What Research Tells Us About Social Media and Its Users

09MayJuly 25, 2019 By Paula Maggio

Social media. Who uses it? How often do they use it? And what platforms do they use?

It’s essential to know the answers to those questions if we want to successfully craft targeted social media posts for our businesses.

The Pew Research Center survey

So let’s take a look at the latest research from the Pew Research Center, which routinely knocks it out of the park when it conducts surveys.

From Jan. 8 to Feb. 7, researchers in the Pew survey conducted telephone interviews among a national sample of 1,502 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Of the respondents, 302 were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,200 were interviewed on a cellphone.

What did the survey conducted early this year find? It found that despite privacy and other concerns, social media use by adults is basically unchanged.

“The shares of adults who say they use Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter are each largely the same as in 2016, with only Instagram showing an uptick in use during this time period,” according to the survey. (Note: There are no comparable 2016 phone survey data for YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp or Reddit.)

The previously steady growth in the use of social platforms in the United States during the past decade appears to be slowing, the report shows. While Facebook and YouTube have the broadest reach among adults, Instagram and Snapchat have a strong following among young adults. These findings illustrate the age-, gender-, and race-related differences in platform use that the survey documented, which we share below.

Evolving social media

But first a news update. Although social media use has remained flat, social media design – from its appearance to its features – continues to change – and here’s the latest on that. The Pew survey results hit April 10, less than one month before Facebook rolled out a new redesign for its app and website in late April.

The redesign gives both a cleaner look, more white space, more emphasis on groups, and prominent placement for “Stories” photo-sharing, according to such sources as Business Insider. Facebook says groups, which it counts at 400 million, are among the most “meaningful” ways people use the site.

Included in the Facebook news was a bit about Facebook Dating, which is set to launch in the U.S. by the end of the year. Also included is a new “Meet New Friends” feature. It will be interesting to see how these changes affect Facebook statistics when Pew conducts its next survey.

What the research shows

For now, let’s look at some statistics about social media users using the most popular platforms, as featured in the Pew survey and in an April 10 article and info-graphic on Social Media Today.

The latest survey is just one piece of useful research about social media that the Pew Research Center has conducted over the years, with the first in-depth studies on both adult and teen use of social media conducted in 2007. Find more here.

General social media statistics

Approximately 3.04 billion social media users worldwide
About the same number actively access social media on their mobile devices.
90% of these reach out to brands or retailers.
In the U.S. 77% of people have at least one social media profile.
Global internet users spend 135 minutes daily on social media sites.

The platforms

Facebook

2.4 billion users
69% of adults use the platform
74% of users visit site daily
50% visit several times a day
63% male
75% female
70% white
70% black
69 Hispanic
84% of 25- to 29-year-olds use it
74% have incomes of $75K+
75% have some college

LinkedIn

590 million members; 260 million users
27% of adults use the platform
29% male
24% female
28% white
24% black
16% Hispanic
44% of 25- to 29-year-olds use it
49% have incomes of $75K+
51% have college+
70% of users are outside the U.S.

Twitter

326 million users
22% of U.S. adults
24% male
21% female
21% white
24% black
25% Hispanic
44% of 18- to 24-year-olds use it
31% have incomes of $75K+
32% have college+
80% access it via mobile device

Pinterest

250 million+ users
28% of U.S. adults
15% male
42% female
33% white
27% black
22% Hispanic
38% of 18- to 24-year-olds use it
41% have incomes of $75K+
38% have college+

Instagram

1 billion active monthly users
500 million are active daily
37% of U.S. adults
31% male
43% female
33% white
40% black
51% Hispanic
75% of 18- to 24-year-olds use it
Dominated by those under age 35
Majority of users visit site daily
60% of 18- to 29-year-old users use the platform several times per day
42% have incomes of $75K+
43% have college+

Snapchat

255 million users
24% of U.S. adults
24% male
24% female
22% white
28% black
29% Hispanic
Majority of users visit site daily
62% of 18- to 29-year-olds use it
68% of 18- to 29-year-old users use the platform several times per day
27% have incomes of less than $30K
29% have some college

YouTube

9 billion users
73% of U.S. adults use it
78% male
68% female
71% white
77% black
78% Hispanic
93% of 25- to 29-year-olds use it
83% have incomes of $75K+
80% have college+
51% visit site daily; that figure was 45% in 2018

Time to Get Organized! (It Really Will Make All the Difference)

02MayMay 2, 2019 By Dale Kiefer

Let’s say it right off the bat: You don’t have to wait until the start of the new year to make a resolution about getting organized. You can do it right now. Believe it or not, there’s nothing stopping you from forging a plan and following through except for your own inertia. And what’s good for you in your personal life is great for your business.

What’s that protest echoing through the corridors of your company? We’re too busy to make a major change right now! A classic objection. We’ve made it this far doing things this way! Alright, but you don’t want to grow?

You may be investing a lot of time just in staying afloat. Sure, we get it. You may have always done things the way you’re doing them now, and yet you’re still in business. Fine. But is Ford still building the Model T?

