How the TikTok Algorithm Works (and How to Make It Work #ForYou)

October 5, 2021 - 9:33am - by

By: Alicia Kurz, Account Manager

If you’re like us, you may have joined TikTok as a joke and are now obsessed with cleaning hacks and follow someone who teaches you how to correctly fold laundry — with a little sprinkle of #GhostTikTok on your feed to keep that anxiety high. 

Whether you joined as a joke or you were one of the first die-hards on the app, it’s clear with 2.6 billion downloads, people love it. Reminiscent of Vine and more addicting than Instagram, it’s where people are spending their time. 

TikTok has made an algorithm that’s more addictive than coffee on a Monday morning, so we’re giving you the rundown on how the algorithm works, and how to make it work for you. 

How Does the TikTok Algorithm Work?

As with any social media platform, the algorithms are always changing, however, with the recent demand for applications to be more transparent, TikTok released a press release explaining just how their algorithm works. They also have a Transparency Centre based out of Los Angeles. 

Engagement 

This one is pretty typical for social platforms in general. When you engage with content on TikTok, it wants to show you similar content. The For You feed displays a stream of videos curated to show you the content you are more likely to interact with. 

You can expect to see similar content to the videos that you:

• Follow 
• Comment on
• Share 
• Like 
• Add to favourites 
• Watch through to the end 
• Make videos similar to 

You’ll see less of the types of videos that you:

• Hide
• Mark as “not interested”
• Report inappropriate

Account Settings 

These are one-time settings like your language preference, country setting, and device type. While they will optimize your performance, these don’t impact your For You page as much as how you interact with videos on your page. 

Video Information

This is what you search for while using the app. This can include details like:

• Effects 
• Captions 
• Sounds 
• Hashtags 
• Trending topics  

Diverse Videos 

Sometimes you will see videos on your For You feed that seem irrelevant and have very few likes. This is an intentional move from TikTok to give lesser-known creators a chance for their content to be seen, and gauge your interest in a variety of topics.

“Our goal is to find balance between suggesting content that's relevant to you while also helping you find content and creators that encourage you to explore experiences you might not otherwise see.” 

Safeguards

TikTok won’t show you duplicated videos, content you have already seen, spam, or videos that the app deems upsetting. 

The “For You” feed generally won't show two videos in a row made with the same sound or by the same creator.”

What is TikTok’s “For You” Page and How Does It Work?

TikTok’s For You page is the first screen you will see when you log onto the app. 

While most other apps have the content you have already liked, followed, or subscribed to as the first thing you see when your log on, TikTok’s For You page is a curated stream of videos they think you will be interested in based on what you have already engaged with. 

How to Make the #FYP Work For You

You don’t need to have a ton of followers to go viral. Let’s be clear: if you have more followers it definitely helps your chances. However, TikTok will show content that people like to a lot of people — so make your content relatable! 

Proven Hacks 

Pick a Niche

You can be good at a lot of things or you can be amazing at one. People will follow you because they want to know more about your niche. Focus on creative content that suits your page. 

Create Short, Engaging Videos

TikTok allows you to post videos up to three minutes long, but the most popular videos are 15-20 seconds. Make sure to start your video off with interesting content right off the hop so people will stick around. 

Use Hashtags

Don’t go overboard. TikTok’s captions are limited to 150 characters, so use the space wisely. Use hashtags from challenges, trends, and your niche. 

Post During Your Most Active Times

To figure this out, you need a Pro Account to finds insights on:

• Video and profile views
• Follower growth 
• Best times to post 

Follow Trends

Create videos doing the current trends. Use trending songs, sounds, effects, and hashtags to make your way onto the For You feed. You can find what’s popular on the Discover page. 

Unverified Tips

While we have zero proof that these factors play into what ends up on the For You page, other content creators and our personal experience suggest these theories might have something to them:

Using #FYP, #ForYou, or #ForYouPage 

Take a peek at the hashtags you see on the For You page. Many of them have some version of #FYP, #FYpage, or another hashtag indicating they want it to be on TikTok’s recommendation feed. Coincidence? 

Close the App

Next time you upload a video to the app, close it and walk away. 

TikTok wants you on their platform. In order to get you there, they want to send notifications. Those notifications can be when someone likes, comments, duets, stitches or engages with your video in any way. Let the app show your video to more people and build engagement opportunities for you. 

Post 2-3 Times Per Day

Many creators on the app say posting multiple times per day is key to getting on the For You feed. That’s a lot of content to put out every day! Tools like the Creator Fund (currently not available in Canada) pay creators for their content, which would make all that work a lot more worth it. 

We Tried It

Yes, we’re the stereotype that joined as a joke, but now @rod is our new life coach. 

In fact, our Account Manager Alicia tested these theories with a mix of verified and unverified tips and went viral in six videos!

Check it out!

If you have a chance to test these theories, let us know.

If you liked reading these in-depth insights about the hottest digital marketing strategies, subscribe to our weekly newsletter. 

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How to Run a Spooktacular (and Successful) Halloween Campaign on Social Media

September 16, 2021 - 12:10am - by

Did you know that Halloween is the 4th most popular holiday after Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter? It’s also the time when most consumers start ramping up their spending!

Halloween isn’t just about trick-or-treating anymore; it’s one of the best holidays where you can get creative, have a little fun, and create a spooktacular digital marketing campaign.

Wondering how to develop a Halloween marketing campaign for your business? Keep reading to find out!

Why should you run a Halloween campaign? 

Halloween kicks off a series of major shopping events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas, making this spooktacular season the perfect time to start engaging with your ideal customers.

Some other reasons you should consider a Halloween campaign include:

• Halloween is celebrated worldwide. 91% of Canadians and 148 million Americans celebrated Halloween in 2020, and the holiday is popular in the UK, major European countries, and even Australia. The global popularity of the day is perfect for any ecommerce business looking to increase sales locally or internationally.

• Halloween spending is rising. Canadians spent nearly $1.4 billion (roughly $86 per person) for Halloween in 2020, and in the U.S. consumers spent an average of $92.12 USD per person. Costume sales also went up by 31% last year.
• Halloween is a cross-category selling opportunity. People buy costumes for themselves and their pets, decorations, clothes, household decor… you name it, there’s probably a “Halloween version” of it. There’s so much to buy, in fact, that last year consumers spent $490 million on Halloween items!

Halloween trends you can use

If you’re not sure how to create a spooky social media campaign, never fear! Below are some of the hottest Halloween-related trends to get the wheels in your head turning:

COVID is still impacting Halloween

Obviously the pandemic is still a thing, and even though masks and vaccinations are helping restore some sense of normalcy, people are still planning to celebrate differently this year.

In 2020, Pinterest reported that more consumers were searching for unique ways to celebrate at home, including spikes in searches related to: 

• “Halloween breakfast” saw a 2x increase
• “Haunted garage” saw a 4x increase
• “Halloween scavenger hunt” saw 2x increase
• “Halloween costumes with masks” a whopping 27x increase

If you sell products related to any of these searches, make sure to update your keyword strategy and include them in any social media campaigns you’re running!

Halloween is a “DIY” time of year

Consumers love getting ready for Halloween almost as much fun as the day itself, and that means they’re stocking up on makeup, accessories, and other goods in advance of the big day.

People regularly search for and share posts related to DIY costumes, makeup tutorials, decorating, cooking and making treats, and pumpkin carving, so find ways to incorporate those themes into your social media.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Be the spooky inspo you want to see. Showcase how your products or services make Halloween easier, safer, and more fun so your customers can get excited about buying from you.
• Share your favourite DIY tutorials. Inspire your audience by showing them the tutorials, ideas, and products YOU love for Halloween. Bonus points if you can tie in a comparison or reference to your own products or services!
• Run a Halloween-themed influencer marketing campaign. Reach out to influencers in your niche and ask them to showcase how they’re using your products to make costumes, decorate, and more.
• Dress up your pets. Most of us are still in a hybrid or full-time remote position, so encourage team members to share photos of their fur babies (or real babies!) to add a human, non-salesy element to your online presence.

