How Digital Marketing Changes In An Election Year

2020 is quickly approaching, and we are all most likely up to our knees for business planning for next year. One unique thing about next year is that it is also an election year, and election years can throw a wrench is business digital marketing campaigns. 

2020 will be my third election cycle as a digital marketing professional, and up until 2016, everything went pretty much as predicted. Candidates bash each other, supporters of said candidates share opinion pieces about the rival, yadda yadda. However, shortly after the New Hampshire primary in March of 2016, I watched the client’s customer bases leave Facebook with the droves leaving the night and day following when we learned who the nominees were. These people also did not log on or interact again on Facebook until well into 2017. 

At that point in 2016, it was just Facebook where the political advertising warfare was raging among the masses. Instagram was pretty much unaffected by the political advertising machine. Instagram, we were still seeing plenty of dog and latte posts with somewhat positive captions that the masses were even interacting with and again somewhat purchasing from businesses.  

The sales trend for purchasing non-essential products and booking services stayed statistically low, as is predicted during an election year. During election years, statistics show that consumers are more conscious of how they spend their money and are more apt to think twice before purchasing because the outlook financially for the next four years is uncertain.  

However, once Facebook jumping began, marketing plans were altered, and email marketing, SEO, and Pinterest became the focus. Which with these changes, businesses’ monthly marketing statistics stayed consistent as non-election years. People are not going to leave the internet because we live here now. People are, however, going to avoid places on the internet that suck for them. 

If Facebook and Instagram are the only marketing platforms that your business is focusing on, I’m sorry to tell you, but in 2020 they could let you down hard. Facebook has already said that they will not filter and will allow all kinds of political ads to be run. Since late September, I have already seen a dozen or more political all sorts of ads popping up on Instagram. This makes me believe that once the Iowa caucuses happen, Instagram will also become penetrated with ads, influencers, and those dogs and lattes photos we all love will be captioned with political comments. At which point, the cycle of leaving and logging off of social media until November 2020 will begin. 

With all that said, the key to running a successful digital marketing campaign during an election year is to be prepared for anything and focus on areas of directly connecting with customers via their inbox and their searches. What worked well for one month could very well not work the next month or as soon as the news cycle is updated. If this election is anything like 2016, we are all going to be opening up our apps to the wild world wide web together. 

Without The Likes, How Will I Know How My Social Media Post Is Performing?

The news of Instagram removing likes is mainly old news now. When the news first broke that the likes were going away, I surveyed my stories asking how people felt about it. Were business owners ecstatic that the like factor was going away, or were they upset that the likes would no longer be visible? To my surprise, it was a 50/50 split on how they were feeling.

The buzz around the likes was happening as I was sitting down with clients to discuss 2020 digital goals, and I kept getting asked the same two questions in different ways. Since you might have versions of the same issues, let’s discuss them now. 

“Without the likes, how will I know how my competition is doing?”

This is a loaded question because the likes on a social media post are not a direct correlation to how your competition is performing financially. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it, popular does not always pay the bills. I have known businesses whose accounts do not have the coveted 10k + following and are killing it in their bank accounts. And I also know businesses accounts with thousands of followers who are struggling to make ends meet. Tracking how your competition is doing based on the follower counts or likes on their social posts is irrelevant. You can never honestly know how your competition is doing or if they are financially your competition without seeing their profit and loss statements. From a marketing standpoint, stick to analyzing how your content is doing. Track your analytics and mindfully share more of the content your audience is telling you that they want from you. Your only actual competition should be striving to be better financially than where your business was last year at this time. 

“Without the likes, how will I know how my post is performing?”

The public might not be able to see your like count, but as the account owner, you still can while likes are one of the last things that should concern your marketing efforts I completely understand why they are essential to you. It feels good to know that people took the time to double tap on your post; however, to track if your marketing efforts are truly effective, you need to focus on conversion. The important statistics to you should be the conversions from social media to your website, sharing your post on their feed, or the conversion of someone reading and commenting or sending you either an email or direct message. Consider this, when you are out networking or selling your product in person, you are primarily marketing yourself. At these events, you can hand out all the business cards that you own, but the only way to be sure that someone ever really “sees” or “hears” you is if they convert that information and reach out to you on the contact information on your business card. 

Fighting an algorithm day in and day out is frustrating and exhausting. I completely understand that, however, the removal of post likes is not the end of the world. Likes have never paid your bills. Sure, clients/customers have liked your posts, but what made them a client/customer was clicking on your website to purchase a product or sending you a message to book your services. Look back at which post-converted them to click and be in direct contact with you, and keep doing more of that.  

