Why An Employer Branding Strategy Is Important

What comes to mind when you think about your company’s brand? Maybe it’s the logo or the brand messaging, or perhaps you think about how the wider world sees your organisation.

Whilst these tend to be what springs to mind first, there’s another element to a company’s branding that is arguably as vital but often neglected. Employer branding is a crucial component of attracting and retaining talent for purpose-driven organisations, and in our post-Covid, working from home, competitive business world, it’s more important than ever.

In this post, we take a look at the benefits you can expect to see when you establish a strategy for employer branding and, crucially, how you go about achieving it.

Is Employer Branding For Me?

If you want to increase your job pool of qualified candidates, save money and improve how your company is perceived online, then yes!

For recruiting and talent acquisition, a positive employer brand is everything. In fact, you can actually save money on recruitment by having a strong employer brand strategy. 

Just think about a potential recruit logging onto your website to find genuine employees talking about how great it is to work at your company – it’s a smart way to entice those candidates without spending a penny on external advertising.

Creating Candidate Personas

You probably have buyer personas that help you create and target online content. Now, think about taking the same approach with candidates. Building candidate personas is a brilliant way of branding your company for potential recruits.

Consider demonstrating internal work culture with photos and videos generated by employees to genuinely showcase what it’s like to work at your company or compose blog posts on company events. Video testimonials are also a surefire way to give your employer brand a boost – current and former employees who’ve had a great experience working at your company can be your biggest advocates. 

These pieces of content can be seamlessly mixed in with your consumer-facing content through your social channels, and with a staggering 1 in 4 job seekers using social media as their primary tool for job searching and research, content like this can have a significant impact on the way future employees interpret your employer brand.

Don’t Neglect Career Sites

You have full control of your social channels and website, but your company is represented elsewhere on the internet too. Career sites like Glassdoor are go-to’s for potential recruits, so it’s important to pay attention to these websites.

As part of your employer branding strategy, you should dedicate time to address negative comments on these sites. Don’t deny issues from disgruntled former employees or get defensive – instead, address the issues and show how your company is working to improve and move on. You can never have total control over your employer brand, but you can help shape the narrative by being honest on sites like these.

CEO Branding

That’s right, it’s crucial that your CEO is factored into your branding strategy too. 

Think about some of the biggest companies in the world – Tesla, Microsoft, Meta – the CEOs of these firms are synonymous with their brands. Any news story about Tesla has Elon Musk’s face plastered all over it; ‘Meta’ and ‘Zuckerberg’ are connected in Perpetuum. 

The reputation of your CEO is closely tied to the reputation of the brand they lead. Research by Brand Finance found that particularly outspoken CEOs have the biggest influence on the way customers perceive their brands (and surprise, surprise – it’s not always in a positive way!)

CEO branding is not just for large corporations; in fact, it can be most effective in smaller start-ups and founder-run organisations. Demonstrating the founder’s expertise and putting them front and centre can help build trust among both consumers and investors.

Bringing out the best of the CEO without ensuing reputational liability is a very delicate balancing act and only works if the leader embodies and projects the core brand values. 

So, how do you harness this unique marketing tool? Here are 3 considerations when building your CEO brand:

  1. Define the CEO’s personal brand

Begin the process by defining the CEO’s executive personal brand. Work closely with the CEO for this piece of work. Consider their personality, strengths, vision, goals and just what sort of a CEO they are. 

  1. Look to the Future

Consumers want CEOs who are forward-thinking and able to anticipate their needs (sometimes before they even know what they want themselves.) Think about how Mark Zuckerberg articulates innovation at Meta – his ‘big picture’ thinking shows he welcomes change and growth and is undeterred by obstacles. He clearly expresses this long-term vision for the company (thinking in terms of decades, not quarters or years), stating the brands’ internal values in 2022 as – “move fast”, “build awesome things”, and “live in the future”. 

  1. Don’t be scared of failure

Once you incorporate your CEO into your employer branding strategy, you need to be prepared to embrace all that comes with that. Being seen is a huge part of CEO branding, so they need to be confident to get out there and show their face and be prepared that not everyone will like them all the time. 

When done well, CEOs are perhaps one of the most underrated marketing tools that you have at your disposal.

We hope you try out some of these employer branding tips. Not only will these techniques benefit employee retention and fuel talented applicants, but they can positively affect other aspects of your company as well.

Get to Know the LinkedIn Algorithm

The goal of the LinkedIn algorithm is to deliver the most relevant content to each user’s newsfeed. LinkedIn wants to keep traffic on their website and stop irrelevant or low-quality content from showing on newsfeeds.

Looking at clicks, likes, comments, and shares, LinkedIn’s algorithm fills newsfeeds with content that seems most relevant to a user’s actions on the platform. Knowing this can help you create and share relevant and helpful content that will encourage more interactions.

So, you need to define your business goals for the platform and think about whom you are trying to reach on LinkedIn. For example, are you trying to raise brand awareness for your company or collect sales leads? Or maybe you want to increase your influence as a thought leader in your industry?

Create a LinkedIn content marketing strategy around what your target audience would find most valuable, and post content that will help you reach your company’s goals for being on the platform.

As LinkedIn wants to keep traffic on the platform itself, here are a few ways you can satisfy LinkedIn’s goal while also delivering the most relevant and valuable content to your followers:

  • Post-text-only updates that don’t include URLs that lead away from LinkedIn. If you really want to include a URL that directs users off of LinkedIn, try adding it as the first comment of your post.
  • Use LinkedIn native video instead of linking it to YouTube or another website.
  • Publish Articles on LinkedIn’s Blogging Platform, Pulse, instead of linking them to your website.

