Do you create custom images for social media? Looking for tools to streamline the design process? There are some new desktop design tools that make it easy to quickly create multiple graphics for social media. In this article, you'll discover three user-friendly desktop tools to create visuals for social media. Why Create Images via Desktop? If [...]
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Looking for new podcasts or sources of business related content? You're in luck. eBay recently launched a new podcast alongside Gimlet Creative, a media company founded by veterans of NPR and This American Life. The podcast, entitled Open for Business, features insights, tips and questions for new business owners.
For example, the podcast's first episode, The Entrepreneurial Mind, discusses the meaning of success in business and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. More specifically, the episode discusses the possibility of an “entrepreneurial gene.” Is entrepreneurship something that you're born with, or can you use sheer will and hard work to make it in the business world?
John Henry, founder of Harlem-based venture capital fund Cofound Harlem and former owner of a dry cleaning startup is the host of Open for Business. In the first episode, Henry speaks with various experts about the concept and science behind entrepreneurship, including Dr. Scott Shane, who has studied the connection between genetics and entrepreneurship, and Corri McFadden, founder of consignment business eDrop-Off.
Open for Business plans to tackle different topics related to entrepreneurship in each weekly episode. Episode 2 is titled Growing Pains, and Episode 3 is called Price Is Right?
You can listen to the first episode now. And you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or RSS to make sure you get updates for each weekly episode. While the podcast is mainly aimed at newer business owners and entrepreneurs, there may also be episodes with relatable themes for a wider audience.
eBay states in a post on it's official news blog, “Open for Business shows how to build a business and talks to entrepreneurs about what keeps them up at night. Combining humor and intelligence, each episode tackles some of the most basic – and most difficult – questions new business owners face: How do you know when to quit your day job? What should you look for when hiring? And, it examines the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of starting a company.”
Since eBay's launch over 20 years ago, the ecommerce giant has been a helpful tool for many online business owners throughout the world. And for those just getting into the world of business ownership, whether it's through eBay or another avenue, having access to content and insights from more experienced business voices can always be a plus. This new podcast is just one more option for new entrepreneurs looking to grow their knowledge base and explore topics they might have not otherwise considered.
Image: eBay (Pictured are Corri McFadden, John Henry)
This article, "eBay Launches Open for Business Podcast to Serve Entrepreneurs" was first published on Small Business Trends
Dear brands, we love you but you have been making a mess of our Facebook newsfeeds with your constant, inappropriate selling, content and updates.
Please stop!
Ever logged into Facebook to be social and interact, only to see a brand trying to sell to you right there? I cringe at the sight of misplaced advertising and selling.
A whopping 66% of brands do not have a Facebook strategy, and brands that do have a Facebook strategy do not have it documented – hence, there's nothing to implement. Nobody goes to the grocery store without a grocery list, so don't jump on the Facebook train without a strategy!
Here's a whole list of Facebook marketing mistakes and sins almost every brand is committing;
By posting on Facebook inconsistently and inappropriately you tell your audience, “Dear customer, we are busy doing more important things, therefore, we have no time to be human and keep you updated about us”.
Organic page reach on Facebook is declining. Now more than ever, engagement should be a priority.
Solution: Create an editorial calendar for Facebook, and focus on inspiring your audience. A perfect example of a brand succeeding at this would be SaaS Company Post Planner. Their Facebook updates are consistent and their content is great. Hence, engagement is off the roof.
Most brands publish content that screams, “We need likes!” or they ask users to like the post and bleh bleh bleh in Dracula's voice (like-bait post).
Well, the bitter truth is Facebook will actually bury such a post. Don't post visuals or updates asking fans to like or comment, as this tells the world how desperate your brand is and your lack of a social media strategy.
Facebook users like myself visit to share photos, watch funny ferret or cat videos, and catch up on the latest happenings in my circle; what do you think I would do seeing a brand asking for likes? I either skip the content or come pour out my heart in your comments (you don't want the latter).
Solution: Provide a lot of helpful content regularly, and put up “real questions” that spark engagement.
Truth be told, brands can't market or fully reach individual Facebook audiences without paying. So to get more eyes on your content, you must be willing to pay Facebook.
You don't publish and pray and expect it to rain likes and comments; with great content you should get a healthy organic reach but want a larger reach? Pay to play.
Solution: Facebook admitted it several times that organic page reach is decreasing. However, using the “boost post” feature would instantly get more eyes and engagement on your brand and content.
