The Boston Police Department even used Twitter to try and identify the suspects showing how live-tweeting and two way conversation through Twitter is shaping how the public find out about, and talk about events globally in real time. 




No, that's what Snapchat said to Facebook when they offered to buy the platform for 3 Billion in November. It's thought that Zuckerberg made the offer to try and engage with the younger users who are now shying away from Facebook (probably because their parents and great aunties keep commenting on every thing they do) and are now flocking to other platforms like Snapchat in their millions - 26 million in the U.S alone apparently. I think that although Snapchat is very popular right now, it may experience a decline due to the new Instagram Direct and the ability for users to share photos privately with their family and friends. 

Oreo's timely tweet at the Superbowl on February 3rd showed how explosive a reaction can be seen when brands create timely and relevant content. The post has received over 15 thousand retweets to date and should get other brands thinking about upcoming events relevant to their industry or audience and how they should be 'on the ball' and ready to create relevant content if anything interesting/unusual/funny happens (even just the lights going out!)

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

In June Facebook started to roll out the ability for users to comment on wall posts with Photos. This small piece of functionality goes a long way in allowing users to be more creative with their replies, and gives brands a whole new functionality for running competitions - like the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games have done here to engage with users in a fun way and allow them to show their excitement for the Games. 


In 2013 the Queen's 'The British Monarchy' Facebook page reached over 1 million likes. 

The world also went mad for the #RoyalBaby - Prince George. From 7.37am on 22 July when +Clarence House confirmed the birth on Twitter a frenzy ensued which saw over 2 million mentions of the birth, and #RoyalBaby being used just under 1 million times by excited well wishers. Tweets peaked at 25,300 per minute at 8.37pm - no doubt during the evening news!

2013 saw the Oxford Dictionary take notice of Social Media with Selfie being named the 'Word of the Year'. A number of users took to Twitter and Instagram to share their #selfies during the day of the announcement, and a couple of brands got involved too like the Nando's cockerel and Clyde the mascot for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. 

#selfie :) pic.twitter.com/fL4DCE0J2O
— Clyde (@Clyde2014) November 19, 2013

After Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) hit the Phillipines in November a call for help went out, predominately through social media. Twitter was used to share information about the storm with over 6.1 million mentions of "Typhoon", “Philippines,” “Haiyan” and “Yolanda” from the 7th - 15th November. As people started talking about the disaster it became clear that most people wanted to help in some way. Celebrities such as Justin Beiber and Harry Styles urged their followers to donate to relief operations, around 5,000 people took #unselfies to share information about donating and Google's crisis map showed a crowdsourced view of evacuation centers, crisis areas, and relief drop zone areas.

What if our selfies were unselfish? We love #unselfie - here's ours! HT @mashable http://t.co/mqXgFqaSkQ #Haiyan pic.twitter.com/nEzUUJtw8M
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) November 15, 2013

U decide! For the first time ever in 2013 Twitter partnered with TIME to vote on the 'Person of the year' using #TIMEPOY. Whilst the final decision still lay with TIME editors, Twitter users could vote on who they thought most affected the news of our lives over the past year to help the editors make their choice. Miley Cyrus was leading the way until December 2nd, but was pipped to the post when Pope Francis was announced as the honoree. 

Twitter launched its innovative micro-video platform 'Vine' in January 2013 which allows users to share 6 second video clips with the addition of hashtags. Users can 'start and stop' filming by touching the screen allowing the production of stop-motion video, humorous comedy sketches and mini dramas! Vine was the most fourth most downloaded free app in the appstore in 2013 showing that the micro trend (Sending snapschats for seconds, 6 & 15 second video clips) is getting bigger, so to speak.


TWerk it! Miley Cyrus shocked the world with her performance at the MTV VMAs and it certainly got people talking: 306,000 of them per minute in fact! Tweets were mostly positive on Sunday night (#votemiley: 28K, sexy: 18K mentions) during the performance but come Monday morning things had turned a bit nasty.(bitch:20K, bad: 52K, hate: 40K metions) Is all publicity good publicity? Hmmm. 

Smilers! My VMA performance had 306.000 tweets per minute. That's more than the blackout or Superbowl! #fact.
— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) August 26, 2013

In 2013 the #1 Top Trending video on YouTube was The Fox (What does the Fox say?) The video has over 317 million views.




On 19 June 2013 over 8 million people tuned into YouTube to watch Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128K. This meant the Red Bull Stratos broke the record for the most concurrent liveview views ever!







There wasn't a Z-lister in sight at the 85th Annual Academy Awards held in L.A in February 2013. The #Oscars generated a record breaking 8.9 million tweets with 2.1 million coming in during the Red Carpet, and 6.8 million from the awards ceremony. The most talked about events during the night were 'Argo awarded Best Picture' (85,300 tweets per minute), 'Adele performing Skyfall' (82,300 tweets per minute) and not forgetting Jennifer Lawrence's dress! 

Thanks for reading! Here's to another exciting year for Social Media in 2014. 

If you liked this post, then please feel free to share it -  Tweet


Follow @_Melissa247

Melissa on Google+

The best social content....of all time!

The title of this blog post sounds like something that should be read out by the 'movie voice over guy' and followed by a fanfare of trumpets. In fact it's a round up of some of the best social content that's been published online since the dawn of (internet) time.

Now, by "best" I don't mean the best idea, most creative, most thought out or well executed  - I mean the content that people have went mad for and 'clicked,shared, RT'd and liked' in a frenzy until their hearts were content.

There's no hard and fast formula for creating content that will be 'shareable' although there are some tips that can help (keep an eye out for a future blog post on these!) You could spend months working on an idea, and it could be fantastic but it could easily be taken over by a video of a cat playing a piano. 

From the examples below it seems that to gain massive exposure on the web it helps to be famous, announce a major milestone and finally...who doesn't like garlic bread?! 

Here we go, a list of the most popular content from some of of today's major social networks (obviously this could change any day now)   

Twitter
Most RT'd tweet ever with 814,411 RT's when Obama announced he had been re-elected as President. 

 View original tweet


Facebook
Most shared post with around 2,000,000 shares is a prank from Nolan Daneils who claimed he would give £1mil of his lottery winnings to someone who shared this photo post. 

Pinterest
Most re-pinned pin of all time is a recipe for cheesy garlic bread with 103,000 re-pins. (mamma mia thatsa lotta garlic!)

View original Pin


YouTube
Most watched video ever on YouTube with 512,883,948 views is a clip of Charlie, the blood thirsty tyrant!!

Linkedin There aren't any stats on the most popular Linkedin article of all time, but the most popular article of 2012 about being a good employee and has been shared over 25,000 times. 

View original article Foursquare The most checked-in places on Foursquare are airports and the most popular with 1,011,808 check-ins so far is the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.  View original place Reddit The top link on Reddit ever (apart from a test) is 'Bus Knight' - a story about a rather eventful bus journey with 21,307 votes.

View original link Flickr Most popular picture on Flickr is a snap of Nohkalikai Falls, Cherrapunjee with 3,175,697 views. The photographer claims it's not his "best photography moment"

View original photo  Instagram There's no way to sort Instagram photos by likes but it's estimated that the most liked photo is from the top two 'followed' members: Selena Gomez wishing her beau Justin Bieber a Happy Birthday. 150,000 likes & counting!

View the original tweet (the Instagram photo is now removed) Itunes The most downloaded song ever is 'I gotta feeling' by the Black Eyes Peas with 6,000,000 downloads (figure from 2010)

View the song on Itunes Thanks for reading! Who know's what viral wonders we'll see next time we check our news feeds... Melissa x Follow @_Melissa247