On LinkedIn, videos are vital

Videos are 5x more likely to start a conversation, plus they tend to convert better. Members spend almost 3 x more time watching videos than static content pieces. Because video is the most important medium on LinkedIn, make sure you use LinkedIn native video and upload videos directly to the platform instead of linking to YouTube or other websites. This will also satisfy LinkedIn’s goal to keep users on the platform. In addition, you can share your LinkedIn videos to other social media platforms to drive more traffic to your LinkedIn page. LinkedIn videos can be up to 10 minutes long. Use short and concise descriptions for the video so connections know what it is about and are encouraged to watch. Since videos are the most successful form of content on LinkedIn, be sure that the videos are lightweight since 57% of LinkedIn users access the app via mobile phone. Stay away from Flash because that won’t work on iPhones or iPads.

Some advanced video tips:

  • The optimal length of a video is about three minutes. It’s enough time to be valuable to viewers, but not so long that they lose interest.
  • Include an SRT file with your upload, which will add captions so that even your connections who can’t listen to the audio can still watch your video and know what’s going on.

When using an image, it is good to include statistics from time to time

LinkedIn is all about networking; if people want to share an image, they want to appear knowledgeable. If your image has statistics or quick facts on it, it is more likely to be shared across LinkedIn. Though people want to see statistics and quick infographic videos, remember that users want to know there are still people behind the company. Don’t be afraid to show company milestones or highlight your company leaders! People want to see the human side of your brand. But don’t talk about yourselves too much — find the balance between highlighting your company’s human side as well as sharing other relevant content for your target audience.

Publish Articles on LinkedIn’s Blogging Platform, Pulse

Similar to the intent of native LinkedIn video, LinkedIn’s Pulse platform aims to keep traffic on the site when its users are sharing long-form content with their connections. One way to start incorporating Pulse into your LinkedIn marketing strategy is by using your company’s existing blog posts and repurposing them as LinkedIn articles. Be sure to edit the content to best fit the interests of the LinkedIn audience you are targeting. Then, after publishing the article, share the link in a post using excerpts from your article to entice followers. You can do this right after publishing the article or later, following these steps:

  1.  Scroll below to the end of the article
  2.  Click on ‘Share’
  3.  Choose ‘Share in a post’

This keeps users on LinkedIn, gives you content to share on your business page and helps drive attention to your content. Other types of LinkedIn articles you could publish could include company announcements, new hires, or your company’s reaction to trending industry news.

Share Your LinkedIn Content at the Optimal Time and at the Optimal Consistency

Now you know what to post, but when is the best time to post it? Timing matters on LinkedIn, and a little research on your audience goes a long way when deciding when to post your content so that it can reach as many people as possible.

Apart from the purpose/goal of your posts and the topics that will be of the most value to your audience, your social media strategy should also include the optimal time the posts should be shared to reach the largest number of people. When trying to find the optimal time to post, you should consider your buyer personas, time zones your connections live in, and your industry as a whole.

Make sure you target the right people

Most B2B marketers close their eyes and shoot their shots. However, once you have refined your strategy, it will make refining your target audience a lot easier.

The Post Targeted updates feature is a great tool for audience targeting on LinkedIn. These updates help tailor content to the specific audiences you are targeting. The posts will only target the corresponding feeds. In order to use this feature, your page must have 300 followers.

Posting a targeted update is quite simple. First, you have to draft your updates on the Home tab of your super content admin view. Then click the dropdown menu to select the audience you want to target. Next, add the target audience’s criteria on the target audience setting page. Then click ‘Save’ to secure this template and post!

The estimated target follower audience is the number of potential people who will see the post. If your targeted posts aren’t reaching a broad enough audience, remove some targeting criteria to broaden your audience. Employees will not be notified when posting a targeted update.

LinkedIn is a great platform where you can grow, learn, and connect with customers and professionals from your industry.

As paid advertising is used more widely across social media and organic reach gets tossed to the side, we’ve put together a free guide to help you boost your organic reach on LinkedIn.

Attract Top Talent with Your Organic LinkedIn Posts

Talent attraction goes beyond recruiting. It is about having a long-term employee retention strategy in place. And in the current age and time, staying relevant and true to your business goals is crucial. Here are some innovative talent attraction strategies that can help you attract and find your industry’s top talent to fill open job roles now and in the future and retain them for a long time.

Highlight your employer branding

Before applying for a job, employees tend to look for reputable companies that share the same mission as theirs. To leverage this, increasing your brand visibility is vital. No company can flourish without a strong employer brand. And to prosper, you need employees that identify with your values. Thus, focusing on employer branding is an effective talent acquisition strategy. Utilise your LinkedIn company page so potential candidates can assess their fit and align their goals with that of your company. Create a compelling employer brand that is representative of your company’s core values. A well-developed employer brand is a key to attracting top talent. This way, potential candidates can assess their fit and align their goals with that of your company.

Plan and write crisp job descriptions

A well-crafted job description can make you stand out as a company that values talent. Keeping this in mind, enticing job descriptions work well as a talent attraction strategy.

Job descriptions should have:

  • Your company culture
  • Job requirements
  • Pay scale
  • Company profile
  • Any benefits you may offer
  • Company’s website or blog

Build connections through social media recruiting

Social media recruiting is a talent acquisition strategy you should definitely not miss. Social media networks serve as great platforms to search for potential hires and be found by them. Information shared on social media tends to have a higher consumption rate. Share your company information on your LinkedIn company page and other social media networks in the form of short videos, infographics, or posts. Connect with candidates on social media and let them know what differentiates you from the others. Besides lowering your recruiting costs, social media recruitment gets in touch with a wider talent pool in a short period. This will help you build a strong online reputation and connect with the industry’s top talent around the globe. Social media recruitment also doubles up as a method to boost employer brand.

LinkedIn is by far the largest global professional network, with more than 770 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Make sure you get the most of it to attract top talent.

Download our FREE guide to learn how to boost your organic reach on LinkedIn

Instagram Organic Marketing Best Practices

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social networks worldwide.

With so many options and variety in how to showcase your service or product, it is natural you may find it a little daunting.

