Searles Graphics - Social Media http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/category/38/Social-Media en-US http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3738/Making-the-Most-Out-of-Your-Facebook-Ads-The-Messengers Making the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads - The Messengers To beginning businesses, digital advertising might seem like the greatest blessing marketing has ever seen. The ability to advertise on a platform populated by billions of users is the marketing pitch of the century from Facebook’s end.


Unfortunately, nearly everybody who hasn’t already experienced it underestimates just how difficult getting people to see and engage with your Facebook advertising can be, or what they will need to spend to get the results they really want.


It’s never as simple as “post and you’re done.” Marketing on Facebook is a tricky mix of targeting the right people, growing your online audience, determining and managing the budget dedicated for your campaign, and curating your content so that users actually engage with it.


In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert talk about the common issues that they’ve seen many first time Facebook marketers have to work through and how to optimize your Facebook ads to deliver real results.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


Spotify

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Google Podcasts

Overcast

Pocket Casts

Google Play Music

Anchor

SoundCloud

Stitcher

 

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3711/Should-You-Invest-in-Content-Marketing-The-Messengers Should You Invest in Content Marketing? - The Messengers Modern marketing is all about effective storytelling.


Fortunately, the tools to tell those stories have never been more accessible. This means that it’s easier than ever for your business to have an up-to-date, modern, and attractive website with valuable SEO content that allows anybody looking for your services or products to find you quickly and easily.


For many this comes in the form of the website copy that describes what a business does and what they are like. But others choose to enhance that tools like blogs or video content on their website, which can be used to boost search rankings and increase interaction.


Of course, content marketing also means sticking to a regular publishing schedule. Without investing in quality content and active and consistent promotion, putting something like a blog on your website can be more of a hindrance than a help.


In this episode of the Messengers Podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert talk about their experience working on content for their own business and share some of the misconceptions about content and promotion they regularly come across.


The duo explains why these tools can be invaluable if used properly, but can occasionally do more harm than good and why many people underestimate the amount of time that’s needed for both creating and also promoting their original content.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


Spotify

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Google Podcasts

Overcast

Pocket Casts

Google Play Music

Anchor

SoundCloud

Stitcher

 

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3674/Should-You-Outsource-Your-Social-Media-Management-The-Messengers Should You Outsource Your Social Media Management? - The Messengers In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert take on social media. The discussion looks at how small businesses in particular approach their social media efforts, along with some of the problems with the most common approach and how to make it better.


In today’s marketing landscape, a huge follower count doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t translate into revenue for your business. Neither does creating social media platforms just to have a presence there. The trick is to gear your content so it appeals to the people most likely to be interested in your business.


Rob and Chris discuss the most important things you need to know when setting up your social media strategy and how to make sure you’re getting maximum value out of your investment. This episode covers topics like:

- The pros, cons and risks of outsourcing your social media management
- Measuring social media returns
- Assigning goals to your internet presence
- Content quality

Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


Spotify

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Google Podcasts

Pocket Casts

Google Play Music

Anchor

SoundCloud

Stitcher

 

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http://www.christophersearles.com/3402/A-Tale-of-Two-Customer-Service-Stories A Tale of Two Customer Service Stories I have a 15 month old son.

As anybody with small children can attest, the market for "innovative" baby products is a bit overwhelming.

I put the word innovative in quotes because, while some are truly fantastic inventions that make the lives of parents much easier, others are - to be blunt - gimmicky pieces of crap.

Baby umbrella

Recently, I had experiences with two different baby-product companies that got ;me thinking about customer service and customer experiences in the social media age.

Quality customer service has never so critical to your company's success; customers have never had a megaphone like they have with social media.

Through social media, a single happy or unhappy customer can have a massive positive or negative affect on a brand.

From a brand’s perspective, it's also never been this easy to show customers how much or how little you care about them.

Which brings me to my two stories. (Yes, links are affiliate links.)

Tale #1: It’s My Fault

Meet the Munchkin Miracle 360 Trainer Cup, maybe one of the best baby products on the market today.

Munchkin Miracle 360 Trainer Cup on Amazon

My wife and I were introduced to this cup through my sister-in-law.

It’s not completely spill-proof (anybody with a one-year old can tell you that’s a dream that may never be fulfilled), but it’s definitely the best we’ve found by far.

The cup has one serious flaw, however, and it’s sole cause of every negative review I’ve seen.

The seal between the body of the cup and the removable top is created with a small rubber o-ring.

The o-ring retains some water between itself and the cap, and after a week or two’s worth of use some mold begins to grow behind the ring.

Mold problem with the Miracle 360 sippy cup

Apparently, Munchkin distributes cleaning instructions with these cups now to help prevent this problem.

We never saw those instructions, and according to online reviews, neither did a lot of people.

That being said, we eventually just pulled the o-ring off to clean both it and the space it covers on the cap.

The worry was that pulling it off my break or stretch the o-ring to the point where it wouldn’t seal the cup anymore.

As it turns out, this is exactly what you’re supposed to do every week or so to avoid this problem in the first place.

Miracle 360 cleaning instructions

During one of these routine cleanings while we were away visiting family, we lost the o-ring.

Unfortunately, Munchkin doesn’t sell just the o-ring, so it looked like we were out of luck with 98% of a cup we loved but could no longer use.

So I turned to social media and reached out to Munchkin on Facebook to see if I could purchase just an o-ring somewhere or directly through them.

It was about 7:30 pm when I sent them my first Facebook message.

It took them until the following day to respond around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Munchkin Facebook response

Once they did, they apologized that they didn’t sell just the o-ring, and offered to send me an entirely new top instead, at no cost, not even shipping, all within 10 minutes.

Not only was it completely our fault that we lost the o-ring, I had also offered to pay for a replacement.

Instead, in minutes I was offered a free replacement (they actually sent two).

Not missing an opportunity to capitalize, they also requested that I share my experience on social media.

Facebook conversation with Munchkin customer service

And why not! Well done on all parts.

(Guys, I hope this article will suffice in place of the social media share I promised. Thank you for the great experience and for making a great product.)

Tale #2: It’s Your Fault

My second story has to do with a plate we bought from Tommee Tippee.

We bought these because of the ability to suction cup the bowls and plates to the table.

Tommee Tippee section plates on Amazon

In general, it’s a good product. We have a few of them, and they work mostly as advertised.

I say mostly because anybody that’s ever had a one year old knows they’ll find a way to throw food on the floor in large quantities.

My son has of course found ways to separate the plate from the suction cup or just pulled the entire matt off the table.

But, just as the Miracle 360 still spills when thrown to the floor from a highchair, even the best baby products are never foolproof.

The point is, overall we’re happy with the product and the purchase decision we made.

That is, even in spite of the fact that one of the plates caught fire in our microwave a few weeks back.

Now, I’m not an alarmist by any means, but that seems like kind of a big deal to me.

We didn’t freak out or overreact, but I did reach out to Tommee Tippee to let them know what happened, and this time I was actually hoping for some sort of restitution in the form of a replacement for the plate we had to (obviously) throw out.

I also wanted to alert them to the situation as I certainly would want to know if one of the products I sold caught on fire.

Galaxy Note 7 fire recall

My expectation was that the customer service reps at Tommee Tippee would be shocked and horrified that this happened, would immediately send me a replacement, and that replacement would include a return slip in the box to send them the defective plate so they could investigate further.

Instead, what I received was a lesson in how to use a microwave, and a week-long back and forth that had me waiting at times up to three days just to get a response.

Here are the most important excerpts from that conversation:

Tommee Tippee customer service conversation

Grill function? To this day, I didn’t even know that was a thing, and my microwave absolutely does not have a “grill function” (and confirmed that with them by sending a picture of my standard LG microwave with no grill function or any other strange features).

My final response was this:

"So this is not the first time this has been reported? Do we have to worry about this new one or our existing ones doing the same thing or has the problem been fixed?"

To which I received the following response:

Tommee Tippee Grill Feature response

I’m not a reporter that heard something second-hand from a source and was looking for comment.

I literally just told you mine caught on fire without a grill setting in the span of about 10 seconds.

This back and forth took a grand total of a week to get to this point so I didn’t push it further (although, looking back, I probably should have).

(As a side note, I wanted to put the plate back in the microwave to get it on video to send to them but my wife had already thrown the plate away at that point, so no luck there.)

Either way, this should have been a 10 minute back-and-forth, and their contribution to the conversation should have been this:

"Hi Chris, we’re very sorry to hear you had an experience like that with one of our products. We take great pride in ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved in using our products and I’m hoping to get some more information from you so we can ensure everything we sell is safe to use. Can you please provide the make and model of your microwave, as well as the conditions surrounding the issue (what was on the plate, what (if anything) else was in the microwave at the time, how long was it in the microwave before the issue occurred)? Also, we’ll absolutely send you a replacement but we’d appreciate it if you could save the defective plate and return it in the box we send your replacement in with the return slip we’ll provide so we can investigate this issue further and ensure no other units are affected. We’ll also be sure to follow up with you once we do to let you know what happened and what we’re doing to prevent it from happening again in the future."

