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Blending Your Print and Social Media Marketing

September 8, 2017 By Anita M. Hicks

Blending Your Print and Social Media Marketing

Have you considered adding Social Media marketing into your Print Media marketing? Do you have links to your Social Media sites/profiles on your business cards? Have you considered adding a link to your Facebook Business page on your Rack Cards or Fliers? These are all considerations when Blending Your Print and Social Media Marketing.

If you have a store front business or a physical location try adding a sign that says ‘“Like” Us at Facebook’. If you have customers waiting at your location also consider displaying a sign that reads: “Have you enjoyed your service today? Give us a 5 Star Review on Facebook!” Have this sign Prominently Displayed at your store front location.

Consider these ideas when blend your two marketing pieces together:

If you add Social Media links and Related Information into your Print Media you will get more value out of both of these marketing sources.

Another thought to consider is when you are live networking with people, ask them to connect with you on your Social Media profiles. After attending a networking event remember to do your follow-ups by inviting connections that you have made at the event to visit and follow you at your Business Social Media sites.

By blending your Print Media into your Social Media marketing you will find a larger engagement of people overall and more interaction with the content that you share. Social Media sites raise you in Search Results by the amount of engagement that you have. These ideas may help you to have a higher return on your investment for all of your combined Print and Social Media marketing efforts.

Remember if you have further questions about this Social Media subject or any other, please feel free to contact The Virtual Assistance by Anita team!

What’s New With Social Media Marketing This Summer?

July 2, 2017 By Anita M. Hicks

Summer has arrived and temperatures are on the rise as many of us see things cooling down around the office as colleagues, clients and media contacts are leaving for respective vacations, trips and other excursions. Even as these Summer days may seem like down time you can actually use the Summer to be very productive on Social Media as you market your business! Are You Ready To See What’s New With Social Media Marketing This Summer?

Please find these hints and tips helpful as you continue to create and share engaging content for potential clients and past customers to enjoy and interact with this Summer. Don’t forget to check out the articles about current happenings in Social Media found at the end of this blog.

Here are some great ways to help promote yourself, and your business on Social Media this Summer:

Take Advantage of Seasonality for Content
The Olympic Games in Rio, heatwaves, music festivals, cultural events or BBQs. The choices are endless. So use this time to maximize your Social Media efforts with what’s trending right now. School holidays are also topical over the Summer, with parents looking for ideas on how to entertain their children on Summer break.

Create New Content
Use this time to create a bank of new content that you can tap into over the coming months. This could be in the form of blogs or more engaging graphics and videos. These are great for building Social Media engagement.

Time For Good Housekeeping
Polish up your Social Media accounts. Are they all active? Are they providing useful content and you receiving good engagement? For example on LinkedIn you may want to use this time to reconnect with your followers (and maybe clear out the inactive ones).

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While taking advantage of these great insights, also consider reviewing helpful articles found below that discuss what’s new with Social Media in Summer 2017:

How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Product Sales

Looking to increase the amount of product sales referrals you are receiving this Summer from Facebook without having to invest in Facebook ads?

This article from Social Media Examiner online discusses organic ways to gain more followers, likes and overall interaction on Facebook with proven techniques. To read the article in full Click Here.

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How Your Startup Can Harness The Power of Social Media

Social Media provides numerous benefits for companies and businesses that are just starting out. This is because Social Media marketing helps to increase brand awareness, create a meaningful connection with customers and more.

If you are ready to start a new company this Summer or just want to further improve your existing Social Media marketing don’t miss the chance to read this think piece from Forbes by Clicking Here.

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The Virtual Assistance by Anita team wishes you a fantastic and productive Summer. We hope you continue to fly your business to new heights this year!!!

Creating Engaging Social Media Content

February 2, 2013 By Anita M. Hicks

How many times do you return to the same Facebook Page or visit the same Company Profile at LinkedIn? Why? Is it because they are offering something engaging that you want to learn more about? Is it because the content they post is consistent and you can depend on it to be similar posts each time you return? Most of us return because, honestly, it has something for us!

To create content at social media which will bring them back wanting more and more of the same, I usually teach my team over months how to do this and work with clients over a longer period of time. BUT, never fear, I am going to share a few tips with you which I usually give in my one hour workshops about content for social media!

Here’s a quick way to think of it – Give them what they want to hear – what helps them to solve a problem or just brings a smile to their face. The 4 E’s of social media content: Entertain, Enlighten, Educate and Engage others with your content.

