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The Digital Marketing Strategy Behind Using #Hashtags by @DinaArsenaultPR

May 8, 2017 by Dina Arsenault 2 Comments

by Dina Arsenault | Featured Contributor

We have all seen them, those random pairings of words forming phrases, pre-cursored with the number sign so eloquently or sometimes not so eloquently embedded in various social media posts. Many of you have probably wondered to yourself, “Is there a point to this?” or “Is this even effective?” and the answer is unequivocally YES!

The use of Hashtags, when done properly can be one of the easiest and most effective ways to market you and your business online.

According to The Balance, Hashtags are:

“Used to categorize content and track topics on Twitter and other social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn. When you use hashtags, you help people who are interested in your topic find your posts and Tweets more effectively.”

As you can see, the very definition of a hashtag makes it an extremely effective way to search for specific content throughout various social media platforms as well as to promote you, your business, your upcoming event or your campaign.

When used properly, hashtags are a great way for individuals and brands to stand out on social media and as a result increase their organic reach and engagement in the process. They give individuals useful context and cues for recall, aggregate posts and images together, and update a group of like-minded individuals on certain topics in real time.

When you are looking to strategically market you or your brand online, use hashtags as a research tool, to find what terms or phrases are trending in not only your country, but your specific region, town or more importantly, your specific target audience as well.

Hashtags, when used properly will actually improve your visibility in search engine rankings which will allow you to generate a higher return on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) when developing your website or designing your content marketing and social media strategies.

So, now you are wondering, “Well this all sounds great on paper, but how do I actually go about creating an effective hashtag?”

Read on – Don’t worry I have you covered…

How Do I Create And Use An Effective Hashtag

Get creative and pick a phrase that is easy to read and relatively short in length.
Research what terms are trending in your geographic area. This will allow you to see what people are talking about and how this can relate to your business.
Use a little humour that will reflect you and your business brand positively.
Check your social media analytics and see which ones worked. Which ones got the most responses, shares, likes, re-tweets, comments or traffic to your website. These will help you to tailor what your future social media posts will include in order to generate the most effective content marketing strategy for you and your business brand. If this particular hashtag didn’t work, then go back to the drawing board and try another approach. Initially, it really is about trial and error and really getting to know specifically who and what your target audience is all about.

The great thing about hashtags is that it is a wonderful way to unify a campaign across all of your social media platforms. When using a specific hashtag for your brand or an event, it allows your audience to search across all platforms easily and effectively, allowing you and your brand to generate new customers and essentially give back to existing ones.

If you are still wondering if hashtags are an effective and essential marketing tool for you and your business brand in today’s social media age, read what Kim Garst, named one of Forbes Top 10 Social Media Power Influencers has to say:

“Hashtags: Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re an integral part of using social media. With reams of content being produced and promoted on social media each and every minute, hashtags provide a simply way to search for specific, topical content. With every major social network now allowing the use of hashtags, understanding why they’re such an important part of social media marketing is even more important.They allow us to whittle down the thousands of updates we receive daily from friends, colleagues and businesses, as well to find new people to interact with and new conversations to follow. They give us the ability to track conversations about our brand and our products, and help us keep an eye on what’s going on in our industry.”

At the end of the day, digital marketing practices are constantly changing and adapting to the technologies that are readily available. In order to stay competitive we have to change along with them. If you don’t want to be left behind, put on your creative thinking caps and get hashtagging!

Remember to use this tool wisely, and don’t overuse – that can be extremely annoying for followers. It can also lead to a new phenomenon on Instagram as of late called, Instagram Shadowban:

“This occurs when your hashtags become ‘un-discoverable’. You can use your hashtags, however you’ll only show up in hashtag feeds of your current followers. This means that your images won’t show up in hashtag feeds of anyone who DOESN’T follow you, obviously reducing the reach of your account and making it much harder to reach a new audience.”