However, looking at some of the other issues they’ve had in the past, it’s not hard to see why I had the experience I had.

Earlier this year, they also issued a recall for a their Electric Bottle & Food Warmer (because some of them were catching on fire).

Tommee Tippee Warmer recall

The beginning of the recall statement reads, “This is an electrical issue caused by our external supplier failing to follow our instructions, which could stop safety features from working properly.”

If that’s not a “pass the buck” statement, I don’t know what is.

Sorry guys, but it’s your product, and you’re responsible for product quality and safety regardless of where you source the individual parts.


Two completely different issues, one my fault, one theirs.

In the first instance, not only did they not do anything wrong (granted, the mold behind the o-ring issue isn’t pleasant but it is avoidable with a little extra time cleaning) but they took care of my problem in a day and I left with an awesome feeling about the company.

In the second, they were absolutely in the wrong, took a week to deal with the issue, and not once ever admitted fault, all while telling me that the only way this could happen is that I was so stupid I didn’t even know how to reheat food in a microwave.

It seemed as if the only concern was avoiding the blame, rather than trying to identify and fix a real problem.

I blame you GIF

In both cases, the company replaced the product at no charge, yet, I left the experience with Munchkin feeling great, and left Tommee Tippee certain I’d never buy from them again.

There’s more to customer service than sending a free replacement of a defective product.

These days, speed is a huge factor given how easy it is for customers and brands to communicate with each other.

Speed shows you care and that your customers matter as much to you as they should.

Tone matters too. I’ve dealt with my share of customer issues that were absolutely due to “user error” so-to-speak.

[Read: Debunking the myth that the customer is always right]

As a quick corollary, I once spent an hour on the phone with a client who’s computer wasn’t working only to find out that the first thing I told them to check ("Are all the cables in the back plugged in and secure?") was actually the problem.

Slamming head into desk

Yes, an hour because when I first asked them to check that the computer was plugged in they thought it was such a silly question that they didn’t even bother to check.

You also wouldn’t believe the way some people speak to you when they’re using a service you provide for free and it doesn’t quite perform as expected.

It’s very difficult to remain calm and supportive in those instances. It’s also critical to the success of your company in the social media era.

And while those customers will never take to social media to tell everyone how patient you were with them after they did something so silly like not checking that their computer was plugged in, they would absolutely share how rude or impatient you were.

Please learn from these stories and remember that every customer interaction is a chance at positive press.

Munchkin customer service opportunity

We spend so much time in our businesses trying to get press coverage, sometimes we forget that every single one of our customers has as big of a voice as your local news outlet.

Give them a reason to rave about you, and don’t give them a reason to share a bad experience.

I’ve even seen some companies go so far as to ask for five star reviews and request that if you won’t rate their product or company with five stars, that you email the CEO immediately to let them know why so they can fix the problem.

There’s no reason you can’t do the same.

When you care about your customers, it shows in everything you do. The opposite is also true.

Be the company that cares and lets it show.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3390/Marketing-and-Advertising-Channels-Ranked-by-Value Marketing and Advertising Channels Ranked by Value While it might sound hypocritical coming from a company that routinely separates digital marketing as a service from things like printing, graphic design, and direct mail, treating digital marketing as this separate "thing" that’s unrelated to the rest of your marketing activities is a huge mistake.

Yes, we present those services to you in different and deliberate ways, but when we make decisions about how to deliver those messages, it’s all about picking something that works, regardless of the medium.

Separation of service offerings from Searles Graphics

I don’t care if I sell digital marketing via a direct mail piece, direct mail via email marketing, or printing via social media.

The truth is, all of those mediums work, and marketing in today’s world is about utilizing every tool at your disposal to reach the consumer wherever you’re most likely to influence a purchasing decision.

Read: How to Make Pokemon Go Work for Your Business

Marketing is marketing. It doesn’t matter what medium you use, the goal is still the same.

There are far too many people out there selling "digital marketing" as the end-all-be-all of marketing solutions in the modern business world.

Take Neil Patel, for instance. While I respect Neil's digital marketing chops immensely, and have even recommended his writing to you in the past, he's absolutely wrong about the future of digital vs print in the near term (even if he's right about self-driving cars as I'll discuss later).

Neil Patel quote

Most digital marketers don’t consider other options because they don’t understand them, don’t know how to buy them, don’t know how to measure them properly, or they just know that digital marketing is simply an easier sell right now.

It turns out, this is great news for smart marketers! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, great small business marketing takes advantages of inefficient markets, wherever they appear.

Print still works. And while that might change tomorrow, it's a fact today.

See: 10 Completely Free Ways to Promote Your Business

So, even if print media is on it's way out for good, that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of it before it goes away.

Here’s a good breakdown for small business owners on marketing and advertising opportunities that are currently over- and under-valued:

Overvalued

  • Television Ads

    Do you really still watch commercials? The one major exception to this is Super Bowl ads which are absolutely undervalued. Yes, $5 million for a 30-second spot at the Super Bowl is a steal … as long as you can afford it in the first place.

  • Banner Ads

    If it's not native, nobody cares, and ad-blockers are everywhere. Yes, I still buy these, but in a very specific way (which I'll cover in a future article so follow me for updates!).

  • Mobile Ads

    Seen as more of a nuisance than anything else; it’s rare to find a good implementation of mobile ads that deliver real value, not just accidental clicks that cost you money for no reason.

  • Snapchat Stories Ads

    This was just the wrong play and I can’t see any value here yet. Too easy to skip, too disruptive, I just don’t see these delivering the value Snapchat or their advertisers are hoping for.

  • Instagram Ads

    My own tests have yet to deliver equivalent value out of Instagram’s ad platform. Instagram definitely sees this which is why they’re beginning to force brands to switch to “Business accounts” which will allow them to curate feeds more like Facebook, forcing brands to pay to play in the future.

  • Twitter Ads

    Twitter is in trouble, and it remains to be seen if they can pull themselves out of it. Recent moves like buying the streaming rights to NFL games might help but as of yet, Twitter is simply too noisy for your ad to have a big enough impact to justify the cost for most small businesses. Mobile app downloads are probably the biggest caveat here.

Correctly Priced

  • Magazine Ads

    People still like reading and holding magazines. Millenials are increasingly looking for breaks from technology and a paid circulation is a paid circulation. Value is easy to calculate.

  • Newspaper Ads

    Depending on the newspaper and the type of business you run, some of the best advertising results I see today come from Newspaper ads.

  • Radio Ads

    It's hard to get people to pay for something they're used to getting for free, and the ad-supported model of local radio is still beating services like XM, Sirius, Spotify Premium, and Pandora, especially until more mobile data plans come with unlimited streaming options and/or self-driving cars cause a shift in drive-time habits from radio to streaming video (it will happen sooner than you think, trust me).

  • Trade Shows

    Assuming you pick the right shows for your business, it’s difficult to get in front of that many targeted buyers for a face-to-face interaction via any other medium.

  • Billboards

    Billboards still work provided you pick the right location and you're selling the right product.

Undervalued

  • Facebook Ads

    They're starting to catch up to being valued properly but Facebook ads still offer one of the greatest advertising options that has ever existed, period.

  • Snapchat Geofilters

    This was a genius way for Snapchat to monetize and there’s still a ton of unrealized value to be had for early adopters here.

  • Google AdWords

    You're inserting a link to your website in front of a person that’s specifically looking for the product or service you offer, does it really get any easier than that?

  • Email

    Email services like MailChimp offer free tiers for small businesses, and extremely inexpensive options as you scale up. Worth every penny if you provide useful content that your subscribers really want to see in their inbox.

  • Direct Mail

    Surprised? That’s why this is a great buy. As baseball great Willie Keeler famously put it, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t!” Better advice for marketing has never been given. If your competitors aren’t doing it, that means the door’s wide open to be the only one like you at the party. Sounds like value to me.

  • Content Marketing

    If you’re reading this right now, it’s because content marketing works, and it works well. It’s a beast, but it’s worth every minute and penny you have to put into making it successful.

  • Signage

    Great signage extends well beyond just your name on a building and can mean the difference between a customer entering your store or walking right by.

  • YouTube / Facebook Video

    Pre-roll video ads on YouTube are one of the only ways to actually get a user a view a video ad these days (see "overvalued TV ads" above). But even better is making the content of the video so good that people actually WANT to watch and share it.

  • Influencer Marketing

    Influencer marketing is the modern equivalent of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing a game of HORSE for a Big Mac and fries. It works and there's more opportunity than ever.

This is not an exhaustive list but it's a good start and should get you thinking about ways to capitalize on undervalued opportunities, regardless of where they exist.

So stop thinking about your marketing in terms of digital vs traditional, because those terms simply don't apply anymore.

