social media marketing Archives - Wellons Communications

Tips for starting an influencer marketing program

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Wellons team

You’ve probably heard of influencer marketing before. Maybe the term brings to mind visions of Kylie Jenner sharing a product she loves on Instagram, and it seems out of reach for your business.

But to be honest, that’s just not true. There are options within influencer marketing for many types of businesses. You just have to find the right fit for you—and get started.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing blends the ideas of traditional advertising, public relations and celebrity endorsements. It involves working with a brand or person who has influence in your space, likely on social media or a digital platform, to drive awareness for your brand and/or drive sales.

The sticking point for many people is that they envision these elusive influencers as celebrities with millions of followers. But influencer marketing can also mean working with what are known as micro influencers—a somewhat misleading term for influencers who have a smaller following, but who speak to a specific niche and have very engaged fans. These influencers might reach fewer people, but they tend to give you a bigger bang for your buck.

How to develop an influencer marketing strategy for your business

In short, influencers can make a big difference for you (we’ve seen it!), whether your business is a nationwide product or a local restaurant, drawing new fans to your pages and property and building that bottom line. You just have to find the right fit for you. Want to learn how? To start, you need to think long and hard about your brand and your goals. Check out our best tips below.

Define your goals. As with most things in business, you need to go in with eyes wide open as to what you want. Do you want to drive SEO results for your company with seeded keywords? You might want to focus on bloggers rather than social influencers. Do you want to reach young people with a wow-worthy, trendy product? Maybe TikTok is for you. Do your users have a big Instagram community? Maybe Instagram influencer marketing is the best way for people to discover your product.

This decision is going to drive all others—and ultimately determine how happy you are with the results—so choose wisely.

Outline the ops. Before you actually start working with an influencer, it’s a good idea to work out what that will look like. How will you package your product (special touches might stand out!)? How will the influencer check into the hotel or make their restaurant reservation, and how will you communicate to staff what’s going to happen?

At this stage, you will also want to think about budget. Many of the best influencers have a media kit outlining their rates for things like a blog post or social story. Others will accept products or experiences—depending on the value—in exchange for a reasonable scope. Some businesses also offer affiliate benefits for partners, allowing them to earn a commission on sales. Decide what your budget will be for this campaign and how you will handle it.

Find your fit. Now comes the fun part. Get on your chosen platform and do some research. Find the go-to influencers in your space. Explore hashtags, or check out other brands you admire to see who they work with. Do a quick search. When you find someone you think is a fit, look deeper. What kinds of things do they post? How many followers do they have? What is their engagement rate, and who is their target audience? Make sure they have enough sway with the right people to help you reach your goals, and make sure they’re someone with whom you want to align your brand.

Make it happen. Find your chosen influencer’s contact info and shoot them an email or just reach out on their popular platform. Outline what you’re thinking, and see if it aligns with their vision and standards. It might help to draw up an informal influencer agreement outlining what both sides can expect for the partnership. If this is a paid partnership with a big budget, you might even draw up a contract, like you would with any other ad deal. Be sure to ask influencers to follow all guidelines regarding disclosures. It can also be helpful to provide your influencer with your own media kit, especially if there are certain messaging points you’d really like to hit. Influencers will often pull from this so they can give their followers reliable information, and it can support your overall branding goals.

Track and reuse. Your influencer received your product, loved it and shared. They came to your resort and wrote a glowing blog. They visited your restaurant and posted a swoon-worthy pic on Insta or video on TikTok. Amazing! Now, you need to see if your program worked. Follow up with your influencer about their experience (you are, hopefully, building a relationship, after all!). Ask them to provide any internal stats they might have about performance (page views, reach, etc.). Take a look yourself at your web traffic or social analytics and see what can be tied to the partnership. This will all help guide you in future influencer partnerships.

And don’t forget a vital step—reuse this influencer content wherever you can. Influencers produce some amazing content for your brand, and you should be engaging with it, reposting it to your page and sharing blogs and vlogs to make the most of your partnership.