With a good organic Instagram marketing strategy, you can increase brand awareness, gain new followers, grow engagement, support customer service with useful information, and make sales by highlighting a product or service.

So you must be wondering how you can achieve all this.

Creating a consistent style, planning content, and knowing when to post is key, but here we are presenting Instagram best practices for 2021, which may help your brand easily rise above the rest in 2022.

1. The first and the most important thing is to know your audience.

Instagram has over 1 billion users, making it an ideal platform for your brand to get the recognition it deserves.

So, who is your ideal customer?

Think about breaking down your audience into age, gender, location, and interests.

Once you’ve found who your target audience is, ask yourself what else they may be interested in. Then, make sure your content matches your audience’s interests.

To gain traffic, relevant audience, and brand recognition on Instagram, it’s important to set your main, and most importantly, realistic goals.

We all want thousands of followers, but let’s start with your first thousand and grow from there. The key to gaining a new audience lies in keeping consistent content that is attractive, starts a conversation, and makes your followers want to share it with others.

Keeping dedicated followers is equally as important as gaining new ones. Keeping content fresh, attractive, and tailored to the audience keeps the existing audience engaged, while like-minded people are attracted to join in the conversation.

2. Create a style guide

Instagram is a visual app, so when it comes to it, visuals are everything. Find your style and make it consistent. Ideally, you should stick to colour combinations and visual styles that fit your brand persona.

Having a consistent style keeps your grid neat and your brand recognisable when it pops up on someone’s feed.

3. Make sure you interact with your community.

An organic Instagram marketing strategy doesn’t just mean broadcasting to the world. It has to be interactive.

Interaction is what turns your Instagram profile into a community. Followers will pick up on the fact that you’re present, interested, and engaged.

Make sure you respond to comments and direct messages daily and comment or react to posts that tag your brand. You can also comment on posts relevant to your brand and industry.

Instagram is the perfect platform to create intriguing and captivating visual stories about your brand. So start creating visuals to tell engaging stories about your brand history, your customer stories, your employee experiences, or your brand impact.

High-quality content that encourages your audience to like, comment, or share, is always a win.

4. Get your community involved

Inviting your community to help share your brand’s story on their accounts is a great way to help reach new fans and customers. Start driving user-generated content by following these three strategies:

1.      Start a hashtag for your brand and encourage your followers to use it

2.      Celebrate your community by showcasing their content in your feed and stories

3.      Include a strong CTA

Think about what action you want your audience to take after seeing your post. For example, do you want them to like, comment, share your post in their stories? This can help you with creating the right copy for your post to make your community members engage with your content.

Building a solid relationship with your customer base is really important. You can also create special moments that your customers can be part of via Instagram feed, Stories, and more.

5. Measure performance and find the best time to post

Using Instagram’s insights, you can see how your audience engages with your content. The better you understand how and when your audience engages, the easier it is to know what to post.

Click on ‘View insights’ on the bottom left of any post. From here, you can see the number of likes, comments, shares, and more. Insights offer an in-depth look with reach and impressions.

Compare these insights on each of your posts to see what kind of content your audience is looking for. 

Once you identify the posts that resonate with your community most, take inspiration from those posts for future ones.

Take note of the time posted as well, since this can give you a good idea of when your audience is most active. Once you’re on the insights page, tap the ‘your audience’ section to gain insight into your followers and audience. This covers location, age, gender, and most active times. Under most active times, you can see when the best time to post on Instagram is. From what day of the week to what hour works best.

Timing posts to when the audience is most likely to be online increases the reach of your content.

6. Use a content calendar

Consistency is key, so the ability to pre-plan and schedule your posts ahead of time ensures that you can keep up. 

Using a content calendar will help you organise your content in one place and keep your style consistent. In addition, having your content and captions ready ahead of time saves you the trouble of scrambling for a new post. 

When planning content, think about how often you want new content on your page. You don’t have to post every day to be successful, but post often enough that people don’t forget about you. Make sure you’re not posting too often that people’s timelines are flooded with your posts. This could lead to an unfollow, or Instagram’s algorithm will simply lower your posts’ reach by not showing your posts in the newsfeed.

Planning your content can set you up for a whole month of consistent, on-brand, and engaging posts.

8. Use hashtags to boost content discovery

Hashtags are your best friends on Instagram. They help your content show up in the search results of said hashtags and in the Explore pages of people who’ve viewed or interacted with similar content. So hashtags on Instagram are a great way to boost content discovery and overall brand visibility.

Make the most of niche hashtags and industry-related hashtags that can help you reach the right audience. And don’t forget to share branded hashtags to encourage user-generated content.

9. Partner with influencers to reach new audiences

With the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people through their posts, influencers can add fuel to your Instagram promotion efforts. Influencer marketing is another way to get your brand in front of new audiences, and the trust that audiences have in influencers’ recommendations can be a huge boost to your customer base.

When partnering with influencers, it’s crucial that you work with people whose audience base overlaps with yours. In other words, make sure you only partner with influencers who can reach your target audience.

10. Stay on top of Instagram changes and updates

The platform has added on to popular content options like Stories and IGTV to introduce features like Reels and Instagram Shopping. Moreover, it has even enhanced existing features to introduce trends such as augmented reality filters to Instagram Stories. Brands can even create custom AR filters to promote audience engagement and gain better visibility.

When it comes to Instagram stories, they allow for great engagement with your audience.

Use these best practices to make your brand stories a bit more creative:

– Use interactive features: Think about using the vote button, quiz button, and question/answer buttons. These interactive elements not only allow you to get to know your audience but this gives great insight into what your followers like. Lay these elements over brand photos or videos.

– Try the create feature: a great way to share new content without having to take photos or video. Use fun GIPHY’s, create lists, and other fun content that engages with your audience.

Think about what your audience may have in common with you and start a conversation. Great engagement can come from fun, interactive content.

