29 Jul

5 Ways to Increase Your Reach Over Google+ Without Paying

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 29.07.16 by John Meloche

To conclude social commerce week, we’re going to talk about a social media outlet that most people neglect. While Google+ isn’t exactly as well known as the previous 3 mediums that we’ve covered, it still boasts a large audience and contains many perks. According to DMR stats, Google+ has 300 million monthly active users. So there’s definitely a significant audience present and its connections with Google itself open up many SEO opportunities. Here are 5 ways you can increase your reach over Google+:

  1. Add People to Your Circle. The first step of developing a network is actually getting people to join your network. Adding a lot of people to your network also offers SEO benefits as well.
  2. Optimize your Posts. Speaking of SEO opportunities, a larger circle means you have higher chances of being recognized over Google searches. One of the greatest things about Google+ is the ability to come up on the first page of Google searches. How it works is that if someone from your circle searches something up on Google, and you’ve already written about it on your Google+ profile, then it will show up on the first page of their search. So if you add a lot of people to your circle, and post regularly about things people in your circle might look up, then your SEO will go through the roof!
  3. Create or Join Communities. Communities are like Google+’s version of Facebook groups. This allows you to optimize both the reach and selectivity of your social media efforts. You can join or create a group that features other people or businesses within your industry or potential clientele. It’s a great way to increase the effectiveness of your posts while at the same time developing relationships with potential fans or allies over social media.
  4. Let Others Know how you Feel. Go out and find posts relevant to your company’s niche and industry. Share your positive opinions. Not only does this make people more interested in your business, but it makes your business come off as an actual person with actual interests. People respect that, especially over social media where identities become one huge enigma.
  5. +1 Posts. +1’s are like the Google+ version of likes. Now this tactic stays consistent over all social media platforms. People appreciate it when you like their stuff. It makes them feel better about their content and makes them more generous. This newfound generosity often leads to a follow back or in Google+, another person in your circle. Not only that but a +1 gives people clarity on your interactions. They want to know that your going to interact with them, +1’s help clear that dilemma up.

 

Well it’s clear, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or even Google+, social media sets businesses up with great opportunities for success. They exponentially increase your reach, help reach new clientele, and expand your user base. Social media is becoming the advertising tool of the future and for good reason. So make sure your business starts operating across all these mediums and follow these rules. Once that happens, then the followers, likes, and customers will all come together.

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27 Jul

5 Ways to Gain Twitter Followers Without Paying

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media, Synergy Suggestions on 27.07.16 by John Meloche

Going along with our social commerce theme, we are now looking at another huge social media outlet: Twitter. Twitter is extremely popular and is still growing in size. According to DMR stats, 310 million people use Twitter and 100 million people are active daily users. What does that mean? Well just like Facebook, there’s a large crowd of people you don’t want to miss out on. Even with the enormous audience, businesses still struggle to expand their reach and connect with potential clientele. So today we’re looking at 5 free things you can do to increase your Twitter following:

  1. Post a lot. This is consistent across all social media outlets. You have to actively post in order to catch and keep the attention of new fans. Just make sure you’re actually posting consistent quality material.
  2. Connect with Similar Accounts.  Go out and explore Twitter and search for similar accounts like yours. Or even search for people who are interested in your industry’s work. Retweet, favorite, or comment on posts relevant to your company and start conversations. Not only is this a great way to bring people to your account, but it’s ideal for starting new relationships with fans over social media.
  3. Follow more people. This could be the simplest thing you can do. People take notice to new followers and occasionally you’ll get a follow back.
  4. Make Sure your Bio is good. Your bio is often the first thing a customer will see when they see your Twitter page. Not only that but it’s the first piece of info they will receive about your company. That little blurb of text is your businesses’ first impression. First impressions definitely matter, so make sure your bio is professional, informative, and intriguing. Don’t go on about your business; people don’t want to read a long paragraph and there’s a limit to your text.  Include all the info you believe is necessary for the twitter user to know. Again, I want to emphasize that a short bio is more effective; people have a short attention span and that attention span is even shorter on social media.
  5. Control your Hashtags. Although Twitter is the origin of hashtags, it’s not the most hashtag-friendly social media medium. It’s been proven that tweets with hashtags are more effective in terms of reach. however, too many can reverse that effect. How many is too many? Well according to Buddy Media, a tweet with one or two hashtags has 21% higher engagement than tweets with three or more hashtags. Not only this. but tweets with three or more hashtags have actually shown a 17% drop in engagement. It’s actually crazy to think that an additional hashtag can cost the reach of thousands of people. So your ideal tweet should contain one or two hashtags in order to optimize the reach on your posts.