Have you considered the possibility that part of the reason why your business acts like that proverbial headless chicken is because you haven’t systematized processes and procedures? Though that chicken may have been full of energy, it probably wasn’t going to win any productivity contests. And neither will you if you don’t get your company’s head on straight.

It’s easy enough to see the worst-case scenario here. Your business can’t stay on an even keel due to the chaos that comes with lost communications and missed meetings. On staff, everybody’s workload is unpredictable, leading to fatigue, both physical and mental. Good people get exhausted and leave. And then you lack the capacity to handle the clients you already have. Perhaps these customers then start dropping off, heading for the exits in the hope of finding a more attentive partnership. Good luck getting new clients, especially if your company now has a reputation for turmoil within your industry. And the downward spiral continues from there.

Let’s say it together: It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are some steps you can take to make sure that your company keeps the winning edge by getting organized:

Let’s get physical: That is, let’s start with the spaces you can see. Einstein may have famously had a messy desk, but unless you’re in the relativity business, clutter is not likely to be an asset. Even a certified genius needs some kind of structure to get those brilliant ideas into production. A good approach is to make sure that every item in your office has a designated place. You may have discovered that you don’t lose your keys when you’re at home if you always put them in the same spot just as soon as you walk through the door. You can manage all the items in your office space the same way. Do you really think it’s good business to have to spend time looking for a hard copy of an important document by sifting through stacks of old papers? Which brings us to our next step…
Let’s get digital: Here in the 21^st century, you have an advantage over Albert and Sir Isaac and those other geniuses of yesteryear. You don’t have to record things on paper. Or, at least, you don’t have to use paper as your primary delivery vehicle. If you don’t already type your notes directly into a device in real time, instead relying on paper to record, say, the minutes of a meeting, you can always scan that paper later on and thereby free yourself from clutter bondage. And if you’re still tied to the pen, you should consider exploring the many options out there for taking virtual notes. Microsoft OneNote, for instance, is note-taking software that enables you to collect and organize text, both handwritten and typed, and store it on the Cloud. Sharing ideas as they blossom has never been easier. And there’s nothing to misplace!
Speaking of sharing: If your business isn’t already using a project management tool, then you need to schedule an upgrade—and do it yesterday. Applications like Basecamp allow your company to easily categorize all of your work under specific project headings. Within each project bucket, you can upload docs and files, schedule and assign tasks, set up to-do lists, display ideas on a virtual message board, and more. Naturally, tools like this are valuable because they organize all of your work materials in one place. But their true indispensable nature comes out in the way that they allow an office to function efficiently when all of the people working in it don’t actually occupy the same physical space or time zone. Got workers on the other side of the globe? Give them a task to do before you leave at night, then wake up in the morning and find it done.
Calendarize it: You may carry a small planner with you everywhere you go. That’s good. Your business may also use a shared calendar like Google Calendar. That’s even better. It goes without saying that missing an appointment or a deadline with a client is unprofessional and just an alternate way of saying that you don’t actually want to do business after all. If only 50 percent of your company’s designated representatives show up for a meeting, then that shows that you’re only half-serious about winning that client. That’s not going to cut it. A shared calendar gets everyone on the same page including, and especially, those employees who aren’t based in a central location.
One big push: Getting yourself organized might seem like a daunting task. You look at the uneven stack of papers on your desk or at your email inbox, bursting at the virtual seams, and think that it can’t be done. But you can do it. And the time to start is now. Entropy will have its way with the universe, so the amount of disorder in your office is going to increase naturally unless you do something to control it. Sort those papers, file those invoices, set up a system and then stick to it. Once it’s there, conforming to it will become automatic, even if getting to that point seems like an insurmountable challenge.

In conclusion, if your business suffers from disorderliness, lack of structure, or 20th-century syndrome, the time to address it is now. Make it a task, put it on the calendar, and let everyone know. Your bottom line will thank you.

It’s not too late to get on trend: Top Social media trends of 2019

25AprApril 25, 2019 By Paula Maggio

While social media is nothing new, that doesn’t mean there is nothing new in social media. At Triple Canopy Media, we have done our research. So five months into the new year, we are sharing the top social media trends of 2019 – as culled from a variety of expert sources.

Influencer marketing

Topping the list is authentic influencer marketing and micro-influencer marketing. Both are a win-win for the parties involved. You benefit because you establish a strategic partnership with someone with reach, credibility, and salesmanship who can advocate for your product or service.

The influencer benefits because he or she is recognized, gets access to information, and becomes the first to learn of news in their field — three things that strengthen their influence.

Interaction

Social media is about more than driving traffic to your website. So be sure to interact with your audience. Take time to understand your customers and how they interact with your brand. Be responsive to their comments. Engage them. Respond quickly to customer complaints, issues and questions. Personal interaction is important because it helps build relationships and relationships help build business. Using the right monitoring and tracking tools will help you do it right.

