Social Thinker

12/13/2022

08/28/2021

There are hundreds of social media providers available to every business owner. Most of them offer a free version of their service as well as inexpensive apps to promote a business, offer contests or enhance advertising.

According to Social Media Today, there are 21 top tier providers in the U.S. social media arena, but the obvious standouts are Facebook and Twitter. If your business is taking full advantage of these two providers, you are reaching the greatest number of potential customers.

If you are one of the millions that personally use Facebook and Twitter, you probably log in every day or even multiple times a day. The constant interaction with these providers is what makes them so valuable. Once a page or account is “liked” or “followed” on Facebook or Twitter by a user, your business has direct access to that person going forward and has the ability to speak directly to them.

Although these providers have great potential for your business, there is a fly in the ointment. Those of you who use social media have probably noticed the uptick in commercial posts. Even though social media has proven to be a wonderfully inexpensive and effective advertising vehicle for retailers, there will probably come a time when consumers will stop clicking on blatant ads and even block those posts. These social media providers are, after all, positioned as “social communities” and people don’t log on every day to watch advertisements.

That’s where stealth marketing comes in. Anyone who has been in the marketing field for a while will remember the 1990s, when advertorials were first being introduced. There were several versions of this, including ads disguised as articles, TV infomercials and various forms of guerilla marketing. These forms of advertising have fallen by the wayside due to the steady decline in print media, especially newspaper outlets, and the huge amount of TV channels now available that require multiple placements to reach the general public.

The good news is that print advertising hasn’t stopped working. Print venues have added revenue channels such like digital news and social media that are more likely to appeal to the 18-44 year-old demographics, which are the gold standard when it comes to consumers. According to the Pew Research Center Newspaper Facts Sheet, old school advertising still works with online news outlets, since that revenue stream seems to be growing, but it doesn’t really resonate with people logging onto their choice social media provider.

Building a strategy that will allow you to maximize social media advertising is one of the best options going forward. Such a strategy reaches potentially interested people who may engage with your business, rather than the traditional advertising that online news providers offer. These post an ad whether or not the consumer is a match for it—though for an added price you may be able to target a few demographics.

Creating a stealth advertisement is simply creating a post that you think will attract your followers and has the potential to be shared by them with their friends or fellow enthusiasts. As an example, if you are a marine aquatic store, you could write an article about the newest skimmer or lighting system that everyone is talking about and post it to your page as a review. This is likely to get interested consumers to “like” your post and potentially your page so they can see future content from your business.

There are many ways to use the stealth marketing approach. Try a post about Lyme disease prevention during tick season. Maybe post dog food recall notices as a public service. And now with the Facebook button choices, you can add a “Learn More” button that steers customers to a deal or discount at your store or online shopping cart.

You may be saying to yourself, “I don’t have enough followers to my page or Twitter account to make any of this work for me.” That may be true—but at least for Facebook, if you budget $10 to $15 a day to boost your “article” or most interesting posts, you can build a following. Once someone has “liked” your page, you’ll have ready access to them multiple times a day.
From my experience with my manufacturers, the ideal follower number to begin to produce real revenue is about 11,000 followers. With Facebook’s advertising tools, you can restrict your “paid” posts to specific zip codes. If you have an online store, you can target states close enough to your store to control freight costs.

Any way you look at it, the market and the ways of advertising to customers are changing. Don’t be left out because you didn’t change along with them.

08/19/2021

Essential Social Media Marketing Tips From Beginner to Advanced

1. Sync posts across all social media accounts.
If you're just starting out, it's a good idea to invest in a social media management service like HubSpot's Social Inbox. This tool can help you schedule posts, monitor mentions, track your social analytics, and keep an eye on all your accounts. Similar tools include Later and TweetDeck.

These apps will also let you sync posts across various accounts. Keeping content synced will ensure you post across all of your platforms and introduce followers with multiple accounts to your brand.

2. Republish and update older posts.
If you have a backlog of content that's outdated, update and republish it with fresh ideas for SEO. This tactic has the potential to draw in new readers and take less time than continuously pumping out new ideas.

This can be blog posts, landing pages, and offers that you have on your website. Your social media strategy exists to put your best foot forward by building engagement, and you don't have to start from ground zero.

In fact, this exact post is an update from 2017, originally posted in 2013. We regularly update posts to ensure our readers are getting fresh content on our blog, social channels, and emails.

3. Schedule posts for evenings.
Don’t be afraid of weekends either. Scheduling content launches for evenings opens up a door for engagement that isn't cut off by time zone. That way, even if it's 3 AM in your geographic location, your tweet about your new app update reaches audiences around the world.