First you have to stop and ask yourself who is it that you are trying to reach on your Facebook Page, Twitter, LinkedIn or You Tube? As then you may be able to identify ways to offer content to engage them. An example – If you are a Realtor and you sell homes in the Columbia, Maryland area then offering information and help on schools in Howard County would appeal to someone who is following you on social media platforms and looking for a home. This is a way to Educate others. You can also do this by using your own area of expertise and offering tidbits of help to others.

Social Media by it’s very nature is a place where people want to be entertained. Put into your content entertaining and amusing photos, videos or quotes will help put a smile on the reader’s face and help them to remember you.

Engaging folks at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or any type of online forum may be done with questions. By asking, simply “What do you do to market your business.”, my Facebook Page gets many comments. The form of the question can be about an upcoming sports event, what they are looking for in your product or service, or simply a holiday tradition. Once you get them commenting on content, it will be easier to bring them back to you when they are ready to purchase your product or service. Contests can do this also or the “Tip of the Day” concept.

Enlighten is the fourth “E” in creating social media content that I teach in classes and usually this word gets a few snickers. As the question comes to mind, HOW do you enlighten someone? Well, with an inspiring or motivating quote, video or photo. Enlightenment could be sharing an article or blog about some positive event happening in your community. There is plenty of bad news in the world, give out something enlightening in your social media as it will set you apart from others.

These are ideas for creating content that will engage others on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites. Here’s hoping these tips help set your business apart from others!

Branding – in social media, really?

July 2, 2011 By Anita M. Hicks

This is just me thinking out loud again, but really – I keep hearing and reading all these articles about branding your business on social media. Branding seems like a cold, withdrawn word. It reminds me of branding cattle; I suppose as I grew up on farms and watching westerns. LOL.

But, branding as a tool to use in social media seems kind of out there to me as I always look at social media as a way to build and strengthen relationships.

But, then I Googled the word branding and here is what I received in search which makes me a much happier camper!

One – Branding for social media means helping people remember your reputation, value and promises. For instance, I promise to make your social media fly to new heights using social media by creating personalized profiles which use custom details to set your business aside from others. I love dragonflies, so I help you fly!

Two – Branding in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and You Tube means creating an emotional connection. Yes, emotional connection. Let’s think about this for a moment using a name brand we all recognize – how about Pepsi and Coke? I interviewed 6 people and asked which they preferred. Which ever it was, they had an emotional connection with it. For instance, I love Pepsi, and first drank it with my grandmom and so there it is – an emotional connection. This is what folks need to have with your business as they will then remember you and give you referrals to others!

Three – Branding is one of your greatest assets in social media marketing. By creating a presence in folks minds through valuable posts, interactions and frequent contact, you are obtaining an intangible and very valuable asset for your business.

Branding through social media is sort of like branding a cow, but a lot less painful with a bunch more relationship building!

Wishing everyone a most joyful and safe July 4th holiday! 🙂

How to be in Two Places at One Time

January 16, 2011 By Anita M. Hicks

Okay, how do you manage to be in two places at one time? Sometimes as a virtual assistant people ask me how do I manage to get so much done. It seems I’m on the computer a ton of hours and yet, I do make meetings and do some networking, have a family and love to volunteer my time to help others. How do I manage? Well, sometimes, I don’t. But, to help with social media – one way to give the appearance of being in two places at the same time is to use a scheduling tool.

There are Free services like Social Oomph and Hoot Suite where you can schedule your posts and content to your social media sites. This will give you an ability to do all your posts at one time of the day, week or month. You then tell the scheduling tool when to post and it does it automatically for you. This is how a very good friend of mine has 7 to 10 posts a day and yet is always meeting people!

The two I’ve listed above are just a few of these types of services out there. TweetDeck and many others are available through Twitter and there are many more out there. I especially like Hoot Suite and Social Oomph but for different reasons. I really love Hoot Suite for posting and content. I can administer many fan pages for Facebook and various Twitter accounts besides my own from this great site. Hoot Suite is user friendly for the most part, as it does take a bit of learning to set up. 🙂 Sometimes it has some issues actually feeding but about 90% of the time I am very happy! I like Social Oomph because it has a few unique and helpful other tools. For instance, I can use Social oomph to automatically follow those who follow me on Twitter. Although sometimes you have to glean those out which are not a ‘good fit’, this seems to work for me to auto follow others!

So this is how I am at a network event and yet, posting for 10 clients and myself at Facebook and Twitter and Linked In!

Shhh – don’t tell my secret to anyone of how to be in 2 places at 1 time! LOL! 🙂

Blending Your Print and Social Media Marketing

Consider these ideas when blend your two marketing pieces together:

Here are some great ways to help promote yourself, and your business on Social Media this Summer:

While taking advantage of these great insights, also consider reviewing helpful articles found below that discuss what’s new with Social Media in Summer 2017:

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