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Robyn Ackerman
In , Instagram, LinkedIn, Marketing, , Tips

5 Ways to Grow a Nonprofit Through Social Media in 2023

In today’s digital age, social media has become an essential tool for nonprofits to reach and engage with their supporters. It provides a platform for nonprofits to tell their stories, share their mission, and connect with their audience in a more meaningful way. However, simply having a social media presence is not enough to grow a nonprofit organization. Here are five ways nonprofits can leverage social media to grow their organization in 2023. By following the tips in this blog post, you can use social media to connect with potential donors, volunteers, and partners, and raise awareness for your cause.

  1. Audit your current social media platforms.

Before you can start growing your nonprofit organization on social media, you need to audit your current platforms. Take some time to assess your current social media presence and identify any areas that need improvement. Are you posting regularly? Are you engaging with your followers? Are you using the right hashtags? Once you know where you stand, you can start to make changes to improve your social media strategy.

  1. Prioritize video content.

Video content is becoming increasingly popular on social media. In fact, video is expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic by 2022. If you’re not already using video in your social media marketing, now is the time to start. Video is a great way to engage your audience, tell your story, and promote your products or services.

  1. Use social media to tell your story.

Social media is a great way to share your nonprofit’s story with the world to raise awareness for your caus. Share photos and videos of your work, interviews with your staff and clients, and behind-the-scenes footage of your events. The more people see your story, the more likely they are to get involved with your organization.

  1. Engage with your followers and potential donors.

Social media is a two-way street. It’s not just about broadcasting your message to the world. It’s also about engaging with your followers and responding to their comments and questions. The more you engage with your followers, the more likely they are to stay engaged with your organization. Nonprofits can use social media to connect with potential donors and volunteers by sharing stories about your work, posting updates about upcoming events, and running online campaigns. For example, a nonprofit that provides food to people in need could post photos of the food they distribute, or a nonprofit that works to protect the environment could post updates about their efforts to clean up litter.

  1. Use social media ads.

If you want to reach a wider audience and grow your business quickly, you can use social media ads. Social media ads can be a great way to promote your non-profit or services to a specific audience. You can target your ads based on demographics, interests, and even keywords.

Growing a nonprofit through social media requires effort, dedication, and a clear strategy. By developing a strong online presence, creating meaningful relationships with supporters, and using social media to share your mission, you can make a real impact and grow your organization. Embrace the power of social media in 2023 and take advantage of the opportunities it offers to expand your reach and achieve your nonprofit’s goals. With persistence and a personal touch, your nonprofit can thrive and make a difference in the world.

Pop Digital Marketing
In Advertising, Blog, E-Marketing, , How to, LinkedIn, Marketing, , Tips

Marketing During the Summer Season: Maximize Your Strategies 

With summer in full swing, you may have seen a slight dip in engagement and sales while consumers are in “vacation mode.” It can be difficult to capture your audience’s attention as more people are spending less time on the internet and more time outside. According to a study by Fanpage Karma, they saw 39% more reactions on rainy days in spring, autumn, and winter than on sunny days. Despite the low activity, you can get the most out of the summer season with these marketing tips to encourage more interactions.

Here are 4 recommended tactics to keep your marketing strong and your audience engaged over the summer:   

Retarget Ads 

With increased sunshine, people are more likely to spend less time online, making it more difficult to drive sales and gain your consumer’s attention. Luckily, there are ways you can optimize your strategy with this trend in mind. Retargeting your ads on Facebook and Google allows brands to engage with their visitors long after they have left your website. These targeted ads will keep your business at the forefront of visitors’ minds while building trust and encouraging recent visitors to return to your site. 

Summer Holidays 

Take advantage of the Summer Holidays and find ways to tie them into your marketing strategy. You can also incorporate National Holidays into your campaign that are interesting to your unique audiences. 

Building a sense of urgency by creating timer popups for holiday sales/promotions through targeted emails is another way to capture your audience’s attention. 

Time to Experiment 

Test out new, various methods with your audience during the summer months. This could be expressing appreciation to your customers through email campaigns, partnering with other businesses to promote products/services, sending out company merch like coffee cups or t-shirts, or pushing loyalty programs that incentivize sales during a typically slow period. 

Do not be afraid to take risks and step out of the box with your marketing strategies. Creative campaigns are a great way to connect with your audience and stand out from your competition. It’s all about differentiating your company.

Take Advantage of Social Media 

You may see a decline in engagement during the summer months, but do not let that discourage you and slow down your posts. Try to incorporate that fun summer feeling into your feed and create creative content that encourages your audience to engage. This could be a call-to-action, summer-themed hashtags, seasonal videos, or hosting a contest to engage your audience. 

