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Summer Social Media

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Summer Social Media Tip #1:
Take the Time to Understand Your Audiences’ Summer Priorities and Schedules

Summer can mean something different for everyone. Sometimes it means freedom for the normal daily grind. Sometimes it means having to rearrange everything to take care of school-age children. Or perhaps it means more vacations or weekend adventures. Everyone is different.

This means that it is up to you to take the time to understand your specific audience’s summers. Once you understand that, you will have a better grasp on your audience’s social media usage, and can shift your summer post accordingly.

 

Summer Social Media Tip #2:
Summer-ize Your Content

When was the last time you updated your social media presence? Summer is a great time to rejuvenate your image!


A) Update Your Cover Photo

Change your cover photo to something more summer-like.

Your cover photo is the largest piece of real estate you have on your social media, and it has a huge impact on your profile’s visual tone.


B) Go Outside

Your audience is spending more time outdoors during the summer. With the warmer weather, the outdoors calls your customers to ditch Netflix and enjoy the sunshine! Use this to your benefit.

During the summer, images that have an outdoor setting tend to have higher engagement levels. Beautiful scenery, warm, sunny beaches, or even fun-filled backyard pictures can help you connect with your audience!


C) Mobilize

Because people are spending more time outside also means that your audience will be engaging with social media more through their phones.

This means you need to make sure that everything your post is optimized for mobile devices. This doesn’t just mean the content you post directly to social media, but also anything that you link to.

 

Summer Social Media Tip #3:
Get Your Customers In On The Action

When you encourage your audience to share content (user-generated content, or UGC) you create a great space for others to want to participate, seeing around 25% higher engagement rate than a standard brand post. Understanding UGC will bring you closer to your audience, and in turn, hopefully, bring them closer to you.

1) Define your UGC campaign goals.

2) Craft the perfect summer-themed UGC request. Some ideas are:

a) Vacation highlights (or horror stories)
b) Summer selfies
c) Pool time

3) Double-check that the theme of the UGC effort is aligned with your brand.

4) Award and incentivize participation. Make it worth it.


A well-executed UGC campaign can have your brand rolling in content all summer long.

 

Summer Social Media Tip #4:
Think Local

Summertime is usually party time. While things may be a bitter different, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, there will still be some events in your local community that you can spotlight.

Now, this does not mean that you have to sponsor these events, but you should plan on attending at least a couple of events in your city. While at the event, snap a picture for your social media and tag the event, coordinators, or other key participants.

Even better, host a summer event of your own and invite the community to participate.

 

Summer Social Media Tip #5:
Have Fun

Most importantly, have fun! Summer is all about having a good time and your social media should reflect that sentiment. Post upbeat content, publish uplifting stories, share some fun memes. As long as you stay relevant and appropriate for your brand, the clear blue sky is the limit.

An easy way to have some fun with your audience is to play games. Encourage your audiences to leave their responses as comments and have some great conversations.

 

Summer is Coming – Soon!

If you haven’t already, now is the time to make sure your social media profile is ready for the summer days ahead. This doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your tried and true social media plan, just be looking for ways to brighten up your content with some summer fun.

 

No Time? Contact Branching Out Media Solutions

We know that keeping up with social media can be a chore. If you are struggling to find the time to manage your social media accounts, Branching Out Media can help. Contact us today!

Did you know you can post photos on Instagram from your computer? There’s a trick!

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At first glance – it does not look like you can – the upload icon is missing…

Some of you may ask – why would I even need this? All my photos are already on my phone. This applies more to photographers (and me! Digital marketers need to upload customer’s images) and other people who need to load their photos onto their computers.

Here’s the step by step:

Step 1: login to Instagram on your computer Step 2: right click somewhere on the screen Step 3: click on “Inspect” Step 4: this opens a code inspection tool – I know it looks crazy, but you only need one thing here Step 5: On the split screen to the right, there is a little logo in the top left that looks like a tablet and phone – click this Step 6: This will change the way you are viewing the page, and it should give you the regular icons you would have on your phone – including the post (plus sign) – if you do not have them right away, you may need to refresh the page

Voilà! You can now upload any photos you have saved on your computer!