– Highlight your most important stories: Instagram highlights showcase important information in a convenient spot. When users first find a new Instagram page, they usually head to their profile to see what they have to offer.

By adding important information such as weekly specials or special services, company achievements, or job postings, users can easily interact with the page and become quickly informed.

Another great novelty on Instagram is the Instagram Reels – quick, fun videos that allow a bit more personality over a traditional post or story.

If you are planning to use reels, make them unique by following these best practices:

– Add Text: The Instagram Reels subtitle feature gives an excellent opportunity to allow accessibility. Plus, more information that can’t always fit in your video can pop up in the form of text bubbles.

– Tag Products: Showcasing a product in your Reel. Tag so that once your audience can see how great it is, they can buy it immediately!

– Make it Entertaining: Like Instagram stories, Reels are a great opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality, whether it’s through fun videos of your products, behind the scenes with employees, or other creative trends.

– Use Fun Effects: Add music and voiceover to your reels to express your brand’s unique personality.

– Engage and Inform: The great thing about reels is that they become a permanent part of your feed. So, once you have created fun, informative reels, continue to share them to show off what your brand has to offer.

Finally, besides following the above-mentioned best practices, make sure you make the most of your Instagram bio.

With 150 characters or less and a profile photo, this leaves little space for large-scale information, so keep it simple and add your website or a featured link to get users exploring more about you.

Think of a quick, witty, and clear message to get your brand voice across. This is the place to let everyone know who you are, what you do, and what makes you stand out.

Don’t be afraid to change it up by announcing sales, news, or other features at an appropriate time.

13 Ways to Boost Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

We’re all familiar with branding our business, but what about branding ourselves?

The past 18 months have been a turning point for many business leaders. No longer interacting at trade fairs and conferences, CEOs suddenly had a laser-sharp focus on their personal brand – and how that was represented online.

Working on your personal brand is an excellent idea if your offline reputation took a hit due to the pandemic. It helps sell and market you and offers a human element to your business. LinkedIn is by far the best platform for establishing your brand, but with so many people brand building, how do you get it right without getting lost in the sea of content?

A good strategy is essential, so here are our top 13 tips to start brand-building.

Getting the Basics Right

To start thinking about your personal brand, begin with the basics. Once you nail these elements, you can go on to think about content and outreach, but it all starts here.

  1. Remember – LinkedIn is your Living CV

Your LinkedIn profile is not something you fill out one day and then walk away from. Instead, it’s a living, breathing record of your achievements and career successes. So the first thing to remember when trying to ace your personal brand is to keep your profile updated – whenever you make a career move, speak at a conference or publish an article.

  1. Optimise Your Profile for Search

Did you know you can optimise your LinkedIn page for SEO?

Understanding your relevant keywords is a crucial aspect of understanding your personal brand. Determine the keywords you want to be found for when potential clients of employers search LinkedIn and use them in your headline, summary, and job descriptions. All the work you do to optimise your profile will be lost if you don’t choose the right keywords, as no one will discover your profile.

  1. Sell Yourself

Just as you would when talking about your business, it’s essential to sell yourself in your description. Again, be specific – include facts and figures to demonstrate your accomplishments, but keep it concise and to the point.

  1. Choose the Right Profile Photo

As with any branding, images are key. When people are skimming through your profile, the first thing they will spot is your profile photo, so it’s essential that the picture represents your brand.

Ensure your photo includes a clear view of your face and shoulders and is clear, crisp, and well-lit. You should be dressed professionally, and remember, a smile goes a long way!

  1. Don’t Forget Your Cover Photo

LinkedIn cover photos are another opportunity for you to shape your personal brand, so be sure to take advantage of this feature. Consider including your company’s logo or an image that reflects your profession. We’ve seen some great examples of company pages that include a CTA in the banner to engage visitors further.

  1. Make Your Headline Count

LinkedIn profile headlines are limited to 120 characters, so you need to get creative to make this prime real estate as effective as possible. Your headline needs to grab the reader’s attention and make them want to stick around. Once you’ve chosen your headline, test it on a mobile device too to make sure it works across devices.

Think Content

Now we’ve got the basics sorted, let’s take a look at how content can help shape your brand on LinkedIn.

  1. Write Articles

To have a chance of standing out in the crowded field of LinkedIn, you need to be creating your rich content. We know you’ve heard this over and over – that’s because it’s one of the best ways to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise and develop your brand on LinkedIn.

Most companies are sitting on a goldmine of information and data that would be interesting to your customers and/or peers; creating content is just about getting that information out there.

Even if you have a blog on your website, publishing on LinkedIn has specific advantages. All your connections get notified whenever you publish on the network, and you can choose to feature these articles on your LinkedIn profile.

  1. Create Brilliant and Diverse Content

The thing that will differentiate you from everyone else on LinkedIn is providing exceptional content that people simply cannot resist. Try to ensure this content is a diverse mix that represents all sides of your personal brand – videos, infographics, free ebooks, and live webinars are all great ideas.

  1. Reshare your top-performing posts

Keep a close eye on what posts perform best, and repurpose or reuse that content. They resonated with your audience, so take your own lead and let them inspire other content, and reshare those super-successful posts to get more traction.

Your Network
  1. Leverage Industry Influencers

Influencers are crucial to your personal brand – establishing relationships with influencers in your industry by mentioning them in posts can help boost your visibility on LinkedIn and affirm your personal brand for other users.

  1. Participate in Groups

LinkedIn groups are a powerful resource, especially as you develop your personal brand. Groups allow you to meet and mingle with other professionals in your industry and offer the potential of powerful connections and working relationships down the line.

There’s one crucial part to being part of these groups: participation. Comment, share content, offer advice and start conversation threads – this kind of engagement will mean you reap a lot more of the benefits of groups than if you sit on the sidelines.

  1. Keep an Eye on Connections

A huge part of LinkedIn is making and maintaining connections. Accept all requests that come in, even if you don’t know the person. The more connections you have, the higher LinkedIn will rank you, and the more others will see your profile.