Facebook statistics as at March 2016 have shown that there are over 1.65 billion monthly active Facebook users, and a whopping 1.51 billion of these are mobile users or visitors.
These numbers are too huge to ignore. Brands should optimize their Facebook pages for mobile users; having cropped out visuals or missing page components damages the user experience.
Take, for example, the visuals below: the visual on Coca-Cola's cover was optimized for desktops only, making mobile visitors to the page believe Coca-Cola has some spiritual agenda.
Now take a look at the mobile version of the same cover
Choosing what now Coca-Cola? Have they gone spiritual?
You don't plant a potato and harvest marshmallows. The same applies to content and engagement on Facebook; using irrelevant hashtags or twisting up trends can be a bad blow for business.
For example, the visual below:
Having made up Star Wars day isn't enough, brands have to make it even more contrived and use an absurd hashtag.
Want to grow a following on Facebook or increase engagement? Posting inappropriate comments and pictures, using click bait, being all about traffic and sales would not work!
Damn, you are so greedy and we can see it! However, Facebook is cracking down on click-bait posts and will continually drown them in the newsfeed; be original and creative.
Solution: Publishing behind-the-scenes pictures of employees, pictures of products, videos or pictures of a typical day at the company or events, holidays and birthdays will increase brand perception, engagement, and page likes.
Brands should not rely on Facebook marketing to make sales. The truth is everyone hates being sold.
Another deadly sin brands make includes not engaging fans in comments. Being social involves you interacting with fans, asking questions and responding.
Brands should be involved in the conversation in their Facebook comments, responding to feedback, lending a helping hand or increasing engagement creatively.
Solution: Engage fans in your comments, address feedback and spread the brand image.
Too much of selling beats the purpose of being social. Brands should abstain from selling and focus more on user experience, building a community and providing value. That way, users remain loyal and increase their spending potential to your brand through the law of reciprocity.
Solution: Facebook is rolling out the shop store for Facebook pages, simply add your products into your shop and users can buy once they visit your page.
Handling trolls and negative feedback requires a dedicated Facebook team, patience and creativity. Brands are expected to respond to trolls and negative comments in a respectful and playful tone to keep the community mood light and friendly or it might result in disastrous PR for that brand.
Solution: Tara Hornor wrote an epic post with tips on handling Trolls and negative comments.
Advertising on Facebook does not end with clicking “Boost Post”. For instance, you could create a lookalike audience based on subscribers already on your mailing list, who are on Facebook, and send targeted ads to them.
The true potential of Facebook advertising cannot be quantified; brands should take specific steps in creating ads that offer great incentives while achieving business goals.
Solution: Use Facebook's Power Editor to create ads to gain leads and advertise new products, but don't spam your users' newsfeed.
Facebook changes its algorithm randomly; the latest changes in the Facebook algorithm include bringing content to users based on previous interaction.
Brands are expected to keep up with the latest updates to ensure a consistent user experience in regards to content, cover photos, and ads.
Solution: Brands should bookmark (literally) the Facebook for pages web page to stay updated with the latest algorithm updates and implement to increase engagement and brand perception.
Facebook marketing requires creativity, A/B testing, and constantly staying ahead of the latest changes from Facebook. For a brand to successfully reach, inspire and engage its audience, the above solutions are required.
What other sins do you see brands commit on Facebook? I would like to know in the comments section.
Guest Author: Pius Boachie is a freelance writer and social media strategist who offers ghostwriting, copywriting and blogging services. He works closely with B2C and B2B businesses providing digital marketing content that gains social media attention and increases their search engine visibility. On his blog DigitiMatic, he shares actionable marketing and branding advice for businesses.
The post 10 Unforgivable Facebook Marketing Mistakes From Big Brands appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Creating content can be an ongoing challenge for startups.
Content marketing provides a platform for us to show off our expertise, but it takes a lot of time and effort to pull it off correctly.
Quality over quantity is key, but even publishing one blog post per week can be hard when there are so many other facets to running a small business.
Even if you manage to write your blog post for the week, the work doesn't end there. The last thing you want to do is publish a blog post that has errors or doesn't read well. Remember, your content is representative of your business!
Even though it is best practice to get another pair of eyes on your content before you hit that publish button, sometimes due to time constraints or team size, that's just not possible. Fortunately there are some simple editing hacks that can help you eliminate, or at least minimize, errors in your content.
