Facebook

What’s the latest on Facebook?

In January of this year, Facebook started the process of removing certain targeting options. Facebook said, “Starting January 19, 2022 we will remove Detailed Targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive… such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation.”

So if you had a really successful Facebook ad campaign in 2021, the same targeting options that made that ad successful may not be available anymore. An example they give is that you won’t be able to target people who have an interest in “Lung cancer awareness” or “World Diabetes Day” anymore. The volume of targeting options being removed is what’s raising alarm to business owners who depend on Facebook ads for sales.

New Call Ads updates announced

Meta has announced some significant updates to their Call Ads, optimising the format to reach more potential customers and find better quality leads. One of the updates will allow customers to request a callback from a business in Messenger. Using it will help businesses show customers that their time is valued and eliminate the frustration of waiting on hold.

Instagram

Everything you need to know about Instagram’s new feature

Instagram has recently rolled out a new feature called “Group Profiles.” This means you can now have one account shared with other users where each group member can post their own unique content that all goes to the same feed and/or story. The content will be seen by your profile’s followers, other member’s followers and the group’s followers. Alternatively, you can also make it private.

What is Instagram’s Group Profile Feature?

Much like its predecessor, Facebook Groups, Instagram’s version allows multiple users to collaborate and share content on a single page. While this puts a fun spin on community-building, it does open up more responsibility for creators (and brands, if they choose) to administer safeguards and rules for the overall group. Just like how Facebook group pages require moderation and set of rules to run the page, Instagram would also require creators to ensure a safe space for interaction through these group profiles. Instagram currently allows users to create group chats, group video and group voice calls. However, for any kind of group interaction, creating a group chat is the first step. To create a group chat on Instagram, go to the Direct Messaging section in your Instagram app. Click on the top left icon and start selecting the members of the group. Name your group and tap on chat. Your Instagram group is created. You can set the message privacy for the group by selecting View Once or Allow replay options.

Get paid in Instagram DMs

Instagram has rolled out new payment options, allowing businesses to accept payment right in their DMs. Customers can pay invoices without switching apps or sites, allowing them a more convenient shopping experience while also granting businesses flexibility in how they do work. This feature is only available to eligible sellers who use a Professional Account on the Instagram mobile app. There aren’t any fees to accept payments in Instagram’s Direct Message chat, and there’s 24/7 access to customer support if needed. The customer’s purchases will be protected, and they can use Meta Pay, credit card, or PayPal.

At Brighter Directions we are always on the look out for new trends in social media, if you like help and support with your social media marketing strategy please contact us at hello@brighterdirections.co.uk and make sure to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter.

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Before the global pandemic, social media was being labelled as an addiction to millennials. The media was filled with ‘social media detox’ tips, telling consumers it is bad for their mental and physical health and is to blame for the depression rates rising. However, in 2020 everything changed for social media (just one of the many ways Covid-19 has affected society). This was the year we all turned back to technology rather than ‘detoxing’ to stay up-to-date with current events, be entertained, and most importantly, keep connected to our friends and family.

During the early days of the pandemic, we utilised social media for the quickest source of information as TV broadcasts and newspapers could not compare with the speed news can spread in the online world. The demand for information on anything to do with Coronavirus was unprecedented to what the media had seen before. Social media not only got the latest news stories out the quickest, but they were also the most accessible.

With the national lockdowns and restrictions altering our lives drastically, we sought entertainment from social media more than ever trying to fill all our newly found spare time. There were booms in fitness trends, recipes, home improvement videos, crafting, dancing, and anything else to escape from the doom and gloom of the pandemic. This not only gave us the feeling of being united but helped reduce the sense of loneliness from being isolated. More people were finding their voice on social media, including a demographic that had not been the main consumer before, the elderly.

Throughout 2020 there was a huge growth in the 70 to 90 demographic on social platforms. All around the world, older generations were signing up and creating accounts to be able to communicate with their friends and family. Likewise, companies and brands that were not based online and some who did not use social media were now being pressured into creating an online presence to compete with those who had already captured their audience.