Winter is Coming…

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Yeah, I went there, but you know what, it is coming and for most business owners, this means a drop in sales. But lets make the best of it – this is the perfect time for a website overhaul or perhaps even a new social media campaign or blog!

The problem is while business might slow down, your life doesn’t. Holiday parties, children’s school pageants, lots of baking and in our case here in the north – lots of snow to shovel (and maybe a couple snowmen to build)!

I can help! (Not with the shoveling- that’s my lovely 11 year olds job!) But I can help get your online presence in tip-top shape. Together, we can drive more customers during a would- be slower season and have your business ready to run at it’s best when things really get crazy!

Be prepared this winter – don’t get snowed in!

Call Right Now!

(734)489-9476

7 Reasons Why Your Website Does Not Rank Well on Google (and what you can do about it)

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You have put in the work for a website, but you haven’t seen much of an increase in traffic. Why might that be? For a lot of companies, the lack of web traffic has much to do with the fact they are not coming up when potential customers search for their goods or services. These days, if you do not rank well on Google, your company will suffer. So, what can you do about it?

Here are a few hints to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) or the items that Google looks at when they rank websites.

1. Helpful Content        Google has moved beyond simply having the “right” keywords throughout your website. Now they track how long people remain on your page and whether they seem to be able to navigate and find what they are looking for with ease. If a customer cannot find what it is that they need quickly, they will usually leave your site to find it elsewhere. So having a well organized site that is helpful and easy to navigate will register with Google that it has helpful content, and in turn, will rank your website better.

2. Images and videos with relevant keywords       Having photos and videos on your site not only help it look better, but they help you rank better too! Be sure to have keywords included in your image or video description to help boost your page and to help your customers understand what is important about what you included. Videos are particularly great at boosting your page because they require some sort of interaction with the page, and customers will linger longer to watch a video.

3. Page speed       Another very important factor in Google ranking is the website speed. People do not want to wait more than a couple seconds for a page to load, and often times, if it does not load quick enough, they will get impatient and leave the website. There are many ways to increase website speed, including limiting the plugins used, enabling caching, and updating your theme. The faster your page runs, the less chance you have of people leaving your site.

4.  Errors or broken links       Having broken links or error pages can severely hurt your ranking. It is important to regularly check on the health of your website and insure that any links that are included are still working. The Internet is a growing changing entity, and websites require regular maintenance to ensure that you are still connected properly and that your customers can easily follow links to and from your page.

5. Social Media       While it is not as big of a deal now as it use to be, traffic from your social media pages to your website also have an effect on the ranking of your website – This means that it is important to have posts with links to your site on your social media accounts. It use to be that you needed to have as many posts as possible to boost your ranking but Google has gotten smarter and now they track quality over quantity. Make your posts valuable to your customers; insure that they are provided useful information and that drives them to your website for further information.

6. Mobile device compatible       Nowadays the majority of all searches are done on mobile devices, so if your website is not mobile device friendly, you need to make that change right away. Most website editors already are set up to display your website on multiple different platforms, but if your website is not, there are many free plugins or templates that include this functionality. It is also helpful to have a well thought out meta description – that is the short line of copy just below your company name in a Google search. Ensure that it is optimized for Google and clearly captures what your company offers so that mobile users can determine if it is what they are looking for without even clicking on anything.

7. Voice Search       Voice search is a newer component to your Google ranking with the rise of smart speakers. There are more and more people who do most of their searching by speaking only – either to their smart speaker or to their phone. This is changing the way questions are phrased in a search engine; they are more like common conversation rather than the choppy phrases used when someone types a question. And if someone uses a voice search, the answer to their question will be read aloud, so it is important that the information that comes up for your website is well written so as to be understood when read aloud.

There are many aspects of your website that can contribute to your Google ranking and in turn, to your potential customer flow. Staying on top of all the changes can be a lot of work –  that’s why I am here to help!

I specialize in managing websites, social media marketing and email newsletters. I keep up to date on the things that make your company stand out among all the rest.

You can follow me on Facebook and sign up for my email newsletters for other tips and tricks to staying on top!

And if you need some extra help – feel free to contact me and see what I can do to help you and your company branch out in this ever-changing digital marketplace.