Interactive quizzes

Interactive quizzes are another important thing to share on social media, according to Forbes. Letting readers answer fun questions in order to receive personalized product and service recommendations encourages two-way conversations in a digital environment.

Podcasts and other audio content

And since we live in a world that encourages multi-tasking, Forbes also points out the creation of podcasts and other audio content as another important 2019 trend. Users can listen to your audio as they drive, walk, run, and do household tasks. With voice search so popular, content creators should be creating content that can be listened to, as well as read and watched.

Long-form content

“Scientific evidence is proving that long-form content drives conversion and search engine optimization when done right,” advises Edward Bourelly of Omni-Culture Marketing, Inc. Consumers don’t necessarily prefer short bursts of content. They will engage with long content if it interesting. So make it interesting. Here’s how to create long-form content that engages readers:

Tell stories that convey the “behind the scenes” realities of your business.
Tell stories that matter to people.
Communicate, don’t sell.
Share personal stories, including employee-created content, which receives eight times more engagement than content shared from the company itself and extends brand messaging by more than 500 percent.

Live video

Ever watch the TV sitcom “A.P. Bio”? In several episodes this season, a high school staffer is shown spending lots of work time recording Facebook Live videos about her consumer experiences. Meanwhile, her phone screen is shown blowing up with positive reactions from viewers. These scenes alone show how live video can connect with a mass audience on an authentic, personal level. Use analytics to find out more about your audience and how to deepen your connection with them. Develop a video strategy that includes live, vertical, interactive and smartphone-quality videos.

Those who study social media trends say LinkedIn, with 260 million users, has done a lot over the last year with video, with the rise of LinkedIn influencers, and with connecting their products to Bing. LinkedIn reports that year to year likes, comments, and shares on the network have increased 50 percent. And the network is appealing to a younger demographic as those folks start out on their careers or head into higher ed, as well as to executives who prefer watching video to reading text.

Instagram stories

Well, that’s no secret. Instagram has exploded, and Instagram stories keep growing in popularity and engagement. Whether the reach is paid or organic, the growth is there. Out of Instagram’s more than one billion monthly users as of June 2018, 400 million of them are clicking on Instagram stories. Instagram Stories continue to gain popularity and increased engagement via organic and paid methods. And Instagram is the only social media platform that has seen an uptick this year over last, a new Pew Research Center study has found.

Social media use steady and established

The Pew Research Center study also found that, “The shares of adults who say they use Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter are each largely the same as in 2016.”

Brent Csutoras, co-owner and adviser of Search Engine Journal, puts it this way: “Companies need to remember that the “newness” of social media is over.” It’s here to stay.

Why a High Turnover Rate is Harmful and What Companies Can Do About It

18AprMay 2, 2019 By Dale Kiefer

Many companies face staffing challenges. It turns out that it’s not only hard to recruit talented people; it’s also tough to keep them. Few things can be more detrimental to an organization’s well-being than high turnover. If your company has a (figurative) revolving door for an entrance/exit, then that’s a sure sign that it’s definitely not functioning as it should. And when employees don’t stick around, this not only adversely affects company cohesion, it also impacts your customers or clients. This, in turn, is going to cut into your bottom line, which inevitably worsens morale, creating a vicious and self-perpetuating circle of underperformance.

For many business owners and operators, it may be difficult to come to terms with the fact that management style can often be a huge factor when it comes to retaining staff. A recent survey on employer-employee relations revealed a very startling but telling truth: A majority of workers reported that, if given the choice, they would actually rather have a better boss than get a pay raise. The abusive boss who screams and throws tantrums may be a Hollywood cliché, but in the real world you’re much more likely to encounter an oppressive micromanager than an overgrown toddler.

Still, whatever the cause, high turnover will devour your company from within. Here are just a few of the ways that it will not only destroy your spirit, but cost you money as well:

Growing pains: Even if, as a recent hire, you’re an expert in what you do and enthusiastic about hitting the ground running, it will still take you a while to get into the swing of things in a brand-new place. There’s formal orientation to go through and adjustments to a new company’s culture. If a high percentage of an organization consists of new hires, then productivity will suffer as all of these recent arrivals simultaneously try to find their way.
Training time: High turnover also has a negative impact on the productivity of the employees who do stick around. That’s because they often end up shouldering multiple burdens. First of all, if there are gaps in the company workforce, then someone has to bridge that divide. That means that some employees will end up working extra hours and may have to tackle projects outside of their assigned departments or formal job duties. Plus, these same veteran employees will eventually have to devote a significant amount of time to training the new arrivals. That inevitably cuts into productivity.
Does anyone know how to…? When people leave an organization, they take their knowledge and experience with them. Maybe some of them were quite thorough when it came to leaving handover notes behind. Still, documents are no substitute for a real, breathing person who can answer questions in real time. If no one at your organization weathered a storm through tough times, that makes it all the more difficult for you to do it in the future.
Putting on the same face: Customers value continuity and consistency. If you get a different person on the phone every time you call an organization that you’re supposed to trust, does that make you feel more or less confident that they have the capability to focus on your needs? And there’s nothing more irritating than having to explain who you are and what you need from a company over and over again each time you call them because everyone you’ve ever dealt with before has left.

