Posts

7 Reasons to Outsource Your Social Media Marketing

    1. Social media people know what they’re doing! An outside agency is (supposed to be) staffed with people who are experts in their fields and have degrees as well as outside experience in social media management. They will find quality content to post across your social media platforms and be able to engage with your followers. If you contrast this with just having a member of your staff manage your social media, the difference is palpable. Not only will your employee be juggling the added social media responsibilities with his existing job, but he likely doesn’t have a very good idea of the job he’s supposed to be doing. Your existing employees are not experts and their work will reflect that.
    2. Hiring an outside agency is often very cost effective. If you were to hire a social media manager onto your staff, you will have to prepare yourself to pay them about $50,400 a year according to PayScale. Now for a little more math. Everyone knows that taking on a new employee comes with more costs than just their annual salary. We used the Real Employee Cost Calculator to estimate how much an employee paid at $24/hour for an annual salary of $50,400 would actually cost a company. The calculator factors in the employee’s insurance, annual bonus, payroll taxes and various infrastructure costs. For our example, it calculates the real cost of your new social media manager to be closer to $100,000. Hiring a consultant at the same hourly rate costs about 60% of  that.
    3. Less mistakes are made. Mistakes are more likely to happen with both other options we have mentioned (giving social media responsibilities to an existing employee or hiring someone new onto your staff). Why? Outside agencies have a series of checks and balances that EVERY SINGLE ONE of your posts goes through. At least two sets of eyeballs should be checking every post for accuracy, grammar, spelling, and common sense. Can your brand afford any mistakes?
    4. Social media matters. At this point you may be thinking: “Why do I have to pick any of these options? I don’t think I even need social media.” In almost every case, you would be wrong. The cost of ignoring social media is tangible. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, nearly 70% of American adults use social networking sites. Additionally, many reports have found that around 74% of consumers rely on social media to influence their purchasing decisions. Social media is not going away, and businesses that do not embrace its power will likely fall to the wayside.
    5. Your social media presence will stay active. While daily social media updates may become low on the priority list for an existing employee (or even a social media manager if they have a lot of other things going on), it will never be neglected by an outside agency whose sole job is up keeping up on it. Daily updates will let your customers know that your business is active and keep them up to date on real time happenings like promotions or events.
    6. Posts will consistently go out at optimal times. Things can get hectic in an office and social media posting can be pushed to the back burner. But an agency will schedule and plan around optimal social media posting times so that they can engage with your followers during the best times!
    7. Analytics reports allow agencies to adapt. Most (good) agencies will track analytics across your social media platforms and constantly adjust and rework your social media strategy so that it is as effective as possible. This type of calculated planning means that resources are used on strategies that work. Rather than hoping a certain strategy will pay off, agencies track success of campaigns and use analytics to gauge whether a campaign is successful, saving time and money.

In short—outsourcing your social media can benefit your budget and your customers. Keeping a strong online presence is key, and social media managers will ensure that your brand and your voice are portrayed in meaningful ways. And before you go Google “best social media managers,” save your time and check us out! Here at Buzzly Media we specialize in analytics-driven social media strategies and we would love to create a customized one for your business.

 

/by

What Can Social Media Do for my B2B Company?

Leaving a comprehensive social media strategy out of your marketing efforts is a big mistake for B2B businesses. In today’s digital world, the sales process is shifting online for the majority of industries, with one study finding that “most customers are 57 percent through the buying process before the first meeting with a company representative.” The same study found also found that “61 percent of all B2B transactions now start online. And 58 percent use social media as a research channel.”

Consumers across all industries are becoming less responsive to cold-outreach and more independent in their research on companies they might do business with, and products they might purchase. Social media channels like LinkedIn and Facebook, and social media service providers like Buzzly Media offer B2B companies many valuable ways to reach customers online.salesperson shaking hand

Social media virtually eliminates the learning curve and gives your customers an almost immediate idea about your brand and your brand’s values before they even make contact with a sales person. This is valuable in the sales cycle because customers who have some interest in your brand (but not enough to convert) may be searching for your company online to learn more before they commit. Social media will offer them softer, more relatable content to ease them into your company culture and let know what to expect when they do decide to reach out.

