Blogging is a great marketing channel that can provide your business with both online visibility and credibility within your field. It’s likely that there are other companies out there offering a similar product or service to you. Creating a blog is a great way to set you apart from your competitors. It gives your business a personality and the chance to share information and insights that will make you stand out. But sometimes, it’s hard to know what to write about. Finding the right balance of entertainment, interest and information can be tricky. So, we’ve put together a few tips to help you create killer content that your users are going to love.

The following diagram illustrates the perfect choice of a blog post. The topics you choose should sit in the middle of the three circles – they should have the potential to drive high volumes of traffic to your site, they should be highly relevant to your offering and for the greatest success, the subject matter should be a novel topic with relatively little content already available.

Share information about your product or service

One of the main reasons people visit your site is to learn more about your product or service. So, your blog is a great place to share what really sets your offering apart. Maybe you follow an innovative process, source materials from sustainable suppliers around the world or have a unique and exciting way to welcome new customers. This is your chance to shout about it and let readers know why your product or service is so great. Make sure your posts are clear and concise, avoid any technical jargon and include appealing visuals that illustrate the points you’re making.   

Incorporate a human element

Humans love learning about fellow humans. Be sure to balance out the product-focused posts with those with a more human touch. You could share the story of the origins of your company, focusing on where the idea came from, the challenges you faced and any key milestones along the way. This will allow readers to feel a connection to you as a person, and not just see your business as a soulless entity. Alternatively, focusing on the people who make up your business is another great way to incorporate human interest into your blog. You could do a Q+A session with some of your team members or share details of what they get up to behind the scenes. Anything that keeps your blog friendly and relatable is likely to build trust with your readers.

Give advice

As a business with a successful product or service in your industry, people will look up to you for advice on achieving their own goals. Compile posts with handy tips, step-by-step instructions or some useful insights into the knowledge you’ve gained during your career. If your post is filled with helpful and practical advice, readers may even bookmark it to refer back to when they need a reminder, which is great for keeping your brand at the front of people’s minds. Incorporating well-designed infographics that readers can easily share will also help increase your reach and establish your blog as a useful and knowledgeable resource.

Share industry updates

If someone has an interest in your product or service, it’s likely they’re also interested in the industry in general. Keep up to date with current news and trends and share this on your blog alongside your own opinions and, of course, how this relates to your business and why it might be relevant for your customers. By showing readers that you’re on top of the latest developments in the industry, you’ll gain authority in the field and your blog may even become a place people visit to keep themselves informed, which will drive lots of traffic to your site. This kind of post is likely to get shared on social media too, which is another great way to build awareness of your brand.

Be inspiring

People are much more likely to read your blog if it makes them feel good. Keep your tone upbeat and make sure you leave your readers feeling positive, even empowered. If you’re giving tips, ensure they’re easy to follow. If you highlight an issue, make sure you emphasise how to solve it – even better if your product or service is the perfect solution! Remind your readers of the values that your company believes in, and inspire them to instil similar positive values in their own lives. Just remember, those reading your blog are already a captive audience so always ensure you give them enough reason to come back!

While blogging can bring many benefits to your business, it can also take a significant amount of time which is something many teams don’t have a lot of. If you’d like support from an agency in creating engaging and well-informed content for your blog, please get in touch with us at hello@socialgamma.com or visit our website at www.socialgamma.com – we’d love to help!

Brand awareness is probably one of the most sought-after objectives when it comes to social media content marketing and it can really elevate your business to new heights. While developing and implementing a content strategy is essential to growing your social media profiles, it is also crucial to evaluate and analyse social media metrics that will make you understand what your target audience is responding well to or if there is a need to revise the initial plan. 

We can all recognise a few social media metrics and some of the most common ones can be likes, comments, views, shares. For someone managing a business page, they will be able to also see metrics such as post engagements, website clicks, impressions, reach and more. 

However, whether you are just starting out on social media or you are already an established brand on these platforms, it is challenging to keep up with the algorithm changes, billions of users and shifting age groups. So, what can you do to take advantage of social media features to generate a more in-depth and accurate evaluation of your brand’s positioning on online networks? Well, social media listening might be just the perfect solution for you to not only monitor mentions of your brand, tags and customer feedback but also get a deeper understanding of the online perception on your brand and industry, as well as find out what your competitors have going on social media and what makes your audience tick. 

Here Are 4 Reasons Why You Should Use Social Media Listening

Increase Engagement Rates

Interaction is a two-way street and there are many pieces of research that revealed the fact that more than half of online users like when brands engage with their audience. Social media listening will provide you with relevant data about your audience and how to engage with. Putting in the effort to craft responses that actually bring value to your followers will take you a long way on social media platforms. Users are most likely to make purchases from brands that are interactive in the digital space and it can really boost your engagement rates, regardless of the chosen platform. 

Monitor Your Brand and Your Competitors

Deciding to monitor your brand’s position in the online environment through social media listening enables you to also track the activity of your competitors and analyse the conversations that take place on different channels about you or your competitors. This can also help you evaluate the online sentiment regarding your campaigns and tweak your strategy in real-time to maximise the reach and impact it has on your target audience. 