Alright, so high turnover is bad, and is likely a symptom of a larger problem within the organization. If you accept that, then the logical next question is: What can a company do to prevent it?

It should be about trust: You’ve gone through the trouble of recruiting, vetting, interviewing, checking, double-checking, training, orienting, and (one hopes) welcoming a new member of staff to your team. And now, after all that, you feel that you have to stand over that person and monitor every keystroke? Save the micromanaging for house-training your new puppy and let the professionals create and manage their own task lists.
Don’t run anyone ragged: Great managers provide their staffs with a clear set of responsibilities, goals, and objectives. Mercilessly piling (sometimes barely relevant) work on employees, even out of perceived necessity, is going to burn your people out. And once they get to that stage, they’ll be looking for the door.
Stay flexible: We’re well into the 21^st century now, and in many professional fields the days of rigid in-office hours and cubicle confinement are a thing of the past. Allow employees to take advantage of technological advances to make their work-life balance more balanced, and you might be amazed at how it actually improves both productivity and morale. In this day and age, an employee can attend a meeting without actually being in the room and still be every bit as insightful. Managers who get that, get to keep the best workers.
Invest in your people: There are many things you can do to make someone feel valued within your organization. One of the most impactful of all is to give that person a path to greater professional enrichment and advancement. Encourage your employees to build their skill sets and then create systems and structures to allow them to pursue self-improvement. Plan and fund ways for your workers to enhance their resumes and they’ll feel loyalty to the company. Plus, you can consider this to be your company’s version of the “rising tide lifts all boats” aphorism. If the people who work for you know more, your company knows more, and that’s just smart business. And if you’re concerned about the cost of additional trainings for your employees, you should know that it’s a lot less costly than onboarding new ones!
Listen: This may be the most vital thing that any manager can do to hang on to good talent. Listen! Communicate! It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the main key to success in a business setting is the same as that in a personal context. Be open, honest, and receptive when it comes to your employees’ concerns, and they’ll feel empowered to share them.
Be the change you wish to see: Some bosses rule by intimidation. That might allow an organization to skate by in the short term. But if you really want to build up your company, nurture your employees, and create a culture of work that actually works, then you should choose inspiration as a motivating tool instead. Even just saying “thank you” to someone on your staff can make a huge difference in shaping attitudes and boosting morale. We all want positive recognition and appreciation. Don’t be stingy with gratitude. You can produce it in-house for free!

Reducing employee turnover isn’t something you do by waving a magic wand over your organization. It’s something that you must live every day; it should be woven into your company culture. Losing staff goes hand-in-hand with losing customers. Don’t find out the hard way.

Content Marketing and Social Media: What’s In It For You?

11AprApril 25, 2019 By Paula Maggio

At Triple Canopy Media, we use Content Marketing to help monitor and maintain your company’s reputation online. This strategic marketing approach is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content, content that will attract and retain a clearly defined audience. Ultimately, this content also drives customers to take action that profits your company. Social media is one component of a content marketing plan.

Social media: an important component

Having a well-developed social media presence is critical in today’s hyper-connected world. Your customers, clients, and stakeholders live on social media, and so should you. Your presence on social media will help you actively engage in reputation management, broadcast (and narrowcast) your public relations messages, reinforce and build your brand, identify and attract new customers, and retain existing customers and clients.

At Triple Canopy Media, we know that social media is an essential component of every business’s content marketing plan. And about 90% of marketers agree. They say social media generates important exposure for their companies.

The benefits of using social media are so great that anyone not using it is missing out on a cost-effective marketing opportunity. It is cost-effective because setting up social media accounts is free. Plus, it only takes the investment of a few hours per week to increase brand awareness and enhance the reputation of your business.

Plan and publish

Simply having a social media page will benefit your brand. And while it has never been easier to connect with your stakeholders, we strongly suggest that you have a plan before wading too deeply in these waters. It’s easy to make missteps on social media. Once it’s on Twitter, you can’t take it back.

But it is also important to provide updated content on a regular basis if you want to generate a wide audience for your business. As we like to say: Publish or perish. So while you want to update your website and blog content regularly, we recommend that you do the same for your social media accounts.

Figure out what to post

Feeling lost about what you should post on social media? Don’t despair. You’ll soon find your way. Here are a few good places to start.

What is your company’s story? What is its mission? What are its key messages? What makes your company stand out from the others? Craft your posts to convey this important information to your followers and those with whom they share your posts.

Vary your posts. Share links to information on your website, including any case studies you may produce. Broadcast links to new informative posts on your blog. Share news about your company, including links to coverage in media outlets. Share details of your events. Be sure to add visuals. Photos, memes, and videos add interest and variety.

Take a look at other social media pages and accounts — including those of your competitors — and make note of what catches your eye. What do you find interesting, informative, important, or amusing? Let those observations inform what you post on your business accounts.