HubSpot Life is a behind-the-scenes look at HubSpot's culture, posting content from global offices on social media. During what's considered "off" hours in the US, HubSpot Life features posts during work hours in other countries, like Paris, Bogota, or Dublin.

hubspot life instagram

Image Source

This ensures that global audiences are able to get fresh content during their work days, as well.

When scheduling posts for evenings, avoid content that requires engagement from your team. For instance, an Instagram photo that invites followers to "Comment below!" about something might not be the best idea to post at midnight, when you're not able to engage.

4. Include hashtags to increase engagement
Hashtags are like a golden ticket to increasing your online reach. Common tags like and are great, but try searching for less-used ones like those of bigger brands (such as Adobe's ), or community-based ( ). Those are going to be the ones an active audience is checking out.

As well as using existing hashtags, try your hand at creating your own branded hashtags, like Buffer did in the example above ( ). This allows you to track what your followers and customers are saying about your media presence and product.

5. Use visuals whenever possible.
If you're getting your feet wet with the social media game, it's okay not to invest a fortune into visual content. However, it's always a good idea to include pictures, videos, or graphics in posts whenever you can.

There are a number of free services, like Canva , to help you edit and create content. GIFs are a great way to engage with a younger audience. And never forget the smartphone most likely in your pocket they produce beautiful pictures you can definitely use on socials.

If you've tried your hand at social media before and feel comfortable branching out, these intermediate tips are for you. They're aimed at easing the process of creating uniform content across your channels while increasing clicks.

07/21/2021

4 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

It’s easy to replicate the same thing you did the year before, but taking the time to examine new social media marketing tools, technologies and strategies helps you boost your ROI each year. Learning from what worked and what didn’t in the past also helps you get the most out of your marketing plan.

Here are four actionable ways you can improve your social media marketing plan for 2019:

1. Analyze Your Data
The more you leverage your data from prior years, the better you can see what’s holding you back and find ways to optimize your strategy. Most social media channels provide some degree of metrics that analyze your performance on the platform. However, social media analytics tools can glean more information from crunching your data. There’s even a tool for Snapchat (which hardly provides any metrics) called Snaplytics you can use to view your performance.

What should you be looking at, exactly? Determine which parts of your social media marketing strategystrategy generated the most leads, traffic and conversions and identify the tactics that performed the worst. Next year, you can double down on what worked best. Remember, it’s not all about how many likes or follows you get on social media. It’s about how well social media takes targeted prospective customers through your sales pipeline, so keep that in mind when you’re analyzing the strategies that worked best.

2. Define Your Target Audience
Another key way you can use your past data from social media is to help you hone in on your target audience. The more you know about the audience that’s attracted to your business, the better you can target new leads.

Whatever your industry, your audience is most likely comprised of various groups you can break down based on their demographic, where they spend time on social media and what type of content they engage with the most. Some social media platforms have analytics that break down the demographics of your audience, such as their age, region and gender. However, you can get a lot more information with the help of a social media analytics tool.

Once you have a sense for the different groups that make up your audience, make a “persona” or “avatar” that represents each one. In your social media marketing strategy, you can use these avatars to target your audience with content, ads and products that are perfectly tailored to them. When you get on social media and post as if you’re marketing directly to one “person” you’ve invented as an avatar, your target audience will feel as though you’re speaking directly to them.

3. Determine Which Platforms to Prioritize and How to Best Use Them
Performing equally well on all platforms isn’t the goal of social media marketing. The goal is to use social media as a means of generating leads and conversions while nurturing customer loyalty. It doesn’t matter which platform is doing this the best, but what does matter is that you prioritize the platforms that are delivering you more return on both your money and your time.

marketing strategyLooking at your past data, you can compare your performance on different platforms based on what drove more traffic to your website. However, sometimes one platform succeeds for you while others don’t because you’re posting the same content in virtually the same way on every platform. Going forward in 2019, you want to have a good understanding of what works well on each platform. For example, Facebook users tend to like video content, while Twitter users like short, topical content. Make sure you’re planning your content distribution in a way that’s tailored to each platform based on what its users engage with the most.

You can also use your past data to determine when to post on each platform and create a posting schedule according to the times that deliver the most engagement.

4. Set a Budget for Social Media Marketing Campaign Ads
Spending more money on your social media marketing efforts typically translates to faster growth. Getting more eyes on your content and getting your brand’s message out to prospective customers happens a lot more easily with paid, targeted ads. Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are the best social media platforms to promote your content, product or service with sponsored ads that reach your targeted audience.