According to Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/), these are a few things to help you get started with social media listening:

• Your brand name and handles
• Your product name(s), including common misspellings
• Your competitors’ brand names, product names, and handles
• Industry buzzwords
• Your slogan and those of your competitors
• Names of key people in your company and your competitors’ companies (your CEO, spokesperson, etc.)
• Campaign names or keywords
• Your branded hashtags and those of your competitors
• Unbranded hashtags related to your industry

Free Feedback 

What could be better than your consumer telling you exactly how they feel about your brand and the areas they think could be improved? Positive feedback is great and reflects well on your brand in the online environment but does not actively contribute to your improvement. Acknowledging feedback that highlights areas, where you can perform better, can be an amazing way for you to really listen to your consumers and understand how you can make their experience with your product or service more pleasant, closer to their expectations and your goals. 

New Opportunities

Is your audience constantly bringing up what is not working about a product or what issues or challenges they’re facing when it comes to your brand or one of your competitors? That is pure gold! Here is your chance to not only potentially improve your own product/service to fit your consumer’s needs better but also a great opportunity to think about a new product to help solve an issue that your online community is dealing with and is actively telling you about it. Whether it makes you think about expanding, rebranding or focusing on one branch of your business, social media listening might reveal new business opportunities you are currently missing out. 

At Social Gamma, we provide full-service marketing packages that can help you achieve your digital goals and grow your business through both organic and paid techniques. If you would like to know more about who we are and what we do, please visit www.socialgamma.com and get in touch with us today!

The biggest news shaking up the world of social media (and if you’ve not heard about this yet, have you been living under a rock?) is the planned trial removal of “Likes” on Instagram.

That’s right, the social network giant is testing out a new feature that would hide how many Likes you have on your post from the public. Only the poster of the content would be able to see the Like count, whilst followers and public user would only see one named user “and others” likes this. Instagram are encouraging users to focus on the content itself, instead of the response. Perhaps this is an attempt by Instagram to reduce the amount of fake accounts circulating their network and focus more on authentic growth.

But what has the response been? Well much like opinions about social media in general, it’s a very mixed bag. This news is following ongoing claims of users becoming too obsessed with number of Likes, often relating the number to their own self-worth. A recent report from the UK’s Royal Society for Public Health found an enormous amount of negative psychological effects linked to excessive social media use, including anxiety, depression, loneliness and sleep deprivation. There are hopes that the removal of the self-worth association with number of likes will reduce the negative mental health impact. This change in the network could help promote the positive opportunities that social media has to offer, like community, authenticity and self-expression.

On the flip side of things, there has been a huge negative outcry from the influencer community. For many of these influencers, Likes directly correlate with their income. With these changes, businesses will have to change the way they make decisions about sponsorship. Influencers and businesses alike will be forced to focus much more on other measure of success, like follower count, comments and post frequency.

Instagram are even considering removing metrics on Stories, which were the inspiration for the change. This all comes after Twitter CEO discussed the possibility of removing follower counts from their network.

Currently the trial is only happening in Canada, so influencers globally are holding their breath to see if it will roll out worldwide. Will these changes affect the constant need for validation in our modern life? Or will users simply switch to a new measurement? Only time will tell.

Let us know what YOU think about Instagram’s Like removal in the comments.

Having done a lot of reflecting on our beliefs and our ethos at Social Gamma, we are embarking on a new chapter in our company story: Social Good.

Social Good is a mission, a way for us to apply our individual and collective beliefs to our work every single day. The most fulfilling projects and clients we have taken on are the ones trying to make a positive change in the world, and we want to build them up to something greater than ever before. We’ve made the decision to make a change and a difference.

We’re focusing in on just a few key industries:

• Health, Wellness and Nutrition
• Non-Profit
• Sustainability
• Education

Having worked with many clients in these industries so far, we’ve come to love not just what they do, but what we can do for them. For our health, wellness and nutrition clients we have carried out a variety of web and app development services, as well as investor and lead generation digital ads. We have helped our clients gain key investors, find leads and even maintain and develop their online presence to ensure their continued success. Our non-profit and sustainability clients have benefitted form our social media expertise. We’re proud of the achievements we have made on their channels, both in engagement and follower retention. We have also helped them to achieve fundraising goals and launch successful events and projects. Our education clients found new leads and an increased following through paid lead generation and social media ads.

And this is not just a side project. The team has always had a passion for giving back, from their university days to now. One of our Account Managers, Ana, has volunteered at a special school, helping children from the ages of 8-14 with learning difficulties and autism. She also worked with toddlers in foster care. Our Lead Creative, Rebecca, was a Team Leader for breast cancer awareness charity “CoppaFeel!”, promoting the cause, educating young people on campus and raising funds. The team won a fundraising award and ranked 3^rd on the UK CoppaFeel! University Fundraising Leader board the year she graduated. Our Managing Director and Founder, Ria, led a group called Remedy Through Music, who visited children’s hospitals every week to sing to the patients. We are inspired to this day by the people we worked with and the plans we helped carry out.