Make sure to be posting consistently at optimal times throughout each week. Decreasing your post times can negatively affect your posting algorithm and ultimately who sees your posts. You may need to adjust your current schedule as your audience may be active at various times of day during these warmer months.  

Marketing in the summer is full of potential, so make sure that your company is taking advantage of all the great opportunities available. Summer is the perfect time to be creative and discover new ways to engage your audience while creating maximum exposure during this traditionally slow time. 

 

Robyn Ackerman
In Advertising, , Instagram, , Tips

How Facebook’s Latest Change Will Significantly Impact Ad Targeting

Meta for Business and Facebook just announced that beginning Jan 19, 2022, they are removing “detailed targeting options” from the Ads Manager Tool that would be considered “sensitive topics” such as: 

  • Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness”, “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”) 
  • Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBTQ+ culture”) 
  • Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays”) 
  • Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures 

For clients of PDM, many of which provide services in the healthcare, education or professional service  industries, this can have a negative impact on personalized ad reach. 

Thankfully, there are still ways to reach your audience: 

5 methods your company can implement to still drive conversions through Facebook Ads in 2022 

  1. Engagement Custom Audiences: Reach people who have liked your page or people who have engaged with your posts in their News Feed. These people have already expressed a direct interest in your services or products and ads will yield a higher success rate if shown to them. 
  2. Location Targeting: If you own a brick-and-mortar or are advertising a local event, you can reach people in a specific vicinity using location targeting.  For businesses that offer services in the home, or companies that ship products, you may set your radius around serviced zip codes and your ad will be shown to people in those targeted areas. 
  3. Lookalike Audiences: Similar to Engagement Custom Audiences, Lookalike audiences can be built to target Facebook/Instagram users that fall under the same user categories as a seed audience.  Use this option if you want to broaden your reach to people who share interests, locations and have purchased products or services similar to yours.
  4. Website Custom Audiences: You can build a list on Facebook Ads that retargets anyone who has previously visited your website. Using Website Custom Audiences is a powerful remarketing tactic that will increase your conversions by 56%. 
  5. Customer Lists. If you have already built customer email lists in your own CRM tool and have permission from subscribers to use their information, you can upload your lists into Facebook’s Custom Audiences. This tool will help you target, retarget, and stay top of mind with old and new customers.   

Initially, once these changes take effect in January, you may experience a drop in conversions. However, if you set up your ads using any of the above approaches, you can avoid a big decline and keep your engagement and conversion numbers growing. 

Looking for help getting your ads set up? Reach out to a Pop Digital Marketing specialist and Get Discovered. 

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , LinkedIn, Marketing, SEO, , Tips,

5 Free Tools to Monitor your Competitors’ Digital Marketing Campaigns

Creating a holistic digital marketing strategy can take months.  Effectively executing the strategy after tweaks, minimal fails and multiple learning curves can take up to a year.  One stage often omitted from this important plan is monitoring competition.   Watching your competitors online holds unparalleled benefits such as identifying market opportunities, connecting with companies you should be cross promoting, back-link insight, social listening and more.

Monitor Online CompetitionHere are 5 Free Tools to monitor your competition:

  1. Google Alerts: One of the most underused tools, Google Alerts allows you to monitor the internet for “interesting content”. You can set up alerts for your industry keywords or even for mentions and articles on your competition.  Google alerts lets you customize the email reports you receive by how often you’d like the notifications, type of sources, the origin of source, and languages. Use alerts to drive trending content ideas and see how well your competition is doing with PR.
  2. Facebook Pages: Facebook offers page admins the opportunity to “watch” competitor Facebook pages. To add a competitor page, simply go to your page insights, scroll to the bottom and type in the name of the business you’d like to watch.  You can see the company’s follower growth, engagement and even the competitor’s top post from the past week.
  3. HootSuite: HootSuite is a simple social media publishing tool that also offers numerous in-platform apps to increase the overall user experience. One of the free apps, TrendSpottr enables you to set up multiple “streams” in your HootSuite to watch trending topics, keywords, brand reputation and even identify industry influencers.  HootSuite is also an excellent “social listening” tool for when potential customers are unhappy with the competition.  Below is an example of great social listening in action.  In this instance, I had tweeted dissatisfaction to Xfinity and within minutes received this tweet from their competitor: social listening example
  4. Alexa: Alexa is a brilliant tool that my company uses prior to working with any company to analyze their overall reach. It can also be used to analytically measure competition.  You can see how the competitor’s website ranks globally, what keyword searches are driving traffic to the site, which pages generate the highest engagement, and which sites link to the competitor’s site.
  5. SEM Rush: SEM Rush offers great analytical reporting on all aspects of digital marketing performance. With a free account, you can see how your competition ranks, the keywords that generate high traffic, and even view their AdWords and video ad campaigns.