Halloween holiday deals

According to the National Retail Federation, 40% of consumers do their Halloween shopping before the actual date, making this the perfect chance to offer Halloween discounts and get a leg-up on the busy shopping season.

The key to success here is to start promoting on social media early so people have time to take advantage of the savings. This is also a great email marketing opportunity, too!

Ready to start making every holiday work for your business? Book a free discovery call today.

Halloween campaign strategies 

If the idea of running a Halloween campaign still sounds scary, use these tips to plan ahead and take advantage of this important shopping date:

• Start early. Most people start Halloween shopping in September (aka, right now!) so spend a day or two planning what you’ll do and begin executing on those tasks.
• Create your visual assets. Make a list of all the social media profiles where your brand is active and create 2-3 promotional images for each platform. This will help reduce user fatigue since consumers won’t be seeing the same images over and over again.
• Protip: if you’re running social media ads, make sure to create additional images for each platform so they don’t look exactly like your social media posts!
• Write out your posts in advance. We’re huge fans of “batch writing” your social media content because it’s more efficient and helps maintain creativity, and that’s especially important for these types of campaigns.
• Bonus points if you schedule them in advance, too!
• Plan your email marketing campaign. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach consumers, so plan to write at least 4-5 “drip” emails promoting your special offers between now and October 31st.

Run a successful Halloween campaign

Halloween is a great way to create a fun campaign that engages your customers, sells more products and services, and reminds them of your business and what you have to offer right as we enter into the busiest time for sales each year.

Using the strategies we outlined above will help you create a memorable, Halloween-themed brand experience for your audience and give you the chance to have a little fun, too.

Is your business running Halloween-themed campaigns? We’d love to feature them on our social media! @ us or slide into our DMs on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn and we’ll reshare your posts on our timelines.

And hey — if you liked what you read here, consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. It gets sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday and has a snappy lil roundup of the articles you need to read to become the savviest business owner (or marketer) in the room. Subscribe today.

6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Creating an eCommerce Content Strategy

August 19, 2021 - 1:32am - by

Chances are you’ve been part of an eCommerce sales funnel. 

You see a new brand on Instagram. Their product catches your eye as you scroll your feed and soon you’re looking at a post on their page from 52 weeks ago. They’ve convinced you! Next thing you know you’ve ordered from their website and are eagerly awaiting the package in the mail.

Does this sound familiar? This isn’t by accident. That brand probably had a killer eCommerce content strategy. 

The most successful businesses don’t just post on the fly. Everything they do is perfectly curated to help consumers along their sales funnel and one step closer to purchasing their product.

Want to learn how to do it, too? Well then keep reading!

Why is content strategy important for eCommerce?

With an estimated 12 million to 24 million eCommerce businesses on the internet, setting yourself apart from the pack is crucial. While your brand may be unique, you need to convey this to consumers.

Luckily, you’re marketing in the same space you’re selling in.

This is where content creation and strategy comes in. 

Posting consistently just isn’t enough. You need a good strategy to guide your decisions and get the results you want. This is where content strategy comes in.

By auditing your process, you can see where exactly you need to improve. This isn’t a one-time action, however. To keep reaching your goals, you’ll need to continue to edit and improve your strategy.

What are your brand’s goals?

The first step is looking at where your business is currently and where you would like it to be in the future. This will vary from organization to organization.

What would you like your business to achieve?

Here are some potential goals to consider:

• Higher conversion rate
• Better return on investment (ROI)
• Increased sales
• More engagement on social media

Take this time to compile data on your brand’s current position. Without knowing where you are, it’s hard to determine where you’re going. This will also act as your starting point when comparing future data.

Once you understand where you’d like to see your business it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get there. 

Who is your ideal audience?

Your ideal audience is who is going to help you reach your goals. But first, you need to figure out who they are and how to reach them. 

They’re also known as buyer personas. Don’t limit yourself to a single buyer persona as this can constrict your growth. Get creative and determine an array of people that can be helped by your product.

These personas are made up of several components:

• Demographic: This is quantitative information about your ideal audiences such as age, location, income, and gender.
• Psychographic: As the name implies, this focuses more on the psychological characteristics of your clientele. Personality, interests, attitudes, and views are all covered under this.
• Buying habits: This is a reflection of both the product you sell and the audience’s psychographics. Will they need a lot of information and time before making a purchase or will they impulsively buy?
• Pain points and goals: Look at what problem your potential customers may be having or, alternatively, look at where your customer aspires to be and how you can help them get there. 

Now write it down!

Create profiles of who may be consuming your content. Give them names, backgrounds, behaviours, and desires. This will help you formulate how you’re going to address them through your content strategy. 

We have a whole guide on creating these buyer personas in case you get stuck!

How does your audience consume content?

Once you know who you’re making content for, you’ll need to determine where they’ll be most likely to consume it. Otherwise, all your hard work copywriting is for naught. 

Your buyer persona profiles will come in handy here. With the information you’ve gathered on who you want to be your audience, you can research where this particular audience is. 

If you’ve determined that your ideal customer is a Baby Boomer, then TikTok probably isn’t the channel to reach them as only 5% of Boomers have a TikTok account. 

That doesn’t mean using a single channel, however. While one channel may be the most successful based on your research, it is still important to spread your content strategy across multiple channels to increase its reach.  

This is also the time to consider what hashtags will help land your content in front of your ideal customers. 

For example, if your ideal audience is health-conscious, the hashtag #friesbeforeguys will not be the best route to their Explore page. 

What kind of content will help move your customers through the sales funnel?

This is where the “strategy” in content strategy starts to shine. 

If your marketing terminology is a little rusty, a sales funnel is a visual representation of the journey that the customer takes that begins with awareness of the brand and ends in a sale. (P.S. we have a blog post with 20+ useful marketing terms here.)

Each step of the funnel requires different content to keep the momentum moving. 

The steps are:

• Awareness: This is when the consumer first hears about your brand. Types of content that can help you hit this first step are promoted or hashtagged social media posts, evergreen content like blogs that have ended up on their search engine results page (SERP), or easy to produce content such as quizzes.

• Interest: This is when potential customers begin to look into how to solve their pain points. Content that promotes what you offer and the benefits of your product can help facilitate this step.
• Discovery: This happens when your potential customer is aware of your brand and begin seeing it as a solution to their pain points. Use content that helps finalize your product as the solution to their problems such as guides and pros and con lists.

• Action: This is when the decision is made and your potential customer converts to an actual customer. Even though they have purchased your product, there is still content strategy at play. Reinforce their decision through FAQ pages and testimonials to ensure they are repeat customers.

A content calendar can help you organize your strategy to make sure you’re posting everything you need to for customers at every stage of the sales funnel. This will help you to create consistent and high-quality content. 

Start developing your eCommerce content strategy today! Click here to drop us a line and let's chat.

How well is your content working?

Content strategy is never over! Trends and algorithms are always changing and to stay at the top of your game, you need to continuously evaluate your strategy.

Create a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitor how your strategy aligns with your goals. For example, if your goal is to increase traffic to your website, what types of posts have the best clickthrough rate (CTR)? 

You can also look for blockages in your sales funnel. If customers are making it to your website and stopping short of purchasing, consider what type of content you can make to address this. Maybe grabbing the attention of consumers is your strong suit but you need to work on converting them. Add this to your list of goals and audit your content.

This can also be a time to compare yourself to the competition. Research your competitor’s strategy and results and see how yours lines up. If you’ve reached your first round of goals, try using other brands as a benchmark and heighten your aspirations. 

Conclusion

A brand is only as good as its customers think it is. Having an amazing product is only the first step. With a strong eCommerce content strategy, your brand can increase its reach and get its products in the right hands. 

By knowing who your audience is and why they need your product, you can tailor your approach specifically to them. Set goals, research your ideal audience, and continuously audit your strategy to grow your business.

