Jul 24 2017

10 Things Brands Need to do to Own Their Digital Landscape

By Kelsey Jones Social

Having a professional business presence online isn’t optional anymore for most businesses, even if they rely heavily on referrals. A consistent, strong digital brand that clearly gets your purpose across while also presenting the business in the best way possible will help grow your sales and influence, no matter the industry.

Below are 10 areas to focus on to build up your digital branding landscape and make sure it’s useful and professional.

Fix The Easy Stuff

If your brand already has a digital presence, it is easy to overlook what has already been done, thinking that it doesn’t need to monitored. However, changes over the years to logos, phone numbers, addresses, and even team members need to be updated online as soon as they happen. Your first priority should always be the goal of customers getting ahold of your company easily, so set reminders to check all profile information, contact forms, and lead generation sequences. Many times, updates in third-party tools (especially if they are using APIs) can lead to something breaking, and if those little things aren’t checked regularly, no one knows they happened.

Post Regularly

Even if your customers aren’t on social media in a business sense, they are likely using at least Facebook in a personal sense. According to Pew Research Center, 79 percent of all adults in the United States use Facebook. If you think your business won’t cater to social media, think of it as a yellow page listing that people may end up looking for online.

Post at least once a month (ideally, you’d want to post every day) so your last update isn’t something from years ago. For many users, even subconsciously, that is a sign that the business doesn’t care about their online presence. This could be a reflection of how they care about their customers.

In addition, there are targeted ad campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin that allow you to target audiences by age, interests, and location. Think past where your audience is at during business hours and look to where they may be spending their free time online.

Use Consistent Branding

Good branding is more important than ever for a digital presence, because that’s all your customers have to go by. A terrible, outdated logo could reflect negatively on a business, even if it’s not a true indication of quality. Look for graphic designers through networking groups or ask your colleagues or friends for referrals.

Many graphic designers charge $800-$3000 for a branding page with logo, color scheme, and a few other materials (like letterhead and business cards). This may be a significant investment for a business, but it is always well worth it when you find the right designer. Shop around until you find a designer that could work with you on updated branding that reflects your business well.

Go Beyond Blog Posts

Think regular blog posts are enough for your brand? For many industries, content marketing has gotten so competitive that regular 600-800 word blog posts just isn’t enough. Come up with a content strategy that offers a buzz piece, like a free ebook or online course, that you can build additional content around. Getting users to download your buzz piece can help you grow your email list, which in turn can produce more revenue. After all, according to eMarketer, email beats almost every other marketing tactic when it comes to return on investment (ROI).

Think of The Target Audience

Working inside a company may give you an unfair view into what you think customers actually want. Something that your team finds interesting may not be of interest at all to the actual target customer. Create personas that you can build content for, with their needs and interests in mind.

Link to Your Other Content

Many marketers are great about developing content, but when it comes to cross-promoting it with other things they have created, it falls flat. Make sure you are always linking to applicable related blog posts in content and always end your content with a call-to-action when it makes sense. After all, content should be created to turn traffic into revenue, and without enough knowledge or a push to engage, customers will simply leave a page without making any kind of purchase on your website.

Look to Where You Can Expand

Most brands feel safe using Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn, but if you find yourself stagnating on these platforms, consider where you could expand. This could mean trying new features of the platforms you already have a good following on, such as Facebook live video or Twitter polls. Or, it could mean checking out new platforms to grow your online community. Many brands still haven’t used Reddit or Snapchat to do campaigns or engage with customers. If your target demographic uses these platforms, consider trying them as well.

Have a Unique Voice

Online users of all ages and demographics are online enough to know when a brand is trying too hard. It can come off as callous, disingenuous, or just out of touch. This can often backfire tremendously. The meme How do you do, fellow kids? is now used by users as a way to call out brands that are trying to seem cool but don’t really belong.

Before engaging with your online community, make sure you know each specific platform’s slang, features, and use and you respect users’ time. Logging on to Reddit and recommending your line of bras for every woman with a bra question isn’t going to win you any new customers. Demonstrate value in a unique voice that acknowledges you are a brand without trying too hard.

Use Media Purposely

Just like with blog posts mentioned above, it used to be enough to use basic stock photography for images in content and calling it good. While this is still better than content with no images, using bad stock photos that are cheesy or don’t make sense for the actual content (e.g. they are vague or misleading), can turn users off. Try to create custom graphics for content using tools like Pablo by Buffer, Canva, PicMonkey, or Piktochart. Even just adding your logo and content title to images goes a long way (and is better for social media).

Think Digital First

Whenever you are building a new campaign or introducing a new product or service, think of your digital strategy first, because it has the largest potential to spread. Deciding budget for paid campaigns, graphics for the promotion, and messaging can help ensure the new offering has a consistent message. This is important because online is likely where customers of most businesses are going to find out about it.