 

While there is a lot of meticulous details with tweeting, it can open so many doors for your business. According to Jayson DeMers from Forbes, 36% of marketers say they have gained a customer by using Twitter. There is so much potential in social media and Twitter is just one of many social commerce opportunities for an expanded clientele base. So get on Twitter, follow these steps, and see your followers number and user base increase.

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26 Jul

5 Ways To Increase Your Facebook Reach Without Paying

Posted in Social Media, Synergy Suggestions on 26.07.16 by John Meloche

This week we are dedicating our blog to social commerce. We are finding ways to improve your presence across all the major social media mediums. First we are starting with one of the most famed and biggest social media outlets: Facebook. Right now more than 1 billion people are on Facebook. It is one of the most popular mediums, if not the most popular. With the immense audience present, you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your posts. So here are 5 ways to help you increase the reach on your Facebook posts.

  1. Create a lot of Content. This just makes sense. You have to post a lot to actually get people’s attention. If you constantly create quality content, then expect the number of likes you have on your page to increase.
  2. Mix it up. Don’t just post pure text all the time. Include some pictures, links, interesting graphics, etc. Posting interesting content coupled with eye catching graphics can be critical for reaching new audiences.
  3. Incite Comments. A great way to get people on board with your Facebook page is to get them involved. Encourage your followers to comment on your posts; ask for their opinions. A great way to achieve this is by starting your posts off with a question to your followers.
  4. Get involved with Other People’s Pages. This is a great way to build social media relationships with fans. People and other pages love it when you notice and share their material. So when you do stuff like that, people appreciate it and are more inclined to return the favor.
  5. Don’t use Hashtags. This might come as a shock to you, but believe it or not hashtags aren’t too effective on Facebook. In fact, they’ve been proven to be the opposite. According to research from EdgeRank Checker, hashtags on Facebook have no positive effects on your posts’ reach. Posts without hashtags have actually been found to have a better reach than those containing hashtags. While hashtags may be ideal for other social media sites, it has not yet found its place on Facebook.

Reaching audiences on Facebook can be difficult but when it comes down to it, it’s all about building relationships with your fans. Showing them love will only lead to them doing the same.

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20 Jul

#Hashtag 2: How Do You Use Hashtags?

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 20.07.16 by John Meloche

Now that we know what hashtags are, and how they work. Our attention now shifts as to how we can use them to optimize our posts’ reach. Let’s look at how we can use hashtags in an effective manner:

  1. Posting Relevant Hashtags. We mentioned before hashtags categorize tweets. They act as a social media organizer. Well when you make a post with an irrelevant hashtag, you’re essentially putting it in the wrong category. All that does is create confusion within the audience you’d like to reach. A disengagement is formed between your posts and your audience, and as a result you harm your reach. Moral of the story is, when your posting something, make sure you use appropriate and relevant hashtags. You’ll create more genuine interest that way and increase your reach.
  2. Not overusing Hashtags. While it may seem like it’s beneficial to use a lot of hashtags, it’s actually been proven to be detrimental to a post’s reach. Too many hashtags can send a poor vibe to your audience. Sometimes when people see an absurd amount of hashtags, they see it as a pathetic or desperate attempt to reach a lot of people. It can reflect poorly on your social media efforts and company.
  3. Use Hashtag tracking tools. There are now websites and apps dedicated to determining the effectiveness of your hashtags. These tools are designed to allow you to pick the most relevant and popular hashtags. They allow you to be more efficient and effective with your hashtags. Some examples of hashtag tracking tools are hashtagify.me, RiteTag, Tagboard, etc.

Hashtags can be extremely effective when used properly. There a couple of blatantly obvious things that you should avoid when using hashtags. However, with all the advanced social media tools present today, #hashtag optimization has become more realistic and easy to achieve.