Don't know where to start?
Here are some straightforward hacks to edit your own content effectively and easily.
Once you've finished a piece, take a break from it and do something else for a few hours. If you can sleep on it, that's even better.
The important part here is that you get your mind off your first draft. This way you'll be able to look at it with fresh eyes, allowing you to see errors and awkward wording that you may have missed.
Read over your content with a specific eye for “weak” words. A weak word is one that is vague or overused. Take your writing up a notch by replacing these less than specific words with descriptors that improve your content, or removing them altogether.
Here are 11 “weak” words to watch out for:
○ Very
○ Really
○ Good
○ Important
○ Big
○ Small
○ Every
○ Went
○ Got
○ Things
○ Stuff
Keep in mind that it's not necessarily bad to use these words here and there, but over-using them could devalue your content. A simple trick I use is to look for these words using the “Find” feature in Word.
While using passive voice is not necessarily wrong, writing in passive voice often leads to weak sentence structure. A good trick here is to look out for all of the “to be” verbs like “were”, “are”, “is”, “had” or “will be”.
Is there a better way to structure the sentence that would be more interesting and engaging? Sentences written in a passive voice aren't living up to their potential.
If you're still unclear about passive voice, check out this example. The first sentence is written in passive voice, while the second has been rearranged and is much stronger.
Take the time to read your work out loud. While this might seem like a bit of an onerous step, it's well worth it.
Read quietly to yourself, mostly mouthing the words in a soft voice that only you can hear if you're working around others. If a sentence sounds awkward, there's likely a grammar or sentence structure problem. When in doubt, go with a quick rewrite.
Sometimes we miss natural breaks in content or opportunities to convey ideas more clearly through bullet points, headings or paragraph breaks. When you're combing over your writing, seek out places to improve the structure of the piece, letting your content shine through.
Just because you're editing your own content doesn't mean that you're actually on your own. Look for a boost from editing tools, which are especially useful if you're feeling less than confident in your skills.
The Hemingway app assesses writing based on passive voice, readability, long sentences, adverbs and complex words.
Inexpensive and effective, Hemingway is more than serviceable when it comes to running a quick check for spelling and readability. The only downsides are that the app doesn't do much for grammar problems, nor does it offer solutions to the problems that it finds.
The truly useful thing about ProWriting Aid is that it offers you not only a checklist of actions you can take to improve your content, but it also gives you ways to fix the problems that it finds.
For the full set of features, including a detailed analysis on sentence length, plagiarism, redundancies, consistency, writing style, overused words, clichés and more, you'll need the premium version. However the basic is still amazingly functional and works well for most blogs, marketing emails and the like.
If you're interested in pulling your writing down to its most potent and readable form, then Word Rake is the ticket you've been looking for.
This app scrapes your Microsoft Word documents for extra bits of fluff and unnecessary phrases. It's important to remember that this tool will not check for grammar and spelling, but then those functions can be covered well with other supports in Microsoft Word.
Another limitation is that it has to be used on a PC as it's connected to Word. Given all of that it's still an incredible tool.
This is another holistic piece of editing software that goes above and beyond. After the Deadline flags spelling, grammar, passive voice and more, in addition to offering style suggestions as well.
You'll get a detailed set of reasons behind the corrections that the program presents to you. The best part about that feature is that the more you use this program, the better your writing gets as you learn what you're doing wrong and why.
Perhaps the biggest boon to After the Deadline is the sheer number of platforms that it's available on – everything from Google Chrome to WordPress to Open Office. You can truly use this proofreading tool wherever you are.
Keep in mind that editing tools are really just what they sound like – tools. While they will assuredly give you a jumpstart on the editing process, you still need to read and re-read your content in order to ensure that it's readable to actual humans.
Unless you're in a real emergency situation for a piece of content, don't rush your editing process. While you might be able to get something quick and dirty out there without thoroughly editing, it's not going to be the best that you can offer. Taking the time for a thorough edit is always worth it, particularly if you are editing your own content.
On the other side, be wary of over-editing, which can cause you to lose the flow of your writing. The goal is to execute minimal amendments that have a significant impact. It's rarely necessary to go over a piece more than once or at the most twice before publication. Balance is key.
You are perfectly capable of editing your own content, even if it's not how you might go about it in a perfect world. By following the steps outlined here, you can be confident that the content you're publishing is high quality.