If you’re ready to find out why we say process equals success, then reach out and let’s chat!

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​How to Permanently Increase Your SEO with Evergreen Content

July 30, 2021 - 9:00am - by

By: Lauren Wagn, Social Media Manager

We’ve all heard the phrase “content is king”, and while this is true, some kings reign longer than others. 

Content is a prime tool in your business’ toolbox to drive online traffic to your website. This can increase brand awareness, brand loyalty, and sales. However, not all content is created equally. Some content will create a flash-in-the-pan of interest while others will organically build traffic over time.

This is the difference between content and evergreen content.

Evergreen content can also go hand-in-hand with SEO techniques for even more return-on-investment (ROI).

 Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about how to make content that keeps on giving. 

What is evergreen content?

When you hear the term “evergreen” you probably think of lush pine trees lining a snow-covered street; A tree that is thriving all year long.

That’s exactly what evergreen content is! 

It’s content that no matter the time of year, or what year it is for that matter, it’ is always relevant. Evergreen content is not time-sensitive, even in a world where trends move in a blink of an eye.  

The difference between evergreen content and regular content is like the difference between Wikipedia and TikTok. Wikipedia is steady and consistent, while TikTok is fast-paced and ever-changing. 

Examples of evergreen content

Evergreen content can come in a variety of formats including how-to guides, testimonials, case studies, and listicles. 

While the format of evergreen content can be diverse, it’s the topic that is the real distinguishing feature. 

Here are some examples of evergreen content:

• The Top 3 Social Media Metrics You Need to Be Tracking. Social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. While the topic is niche, it will not lose its relevancy.

• How to Bake a Cake. Originally posted in 2010, this evergreen article has been updated to maintain its freshness.

• Evergreen Trees: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know. Evergreens grow all year round and are relevant all year round.

• The article you’re reading right now! Informational articles about industry-specific concepts make great evergreen content.

What these topics have in common is that none of them are tied to current events, news cycles, or trends. This allows them to sustain growth over long periods of time.  

Evergreen content is built to last. News posts, announcements, statistics, and seasonal content will all age rather quickly. While there is a time and place for this type of content, evergreen content can build a strong foundation for your business’ online presence.

To compare, here are the Google Trends results for an evergreen topic next to a trendy topic.

Here are the results for “How to bake a cake”: 

 

 

Versus the results for “Brangelina”: 

“How to bake a cake”, while having some spikes, is generally consistent. “Brangelina”, however, was a hot topic following their break-up then flatlines into relative obscurity. This illustrates the life expectancy of these two types of content.

Why evergreen content matters

So now you know what evergreen content is, but why should you be interested? 

 1.)   It consistently brings potential customers to your website

As evergreen content is always relevant, people will always be searching for this information. This creates a steady stream of viewers that may have never found your website before.  

2.)   It can drive traffic through different parts of your website

Once the evergreen content has brought the lead to the page, internal links can help boost time spent on your website. The more time they spend engaged with your content, the more likely they are to convert. 

3.)   It conveys information to your audience that will solidify you as an authority in their eyes

By using your content to address your audience’s problems and solve them, you can begin to build a relationship of trust with them. 

How to make evergreen content with SEO in mind

 When creating evergreen content, strategy and quality are equally important. 

Evergreen content relies heavily on the topic it is based on. This will be different depending on what industry your business is in. We suggest picking something that you can position yourself as an authority in. What does your business know best?

When considering what topics to write about, look at frequently asked questions about your business or information that beginners may want to know. 

Once you’ve determined an overarching theme, research what keywords may help your content find the right audience. Choosing a popular and heavily used keyword may lead to too much competition. Through your keyword research, you can begin to narrow down the scope of your content to form a concept that your audience will want to read. 

 These keywords can be used in various places in your content, such as:

• Title of the page
• URL
• Copywriting
• Meta tags
• Image file paths
• Anchor text

This will help optimize your content and help it land on search engine result pages (SERPs).

With the topic fully fleshed out, it’s time to research the competition. Put your keywords into Google and see what comes up. This is what you’ll be competing with when people are looking for information on your chosen topic.

Pay attention to the headlines, format, and depth of information in these high-ranking results.

To rank well, you’ll want to produce content that is as good, and ideally better, than what is already out there. Use your competition as a benchmark for your content.

Not only is the quality of the content valuable to the reader, but it is also valuable for SEO. By building authority and creating high-calibre content, your page can attract backlinks, which is when another website “links back” to your post. 

Having other websites link you as a resource not only drives traffic from their site to yours, it also factors heavily into Google's ranking algorithm. 

At this point, you can begin to outline and draft your evergreen content

Need help developing an evergreen content strategy for your business' blog? Click here to get in touch!

How to keep your evergreen content alive

Researching and creating your evergreen content makes up the bulk of the work, but maintenance of your content is still important! Just like pruning a tree, evergreen content will need to be checked on and updated periodically. 

While the majority of your copy may not need any tweaks, smaller aspects may need to be adjusted. Click on any links to make sure that they are still working correctly or review any statistics that may have changed. It is also worthwhile to check the effectiveness of your keywords and edit as needed. 

This maintenance will keep your content fresh, useful, and accessible to your audience.

Evergreen content tips

When creating evergreen content, here are some extra tips to keep in mind:  

• Write for your audience. If you’re speaking to beginners, don’t go too heavy on industry jargon so it is accessible to everyone.

• Break it up into “smaller” pieces of content. Use your evergreen content to create smaller, bite-sized social media posts that can drive traffic back to the original content.

• Use enticing headlines to catch people’s attention.

• Don’t rely exclusively on evergreen content. Use timely content to capitalize on trends and increased searches on certain keywords too. 

Conclusion: start writing evergreen content today!

Evergreen content can be an effective way to get your business on SERPs, drive traffic, connect with your audience and convert leads. It’s also a great ROI as the returns just keep on coming.  

When using evergreen content, just remember to thoroughly research your topics, keywords, and competition before writing so you can create the best possible content for your audience. This will ensure that your content has the desired outcome. 

Ready to create evergreen content and don’t have the resources to do it the way you want it done? Reach out and let’s talk about how we can help you create content that’s right for your audience. 

Did you find this article useful and are ready to learn even more?  Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get hand-picked digital marketing tips, tricks and trends delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday.

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Facebook Ads Not Delivering? Here's How to Solve It

June 14, 2021 - 11:29am - by

There’s nothing quite like logging into Facebook Ads Manager and seeing all those rows of statistics and data, showing you that your ad is accomplishing its goals.

But what if you log in and your ads aren’t delivering? 

This is (understandably) one of the most stressful things to see — those zero’s across the board are enough to give anyone a heart attack!

If your ads aren’t delivering, or you’re running into issues getting your Facebook ads approved, then this is the post for you. We’ll be diving into four of the most common reasons why ads don’t deliver, and what you can do to solve it.

Not seeing your ad doesn’t mean it’s not showing

This post is going to focus on ads that aren’t earning any Impressions, not on ads that you haven’t seen personally. 

Here’s why: sometimes a client will say something like “I’m not seeing my ad, does that mean it’s not working?”

The short answer is: no, just because you’re not seeing your own ad doesn’t mean it’s not delivering. 

In fact, if you’re not a member of the audience you’re targeting with your ads, then it’s a good thing that you can’t see the ad. Otherwise something would be off in your audience targeting!

So for the purposes of this article we’re going to focus on solving  why your ad isn’t earning an Impression share — not when you aren’t personally seeing your ad.

Issue #1: Your audience is too small

This is the most common reason ads don’t show up: the audience you’ve selected is too small. 

Facebook requires advertisers to have a minimum of 1,000 users in your target audience, so trying to be too specific can actually hurt your ad delivery. 

Things that could be causing this issue include:

• The targeting parameters you’ve chosen don’t have enough users in them
• You’re excluding too much of your audience to try and be efficient 
• The customer list you’ve uploaded isn’t matching as many people as anticipated
• Your targeting layers aren’t set up correctly

If you’re trying to be very, very targeted with your Facebook ads, it might be causing your ads to not show up at all.