As our lives completely moved to be through computer screens, we as consumers searched for the feeling of the ‘real world’ online. We want to see real people with real lives to who we want to connect. This has led to the biggest increase in influencer marketing on social media. We seek inspiration for everything through these influencers as we want to feel a part of a community and find the socialisation that we now lack in person.

A reason influencer marketing is becoming more successful is due to the ability of the influencer to communicate with their audience through likes, replying to comments, Instagram lives, Q&A stories, etc. Through these outlets, they can establish and build relationships with their followers.

Brands need to acknowledge the changes 2020 has bought to the social media landscape and ensure they create community management and develop a strategy that incorporates having dialogues with their customers online. They must organise their values and develop a brand personality that their audience can relate to.

As people are not currently able to visit stores and experience customer service, they need to form that relationship elsewhere. By brands showing support for issues around the world that they believe in, it helps to make a positive impact on growing their personality and thus making them more attractive to the consumer. Utilising tools such as Facebook and Instagram lives makes the brand more authentic and personable and not just an online company. The ‘new normal’ for social media means that brands have to learn to embrace this new social aspect of the online community and develop their own personality.

If you are unsure how to increase engagement with your audience, why not start with our three top tips?

1. Create a content plan for your social media to post once or twice a week. Posting consistently is key. Ensure you including captions, graphics, and relevant hashtags in your plan. Then you don’t have to worry about planning a post last minute.
2. Arrange a Q&A session with your audience on your Facebook or Instagram story. Decide on a topic, for example, a new launch or customer service, and ask your audience for questions. Prepare your answers beforehand and post as a story or host a Facebook or Instagram live.
3. Organise a competition or giveaway. This is a great way to increase your followers, your engagement, and appeal to a wider audience. You can either host this as an individual or team up with another brand or influencer.

If you would like to hear more about how to develop your social media and engage your audience, we’d love to help. Contact us via socialmedia@brighterdirections.co.uk to discuss your business.

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Taking action on the information you find is what sets social listening apart from social media monitoring which is all about collecting data, allowing you to look back at what has already happened.  Social listening goes beyond numbers and looks at the mood that your social media posts create and how people feel about your brand and your competitors.

The online mood your company creates is also known as social media sentiment; keeping track of this is an important part of social listening. Social listening allows you to recognise a change in sentiment; you can track in real-time positive or negative responses and react accordingly. Interaction with consumers is great when it ends in positive sentiment however when something goes wrong, social listening can help stop PR disasters escalating by recognising the consumer reaction as soon as it happens.

Your customers share information about what they do and don’t like about your brand each and every day, social listening can help you understand this information and utilise it. Not only will people be speaking about your brand, but they’ll also be speaking about your competitors too. You can analyse the market through the eyes of your customers and help seek out opportunities and threats in the industry. Getting to know how people feel about your brand can help you know what is going right with your marketing and product development strategies.

If you care about your customers and their insights then you should be using social listening as a tool in your marketing strategy. If you feel you aren’t getting enough interaction in general, social listening can help you alter your strategy to gain an increase in your interaction numbers.

If you are looking to implement social listening into your marketing strategy but unsure where to start, Brighter Directions is here to help, call our team today to see how we can help on 01246 586330!

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In marketing, it can be all too easy to discuss and discard some of the ‘softer’ marketing tactics as ‘intangible’. However, in my experience of marketing for the last twenty years, everything is measurable, if you find the right tracker and goal metric!

A superb recent example of the importance of both points (audit and continued impact review) is with one of our clients, a tech company who was spending a significant amount of budget on Google Adwords each month.

After recently taking over their marketing division entirely, we completed a full audit of all their marketing output, including the SEO campaigns. This technical review looked over the previous 12 months campaigns, results, impact and goal conversions as well as comparing campaigns alongside other direct marketing activities and found that some of the campaigns were, in fact, engaging a less profitable audience segment. This ‘update’ reduced the marketing spend from £20k per month to £11k per month.

The success was that the impact (stats/ conversions) did not go down, despite this reduction in spend! In fact the impact increased by +30%– utilising a small segment of the budget on other, more targeted, direct content marketing activities, including social media.

After two weeks, we audited the campaigns again, and assessed against previous campaigns run, but not continued, as well as the intermediate analysis from live campaigns – as a result, we reduced the spend a further 25%, saving a further £3.5k per month!