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18 Jul

Why Do #hashtags Matter To Your Business?

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 18.07.16 by John Meloche

One of the most amazing things about social media is that you have the ability to reach millions simply by typing one word. Of course that word would have to proceed a pound sign, or hashtag. But how do hashtags allow you to reach these people? Let’s take a look at how hashtags can amplify your posts’ reach.

Hashtags start by making your posts more searchable and easier to find. When you enter a hashtag on your posts you’re essentially opening up your post to a variety of people. Hashtags are used to categorize tweets and let people see all the tweets pertaining to a particular category. Usually you’ll cover a major topic relevant to your post. Ideally you’ll use a hashtag that’s covering something that’s trending and thus will open your posts to an immense audience. When these stories become trendy, people then become more interested and want to know as much as possible. This means that they’ll look at every post that relates to that popular topic and hence will look at all the posts using that trendy hashtag.

Hashtags are even more powerful now as users can now look up hashtags. This allows users to have easier access to posts about new, trendy topics. Before these posts would be revealed after clicking a hashtag from a post, but now it is much easier to deeply explore prominent topics.

Hashtags are a very powerful tool; they can help open doors to millions of people. When used properly, they can be your best friend. So keep the #hashtags rolling, and amp up your social media presence.

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15 Jul

5 Ways To Strengthen Your Social Media Presence

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media, Synergy Suggestions on 15.07.16 by John Meloche

Did you know that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter serve as the 2nd, 3rd, and 8th most visited websites respectively? There’s such an immense audience present on social media, but still businesses struggle to direct traffic to their social media pages. Well, fear no more, cause here are 5 ways to strengthen your company’s social media presence.

  1. Constantly Post. This is kind of obvious. People don’t want to follow a plain and boring account. They want to see a consistent stream of interesting content. At least a post a day is good, but if you can post more then that would be ideal.
  2. Change it up. It’s good to post consistently but make sure you’re changing the material. People don’t want to see the exact same post every day. The whole point is you want to keep people interested, steady similar posts doesn’t really achieve that.
  3. Make the Content Relevant. You have to make sure the stuff you post actually relates to your business somehow. Ideally you want to explore different routes that help reveal your businesses’ niche in an interesting way. Also when you post, you want to portray a realistic image of your company. You have to realize that your Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram account, etc., are all your virtual representatives. You need to post stuff that your business would otherwise be interested in. You have to conduct yourself in a professional matter over social media in order to maintain a beneficial/good image of your company. People look to social media for pretty much anything, you don’t want them to develop a poor image of your company because of some irrelevant posts; that’s a large market you don’t want to miss out on.
  4. Like Random People’s content. Believe it or not this is a pretty effective strategy. There’s no better way to appear on social media, then on someone’s notification page. People are obsessed with getting likes, some would even go as far to buy likes for their posts. When you like a person’s post, they notice it, and some would even get so happy that they’d maybe even follow you back. Neil Patel, from Quicksprout, used this strategy and found that for every 100 likes he made on random people’s photos, he got 6.1 followers.
  5. Take Advantage of Hashtags. Hashtags have made many marketer’s dreams come true. With a simple hashtag, you can reach millions. However, there is a caveat to hashtags. It’s extremely easy to misuse hashtags. It’s important to stress quality over quantity for hashtags. Make sure your hashtags are actually relevant to your company and posts. Irrelevant hashtags can easily confuse your audience and throw them off your posts. For example, #followforfollow probably isn’t the right thing to say when you’re posting about a big sale.

Social media can open so many doors for your business, but it’s all about using it the right way. Your posts need to be relevant and interesting, otherwise you can say #goodbye to new followers.

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29 Jun

The Business Landscape Of 2016

Posted in Small Business Advertising on 29.06.16 by John Meloche

A few blogs ago, we talked about the modern business world today vis a vis social commerce. This is just one of the many hot trends present in today’s marketplace. So let’s look at some other notable trends in today’s business landscape.