Guest Author: Michael Georgiou is the CMO and Co-founder at Imaginovation, a web design & mobile apps development firm in Raleigh, NC. He's a dynamic business professional and entrepreneurial guru with proven success in creative strategy, online branding, project management, and communication projects in both the public and private sectors.
The post 10 Simple Editing Hacks For DIY Bloggers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Do you want to connect with local customers on Facebook? Have you considered targeting them with Facebook ads? Facebook ads offer a quick, easy, cost-effective way to reach consumers in your local area. In this article, you'll discover how to get your business in front of local customers using Facebook ads. #1: Choose Your Ad [...]
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
To be honest I am disillusioned.
Social media offered a promise that was so compelling that when I discovered it I was hooked. The potential and the promise became apparent. You could create, publish and get worldwide attention for free.
And ten years later…..over 2 billion people are now obsessed.
The social networks and new media channels allowed the freedom and power to get your content and message out without paying for it.
The promise….free attention and content distribution.
Viral traffic was attracted by YouTube. Blowing things up, blending strange objects and cat videos went off. We were mesmerized.
But things aren't the same anymore.
The landscape is changing fast. The new gatekeepers are Facebook and Google. They have the data about your customers and to reach those prospects you now need to pay them. They are the new media moguls.
The social network gatekeepers. And they are slowly closing the gate.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all want to keep you within their eco-systems. Much of the viewing of videos and even articles are now happening within the platforms.
Ev Williams (Twitter's founder) is concerned.
In a recent interview on the Atlantic “Primarily what we've seen is that the social networks have gotten really, really big, and they drive more and more of our attention.” They are threatening the open web. “That could be bad,” says Williams.
The reality is that Facebook and other social networks are becoming the default portals. Even Google now is serving up the answers on its results page and you don't need to click through to the website or blog to get the answer.
This stat really makes you sit up and notice.
“85 cents of every new dollar in online advertising went to Google or Facebook in early 2016”, according to a Morgan Stanley analyst quoted by The New York Times. So both the free attention and the paid traffic are being dominated by what is emerging as almost a duopoly.
You have to get creative.
It's what great marketers have always done. The term has been coined. Growth hacking
Growth hacking is the art and science of growing a business and startup without spending big bucks on paid digital or traditional media advertising. It's all about efficient marketing tactics that deliver growth without advertising.
Let's face it. What startup or small business has a access to a huge marketing budget. Almost no one!
Big brands, banks and the big end of town can pay for brand awareness. But the small guys first need to get leads. That's your email list
But before we go there we need to get traffic.
Websites, bloggers and start-ups had 3 ways to get traffic to their digital platforms before the social web.
So, things have evolved.
Pay for traffic….We now can pay Google and Facebook. They are the big paid channels.
Earn it. We now can earn attention on social (getting harder) or build authority on Google (takes time)
Partner. Collaborate with influencers, bloggers and websites that already have traffic. But you need to have something of value to exchange.
Own the resulting attention. This is done by building an email list when they show up after you have been working on 1-3. These are your leads.
So how do keep getting attention without paying for it despite the big networks wanting to own it all. How do get traffic that is sticky?
As the fight for attention online becomes tougher you will need to look at creating sticky content and traffic.
There are some core strategies that you need to consider to be effective on a web that screams louder every day. These include.
Let's take a closer look.
In a world where mass media is impersonal and the web is virtual the challenge is making your engagement authentic and sticky. This is becoming key to standing out from the crowd in a see of blandness.
Making it personal is what engagement is all about. This could include behind the scenes insights on Snapchat that can turn visitors into raving and engaged fans.
But the challenge is doing engagement at scale.
A face to face meeting is the best level of engagement. But it doesn't scale well. The social web provides the technology and networks to have a highly engaging conversations with no limits and provides a big lever.
Here are some engagement tactics are not something that scales traffic fast but it is where the traffic is stickiest. It builds that credibility and trust like no other traffic source.
Podcasts reveal the voice and personality of bloggers and brands. Podcast popularity is rising with 57 million Americans now listening to them on a regular basis according to Forbes.
The game here is changing fast with Apple iTunes virtual monopoly and market share being challenged by Androids “Play”. Pandora are getting into the game with “Serial” as well as Spotify throwing its hat in the podcast ring.
This will be good for everyone.