How to solve it

Solving this issue comes down to answering this question: can people outside of the audience you’ve created see your ads? 

If no, then your ads won’t be able to run because the audience you’ve defined is too small.

If yes, then you can solve this issue by expanding your target audience. You can do this in a few ways:

• Add some additional behaviours or interests
• Extend your geographic restrictions
• Add more users to your customer upload list

No matter what you do, you’ll need to reach the 1,000-person threshold before your ads will show.

Issue #2: Your ads are limited, or disapproved

Until pretty recently, one of the biggest issues with ads not showing was the amount of text in the ad,  but September 2020, Facebook announced that it was removing text limits on ad images.

This is great news for advertisers, as this was the most common reason why ads were being limited or disapproved.

Nowadays the biggest challenge with having an ad approved comes down to how it’s categorized is whether or not it falls into a “special category” like:

• Social issues, elections, or politics. Ads made on behalf of, or about a candidate for public office, political parties, etc.

• Credit opportunity. This includes credit cards offers, auto loans, and other personal or business loan services.
  
  
• Employment opportunity. Ads related to full or part-time jobs, internships, job fairs, and other related topics.
  
  
• Housing opportunity. Ads that link to housing opportunities, including homes for sale, rentals, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, and more.

You can read more about special ad categories on the Facebook website.

If your ad falls into a special ad category your targeting will be limited (you can’t target by age for housing-related ads, for example), and your ads will require special approval to make sure there’s no discrimination happening on the platform.

If your ads are flagged or wrongly disapproved you can reach out to support to get them approved again, but beware: this can take a long time.

How to solve it

Your options are pretty limited here: either fix the ads to fit within Facebook’s rules, or your ads won’t show.

This could mean filling out political paperwork, changing the text and images in your ads, or contacting support and waiting around while your ads have been approved (we’ve done this, it sucks). 

Either way, without approval your ads won’t show.

Ready to run more efficient Facebook Ad campaigns?
Drop us a line and let's chat!

Issue #3: Your ads have bad or low engagement

Facebook wants to show ads that are engaging and entertaining, so if ads are getting little/no engagement, they won’t get shown as often as ads that receive higher levels of engagement.

Facebook assesses this based on three ranking factors:

• Quality ranking. Quality is measured using feedback on your ads and the post-click experience, which is then compared against ads that competed for the same audience.
  
  
• Engagement rate ranking. A ranking of your ad’s engagement rate, including clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Again, your ad is ranked against ads competing for the same audience.
  
  
• Conversion rate ranking. This measures how well your ad is converting, and ranks it against other ads with your optimization goal competing for the same audience.

How to solve it

The easiest way to solve this issue is to create a new ad and hope it gets better engagement. In our experience, a poorly-performing ad isn’t going to suddenly start receiving higher levels of engagement — it’s time for a redo.

There are actually lots of ways you can solve this issue. So many, in fact, that Facebook created a whole guide on how to do it:

You can read more about this topic on Facebook’s website.

Issue #4: Your bid/budget parameters are too restrictive

One of the most common reasons why an ad isn’t showing is the bid or budget is too restrictive to show it to your target audience.

Think about it this way: your audience targeting tells Facebook’s algorithm who you want to see your ads, and the algorithm serves the ad to a selection of that audience who are most likely to take the action you want them to take, whether that’s a lead gen form submission, purchase, landing page view — you get the idea.

The algorithm makes these choices based on performance (good or bad), and if you’re too restrictive with your budget it might be limiting your ad’s delivery to such a narrow audience that the algorithm can’t learn from it.

For example, if you run ads with a daily budget of just $1, Facebook can’t serve ads and learn fast enough for the algorithm to determine if the ads can be successful, and it will stop serving your ads altogether.

On the flipside, let’s say you’ve set a reasonable daily budget (say, $30/day) but you set a tight bid cap at $1. 

Just like with the budget example, a too-small daily budget doesn’t give Facebook enough opportunities to reach audiences who are likely to convert. Since the ads aren’t being seen, the algorithm will stop serving them.

How to solve it

Solving this is easy: keep your budget and bid restrictions flexible enough to give Facebook enough time to learn and optimize your ads.

One way around this is to ignore daily limits altogether and set a “lifetime budget” instead. This allowed Facebook to spend your ad as it sees fit and avoids this issue altogether. 

If you’re set on daily bid caps, we suggest starting off with automatic bidding for lowest cost, and then adjusting based on initial performance. 

Facebook ads not delivering: use these tips!

There are lots of reasons why your ads might not be delivering, but unless you’re running an ad that’s breaking all of Facebook’s rules there’s no reason to let your ads languish!

Using the tips above should help you get your ads approved, delivering, and generating the results you’re hoping for. 

Do you have any tips for solving Facebook ad issues? Tweet them at us!

And hey — if you thought this article was useful, sign up for our weekly newsletter and get articles like this (plus handy industry resources, news, and more) delivered to your inbox every Tuesday morning.

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10+ Enticing Headline Examples To Drive More Targeted Website Traffic

May 17, 2021 - 9:17am - by

Headlines are one of the most important tools to drive traffic and conversions that you have in your digital marketing arsenal.

When we talk about “headlines” people typically think we mean just blog posts, but that’s just a narrow slice of the pie.

If you do any sort of copywriting you’re also writing headlines for social media posts, headlines that encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter, introductions on your web pages, and more.

Why are headlines important for businesses?

A strong headline helps your content stand out from the competition, and can position you as a thought leader, expert, and resource in your industry — all things that contribute to a positive brand image and lead to more sales.

Headlines that are vague, confusing, and that don’t contain SEO keywords won’t entice your readers to stick around and see what you have to say. 

Of course, writing snappy headlines is easier said than done — that’s why we like using formulas to take the guesswork out of writing attention-grabbing headlines. 

The best headline formulas for business

The formulas below aren’t just intended to give you a framework to create eye-catching headlines; we’re also going to go into the psychology of why each one is useful with examples of how you can use them for your own business.

Let’s explore:

1. X Examples of ______ To ______

This headline works because it provides the reader with examples that help them achieve a specific outcome. 

You can also replace the word “example” with “steps” for a similar effect — basically, you’re providing a framework for success.

In case you didn’t notice, the title of this blog post follows this example, but here are a few more to get you started:

• 10 Examples of How Businesses Are Using Chatbots To Drive Sales
• 5 Cold-Email Examples To Generate More Leads
• 12 Amazing Landing Page Examples To Inspire Your Next Campaign

2. The X Best Ways to Get _____ Without ______

These headlines appeal to readers looking for (you guessed it) the best way to accomplish something without resorting to obvious or common methods.

Statements like the one in this headline position you as a subject matter expert who has a “hack” to share with your audience, so make sure your content delivers!

Check out these examples:

• The 10 Best Tools for Taking Notes Without a Pen and Paper
• The 5 Easiest Ways to Grow Your Business Without Using Paid Ads
• The 6 Secrets to Shooting Professional Photos Without a DSLR

3. X of the _____ _____ You’ll Find Today

This headline combines an adjective with a noun, which adds weight to the statement. Using an unusual adjective also helps your headline stand out, which encourages people to click on it.

You can also change this headline to singular form, too. Let’s see some examples:

• 12 of the Best Blog Posts About SEO Copywriting
• 5 of the Most Eco-Friendly Cars for Growing Families
• The Most Important Trick to Growing Your Brand on Social Media

4. Here’s What You Don’t Know About _______ That Could _______

The headline is effective because it piques your reader’s curiosity and clearly states how they can make a positive change.

It tells your readers that, by not educating themselves, they’re putting themselves in a precious and undesirable position. This increases the likelihood that they’ll click through to read your piece!