All in all – this activity saved the company a significant amount of ‘unnecessary’ budget and directed to other, more profitable and impactful marketing activities with some sound intelligence and direction.

One of our true values is the ethos, passion, and dedication we have to our clients – we work on your marketing tactics (and budget management) like it was our own… as true partners and part of your company team.

If you are looking for support across areas such as Content Marketing, PR & Media Relations, Social Media, or generally to assess your Marketing Strategy – give us a call and see if our ethos and customer-centric approach aligns with yours, and how we can help you save money and become more efficient across your marketing!

T: 01246 586330

E: marketing@brighterdirections.co.uk

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The majority of businesses that use Facebook, are not just B2C but a huge proportion are also B2B led, looking for brand awareness and audience engagement as such as consumer led brands.

A lot of businesses that use Facebook simply focus on the metrics, such as the best way to post a link, the most effective post content and the best time to post for higher reach.

We’re not at all saying that these aren’t great and fundamental strategies that you need to use while managing your commercial Facebook in terms of understanding and building your visibility – but, as a company looking to build credibility and position yourselves above the vast competition, you also need to focus on being consistent on why and what you post.
So, in this post, we are going to show you the best tactics and tricks to enable you, whether a consumer or business firm, how to use Facebook to release its full potential:

Cover Images:

Focus on optimizing your Facebook page through your cover photo – this is not only an image displayed but the first impression people will get of your page!

Facebook does have a pretty cool tool that when someone is to hover over your company’s name… it brings up a tiny preview of your page showing your cover photo!

This is a GREAT way to catch the eye of individuals or companies and completely FREE!

Always optimize your about section on Facebook with critical keywords and links to your website.

Interaction:

We all know that social media is about the audience and engagement… so make sure you put this into practice throughout all your social activities, such as:

Always interact with the audience engaging in your page – this is not only a great way to get you noticed, but also helps build your branding and position in the Facebook and Google feeds as it demonstrates your active presence.

Also, don’t forget to keep building your page, by inviting people who have liked your posts to like your page as these are already interested in what’s been posted.

By interacting with other pages it also helps enhances your visibility across other pages, some of whom may be really aligned to the proposition you offer.

Consistency:
The biggest way people will interact with you is through your posts. It is therefore crucial to know what you’re posting and how often you post.

Professionally, we will always advise you to have a mixture of different content that directly ‘speaks’ to your audience and reflects what THEY want to see from your page content, such as:

• Insights
• Business news
• Promotional

Facebook is more of an informal (community led) social media platform, so make sure this is reflected in the tone and style of your post and content strategy – think about the type of people using Facebook and always, always ensure that your posts reflect the audience you are trying to engage.
Brighter Directions are experts in Facebook marketing, Facebook engagement and Facebook advertising for organisations from start-ups to growing SME’s and global brands. If you are looking for any help to drive your Facebook campaigns and maximise your exposure and sales through social media, then we’d love to hear from you! Simply call us on 01246 252855

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All great questions.

In our usual style of ‘sharing is caring’ we thought that in this week’s blog topic, we would take a look at these questions and offer a little more insight and tangible strategies that you, whether a small or growing business can implement, as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5…

This is what we utilise as the 5 pillars of social media engagement:

Now, let us explain each one briefly…

1. Advocacy – we all know that advocacy is other people valuing your product or service and influencing others to do the same. This is always the strongest of all marketing methods, and most sought after in terms of enquiry generation with all organisations. The way to build advocay online is to not only be ethical and transparent to your audiences, but to provide consistency and value over a long period of time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Nor should you expect it to.
2. Contribution – Doing. Social contribution is essentially the responsibility you have to your community (aka your audience) by being present and valuable within the platforms (sites) and their needs (content). So staying frequent and ensuring you talk about the things that matter, to them.
3. Endorsement – Another form of ‘advocacy’ yet this refers to advocates or influencers actually endorsing and promoting yuor product without needing or having to. This endorsement can come in the way of sharing your news, posts or content across their own audiences. Think of someone opening a door for you as you enter a building, always say thank you and acknowledge the compliment that comes with that.
4. Appreciation – Again, the art of saying thank you. Too many organisations today take digital engagement too literal – social is still very much about people, and therefore the art of basic appreciation and manners is vital, say thank you, have human real interaction and ensure your audience feels valued and understood through your channels.
5. Observation – It’s not all about talking and shouting out, listening is just as vital as speaking, as it is in ‘real life’ listen to your audience and their on-going behaviour and interaction, do they like what you are saying, is it relevant, does it match their desires? Then, act.