Influencer marketing can work for you

Now that you have the steps, tweak and repeat. Despite the sometimes bad rep influencer marketing gets, when done correctly, it can be a great thing for your business.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of starting from scratch? Call in the pros. At Wellons Communications, we’ve put our PR savvy to work for years building influencer programs for everything from national products to local restaurants. We understand how the process works and have built great relationships with all kinds of influencers. We’d love to put our know-how to work for you. Give us a call at 407-339-0879 or email will@wellonscommunications.com, and let us get started working for your busines

How to get started with Facebook and Instagram ads

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Wellons team

Maybe you’ve been there.

You’re posting and posting great content for your business, and yet you still see your post reach hovering in the same sad range. You’ve heard about social media ads, and you’ve even started researching how to get started, but every time you fall down a Google spiral, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of deploying ads on Snapchat and Pinterest, setting up a landing page and mapping out a sales funnel until you just give up.

We’re here to say it: Getting started with social media ads does not have to be that complicated—and they can make a big difference for your business.

Just start small.

The why and where

First, know you aren’t crazy for thinking you’re running in circles relying on organic reach. In fact, besides a 0.5 percent increase during the social media surge of the pandemic, organic reach on social has been declining for years. Now, only 5.2 percent of your page’s followers see any given organic post.

That alone is a strong argument for the use of paid social media strategies.

There’s also plenty of opportunity out there. While nearly all social platforms offer ads (Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and most recently TikTok to name a few), Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) are great first steps. Facebook’s ad platforms have been around for years, and with 2.6 billion monthly active users, it’s also the largest social platform.

Because of this, we’ll focus there first. Ready to get started? Check out some of the most basic steps below.

Give yourself a boost.

If all you’re looking for is a little bump of engagement on your page posts and you just want to dip your toe in the social media advertising waters, boosting a post on your page is the way to go. Simply go to your business’s page and select the post you want to amplify. There should be a blue button offering to boost. Here, you’ll see a simplified version of Ads Manager where you can decide how to boost, who to target and how much to spend. And just like that, you’re doing it! While you can read on for more about how to refine your efforts, think of a simple boost as giving the organic content you’re already doing a little more “oomph”.

Ready to go bigger? Define what you want.

If you want to turn that “oomph” into a “POW,” you’re going to need to use Ads Manager. Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with it (we promise it looks more complicated than it is). Facebook offers a variety of options right off the bat. They break down to:

Awareness

Brand Awareness—Increase people’s awareness of your business
Reach—Show your ad to as many people as possible

Consideration

Traffic—Drive people to a website
Engagement—Like a boost, but with more refined options. This breaks down into page likes, post engagement and event responses.
App installs—Promote your business’s app
Video views—Get your video in front of people most likely to watch it
Lead generation—Using a form, get people to submit info, like emails for newsletter sign ups
Messages—Another of your boost options, this allows people to connect with your business.

Conversion

Conversions—Drive actions on your site, like adding to cart
Catalog sales—Promote your ecommerce store to drive sales
Store traffic—Promote your brick and mortar location to those nearby

You need to decide what it is you want to accomplish with your ads. Do you want more web visitors? Do you just want to stay top-of-mind? Are you looking to ramp up engagement on your page? This will drive your choice. While all of these objectives are useful in the right moment, if you’re just getting started, consider engagement, a page likes ad, traffic or awareness as a first test. Some of these other objectives require slightly more complicated setups (great for your continued education!)

Know your audience

Once you pick your objective and set your budget to where you feel comfortable, you will have to create an audience to target. Facebook offers so many options here, you might feel a little creepy—and you’ll definitely start to understand more about the ads you see in your own feed. Think about who your target customer is. Then, get creative creating parameters that best fit people like your best customers. The trick here is to shoot for a middle ground. You don’t want your audience to be so wide they find your ad irrelevant, and you don’t want to be so narrow that you’re missing great targets and not getting bang for your buck. Playing with the custom audiences is a great place to start, but lookalike audiences hold huge potential for later down the line.