Let’s explore a few examples:

• Here’s What You Don’t Know About Instagram “Bots” That Could Hurt Your Business
• Here’s What You Don’t Know About SEO Copywriting That Could Harm Your Business
• Here’s What You Don’t Know About Car Repairs That Could Void Your Insurance

5. _______ Vs _______: Which Is _______?

Consumers make purchasing decisions by comparing one option against another, which can be confusing and time-consuming.

Creating content that does the leg work for your customers benefits you in a few ways:

• It drives traffic to your website. Rakuten Marketing found that the average consumer makes 9.5 visits to a brand’s website before buying, so this gives them reasons to come back!
• It positions you as an expert. Giving customers helpful information builds trust and endears your reader to you — all before they see a sales pitch.
• You can target long-tail SEO keywords. Long-tail keywords are SEO gold, and help drive more targeted traffic to your website. You can read more about SEO keywords here.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

• Mac vs. PC: Which is Right For You? (the “OG” comparison topic)
• Facebook vs. TikTok Ads: Which Earns the Best ROI?
• KitchenAid vs Cuisinart Stand Mixer: Which Is the Best for your Kitchen?

6. Are You Still Doing ______? You Might Regret It

The headline works because it implies that the reader is missing out by not implementing the change you’re suggesting. 

Unlike the last example, which presents an option, this headline offers a definitive conclusion that we’re encouraging readers to take. 

Here are a few examples:

• Are You Posting to Social Media On-the-Fly? You Might Regret It
• Are You Still Putting Off a New Furnace? Here’s Why You Need to Upgrade Today
• Have You Put Off Replacing Your Winter Tires? Here’s What Could Happen

7. How to [Do Something] In [Short Amount of Time]

We all want to achieve the best results in the shortest amount of time, and this headline tells a reader exactly how to do it.

These informational headlines work great because they empower your reader to take action and implement the steps you’re suggesting — which builds trust and creates positive feelings towards your brand.

Here are a few samples:

• How to Increase Instagram Engagement in 30 Minutes a Day
• How to Land a New High-Paying Client in the Next 7 Days
• How to Give Your Bike a Tune-Up in 60 Minutes or Less

8. How to [Accomplish/Benefit] In [Short Amount of Time] Without [Expense]

This is a play on the headline template above that suggests an even greater benefit to the reader. It combines several eye-catching things: a specific benefit, a time frame, and how your reader benefits from taking your advice.

These headlines are most effective when you can tie the outcome to a specific number, like this:

• How to Grow Your B2B Business Without Spending a Penny
• How to Land Your Ideal Clients Without Sending 1,000 Emails
• How to Pay Off Your Student Debt Without Working 4 Jobs

9. How to [Accomplish Something] Like [Famous Person/Brand]

This headline is effective at driving traffic because it connects a specific outcome with a well-known and successful example. 

The trick here is to choose a person or brand who will be easily recognizable by your reader, who is relevant to their industry, and to link them to a goal your customer might have. 

Here are a few examples:

• How To Grow Your Startup Like Elon Musk
• How To Build a Personal Brand Like Tony Hawk
• How To Run Effective Meetings Like Jeff Bezos

10. The Science-Backed Formula For [Accomplishing Something]

You’ve probably noticed that a lot of these headlines introduce an actionable way for your reader to accomplish something. 

This is great, but an easy way to help your headline stand out from the rest is to showcase a peer-researched study or other scientific data that backs up your claim.

Let’s look at a few examples:

• The Scientifically Proven Formula For Growing Your Business 25% Each Quarter
• The Scientifically Proven Formula For Profitable Blogging
• The Scientifically Proven Formula For Writing SEO Headlines That Convert

11. Is [Something People Do] Causing [Something Bad]?

One of the best ways to demonstrate industry expertise is to show your reader how to solve a problem or stop doing something the wrong way.

The trick with these headlines is that they need to mention something that your audience does regularly, and then show how it could be causing a problem. This grabs their attention, encourages them to click, and sets you up as the expert by providing them with a solution that solves the issue.

Here are a few ways to do it:

• Is Your Pitch Causing Investors to Avoid Your Startup?
• Is Your Email Campaign Causing Potential Clients to Drop Away?
• Is How You Give Feedback Hurting Employee Morale?

Bonus: A Checklist For Great headlines

Use the checklist below to make sure you’re writing the best headlines possible:

Conclusion: Start Writing Better Headlines Today

Attention-grabbing headlines are the easiest way to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness.

Remember: you don’t need to be an experienced copywriter to write headlines that resonate with your audience — all you need to do is follow the steps outlined above.

If you’d like more useful articles like this one (from us + other industry leaders) subscribe to our weekly newsletter and become the savviest business owner in just 5 minutes per week.

You can also drop us a line and let us know how we can help create content for your website and blog that connects with your audience and increases sales. Just click here.

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The 5 Most Important Elements of SEO Copywriting

April 27, 2021 - 12:56pm - by

One of the hardest parts of content marketing is writing copy that’s optimized for search engines, but is still fun and entertaining to read.

Regularly publishing useful, interesting updates (usually to your website's blog) gives people a reason to visit your site over and over again, which familiarizes them with your business, builds trust, and increases the likelihood that they'll buy from you.

In fact, a recent HubSpot survey found that 20% of marketing leaders described company blogs as one of their "most important channels" for hitting goals.

However — this is easier said than done. In order for your blog to be successful, you need to do more than just “write content". Your copy needs to:

1. Appeal to your target audience
2. Solve a specific problem
3. Show how YOU, specifically, solve that problem

The easiest way to convey all of the above is by using strategic SEO keywords to drive targeted traffic to your website. 

Keep reading to learn how to write SEO-friendly copy that attracts the right audience to your posts and builds brand awareness with your ideal customers.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of writing your website copy and setting up your site in a way that helps it appear on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Where your website shows up (or “ranks”) on a SERP is the result of your SEO.

When it comes to applying SEO to your content strategy, that process looks like this:

• Research keywords relevant to your industry
• Select a particular keyword (or keyword phrase)
• Use that keyword to write a blog post
• Share that post on social media and encourage others to do the same

How Are SERP results calculated?

A search engine’s algorithm calculates SERP results on a few factors, which are:

The content on your page. Things that are measured include the amount of times a keyword (or key phrases) are used throughout your content.

Types of clicks. According to Moz, there are three types of clicks you should pay attention to: First, Long, and Last.

Authority. Authority refers to the number of links pointing back to that page, and how trustworthy those links are. The more popular and linked-to a website is, the more “trustworthy” those websites are.

Think about links like “upvotes” on Reddit: the more upvotes your post gets, the higher it appears at the top of the comment thread. Websites and SERPS work the same way.

The “comment” that gets upvoted is your website, and it receives an “upvote” when a trustworthy website links back to it. Pretty simple, right?

What is SEO copywriting?

SEO is the process of writing content that is useful, ranks well, and communicates expertise and value to your target audience.

The practice of effective SEO copywriting has changed a lot over the years.

Starling Social started as a freelance copywriting business, but back when we started doing SEO copywriting it was more about following a specific format, like mentioning the business name, services, city, and phone number in the opening paragraph of a web page.

Unsurprisingly, this made the internet sound boring and repetitive.

These issues also caused search engines like Google to start rolling out updates to their ranking algorithm and how it parses (categorizes) content on a website.

Nowadays there are lots of factors that go into how a website ranks, but consistently communicating how you solve your customer’s problems through your content is how you write truly “effective” SEO copy.

The 5 most important elements of SEO copywriting

Like we said: there are lots of things that contribute to a web page’s SERP ranking, but when it comes to copy, the most important elements are:

1. Headlines
2. Content
3. Meta descriptions
4. Keyword frequency and density
5. Page links

1. Headlines

Your headline is one of the most important elements of your SEO copy, since the headline is what catches people’s attention and entices them to click and read further.

Some writers suggest writing your headline first, then writing the rest of your copy, but the order you do it in is up to you. We usually write ours last, and check it against Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer to see how it’ll do.

Not sure how to write snappy headlines? Use these tips as your guide:

• Include a number in the title if possible. Conversion XL found that headlines with numbers earn higher click-through rates.