I think nowadays far too many people think that digital is another world outside of natural human behaviour, when in fact it’s the absolute opposite. Digital engagement is very much about human interaction, just on a deeper level, where you have to work just as hard (if not harder) through digital screens to demonstrate transparency and ethics, which builds trust. Just like real life.

If you would like to learn more about how you can develop an effective and valuable social media engagement strategy for your organisation, whether you’re a start-up or innovative SME – we’d love to chat.

Call our professional and friendly team today for a free consultation on 01246 252855

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Early opinions are mixed. Some like the new look but LinkedIn have removed a few functions from the everyday free user and also the LinkedIn Premium Users. These include the removal of the tagging option, plus what appears to be a now a much more limited ‘Advanced Search’ option. Here you can find how to make the most of the new LinkedIn search.

LinkedIn says “The LinkedIn desktop redesign puts conversations and content at the center, making it easier than ever to be more productive and successful.”

This short video highlights new features and how to navigate the new LinkedIn.

If you’re anything like me then you’ll hate the changes – purely because they’re new and now you need to master the art of navigating the new LinkedIn (yet again). I also have no doubt that I’ll ‘get over it’ in a matter days once I’ve located all of the useful features, and frequent use means knowing where to find everything becomes second nature very quickly. I’m sure I’ll dislike the next changes just as much as I initially dislike these!

Personally, I think the new navigation bar has a ‘mobile app’ feel to it and I have seen many articles referring to the recent changes as “Looks just like Facebook”. For some this is not a problem, one article from wired said “People know how to use Facebook” but for others, the ones that despise the cross over between the two platforms already, this just further antagonises them.

Personally I think it’s not what LinkedIn looks like, but what it does that matters to me, but it’s clear we’re slowly being edged towards needing to pay for premium services to get the standard of LinkedIn we’ve become accustomed to in standard packages previously – but hey, we’ve all got to earn a living, even the big guys at LinkedIn!

Interested to hear your thoughts on the updated version of LinkedIn!

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Brighter Directions experts in digital marketing

There’s no magic formula to make your marketing a success. Getting the engagement and attention you desire can be a long, hard slog, but it can be infinitely compounded when you make one of these silly digital marketing mistakes. Here are some of the worst offenders, and how you can avoid them.

1. You don’t have clear campaign goals

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Without measurable objectives, you’ll struggle to measure any ROI or business impact your digital marketing efforts might have. Define and communicate your objectives from the start, and build insights from previous campaigns into your future planning process.

2. You’re targeting the wrong audience

Even if you’re creating the very best content imaginable, if you’re showing it to the wrong people, it’s not going to have the desired result. Think not only about the demographic of your audience, but also about their behaviour, where they hang out and what they love to do.

3. You forgot mobile

Around 62 per cent of digital media time is now consumed by mobile devices, so if your campaign is not mobile ready, you’re excluding almost two thirds of your potential audience. From your website to your newsletters, everything needs to be not only compatible with tablets and smartphones, but ready for the time poor, on-the-go visitor as well.

4. You bought social media followers

It can be easy to be caught up in the numbers game of social media. After all, more followers make you look more authoritative, trustworthy and popular, right? However, social media users are becoming more savvy, and can tell when you’ve bought fake followers for your account. Look instead to build a network of real people who have the potential to become customers in the future.

5. You’re not testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a simple way to make sure your campaign is working the very hardest for your business. Testing emails in this way is an easy way to gain an incredible insight into your audience, and to ensure you are giving out the right message in the right way. Take this intelligence and apply it across your other digital channels, and keep testing and refining to develop a world beating campaign.

Check your strategy and behaviour, and see if you’ve been making any of these shocking digital marketing mistakes.

For more help with implementing a better strategic plan, talk to us today on 0203 633 2925

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