But Podcasting isn't without it's challenges and will need to evolve to achieve greater penetration
They can be hard hard to discover on iTunes. Also they don't surface and are listened to easily via Google search. I agree with Jay Baer comments that it has to evolve to being an “on-demand radio“.
Once the standards and platforms evolve to being more open, searchable and easy to use we will see the real explosion of podcasts.
But despite that it's a highly engaging and personable way to communicate and build that all important attention.
Not much polishing is done here. Snapchat is raw and real. And the law of scarcity can be used to drive traffic to your blog, landing pages and online portals. A 10 second video and a 24 hour story are driving engagement on Snapchat through the roof.
Who is doing this well?
I will be using Snapchat more over the next few weeks as we trial the engagement and tactics. So watch out for this funny face.
Online video is a personal and visual conversation that can be one to many. It scales well.
This type of tactic can convert attention that educates into traffic that converts. Learn the art and science of creating videos that educate first and sell second.
Webinars is personal training that can be watched by thousands at a time.
Education is the focus and collaborating with other bloggers and influencers can explode both your email list and your traffic.
Livestreaming has come into its own as the technologies have matured. The parallel development of several technologies such as smartphones, video streaming tech and also faster mobile networks has made this possible.
Periscope and Meerkat are two emerging livestreaming platforms. They are personal and very engaging.
Now, just because I listed 5 types of mediums to drive engagement and then traffic doesn't mean that you do all 5. Start with one like a regular webinar or maybe a podcast.
Content needs these to elements to really move across the web.
Steve Rayson and the team at BuzzSumo have done some research and have revealed the 5 key elements for writing a viral headline. It is based upon research done with millions of headlines.
Here is an example of a headline using this formula.
Stock images are almost past their use by date on social. The rise and use of “real” images is something that Facebook is encouraging for marketers to include in their social advertising strategy.
This is one of the reasons they chose to Shuttlerock for an innovation award for creating authentic visual content that will scale and can be uploaded to be used in Facebook ads.
Authentic and relevance is key if you are posting visual ads into a Facebook timeline .
Marketing now needs tech tools. Love it or hate it the reality is that technology is now a key component of marketing. These are 2 tools that I use to convert traffic that sticks.
Pop-ups are avoided by many because they see them as annoying. Television ads are sort of the mass media version of a pop up. But 50 years later we are still watching television with ads that sometimes seem to run for ever.
A pop-up done well is a bit sticky and also adds value in exchange for an email address. I have been using SumoMe's “Welcome mat” for the last few months and the results have been astounding.
We have grown our email list by nearly 30,000 just with the Welcome mat!
If you want to learn more join us this Tuesday for a Webinar at 6pm EST and we will reveal some other great tips and tactics how we did this.
Traffic is good but converting into leads and then sales needs great landing pages.
We have been using Leadpages for well over a year now and it is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to build landing pages for webinars, sales funnels and for selling products.
It has transformed our business.
This is the Leadpages landing page we created and where we send visitors from Twitter. These are sent every 4-5 hours into the Twitter stream.
This is how the visual tweet looks.
This tactic and the landing page is alone adding 400+ new subscribers a month.
Below is the landing page.
Trying to find the right partners to collaborate with is becoming a big part of a digital marketer's tool kit.
You can find them the hard way or you can be smart and use some cool tools to identify influencers and bloggers. These are also great for finding content that is trending or viral.
These tactics are now a key part of hijacking engaged traffic.
Want to see what top stories are trending and which influencers and writers are the sources of that? Then Spike NewsWhip is essential for any PR professional, journalist and content creator..
Want to know what content and who the top influencers are in your industry or niche? Then BuzzSumo is a great tool for identifying bloggers, influencers, companies, journalists that are creating content that is resonating around the web.
It also helps you find the top performing content with its content research feature. You can then use this to use as inspiration for creating content that maybe can go viral.
So what are you doing to attract the eyeballs and ears that you need to succeed in a digital world? How do you break through the clutter, get attention and get traffic that sticks?
What's working for you?
Look forward to hearing your stories and comments below.
Join us for a webinar on June 28 at 6pm EST time to discover the key tips and tactics to grow your email list fast.
The post 11 Awesome Tactics and Tools to Grow Traffic That Sticks appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What's New This Week YouTube Brings Live Streaming to Mobile: YouTube will be “bringing the power of live video to creators everywhere” [...]
