We are halfway through the year and the 2017 New Year’s Resolutions we made seem light-years away. However, in a business, goal setting and goal completion are a ongoing struggle. One of our Jemully finds this year was a productivity workbook called Your Best Year: 2017 by Lisa Jacobs. According to Jacobs, “By January 15, 95% of people who set New Year resolutions will have already given up on them”. We are determined to help you be a part of the 5%, not the 95%.Continue reading
Your Twitter account represents your business; it’s a part of your brand. I’ve been on Twitter for several years managing various client accounts and it’s easy to see who knows what they’re doing and who doesn’t. Like it or not, a business that displays a degree of social media acumen is a business that gains trust in the eyes of consumers.
If you want your business to be well-represented on social media (and why wouldn’t you?), it’s important to know what you’re doing. Here are 25 Twitter do’s and don’t’s for business.
One of the best ways to explain the 20/20 rule of marketing is to imagine a scenario where you are hanging out with your friends. What if you only talked about ONE thing… every single time you hung out. And that one thing was something you were trying to sell to them. YIKES! Probably not the best way to keep friends, right? Perhaps you would be lucky if those same friend would hang out if you only talked about what you were sellingt 80% of the time. Then you could engage in conversation about other topics 20% of the time. How about, an even better idea. What if you switched the 80/20 rule around and most of the time you could talk about mutually entertaining and enjoyable subjects, leaving only 20% of the time to promote your product?
The same idea holds true for social media practices. If a company only posts about their products and services, their friends and followers may quickly tire of hearing about it. Ideally, companies will intersperse this type of information among other content that is a little more personal and engaging. Just as your friends want to learn more about you, a company’s following typically wants more than just a sales message.
At Jemully, we encourage our clients to follow the “80/20” rule for social media marketing. In fact, we recommend the 80/20 marketing mix for all of your content marketing. This rule says only 20% of the content will directly promote your products or services. The other 80% can be topics related to your brand, or things that you have strategically planned that your audience will enjoy. We can adjust these percentages, depending on the client, but it is a good rule of thumb. You are more likely to get engagement on your posts if they vary in type. It makes your sales pitch less likely to be tuned out by your audience.
As anyone not privy to Google’s ever-evolving search engine crawling algorithm can (and should) tell you, SEO (search engine optimization) is a long-term commitment and the process is never finished. Text-based content, meta descriptions, image descriptions, headings, URLs, links… there are an awful lot of factors and knowing the list is an essential part of the uphill battle. Here, we are focusing on one specific and unheralded element of SEO: The Long-Tail Keyword.
But first…
While they are not officially designated like the items listed above, keywords woven throughout your site, and the relevance and richness they lend your content, are ultimately the most important factor in SEO. Search engines (Google) seek to find the results that best match a Googler’s inquiry. Google is really good at finding the best results. That’s why it’s so popular. The best results (websites) are those best able to demonstrate to Google’s crawling non-human bots that they have the best and most relevant content. So basically, if you want to show up on the results page when someone searches for “shoes,” your website better be all about shoes, or at least have a lot of shoe-related content.
Over the years, there have been loopholes and cheats that enterprising webmasters have found to artificially boost their SEO. For example; cramming an unnatural amount of keywords into a page, or using trendy keywords in content that had otherwise nothing to do with those particular trends. These practices and many others are always snuffed out by Google’s crawlers, which are constantly improving because—you guessed it—negating shady practices ultimately helps yield better search results to Googlers. Again, Google is very good at this, which is why Google is far and away the top search engine, owning an estimated 70% of the global search engine market.Continue reading
Before a social media campaign’s frequency, quality, and creative services can be determined, a strategy must be developed. How detailed should your social media strategy be? Social media strategies begin with determining the specific target audience, selecting the right platforms to reach that audience, and then defining the goals, how you will measure success, and actions are considered a conversion. These aspects can be as general or as highly detailed as you see fit, but they must both be in place to effectively determine your social media costs. In our experience, we believe the more detail in your strategy and plan, the better your execution will be, and the better you can control the social media costs in the future.
Naturally, the cost of hiring a social media manager to handle your company’s accounts will vary depending on whom you ask and where they are located. Here are a few things to keep in mind regarding how much social media management will cost when setting your budget.
Some businesses like to be active every day; lots of posts, and near-instantaneous responses to every customer or follower interaction. These are worthwhile, valuable goals. Yet, accounting for a few variables—not every company requires this level of activity, and not every company has enough time to devote to this level of activity—it is not always realistically attainable.Continue reading
With marketers continuously looking for new ways to leverage their content marketing strategies, all developments in publishing platforms must be evaluated. Facebook is a social media giant and an influential marketing platform. Despite its ubiquity, Facebook offers features that are undervalued for content marketing purposes. Those features? Facebook Notes and Facebook Instant Articles. First, let’s very simply define each tool. Then, we will explore the highlights with pro-con lists.Continue reading
“I’m done with social media.”
Every once in a while, we hear people say things to this effect. I know I’ve heard a variety of reasons, and undoubtedly many more exist. These are some of the more common ones:
These reasons are pretty substantial on paper, but I’m not really convinced that quitting social media actually works for any extended period of time without a zealous, unrelenting commitment. Social media isn’t a light switch to simply be turned off.Continue reading
Are you looking for a way to improve your company’s web presence, but unsure where to start? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an important process to go through for companies with online footprints of all shapes and sizes. For decades, there have been tricks and shenanigans for improving your standing in Google’s search results, but each one inevitably fades into irrelevancy as Google evolves.
There are best practices to achieve a more concrete SEO boost that will not be subject to the closing of any Google’s loopholes. As a guide, Jemully Media has authored a 12-page PDF loaded with SEO strategies and infographics intended to spread the word about healthy SEO practices for companies looking to improve their search engine optimization and show up in a greater number of Google search results.Continue reading
The purpose of this survey is to provide a snapshot of the marketing practices of small-to-medium sized businesses in West Texas. This survey will provide participants an opportunity to think critically about their own business, and a chance to measure themselves against fellow and neighboring businesses in West Texas. For the best possible results, please answer this survey honestly and accurately.Continue reading