Once you have all this data at your fingertips, it is time to utilize it wisely by crafting new campaigns.  Contact websites that link to your competitors to build new relationships, start focusing on keywords that drive heavy traffic to your competition’s site, avoid social media snafu’s that failed on your competitors’ platforms, and contact your competitor’s dissatisfied customers through social listening.

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , Marketing, , Tips

Employee Brand Ambassadors | Why and How

A couple of years ago, we posted an article on Word of Mouth Marketing https://popdigitalmarketing.com/word-mouth-marketing/.  The article explained the new wave of marketing tactics utilizing current “brand fans” through social media.

To reiterate, studies have shown that consumers are 65% more likely to choose a brand based on the recommendation of another customer or employee than buying from a brand based on an ad or company promotion.  Customers today rely on trust.  They trust other people, like them making every day decisions.  They trust people, not companies.

Benefits of an Employee Brand Ambassador Program

employee brand ambassadorBuilding your brand takes consistency, time and a strong brand strategy.  It also takes a strong community of fans.  Your employees play a fundamental role in promoting your brand.  If your company is listed as the employee’s workplace on Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media platform, each and every time your employee engages in anything, they are representing your company.  Once your brand strategy and brand promise have been developed, you must train your employees in what your brand story is.  What your company represents.  The problem your service or product solves.

Employee Silence is Loud

Your employees have the potential to expand your reach exponentially.  Silence speaks volumes.  If your employees never endorse your brand, that sends a very clear message to customers.  They don’t love it. They do not believe in it.  If your employees are engaged in and passionate about promoting your company, they will “sell”.   It makes people excited to be a part of something everybody loves.  It’s also great for recruitment.

How to Build Your Employee Ambassador Program

  1. Develop your brand. This is the backbone of your program.  You cannot continue until you have this set in stone.
  2. Train your team. Your entire company must learn, understand and believe in your brand.  If they do not, it may signal that you aren’t delivering your brand promise and need to re-evaluate either your brand promise or the process of your services/products.
  3. Choose an Ambassador Leader. The Ambassador Leader is someone in your company that loves everything about coming to work. They already show their ambassadorship, share your company news online, have a strong following online and are an “influencer” online and off.  This person does not need to be in your marketing department and can be at any level of management.
  4. Make the program optional. You only want people participating if they choose to. If it is forced on everyone, it will show.  The Ambassador Leader should assemble an Ambassador Team of employees that are excited to be a part of this new program.
  5. Set expectations. Make sure the program has very clear and easy guidelines.  The easier the program is to participate in, the more employees will want to join.   If you are using an ambassador management system, provide each participant with a tutorial.  If you are not using a system, make sure create your own standard process.
  6. Don’t write scripts…..but have materials ready. Allow each team member to promote the materials in his or her own words.  Again, we want to work off trust.  If customers see everyone writing the exact same script, it becomes an ad, not a genuine referral.   If you are not using an Ambassador system, you can use google docs to place all the types of content/materials you want promoted, and track employees’ efforts there.
  7. Lead by example. Don’t expect employees to be passionate about your brand if your top executives are not.  The leaders of your company do not necessarily need to participate in the program for rewards, but they absolutely should use the material to promote on across their various networks.
  8. Measure and Reward. Make sure you have a measuring system set.  Hashtags are an excellent tool for measuring.  Choose a specific hashtag such as “PopDigitalMarketinglife” and check it on a weekly basis.  Your Ambassador Program should provide rewards as well.  Rewards must be attainable and set on a short term basis (people like immediate results).  Rewards can range from praise and recognition, gift cards, group lunches to elaborate gifts.
Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, Marketing,

Boosting a Facebook Post | Best Practices

Facebook offers a wonderful way to “boost” or “promote” your content by paying a bit extra money (as low as $5).  This is separate from Facebook ads, which requires a higher level of online marketing expertise to generate success.  Facebook has made it quite easy to set-up a boosted ad post which creates an attractive option to those not as skilled in online advertising to try out.  I see a lot of small and medium sized business utilizing this tool lately, yet only about 1/3 of them are doing it correctly.

What is a “Post Boost”?

When your company page writes a status, shares a picture or uploads a video you are given the option to “boost” that post.  See below for a visual on where the option is.  Boosted posts will appear higher up on the newsfeed (note: not in the right ad column) to increase viewership.