Social media is one of the best tools available to strengthen your brand’s status as a thought leader in your industry. By connecting with influencers, posting timely industry news updates and weighing in on relevant issues, your brand’s credibility will rise dramatically over time. Brand-building, however, is just one element of a social media campaign and should reflect that customers like to see educational content that is more informational than it is brand / sales-centric.This builds trust and will help them remember your company when they are ready to make a purchase.

You would also be strongly advised to consider social media marketing if you are trying to drive valuable traffic to your website and landing pages. Buzzly Media clients have had great success in generating leads through the careful development of laser-focused landing pages. It’s a great way for someone to engage with your brand without committing much time. The easier you make it for people to hop in your sales funnel, the more leads you’ll have overall.

customer doing online searchSocial media will also help your website’s ranking by increasing the number of sites linking in, otherwise known as “backlinks.” These tell search engines that your website must have valuable information on it if others are spending time putting your links in their content, and it’s great for boosting search engine optimization. Remember, “94 percent of business buyers do some form of online research” when looking over their options.

And finally, the best part of social media is that it’s social! Having digital presences for your brand and its executives will allow you to connect with valuable industry contacts and start building relationships online. We know that “more than 90 percent of decision makers never respond to cold outreach.” A great way to move right past the cold outreach part of the sales cycle is to network online and give your potential customers a face to your brand. This will make you and your company seem more familiar when the time comes to sell.

The most important thing about establishing a digital presence for your brand is having the right information available to people at the right time. You never know how or when customers are searching. If it’s on Google (which is quite likely), then you want to make sure you are ranking high for generic industry keywords and have the social media profiles to back it up. If it’s late at night (or in a different timezone) when a potential customer can’t make contact with a human salesperson, you want them to get that same personalized experience through your social media.

A comprehensive social media strategy is the way to take your B2B business to the next level in today’s digital world. When you decide it’s time for a thoughtful and effective dive into social media marketing, let the fabulous people at Buzzly Media know! We’re always ready to help and will respond to your request with surprising speed.

Already have a social media presence and want help to improve it? Sign up for a free audit with Buzzly Media on our site and our experts will deliver their recommendations. 

/by

Are your Social Media Efforts Paying Off?

One of the most common questions we receive about social media marketing is, “How can I tell if it’s working?” It can be hard to measure the success of social media because it can be a challenge to track goals like brand awareness and credibility. We offer our clients complimentary analytics reports every month to show them exactly what their social media efforts are accomplishing for them and how they can quantify the return on their investment–but if you don’t have an awesome team like ours measuring your success, how can you be sure you’re doing the right thing? 

There are several things you should take into account when doing an audit of your social media marketing efforts. They will, of course, depend on your goals as a business, but there are many standards that apply across industries.

The first thing you should think about: is my audience hearing from me frequently and consistently? This is an important thing to take into consideration whether you are trying to establish yourself as a thought leader in a certain field or attract customers to your diner. If people are following you on social media it’s because they want to hear from you. Providing regular updates is a big part of keeping your following happy and informed.

The next thing to check out is your branding across platforms. We see brands having major troubles with consistent branding. If you are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, your users should be able to identify you by a username pretty close to your business name and a logo that looks the same (but hopefully cropped and resized according to different platform requirements) across all your accounts. This helps users quickly identify that they are looking at the correct person/business/organization and cannot be understated in importance.

Another aspect of social media posting that we focus on is post appearance. All social media is visually-driven and there really isn’t room for silly mistakes like bad formatting and incorrect grammar. Formatting posts across platforms is not something that comes naturally to anyone–it’s a matter of knowing the intricacies of each platform and tailoring the posts to look as visually appealing as possible. Contact us if you need formatting help, we have a beginner’s guide that will show you everything you need to know!