I don't care how I reach you, as long as I reach you, and I’ll continue to do that via digital, print, in person networking, or anything else I can for as long as those efforts produce results.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3386/Instagrams-Blatant-Snapchat-Ripoff-Might-Actually-Work Instagram's Blatant Snapchat Ripoff Might Actually Work Last week Instagram released a brand new feature called Stories. The idea was a good one.

We know that already because it's been working extremely well for Snapchat for the last three years.

To understand the feature and why Instagram decided to introduce it, it's important to understand both Instagram and Snapchat at a core level.

Instagram has always been the place to share your best photos, whereas Facebook (and more recently Snapchat) are where you post ALL your photos.

Instagram gained in popularity because it allowed amateur photographers to add filters quickly and easily to their photos to make them look like professional shots.

Instagram filters side-by-side

The strategy worked amazingly well, making Instagram one of the largest social media networks in the world today.

With the "best pictures" setup, however, comes with it an important limitation: You're not supposed to post a lot of pictures on Instagram.

In fact, I've even given the advice to enforce a strict two-posts-per-day maximum on your Instagram account (and even that is probably too much if you post every day).

Snapchat saw this limitation and filled the gap, becoming the go-to social media platform for sharing pictures of your every day life.

This made a lot of sense on Snapchat where all pictures were designed to disappear after a very short period of time (10 seconds maximum for sharing direct with other users, 24 hours for pictures shared on your story).

Snapchat saw this limitation and filled the gap, and has become the go-to social media platform for sharing pictures of your everyday life.

Snapchat screen capture

This made a lot of sense on Snapchat where all pictures were designed to disappear after a very short period of time (10 seconds maximum for sharing direct with other users, 24 hours for pictures shared on your story).

Snapchat brought filters of their own designed just for fun rather than to make your pictures look professional.

Snapchat filter

Users responded and have been flocking to Snapchat as of late to share the more common events of their day.

Instagram responded to Snapchat once with their “Direct” feature designed to send images to a single user at a time.

Even at the time, it was obvious this was an attempt to respond to the success of Snapchat by providing the same feature Snapchat was known for, just without the auto-delete feature.

However, the latest data I can find on the subject shows that only about 25% of Instagram users utilize the feature, and I personally have received only a handful of direct messages on Instagram.

Yes, this was a Snapchat ripoff but at least Instagram had the common courtesy to come up with their own name for the feature.

Instagram Direct screenshot

Enter Instagram Stories.

With Stories, Instagram has blatantly ripped off Snapchat’s most popular feature, and they didn’t even bother trying to come up with a new name this time.

Photos and videos added to your Instagram story disappear after 24 hours, you can doodle on them, you can add filters and overlays, videos are limited to 10 seconds … aside from some very subtle differences, it’s a complete copy of Snapchat.

But, all of that doesn’t mean it won’t be effective.

In fact, brands in particular have traditionally had a very hard time finding a way to utilize Snapchat to promote their businesses outside of the paid options Snapchat has made available.

How to use Snapchat custom geofilters for your business

Instagram on the other hand has been entirely responsible for a large number of success stories.

The primary reason is that Snapchat was built around privacy and secrecy, where Instagram was built for discovery.

Discovery on Snapchat is non-existent; you need to have someone’s username or phone number to add them on Snapchat (or a snapcode).

Instagram has powerful hashtag, geolocation, and search features built into the core of the platform and has always been primarily about discovering great photographs and interesting users.

Instagram discovery options

And while Snapchat has been on a tremendous growth spurt, Instagram’s still boasts a larger active user base, and it’s a lot easier to get an existing user to try a new feature than it is to attract a new user.

That’s why Instagram’s imitation play might actually pay off big. While older users are still hesitant to install Snapchat, there are very few Snapchat users that aren’t also Instagram users.

For brands, it’s also a way to reach the existing follower list they’ve spent years building up rather than trying to find a way to develop a brand new following on a platform that doesn’t seem to offer a good way to do so.

This is a factor that is not to be overlooked. As social media networks mature, brand loyalty boils down to being where your followers are.

Have you tried Instagram Stories yet? Let us know what you think on Facebook!

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3374/10-Completely-Free-Ways-to-Promote-Your-Business 10 Completely Free Ways to Promote Your Business Promoting a business isn't easy, I get it. But how hard are you really trying?

Chances are, if you're reading this article, you're at least trying a little bit, which is a good start.

Do me a favor though, before you even continue reading to the end of this article, ask yourself one question (and be brutally honest with your answer).

After all, you're only talking to youself, so if you can't be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with?

Here's the question:

Are you reading this article hoping there's a magic formula I have that you can implement in less than twenty minutes, then sit back and just watch the orders roll in?

I have news for you, it doesn't exist.

There are no magic formulas, no secrets only known to a chosen few, no shortcuts to building a successful business.

Seth Godin did a great job in describing that mentality in his fantastic book, The Dip.

The Dip by Seth Godin

If you answered yes to that question, buy Seth's book (it's a quick read), then come back if you still want to read the rest of this article.

In the rest of this article, I'm going to provide you with ideas that do actually work, but you have to be willing to put in the time to implement them.

That's all. Just a little good-old-fashioned hard work and effort.

Easy enough, right?

1. Use Social Media

Yes, you knew that already (hopefully). But are you using it properly?

I see so many small businesses complain that social media isn't working for them or, even worse, have no idea that it could be working for them in the first place.

The problem isn't with the platform, millions of brands use social media every day to reach new and existing customers in amazing ways.

The problem is in the way you're using them (or not using them).

Just like I wrote in my intro, social media isn't a magic bullet where you can post a couple links and expect your product or business to go viral overnight.

It takes effort, research, subject-area expertise, and perhaps most importantly, time, to do it right and see a return.

 

Still & always ... The work matters

A photo posted by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on

Check out this article for detailed steps on using social media for your business, complete with a bunch of useful resources at the end.

2. Video, Video, Video!

Creating and sharing video content is the absolute best way right now to reach huge numbers of people.

The best part? You don't have to spend a dime!

I'm assuming you have a cell phone that can shoot video. If you don't, borrow one from somebody that does, or try your local library to see if they can help you out.

For example, my library has a GoPro that anyone with a library card can check out for the day.

Patchogue Medford Library GoPro

Come up with a concept that either requires no editing at all, or use the free editing software for your operating system (iMovie for Mac users or Windows Movie Maker).

You can download free music and sound effects from YouTube for use in your video (or upload it to YouTube first and overlay the audio in the YouTube Creator Studio).

When you're done, upload the raw video (not a link to the YouTube version) to whatever social media platforms you can and share it with everyone you can.

Facebook Video Upload

A quick tip: Try to keep your video under 1-minute in length unless you need more.

Instagram allows videos up to 1-minute in length (the smallest limit of the major players aside from Snapchat, but that's a completely different animal) so you'll be able to get the full video on all major platforms if you can stick to that limit.

3. Create Killer Content

Content marketing is a topic in-and-of itself, and there are already volumes written on the subject.

Content marketing Google search results count

The gist is that thought leadership in your niche or industry matters.

It helps drive website traffic through referrals and search engines, builds trust with consumers, and helps turn cold prospects into warm leads that are ready to convert.

If you already have a blog on your website, use it.

If not, head to Medium and create a publication for your business or niche.

View the instructions on pointing a subdomain to Medium (i.e. “blog.yourbusiness.com”) here and then link to your blog from your website.

It's a new option from Medium so the process is a bit clunky but well worth the minor effort and inconvenience.

Spend time creating high-quality, useful content that’s related to your niche but doesn’t try to sell your product or service.

Then, spend 4-5 times longer than that promoting your content and getting people to see and read it.

Spend a disproportionate amount of time promoting your content

There are a huge number of ways to do that, and this Neil Patel guide is one of the best out there (and a terrific example of what high quality content looks like).

Keep this up a few times a week for 12-18 months and measure your results.

Yes, you read that right, 12-to-18 MONTHS!

I told you there was no magic formula, just good old grind-it-out style hard work that will pay off in the long run if you stick it out and trust the process.

4. Mine Your Local Chamber of Commerce’s Website for Leads or Partnerships

If you sell B2B, especially to smaller businesses, often this is one of the only sources of leads you may need.

While I would encourage you to join your local chamber, this article is about free ways to promote your business, and you don’t need to be a member of the chamber to access the list of members.

Patchogue Chamber Member Search

Go through the list and identify qualified prospects and copy and paste their information into a spreadsheet (Google Sheets is completely free with a free Google account).

Set up your leads in your first column, and identify the steps you’re going to take to make contact and follow up with each prospect, and track your progress in the spreadsheet.

Remember, it’s easy to make a single call and give up, it’s far more difficult to put in the real work of being persistent (but not annoying or pushy) enough to get a meeting and close a deal.

If you sell to consumers, use the list to identify potential partners or retailers for your product or service.

Retailers are self-explanatory, but partners can come in a number of forms.

