Tag: relevant

Posted on

Are You Making the Most of Your Social Media Platforms?

Did you know that almost 90% of marketers say their social media marketing efforts have increased exposure for their business? In case that is not powerful enough for you to want to learn more and achieve increased traffic, 48% of Americans have interacted with companies on at least one social media network. But to be a part of these statistics, you need to keep these factors in mind:

  • Which channels you use depending on your target audience as well as how well you have identified their patterns and behaviors.
  • The voice of your brand should be consistent and friendly and represent what suits the business
  • The content should be visual, relevant, and engaging.  

The main goal is to get the fans to interact and not just follow. You should use your social media presence as a place to connect and produce engaging content with clear and consistent messages. If you don’t have a clear message to convey to your fans, the engagement will be limited and you have a 51% chance of having them unfollow you.

There are many social media platforms out there for you to connect with your fans. One of those platforms you use needs to be Facebook. Although, most think Facebook is dying, stats don’t lie. Facebook is still king of the social media platforms right now. Seventy nine percent of internet users in the US log into Facebook. Facebook continues to command the largest audience and the time users spend on the site is still growing. However, due to the recent algorithm updates, organic reach for brands is lower than ever. So you have to get a little creative to best reach your target audience.

However, nearly a fourth of social media influencers believe Instagram is the top avenue for marketing strategies. As Instagram emerges as a top platform, more and more brands will be focusing heavily on marketing strategies for Instagram. Instagram drives the most engagement per post compared to any social media platform. 84 times more than Twitter and 10 times more than Facebook.

Twitter ranked last as platform to use for ads but 47% of marketers agreed Twitter was the best social media channel for customer engagement. Due to its real-time feed and updates, Twitter has proven to be top channel for customer service, allowing customers to easily and quickly contact brands.

For LinkedIn, you do have to focus on making sure each post contains highly relevant and targeted information but you don’t’ have to produce the volume of posts required for a successful Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter campaign. The typical LinkedIn user only uses the network for an average of 17 minutes per month. Users come to LinkedIn for information and expertise, so it’s an ideal platform to establish yourself as an expert in the industry.

It also drive more than half of all social traffic to business to business blogs and sites. Of the 2 billion Millennials globally, 87 million of them are on LinkedIn. Of those 87 million Millennial users, 11 million are in decision-making positions.

If you take anything away from this, it is that social media is more important than ever for marketing. The platforms you use and the content you produce for each are just as important to your campaign to get engagement and fan investment.

If you want to learn more about maximizing your social media platforms and using social media to promote your brand, you need to attend our Business Growth Training workshops for 2019.

Register for our workshops: http://www.eecincubator.com/business-growth-workshops.html

See this site for more stats on social media: https://ignitevisibility.com/social-media-statistics/

Posted on

Why Continuous Learning Matters

Written by Dora Cheatham, Program Manager, Emerging Enterprise Center

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”  Confucius

When I first entered the world of business more years ago than I care to remember, it was a very different place.  Word processors were just making an appearance and sending a fax was the ultimate in high speed communication, the internet barely existed, and Amazon wasn’t even a glimmer in Jeff Bezos’ eye.

Fast forward to 2018 and while the basic principles of business remain the same, the way we DO business is infinitely different. Technology has changed how we make decisions and embark on a strategic direction, how we execute on strategy, how we transact business, how we communicate. Equally, we have access to more informational and educational resources than ever before. For the small business owner today – more than ever – to ignore the need for continuous learning is to remain stagnant at best, fail at worst.

The Emerging Enterprise Center’s Business Growth Workshops hone in on business processes that every small business and entrepreneur needs while tying into the ever-evolving business environment.  Among these:

Marketing & Communication:  30 years ago, sales and marketing were almost synonymous and advertising represented the main thrust of the marketing and sales effort.  Today the world of sales and marketing couldn’t be more different, yet too often small business owners still believe that, as long as they market their product or business “customers will come”.  This couldn’t be further from the truth, so it is critical that new entrepreneurs as well as small business owners are clear in their own minds of the differences between strategic marketing, marketing communications, advertising, and sales so that they can develop and implement a sustainable business growth plan.

Selling Value:  Probably the toughest thing for first time – and sometimes serial – entrepreneurs to grasp, is the difference between selling a PRODUCT or SERVICE and selling VALUE.  Entrepreneurs and innovators, rightly, are passionate about their product and their passion is reflected when they speak about it.  What it can do, how it can do it, how it was developed, the features, the benefits.  The more clearly those features and benefits can be articulated into end user value, the less important price becomes as a part of the sales equation.  This translates into a more valuable business model that generates greater revenue.  To quote Warren Buffet:  “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”    Are you clear about the value that you are providing to your customers?

Innovation: “Innovate or die” has become a 21st century mantra and rightly so.  Failure to innovate led to the slow demise of companies like Eastman Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears and, more recently, Toys ‘R’ Us.  In today’s world of rapid technological development, changing tastes and increasing competition, product life cycles are becoming shorter and shorter.  Businesses that fail to update are gradually squeezed out of the market.  Innovation doesn’t have to be disruptive – it can be gradual and incremental.  The key is to remain relevant!

Globalization:  Globalization can be a hotly contested topic but has nevertheless had a profound impact on business with increased competition, expanded markets, increased resources, technology transfer.  The increased ease with which business can be transacted internationally means that even the smallest of businesses can access customers and markets which in the past may have seemed unreachable, either directly or through strategic business alliances.

In the end, while ignorance – at times – can be bliss, when running a business, it can be fatal.  As a business owner, I’m all too aware of the fact that the first step to growing a business is the ability to acknowledge that “I don’t know what I don’t know.”  So I make sure I continue to learn.

For more information on the Emerging Enterprise Center’s Business Growth Workshops, contact Erica Crell at (302) 294-2063 or via email.