Continue putting your best stuff out there, and remember that these are FREE platforms to use. We could all still be in a time where to be known or seen we would have to pay for an advertisement in a magazine. However, that’s a topic for another time.  

Why Customer Service Is The Best Business Strategy You Could Ever Have

There is a Maya Angelou quote that says, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Customer Service is at the heart of any business, be it a product or a service provider your customer service needs to be on point because if it is you will be rewarded a hundred times over with new customers and continue to retain current customers.

I recently had one of the most incredible customer service experiences that I’ve had in a while, and it involved a record store and the holy grail for my vinyl collection.

If you follow along with me on social media that I am a huge Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks fan, you might also know that I am building out a 70’s rock vinyl collection and refurbishing a 70’s system to listen to said vinyl. A record that has been on my list for years and one that will finish out my Fleetwood Mac collection is a copy of “Buckingham Nicks,” the only album released by Stevie and Lindsay which helped Mick Fleetwood find them when he was looking for a replacement when Bob Welch left the band.  

I have searched every flea market, garage sale, estate sale, and record store to find this elusive personal holy grail of music. Still, every record store, estate sale, or flea market that I went into, I would look and every time come up short until I walked into a record store in Victoria BC.

Turntable Records is in the tourist hub known as Fan Tan Alley; I had zero expectations for this place. I figured that I would walk in dig a little bit and then walk out, my experience with record stores in tourist parts of cities is not all that great. I walked straight to the Fleetwood Mac section and started digging; there was a lot, so much early stuff that I thought well maybe. A gentleman with a sizeable dark mustache came over to me and said, “Rumours is way in the back.” I said, “Thanks, but I already have that. I’m looking for something else.” The next record that I flipped was the cover of “Buckingham/Nicks,” I held it up and said, “This is what I’m looking for.” His entire demeanor toward me changed, in his body language, I went from some American Fleetwood Mac fangirl that only knows Rumours to a woman who is invested in all the music and history of this band. The next thing he said .”You know that those are getting incredibly difficult to come across.” He opened it up and said, “let’s take a listen.”

It was amazing. I had never heard any of these songs before that moment because it is not something that you listen to on Spotify when Stevie’s voice started singing my eyes filled with tears because I had found it, in fantastic condition. This man was teaching me more about this record that I didn’t even know.  

Gary is the owner and the gentleman that was along with me for my Buckingham/Nicks journey. While he held the door open for me to walk out, I felt as if we should hug or something because we had just shared that experience.  

The Turntable offers plenty of excellent condition vinyl products, their tiny shop in Fan Tan Alley is stocked to the brim with it. The customer service that Turntable sells is the experience. Selling the type of experience they do replaces any marketing budget; a satisfied customer is the best business strategy you could ever have because they will forever tell people about you. 

The Struggle To Write A Social Media Caption

Every time I meet one-on-one with a business owner, a consistent struggle comes up one way or another, the effort to write a caption for social media.  

Many times I have heard, "I write something I hate it, I delete it, I write again and delete it. Get frustrated and don't post at all." OR "I'm afraid that whatever I post is going to screw everything up."

I get it; I'm right there with you, and I want you to realize that you are not alone in this. Somedays I also struggle with what to write on my social media because I'm so inundated in the updates on social media that somedays it is the last thing that I want to talk about. I realize that you are all here for those tidbits that you otherwise don't know and how to make those platforms work for you and not against you. Just like your clientele does not know everything about your industry or your product, they are looking to you to educate them on what you have to offer. 

You aren't going to screw everything up unless you write something hurtful to another person that gets shared and goes viral. Does anyone remember the tweet that blew up Justine Sacco's life? Writing things like that is what is going to screw everything up for you. 

Here are a few tips to help you through the captioning anxiety:

1. Remember that people read your captions in their tone, not yours. The tone confusion can happen if you are not posting a video, or they have never interacted with you in person to get a grasp on how you communicate IRL.

2. Learn how your target market communicates both on and offline and work on ways to communicate with them that way.

3. Findings have found that our attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. Get to the point quickly or risk getting scrolled past. Write what you want then go back to edit to make sure you've gotten to the point.

4. Tweet how you want to be tweeted at or about. Every post you put up and comment response is a reflection of you and your business's customer service culture.

5. Be yourself. Write in a way to the person that if you meet a follower or customer IRL, they feel like they already know you once you begin talking.

Finding your business's voice takes some time, effort, trial and error, but I am confident that you can do it. 