• Keep your headline short. Search engines cut off titles after 72 characters, so avoid long, meandering headlines if you can help it.*

• Use Google for content inspo. Search for your target keywords and pay attention to the themes that appear in the topic, content, and which headlines turn up — this will show you the hottest topics that are getting the most traffic.

• Use Yoast SEO. This handy WordPress plugin will help you optimize your content for SEO by using an easy-to-understand ranking system.

* For reference, the title of this article “The 5 Most Important Elements of SEO Copywriting” is 48 characters. 

2. Content

When someone looks something up, they’re searching for content that meets those needs, and SEO copywriting is how we create the high-quality content that gives them what they’re looking for.

How to strategically plan SEO content

The best way to plan your SEO content is to target keyword phrases, instead of individual keywords. Let’s look at an example:

As we can see, this generic search turns up about 197 million results — not great if you’re a small business without an ad budget to give you an edge in such a crowded space.

Now, let’s take a look at a more specific keyword phrase and compare:

By targeting a more niche keyword phrase, we reduced the volume of results by 97%!

While this is still a pretty sizable number of results, it does a good job of illustrating how targeting specific keyword phrases can increase the likelihood that your page will turn up on a less-crowded SERP.

How to write high-ranking SEO content 

Before you start writing, it’s essential to know who you’re writing for.

Consider your customers and ask yourself: what kinds of questions can I answer for them? As you can see in the screenshots above, the more “niche” you can be, the more likely your content will show up on a SERP, so try to avoid general questions and focus on industry-specific topics instead.

The Google Panda 4.1 update specifically penalizes “thin” or shallow content, so make sure your articles and posts are at least 1000 words long, and include your keyword phrase several times on the page.

But beware: search engines penalize “keyword stuffing” so don’t jam your keywords into sentences in ways that feel repetitive or sound unnatural.

3. Meta descriptions 

Meta descriptions are short, text-based descriptions of what’s on a page. Here’s an example of some of the meta descriptions from the Starling Social website:

If you check out your website’s HTML, you can find it in the <head> section </head>. Updating it can be tricky if you aren’t a web developer, so we recommend using Yoast SEO for this purpose if you’re serious about optimizing for SEO.

How to write eye-catching meta descriptions

Meta descriptions need to do two things: rank well in a search, and be engaging enough to capture readers’ attention and encourage them to click.

Make sure to keep keyword intent in mind. Keyword intent is the reason behind the keywords. 

Think about it this way: if you’re a digital marketing agency (like us, hello), then you might assume that you'd want to target only keywords like “digital marketing agency” — but if someone else is typing those words into Google, what are they looking for?

Obviously they want to find a digital marketing agency, but why? Maybe they want help understanding how to run Facebook ads, or how to grow their following on Instagram. 

Whatever it is, your meta description needs to speak to those needs! Use this tip sheet as your guide:

4. Keyword frequency and density

Keyword frequency refers to how often your keywords appear on your page.

Keyword density, on the other hand, refers to the ratio of your keyword phrase to other words on the page. 

If you write a 1000-word post with the target keyword phrase “professional Manitoba photographer” — how many times does that phrase come up, and how much are you using it in relation to the other words on the page?

Overdoing it here is called “keyword stuffing”. Jamming your keyword (or phrase) into your text too many times can cause search engines to flag your page as “spammy”, and also has the unfortunate side effect of making your content look spammy, too.

Here’s an example of how not to do it:

“For the best professional Alberta photographer look no further. We offer the highest-quality professional Alberta photography at competitive rates. Want to learn about our professional Alberta photography services? Click here.”

Not great, right?

The example above is pretty obvious, but if you’re not sure what your keyword-to-content ratio is, we suggest using the SEObook keyword density tool.

5. Page links

Page Links are how search engines see that your website is connected to the rest of the web and that your content is useful enough that it links to other, relevant content online.

Google’s stated mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible, so adding outbound links to your content indicates that you value what other people have to say, which helps your website as more valuable to search engines.

What SEO copywriters (like us) do is identify target keywords, research supporting and accurate information to support our content, and then use both to create useful and interesting content.

There are no “hard and fast” rules about page linking, but here are a few to keep in mind:

• Link to relevant pages within your own site
• Link to in-depth 3rd party guides and resources
• Link to other pages with appropriate anchor text* that sounds natural

 * WordStream defines anchor text as “the clickable text in a hyperlink”

Bonus: site speed

Site speed isn’t technically related to SEO copywriting, but how fast your website loads play a huge role in how your website ranks on a SERP so we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention it.

According to a study by Akamai, 53% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, and mobile sites that loaded in 5 seconds earned almost double the revenue of sites that took 19 seconds to load.

If your web page takes more than two seconds to load, you could be losing out on valuable traffic! We recommend testing your website’s loading speed using Google’s PageSpeed insights tool.

SEO copywriting tools

Looking for more tools to increase your SEO copywriting abilities? Check out this list of handy resources:

Hemingway App. This tool identifies excess text and helps keep your copy short and snappy (just like Hemingway’s writing).

Coschedule Headline Analyzer. Exactly what it sounds like.

Moz Keyword Explorer. A keyword research tool that gives you up to 10 free keyword searches a month with a free account.

Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List: Exactly what it sounds like.

Start writing better SEO copy today

Following these SEO copywriting strategies will help you drive more traffic to your website, improve your brand’s reputation, and (most importantly) write content that people and search engines love. 

And hey — if you thought this was a useful post and you want to get more of this kind of content (ours and others) delivered to your inbox once a week, subscribe to our newsletter.

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How We Manage Digital Marketing Workflows With Trello

March 11, 2021 - 9:34am - by

At Starling Social, we use Trello every day to create, manage, and track updates to various deliverables across multiple digital marketing campaigns.

If you’ve never heard of it before, Trello is a great tool that uses a kanban-style layout to help teams work more efficiently.

In this post, I’ll share why we use Trello, how we set up our Trello boards, and how we use them to stay on track, communicate with our clients, and make sure no detail gets missed.

There’s a lot I could go into, but for this post I’ll be sharing:

• Why do we use Trello?
• How we organize Trello cards
• How we use Trello columns to manage our workflow

Why do we use Trello?

Trello allows our team to collaborate with clients without calling, emailing, or jump into a meeting. By creating a space where every aspect of a project can be managed, edited, and approved, everyone stays on the same page. We also have a record of everything that happened.

Starling Social has always been (and always will be) a fully remote agency. I’ve never liked working in an office, but deciding to be remote meant that I needed to figure out a way to accomplish the following goals:

• Reduce email back-and-forth since that’s where details get lost
• Create a “hub” where my team and clients could work together
• Keep track of everything without needing to check in all the time
• Create a repeatable, scalable process we could use with every client
• Avoid using Slack (I hate Slack, sorry/not sorry)

Trello solves all of those problems for us. Every client gets their own board, and we use a series of template cards to manage projects, track their progress, and keep everyone on the same page.

Wondering how we set up our Trello boards? Let’s dive right in:

How we organize Trello cards

Every template card is a little bit different, but they all share some similar characteristics, including:

Labels

These help us know what each card is about at-a-glance. I don’t have many pet peeves with Trello, but I do wish there were more options to customize label colours.

Members

When creating these boards for our clients, we add the people related to the development and approval of the task to the template card — this way, everyone gets notified when something changes, and nobody misses an @ mention, so approvals don’t lag.

If you look closely at the example images in this post, you’ll see that I’m also tagged on every card. This allows me to keep track of multiple moving projects at once.

Due dates

Due dates get added when the card is created and typically relate to the checklist’s first item. Due dates are updated as we go down the checklist, so everyone involved knows what’s due and when.

Descriptions

We use this section to lay out the details, files, and other important information needed to complete each card’s task.