Try setting up a marketing partnership with a business that offers a complementary product or service where they recommend you to their clients and you do the same to yours (they’re probably in the market for some free promotion too!).

5. Join and Participate in Relevant Facebook Groups

What if I told you there was a place out there where people went out of their way to categorize themselves as perfect targets for your business?

What would you pay for access to that kind of information?

Well that service exists, it’s completely free, and it’s called Facebook Groups.

Whether you’re looking for pet owners in Cleveland, local moms in Burlington, or movie buffs around the world, you’ll have a hard time not finding a group that is relevant to your niche.

Burlington Moms Facebook Groups Search

(I promise I made all of those up off the top of my head as I was writing and found each of those groups in a grand total of about 45 seconds.)

Join the group and participate, don’t sell!

Once you’ve built up enough of a reputation in the community, feel free to drop a link or two to some of your content when it makes sense.

Remember, you’re not the only one that’s ever gotten this advice or thought to try to use this feature for your business, so you need to be a genuine member of the community, not just another marketer looking to push product on anyone and everyone.

You’ll start to draw some targeted page views for your website where your awesome content will get shared, create return visits, and hopefully generate some email sign-ups.

And speaking of email ...

6. Use Email

Email is still huge (read this).

If you don’t already have one, head over to MailChimp and create a free account (here’s why I recommend MailChimp if you're curious).

Use the tools they provide to add sign-up tools to your website so you can capture email addresses from your visitors.

To do that, click on "Lists" at the top of the page.

MailChimp List Management

Select the list you want users to sign up for (or click the button on the top right to create a new one).

Then click the tab for "Signup forms" and select the best option for your integration (you can reach me on Twitter if you have questions).

MailChimp list signup tools

Then actually follow up with your list and send AT LEAST a monthly email, but ideally you’ll send 1-2 per week.

Any more than that and you’ll get a lot of unsubscribers, less and you risk not being top-of-mind for those who would have otherwise bought from you.

7. Use Reddit

(Technically speaking, Reddit is a social media network, but it’s so vastly different from the more “mainstream” social media networks that it requires it's own separate conversation.)

I make this recommendation with a bit of trepidation.

Reddit is extremely tricky and it takes some time to get used to the community before you can really take advantage of its power, but once you do, it can be a game changer.

If you’re not familiar with Reddit, know that likely 99.9% of the stuff you see in your Facebook feed was originally discovered on Reddit.

Reddit front page

Bloggers are known to troll sites like Reddit looking for new content that’s getting a positive response (or perhaps is causing a stir and some controversy).

It’s a litmus test for them that ensures what they’re publishing elicits a response and will hopefully generate some page views.

You can do the same to find quality topics in your niche to write about.

Once you’ve created an account with Reddit, do a search for subreddits in your niche.

Subreddits are what Reddit uses to categorize content (again, all that work is already done for you!).

How to search for subreddits

Subscribe to some of the popular sub’s in your niche and spend a few weeks getting to know each sub.

Each one has it’s own style, rules (Redditors are HUGE on following rules, break them at risk of having your account "shadow banned" for life without even knowing it happened), and guidelines on what should be posted in the sub.

Reddit rules plea

With Reddit, starting out by commenting on other’s posts is the best way to get started (many subs won’t even let you create your own thread until you’ve commented and engaged a certain number of times).

Once you’ve built up some “karma” (Reddit’s measure of how valuable your contributions to the community have been), start submitting high quality posts that don’t link to your own stuff.

If you're getting started, check out r/FreeKarma for a little boost.

Your best bet if you want to use Reddit to drive page views on your own site is to do so only with someone’s explicit permission to share the link.

You can do that by publishing a unique piece of content and indicating at the end that you have a link to share with anyone that’s interested.

Wait for someone to ask for it before you post it, and only post it in a way that’s allowed in the rules of the sub you’re posting to.

Reddit TIL rules

Your other option is to include links in high-quality comments to other people’s posts. Follow the same rules as above and get permission first.

Here's a much more in-depth article from Kissmetrics that only deals with marketing on Reddit.

8. Network at Local Meetups

Once again, there’s a group for that.

Meetup.com is a great resource for local like-minded people to get together for just about any reason you can think of.

It’s quick and easy to search for meetups that are already happening in your area related to your business or market segment.

If it doesn’t exist, start one!

Meetup.com home page screenshot

Use the Facebook groups you’ve joined, existing business contacts, existing customers, your email list, Twitter, Instagram, and anything else you can think of to try to attract people to your meetup.

(This is a good introduction to Twitter article if you still have no idea what it's all about.)

Inviting people to a meetup of like-minded locals or professionals makes it much easier to find passionate people in your industry that you can build a genuine relationship with, rather than just trying to convert a quick sale.

There’s that long game again …

9. Ask for Referrals

It always surprises me how few business owners actively solicit referrals from existing customers.

Hopefully you’ve provided an amazing product or service to your customers already (if not, you should probably start there and come back to this article only after you offer a world-class product or service).

If you’ve truly done that, your customers will be more than happy to recommend you, sometimes they just need a little push.

Reach out to them any way you can; email, social media, on the phone, in person, whatever you need to do to try to drive them to recommend your company to a friend.

A great option from a client of ours is a new website called Frendex, where the anonymous reviews are forgone in place of a simple recommendation from friends.

I love the concept because it eliminates bogus reviews and reviews from people you've never met and whose opinions you don't value.

Frendex homepage screenshot

Visit Frendex, create an account, invite friends and ask them to recommend your business in the appropriate category.

At the time of writing, the site is limited to home service providers like contractors, painters, plumbers, and electricians, but I reached out to the founders and they assure me that adding more categories is their top priority and will be available shortly.

Check out their blog (on Medium, no less!) for updates.

10. Peddle Your Wares Anywhere You Can

It may not be glamorous, but starting a growing a business rarely is (the fake garbage you see on Instagram notwithstanding).

Please pay no attention to this guy (or anybody else like him):

Real success comes from grinding it out and hustling to make a sale whenever and wherever you can.

Have a product that would appeal to homeowners who have a pool?

Go on Google Maps, scroll around until you find a neighborhood where you see a high concentration of pools, make note of every address that has one, and knock on doors after work or on the weekends to try to close a few sales.

Find pool owners on Google maps

Targeting parents of young children? Talk to local day care centers and see if they’ll allow you to set up a table outside during pickup hours (not drop-off, mom or dad obviously needs to get to work!).

Have an amazing product for the beach? Go to the busiest beach in your area and use it, with a giant sign attached somewhere to tell people to come try it out or ask you about it!

These are just a few examples but if you want to reach out to me for a few ideas specific to your business, please do!

Hopefully by now you’ve gotten my point that there are opportunities to be had, you just need to be willing to take advantage of them and put in the work that’s required when you don’t have the cash to pay someone else to do it for you!

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https://www.eventincite.com/blog/3358/A-Step-by-Step-Guide-to-Promoting-Your-Event-Online A Step-by-Step Guide to Promoting Your Event Online Have you ever been disappointed in the turnout for an event you put together?

Marketing events is difficult. You're actually in the business of motivating somebody to do a lot of work to go out of their way to attend your event.

They have to get dressed up (at least to some extent), commit to a date and time, drive someplace potentially far from their home ... it can be a lot to get somebody to make that type of commitment.

Fortunately, there are a lot of tools at your disposal to get your event in front of more people.

1. Create a Central Hub

You should have one primary location where your conversion (purchase or registration) occurs.

My suggestion would either be a page on your own website where users can register or buy a ticket, or use a service like Event Brite to handle your event ticket sales for you.

2. Post to Facebook Events

Facebook events has made a big comeback recently and is a great way to get your event in front of prospects. Facebook now notifies you when your friends have indicated an interest in attending an event that's happening near your location.

This is a powerful viral marketing tool for anybody that's trying to promote an event.

Head over to the Facebook events page, input your details, be sure to tie it to the venue if they have a Facebook presence for extra exposure, link back to your primary event page, and then don't forget to invite people once it's been created!

Focus on inviting your friends that are most likely to be supportive. Facebook always rewards engagement so sharing with people who will ignore it not only doesn't help your event show up in people's feeds, it actively hurts.

Pro Tip:

By default, Facebook makes your event a private event and as of the date this article publishes, you can't change it after you submit it.

Make sure to change it to public so it's discoverable beyond just those you invite.

3. Submit to Local Event Calendars

Most local area publications and blogs maintain online event calendars that people actively seek out or find through search engines to find out what's going on in their area.

Do a Google search for "[location] events" to get a list of some of the most popular ones in your area, and check out your the local newspapers websites as well. Most of these publications offer a way for you to submit your events for free.

You can also check out one of our products, Event Incite, for a way to publish your event to a single source to be listed across a number of local event calendars.

The service is new and we're actively adding new locations and new publications but even if your location doesn't have great coverage, you'll get some SEO juice out of listing it and linking back to your primary page, and we go out of our way to help you promote them on social media.