If you are:

Using bots, automated services or buying followers
Using the same hashtags for months on end
Receive a recent surge in activity
Use broken hashtags

An Instagram Shadowban can occur. It just goes to show, that if you place your marketing focus on building relationships over acquiring instant sales by providing value to the community you are striving to build around your brand, these types of things can and will be avoided. So my best advice for when you venture into the world of hashtags is to utilize strategically and above all else have fun!

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Dina Arsenault Digital Media Strategist and the undisputed reigning Madame of creativity, community and connection for the Ontario Chapter of http://acueconsulting.com/.

A celebrated and sought after speaker and writer, Dina is a caffeine fueled and food delighted ( locally sourced of course) Community Builder, Relationship Nurturer and all around Small Business Supporter. Dina’s online expertise is driven by her desire to promote your business online while connecting and elevating others in the process to foster community and the all around ‘good feels’. If you want to be visible, connected and engaged with your community (and exposed to great food and fun) Dina is your gal!

Connect with Dina: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Snapchat: dinaarsenault7

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Dina Arsenault

Dina Arsenault Digital Media Strategist and the undisputed reigning Madame of creativity, community and connection for the Ontario Chapter of http://acueconsulting.com/.

acueconsulting.com/

To Market Your Business Successfully Online Can Seem Like It Takes A Village, When Really It Should Take a Targeted ‘Group’

April 12, 2017 by Dina Arsenault 1 Comment

by Dina Arsenault | Featured Contributor

Bing, you get a notification on your phone from your Facebook notifications, you click on it to see what it is and low and behold you have been added to another Group! Are you excited or angered?

Let’s be honest, Groups have about the same popularity as Game Requests on Facebook and tend not to be high on anyone’s popularity list. Unfortunately, many marketers and business owners have ineffectively used them as a means to spam individuals to like their pages or buy their products or services which goes against the very nature of why groups were created – To build and create those all to important relationships online with your target audience.

Effective social media marketing today is a medium which puts building an authentic relationship with one’s followers at the forefront. This is achieved through authenticity speaking ‘TO’ your target audience and not ‘AT’ them. Groups when used properly can achieve just that.

Groups generally are an under utilized strategy that business owners need to be using effectively for their online marketing strategy. I will discuss three ways they can achieve this below.

Here we go…

Coaching or Mentoring

Having either a private or public group centered around you mentoring or coaching its members is an excellent way to position yourself as a expert in your field. This is also a great way for people to connect and inspire each other either in business or in life. Real Relationships can be formed, which then can be taken offline either in sales or in business connections. It is a wonderful atmosphere to share ideas, work on joint projects and create an overall positive community around your brand.

Networking

This one probably seems the most logical and generally is one of the most popular uses for groups we see. This is where you need to be selective with which the ones you choose to belong to. This generally is where you will see individuals spamming the newsfeed with sales pitches or promotions. You really need to be cognizant of the group posting and participation rules. When done correctly, networking groups can be a valuable space for sharing with other business owners and entrepreneurs, finding new clients, getting ideas and or providing advice or inspiration to others.

Online Marketing Strategy

It is no secret that the continuous changes to the Facebook Algorithms has made getting effective reach and engagement on our biz pages that much more difficult to obtain. An effective strategy that can work to boost this, is to spend the time engaging, supporting and building those all too important relationships online within the confines of Facebook Groups. If you follow the number one rule of providing value first, true connections will organically occur over time. What you will find is that others will happily return the support back to you by liking, commenting, sharing and checking out your own biz page in the process. Unlike your own pages, groups don’t have algorithms to deal with, so the added bonus is that every group member will get notified when you post or share within the group, so you have even more of a chance of the right people seeing your content than merely on your biz page alone. Groups are paramount for your content getting seen by the right people. Once you know who your target audience is, I suggest that you find a group that ‘they’ likely would be a part of. Share content from your own biz page that you think your target audience would find value in, and ALWAYS follow the groups posting guidelines, never spamming or just ‘selling’ you or your business.

So as you can see, when used effectively, Facebook Groups are an untapped ‘gold mine’ of opportunity and connection for both you and your business. Now, with Facebook beginning the staggered roll out of business pages having the opportunity to share from their business pages as their business page, it has become an even more important strategy to utilize.

