The Full Noise
Blenhiem Graphic Design and Website Designers
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After listening to my Media episode yesterday I decided I could talk more about using social media to get your message to your market.
I discuss the main benefits and pitfalls of Social media.
Images have long been used for communication of ideas since the dawn of human societies, well before any forms of written language.
We are hardwired to process our world visually, to judge threats, opportunities and make fast decisions.
A few thousand years later, images began being used in advertising and marketing. As soon as people worked out how powerful they are at communicating desires and emotions. You know the saying – ‘a picture says a thousand words’.
And now, with our ability to publish content to the world at will, in just a few seconds, the majority of sharing and interaction on Facebook and the other large Social networks are images. So much so that I would suggest that Images are the currency of the social web.
As Web and Graphic designers, we are essentially dealing in images constantly. Whether they are photos, logos, advertisements. Almost everything we do has a visual aspect to it.
We get a lot of requests from clients or potential clients to ‘just get an image from Google images’.
This is something that except for a very few (legal) circumstances we won’t do. Images on Google images ARE NOT FREE. They are not there for anyone to use as they wish. Somebody has taken that photo of created that image (in the case of graphics), and they own the copyright.
One more thing… an image from Google Images, isn’t your business. It isn’t helping you relate anything about you and your company to your website visitors, or readers of your brochure.
My opinion is you should whenever possible, create and use your own images from your own business, your products, your customers, your staff and your events. Make them authentic… People can tell.
If you have some important images you need to showcase your business for branding purposes, use a professional photographer.
If you need some shots for your social media efforts – take your own. Get into the habit of taking photos just for the sake of it. If you’re developing a new product – take some photos; running a workshop or seminar – take some photos; attending an event – you get the picture (sorry).
While most of them won’t be great, you’ll be amazed how often some shots you took will come in handy.
Want more about the power of images in marketing
One of the recent episodes of our podcast ‘The Local Social Business Show’ covered a broad range of uses of images to promote your business online. From Blog posts, to Facebook and Pinterest, we cover it all.
Jump over and have a listen to the episode here, and subscribe to the show in iTunes to listen to all of our marketing tips for free every fortnight.
Here is how NOT to get new fans on Facebook:
I recorded this after a business spammed one of my Facebook Pages wall with a blatant sales message. After a bit of investigation, I found they were posting the same message on the walls of a large number of other business pages.
I outline what they did, and what they should be doing instead.
If you find this helpful, jump over and like our Facebook page for more helpful tips like this.
Tagging others in your Facebook posts creates a link direct from your post or comment to the tagged Persons profile or the Facebook Page. It is a great way to promote others, stay connected and at the same time, increase the exposure of your Facebook Page.
In this short (3:46sec) video I show exactly:
As always, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.
Everybody in business knows that word of mouth is the absolute best form of marketing for their business.
Having a third party recommend your business is more credible in the eyes of the potential customers. Numerous studies have shown that recommendations from friends and even complete strangers have much higher levels of trust than advertising.
The problem with word of mouth marketing is that it is really hard to instigate, encourage or control. For someone to recommend your business, you need to be top of their mind when they happen to be having a conversation with someone who needs your products or services. Basically the right person needs to be in the right place at the right time, having the right conversation to make the referral.
Social media removes some of the barriers of word-of-mouth referrals and makes it easier for your customers to refer or recommend your services. In fact, it makes it so easy, often times, people don’t even realise they are doing it.
Social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or even email, allows you regular contact with the fans and customers of your business. That regular contact is critical to reminding your fans that you exist.
Here’s the thing… The contact doesn’t have to be anything heavy. It doesn’t have to be a sales call, a product offer or any form of ‘marketing message’. In fact, it is better if it isn’t (of course there is a place for promoting sales from time to time).
The point is purely to let them know you are still here. Doing your thing. Helping people.
Before social media, contacting people was slow and expensive. But now, taking 10 minutes to post a photo or a tip on Facebook, and you’ve made contact with all of your fans who are interested enough to follow you.
The trick is posting something interesting that inspires your fans and followers to want to have their say. To share it with their friends.
It only takes 2 seconds to click the ‘like’ button or send a retweet on Twitter, or a minute to compose a comment. On Facebook, every interaction with your content spreads your idea and the visibility of your business further, to reach a larger audience. Effectively removing the barriers of referring your business.
If you haven’t already, set up your presence on these platforms.
Think about what sort of content would be useful or interesting for your customers, and plan some cool content. Remember, content, can be short text tips, long articles, photos or video.
Get some fans. Spread the word with your staff, friend and customers, and give them all a reason to follow you on these services.
Get publishing. Be cool.
Speaking of being cool. If you found this article helpful, I’d appreciate it if you took a moment to write a comment below or share this article on Facebook.
I recently made this quick video.
Inside the video I explain how I answered a clients question using video, which meant rather than just explaining them the answer (it was slightly technical), I could show them exactly what they needed to do to fix their problem.
Using video to communicate with the client had three further benefits:
Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine on the internet, and the lion’s share of the videos watched are How-to in nature.
Have a watch of the video and let me know what you think in the comments.