4. Promote on Facebook

You didn't think you could host this amazing event with hundreds of people without paying for some advertising, did you?

Facebook currently has the single greatest advertising product that has ever existed on this planet, bar none.

You can narrow your audience down to your exact prospect and pay only when they actually click through to your central event page.

Pro Tip:

Don't use the "Boost Post" option, it's the single worst (and laziest) way to advertise on Facebook.

Take the time and use the ad manager to craft a few well-built ads that you can test against each other to find out which one works best.

For more detail and tips about marketing on Facebook, check out this blog post.

5. Post on Instagram

If you've hosted this event in the past, use a quality image from one of the previous occurrences and feel free to write up a detailed post.

Not enough people take advantage of long-form content on Instagram which means you'll stand out.

Instagram's interface also makes it easy for someone to view as much or as little of your text-based content as they want so don't be afraid to put a full description with your image.

If you don't have a good image to use of the actual event, use a stock photo that will grab some attention and hopefully not look too much like a stock photo (Instagram users in general don't respond well to obvious stock images).

Check out Pexels.com as a good source for some free stock photography.

Don't have a lot of Instagram followers? It's time to start working on your influencer marketing.

Start searching the area where your event is happening for accounts that are related to your event with a lot of followers.

Reach out and see if they'll share your post and event info. If you've done a good job crafting an image and building an event worth sharing, these users are always on the lookout for quality content to share with their followers.

If they won't do it free, you always have the option to pay for the exposure.

Instagram makes direct response more challenging because they don't allow links in posts, but the best way I've found is to use a service like Bitly to shorten your URLs into something simple to type into a browser and then to also include the link in your profile (and let people know it's there).

Here's a quick example:

 

And don't forget, hashtags, hashtags, hashtags! Be sure to hit all of your local area tags for people searching in your area.

6. Remarket with Facebook and Google

Remarketing is one of the most underutilized tactics in digital marketing.

Once someone has visited your website, ad platforms like Google and Facebook can tag those users so that you can continue to show them ads while they're still warm leads.

Here's a good tutorial from Google on how to set up a remarketing campaign with AdWords, and here's the same for Facebook ads.

7. Ask Sponsors to Share

If you have event sponsors, they should be happy to help promote your event.

Once you have your landing page and other advertising and marketing assets created, make sure to share them with your sponsors and ask them to promote and post your event to their followers.

8. Set Up a Google Alert

Go to Google Alerts and create an alert for your event to have Google email you whenver your event is mentioned.

Take a look at the pages where it gets mentioned and make sure they link to your central event page.

If not, reach out to the website owner, author, or user that mentioned it, thank them, and ask them if they wouldn't mind including the link in their post to help their readers find more info.

There are a number of other tactics you can employ to help gain more exposure, and they're certainly not limited to just digital, but this should be a great start on your road to a succesful event.

And don't forget to reach out to me if there's anything I can do to help :-).

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3357/How-to-Get-Started-with-Social-Media-Marketing How to Get Started with Social Media Marketing If you're thinking about starting a business, already own a business, or work in marketing for a small business, you've undoubtedly had questions about social media marketing. While I'm sure the list is extremely long, I thought I would compile a good "Getting Started" list for anybody that's lost in a sea of information or struggling to even find a starting point.

1. Be Precise: Choose the Right Network(s)

Facebook is a monster, period. As a general rule of thumb, it's the best place to start and it's hard to imagine a brand that shouldn't have a Facebook presence. Just about the only exception to this rule would be businesses or products that people are embarrassed to publicly admit they use (there's currently no Facebook page for Preparation H); but even in these cases there can be a way to use that to your advantage. Instagram would be my second choice, not for any reason other than it's a little more difficult to come up with a good strategy for many businesses on Instagram and you don't get the same direct response you do with Facebook because Instagram doesn't allow links in posts.

2. Be Present: Don't Overextend Yourself

The most important thing to remember when discussing social media marketing is that it's SOCIAL. If you think you're going to create a Facebook page, pump out a bunch of updates advertising your product or services, and generate thousands of followers and new customers, think again. You need to be present and actively engage with your audience. This means you need to start small and focus on only as many social networks you can be extremely active with at one time. Usually that number is no larger than two unless you have a large team.

3. Be Value-Oriented: Quality Marketing is Expensive

Remember #2 above? Sound like a lot of work? It is. And remember, expensive doesn't just mean dollars spent. Every minute you spend doing anything costs you. Whether it's time with your family, time away from managing other aspects of your business, or dollars spent hiring someone to do it for you, there is a cost. It's important to put your time (or money) into the activities that deliver the most bang for your buck (hence my "start with Facebook" recommendation). Once you have the resources or the understanding to expand the scope of your social media efforts, then you can start looking seriously at other networks.

4. Be Opinionated: Have Something to Say

Being opinionated doesn't necessarily mean you have to be controversial, althought it may mean creating some controversy. For example, the most shared blog post on SearlesGraphics.com at the time I'm writing this is titled, "Trees Don't Need Saving, Print That Email as Much as You Want" (it's well worth a read, btw). It's a stance that flies in the face of conventional wisdom and makes the argument that using paper products is one of the best things you can do to ensure our forests will be around for a long time to come. Lots of negative comments have come in from those who wouldn't even take the time to read the article to see what it was about, but the positive responses and results have far outweighed the negative.

5. Be Better: You Have a Lot of Competition

Competing for attention used to be pretty easy. It's how some of the biggest brands in the world came to be the giants they are today. In the '50s, all it took was a TV ad and a generation of Americans believed that high-sugar cereals were a good option to feed their kids for breakfast. But the days of the entire family sitting in front of the television and watching (and believing) all the commercials are long gone. Now a person's attention is not only split across devices, but the myriad of options on those devices, and the neverending stream of content flowing through each of those options. With that much content available, you need to be better than everyone else if you want to win your user's attention as they scroll through their feed.

6. Be Genuine: Consumers Are Smart

People today are the most-informed consumers that have ever existed on this planet (sometimes to a fault), and social media is no longer in it's infancy, so anything you think you can do to "get one over" on a consumer, they've already seen. Let your social media be the outlet for your company's unique voice and let your community members be a part of your brand.

Here are a few other resources to get you started:

And, as always feel free to reach out to me or Searles Graphics with your questions!

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http://www.christophersearles.com/3348/Twitters-API-is-Whats-Killing-It Twitter's API is What's Killing It Twitter is in trouble. For most people, it's still this confusing, niche social network that they feel no need or desire to be a part of. For those who already are a part of it, it's becoming less valuable by the minute. A big contributor to this decline is Twitter's API.

If you don't know what an API (application programming interface) is, it's what allows other developers to integrate with Twitter. It allows anybody to build an app and pull data from and push data to the service.

Twitter's API is one of the most used for a few reasons. For one, it's the simplest of the social media platforms. While at first Twitter's fundamental platform of allowing only 140 characters per tweet seems very limiting, you can actually do a lot more with Twitter, especially through their API, than you can through other services.

Where Instagram doesn't allow clickable links in posts, Twitter lives by them. Where Facebook makes it difficult to tag other users in posts through it's API (and only more recently supported it in their own platform), Twitter's '@username' structure has always made it ridiculously easy to do. Twitter essentially doesn't restrict outside apps from doing anything just as easily as it can be done through Twitter itself.

At the same time, Twitter's simplicity is also it's undoing. Instagram was built on the back of it's filters. It's a visual medium which means it's hard to automate. Facebook is built on engagement with a very personal network of friends and family - people you know and interact with (or at least did at some point) outside of the network. It too is a highly visual medium which is the reason you see far more images in your feed these days and almost no text-only posts.

Twitter, on the other hand, was for a very long time a text-based stream of stuff people said that most outsiders couldn't understand. It's only been more recently that they've added video and images in your stream, and started to curate posts instead of showing a straight timeline from accounts you follow. The catch 22 is that every time Twitter makes one of these changes, it makes Twitter less "Twitter" and more like all of the other social networks. And there's just no reason anybody would leave Facebook for Twitter just to get the same functionality they already enjoy with Facebook.

The core of Twitter's problem is that it's simply not scalable to the extent of the other social networks. Twitter's early growth was driven by users who were able to connect with celebrities and athletes who actually responded to them. It gave "regular" people a level of access they'd never dreamed of. But as more people join the platform and follow and attempt to connect with those celebrities, the less access everyone has to them.

Twitter also enjoyed a high-level of engagement with young people eagerly looking for an alternative to Facebook to get away from their parents. Unfortunately for them, EVERYTHING on Twitter is 100% public and their parents soon followed them there too (hello Snapchat).

Then came the marketers, and the real beginning of the end. There are now more services than you can count that you can sign up for with your Twitter account, provide some keywords and a few samples of accounts you would follow, and out goes the software (using Twitter's API) to follow thousands of users, like Tweets, and post content all on your behalf. Unfortunately, it seems like more Twitter users are using these tools than not. So as you see your follower counts rise, your following counts rise with them; and just like you can't read the Tweets of the 10,000 people you're now following, the 10,000 followers you now have aren't reading yours either.