If you have any questions about how you can utilize Facebook Groups for you and your business, please feel free to contact me, I would be more than happy to help!

Until next time, Happy Grouping!

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Dina Arsenault

Dina Arsenault Digital Media Strategist and the undisputed reigning Madame of creativity, community and connection for the Ontario Chapter of http://acueconsulting.com/.

acueconsulting.com/

Marketing Challenge: Finding a Balance Between Being Present and Being Useful by @BBorowicz

January 16, 2015 by Brittney Borowicz Leave a Comment

by Brittney Borowicz | Featured Contributor

As the popularity of social media continues to grow with both customers and salespeople, companies are realizing the importance of being socially present. This presence allows customers to see your company, know your company and ultimately think of your company when they need your product or service. But marketers aren’t just staying present on social media. A true integrated marketing campaign utilizes social media as well as blogs, email blasts, white papers and so on.

As companies strive for this constant presence to their audience, they seem to be forgetting one thing: being useful.

Everyone agrees that spammy, overly frequent emails are the worst, but what is worse than the worst? Spammy, overly frequent emails that provide no value to me, the consumer. I mean, come on! At least tell me how your product/service is going to help solve my problem! Some annoying runner-ups to spammy, overly frequent emails include boring blog posts for the sake of having multiple blog posts per day and the hourly social media update using some meme that was brutally misused.

In order for a company or brand to truly market effectively to their consumers, they must provide value in their content. In other words, companies must first start thinking, “will our customers and potential customers find this content to be useful?”

Publishing valuable content does great things for the relationship between your company and your consumers and potential consumers. People want to do business with people they like and trust. Providing reliable, useful information builds trust with your audience by establishing your company as a credible thought leader that wants to solve their customer’s problem(s). Remember, the customer should always come first — not just in sales, but in marketing as well.

So what are some ways to be present and useful but not be annoying?

Utilize your social media accounts to answer questions, engage with your audience and post helpful tips, tools and articles… and don’t be afraid to have fun with this!
Respond to reviews – both positive and negative. A “thanks” or even an “I’m sorry this happened but here’s how I am going to fix it for the future” goes a long way to show customers that you care.
Write blogs and white papers about topics your customers are actually interested about. If you’re not sure, try looking at the top ten questions your company gets asked about your products/services/industry.
Email consumers and potential consumers ONLY when you have valuable information to share. This may be the blogs or white papers you have written above or maybe updates or news about your products and services.
Don’t just stick to text. Experiment with sharing your content in infographics and videos. Visuals can often tell a story much better than just text can.

These are only a few examples, but by all means stay present! It’s important. The challenge is to find that balance between being present and being useful to your consumers. Unfortunately, there is no cookie-cutter answer to where that balance lies among different industries and audiences. Marketers must test types of content and frequency of publishing to find what is most effective for their company. Make sure your customers and potential customers know you are present… but don’t be THAT brand that gets sent to the spam folder because you are annoying… you won’t be seen there.

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Brittney Borowicz is an integrated marketing professional with a strong communications background specializing in journalism, public relations and social media. Originally from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Brittney has spent the past few years working with entrepreneurs and start-ups in the Chicagoland area to enhance their marketing and social media efforts.

Prior to her current role as the Marketing Manager for an embedded networking company, Brittney realized her affinity for all things media and marketing while working in radio and television and as a professional presenter. Later, she began working at a couple of small marketing agencies in Chicago as a Public Relations and Sales Director and Account Manager, which required her to be well-versed in coordinating specialized public and media relations strategies, creative marketing initiatives and cohesive sales process implementations.

As a strong believer in intimate consumer/brand involvement, Brittney helps her clients create content that engages and educates brand audiences while establishing each individual or company as a thought leader in their industry.

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Brittney Borowicz

Brittney Borowicz is an integrated marketing professional with a strong communications background specializing in journalism, public relations and social media. Originally from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Brittney has spent the past few years working with entrepreneurs and start-ups in the Chicagoland area to enhance their marketing and social media efforts.