So now, our mission is clear. We will use our skills and know-how to spread the positive waves out into the world! If you are in the health, wellness and nutrition, sustainability, non-profit or education industries and you’re looking for a Digital Marketing Team who share an affinity with your values and passions, then give Social Gamma a call. We look forward to doing Social Good with you!

When you’re marketing a new product or service it’s tough to keep up with the ever-evolving online social space. Keeping pace with the millennial mindset, algorithms, demographics and new techniques can be near impossible! That’s why we’ve put together your new ABC’s, to help guide you in your decision making on Social Media.

Authenticity

If there’s one thing we know about millennials, it’s that they can’t stand things that seem fake. A recent campaign from Fanta showed a series of prank clips based around their new flavours. These videos were staged to look like common viral videos that quickly gain popularity – but these didn’t. Many of the Facebook comments were simply about how “clearly staged” and “cringy” these clips were.

This just goes to show that non-authentic content is an immediate no for millennials. Authenticity creates trust between you and your followers, something that is key for customer retention. This is one of the reasons that influencer marketing is overtaking celebrity endorsements on social media: it feels far more authentic.

Balance

It’s important to consider the main purpose of social media: to be social. If a brand’s account is all product pushing all the time, then followers can get bored quickly. They come to social media to be amused, to find fun content they want to share around, and occasionally for recommendations and shopping. A balance between personal posts that remind your followers there is a face/team behind the brand, and posts discussing the product/service can help with retaining followers and long-term brand awareness. However, make sure these personal posts are authentic and in keeping with the brand’s tone of voice.

Clarity

Make it clear who you are as a brand from day one. If you are a serious company then take your social media seriously by posting industry knowledge, important events and milestones within the company and present your product/service as a clear-cut solution to something. Memes have no place on a serious company’s feed and can cause confusion amongst followers. If you are a quirky, friendly brand then make it clear with a conversational tone of voice and humorous, highly personal content.

Having a social media marketing team behind your brand is paramount to hitting these key points regularly with your content, whilst keeping up with the finer details of the online world. Even great content needs expert knowledge on the best times of day to post, the best channels for a brand, and optimisation of hashtags. These things ensure your content is not just being seen, but being seen by the right people, in the right light. With all this behind you, there should be no trouble with increasing the number one thing that matters on social media: engagement.

With these simple rules in mind, you should have the components necessary for a flourishing social feed. All you need now is an excellent product or service to show people!

Contact us for further information on how Social Gamma can help you present your brand online.

Businesses nowadays are no stranger to the cultural phenomenon that is Instagram. With over a billion users on the platform, those who don’t get on board risk missing out on a whole untapped double-tapping audience.

More recently, businesses have started to realise that simply having an Instagram account isn’t enough. There is a fine art to ‘gramming’ for your business, so read on to find out about some of the top businesses taking it in their stride.

1: @balletoperadeparis

Copyright @balletoperadeparis on Instagram

The ballet uses banners (pictures spread across multiple posts) on Instagram to elevate their already stunningly beautiful photographs. Amongst these is sneak peak shots at practices, to entice followers and excite them about shows and events to come.

2: @lego

Copyright @lego on Instagram

You might expect a Lego Instagram to be full of cute shots of kids playing with bricks… but you’d be wrong. Lego have done something really clever by curating their feed to be Lego built images of popular culture, and beautifully directed images of their new products. See unique film announcements, or even a life size carriage for the Royal Wedding.

3: @gucci

Copyright @gucci on Instagram

This renowned high fashion brand ensures all their posts aren’t just basic product images. They contain eccentric, over the top foregrounds and backgrounds laid out in an almost obsessive manner, to give their feed the feel of excess. You are buying into the lifestyle, not the product.

4: @jessicavwalsh

Copyright @jessicavwalsh on Instagram

Whilst she might not be a business selling a product, Jessica Walsh is selling her design services, and he has a beautiful Instagram feed to show the world exactly what she’s all about. This kaleidoscope of colour and surprising imagery is designed to freak you out and challenge perceptions of modern life.

5: Haagen-Dazs (multiple handles)

Copyright @haagendazs_us on Instagram

The popular ice cream brand is updating themselves to be more accessible to millennials. Their redesign covers packaging, instore look and online presence, with the whole direction of the visual identity being to make it “instagrammable”. It’s said to be the biggest packaging overhaul in almost 20 years.

Instagram itself underwent a rebrand to keep up with the beast it evolved into. They understood that they were no longer just a photo sharing service, but a massive opportunity for businesses. To reflect this, they changed their logo to the simple shape with a gradient background you see today. People took a while to get used to it, but now curating your feed is a huge deal, with whole marketing teams dedicated to perfecting posts for business.

https://vimeo.com/166138104

To find out more about how Social Gamma can boost your social media, drop us an email via our contact page.