  1. Engage

Crucially, you must continue to engage with LinkedIn for it to be an up-to-date authority on you and your personal brand. So regularly post, share, engage and keep your profile up to date. The more present you are, the more benefits you will get from the network.

LinkedIn is one of the most critical networks for personal branding; it’s a powerhouse tool to have at your fingertips, so we hope these strategies help you to make the most of personal branding on LinkedIn.

Top Tips on Utilising Email Marketing and LinkedIn for SMEs

In our hyper-digital world, there are a handful of essential digital marketing outputs that every business must embrace.

Even the smallest of SMEs can benefit from a solid digital presence, so we’d thought we’d do a rundown of two of the most important platforms out there – email marketing and LinkedIn.

We often hear that SME leaders assume that these tools are suited to the big firms, but no matter the size or industry of your business, both email marketing and LinkedIn can help you foster better client relationships, help establish your brand, and develop your customer base. Firstly, let’s take a look at how email marketing can work wonders for your business.

Leveraging Email Marketing for your SME

Email marketing is frequently cited as the most fruitful form of digital marketing – 80% of business professionals consider email a vital aspect of customer retention. Furthermore, when used correctly, email has the potential to deliver the greatest ROI of any marketing channel.

However, inboxes are a battlefield for marketers, so it’s crucial to remember the core strategies that make email marketing effective and ensure you stand out from the crowd.

One of the most important practices to remember with email marketing today is to be as transparent and open as possible with your customers. Generic emails won’t get you far, and an unsolicited approach is not only a violation of GDPR but also a sure-fire way to annoy potential customers.

So, in that spirit, focus on getting customers to subscribe to your newsletters, and build a powerful and robust email list by remembering the following tips.

Timing is everything

The optimum time to send emails will depend on your audience – so take advantage of research available online to get some advice for your firm. The day of the week matters too – Tuesday is reportedly the best day by far.

Provide one clear call to action

Don’t be tempted to fill your campaign with calls to action. Instead, keep things simple – emails with one call to action can increase clicks by 371%. To ensure maximum clickability, keep your call to action between 2 – 4 words and place it near the top of your email.

Keep things personal

Personalised emails have 6x higher transaction rates, so if you’re not already segmenting your audiences, then get to it! However, sending fewer, more relevant emails that recommend products based on past purchases, browsing history or include the recipient’s location can achieve better results than mass mailouts.

Don’t forget to test

Regular testing and measuring will ensure you are staying on top of your evolving customer base. First, find out what devices and email clients your subscribers are using and optimise these formats. Tools like Litmus let you test your email messages on various clients so you can fix any problems that might occur across devices.

Embracing LinkedIn for your SME

Companies of almost any kind can benefit from maintaining a LinkedIn presence, and although it does require a dedicated, platform-specific approach, the stats speak for themselves. In 2020, 94% of marketers were using LinkedIn to publish content; so, if you’ve not embraced LinkedIn yet – now is the time!

First things first, you need to start thinking up some ideas for brilliant content. Here are a few of our favourite ideas:

Publish how-to blogs or list posts

Writing informative articles is a great way to raise your visibility and start conversations on LinkedIn. It demonstrates your industry expertise and positions you as a thought leader. How-to blogs and list posts receive the most attention on LinkedIn and given their easily digestible formatting, it’s easy to see why.

Share industry-adjacent content

The key to LinkedIn articles is to consistently share information that interests your clients. Customers remember smart people who offer up reliable advice, so sharing industry-adjacent content helps keep you top of their minds in the long run.

Create screencast tutorials and presentations

A screencast is simply a video recording of your computer screen accompanied by audio narration. For example, use a PowerPoint presentation or high-quality visuals, and narrate as if you were giving a presentation. Screencasts are one of the most cost-effective techniques for producing video content and are the perfect place to start if you’re camera shy or don’t have a video camera.

Content is king, but it’s not the only thing you need to pay attention to if you’re trying to get a leg up on LinkedIn.

Building your following is a sure-fire way to gain traction on the platform, but you want to make sure those connections are relevant and add value to your network. So read on for our tips.

Add a page link in your email signature

If you’re already emailing someone professionally, it’s likely your page will interest them.

Add the follow company plugin to your website

This drives visitors from your website to your LinkedIn, increasing your reach.

Mention companies and pages in page updates

By mentioning companies with the @ symbol, it’s easier for them to reshare your content in front of your audience. Think about the companies you admire and have solid followings and mention them in your updates.

Keep it up

Post consistently – according to LinkedIn, pages that post daily get twice the member engagement. Try the 3, 2,1 technique to keep your content varied- every week, aim to post three pieces of industry-related content, two pieces of ‘proud’ content (content that makes your employees and followers feel good) and just one piece of product-related content.

Remember to engage promptly – reply, comment and ask questions and keep your business details and photos up to date. Building a community on LinkedIn requires attention.

LinkedIn and email marketing are crucial facets of any company’s digital marketing efforts, whatever size the business is. We hope these tips help you take advantage of these brilliant tools to reach your current and potential customers.

Six Tips to Help Boost Your Company’s Organic Facebook Reach

Facebook marketing has evolved immensely since the inception of the company. Organic reach, the number of people who are shown your posts in their feed, is the lowest it has ever been. Considering all the obstacles, here are six tips to help boost your company’s organic reach.

Promoting products and services solely will hurt more than help — have a diverse range of photos

Since users will be more engaged with variety in your page, it’s best to have varied content, including brand story posts, authority building posts, lead nurture posts, and personal posts. Given that Facebook is a social media platform, it needs to be personalised — it’s important also to include team posts and highlight witty and creative posts. 

As tempting as emojis are, stay away from them unless they add meaning to your post. 

Since they are tiny images, emojis weigh down the post and are less likely to reach a bigger crowd. However, when used in moderation (less is more), they can help. Unfortunately, there are so many rules to emojis and how they can easily hurt the algorithm that it’s almost easier to forego them. 