Don’t forget user generated content. As Social Media Today reports, “the authenticity and influence of user-generated visuals are what people seek, trust and act on most.” Reviews from satisfied customers or clients are perfect, as are video testimonials from that same group. Such content proves you have a valuable product or service, according to the real people who use it.

Remember these two things: Eight-six percent of people say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support. And 93% of consumers admit online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. Both are good reasons for collecting and using user generated content.

Tag and hashtag

Remember to tag other businesses and organizations that you mention in your social media posts whenever possible. Such tags will encourage those entities to like and share your page and your posts, thereby increasing your audience and generating more awareness of your business.

Add appropriate hashtags that refer to the topic(s) included in your post. This will allow those interested in that topic to find your post by searching the particular hashtag. Example: #contentmarketing

Like and follow

Look up your clients and customers on social media. Find the accounts and pages of important civic organizations and others in your community. Like their pages. Follow them. Like and share their posts. Post positive comments. Write reviews. With any luck, they will do the same for you. All of that will increase your audience, your engagement, and your credibility.

What social media can do for you

Now that you have had a crash course in social media engagement, here’s what setting up and regularly maintaining appropriate social media accounts can do for your business:

Create and increase brand awareness
Build credibility and trust
Educate your audience(s)
Generate demand for your goods or services
Generate leads
Build loyalty and brand advocacy with existing clients/customers
Build an audience
Generate sales/revenue
Improve search engine rankings
Increase website traffic
Drive attendance to events
Support product launches

How does TCM handle content marketing?

We assess your needs, determine which social media platforms will best serve them, and set up a regular process for sharing carefully crafted content about your business via selected platforms.
We create a cohesive strategy and measurement plan.
We integrate the plan across the organization.
Finally, we use metrics to monitor content marketing performance and ROI.

Reach out for help

Trust us. Social media is a key element for marketing success. If you’re not sure how to do it, reach out to us. We here at Triple Canopy Media would be glad to show you how it’s done. Or do it for you.

Tell Your Company’s Story Using Content

07JunApril 11, 2019 By Matt Williams

Although SEO strategies are constantly evolving to keep up with changes to search engine algorithms, some marketing essentials stay the same. Your company still needs to stand out. Why do customers search for a business? They do it because they have a problem that needs to be solved or because they don’t have something and they’re hoping to find it. The goal of your business should be to solve their problem or fill that void with a product or a service that meets their needs. And you can only do that if the customer can find you.

As we discussed in a previous post, people are increasingly conducting online searches by speaking to their personal virtual assistants on their phones and other devices. This means that searchers tend to ask their search engines questions the way they might ask questions of other people, that is, in complete sentences. Searchers (who are your potential customers) don’t look for what they want using a jumbled mess of keywords piled on top of each other. That means that your company website absolutely should not feature content that is nothing but a heap of keywords either.

The established wisdom that you should write content for people and not for search engines is still true in 2018. Search engines like Google, though not yet sentient beings, are already smart enough to detect when unscrupulous marketers are trying to trick them by stuffing keywords into a webpage. If you try to do this, they might even penalize you for it by shoving your site lower on a list of search results than it ought to be (and certainly lower than you would want it to be). To be found by real human searchers you must be able to tell a story that is engaging to real human readers. And that story should also answer questions that real humans ask.

Creating content for your company’s website gives you the chance to define who you are and what you do. It also allows you to sell yourself to the type of customer who would be most likely to want to patronize your business.

For instance, let’s say that you own a restaurant. Naturally, you want as many customers as you can get. But simply striving to appeal to everyone is not enough of a marketing strategy on its own. What selling points does your business have that sets it apart from the crowd? Maybe your restaurant serves barbecue. Maybe it’s a Thai or Mexican place. Perhaps you cater to diners who want organic fare, or need for their meals to be gluten-free.

Those are the basics, but your content branding strategy needs to go beyond that. Is your restaurant at the cutting-edge of culinary development, or is it full of laid-back, home-cooking fare? Are families welcome there, or do you have a large cocktail menu that might cater to young partiers? Is your place one where people can count on watching the big game while they eat or one where a couple on a first date might have the chance to engage in an intimate conversation? All of this is part of your company’s brand, and it defines how you attract the kind of customers who are most likely to enjoy what you have to offer. And if they like what you do, they’re more likely to come back. Not only that, but they’re more likely to tell their friends about it and to post positive and accurate reviews of your business online.

You tell your story through content. You define your brand through content. And if you do this well, then you get the customers your business wants and you can leverage them to expand your customer base even further.

Content that can attract customers is not just limited to words. Your company’s website should also be aesthetically pleasing, and that means having an appealing layout full of pictures and videos. But remember that multimedia items are great for human browsers but not so good for search engines, which can’t understand this type of content. They can only detect the words that you use to label it. This is why you should make sure to assign accurate and descriptive tags to your visual content. Look at this as a chance to throw in a few extra keywords as well.