Why Keeping Your Social Media And Digital Marketing Up To Date Is Important For Your Business Health

One of the accounts I work with is a user-generated content account where I repost content from paying community members, as an additional way to market for them. Right now, these accounts are smack dab in the middle of their busy season. They aren’t keeping their channels updated because they are so busy running their business. Not updating is entirely understandable. You, as a business owner can not wear all the hats, run the business, write content, and post the content all while taking care of themselves, their families, and their other personal commitments. Something has to give, and most of the time, I have noticed that it’s their digital marketing that gets put on the backburner.

While this is an understandable situation, I am here to advise against this happening too often to you. There are inexpensive and even free resources to keep your accounts up to date; it just needs some planning in advance and setting aside a few hours during the week to update the scheduling applications.

In this day in age, we all as customers have become accustomed to interacting and engaging with a brand on we feel like we know them in real-life level. We think of brands as a part of us and the smaller ones we might even feel a personal connection with the owner.

The flip side to this is that it could be attracting other new people to your feeds via locations, hashtags, and search terms. If these new people visit your feed, see that you have not posted in months or longer, they may scroll right past you and choose to do business with someone who is keeping their feeds up to date and current.

Both of these situations are not ideal for your business because, in a world where our attention span is about three seconds, a society we are continually fed content from every direction existing and customers could forget that you even exist if you are not staying at their top of mind.

A few suggestions to avoid this situation from continuing to happen to you, invest in either a free or a paid social media scheduling platform, schedule time on your calendar to write and schedule your posts. Or hire out the workload to a social media manager.

Every single business has a busy season. The trick to keeping existing customers as well as enticing new customers to conduct business with you is to maintain your social media presence.

Is Blogging For Your Business Dead?

In a meeting a few weeks ago, a client of mine asked if blogging was dead? While I understand why it might be perceived that blogging is dead. Especially since we live in a world where a person would choose to watch a video to learn or connect with someone instead of reading a post.  The world of blogging is most certainly not dead, at least from an SEO standpoint. 

Blogging as much of a pain in the ass that is is, helps Google understand that you are a current website. A regular blog schedule helps keep your SEO up to date,  and the more that you blog, the more that Google will continue to feed your content to the top of people's searches. 

The other day I posted a survey on my Instagram stories asking an audience if they thought that blogging was dead.  And the response I got was pretty eyeopening. 44% of the audience I surveyed said that Yes, they felt that blogging was dead while 56% of the audience noted that No blogging is not dead.   

I have been working with a photographer client who when we first started working together wasn't completely sold on the idea of blogging.  She has two young children, a blossoming photography career and didn't have the time to devote to sitting down and adequately blogging her sessions for future clients to see. 

We had a one-hour session together, working on a blog about an elopement that she shot on top of Haleakala.  After being live for 72 hours, that blog post was the first item in a Google search for anything related to having a wedding or an elopement on Haleakala in Maui. Her inbox started blowing up with inquiries for booking her for their Maui nuptials. 

During our coaching session, while we talked about goals, one of her biggest goals was to shoot more weddings and elopements in Hawaii. With the goal in mind, we tailored the SEO on that post to get her in front of more couples looking for a photographer for their Hawaiian weddings.  

We also worked some SEO magic on other venues that she would love to shoot at more and low and behold her inbox is getting requests from couples who are hosting their nuptials at the sites she wants to shoot at all because she is now making blogging those sessions a priority in her digital marketing plan. 

While you might be one of the people, who think that blogging is dead, perhaps because you, yourself are not reading blogs. Remember that when it comes to your digital marketing, you are not your target audience. Blogging even twice a month will help keep your SEO fresh and clean to the Google machines, which will put your website in front of your target searchers.

Five Ways To Successfully Instagram Story For Your Business

During one of my latest speed marketing sessions, we were chatting about Instagram Story Highlights and how some stuff is better left off of them. If you’ve met with me or heard me talk you already know that your Instagram Highlight buttons should be where you put work that you would want on a portfolio or that you want to live permanently in your feed.  

You’ve also heard me say that your Instagram Stories should also showcase a more personal version of your business, highlighting the person and people involved in doing the business. The stories should give a behind the scenes of the person that is engaged in the business for 24 hours.  

Stories could include slides of your dog, cat, kiddos, camping trip, etc. However, these slides should not necessarily make a permanent home on your highlight reel if they do not have anything to do with what your actual business is. The more candid stories that relate to your business should live in your highlight reel if you love them and fit into the themes of one of your bubbles.

I’ve flipped my way of storying and started thinking of Instagram stories as “trailers” to grab the attention of the viewers to click your name and check out your entire feed. Since I started experimenting with this method on my feed, and a few clients, feed their stories, views, and profile visits have skyrocketed. It’s insane, stories that used to get 20 pictures or so have quadrupled! I’ve been testing this on my feed for 30 days, and while my likes and engagement are down, my website, clicks have quadrupled as well.  