Continually monitor and analyze the outcomes of your social media ad campaigns. Your ROI should dictate the outcome of any social media ad campaign, as opposed to engagement or audience size, which don’t always reflect your number of conversions. Think of your ad campaigns like you’re paying for conversions, and crunch the numbers to determine your budget. For example, you might (conservatively) estimate that 1 percent of your paid clicks will result in business transactions. With that in mind, you can decide how much you’re willing to pay for each conversion–or in other words, for 100 clicks. In your ad budget, you also want to consider paying team members like writers, graphic designers or video editors to help you create high-quality ad content.

06/03/2021

How to Avoid: Create Videos That Target Each Stage of the Buyer's Journey.
You need to take a step back - look at your buyer personas and the buyer's journey. What are some frequently asked questions they might be asking when researching? What do they want to know right now?

Like any content you create, your videos should be informative to help guide your leads through their journey towards making a buying decision.

If you’re focusing on a video for the awareness stage, for example, you should provide introduce your brand and offer some educational background on your service or product.

In the consideration stage, your leads are starting to do more research on what will solve their problem, so, create videos that provide comparisons to show your audience why your product or service is better than their competitors.

Lastly, for the decision stage, testimonials, product demos, or tutorials can all guide viewers towards making a purchase.

05/28/2021

Successful social media marketing requires ongoing creativity. The best marketers continually find new ideas to promote their products, gain new followers, and increase recognition of their brand. Repeating the same self-promotional message usually fails to entice consumers. People demand excitement and entertainment. If marketers’ ideas slow, their followers will leave for other brands.

With that in mind, these are some examples of creative marketing ideas and campaigns we’ve gathered from marketing pundits.

Popular Techniques
In an article for Social Barrel, Jane Danes cites NASA, Nike and Adidas as top examples of social media accounts that can spark marketing ideas. They rely on some of these techniques

Humor. Brands, or the marketers providing the voice of the brand, use a first person voice with witty phrases to introduce their products and services. They aim to educate their audience in an engaging and witty manner. Wendy’s also uses humor on social media in responding to customer queries and complaints.

Pop culture. Brands that seek a young audience make regular references to pop culture. They use the latest memes trending online and Internet lingo in clever twists.

Customized content. Tailoring content to the formats of different networks works wonders. Marketers keep Snapchat posts entertaining as possible and avoid jargon, but they share detailed information on Twitter and Reddit. They post behind-the-scenes or photos before they are released to the press, and images that attract attention.

Influencers. Companies with large numbers of followers understand the importance of nurturing relationships with social media influencers. For instance, they might urge their followers to share a company news item, then give a few select followers a behind-the-scenes tour of the organization and offer them an opportunity to accompany engineers or executives.

05/27/2021

Technology has changed the way international educators work with and connect with their students. There has been no other platform in the past 10 years that has had such a transformative effect on international education and the way we communicate as technology and in particular, social media. How can your institution get the most out of social media for communicating with students?

Depending on who you ask, some may say that due to social media, people, particularly those within the college-age range, are losing the art of engaging in face-to-face communication. Yet others insist that social media has only enhanced student’s communication. In reality, it is not necessarily one end of the spectrum or the other but instead, social media has necessitated that people – especially those not accustomed to social media – think of communication differently. Students in particular may actually be communicating and interacting more than they did pre-social media; however, they are just doing this in unexpected and sometimes misunderstood ways.

Rather than debating the type of communication and/or interaction that is happening, international educators should instead be looking to harness the idea that they are communicating and interacting, period. Most international educators have a difficult time having people respond to e-mails, flyers, etc and should be seeking to explore what attracts students to social media and how they too can harness this attraction and use it to capture this target audience in meaningful ways.

05/27/2021

It’s a common myth that social media in business and is both easy and free
But we all know that nothing of value comes easy or free. Technology has made it easier (but not easy) for businesses to communicate and market through social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn may have made it more affordable to communicate with key audiences. But whilst using social media in business may at first appear to be easy and free, doing it well is not. Mastering and managing these social media takes time, planning, effort and expertise. These are definitely not free.

People need to scrap the idea that social media is easy and free, and acknowledge these six ingredients for social media success.