For instance, when you upload an image onto your website, give it a title using words that can help a search engine identify that image as something that rightfully accompanies your written content. Returning to the business example we discussed earlier, let’s say that you run a gourmet burger restaurant and that the image seen here depicts one of your signature items. A person can see this for what it is, but a search engine can only see the text connected to it. Therefore, make sure that the filename for this image is something like joeseverythingburger.jpg, and not img64738.jpg. In the same vein, be sure that your alt tag for your image (the words that describe the image for people if it fails to load) is just as helpful and descriptive.

Remember that content is your brand and your brand is your business, so make sure that it says what you need to say to reach your target audience. And, although you should write for people and not for search engines, it’s essential to create content that is accessible to them as well.

If you’re not sure how to do that, reach out to us. We here at Triple Canopy Media would be glad to show you how it’s done.

Backlinks—Weave your Site into the Web

07JunJune 7, 2018 By Matt Williams

Let’s say you have a lot of great content on your company’s website. Excellent! That’s one of the most effective things you can do to make sure that potential customers find your business when they conduct a search for a solution to their problems. You want your company’s website to tell your company’s story and you want people to find it compelling enough to reach out and purchase your goods and services.

Now with that in mind, let’s say you have written a novel. Maybe it’s full of heart-pounding action and unpredictable plot twists. Perhaps you have crafted a fully-realized universe full of engaging characters and moral quandaries that examine the very meaning of what it is to be human. You’re convinced that it’s bound to change the literary landscape and be a bestseller on top of it!

What’s the next step? Would you put your manuscript in a drawer, and never show it to anyone?

Of course not! No one will ever see it there.

The world wide web is like real life in this way. If no person will ever be able to find your page—even if it has a lot of great things going for it—then much of the hard work that you put into creating it will go unappreciated. To put it simply, you want to be found.

We have already discussed why crafting high-quality content is of the utmost importance when it comes to getting search engines (and through them, people) to your site. But it doesn’t stop there. Backlinks can help connect you to the rest of the online community and increase the exposure that your website receives. Hyperlinks (or simply links) are, of course, those bits of underlined text that you can click on while browsing a website that will take you to another webpage. That page could be within the website you’re currently browsing (an internal link) or to a different website altogether (an external link). When a webpage on another site contains an external link that leads to a page on your website, then your website has a backlink from that site. You want backlinks from other reputable sites, and the more the better.

The main reason for this is that this weaves you into the fabric that holds the online community together. Knowing this, it should be easy to see why we call it the world wide web. Different websites are connected to each other through links (enmeshed like the strands of a spider’s web). Search engine robots, often called web crawlers or spiders, move along these links to discover websites, so the more backlinks you have directed toward your site the more likely it is that the search engines will find you. And if they find you, that means more traffic from real live humans.

Of course, getting others to link to your site is not as easy as simply understanding what backlinks are or how they can help you. It takes time and diligence. And it has to be organic. Paying some unsavory service to hurl links at your site is not just ineffective; it might result in Google penalizing you for doing it. As with so many things that matter in the real world, quality counts so much more than quantity. It’s better to have a real human user who maintains an influential website in your field create a link to your site than it is to have spambots try to promote you through cheating. Search engines will see through this trickery. Plus, you degrade the inherent value of your website and, by extension, your brand, by doing this.

The best method you can use to get other websites to send browsers to your site is to make it worthwhile to do so. And you accomplish this by writing great content. This may mean devising an illuminating guide that helps people understand the best method for accomplishing something. It may mean being at the vanguard of a technological movement. It may even mean sharing immersive anecdotes revealing the wisdom you have acquired in all your years of being in business. If it’s accurate, engaging, helpful, and, most of all, readable, then people will want to share it with others. And the more they share the more traffic you get.

You can take additional steps toward getting yourself more effectively woven into the fabric of the world wide web. Put external links in your own articles that send users to other websites that help to further illustrate or reinforce the points you make in your written content. It never hurts to connect yourself to more-established sites, provided that they are relevant, reputable, and as authoritative as possible. Don’t write articles that are made up entirely of links, but feel free to direct your users to other sites if you think that this will be helpful to them and reflect well on your material. And if what you compose is valuable, expect others to begin doing the same for you!

Online Customer Reviews For Your Business

18MarMarch 18, 2018 By Matt Williams

If you run a business, you need to get good online customer reviews. These online customer reviews are can help you grow your top and bottom lines, and it can also help to insulate you against the online complaints of the occasional disgruntled customer. A recent comprehensive study covering 2017 found, among other things, that 97% of consumers look online when seeking out a local business and that 93% of consumers read local reviews to decide if a business is good or not. And since this trend is likely to continue and accelerate, it’s clear that online customer reviews (or a lack thereof) can make or break a business.

The value of positive online customer reviews is fairly self-evident. As consumers, we often weigh recommendations more heavily when we feel that they’re coming from disinterested third parties. We are more likely to heed the advice of a friend who had a positive experience with a company than we are a paid advertisement put out by that company, even if they both say basically the same thing.