Are you thinking, that's fine, I'll just unfollow the accounts after they follow me. Sorry, but they thought of that too and the same software will also unfollow those users as soon as they do that to you.

All of this culminates in Twitter becoming a noisy mess, which is an exponential problem. As Twitter gets noisier, each Tweet becomes less valuable. To compensate, content-producers end up Tweeting far more frequently in the hopes they'll actually show up in their follower's feeds, resulting in even more noise. As content-consumers find less value in each Tweet, they need to spend more time sifting through the noise to get the same value out of the platform as a whole until they get frustrated and give up, further devaluing each tweet and each follower.

Ultimately, all of this means the only users left on the platform are too busy pushing their own content with nobody consuming it.

Twitter is in real trouble of becoming MySpace (which is still a thing, btw), and it's going to take something big for them to reverse course. Shutting down (or at the very least limiting the scope of) their API might just be the risky "everybody hates it at first" move they need to stay relevant.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3340/Stop-Outsourcing-Your-Social-Media Stop Outsourcing Your Social Media! Social media is something you should never outsource - not completely at least. Coming from someone who sells social media marketing and consulting services, that should mean something to you if you're thinking about (or already are) outsourcing your small business social media marketing to an outside firm or freelancer.

Yes, we sell social media services to our clients at Searles Graphics, and yes, one of the options we offer is a complete hands-off management solution. It's the most expensive option we offer, yet I've never sold it and hope I never will - and I tell that to every single client I offer it to. Some sales pitch, huh? :-)

I don't want to sell it because I don't believe in it. I offer it because I do believe it's better for you than having absolutely no social media presence at all, but not by much. You absolutely don't get the value out of it for what you have to pay for someone to do it well (or at least as well as they can), and just a little effort on your part would go much farther than simply writing a check.

Social media offers and unprecedented way to connect with your customers and prospects who have opted-in to receive that information. With that permission comes an expectation and an opportunity for you to be genuine, sincere, helpful, and responsive. Just about every one of those is impossible when someone outside of your organization is responsible for managing that presence.

Your customers aren't stupid. They can tell when you're paying someone to vomit worthless information on your Facebook page. They know when the response they received to the question they posed on your page didn't come from anyone that can actually help them.

I tell all of my social media customers the same thing: Nobody knows your company, your industry, your work, and your customers better than you. You have an incredible amount of knowledge locked in your organization looking for an outlet where it can be set free (why do you think I write this blog?). By outsourcing your social media efforts completely, you're keeping that knowledge locked away for good and depriving your followers of it.

Social media marketing is difficult. To do it right, it's time consuming, laborious, and tedious. Yet it represents one of the greatest marketing opportunities available to your business right now which makes all of those adjectives secondary to the fact that it works and it's powerful.

As a business owner today, you have to at least have an understanding of how the primary social media networks work. You don't need to be the most active social media user ever, and you don't even have to manage your company's accounts as long as you're involved with them and someone in your organization is ultimately responsible for them. You also should have a goal for your social media efforts the same way you would for anything else you spend your marketing dollars on.

"I don't like Facebook" is no longer a valid excuse. If you're not doing it, you're being left behind, and someone else is working their way into the minds of your customers while you complain about the way things are and long for the way they used to be.

Photo: Flickr | Jason Eppink

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3328/What-Are-Ad-Blockers-and-Why-Should-You-Care What Are Ad Blockers and Why Should You Care? If you're not familiar with ad blockers, you're now in the minority. Ad blockers are extensions you can install for your browser that, well, block ads.

The technology has varying degrees of success based on exactly which ads you don't want to see. Although they may not be flawless in their pursuit of an ad-free experience, they are extremely effective. In fact, ad blockers have become so good that for the first time ever Facebook recognized ad blocking technology as a significant risk factor to it's business model in their annual 10-K filing.

Interest in ad blockers was relegated to techies for a long time and remained relatively stagnant from 2005 until mid 2012. However, beginning mid-2012, interest in ad blocking technology has exploded and ad blockers have now gone mainstream.

If you read my stuff regularly and atually listen to my advice, you should only be mildly concerned about the affect this may have on your business. Why? Because I am constantly urging you to create original, compelling content, increase your organic search results, think of your business as a media company regardless of what you sell, and to continue (or begin) to invest in print marketing.

By creating unique, compelling content, you're giving people something they want to see rather than annoying them with an ad they want to block.

Optimizing your website for organic search to increase your search engine rankings means you're oging to be found when someone is looking for you, whether or not they have an ad blocker installed.

Investing in print means giving a client or prospect something they don't have the ability not to see. There's no such thing as an ad filter for the United States Postal Service, and if you're using print effectively, you should be sending something your recipient wants to see anyway.

Thinking of your business as a media company means learning how to be an amazing storyteller (or hiring someone to help). By telling a story instead of pushing a product, you can continually reinforce who you are and what your brand stands for. And by doing it extremely well, you're entertaining instead of annoying, and hopefully creating something people want to talk about and share.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3323/Keep-Your-Message-Native-to-the-Platform-for-Better-Social-Media-Results Keep Your Message Native to the Platform for Better Social Media Results Anybody that knows me personally or reads my stuff regularly knows that I'm nothing if not honest when I see someone doing something so poorly that pains me. The inspiration for this article comes from the real estate industry and some of the realtors I follow and even do some work for.

There's almost nobody with a better product to market on social media than realtors, especially those in the high-end real estate market. To be honest though, I could write an entire book about real estate marketing in any market. There are so many creative ways to utilize social media to engage people with that product.

Even people who aren't looking to move are curious about other people's homes; how they live, how they decorate, what color they painted their walls, and what their kitchens and bathrooms look like - even if it's just to get ideas for their own homes. It's why Pinterest is such a monster in this space. Just about everybody out there has also thought about real estate as an investment opportunity, whether it's the potential of flipping a house, or the allure of steady rental income every month.

These are emotions you can easily work with to produce compelling stories for social media without a lot of effort. Unfortunately, I don't see many (if any) realtors coming close to this level of social media marketing. And while I focus on that industry as an example in this post, think about how you can apply this to your own business (or feel free to just ask me).

The primary triggers for this article are the constant "Open House" notifications I see on LinkedIn. Yes, you read that right, realtors marketing open houses on LinkedIn. There couldn't be a worse place to market your open house. People don't go on LinkedIn to shop for a new home, they go there to network, look for a new job, try to find potential new clients, or learn more about their industry or profession.

If you want to utilize LinkedIn as a realtor, go for it, it's a phenomenal tool (especially if you're a commercial agent). But posting open house notifications for homes is just flat out lazy and bad marketing.

The way to use LinkedIn for real estate is to establish yourself as an expert in an area or region. You're the one that knows everything that's happening. Who purchased what properties, what new businesses are coming to town, what that's going to mean to property values and job opportunities, how many potential customers exist within a 1, 5, and 10 mile radius of a retail property, and what the demographics of every little neighborhood are. That's what makes you valuable on LinkedIn.

Then, you can take that knowledge and apply it. Find business owners who could benefit from expanding into your area and reach out to them with helpful information. Find out who runs the business that just moved to town and network them with the editor of the local newspaper (whom you have a good relationship with because you advertise with them regularly, right?).

See somebody that just took a new job in your area? Let them know which restaurants have the best happy hour or live music. Build a name for yourself as the person everybody turns to when they want to know what's happening in your area. Do that and who do you think they'll turn to when it comes time to list or purchase a home? This is the long game that makes the difference between somebody that had a good year once and somebody who builds an empire.

This doesn't just go for LinkedIn, it goes for every social media network. Your message needs to be native to the platform to be valuable. On Instagram it means high quality (or at the very least interesting) pictures or short videos that are consistent in their message. On Twitter it means regularly providing useful resources for a category (maybe local news and events in our example), or being clever and funny in less that 140 characters. On Snapchat, it means highlighting the most interesting parts of your life (or business) on a daily basis, with a focus on appealing to individuals under the age of 35. On Pinterest, it means showcasing great design and/or utility in high-quality photos targeted predominantly towards women.

Facebook might be the only exception to this rule, in that just about everybody is on Facebook, and for a variety of reasons. It's become saturated with content from everybody, so you can get away with just about anything, as long as you're consistent in your messaging and you know how to get maximum value out of the platform (ahem, video and retargeting).

Be consistent and native, and the results will follow.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3316/New-Social-Network-Anchor-is-Something-You-Should-Pay-Attention-To New Social Network Anchor is Something You Should Pay Attention To Update: Anchor was acquired by Spotify early this year in a deal worth more than $150 million. Told ya so ;-) And don't forget to check out The Messengers podcast on Anchor!

In case you haven't "heard" (wait, you'll get it in a second) Anchor is here and it's the first new social network I'm really excited about in a long time. So what exactly is Anchor and why am I so excited?