Know your business
Start with the basics and be very clear about your business goals. Consider where you want your business to be in 6, 12 or 18 months. Identify all the different types of products or services you offer and prioritise them in order of importance for your business. Consider who your ideal customers are. Carefully break down the needs of prioritised existing and potential customers by thinking about market segments, customer profiles and their real problems. This information is key in helping you clarify what you say through social media channels.
Social media is nothing without content
Valuable content is the fuel that drives social media. Social media is a tool that helps you generate conversations, and build relationships and communities around your content. As a business you will offer some kind of expertise that forms the backbone of the products or services you offer. This expertise is your key ingredient for valuable content. Use your knowledge to create content that persuades your audience to take notice of you and believe you have products and services that solve their problems.
Cohesive communications
Ensure your social media activity integrates with a strong website hub, a content marketing strategy (driven by the information in point 1) and all other communication and marketing channels.
Inspire your people
Know who will carry out social media activities, how it will be resourced and what support they need to deliver. Do not throw social media at someone who has little understanding of it and no extra resource (such as time and budget) to make it work.
Tools and systems
Invest time in selecting tools and systems for smart and efficient social media delivery.
If you need help to establish your social media plans or are already using social media but don’t have time to give it your full attention, then let us look after it for you. Contact Us to discuss your needs.

05/25/2021

Miniature shot 📸

05/25/2021

Join us Sunday, May 23rd, service @ 2:30 p.m. & live streaming @ 3:00 p.m., as we celebrate Apostle Mark A. Henton's Birthday and 19 years in Pastoral Ministry. We will be in all white attire as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday. Cash App $ApostleMAH5

05/25/2021

Business Blogging Vs. Social Media – Use Your Time Well

Do You Need Both?
Certainly, you cannot manage without either a blog or some social media presence. But which one should you spend more time on? You are building your blog to secure a future for your business, its benefits are there, but cannot be quantified. You need to be posting two or three articles a week to your blog to grow it to a level where it becomes the engine house of your company’s marketing.

Social media platforms are by their very nature, owned by third parties. It is a very naive small business owner who puts all his or her faith in someone else’s platform. You surrender all rights to any content you post on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and these companies can use your photos and posts in any way that suits their own businesses. Your business pages can be closed down, blocked or deleted without warning or compensation, leaving you with no access to followers to explain what has happened.

Blogs are your property, provided you have your own domain name and avoid using blogging platforms such as Blogger. If you set up your blog using free software from WordPress.org and paid web hosting, then you are golden. This is one of the reasons it’s recommended to use WordPress whenever you build a blog.

Yes, you need company social accounts, but they must never replace your own blog, on your own domain, where you own every single word and image, every video frame and sound recording. Why not breathe new life into your old blog and enjoy the rejuvenating effect it has on your business?

05/25/2021

Social media has become the most influential and important virtual space where the platform is not only used for social networking but is also a great way of digitally advertising your brand and your products.

Social media's power is commendable as you get to reach a large number of people within seconds of posting an ad, helping you reduce your costs, and making your ads reach out to your potential audience through these social media advertisements.

With the huge number of online users, which is almost 59% of the world’s population, marketers must not miss out on their chance of marketing on these digital forums where they can reach all the maximum number of potential buyers compared with print or television media marketing.

05/25/2021

Social media marketing is the action of creating content to promote your business and products on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your unique content should be tailored to the specific platform it’s being shared on to help you boost conversions and increase brand awareness.

12/29/2020

MOFEC YOUTH MINISTRY - Ignite The Lights. Wishing You A Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year

12/29/2020

Food Giveaway today at 10 A.M. How wonderful it is to serve those in need. This Holiday Season, MOFEC and the Connection Center has come together to feed th...

12/21/2020

Brainstorming Blog Ideas

Ever notice how some people just seem to have a knack for coming up with good ideas for their website blog posts? They seem to be overflowing with relevant content and know just how to turn a phrase. Sure, some people are born with the ‘gift of gab’, but most of us are successful because we are constantly on the lookout for ideas (and saving the ideas when we find them). The key to creating good content is having lots of ideas to choose from and filtering out the not-so-good ones.

12/10/2020

It’s nearly impossible to run a successful business today without a social media strategy.

Unfortunately, social media marketing requires a lot more than just signing up for a Facebook account and posting the occasional meme. Succeeding online requires a comprehensive strategy, dedication and plenty of patience.

Here’s a quick checklist of what you need:

Goals. What’s the point of your social marketing outreach? How will you know whether you’re succeeding? You need to have clear objectives to guide your efforts—and that means goals that are specific, measurable and time-bound.
Audience. Whom are you trying to reach? On which social networks will you find them? What kind of content are they looking for? Use buyer personas to ensure you’re speaking directly to your target audience.
Automation. Not everything can be automated, but using a program such as Hootsuite to schedule some posts can remove some of the grunt work and streamline your campaign.
Humanity. The whole point of social media is connection. Humanize your brand: Use humor when appropriate, and include candid photos of your team.
Consistency. Regular activity is crucial for social media success. Nobody’s going to keep up with a social media presence where the updates are infrequent or sporadic. Use an editorial calendar to stay on schedule.
Interaction. Monitor your accounts, and respond to questions and comments from customers or fans.
Curated content. If you’re looking to display your industry authority, try sharing informative content from external sources (not your competitors).
Original content. Curated content is important, but hopefully you’re developing plenty of branded content to share, too. Aim for a spectrum of content—blog posts, photos, videos, web page shares, etc.
Data. Are you regularly consulting analytics to see what’s working—and what’s not? Make sure you’re using the right dashboards and tweaking your strategy as you go.
Optimization. Finally, check that your social media bios and profiles are all well optimized. Include target keywords and convey the value proposition for your brand. Refresh your profiles annually.