That said, outside of reviewing restaurants and hotels, most customers simply don’t think about leaving online customer reviews. It’s not that they don’t want to help businesses that serve them well. Most customers are happy to show appreciation when they’re pleased with how they’ve been treated. But oftentimes it just doesn’t occur to many of them. And some of them may want to, but just don’t know how. As a business owner you should be attentive to your online public image. That means you must prioritize encouraging customers to write reviews about you and make sure they know how it’s done.

If you don’t take the reins and actively ask for reviews, you may have to face this challenging reality: Most of the online feedback you’ll receive from customers (if you get any at all) will be negative and likely not an accurate reflection of your customers’ satisfaction overall. That’s because some people have a tendency, when they’re disappointed or upset over what they see as lackluster service or a faulty product, to seek attention through posting scathing online reviews, seeking a chance to vent or hoping, perhaps unreasonably, for redress or compensation. Meanwhile, customers who are pleased with how a business has treated them may walk away after a handshake and a smile, feeling that the transaction is now complete and that there’s no need to give it an afterlife.

With this in mind, it’s good to know that with some helpful guidance, you can inspire your customers to write online reviews and make sure that they will understand how to utilize different online forums for posting feedback. And you can be confident that this will raise the profile and the visibility of your business.

Google, Facebook, and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) are all places where you can direct customers to write reviews. (Yelp strongly discourages businesses from soliciting feedback, and claims that their recommendation software actively targets reviews obtained in this way, so it’s best to let customers use that one on their own.)

Getting a lot of positive reviews on Google is a great place to start, especially if your business is one with a fixed location that comes up when potential customers search for “[your type of business] near me.” The best way to illustrate this is to take a look at what comes up when you use Google to search for a business such as “Triple Canopy Media.” Here is a screenshot of that search:

Google will display vital featured details about the business as long as that business has set up a Google My Business profile. (If you haven’t created a Google My Business profile, you should do so right away—it’s free! You can start the process here.) Notice that the most prominent pieces of information about the business, after the name and photos, are the reviews. Not to boast, but notice also that Triple Canopy Media has a 5-star rating based on nineteen reviews.

Triple Canopy Media obtained the bulk of these reviews within a period of six weeks as part of a deliberate front-loading outreach campaign. TCM actively solicited reviews from customers during this time period. These results demonstrate the ability of a business to generate positive online buzz relatively quickly by making a conscious effort to do so. Of course, getting positive feedback from customers should be an ongoing process for any business, and one that you, as the owner, might even want to delegate to a particular member of your staff, just to make sure that someone has the responsibility for it and that it will always be done. But it is essential that you start strong, since more positive reviews leads to more customers and a larger customer pool leads to more potential positive reviews and so on.

It’s important to remember that prospective customers often base their decision-making not just on the quality of the reviews they see but the combination of the quality and the number of reviews a business has. For instance, one 5-star review is not likely to have as great a positive impact on a potential customer as fifteen reviews that average out to a rating of 4.2 stars. The larger the number of people who have had a positive experience, the better.

The main thing that you need to do to make sure that you get reviews on Google (or elsewhere) is to ask for them! And if customers don’t know how to write reviews on Google, then go ahead and show them. And if they forget, then feel free to give them gentle reminders to do so.

Facebook has more than two billion monthly active users, so chances are, nearly all of your customers will have profiles there and many of them likely already spend time there every day. This makes asking for a review on Facebook relatively easy. Of course, if your business doesn’t have its own Facebook page, then your customers can’t find it and write reviews, so creating one should be a priority for you. Get started here. Once that’s accomplished, you can promote your business on Facebook by doing all of the things that you would do on your personal Facebook page: post status updates, announce upcoming events, and share relevant photos and videos. Then you can reach out to your customers and ask them to give you feedback. This is pretty straightforward, but if any of them need a helpful how-to, you can direct them to this short Facebook article. For your reference, here is a screenshot of some of the reviews on the Triple Canopy Media Facebook page:

Finally, there’s the Better Business Bureau, which has the most formal set of procedures for both business owners and reviewers. Businesses that wish to gain accreditation from the BBB must apply for it and meet certain eligibility requirements, such as being in existence for at least six months, and being fully licensed and bonded wherever they operate, among several others. You can learn more and start the process here. For your customers, sharing feedback here can be a bit more involved, in that the BBB vets reviews and may reach out to those who write them to prove that they interacted with the company they’re reviewing. You can help your customers out by sending them to this page showing them the steps they can take to write a BBB review for you. And, again, for reference, here is the portion of the BBB Triple Canopy Media page that showcases customer reviews:

Regardless of which of these forums you or your customers choose to emphasize the most, your constant vigilance is essential. You should not stop at simply asking and reminding customers for online customer reviews. You should also make sure to monitor the online customer reviews that you get and do your best to mitigate the potential damage that any negative feedback might bring to your business. This may mean having to endure the task of responding to these reviews so that they don’t just hang out online as the definitive word on how you do business.

