Are You Making The Best Use Of Your Social Media Profiles?

Are You Making The Best Use Of Your Social Media Profiles?

by | Nov 8, 2021 | Brand Marketing, Digital Marketing, Personal Opinion, Social media, Social media tools, Website design

Are your companies social media profiles relevant and up to date?

How many of you have social media profiles for your business? Have you spent any time reviewing them recently? How do they reflect on the brand of your business?

Do you know that there are still many businesses out there who set up social media profiles a long time ago but haven’t really looked at them since?

Ever since we started Concise way back in 2008, we have always had the same mantra – use a few channels well rather than loads of channels badly.

In our qualification City & Guilds Diploma in Digital Marketing, we have a scenario in which a business does a search for a potential supplier. This supplier has empty or very old content in their social media profiles. The question we pose is “What does this say about the supplier – how trustworthy are they?” Our suggested answer is that more research would be needed before starting work with the supplier – they might not be in business anymore – or they may just not have the time and skills to keep their profiles up to date. It isn’t helpful to make your potential customers have to do more work before contacting you though – it probably isn’t the best first introduction.

How do you ensure your business profiles appear trustworthy? I would suggest at a minimum:

  • The social media profile picture should be a logo or professional photo of an individual (depending on the business/profile under discussion).
  • The bio should be complete and explain the products and services offered.
  • Accurate contact information or link to website included where possible.
  • Ideally, the cover photo (that big image behind the profile picture) if one exists should be a branded image. This is a marketing space and you can change it regularly depending on the time of the year, products/services you are promoting, or offers you want to shout about.
  • The social media profile should be active – not only post regularly but also reply to any comments. If you just post without replying, you can look like you are just a robot 😊
  • Connections – you should be building up your follower numbers. A profile not followed by anybody is unlikely to appear trustworthy!

Want to take your social media profile one step further? I would encourage you to:

  • Add branding elements to the images you post. This might be as simple as adding a logo or could take the form of creating posts around elements of your branding.
  • Focus on sharing information that is useful or added value rather than information about you and your business.
  • Use hashtags – where appropriate for the channel. This may involve posting separately to different channels. Instagram for example, can take up to 30 hashtags, this does not look right on Facebook posts.
  • Identify and develop your brand voice to ensure consistency across posts and channels to ensure you identify with your target audience and correctly represent your brand.
  • Your social media profile is how you appear to somebody when you are not in the room – don’t ignore the impression you can make.

If you need help with your online profiles, do get in touch or call on 07799 634835 or explore our social media content management packages.

ContentCal undergoes a revamp but has it retained what we originally loved?

ContentCal undergoes a revamp but has it retained what we originally loved?

by | Dec 12, 2018 | Content management, Social media tools

The popular social media planning tool, ContentCal has undergone a revamp.

We have been using ContentCal for about a year now to manage social media posts for ourselves and our clients and have found it to be one of the best social media scheduling tools on the market. In fact, we were so impressed that we wrote a blog post about it back in September 2017. 

We were surprised to discover that ContentCal had been working on a new version. We switched to the new app just over a month ago and, despite some initial teething problems, we’ve been very pleased with what we’ve seen so far. 

So what’s changed?

The first thing we noticed is this is a complete rebuild of ContentCal. The look is more sleek and modern and it’s definitely faster (ContentCal lists it as up to 70% faster). 

ContentCal has undergone a significant revamp.

All calendars which you create for each client are now collated in a dashboard making it really simple to select which calendar you wish to view. The dashboard also contains a link to the help guide and helpful videos showing you how to create posts, campaigns, connect your profiles and customise your calendar. 

When you are viewing a calendar the new layout makes it easy to apply filters, navigate to a specific date or access your calendar settings. You can filter your calendar by post state, social media channel, category tags and post creators. So if I wanted to see all Facebook posts created by Mary Thomas on the Concise Training calendar, I can with just a few clicks.

The new calendar view in the revamped version of ContentCal.

A useful feature that ContentCal have added is the ability to save hashtags. On each calendar, you can save your most popular hashtags. When it comes to adding them to a post simply add the # symbol and a list will appear of the hashtags you’ve saved. 

Creating a post is easy on ContentCal

Analytics now contains more information that can be useful for deciding the best time to post. It even provides you with a chart showing the performance of your posts at different times.

The improved analytics in the new version of ContentCal.

As well as an overall view of your analytics you can also break it down by each channel you have assigned in your calendar. You can easily see your audience breakdown and growth, engagement growth and your top performing posts.

In this ContentCal revamp, there was originally an option to select multiple dates for a post to be published. This was a great, time-saving feature which removed the need to copy and reschedule a post in order to repeat it. At the time of writing, ContentCal has temporarily withdrawn this feature due to it being abused but they hope to reinstate it soon.

One thing that has really impressed us about ContentCal over the past few months has been their customer service. Whilst you are using ContentCal, you can bring up a Chat Box so you can easily ask questions to the ContentCal team without having to navigate away from your work or having to open a new browser window. They are attentive and quick to respond– something that is always good to have when you are using a service for business purposes. 

Need help setting up and using ContentCal?

Have you used ContentCal before or are you a current user and recently switched over to the new version? We would love to hear your thoughts. If you would like some help setting up and using ContentCal then please get in touch – we can provide a bespoke training course for you.

Originally published at www.concisetraining.net on 5th December 2018.

Have you created a Thunderclap?

Have you created a Thunderclap?

by | Jun 3, 2017 | Social media tools

Generate impact with ThunderclapHave you even heard of a thunderclap?  A thunderclap is a way of getting lots of people to post the same update on Twitter and Facebook at the same time to generate the maximum impact. This works particularly well for a cause.  More than 12 billion Thunderclap messages have been seen in 238 countries and territories shared by over 7 million people.  Thunderclaps have been used by event organisers, charities and brands to promote their message.

There are a number of steps required to create your own Thunderclap:

Set up the Thunderclap

  1. Go to www.thunderclap.it
  2. Login with Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr
  3. Click Start
  4. Fill in the profile details about you
  5. Fill in the status update you would like shared along with the link you want to share and a photo. Note the status update (link not included) needs to be a maximum of 118 characters to allow space for the Thunderclap shortened version of your link.
  6. Fill in any information about the cause or reason for the Thunderclap.
  7. Choose how many supporters you will be able to get. You need to achieve the number of supporters or your Thunderclap will not be posted so it is best to aim for the minimum of 100 supporters unless you are very confident.

Get Supporters

  1. You now need to get people to support your Thunderclap by sharing a link to the Thunderclap. People can support using Twitter, Facebook personal profiles or Tumblr.
  2. It can take some time to get people to support, so it is a good idea to set up your Thunderclap at least a month before you want it to go out.
  3. As people support the Thunderclap, you are given the potential reach of the status update.

The Day Arrives

  1. When the day of your Thunderclap arrives, assuming you have reached the minimum supporter numbers, your status update will be shared automatically at the same time by all your supporters. As you can imagine this could reach thousands of people.

Example

This is a Thunderclap I have set up for a charity we are working for.

An example of a Thunderclap which we have set up for Walk with Me.

We would be grateful for your support.  You can experience ThunderClap (and support #WalkWithNyasha) by clicking this link

Let me know about any Thunderclaps you set up.