Know the requirements

One of the last steps to launching your ad is to select the creative—and this is an integral step. If you don’t create an ad that catches people’s attention, all the hard work you’ve put in won’t ROI in the way you hope. Worse yet, if you don’t create an ad that fits Facebook or Instagram’s parameters, it might not run at all. When you get to this step, you can either select a post from your page or create a new ad. Give good thought to if what you post makes sense for the audience and the platform. Make sure your objective carries through with the right call to action. Make sure the visual you select is eye-catching, and at the most basic level, is the right size and shape. Sprout Social has great guides like this one to help you with this. Finally, make sure your selected image doesn’t have too much text. Facebook prioritizes ads for images with less than 20 percent text.

Monitor, learn and repeat

You’re not going to get it totally right the first time. Even the most experienced marketers and social media gurus know there’s always room to optimize. Try a few things and see what works best for your business. Once you have a little more experience, you might look into installing a pixel on your website and trying retargeting, or setting up a catalog for dynamic ads to sell products.

Truly, there are huge possibilities for your business in the realm of social media ads. You can always learn and grow. But the only way to reap the benefits? Take the first small steps and get started. Still feeling overwhelmed, or ready to move on to Social Ads 201? Give us a call at 407-339-0879 or email Will at will@wellonscommunications.com. We’d be happy to review your goals and put our social media advertising know-how to work for you.

Are you too much in love with social media?

Posted on February 13, 2019 by Wellons team

Social media—and its hold on businesses that are seeking to sell to those millions of fans—has dramatically changed how we market to wanna-be clients.

Businesses like to call on social media because it is relatively inexpensive, allows rapid formulation of messages and makes it easy to distribute information.

But how effective is social media? Does it really sell things and ideas? Or is it more “white noise” in a world where communications have become overloaded?

Social media’s sheer volume offers opportunities to influence customers

Consider this: According to Social Media Today, “…. (the) total time spent on social media beats time spent eating and drinking, socializing, and grooming.”

That’s a lot of time. And that huge chunk of everyone’s daily life offers a tremendous marketing opportunity. But simply lobbing information on an indiscriminate basis without an organized plan and strategy is not the answer.

Because social media is so prevalent, businesses in love with social media often spew out tons of information that may not, in fact, be “share-worthy” or even interesting. That leads to less-than-satisfactory (or no) results and wastes the time and energy of the business.

In short, there’s more to it than simply “Let’s post a lot of news, information, and graphics on Facebook and Instagram.”

Social media CAN work, but only if it is based on newsworthy information

Cision, who prospered for decades as a leading press release distribution company, has morphed to a distributor of information via electronic resources.

Even though the means of distribution has changed, Cision has never varied from its belief that whatever information is shared, it has to have some value to both the reader and the organization that is issuing the news.

Cision’s philosophy is encapsulated the still-relevant article 7 PR mistakes to avoid in 2017. The theme of the article can be summed up in two ideas: you have to distribute information to reach your audience and your information has to be relevant.

So how do we approach social media at Wellons Communications?

We still subscribe to the old 5 W’s—who, what, when, where, why and how—but supported by modern technology and adjusted to fit prevailing attitudes.

When you put the new technology and attitudes aside, it still comes down to clearly identifying who can use your information, when they can use it, and clearly stating and explaining why your message matters.

How we go about that is more complex. How and what revolves around putting together a well-thought out plan that integrates messaging and timing and generates results…. all without breaking your bank

We certainly believe social media is paramount in today’s communications environment.

But we look at social media as a means of distribution, not the “magic bullet” that makes people buy products, services and ideas. Posting information on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean sales will skyrocket. It simply means you have distributed information.

At Wellons Communications, we take a total approach to public relations. We recognize the power of social media, but we also understand the value of traditional public relations, marketing, content, SEO and more.

They all work together to move the needle for clients, and no one plan fits all. There is only one plan that works—and that plan is the one that is best suited to accomplish your marketing goals, within your budget, and delivering the kinds of results that will enable your profitability and success.

Social media is more than likely part of that plan—but if you’re only doing that, and if you don’t have a clear idea of why, it may be time to rethink the relationship.

As you plan ahead and seek to more actively involve public relations in your overall marketing, keep Wellons Communications in mind.

We’re mindful that you only have so much money to invest in marketing and eager to help you use PR to serve as an affordable and reliable means of augmenting and strengthening your overall marketing program.