Anchor is a social media network dedicated to the spoken word. While everybody else out there was focusing on text and video, audio never really had it's place. Audio on the internet has, for a while, been religated to traditional media outlets (radio stations) streaming their feeds online, and tech companies like Spotify and Pandora streaming the same stuff you can hear on the radio, just replacing the DJ. Podcasts were (and still are) the way for regular people to produce their own audio content and stream it to an audience.

That's all changing with the release of Anchor. Anchor lets anyone produce their own "waves" and put them on the line for the world to listen. Responses all happen via audio clips as well, and you can easily categorize and search for clips using hashtags.

[Just in case you didn't get the joke above ... ]

I love this idea (Anchor, not Exchangeagram) because it fills a gap in the market. Everybody and their brother has tried to be the next Facebook, and very few have been able to pull it off. Twitter worked (although it's definitely struggling at the moment) because it allowed people to connect and communicate with celebrities whom they otherwise would never have been able to interact with directly previously. Instagram satisfied people's desire to take, distribute, and consume beautiful photographs. And Snapchat realized that not everyone wants everything they do and say to stick around forever on the internet and is now a monster in the space because of it (if you didn't read my last article about using Snapchat's geofilters for your business, that should be your next step).

Anchor's biggest challenge is going to be scaling fast enough to keep competitors at bay and keep from becoming the next Meerkat. If you're not familiar with the story, Meerkat was a media and tech darling that brought live streaming video to the social network market ... for all of about 3 months until it was killed by Twitter and their own live streaming play, Periscope.

The platform works really well, the audio quality is outstanding, and it's already a pretty active network with a lot of people finding new and interesting ways to use the service. The onboarding experience is great and I've been enjoying my experiences there so far. Plus, co-founder and CEO Mike Mignano was my very first employee ever at my first software company so I'm rooting for him big time!

If Anchor is able to scale fast enough, now is the time to get involved. Yes, there's always the possibility that it flops and you end up like the guy that had 1,000,000 MySpace friends back in 2006, but that's a risk you take on any platform where you don't own your followers (hint: build your email and direct mail lists).

I'm excited to see what Anchor has in store for us, and I'm especially excited for the Android app to come out (right now it's only available on the iPhone) so I don't have to carry two phones around anymore! Download the app, find and add me, and start building an audience by putting out awesome content.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3307/Why-You-Should-be-Using-Snapchats-Custom-Geofilters-for-Your-Business Why You Should be Using Snapchat's Custom Geofilters for Your Business Let me preface this article by saying if you're not at the very least paying attention to Snapchat as a marketing tool for your business, you're making a huge mistake. The social network that was once only for teenagers who wanted to send, ummm, "private" pictures to each other has grown up and evolved significantly, and is now a major force for brands in the social media landscape.

Snapchat offers huge potential for marketers that has gone largely untapped thus far. But like all the other social networks that came before it, at some point it's time to realize that a multi-billion dollar valuation only remains valid if you can find a way to monetize all of those users. And that means at some point you go from the cool, anti-establishment app to something that brands can take advantage of to market to the mass of users on the platform.

In this, I have to be honest that I didn't see a clear path to monetization for Snapchat. Ads don't really lend themselves to the platform as any implementation of them would likely frustrate users too much, and the minute they tried to charge for the service users would leave in droves. That being said, the path they're choosing to take at the moment is absolutely brilliant. Snapchat's most recent plan for monetization is what this article is all about: Custom geofilters.

If you're not familiar with Snapchat, a quick rundown is the platform allows you to send messages, both text and images, direct to other users. They also allow you to take pictures, add some text and a filter, and post it to your "story." In your story, messages you post live for 24 hours before they're removed permanently, and anybody you follow on the platform can view your story posts in sequence at any time before they disappear.

For a while, Snapchat has offered filters as an option to add to the photos you send in the service. These often change based on your location or when something big is happening. Today, for example, you could add a "Happy St. Patty's Day" message or something related to the NCAA tournament.

Custom geofilters, on the other hand, allow anybody to create a filter that can be applied to a Snapchat user's photos. When you create one, you specify the duration it will be available (up to 30 days but it can be as little as a few hours), and the geographic area in which it will be available. It takes about a day for Snapchat to approve your filter, but it's certainly better to give yourself a little more time if you have an event or something happening that you can plan ahead for. Snapchat does reject designs if they don't conform with their rules (for example, you can't include URL's or blatant usernames like @ChrisASearles), so give yourself some time to make changes if necessary.

Snapchat has (smartly) developed a scaled pricing structure based on the amount of people that are likely to be in your target area. The minimum area you can target is 20,000 square feet. Targeting the minimum area immediately around the Patchogue Theatre for example (where I'm a board member and where you'll be able to see our geofilters soon!), costs about $8 / day. The same space in Times Square costs about $46 / day.

The maximum area you can target is 5,000,000 square feet (the equivalent of about 33 NYC blocks or about the size of an average golf course). Targeting an area this size in the Upper East Side of Manhattan runs you about $14,000 / day, while my local golf course (Bellport Golf Club) would cost you about $1,500 / day.

So how can you take advantage of this for your business? That depends. The most obvious applications are for entertainment venues. Places where a lot of (generally younger) people congregate in a relatively small area and like to take and post pictures are a no-brainer. Nightclubs, bars, concert venues, sports teams, and festivals should all be utilizing this opportunity already.

If you run a business that doesn't fall into that category, you'll have to be more creative. If you're exhibiting at a trade show, think about creating a filter for the show and subtly branding it with your business. To cover the exhibition hall at the Javits Center for a full day (7 am - 5 pm) costs about $300 - that's a pretty tremendous amount of value if you design something that gets used. If you run a store that sells bathing suits, think about creating a branded filter that covers your local beach or community pool. The opportunities are there, it's your job to find them.

Feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, Instagram, my website, or Snapchat (scan the code in the image attached to this article to add me!) if you want some tips on how to use this feature for your business.

Original photo: Flickr | AdamPrzezdzlek

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3266/5-Tips-for-Marketing-on-Twitter 5 Tips for Marketing on Twitter As one of the more popular and notable social networks, Twitter gets a lot of attention from brands, especially those trying to reach that coveted 18 - 35 demographic. Unfortunately for small and medium-sized businesses that don't have the same time or marketing budgets the big brands have, Twitter is notoriously difficult to take advantage of. As such, Twitter ends up being one of the first networks I pull my clients away from.

That doesn't mean Twitter can't work for you, it just means you have to work a lot harder to get results out of it than you do on other platforms. (For more information on that and Twitter in general, check out my Introduction to Twitter post.) It's for this reason that I often suggest to those with limited time and resources to put into social media marketing that they are better off spending their time and money on networks that will provide a bigger bang for their buck.

But if you want to add Twitter to your social media marketing plan, here are five tips to maximize the value of your Twitter marketing campaign.

1. Engage More than You Push

Twitter is only valuable if you engage in the conversation. Discovery is much more difficult on Twitter than on other platforms because tweets have such a short life-cycle, so it's important that you actively seek out conversations where you can insert yourself. Once you do, don't push your product(s) or service(s) but focus on adding real value to a conversation that is relevant to what you do. Do this enough and you can start to build a nice following that will pay attention to the few tweets you do send that promote your stuff.

2. Capitalize on Trends

This might be one of the most common pieces of advice anyone will give you for Twitter but few brands do it well. Twitter goes out of it's way to show what topics are trending, but it's up to you to figure out how (and if) you can join that conversation to capitalize on the trend. The most difficult aspect of this strategy is finding a way to insert your brand's message organically so you're adding value to the conversation, not simply trying to divert attention away from it. The most famous example of this strategy at work was Oreo's "dunk in the dark" tweet during the power outage at the Super Bowl. Lighting like this strikes rarely, however, so tread lightly or you risk looking like you're simply trying to be something you're not (see "Brands Saying Bae").

3. Repeat the Tweet!

Tweets don't last. According to Twitter, about 350,000 Tweets are sent every minute. What does this mean to you? Unless you repeat your tweets multiple times throughout the day, week, or month, there's a high likelihood they'll never be seen by a good majority of your followers. A good general rule of thumb for tweets promoting your links or materials is to send it four times throughout the day.

4. Use Hashtags but Don't Go Overboard

Studies show that tweets with hashtags receive up to 2x more engagement than those without. However, tweets with more than 2 hashtags actually show a decrease in the level of engagement.

5. Insert Usernames and Hashtags Using Natural Language

Tweets are a lot more effective when they read well. Tagging the right people and using hashtags are great, but try to do it in a way that feels natural. For example, let's say you run a pizza place in Manhattan. Take the following tweet:

2 for 1 cheese slices today! #pizza #nyc

A much better approach would be:

2 for 1 cheese slices of the best #pizza in #nyc today!