You can find a detailed summary of how to deal with several types of negative reviews here, but it’s best to approach them in the same cool-headed manner you would use to deescalate any disagreement in real life. You should own up to and apologize for mistakes that your business actually did make. Feel free to tell your side of the story, but stick to the facts—don’t let your emotions do the talking. Finally, show that you have worked to ensure that the circumstances that brought about the negative review have been addressed so that no future customer will have an experience like the disappointed one who left the online customer review review.

Remember that the power to shape the online story for your business lies largely in your hands. Treat your customers well, and they will give you some positive feedback. Ask them to do it, show them how, and then keep reminding them, and they will give you even more.

Search and SEO Trends for 2018

02MarMarch 2, 2018 By Matt Williams

EMERGING SEARCH & SEO TRENDS FOR 2018

When the technology that we use evolves, the way that we interact with it inevitably changes as well. How we search for information today might be very different from how we will search for it even just a year from now. It’s essential that your business stays on top of the changing trends that will affect how you can reach your desired audience. In this article Triple Canopy Media keeps an eye on search and SEO trends for 2018 so that you can keep two eyes on your business.

MOBILE-FIRST INDEXING

Way back in 2015, Google announced that queries conducted on its search engine using mobile devices had outnumbered those made on desktops.

This shift has inspired Google to change how it discovers results and ranks listings. Formerly, it had used the desktop browser’s view of the web to search for pages online, by crawling from link to link. Now, it’s using a mobile device’s point of view.

If you don’t have a mobile version of your website, Google will still be able to find and rank the desktop version. That said, if you have both a desktop and a mobile version, Google will likely just see the latter. This means that it’s vital that your mobile site have all of the same content as its desktop counterpart. And if your site is not mobile-ready, then now is the time to update it and make sure that it is. This is an important SEO trend development for 2018.

VOICE SEARCH

A recent consumer survey revealed that people have fewer inhibitions about talking to their phones—even in public—than they did only just a year ago. The respondents of the survey noted the ease of this mode of search (as it’s quick and involves no typing) as well as their general satisfaction with their device’s ability to understand them and what they were asking for.

The same study revealed that a greater number of respondents wanted more direct answers (and therefore fewer search results) when asking questions to their devices. This means that a featured snippet (that page excerpt that often appears above the list of other search results in a query when viewed on a screen) may be the best way for some companies to get noticed. And you increase your chances of being a snippet by having content that answers direct questions that users most often ask about a subject. In 2018, content is still king! This SEO trend should inform your marketing strategy for the upcoming year.

LONG TAIL SEARCHES

Keeping with the theme of searchers asking direct questions and wanting direct answers is the concept of long-tail keywords. These are the longer and more specific phrases that people use when conducting voice searches or when they’re closer to actually making a purchase. Someone who searches for “cookware” might just be passing time. But someone who searches for a “7-inch diameter non-stick skillet” probably wants to buy that item today. As a business, the key to taking advantage of this trend is to make sure that you have specific phrases describing what you do or sell in your site’s content that can set you apart from your competition.

This is just a sampling of the changes that 2018 will bring, of course, but keeping them in mind will give you a head start as you strive to gain visibility online.

What is Influencer Marketing?

09FebFebruary 9, 2018 By Matt Williams

So what is influencer marketing? Influencer marketing is more or less just what it sounds like. If you want to promote a product or a service, find a person who is a prominent figure in your field of business and then have that person lead the way in drawing positive attention to what you sell. By doing this, you can piggyback on your influencer’s established following, platform, or expertise.

The use of influencer marketing is increasingly important as brands move away from traditional media platforms such as television, radio, and print, and move toward a greater focus on outreach through social media.

This seems to be a logical step for marketing to take in an era in which celebrities and their tastes and opinions are ubiquitous. Combine this with the old wisdom that potential customers often give more credence to word-of-mouth recommendations from third parties they trust than they do to traditional advertising, and it’s clear that influencer marketing can be a very powerful tool for any brand.

The Pew Research Center reports that a majority of U.S. adults get at least some of their news from social media sites. People often trust in what they see on social media, and this is where many influencers have made a name for themselves. LinkedIn, for example, uses exactly this terminology, inviting the people who use its service to follow recommended “Influencers” it thinks they will like based on their interests and industry.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and dozens of smaller sites have either launched celebrities or kept them in the limelight by being the primary way that their fans and followers stay in touch with them as well as what they recommend and consume. Influencer marketing allows you to capitalize on an audience that has already been built and that trusts what its influencers say. You can create content that your influencer then shares with his or her followers, or you can entrust the influencer to create content on their own and spread it on your behalf.

Natural influencers are often individuals who have massive social media followings. But it’s important to look beyond those who simply dominate Twitter or Instagram with their numbers. Influencers can also be activists and educators as well as early adopters in certain markets, especially in fields like tech or fashion. As with any promotional campaign, it’s essential to not just reach tons of people. You want to make sure that you’re reaching the most appropriate audience for your brand or product. And in that regard, when it comes to marketing, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So what is influencer marketing? It’s something that your business should probably be leveraging to your benefit. Triple Canopy Media can help you do this!