Social media check-up: Is your business healthy?

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Wellons team

With more than 2 billion people on social media, we’d be surprised to find someone who doesn’t think it’s important for his or her business.

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned pro, social media inevitably comes with a lot of questions. Am I doing this right? Am I getting the most out of it? Where do I even start? We’ve heard them all.

And we can relate! Social media has been on our minds at Wellons Communications lately. Our CEO recently led a workshop on social media, and as a staff, we did a deep dive on best practices across platforms.

A short check-up never hurts. Below are five essentials for your business’ social media—so you can be sure you’re in tip-top shape.

Know your platform
There are a multitude of social media platforms out there, from Facebook and Instagram to LinkedIn and Google+. Each platform operates differently, attracts a different demographic, and has different requirements. For instance, Instagram is driven by visuals. LinkedIn attracts a more professional crowd. Twitter allows the use of hashtags. Understanding each platform and selecting the right ones for your business can set you up for success.
Set a strategy
Just like with any other marketing and public relations tactic, you must establish a plan. Jumping head first into social media without setting a strategy is like driving down a dark road without headlights. Eventually, you’re going to crash. Ask yourself what you want from social media. Do you want direct ROI? Do you want to be seen as a thought leader? Your goals will drive the strategy you use.
Craft your content
What you post on social media defines your company, just as much as a sales presentation or your website. Content shows viewers what your company is, what it does and what it stands for—so it has to support your goals. What does your brand want to convey? What is your aesthetic, visually and tonally? Do you post videos, photos, articles or something else? Take some time to set some brand standards. After all, posting to a personal account is not the same as posting to a business page.
Stay consistent
To effectively use social media, you have to be engaged. That means posting regularly (this is where that plan comes in!), responding promptly to comments and concerns, and actively listening to what is being said about your company on social media. Are you doing all you can to protect your reputation and keep your voice out there?
Keep up-to-date
The social media landscape is constantly changing and growing. It’s essential to stay in the conversation and up-to-date on the latest trends to remain relevant. Are you reading up on changes on platforms or best practices in your industry? At Wellons, we make sure to brush up periodically to make sure we stay sharp.

If you still have questions or want to ensure your company is getting the most out of this powerful tool, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to share our knowledge and expertise with you. Give us a call at 407-339-0879 or email Will at will@wellonscommunications.com.

Social media delivers results

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Wellons team

More than 80 percent of Americans have a social media presence. If you’re not using social media as part of your marketing strategy, you’re missing out.

Social media marketing can be extremely effective, and it doesn’t have to be confusing or expensive.

There are two main ways for you to use social media marketing effectively. First, there’s the organic reach.

Organic social media marketing is content you don’t pay for. If you’re in business, chances are you already do this or have at least thought about it. These posts are generally content-driven and help keep your customers up to date with company news. They can also further your company’s brand.

But because these posts are organic, they can easily get lost in the flood of things available on the internet to the point where your followers might not even see them.

Because of that, if you choose to go the organic route, it’s essential to develop a long-term plan for your posting. It’s also important to keep your audience in mind and create shareable content so you can reach new people.

Paid social media posts, however, can help you meet your goals faster. Through paid ads and boosted posts, you can target specific audiences and have a flexible budget. Money can go a long way on social media, because, according to Moz, the average cost is about $0.25 per 1,000 impressions.

To create a strong social media campaign, it’s important to take a few things into consideration.

Target the right audience. Paying for posts that are going to the wrong audience can deplete your budget quickly and deliver few results. Write your posts for the specific audience you want to reach and put some thought into who your ideal target is to create an effective audience.
Budget your campaigns. Learn from experience which posts generate more engagement and reach. See which posts have a higher relevancy in Facebook and which ones convert into paying customers. Tracking conversions over social media can be difficult, but, over time, trends may emerge.
Choose the right platform. Although 18- to 29-year-olds dominate social media sites, there’s a more even spread of generations on Facebook, according to Pew Research Center. Use the platform to your advantage. For example, if you have a visual product or experience you want to promote, Instagram may be the way to go.