A few simple ways to create a “trailer” for your feed:

1. Make use of the quiz, survey, and question stickers.

• Erase the “Ask Me A Question” statement on the question sticker and ask your audience a question you want their answer to. 

• The survey sticker is a great way to do a market research of your target. A few times, I did a survey asking if people would prefer speed marketing during happy hour and the response was overwhelming that they did. Therefore, I’m going to try a few sessions during the happy hour. 

• The quiz sticker is a cool interactive sticker to see who in your audience is paying attention to what you are putting out there and an excellent way for your audience to get to know you better and for you to be more personable. 

2. Don’t always be trying to sell and talk about your business. Show what your life looks like, messy desk, no makeup and all. You also want to show who people are going to get in real life when they sign up to meet with you.

3. Make sure that your highlight bubbles are categorized including services that you offer, reviews, and any other page that is also on your website. 

4. If you are selling products and have them in your feed, shoot those posts also to your stories. 

5. Try to keep up to 4- 6 slides on your story in a 24-hour time frame. Any more than that and people are going to swipe away from your account. This is extremely important if you are doing a video story. Please be conscious that you are saying everything you want and getting to the point in ONE story slide. If your video goes for multiple slides, you’re going to get swept next. Longer video can most definitely live on your IGTV channel. 

The story neighborhood seems to be the hip place to hang out these days. If you are not storying, consider giving it a try, and if you need help with ideas sign up for one of the Speed Marketing Sessions. 

How To Respect Nature And Get The Photo

In honor of Smokey The Bears 75th Birthday, I want to chat about an article that I recently read that stuck with me. There’s an article written by a photographer on the amount of disrespect people were racking in the lavender fields of Provence to get that perfect Instagram selfie. Visitors were doing this with next to no acknowledgment for the destruction that they were causing to the farmer's fields, and virtually their lively hood.

The article brought to mind also warnings and chatter I had heard about the impending destruction of the super bloom of poppies in California and the bluebonnet super bloom in Texas.

If you have been following around here for a while, you know that I spend a pretty decent amount of time outside, hiking or camping in some secluded spots of the wilderness. The amount of human trace that I see in these spots is pretty incredible. From the green plastic straws, the broken glass of beer bottles, empty plastic water bottles, and fallen plastic wrappers. Each time I go for a hike, I bring a trash bag and remove almost always an entire bag full of other peoples trash.

I have to admit that sometimes I do hike or stop at a location for either current or future content creation. Therefore I am not lost, and fully aware of the irony of this discussion.

While I was visiting Banff, I started to think more about the conservancy aspect of using these pristine natural jewels as our backdrops in content, while maintaining their beauty for the next person. While enjoying the sunrise at Peyote lake with waist-deep snow, two young women hiked in with a few outfit changes in tow. They were asking us if we knew how to walk to the bottom and get next to the frozen lake because they couldn't find a trail on the map. We answered that we didn't since there wasn't a trail listed on the map, and again there was waist-deep snow the level of danger with that was apparent. They shrugged their shoulders at us and proceeded to trounce through the snow in efforts to get to the lakes shore. If you haven't been to Peyote Lake, the overlook is the famous place that every Instagrammer who goes to Banff has taken a photo from. This distance from this point to the lakeshore is at least a two-mile hike. We saw the women come through the trees into a clearing and they were hanging onto pine boughs for support in navigating the snow. It was at that point that they changed into their first outfit and began taking photos of each other. When they started walking and broke off a large pine bough, it was time for me to leave.

I have seen furniture being carried out to beautiful grassy wildflower-filled fields and set upon rare blooms of wildflowers. I have seen people stand at the edge of a cliff with their back to the drop off and their selfie stick out. I have seen people have a campfire for a photoshoot during a burn ban in a state forest because they didn't want to reschedule. I have witnessed people pulling over on the side of the road to "dance" in a private farmers field of sunflowers, proceed to pick them and drive off.

I am not writing this out of criticism, only to bring attention moving forward to the fact that beautiful locations in nature do present themselves as incredible backdrops for content photoshoots. But are also beautiful for people who could care less about leaving with a photo and only want to enjoy the views.

To maintain & conserve their natural appeal, consider these seven things:

Sticking to established trails.

Leave no trace that you were there.

Dispose of waste properly.

Leave what you find.

Be considerate of other visitors.

Asking permission ahead of time to access private land.

If it is a fee property, pay the fee.

By being careless, we are inevitably ruining beautiful landscapes by going "off-trail" and messing with the lively hood of farmers and their crops. Please be just be aware and respectful.