This post YouTube Adds Live Video to Mobile App: This Week in Social Media first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
There's nowhere quite like a county fair. In small towns across America, they're usually the highlight of the summer. But county fairs aren't just for rural farmers - and they've got a lot more to offer than petting zoos and pie eating contests.
County fairs and state fairs are also crucial opportunities with which to extend your brand reach and connect with a diverse range of would-be customers.
Some business owners are understandably wary of getting involved in the fair circuit. After all, accounting apps might not feel like an easy sell when you're competing with a glitzy Ferris wheel for attention. But the truth is, there's a spot at the fair for businesses of all shapes and sizes - you've just got to play to your strengths.
To help get you started, we've rounded up a few top tips that will enable you to make the most of your annual fair.
One of the most common and cost-effective sponsorship opportunities will be to enlist as a web sponsor. This will typically earn you a logo or brand mention on the fair's website, which will enhance your SEO and hopefully increase your own site's traffic.
They say 'print is dead'. Yet the fair is one of few places on the planet in which a print advertisement may still generate a bit of business. Event programs are widely circulated and read at these sort of events, and so an affordable advertisement is usually a pretty safe bet.
Bigger county fairs are always on the hunt for financial aid - and so just about everything is up for sponsorship. Parking barrels, tractors, picnic tables and horse rings all provide great banner space at affordable prices.
Every successful business needs a good, old-fashioned street team. The county fair is a perfect opportunity to put that team to the test. If you've got promotional materials or fliers, get down to the fairgrounds and make sure they're getting in the right hands. But don't just people fliers in silence. Engage with people, work the crowd and give sparingly.
We all love fairs for the cotton candy and petting zoos. But at the end of each day when the sun goes down, everything revolves around one big show. Some nights it's a Cornhole tournament, other nights it's a demolition derby or a big concert. Either way, each and every event is a brilliant opportunity to get your company name up in lights. Bearing that in mind, you should definitely contact your local fair organizers and ask about event sponsorship opportunities.
If money is no object, go all out and turn your company name into an event in and of itself. Plenty of fairs offer event sponsorship deals that will ensure your brand name is tagged onto a big event. You'll appear on tickets, programs, websites and social media. Although these sort of sponsorship deals may seem quite dear, they're actually pretty cost effective.
Getting a bid of publicity at your local fair isn't all about bright lights and tomfoolery. If your budget is fairly non-existent, you can even earn yourself a bit of brand recognition by simply donating free goods or services to the fair's silent auction. In fact, that's the easiest way to win customers over one at a time.
If your business does have goods or services that can be aptly demonstrated, sold or advertised at a booth, then you should get on board. Food businesses, this is a great time to reach a huge audience. You don't have to offer your whole kit and caboodle, though. Maybe a food stand that offered a limited range of your offerings. It's a great way to get your name and great products out to the masses.
Contact organizers about booking a table or booth for peak days across the week, get a few staff members together and show revelers what your business has to offer.
County fairs are typically places where rural tradition rings true. All of the bunting, balloons and loud banners might seem overly stereotypical. But at the fair, it's all part of the fun. Place your products in bushel baskets filled with hay, go crazy on the gingham and incorporate plenty of interactive games.
What's the point of spending ages decorating a booth if the people standing behind it don't look the part, too? You and your staff have got to embrace the atmosphere and dress accordingly. If your booth has got a theme, run with it. Otherwise, simply capitalize on your typical fair thoroughfare.
If your business has products to sell, it's always with letting customers try them out first-hand. By incorporating a few free samples as loss leaders, you'll be able to rope in potential leads, establish brand loyalty and become a very popular vendor.
If you've got something to sell, rope visitors in with a ring toss – offering product discounts as a prize. This will help to replicate the fair's carnival atmosphere on a smaller scale and ensure that your booth stands out from the crowd.
More practically, you should be sure to get yourself a reliable portable card reader. After all, county fairs might be all about tradition, but the tradition of carrying cash is in rapid decay. Likewise, you've also got to have all of the resources you might need right there on hand. Don't forget price lists, product specifications or any necessary replenishments.
First and foremost, let your current and established customer base know you'll be going to the fair. A few friendly faces and known customers popping by your stall could generate a bit more buzz – so you should get on social media, update your followers and create an event that they can bookmark. If you've got a regular company newsletter, draft up a new HTML and send out one or two reminders that you'll be appearing at the fair or sponsoring an event.