At Wellons Communications, we have experience creating both organic and paid social media campaigns. From the beginning, we’ll customize a plan which can help your company gain new customers and grow the relationship with your current customers. Give us a call today at 407-339-0879 to see how we can help your business grow to its fullest potential.

How to get more love out of your social media marketing

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Wellons team

Chances are you’ve seen a celebrity or public figure singing the praises of a certain product, only to be followed by a #sp or #spon. The rise in popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have changed the way brands market themselves and their products, making sponsored posts all the more common.

But though working with people who have social media pull can have many benefits, it can also pose challenges that marketers are just starting to navigate.

A recent Digiday article goes so far as to call it a “love-hate relationship.”

First, there’s the love. Marketing through influencers can be a great thing for a brand or business. If you have a product related to fitness, for instance, an influencer who has popular fitness-related posts opens the door for your product to be seen by many followers who are into fitness.

But then there’s the hate.

As Digiday points out, because influencers have a lot of power these days, they often charge a lot—and the more followers a person has, the more money they are able to charge. Prices can even reach into six-figures for a campaign across several platforms.

You also might not be sure you’re getting anything for your investment. Linking likes, shares and views to the number of sales they caused is tricky.

Finally, as many marketers have found out recently, brands can’t always control what influencers say or post. This recently came to light with both Scott Disick and Naomi Campbell. Disick accidentally posted part of the instructions for his promoted post for Bootea, and Campbell did nearly the same with her post for Adidas. While both of these gaffes brought in huge attention, such posts take the focus off the product and take away from the authenticity of the influencer and their posts.

So how can you take advantage of the best that influencers offer while avoiding risks? For one, it is extremely important to do research before you reach out to influencers. Find out the demographics of their followers, how many likes and shares their posts receive, and what the influencer will post for the price. While you can never know 100 percent what an influencer will do, doing the legwork and having the information goes a long way to taking advantage of the latest places consumers are going for information.

At Wellons Communications, we deal with influencers on a daily basis. We have the knowledge and resources to properly vet them, and we can help share your product and get results. Call us today at 407-339-0879 to see how we can help you.

ICYMI – Social Media Platforms Widening Advertising Options

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Wellons team

Instagram introduces carousel ads, Pinterest expanding promoted pins

In case social media advertising and marketing wasn’t complicated enough, more platforms are expanding their promoted content offerings. Instagram and Pinterest are both expanding their promoted content services, and they are both making their advertisement options unique.

Instagram:

Earlier this month, Instagram introduced their new idea for promoted content: “Carousel Ads.”

Carousel ads give brands using promoted content advertising more flexibility in telling their stories. Viewers of these ads will be able to swipe left to see additional images and link to a website of the brands choice. Instagram says that this will “bring the potential of multi-page print campaigns to mobile phones.”

The new kind of ad will allow advertisers to be more creative. For example, a fashion company could deconstruct the individual pieces in a “look” and link to where potential customers could by them.

Click-through links give advertisers another way to drive traffic to their website and drive sales.

Pinterest:

Our Pinterest home-feeds have become flooded with Promoted Pins.

As of the first of this year, Promoted Pins became widely available to advertisers. These pins are paid for by advertisers and appear in the dashboard of users that match the advertisers’ brand’s interests and relevant search results. Much like Facebook, Pinterest allows you to target your promoted pins and uses analytics so advertisers can see how their campaign is going.

Now, Pinterest claims that Promoted Pins perform just as well and sometimes better than organic pins, and that brands across all industries saw results. But if your consumer base is anything like this blogger, they will have nixed most of the “Pins Based on Your Wedding/Food/Style Board” pins in no time flat.

Time will only tell how well Promoted Pins does and whether it’s worth investing in. In the meantime, we’ll be watching for more research.

On a related note, Pinterest said that their Auction-based Promoted Pins (CPC), or cost-per-click model is seeing impressive results for their beta users. However, they’re not quite through working out the kinks, and it’s not ready for mass use.

So if you didn’t have enough on your plate with Facebook’s ever-changing algorithms and advertising options, we’ve just added two more to your list. Do you think these options are viable for your business? How do you plan on keeping up with different social media platforms?