Descriptions change on a per-template basis since different tasks require different information to get done. Here’s an example of the “Description” section for a template card related to developing quarterly interview features for a client’s blog:

Checklists

Checklists also change on a per-template basis. When creating new checklists, we make sure to mention who’s responsible for each task, so there’s no confusion. 

The example below lists “Client” as the assigned person, but with clients, we list the person’s name, specifically, so there’s no confusion about who needs to take care of what.

How we organize columns in Trello

Now that we've covered what goes into creating a card, let's take a look at how I set up our boards.

What I love about kanban-style project management workflows is you can visualize where a project is at-a-glance because it literally moves from column to column as it moves further towards completion.

By organizing different columns as workflow stages, the team and I can keep track of the status of every project we're working on, add or update due dates, and talk to each other and our clients about needs and deliverables in a shared space that we can all access in order to stay on the same page.

Some clients require custom columns for specific tasks or topics, but generally our Trello columns are organized into these categories:

Column 1: Templates

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in business is to have a template for everything.

Templates increase efficiency, create repeatable processes, and make sure nothing gets missed. Templates also help us quickly pivot and update our processes when we discover a roadblock or bottleneck.

As you can see in this example, we create template cards for repeating tasks like copywriting, general social media tasks, as well as “one-off” items like events.

Column 2: Assigned

This column serves two purposes: 

1. House tasks that are newly-assigned
2. House upcoming tasks like events, special days, and campaigns

For our team, this column serves as our to-do list, and our clients have a place to add new tasks without needing to write an email about them. 

Column 3: Events

This column is where we keep track of any upcoming events our clients are planning, as well as any events they’re planning to attend.

We organize events chronologically. The due dates relate to when items related to promoting the event are due — usually visual assets, website URLs, and promotional videos.

When we start promoting an event, the card moves from “Events” to “Doing” so everyone knows that it’s an active task.

Column 4: In review

This column is somewhat self-explanatory; items in review go here when something on the card needs a review. Sometimes this could be a blog post that needs a once-over or a campaign video that requires final approval.

Whatever it is, this is how everyone knows at-a-glance where the card is in the process.

Column 5: Doing/Ongoing

This is another self-explanatory column. When cards are in progress, this is where they live. 

Cards move into this column once all necessary information is added and approved. Cards stay here until they're complete, and then they move over to our final column:

Column 6: Done

Anything completed gets moved to this column. Over time, this column can get really long. 

Still, we don’t delete any of our old cards because they might contain important information, details about the approval process, or attached items we may want to reference or come back to later.

Column 7: Resources

As I mentioned, Starling Social is a fully remote agency, so we needed somewhere to store all of our client-specific information and documentation in an easily accessible place.

Cards in this column often include things like:

•  a link to a secure image file with login information

• how-to documentation

• holidays and “special days” relevant to the client’s industry

• a card for social media sizing (I add this to every board since it’s a really useful resource)

• and other miscellaneous items we may need to reference on an ongoing basis

Managing your digital marketing workflow with Trello

The thing I love most about using Trello is how much it streamlines communicating with our clients. Having a single place where we can keep everything means the board’s layout becomes part of our process. 

Because I run the business, I get Trello notifications anytime anything happens on any board. This allows me to maintain a bird’s eye view of everything our account managers and copywriters are doing without needing to follow up and interrupt their workflow constantly.

Since everyone is added to the card, we can @ mention each other when we need something, reducing email clutter and keeping everyone on the same page.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into how Starling Social uses Trello to keep our digital marketing processes on-track. If you’d like to know more about how we bring strategy and structure to our client’s businesses, check out our services page. 

If you have any questions (or want to chat about how we can help your business grow) I’d love to chat! You can reach me at alyson@starling.social", at @starling_social on Twitter, or by filling out our contact form.

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Are Instagram Giveaways Killing Your Growth?

February 8, 2021 - 1:12pm - by

Instagram giveaways are one of the most popular “IG hacks” out there — but are all those contests and giveaways helping or hurting your growth?

In this post, I’ll talk about why all those contests and new followers you’re gaining might not be as good for your business as you might think.

Does this situation sound familiar?

I’ve been thinking about (and doubting) the efficacy of Instagram contests for a while. Back in the “before times” when the pandemic wasn’t keeping us all at home, I was visiting a small business and chatting with the owner about how things were going.

She said, “we’re working with an agency who just helped us throw a huge contest that grew our account by over 10,000 new followers!”

I replied, “that’s awesome! How did the contest increase your sales?”

She blinked and said she hadn’t seen an increase in sales. 

I followed up by asking if she’d seen a boost in engagement with her Instagram content, and she replied by saying that it was lower than ever.

“I don’t get it,” she sighed “we got all these new followers and brand awareness, but it isn’t generating the results I was hoping for.”

Does this sound familiar? Have you been running Instagram giveaways, hoping to grow your business, but not seeing any sales or return-on-investment (ROI) beyond more IG followers?

If so, keep reading:

Why (most) Instagram giveaways are bad for growth

Instagram giveaways have been popular ways to grow your account since the beginning, and not all giveaways are bad (more on that later). 

However, since Instagram changed its algorithm to distinguish fake accounts from real accounts and began rewarding engagement over numbers, everything changed.

Instagram’s goal is to create the best user experience possible. It’s why they abandoned the chronological feed and replaced it with a feed showing the “best quality” content, which is measured through engagement: likes, comments, shares, and saves.

Instagram rewards accounts who spend time on the platform engaging with other accounts and creating real relationships.

How does the Instagram algorithm work?

To understand why contests don’t work, we need to dive into how the algorithm works.

Instagram’s algorithm is programmed to provide users with the best experience possible, which means weeding out fake accounts, spammy activity, and buying likes and followers (which we’ve also been against since day one).

Instagram is too big to track down and shutter all those fake accounts by hand, so the company relies on the algorithm to monitor for sketchy activity, like commenting on thousands of posts from a single hashtag, liking too many posts in a row, and other spammy actions.

This is why the algorithm is so focused on engagement, not on how many followers an account may or may not have.

The two types of Instagram giveaways

As I said at the top: not all giveaways are bad. There’s one type of giveaway that can be useful for growing your business, so let’s explore:

Giveaway one: big, generic giveaways

Giveaway two: small, niche-specific giveaways

Type one, the “generic giveaway,” is the kind of giveaway that hurts your business. Here’s an example:

The business owner I was talking to runs a niche business that sells female-focused products and services. She’s a local business, so most of her followers were young women in Winnipeg and the surrounding areas. 

She started with 6K followers, was posting once a day, and receiving 200 likes and around 30 comments because her followers are very engaged.

She hosted a month-long giveaway where people have a shot at winning a $500 gift card if they like, comment, share, and tag a friend in the post. This giveaway earned her 2500 new followers a week. Now she’s got over 15,000 followers! Great, right?

But, then she starts to notice that her likes per post are down to about 100 per post, even though she has all these new followers.

She also sees that she’s only getting about half the number of comments as before, and it’s mostly from people she knows, not any of the new followers.

She’s also not seeing an increase in sales or business growth.

What happened?

The answer is pretty clear: by hosting a generic giveaway, she attracted a bunch of people who only cared about winning the prize, and not enough people who actually cared about her business.

Her new followers might not be the kinds of people who would typically buy her products or services, have the same interests, or even be located within the same geographic location.

So while the giveaway increased her total number of followers, it caused her engagement to drop as soon as the giveaway ended, which  told Instagram's algorithm that her content wasn’t as useful as it used to be. 

Now her posts are seen by fewer people less often, which means she has to work harder to grow her presence on the platform and turn the limited engagement she gets into sales.

Other drawbacks of generic giveaways

Here’s a short summary of why generic giveaways hurt your business and Instagram growth:

• They increase your total number of followers but decrease the percentage of engaged followers
• This results in lower engagement for your posts
• Which results in your account being shown to fewer followers
• Which decreases the average number of likes and comments
• Which, in turn, makes authentic growth even harder

If you’ve artificially inflated your total number of followers with people who don’t care about you, then Instagram’s algorithm will conclude that your content isn’t as interesting as it used to be. It will also conclude that your followers aren’t as engaged with your content as they once were, and show fewer of your posts to them. 