When it comes to a better digital branding landscape, make sure all your company’s presence online is consistent, engaging, informative, and easy-to-navigate. Focus on what you’re best at but try new things to be innovative in your industry, when it makes sense. Being proactive about a better online presence will lead to more engagement and traffic from your target audience.

Jan 20 2017

Love0

Product Launch Faver!

By Anthony Miller Fashion, Product Launch, Social, User Experience

Transforming the Social Shopping Experience

Choosing the ideal gift for a millennial is a challenging process, in particular when you’re a millennial yourself and you’ve no idea where to begin looking. Luckily, we have some top advice to help you find what you’re looking for.

Before you’ve started shopping, think of what the person could like or need. If it’s a friend who likes to read, go for the bestseller of a popular writer. If it’s a family member who needs to rest from work, buy them a travel voucher.

The ideas are endless!

Buying gifts online

Navy Web Mockup Screenshots

We can all agree that online shopping is more convenient than browsing through multiple real-word stores, but that doesn’t make it completely stress free.

In fact, inexperienced shoppers may end up wasting more time, money, and effort ordering their loved ones’ presents from home.

Why is gift-shopping so stressful?

Image of storefronts within a mall settings

Factor 1: Trustworthy sellers

On the high street, we can tell what’s popular, and which stores we can trust. However, it’s a lot harder to tell which sellers are reputable when we shop online. We rely on customer reviews to make our decisions, despite not all reviews being as genuine or impartial as they might make themselves out to be.

Factor 2: Too much choice

Online shopping puts unlimited choice at our fingertips, and this can make it difficult to know where to start. When browsing a physical store, we might stumble upon products we wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. This method of discovery has been almost completely lost in the digital age.

Factor 3: The chance that they won’t like the gift

Sometimes it can be difficult to know if the person we’re buying for will genuinely like what we’ve bought for them. Wishlists are the surefire solution, but they’re rarely public or easy to find, and that’s only if your intended recipient has put one together at all.

The social product discovery tool of the future: Faver has transformed e-commerce

What is Faver? Faver is a web application designed for desktop and mobile usage; somewhere you can ‘fave’ products that you like the look of. Once a product is faved, this information enters the Faver database, and the system automatically updates a ‘Suggestions’ page where you can browse countless personalized recommendations. Most importantly, Faver is a social application, which means you can also see everything your Facebook friends have faved, and the suggestions they’ve received based on those.

In addition to faving products, customers can also create wishlists and recommend products to other friends. This is how Faver can inspire people and help them pick gifts more confidently, especially when buying for close friends and family. All it takes is to log into Faver with Facebook Connect.

Why use Faver?

It’s truly a one-stop-shop for all types of products. Their database currently lists millions of products from stores ranging from local independents to the likes of Amazon, so there’s very little chance you won’t find the product you’re looking for. Faver has been designed with the user in mind and it really shows.

Faver knows that shopping is something we should enjoy, and not feel tired from. It will give you more ideas than you can possibly think of. Faver is an intelligent system that bases results on your preferences, and will relate future suggestions to what you’ve faved. Even as other users fave products, your suggestions will update as a result of what Faver has learned.

It is a universal gift list. You can create your own lists of favorite products and share them with as many people as you want.

The concept of social shopping explained

By social shopping, retail experts usually refer to services that combine e-commerce with social media, and take into account all critical aspects of online networking (friends, comments, groups, communities, voting, tags, forums, and so on) to help the shopper make the right decision.

On social shopping websites, users can share the product they like, and engage other users in productive discussions.

Just a few years ago, social shopping came down to the product actually being displayed on the internet (Twitter handle, Facebook fan page, or sharing buttons on e-stores), but it has advanced to a social interaction experience reminiscent of real-life shopping and communicating with the vendor.

Two side by side screenshots showing the Faver app screens

In fact, there are many buyers led by their fundamental desire to interact and reassure themselves that they are making the right decision, whom would agree that social shopping is just as rewarding as traditional shopping, and perhaps even more personalized.

The way social shopping functions nowadays, customers have access to specific product feeds designed for them, but can also participate in collective shopping to make sure they are making the best purchase decision.

Why is social shopping so popular?

Put it this way, social shopping helped solve a huge retail problem: it helped indecisive buyers find the right products for themselves or for the people they love, and did so because of enabling retailers to make the right suggestions for each of them. While this would take days in conventional shopping practices, it’s now instant and automated on the web.

Shop view and an opened menu view of the Faver app

The aspect which helps engagement the most is the fact that people share experiences, and rely on each other to appreciate the value of a product before they’ve bought it.

This isn’t new – prior to internet technology, we used to ask friends and family to exchange options about the product, however now that we’re connected with thousands of social media users, we can ask literally everyone!

Obviously, we’ll still be expected to rely on our own judgment, but we can all agree that making a purchase decision is way easier with the input of impartial people. Alongside Faver, we can consider the choices of our friends and connections, and use the vacant-eye model to get inspired.