Love is stronger than like (in more ways than one) 

The love reaction is stronger than the like reaction because it weighs more on the algorithm. So, utilizing thought-provoking posts or bright, happy scenarios can produce a “love” reaction versus a like. Spread the love. 

Bypass the algorithm with Facebook Stories 

Stories float above the algorithm since they aren’t a part of the newsfeed. Stories should be easy to understand but engaging. Showing new products or advice about them is a good start, as well as keeping them personal. 

Start a conversation! 

Facebook, at the end of the day, is a community. Starting a conversation on a post that engages users through humour or curiosity—not manipulation into winning a prize. Drawing them in with interesting ideas will inspire people to comment and share. Using a question sticker or a poll can be one easy click for the user while driving engagement at the same time. 

Less is usually more, especially when it comes to posts per day

In fact, engagement actually decreases when you post too often. It’s best to post between 1-3 times per day, depending on your following. If you have an international audience with a range of time zones, stagger your posts per day to reach out to different audiences.

Want to read more social media tips and insights? Click here.

Here’s Why You Should Be A/B Testing Your Paid Social

Using A/B testing as a marketing strategy is not new. In fact, it was used routinely in the pre-internet era to conduct small tests by direct mail marketers, who would send a tiny fraction of print to their contact lists before committing to the massive cost of printing and mailing a campaign.

Nowadays, the technique is just as important to marketers across the globe who want to refine their content marketing and advertising strategies on the fly. The true beauty of A/B testing in the digital age is its agility – any time you have a hunch, or question-related to your strategy, social testing can be easily implemented, helping support your next steps. 

Whilst there are endless articles online about creating the best social ads, the truth is that the best way to reach your audience will be unique to you. That’s why we’re big advocates for the importance of A/B testing here at Colour Me Social. 

So, we thought we’d compile a guide to starting with A/B testing paid social. Whether you’re trying to secure more clicks and conversions or improve engagement, we’ll show you how to use A/B testing to get great results for paid social ads.

What exactly is A/B testing?

Let’s drill down into the basics.

A/B testing, also known as split testing or conversion optimisation, is the process of running versions of ads that are different from one another in only one aspect. These two versions are then sent to a small percentage of your total audience – half get version A, half get version B. Testing two versions means you can find out which works best – the winning message is determined by success metrics like opens or clicks. Think of it as survival of the fittest. 

It’s a simple concept. However, the countless variations you can build into social ads requires marketers to be very precise. Without precision, you may end up wasting budget and garner no significant insights.

A/B testing can be used to answer key questions about your social ads, helping you identify the strongest messages, the best time of day to post, or the most effective call-to-action.

Getting Started

A/B testing lets the data show you what’s working and what’s not. It’s deeply rooted in your campaign, rather than relying on blanket best practices or other people’s benchmarks. Therefore, before you start running A/B tests, we suggest you get the following five key details down. This work will help you identify the most important areas to focus on when it comes to testing. 

  1. An understanding of the overarching goals of your business
  2. Your current social strategy, including your general goals for each platform
  3. An understanding of your audience for each platform
  4. An overview of your current performance across all channels
  5. Your questions, hunches, feelings and ideas that you want to test

What can you A/B test?

Anything! Well, pretty much. Any variable element of your social media ads can be tested, but let’s take a look at some of the most common elements to test:

Post Text

There are many variations you can try with your headline, post text and description. Just remember the A/B rule – make just one change for each test, otherwise, you won’t know which variation is working. Here are some considerations:

  • Testing a formal approach vs more friendly language is a common A/B test. Think about the tone of voice you use and the words you pick – different phrases and punctuation can hugely impact click rates. 
  • Consider the use of emojis – dependent on your target audience they could be well received or could come across as unprofessional. If your audience is responding well to them, which emojis work best?
  • Other useful tests could include the length of your ad, and the style of the copy itself – which will perform better – a question? A statement? Or perhaps even a statistic?

Layout

Layout variables depend on the platform you are using; some provide a lot of options that are well worth A/B testing. Facebook, for instance, offers multiple ad formats like carousel ads and lead ads. Test these against each other to see which your audience engage with the most. 

Imagery

Photos, graphics, illustrations – we know imagery is important in social ads, but which type will work best for your ad? Does a product image or video perform better? Will GIFs perform better than static images? Will images with brighter colours outperform those with dark colours? There are countless A/B tests you can run with your imagery. 

Audience

This one is a little different – rather than showing variations of your post or ad to similar groups, you show the same advert to different audiences to see which gets a better response.

Test your assumptions, and find out if the persona you imagine matches the results you see when you run ads. Test a sample size by using the filtering characteristics to drill down into your audience, consider:

  • Location
  • Gener
  • Education Level
  • Hobbies
  • Behaviours

How to run an A/B test on social media adverts

Now’s the time to determine which two variants you want to test against each other, and to run your first A/B test.

Step 1: Decide on your goals

Knowing your objective is an essential first step when setting up your campaign. This will help you in planning your budget and in knowing what to test. A vital first step is defining what success means to you. 

Step 2: Choose what to test

Look at your goals and let them guide your decision. Of course, you can (and probably should) run many iteration cycles you can run to find the best ad, so choose your goal with this in mind. For example, if you are optimising for overall impressions, your aim would likely be to get the lowest Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). The main elements that affect the CPM are the targeted audience and the ad placement, so that is what you would start testing.

Step 3: Set your budget

A/B testing can involve many cycles, so it’s crucial to set your budget at the start of the process. Think about your targets, and make sure you factor in some wiggle room for ads that will underperform.

Step 4: Run your test

Once you’ve completed your test, take the best performing ad and scale up your spending to the full budget allocated towards that campaign. Alternatively, you can test it against another small variation to see if you can improve your results further.