This starts in a spiral that shows less of your content to the people who are most likely to support your business. 

And, worst of all: generic giveaways attract people to your business who are less likely to buy from you. Why invest money in a “sales strategy” that doesn’t generate sales?

Effective Instagram giveaways

Like I said: not all Instagram giveaways are created equal. 

Small, niche-specific giveaways can be great for growing your follower count and attracting real customers to your business. 

Let’s use the business owner from earlier as an example. Since her business is local and targeted at a niche of women in a certain age bracket with particular spending habits, here’s what she could have done:

• Offered to give away something specifically appealing to the audience she wants to attract
• Something that would not appeal to people who aren’t in her target audience

Sure, giveaways of this type aren’t going to net 1000 new followers a week — but as we just discussed, we don’t want that kind of growth.

A small niche-specific giveaway would have had the following impact:

• More likely to gain followers who are interested in her business
• Rewarding the followers she already has, and attracting more like-minded women who are likely to engage with her posts
• Often cheaper/less resource-intensive than big, generic giveaways

Who benefits from doing Instagram giveaways?

Don’t get me wrong: businesses do benefit from Instagram giveaways! 

But they benefit the most when they’re giving away products they already make or sell, and when their giveaway is targeted at their audience on the platform (not everyone).

For example, our client Portage & Main Press / Highwater Press specializes in educational curriculum material and Indigenous-focused literature. We regularly help them host contests and giveaways where the prizes are niche-specific: we give away copies of popular or upcoming titles, free sets of books for classrooms, etc.

These contests don’t earn them tens of thousands of new followers, but that’s not the point — the point is to get their books into the hands of people who will use and enjoy them, and to encourage people who care about the books they publish to follow them on the platform and buy from them in the future.

These small, niche-specific giveaways help us grow their total followers and increase engagement at the same time. 

Don’t make these Instagram growth mistakes

Running too many giveaways

Just because niche-specific giveaways are more effective than generic giveaways doesn’t mean we should overdo it. 

Remember: contests and giveaways are an artificial growth strategy. They motivate people to follow, like, comment, and share in the hopes of winning something — not typically because they care deeply about your business and what you have to say.

Running lots of contests and giveaways risks attracting people for reasons other than wanting to see your posts. But if you focus on niche giveaways that appeal to your target audience, you can help people with similar interests find your account. 

Focusing on vanity metrics

“Vanity metrics” are numbers that make you feel good, but don’t actually help you grow your business, increase sales, or generate a higher return-on-investment (ROI). 

On Instagram, the vanity metric people obsess over are their follower counts. 

Instagram giveaways: final thoughts

Like I said above, vanity metrics are just that: vanity. Who cares if you have 10,000 followers if only 100 of those followers genuinely care about buying from your business?

While small giveaways targeted to your niche can be great ways of growing your Instagram following, running big, generic giveaways hurts your growth, business, and wastes your time and money.

True, sustainable growth takes time, energy, and real commitment to fostering a community of people who love and support your business — something generic giveaways don’t do.

Do you have questions about running nice-specific giveaways? Drop us a line and let’s chat about how you can run contests and giveaways that actually grow your business.

And hey — if you like what you’ve read here, sign up for our weekly newsletter that’s jam-packed with articles and resources to help you make more strategic, informed decisions about your digital marketing. 

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Are These 3 eCommerce Mistakes Killing Your Conversions?

January 12, 2021 - 7:36pm - by

Are you struggling with low conversions on your ecommerce website?

When designing an online store, a lot of focus tends to go to the homepage since it’s the first thing visitors see when they arrive on the website. However, the real goal of any ecommerce website is sales, and those sales happen on the product page.

If you’re seeing low conversions (sales), then your product pages might be to blame.

In this post we’ll cover the three most common ecommerce mistakes businesses make on their product pages, and what you can do to fix yours.

What is a Product Page?

Product pages are exactly what they sound like: they’re pages on your website dedicated to a featured product.

Unlike a landing page, which is designed for a specific campaign, product pages exist only to convey the value of the product and to promote a sale. Prodigy pages tell shoppers what the product looks like, tells them what it feels like, what makes it better than similar products, and why it’s something they absolutely need to own.

Now that we've covered what a product page is, let's dive into the most common e-commerce mistakes, and how to fix them:

1. Poor-quality product images

One of the biggest mistakes ecommerce businesses make is not investing in high-quality product images and video.

Since customers can’t see, touch, or try the products before buying, your product images need to be clean, high-resolution, and help the customer picture what the product is like in real life.

The internet is a sketchy place, and as an independent seller there’s even more pressure on your business to look legitimate and create a sense of trust with your customers. 

Beautiful, eye-catching images help your customers feel more confident in their purchase. 

Which product images do you need for your ecommerce product page? Here are some must-haves:

Primary images

Primary images are standard, high-resolution images where the product is emphasized against a pure white background (like the images you see on Amazon, for example).

These photos should look professional, and should showcase the product from a few different angles.

Lifestyle images

These images are intended to show the product being used in real-life. This could mean showcasing a pair of earrings on a real person’s ear, or how the humidifier your company sells will look in a living room or an office.

Illustrations

While not as important as primary or lifestyle images, infographics or “how to” manuals or illustrations can show how easy your product is to use.

Videos

Short videos are one of the fastest ways to sell products through your ecommerce store. Research found that customers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video, and you can re-use the video elsewhere on your social media (like in ads, for example) to get the most out of your investment.

Important: while DIY is of course an option, we recommend working with professionals for your product images and video. Bush-league video taken on a smartphone, or in poor lighting, can hurt your business more than paying for a pro.

2. Writing Bad Copy

The second-biggest mistake ecommerce businesses make is writing bad copy.

Website copy should be concise, engaging, and inspire the reader to take action (aka: buy)... but this is easier said than done. Not everyone has almost 20 year’s experience writing for the web.

To keep your product page copy short and snappy, follow these steps:

• Focus on the unique value proposition (UVP) of your product. What makes it better than similar, competing products?
• State all the benefits of using your product as a bulleted list
• Use your copy to address any questions or doubts customers may have
• Highlight any warranties or return policies you offer 
• Write your copy for SEO and include keywords when you can
• Use a casual, friendly tone without jargon or run-on sentences

3. Not Sharing Social Proof

Social proof, according to Wikipedia, is a “psychological and social phenomenon referring to people’s reliance on the feedback and actions of others to determine what is right and what is wrong in a given situation.”

Why does social proof matter? A study from Trustpilot found that 92% of consumers read reviews on the internet, and 80% of shoppers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

But how do you collect social proof? One of the easiest ways is by emailing your customers and asking them to share their feedback. Since there’s usually nothing in it for them, it might take a few follow-up emails showing that their feedback is important to you to get a customer to agree to submit a review.

The second (and more powerful) approach is to be proactive and incentivize your customers to leave reviews by offering them discounts and rewards in exchange for leaving honest feedback on your website.

A benefit to this second tactic is it builds customer awareness and loyalty from the get-go.

If your customers are leaving lots of negative reviews, take the time to respond to them in a polite, courteous way and reassure them that you’ll do everything you can to improve moving forward. Whatever you do, always respond to customer reviews, and never respond with a rude or disrespectful comment.

Even better: reviews are social proof that you can repurpose into social media quotes and testimonials to use elsewhere in your marketing.

Common eCommerce Product Page Mistakes: Conclusion

There are lots of moving parts to any ecommerce business strategy, but keeping your product pages up-to-date with professional images, clever copy, and social proof is the easiest way to make sure your customers complete a purchase before leaving the page. 

If you’re struggling to increase conversions on your ecommerce website (or if you need help increasing brand awareness to increase website traffic) get in touch and receive a free quote for service.

You can also stay up-to-date with the latest digital marketing news and strategy from across the internet by subscribing to our weekly newsletter.

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