  • Skewed Demographics. Baby boomers have always dominated the marketplace, however with their increased age their market force is declining. That being said these boomers are still outnumbering their youth counterparts, providing a skewed age pyramid. This still leaves a debate for how impactful the baby boomer demographic will be. A cohort of their size will surely remain prominent even after their departure from the marketplace. The Baby Boomer cohort will certainly provide more opportunities for elderly care, pharmaceuticals, etc.
  • Social Commerce. We touched on this before, but it’s so important that we have to bring it up again. Social media is a hub for mass communication. In today’s world, it would be much easier to reach a teenager over social media than anything else. In addition to offering maximum reach, numerous social media platforms provide specialized advertising programs that essentially allow you to advertise to exactly the person you want to target. It’s actually amazing how effective this advertising may be and it will only continue to impress.
  • Diversified Advertising. When you mention social commerce, it’s hard to neglect the effectiveness of online advertising. This in turn may create questions surrounding our traditional advertising platforms such as the television. We’ve relied on TV commercials for ever. However there is a change occurring and the TV may not be a part of it. With the rise of streaming media platforms such as Netflix, Crave, Shomi, etc., there’s no doubt TV ratings have taken a fall. A piece by Mike Vago from avclub.com discusses how even the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau has admitted that the audience for live TV is dropping at a rate of roughly 10% per year. Television ads are used for mass advertising, however with a dwindling audience, it may be ideal to start looking for new advertising mediums.

The business world of 2016 is dynamic; trends are starting and ending every day. However these trends are here to stay. This market is not synonymous with ones we’ve seen 30,20, or even 10 years ago. So if you want to succeed today, you may need to abandon traditional business proceedings and lose that old school mindset.

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27 Jun

What Social Commerce Means For Your Business

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 27.06.16 by John Meloche

When thinking about the online component of a business, people typically focus more on E-commerce and online transaction processing. In this process we tend to understate the importance of social media. There is a new subset of E-commerce that’s becoming more and more relevant these days: Social Commerce. Social Commerce can be defined as “a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions. to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.” (Cohen, 2011)

What does social commerce mean for your business? Social media can drastically impact your businesses’ sales and operations. Advanced advertising campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram now allow you to zoom in completely on your target audience, no matter how specific that may be. Not only that, but most social media advertising campaigns (including Facebook and Instagram) charge on a “per click” basis. Meaning that your advertising is truly charged on its effectiveness. This in turn allows you to optimize your spending and permits you to be more efficient with your advertising.

Social Media is a huge forum for businesses to attract potential clientele. Social Commerce is a big trend and is continued to grow. Brian Hughes from Small Business Trends noted that the top 500 retailers earned $3.3 billion from social shopping in 2014, a 26% increase over 2013, and well ahead of the average 16% growth rate for E-commerce. Its clear Social Commerce is an up and coming trend and will continue to grow rapidly so long as social media remains a mecca for communication. So do yourself a favor and make sure your business isn’t a #throwbackthursday and get on social media now!

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07 Apr

Synergy Marketing Reaches 200 Followers On Twitter!

Posted in Social Media on 07.04.16 by John Meloche

Depositphotos_62528675_s-2015Okay, right off the bat, allow us to state that we know that, in the grand scheme of things, 200 followers on Twitter isn’t all that big a deal. But when you consider that Synergy Marketing has been specializing in providing Canadian business owners with top-of-the-line promotional products long before the days when social media were all the rage, it’s a pretty cool milestone for us. It wasn’t long ago that our Twitter account had no followers at all. This week, we’ve reached 200!

What we’re probably the most proud about is the fact that we’ve been building our Twitter following in a tried-and-true old school way. We haven’t used any tricks or gimmicks. Our daily blog posts have helped us to significantly grow the reach of our brand, earn us new customers and grant us much higher website traffic. And, we just so happen to be practicing what we preach, as a number of our past blogs have championed the use of social media to help businesses grow.

Are you on Twitter? If so, we’d be most appreciative if you’d join our list of followers! We promise to stick to our mandate of always following back those who follow us. It only makes sense that we do that as, in order to grow within your industry, you need to know what other members of it are up to. This isn’t just something we’ve learned along the way, it’s advice we’ve taken from experts.

“When building your social media strategy for your business, it helps to learn from what other people in your industry are saying and doing,” writes Donné Torr on Hootsuite.com, “When it comes to your social media marketing plan, there’s no point in re-inventing the wheel. Instead, take advice from businesses that have found success when using social. Whether it’s gaining more followers or increasing customer engagement, businesses around the world are discovering ways to how social media is contributing to success and growth.”