The last element we’ll cover in this blog is engagement. Many people think that as long as they reply to comments and messages on social media then they are doing their part in engaging with their audience. But really, engagement encompasses a lot more than that.

The power of social media is its social aspect. Just posting to your profile is usually not enough to spark high levels of interaction with your customers, and for good reason! People like profiles they follow to chime in on conversations they care about, not just promote themselves all day long. This means joining in on relevant Facebook groups, Twitter chats, LinkedIn groups, trending Instagram hashtags, etc etc. If you aren’t interacting on social media then it’s unlikely that people will be interacting with you!

Sometimes it can be hard to step back and critically evaluate what you should change about your social media marketing efforts. That’s where we come in! Sign up here for a FREE, full social media audit so that our team of professionals can give you some expert insight into what’s working and what isn’t.

/by

5 Insider Questions to Ask Your Social Media Agency

Wondering if the social media agency you’re considering hiring (or have hired…) can be trusted with your brand? Obviously you need to grill them on why they are qualified, how often you can expect them to be posting, etc etc. However, if you feel like you’re missing something, check out our insider questions that you definitely need to be asking.

  1. Do your employees actually write the social media postings and blog content? One of the biggest loopholes in the industry is for an agency to hire someone cheaper to write content for them. They will then resell this content to you, the client, at a higher price. This practice is called whitelabeling and if you are considering hiring an agency that does it you need to really scrutinize if the rest of the package is good enough to make up for the fact that the content you are getting is produced by someone working for a lot less money than you are paying.
  2. Do you track analytics? A company that is posting across social media platforms but not analyzing the success of each and every post is only doing half its job. Each and every post needs to be under a microscope so that the strategy can be tailored to what is working. You should expect quarterly (if not monthly, as provided by Buzzly Media) analytics reports detailing the success of the agency’s efforts.
  3. Are you using scheduling tools to schedule out all the content posted? If so, how far out do you schedule? While scheduling posts is not necessarily terrible, it does have a couple downfalls. First, if an agency is scheduling weeks and months of content out in advance, that means they cannot be using analytics on previous posts to improve each one that comes after. The furthest out day to day posts should be scheduled is about a week. You want your agency to be constantly adapting and reanalyzing their strategies online. Additionally, we have pretty good evidence to indicate that scheduling on certain platforms (we’re looking at you, Twitter) is punished by the platform itself. Of course, social media platforms prefer unique, off the cuff content. They know that’s not what they’re getting when content is scheduled. While it’s fine to have a separate bank of approved content ready to go, it’s advisable to have a real live human post it at the time you want it to go out. Another advantage to this is that a real live person can be watching various platforms for things that are “trending,” and can post something relevant on your profiles that may surge if it’s in line with what’s going on at that moment.
  4. Is this your full time job? Okay, okay, a little personal. But important. You want the agency you hire to be at the ready at all times to post fresh content, respond to people who comment on things, and monitor what’s going on. If you’re hiring an agency with a bunch of part-time staffers, things can get lost in the shuffle and you know they’ll be leaning heavily on things like scheduling content way out in advance. This is a question closely tied to the amount of work each employee is responsible for. No one person should be managing more than five clients at a time. It just won’t be good, believe us.
  5. Where do you get the images/graphics you will be posting on our profiles? If you want to post something about dogs and just google “dogs” you will get an abundance of adorable pictures. But you can’t just download the first one you find most adorable because copyrights exist! Even if a picture is on the internet, it can still be protected under copyright, and you can get in huge trouble for using someone else’s picture to promote your brand. Agencies should have a few solid sites or resources at their disposal for quality photos and should ideally be creating their own graphics. (Our favorite source for license free photos is Unsplash!)

Not getting the answers you want from any of the agencies you’re thinking of hiring? Buzzly Media is a social media marketing agency with an expertise in nonprofit branding. Drop us an email; we’ll respond with surprising speed.

/by