There's no point sponsoring an event or spending hours setting up a booth if you aren't going to engage with potential consumers. It's great if you can rope revelers in with a fair game of your own design, but it also helps to have an identifiable team member working the crowd near your booth. Be friendly, get people chatting and use intrigue and entertainment in order to peak their curiosity and lure them over. Be fun and be outrageous; after all, people have come to the fair to have a good time.
Once you've caught their interest, it always helps to cater to impulse. That means you should be stocking your booth with a couple of low-priced and easy-to-carry items. Two-for-one offers perform particularly well at fairs.
Meanwhile, a sign-up sheet is also a brilliant way to get the most out of your county fair presence. Families passing by will usually be clinging onto quite a few things already – meaning your business cards and cumbersome fliers will probably end up getting tossed in the bin twenty feet away. Instead, simply ask people if they'd like to join your mailing list.
Sometimes it can be difficult to try and coax personal contact details out of potential consumers. That's why it always pays to try and sweeten the deal a little bit by offering up a special incentive. Offer an exclusive deal or a one-off discount in exchange for signing up. Your conversion rates will skyrocket.
Once you've made contact with potential leads at the fair, be sure to follow up with unique and engaging content. If you've registered a few dozen new customers for a mailing list, create a follow-up letter devoted specifically to your new customers, what was discussed at the fair and items that might appeal to them in particular.
County and state fairs are all about getting together, celebrating the great weather and admiring all of the hard work that your community has been putting in to their respective trades. It doesn't matter what industry you're in or what county you're based in – there are going to be members of your community that will want to check out your business and see what you've been getting up to.
Once you've finished up pushing your wares, it's always worth getting involved, too. Grab some cotton candy, enjoy the live music and toast a drink to a job well done. After all, the fair only pops up once a year.
Ticket Booth, Candy Apples, Swine, Fair Ride Photos via Shutterstock
This article, "20 Steps to Promote Your Business at County Fairs and State Fairs" was first published on Small Business Trends
Mobile technology is changing the way people shop. And that doesn't mean that people are just using mobile payments or completing purchases from their phones. Consumers also use their mobile devices to find physical retail locations where they can make purchases. And a new Facebook advertising feature aims to help businesses better target those mobile customers and even track the success of those campaigns.
Facebook's local awareness ads essentially allow businesses to target the customers closest to them. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) users can see a map of a business's locations. So even if your business has several different locations, you can target customers using the specific location that is closest to them or allow them to select the location they want. Then you can provide them with relevant calls to action like the ability to call or get directions.
Those location awareness tools can certainly be helpful in targeting relevant customers, especially if you don't have a mobile friendly store locator on your website or if your customers are more inclined to just stay on Facebook for that type of information. But how do you actually measure the results of such a feature? That's been an issue not just for Facebook, but also for many different online platforms that offer marketing initiatives for local businesses looking to increase in-store sales.
That specific problem is what Facebook is looking to solve with this latest update. The platform just added store visits as a new metric within the Ads Reporting tool. So businesses that run local awareness ads can now access data about how many people come to your store after seeing a Facebook campaign. The metric is based on data from people who have location services enabled on their phones. So it's not necessarily exact. But it can still offer advertisers a general idea of how mobile ads can impact local foot traffic.
This feature also gives you the opportunity to create different ads for people based on whether or not they've already visited your store so that you can better tailor your message to different types of consumers. Then you can even compare your results across different stores or regions if you have multiple locations.
Beyond that, you can also connect your business's in-store or phone transactions to your Facebook ad campaigns using the Online Conversions API. This can help you measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns in terms of real dollars. You can also access some demographic insights about customers to better optimize future campaigns.
To activate this feature, you can work with Facebook's partners such as IBM, Index, Marketo, Square and more to match transaction data from your point-of-sale system to Facebook's Ads Reporting. You can also set this up with Facebook directly.
Overall, these new advertising features aim to make mobile advertising actually make sense for local businesses. Instead of just investing in those ads and hoping to see some general increase in sales over time, you have a way to actually measure the effectiveness and access the insights that can help you make future mobile ad campaigns even more effective. The systems may not offer the full picture of in-store visits and purchases. But it seems to be a step in the right direction for local businesses.
Image: Facebook
This article, "New Facebook Ads Promote, Measure In-Store Visits, Purchases" was first published on Small Business Trends
So you want to create awesome images, the kind of images that you see on your favorite Instagram accounts.