What are the tangible benefits of using social media to promote your business? If you consider the fact that social media provide us with free ways to learn about what other businesses are up to, you’ll realize that being on social media encourages others to learn what you are up to! Not taking advantage of the Twitters and Facebooks of the world is simply irresponsible. Sorry, but it has to be said. These platforms are incredibly popular – and did we mention FREE? – ways of advertising your brand.

Torr highlights the fact that these popular social media platforms also help you to better understand your audience. “All successful businesses have grown to know their audiences very well,” she insists, “The benefit of social media is that, getting to know your audience is now easier than ever…While gaining insight on the demographics of your audience, social also helps you connect on an individual level.”

This is because social media is all about being social. It should be stressed that in order to truly benefit from social media, your posts should be engaging. Twitter, for example, isn’t a medium that is ideal for straight advertising. Instead, it should be your objective to engage others in conversations with your tweets. This is why nearly every one of our tweets is a question. Each is inevitably answered by our blog posts, which are linked to each tweet.

Naturally, this helps to increase traffic to our website and build our brand awareness. Torr notes that this is one of the best aspects of social media. “The best part about social media is that if you have an Internet connection and a computer, anyone can participate,” she says, “Meaning that in terms of monetary investment, you can do a lot with just a little bit of budget. For small businesses getting started in marketing, social media is an easy and affordable option.”

Here’s hoping we’ll reach 300 followers in record time. Follow our Twitter account today! Remember, we’ll follow you back right away!

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04 Sep

How Smart Social Media Use Has Helped Our Brand

Posted in Social Media on 04.09.15 by John Meloche

Social media conceptAdvertising your business on social media isn’t as easy as you may think. This past week, the Synergy Marketing Blog has been focusing on this concept with special attention being paid to unique ways that business owners can engage their audiences. That’s what it’s truly about at the end of the day. Without drumming up conversation and sparking interest in the minds of your friends and followers, social media marketing can’t be successful.

Take it from a company that has experience knowing what it’s like to use social media the wrong way. Well…to be fair to ourselves, we’ve never used social media incorrectly…we just weren’t fully aware of the techniques that make it worthwhile when we first started out. Take our Twitter account, for example. Around the time when we first starting posting blogs, we had links to our blogs immediately posted to our Twitter feed.

But that was it. They were just links. There wasn’t a whole of traction being generated because the tweets weren’t set up to be conversation starters. Today, we include a specific question along with the link to each of our blogs. That way, we purposely engage our followers by getting them to ponder the answer to the question. The blog post is meant to answer the question as well. So each tweet becomes an invite to learn more about a specific topic.

On Curata.com, Neal Schaffer advocates this practice. “The beauty of social media marketing is that it can be used to improve both your public relations as well as content marketing by simply asking for a response,” he informs, “To generate feedback and promote engagement on social media, include a question with the shared content that compels readers to respond. Better yet, create questions for some of your headlines and test the waters.”

But that’s not all. We also learned to include hashtags in our tweets. By adding those famous #hashtag symbols to key words used in our tweets, we have enabled more people to catch on to our conversations. Hashtags essentially help to group your messages into specific categories of conversations so that they are shown alongside similarly-hashtagged tweets. The bottom line is that they help for your posts to get noticed by a lot more people.

As you may have noticed, our blog posts are meant to be as informative as they are interesting. We primarily focus on business marketing-based posts since our company’s specialty is promotional products. Such posts provide value to online readers. This too, is a key method in attracting more attention through social media. On AmericanExpress.com, Christopher Litster points this out as a best practice.

“While including fun posts that reflect your personality is a must, it’s important to create content that benefits your followers,” he tells us, “That can mean posting tips on best practices, providing access to white papers, or offering special deals on products or services.” For the most part, our blogs go heavy on the tips and advice, and we find that they are typically very well-received. In turn, it helps to endear more people to our brand.

The number of our Facebook and Twitter followers continues to rise. And we certainly hope that our blogs have helped you to come up with ways to grow your friends list and increase your followers as well. For any questions regarding ways in which Synergy Marketing can help to advertise your business, give us a call at 1-877-748-9884. After all, we offer the best promotional products in the business!

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