Step 5: Report back

Finally, share what you learn throughout your team to build a library of best practices for your company.

A/B testing is a smart, quantifying process that should be the cornerstone of every social ad campaign. Using trial and error is a failproof method for achieving maximum conversion, and we highly recommend that you build it into your strategy. 

33 Blogging Tips For Beginners

Although we know the value of regular, fresh, informative content, the mere idea of blogging can be intimidating for a lot of people.  

If writing blogs constantly falls to the bottom of your to-do list, then we’re here to help. Our top 33 tips will help you form your ideas, keep your mind focused on the task and produce brilliant, captivating content that will help boost your SEO, build traffic to your site and establish brand awareness. 

Let’s dive in…

  1. Begin with an outline

If you find yourself staring at a blank page when you sit down to write a blog, you’re making your life harder than it needs to be. Start by creating a framework rather than launching straight into writing. This outline will be your guide to writing your blog and will make the whole process much easier as you tackle each part section by section

  1.  Answer questions

Your reader will have questions, so set out by answering them. Why are you reading this blog? Probably because you are starting out blogging, and we promised to share our top tips! Provide a solution to a problem, and you’re off to a great start.

  1. Aim for 1500 words

This may be daunting, but studies show that longer posts attract more links, likes and shares. Ensure you are hitting a minimum of 500 words, but aim for higher, and then watch the likes roll in.

  1. Keep the format friendly

Bullet points and numbered lists will make your blog easy to skim through and more accessible for the reader. Big blocks of endless text are far less appealing to read.

  1. Make it evergreen

An evergreen blog post maintains its relevance over several years. Although responsive up to the minute blog posts can be incredibly effective, if you are stretched for time, an evergreen blog will give much more bang for its buck. These consist of issues that people consistently need help with (like this one), so think about how-to blogs and top-tip lists.

  1. Tell a story

Storytelling can be incorporated into every element of your branding, especially your blog. Keep the reader captivated by learning from the world’s greatest storytellers.

  1. Write to one reader

Imagine you are addressing your blog to one specific reader. This is a helpful exercise when you are faced with writer’s block or feel uninspired. What does that one person need help with? How can you share your knowledge with them? Write to an individual, and you’ll find your writing will flow better, and you’ll secure a more in-depth relationship with your audience. 

  1. Don’t shy away from passion

You may be writing about a business, but that doesn’t mean your writing should be cold and stale. Show your passion for your work through the informal context of a blog; people respond well to emotion and genuine passion.

  1. Get your blog down, and then go back to edit

Jumping back and forth between writing and editing can make the process of writing a blog slow and frustrating. Try getting everything down first, and then go back to edit your work. 

  1. Don’t focus on yourself

This is a common slip up in blog writing – don’t make it all about you. You are trying to connect to a reader, so try to understand what makes them tick and keep your focus on your audience, not yourself. 

  1. Set a timer

If blog writing is falling to the bottom of your to-do list constantly, it may be because it is a time-consuming experience. It doesn’t need to be. Use a kitchen timer or unplug your laptop to create a sense of urgency. Having the pressure of a deadline works really well for a lot of writers. 

  1. Be humble and honest

Ok, so you are writing a blog because you have knowledge to share, that’s great! But remember, no one likes a know-it-all. You’re not writing for your English professor, so don’t feel the need to show off your extensive knowledge; share what you know, but keep it human and genuine.

  1. Write for your audience, not for Google

It’s incredibly tempting to focus on keywords, titles and headings when you’re writing a blog in the hopes that Google will rank you for a specific keyword. This is not invaluable work to do. However, it’s not where you should start. Focus on your audience. Introduce keywords as you see fit, only once you have delivered a piece of content that works for you and your readers.

  1. Understand your niche

Once you get in the swing of writing, you might be tempted to tell the world about your enthusiasm for other topics – please try and resist! Your audience is with you because they care about your niche, so this must always sit at the heart of what you write about.

  1. Make commenting easy

It’s important to encourage comments, making it as easy as possible for readers to engage in the topic you are discussing. Requiring users to sign in, complete two-step authentication or pick out all the crosswalks they can see is just going to interfere with that process!

  1. Give your blogs punchy titles

Your title is your shop front, so ensure you draw readers in with exciting, intriguing titles. 

  1. Maintain a regular schedule

Sporadic posting is one of the biggest issues with blog posting; if it’s not consistent, it’s not going to get the attention it deserves. Try and carve out time every week to create new blog content, ideally aim to write two a week for the best results. If you’re going on holiday, take advantage of scheduling tools to ensure your posting regime doesn’t slip.

  1. Know your audience

A crucial rule when writing – you need to know who you’re writing for. Is this content for prospective customers or long-term clients? Are they male, female, in the C-suite or working in junior roles? The more specific you can make the persona, the better.

  1. Use spell check

Before you hit publish, ensure you have checked your spelling and proofread your blog. Bad spelling will not only dent your credibility but will also damage your SEO. Double-check everything before going live.

  1. Let your readers help you form ideas

You need to write what you know, but it’s well worth trying to understand exactly what within your niche people are going to want to read. 51% of website traffic comes from organic search, so you need to be writing about things people are searching for your blog to perform well. You can use keyword research tools to help here.

  1. Set goals

Your blog is part of your business, so it’s important to set goals and KPIs, as you would with any other business endeavour. Setting goals will help you monitor your progress, which will also help you to understand what works and what doesn’t. Goals could be page views, comments, subscribers or any other metric that reflects your ambitions. 

  1. Use a blog topic generator tool

If you are struggling to consistently come up with topic ideas, take a look at HubSpot’s blog topic generator. It’s an interesting way to get ideas based on a few keywords that you type in.

  1. Use an editorial calendar

Once you have a solid list of topic ideas, use a calendar to keep on top of your content. With two or more blogs going out each week it’s easy to get bogged down; even a simple excel spreadsheet can help. Include your publish date, keyword, topic, title, link to the working document and a column for every avenue you promote it on.