You know, the ones that leave you in awe and get hundreds and thousands of likes.
How do they capture those colors? How do they create that beautiful typography? What software do they use? And how long does it take to create such an image? What's the process?
If this is what you're thinking when scrolling through your Instagram feed, then keep reading to learn how awesome images are born on Instagram and how you too can create gorgeous quote images with a few basic Instagram apps.
Here is a series of steps and Instagram apps that will prettify your photos in terms of lighting, color, symmetry and perspective. And a few more to help you create unique quotes with cool design and typography.
You can either use your phone's native camera app or VSCO. This is a powerful all-in-one app that lets you take the shot and make all kinds of DSLR-like adjustments, from lighting, color, straightening, to filters and manual focus.
You can use its basic functions to simply set your focus point and shoot, or use more advanced manual settings to adjust the ISO, shutter speed, white balance and manual focus, which gives you more creative control.
You can either edit the shot with VSCO or use Snapseed (Android & iPhone). The latter is a far better editing tool that covers most of your editing needs, including colors, contrast, highlights grain and mid tones.
The advanced features include Histogram, selecting editing points (you can get really creative with these settings), HDR and more.
You can also use Snapseed to remove unwanted objects that may appear in the photo – birds, marks, branches, etc. anything that you don't want in the frame.
Another cool app for adding textures, frames & filters is Afterlight. You can get some incredible effects by adding unique frames, filters, textures and light leaks, cropping presets and more. Afterlight also has editing features, so it comes down to your own preference for which Instagram app you use for editing.
Another powerful editing app is SKRWT. It's especially useful for perspective corrections and adjusting distorted lines due to the wide angles lens.
This is where mixing different apps to achieve a cool design gets interesting. Regardless the niche you're in, adding a few quote images to your Instagram feed always seem to work like magic. People love quotes, they're shareable and they're very easy to create.
Here are some simple apps to help you create great looking quote images without need using to use complicated design software. You can use these tools even if you have no experience with graphic design. And you can put on your own watermark, as well.
Typorama is the first one. It's for the iPhone but I'll show you a similar app that works for Android, as well. First, you select a background from their huge gallery. Load the image into the app and double tap to add your text.
Ideally you should prepare your content in a notepad file or Evernote, so it's easy to pull out. You can choose what fonts you want and you can keep tapping on the text until you find the variation you like best.
Once you're done, save the image to the gallery on your phone. You don't want to share the image just yet, there are a few more tweaks you can do.
The next app will let you add the name of the author who's quote you just used. You can do that with Typorama as well, but Wordswag gives you an extra kick. This app lets you take any type of text (e.g. tip, quote, question, etc.) and put it over one of their cool templates to create a great looking quote image.
You also have the option to use images from your own gallery and just use their typography. Whatever suits you best.
So for example, you can take the image you just created in Typorama and open it in Wordswag to credit the author using a different font. Click “Done” and next you can use Wordswag to add a logo or watermark to your images. Put your branding in the quote and you're done.
For Android users there's Phonto (instead of Typorama). Simply take your text and paste it in the app (choose from loads of fonts). Then, go back to Wordswag and add your logo or watermark.
The last step is finding an app that allows you to streamline the whole process. There's an app you can use to schedule your posts, called Later (formerly known as Latergramme).
The reason you need this is because Instagram only allows you to post from your phone. Later lets you schedule everything in advance, and you can install the app on your device. Make sure to choose the correct time zone when you sign up.
Once you select the images you want to share, add the tags, the caption and you're done. You will get a popup on your phone from the app and just press “Post”.
You can start with a free account but if you want to take full advantage of the app, you should upgrade to their paid plans (starting from $19).
Another very powerful tool for managing your audience is Crowdfire. It lets you unfollow non-followers, add your competitors' followers and more.
Image Source: I Am Wire
Hopefully you can see the huge help you can get from using these Instagram apps and creating a system for your Instagram marketing activities. The more you experiment with each of them, the easier it will be to get things done faster and eventually delegate the content creation process to someone in your team.
Once your steps are set in place, you can outsource the implementation procedure so you can focus on growth strategies for your business.
Guest Author: Sarah Williams is a Berlin based entrepreneur and lifestyle blogger. On Wingman Magazine, her website targeting modern men, she helps them to evolve to their higher potential, boost careers and flourish their social interactions.
The post 9 Amazing Instagram Apps To Generate Buzz For Your Business appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
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