How To Effectively Pay To Play On Facebook

The other day listened to a podcast that said that the 2020 presidential candidates were spending on average $75 on a Facebook ad to get 1 $1 donation. All of this information leads my brain astray with googling thoughts. 

Since all I’ve been obnoxiously reading and seeing these days are complaints about “how you have to pay to play”. I would fill you in on some data.  

I began by researching what the average cost per click was for a Facebook ad these days. 

The following Cost Per Click data is via Sprout Social:

Apparel: $0.45

B2B: $2.52

Customer Services: $3.08

Real Estate: $1.81

Retail: $0.70

Travel & Hospitality: $0.63

Remember the cost per click is to get someone to click on your ad and get to where you are sending them. There are other objectives that you can set up on your ad, such as getting Likes or having them complete an action ie, downloading and installing an app. 

I want you to keep in mind; however, also that the time of year that you are running an ad is incredibly important. For example, if you are a retail business and are planning out your Q4 advertising campaigns realize that your costs will be higher because you are going to be competing with so many other ads, and your ad is going to get lost. 

It was difficult for me to understand while I was listening to this podcast how candidates had to spend $75 to get one $1 donation, but then it’s the time of year. We are still over a year away from the election, and the masses aren’t fully paying attention yet. By this time next year, if the metrics and studies are correct, a $75 ad should be getting them more than one $1 donation.

If you are in need or wondering if your business needs a digital marketing strategy, know that it does.

For more information on how to effectively run a Facebook ad read THIS.

Is There A New IGTV Rewarded Algorithm?

Is there a new Instagram algorithm? Every time something on our favorite app shifts, I get an inbox full of "Is there a new Instagram algorithm?" As far as I know and the trusted sources that I communicate with, there is no such thing as a "new" Instagram algorithm.

Instagram is consistently testing, adding, and removing features. Updates are happening on the weekly, the daily, even on the hourly. Currently, Instagram is testing the removal of "likes" in the following markets: Canada, Italy, Japan, and Australia with more to come. Instagram is testing for the overall elimination of "likes" from the platform, which begs the question of will this leave room and forces people to engage more?

There's a rumor floating around that there is a new algorithm in place that favors heavily on using IGTV. Y'all this isn't new news. Anytime ANY platform releases an upgrade; they heavily prefer the content of the accounts that are using said new feature because they want to promote this new feature internally. IGTV is a little over a year old. I have my hypothesis about the "new" IGTV algorithm. Since I have gotten 10 DMs and four emails asking me about this new IGTV algorithm includes that y' all aren't currently frequenting this neighborhood. I hypothesize that since it's release on June 20, 2018, this neighborhood hasn't grown in the masses that Instagram thought that it would become. That in its 13-month lifespan it hasn't taken down Youtube or even really showed up in the ring as a heavily favored competitor of Youtube as I feel the end goal was. I think that this is the basis of the "new" IGTV preferred algorithm. When the facts point to if you are present on IGTV, you are rewarded for frequenting this neighborhood that Instagram wants to grow. It's like going to a street fair, and you are handed coupons from vendors to come to their establishment for 10% off or a free something or other. You are there in their "platform," and they want to reward you for showing up and showing interest by giving you something in return.

For a few months there, I was animate about recording and adding IGTV content; it helped everything in my digital marketing world for sure. However, life and client work got the better of me, and my IGTV fell to the side. Do I think that not regularly posting to my IGTV is what is hurting views and likes? Nope

I have been marketing on this platform since it's infancy and I've seen and heard it all. In almost nine years on this platform, three straightforward things lead to some measurable "success"

Consistency

A unique photo

Tell a story

Consistently show up by posting, commenting, and interacting in whichever neighborhood of this platform you enjoy the most: your feed, stories, IGTV where the eff ever. But keep showing up. When people trust that they will hear from you, they will buy from you or recommend you to someone who will buy from you.

Sharing a unique photo sets you apart. When I hear from people that they know they photo is from me before they even look at the account name, that feels good. Stop trying to copy everyone else who you think is doing it right and post what is you.

Tell a story, digital marketing is just digital storytelling. If you want to grab peoples, attention tells them a story. We are nosy by nature and want to know ALL the details about the people that we follow and the brands that we purchase from. Give people something that they can relate to because while our experiences are all unique to us, someone somewhere can connect on a personal level.

Please do me a favor; if you haven't heard it from a credible source such as Instagram, someone with an in at Instagram, or some nerd who subscribes to EVERY email that comes from reliable digital sources that have ins at Instagram, then it's just a rumor.