  1. Write blogs focused on case studies

People love learning from real life experiences, so consider writing about case studies that evidence your product or service working with real customers. It’s the best kind of social proof.

  1. Fact check

When you publish any content, your reputation is at stake. Go through your whole post and check it for accuracy before hitting publish. 

  1. Post your blog on Monday or Thursday mornings

Peak times do vary by industry, and you will have the best insight into your target audience’s behaviour over time by looking at your website’s traffic signals with analytics; however, Monday and Thursday are proven to be the best days to get the most traction. 

  1. Send your blog post to people that are mentioned

Referencing an influential figure in your industry? Be sure to share your blog with them. They might share it to their circles, expanding your reach exponentially. 

  1. Pay attention to your foundation

Your first few months of blogging are an important time. Dedicate time to honing the basic skills of writing, SEO, and social media marketing, then these skills will work as a foundation for your success when you grow.

  1. It’s not writer’s block, it’s writers procrastination

Don’t use excuses.Take responsibility for your inability to get the blog written and use the techniques we advise to get your focus back and get the job done!

  1. Test your blog in different browsers

Ensure your blog looks great in every browser, and that it is optimised for mobile reading. 

  1. Always reply to comments

If your readers are invested enough in your blog to comment, it’s important that you take the time to reply. It will promote a thriving blog community and will keep your readers coming back to comment again. 

  1. Use data to reinforce your points

Good writing offers the main argument, establishes proof and then ends with a clear takeaway for your audience. Use data to introduce your main argument and show its relevance to your readers or as proof of your argument throughout.

  1. Have fun!

Finally, it’s worth remembering that a good attitude will make you a better writer. It will make the process more enjoyable and make your blogs more engaging to read. A positive attitude will turn blogging from a dreaded task to an enjoyable and creative part of your day-to-day. Good luck and happy writing!

4 Ways to Follow Your Audience, Not Marketing Trends

The key to any successful marketing strategy, nay, any successful business, is a clear understanding of your target audience.

We know this isn’t news to anyone, but we think it’s worth remembering when you’re trying to get more leads, customers and referrals in a fast-paced, trend-driven environment.

Don’t get us wrong. Following marketing, trends can get your company’s name out there and position you as a progressive organisation. However, unless you conscientiously integrate these trends into an established and well-researched marketing strategy, it’s unlikely they will lead to significant growth.

Although new popular platforms, ideas and techniques may attract attention and raise short-term revenue, ultimately, following a trend means following someone else’s lead. Doing this can cause you to stray from your own brand identity and values, and move you further away from your own customers needs.

Remember, customers can see right through phonies, so jumping onto TikTok because it’s ‘what everyone else is doing and not because you have a genuine potential to develop leads on the platform could make your company look foolish and out of touch. It could also dent your reputation and cause customers to lose trust in your organisation.

While recent years have brought marketers a load of new and innovative ways to reach out to and connect with their customers, there is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach to marketing, and whilst it’s easy to be susceptible to new trends – not least because they appear a dime a dozen in the marketing world – we urge you to begin with your audience, not the trends. Once you know what they need, you’ll have a clearer perspective on which of those novel fads (if any!) could actually play a relevant role in your efforts to boost conversions and improve customer loyalty.

In this blog, we’ll take things back to the essentials of brilliant marketing, dismissing the fads for a deep-dive look at 4 techniques for effectively listening to and learning from your audience, proving that you should be led by your audience, not overhyped marketing trends.

Do a Deep Dive on Your Analytics

When setting out to gain a greater understanding of your audience, begin by reviewing the current data you have. This includes all analyses your company has conducted about your customers since you’ve been in business, such as focus groups and figures you can gather from your marketing outputs, including website traffic, social media data, email open rates and click-throughs. Use this invaluable data to pinpoint where your customers are engaging the most and to inform the rest of your marketing activities.

This gives you a starting point to work from when learning about your audience on a deeper level — you already have some understanding of the real pain points and challenges they experience and what they need from your product or service.

From there, consider the other types of audience-related information you’re missing and need to obtain.

Ask Your Audience

Surveys are an effective way to listen to both current customers and a prospective audience; it’s the most direct way to understand their needs, as it comes directly from the source. Surveys allow you to continually improve and amend your services in line with your customers’ expectations, increasing retention rates.

Try Social Listening

To really get to know your audience and find out what they are saying about your industry and your brand online, try social listening. It gives you a useful context to see where your brand lies amongst competitors and will go a long way to inform your marketing strategy.

Social listening is not about looking at numbers of followers or likes but about how audiences react to your content and brand and reading their mood. Whether it’s positive or negative, knowing when and how your audience reacts to your brand online is crucial to truly understand your customers.

Create Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They can help you focus your time on qualified prospects and guide product development to suit the needs of your target customers.

When done well, buyer personas can be really helpful. They can make it easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, and services to meet the specific needs of your target audience.

You can build your buyer personas through research, surveys and interviews. They usually consist of information about a prospects age, job, salary and education – now this information can prove useful. However, the best buyer personas include more detail about what actually matters.

What are the tasks they struggle with day to day?

Where are their frustrations?

What work do they love doing?

The answers to these questions are a lot more helpful to marketers, so try to build them into your buyer personas.

As copywriter Gary Bencivenga said: “Emotions are the fire of human motivation, the combustible force that secretly drives most decisions to buy. When your marketing harnesses those forces correctly, you will generate explosive increases in response.”

Listen to Your Audience, Not Trends

Getting to know your audience isn’t always a simple process, but it’s a crucial one. Conducting this work and doing it often will ensure you know what resonates with your audience to create the content and products, and services that your buyer personas and target customers want to buy.

Having a strong understanding of your potential customers will help you convert them into long-term, paying customers. So, start working through these steps to getting to know your audience better and begin building a customer-led strategy rather than letting trends direct your decision making.