12/07/2020

Common problems with social media marketing & how to overcome them

Not always knowing what to say
Social Media is a big commitment, and something you have to engage with regularly to see the benefit of; different platforms have a different recommended frequency but they all have one thing in common – regularity. So, knowing what to say all the time can be tricky. Having a basic Social Media strategy will help you with this; by setting out clear reasons why you’re using Social Media in the first place, what you’re hoping to achieve with it (your goals), and how you’re going to measure overall success will help you gain clarity on what it is you should be posting on a regular basis.

Experiencing huge declines in organic reach
For many years now, Facebook particularly has been squeezing organic reach in favour of paid advertising; seemingly ever-changing Facebook algorithms mean that Facebook posts will continue to reach less and less people naturally in order to encourage businesses to put money behind a platform. Although this is a huge challenge to overcome, it’s also a blessing in disguise, and should be seen as an opportunity to change up your content – experiment, and try new things. To overcome this, why not try creating videos, original infographics or reaching out to Social Media Influencers with huge followings? And if these aren’t for you, embrace the beauty of targeted, measurable Pay Per Click advertising and marvel at the wonderful results.

Too much content, not enough substance
This happens all the time! Businesses posting anything and everything up on Social Media constantly, then wondering why audiences aren’t engaging. Succeeding on Social Media isn’t about posting as much as possible and, in fact, if you post too frequently a couple of things will happen:

The platform itself will show your posts to less people

Engagement will fall

All because audiences will start getting bored, and stop liking, sharing, and commenting on what you’re giving them. Audiences want quality over quantity; they want blog posts that provide them with valuable information, they want videos that move them or make them laugh… Take care of your content, and don’t feel pressured to post on Facebook 4 times a day just because someone once told you that was what Facebook expected. Every page, every business, and every following is different. Post to a beat of your own Social Media drum.

Achieving genuine engagement and connection
Far too many businesses use Social Media as a platform to broadcast their thoughts, opinions, strengths, and events – almost as though their Social Media channels were their own professional, online soap box. However, broadcasting into the digital abyss and waiting for the sales & enquiries to roll in is not what Social Media is about. In fact, the key to achieving genuine audience engagement, and making true connections with people on Social is hidden in plain sight; Social Media is about being Social. If you want your audience to engage with you on a deeper level, you need to engage with them; reply to comments personally, ask your audience questions… heck, even set up your own focus group or forum if you really want to – anything that makes those individuals that make up your Social Media audience feel valued and listened to.

Growing your reach/audience
There are millions of businesses across the world, investing in millions of Social Media profiles… lots all saying the same or similar things (hey, there are only 7 truly different stories in the world, right!? You can’t always be original!), and as a result it’s becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to grow your Social Media presence. Oh so many tend to reach a couple of hundred followers on one platform, and quickly plateau. In order to grow your reach and reach new audiences, you need to say something new; you need to give audiences valuable information and new insights. But not only this! You need to invest in other tactics, too. Write guest blogs for other websites, link up with Social Media Influencers, join forums, and ask questions…

Getting audiences to share your posts
We’ve all been there. We create a piece of content we think is wonderful, release it into the wilds of Facebook or Twitter, and wait expecting it to be shared and commented on and liked 100+ times over. Annnnd… nothing. But why? Getting audiences to share your posts on Social Media is one of the hardest things to do. But it’s also one of the most rewarding. Get even a couple of your followers to share your posts on Social Media, and you’ve quickly reached 1000s of new people. The best way to create shareable content is to create something that:

Tells a story

Is useful

Is moving/emotional

Says something new

Consistently creating good content
We all have down days, and none of us are perfect. But when posting on Social Media, you have to ensure your content is consistent; it remains at a high standard and continues to engage time after time. And it’s really tough to create great content all the time. Ways to ensure you’re always creating good content are to monitor your competitors, run integrated marketing campaigns, don’t be afraid to get personal & honest, and create original content wherever possible; blog posts, videos, infographics, and graphics.