A quick rewrite allows your tweet to read a lot cleaner while still including your most important hashtags.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3230/Why-I-Wont-Stick-Your-Facebook-Feed-on-Your-Website Why I Won't Stick Your Facebook Feed on Your Website Like a lot of things I write about, this one comes from requests I receive often from clients. "Put my Facebook feed on my website somewhere." My answer (just about) every single time is no. Here's why.

The problem with this request is that almost 100% of the time there's no (sound) reasoning behind why we're being asked to do it beyond "I hope people will see it and like my Facebook page." But when I probe deeper, I'm often shocked at the lack of planning that accompanies these requests. When I respond, my first question is always, "Why do you want people to like your Facebook page?"

Sounds pretty simple right? It's not. You'd be surprised how many small businesses have a presence on Facebook simply because they feel like they just have to. They don't have a plan or a vision for what they'll do with those likes once they get them or how they're going to convert those Facebook likes to dollars and business. If you haven't first sat down and developed a real plan for your social media marketing efforts that identifies why you're even utilizing it in the first place, then I'm certainly not going to help you promote that effort (or lack thereof) on your beautiful, brand new website we just built for you.

This is the single most important aspect of your social media plan, why you're bothering to invest your time and money into it at all. Where and how are you going to get your return? If you can't answer that question right away, you need to take a step back and reevaluate.

Once you know why you're on Facebook and what you're going to do with those likes, the next question to ask is why you want all of your Facebook content to be syndicated on your website. For most businesses, the real opportunity to convert a browser to a customer occurs on their website, not their Facebook page. While this is certainly not true for everyone in every case, it tends to be true far more often than not, especially for small businesses.

Assuming this is true for you, your other channels should be there to drive traffic to your website, not the other way around. Once you have a prospect on your website there are a number of options to convert that visitor to a follower on social media. For example, if you're reading this article on the Searles Graphics or Searles Media website right now and you have an active authentication cookie with Facebook, you're going to see ads from us for other articles for the next few months. Those ads are meant to entice you to like our Facebook page because that's one of the places we promote our content, and I hope you find the content we produce valuable enough to want to see more of it.

I'm also hoping you'll use one of the methods we've provided to subscribe to our email list where you'll get popular content sent to you once a month. In both of these cases I'm utilizing the channels available to me to drive you back to my website where I have total control over your experience and the items I'd like for you to see. There are two primary goals I'm trying to achieve with all of this. First, if you're not already a client of mine, I'm hoping to prove to you why you need to be. Second, if you are a client of mine, I'm hoping to reinforce why you deal with me outside of our normal communication mechanisms. Here I can be a little more long-winded (and often more honest) than I can in our regular communications to add more value to your organization.

This is why you don't see a Facebook feed anywhere on this website. You also won't see the content of the emails we send to our subscribers either. If you want that content, you need to take action to view them on those platforms. We segment our content to target each platform individually, and you'll get a unique experience and distinct value from being a part of both of those channels (or Twitter, or YouTube, or Instagram, etc.).

But what if your ultimate goal is to get people to your Facebook page? The strategy is the same, just in reverse. Rather than designing your social media content to drive traffic to your website, design your website content to drive traffic to your Facebook page. Simply syndicating that content on your website doesn't give someone a reason to like your Facebook page. They don't need to, they can get it all on your website without following you. Instead, your website needs to make a sale. Prove to that visitor why they need to go to your Facebook page and click the like button (or the one that's embedded on your sales page).

Integrating your marketing efforts is about much more than just slapping an embedded feed somewhere. Start with evaluating the goals of each of the mediums you participate in and figure out the best way to maximize the value of each to get the most out of your marketing investment.

Photo: Flickr | danny O.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3169/5-Facebook-Marketing-Tips-for-Small-Businesses 5 Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses I often see small businesses make the decision that they "need to be on Facebook" without taking the time to truly understand the platform and figure out how to make it work for them. While you may get something out of simply having a Facebook presence that you post to every once in a while, by-and-large you definitely won't get back enough value to justify the time you put into it.

When it comes to your social media marketing, the most important thing you can do is to educate yourself first (take a look at my introduction to Twitter when you're done here). To that end, here are five quick tips to help you with your Facebook marketing and advertising efforts.

1. Determine Your Goals

Before you embark on any marketing or advertising effort, it's important to determine what your goals are for that activity; social media marketing is no different. Social media activity in-and-of-itself is useless if it doesn't provide some return on your investment. It's up to you to determine how to both define and get that return. Whether you're a deli or a restaurant looking for a good way to get your daily specials out, or a community newspaper that wants a platform to build a bigger, you need to have a clear idea of what constitutes success. From there, make sure to re-evaluate your goals on a regular basis and make sure your content falls in line with your goals.

2. Use "Boost Posts" Sparingly and Strategically

About two years ago, Facebook made one of the best business decisions it ever has; they provided the ability for page admins to pay to boost their regular posts as ads. This was fantastic for Facebook and potentially damaging to small businesses that don't use it properly. This feature is a fantastic way to quickly and easily test content and ads. It isn't an end-all-be-all solution to your Facebook advertising. Facebook has some extremely powerful advertising features that can only be accessed in the Ad Manager or in Power Editor. While all of Facebook's ad tools are continually getting better, at this point in time there is no replacement for what these two can do for you. Between custom audiences, advanced targeting, conversion tracking, and ad types that can only be created using these tools (Power Editor just released an awesome new "Lead Ad" you should absolutely pay attention to), there is still no substitute for either of these tools.

3. Images, Images, Images!

There's a reason Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram and tried to also acquire Snapchat for billions: Images work. Scroll through your Facebook feed and tell me how many posts without images you see at all, let alone notice and pay attention to. A good image for your post is the initial attention grabber that your headline and post text need to convert to a click (or a like, or whatever other goal you're trying to achieve with your post).

4. Native Videos

Facebook has made a few key moves that affect how you need to handle video posts within the platform. The biggest was when they stopped auto-playing YouTube videos in the feed and instead began to display them like links. The reason for this was to push users to upload their videos natively to Facebook rather than uploading to YouTube and then embedding the video in Facebook. (My assumption is that Facebook is actively working on ways to monetize video content the same way YouTube currently does.) What this means to you is that those embedded YouTube videos get far less views than they used to, while native Facebook videos with their auto-play and click-to-hear-sound functionality get significantly more. SIGNIFICANTLY. It's not a small difference, it's a MASSIVE difference. If you want your video seen on Facebook, you have to go native.

5. Dark Posts

Dark posts are becoming less of an "insiders only" feature and more of a standard for Facebook advertising. I suspect the term "dark posts" will probably go away soon as more people use the feature without even knowing they're creating a dark post. A dark post is simply an ad that doesn't appear in your page's timeline. This is powerful because you can separate the content you push to your existing audience from the content you push to those who aren't already following you. Want to offer a discount to a targeted audience that doesn't yet follow you without pissing off your existing followers? Dark post. Want to advertise an introductory offer for new customers in a specific market segment? Dark post. Want to advertise the same exact item or content to different demographic segments with different text and images? Dark posts. To create a dark post simply use the aforementioned Ad Manager or Power Editor and create a news feed ad with brand new content.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/2156/An-Introduction-to-Twitter An Introduction to Twitter Social media marketing is a huge weapon in the arsenal of a small business, but all-too-often I see small businesses make the mistake of simply having a presence on a social media network and assuming they're doing something good just because they're there. It's important to understand that as a small business, the most valuable resource you have is time, and ANY investment you make of your time is one that should be carefully thought out.

Twitter is arguably the most "techy" of the most widely-used social media outlets. It's also the one that requires the most effort to use correctly. This combination can be dangerous and it's why Twitter is so often misused.

The most common way I see small and medium-sized businesses use (or really, misuse) Twitter is that they set up an account, they follow Twitter's getting started process, and they never log in to the platform again. Instead, they connect it to their Facebook account and simply auto-publish their Facebook posts or they sign up for a social media dashboard like Hootsuite, Buffer, or SproutSocial (there are a number of others as well) and schedule out their updates. The problem is that simply pushing content onto Twitter is just about the worst possible way to use the platform (the worst is to not use it at all!).

Twitter's value comes from the power derived in open, well-categorized conversations that anyone can view and engage with. There's no such thing as a Twitter post that only goes out to your followers, when you put it up there anyone can see it, retweet it, reply to it, and engage with it. But until you build up a following of any significance, just pushing your own agenda doesn't get you anywhere.

The lifetime of a tweet is extremely short (unless you're famous and say something stupid, those seem to never go away). So that important piece of information you posted to Facebook and auto-syndicated to your 500 Twitter followers might be seen by 5 people ... maybe. With a little tweaking, however, your message could have been seen by 50,000 people; or, even better, by 1 really important person.

I'm going to publish a series of articles on specific strategies you can use to maximize the value of your efforts on Twitter, but for now, get rid of the auto-publish settings and log in to the platform. Play around, search, click on stuff, and familiarize yourself with the ins-and-outs and the language of Twitter. If you don't understand something, Google it, and check back soon for updates!

Photo: Flickr | Andreas Eldh

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