Facebook Post Boost

Why you should Boost a Post?

By promoting or boosting a post, you are reaching more people.  If you choose to have the post boosted, you can check a box to have it show up to people who like your page and their friends, or you can target it to anyone on facebook.  You can target people based on location, age, gender and interests.  This will guarantee your post is seen by those who find your business relevant.

What type of posts should be “Boosted” or “Promoted”?

First, it’s important to track your facebook insights to learn which content engages your fans.  Those types of posts will perform the best as a promoted/boosted post.

Second, you have to strategically plan the desired goals and outcomes of this campaign.  Are you trying to generate more likes on your page?  Bring about greater brand awareness?  Highlight a service or event?  Generate traffic to your website?  Knowing this in advance will ensure a higher return on the investment.

Currently, statistics show that boosting a facebook post works best for:

  • Increasing visits to your facebook business page
  • Creating awareness about events
  • Generating interest in online offers
  • Spreading updates and news
  • Contests or Sweepstakes

Best practices for boosting posts:

Make sure that the post you are paying to run has timely information.  For example, do not boost a post that states a date in it: “It’s Wednesday, and we are giving away 5 free….”.  By putting a date on it, anytime it runs after that day, people will ignore it.

Boost a post that generates “likes” and engagement.  Don’t boost a post that requires no action from the viewer.  Make sure there is a question to be answered, a page to be taken to with valuable information, or a hot topic to “like” or even disagree with.  The more action (clicks, likes, shares) the post gets- the higher up it will go with Facebook EdgeRank.

Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, Marketing, , Tips

What Facebook’s New Recommendation Tool Means For Your Company

In October 2016, Facebook rolled out a brand new option to ask for “recommendations” on your personal feed or in a group. Facebook automatically detects words like “I need a recommendation” or “I am looking for” and converts the post into a distinct “recommendation” post that now includes an active map.

facebook recommendationsBenefits of the Recommendation Rollout:

  • For the everyday Facebook user, the new rollout is a quick and easy way to poll one’s connections for nearby establishments offering the services they are looking for or events to attend. When a friend starts writing the name of the company they want to recommend, Facebook auto fills in the company page and will put a marker on the map above. It also provides quick links to that business page. Facebook is currently saving all this data to use in its next roll out of providing you with a tab of your friends’ current recommendations all in one place.
  • This is beneficial to your business because your customers are now able to easily promote your business to active seekers of your services! It also gives your company exposure to everyone else reading or active on the post. Your company is automatically linked, so you do not need to depend on the happy customer to copy and paste any website URLs which is a step often forgotten. Plus, if your Facebook page is set up using a CTA (Call To Action), the new visitors can convert immediately!

Potential Opportunities to Use it in the future:

As more companies build brand ambassador partnerships with happy customers, the new “recommendation tool” can be used as a simple and free tracking method. Once your page is mentioned, you will receive notification on who recommended you. Those insights will be key for rewarding your online referral sources.

Another impending future roll-out is rankings of places that receive recommendations. The more you get, Facebook will measure and eventually rank you in your industry with those numbers.

Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, Marketing, , Tips

5 Key Tactics to Create Engagement on Facebook

facebook engagement tips

Big brands and small brands alike all have similar goals on social media: To cultivate our online community, grow our followers and ultimately create a platform to convert new leads. 

What is Facebook Engagement and why does it matter?

Many times our clients at Pop Digital Marketing ask why they should try and solicit responses, likes and shares on Facebook. Facebook Engagement Rate is measured by the percentage of people who saw a post (the reach) and liked, shared, clicked or commented on it. As a result of Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm, your page’s engagement rank will play a leading factor in which newsfeeds your posts get displayed in.  So in short and simply put (there is a bit more to it), if people are not interacting with your posts, they will eventually stop seeing them.

5 Facebook Posts to Drive Engagement:

  1. Contests. Create a fun contest that requires participants to comment or share the contest photo. Facebook has removed the contest requirement of using a third party application, so you can make this as simple as you want now!  Facebook contests with the goal of increasing engagement also carry many other benefits if your team strategizes well.  Over 38% of Facebook users are active in contests and when the rules are simple to follow that number goes up to over 52%.

What works: Try requiring followers to post a link to a product or service from your website to your page.  This now increases web views and brings awareness to what you are selling. 

  1. Photos. According to Wishpond– Facebook photos attract 104% more comments than an average post. And while insights of engagement vary across different industries, there is a global statistic that engagement rates are higher on Thursdays and Fridays. 

What Works: Right now, Throw Back Thursdays and Flash Back Fridays are driving many successful engagement campaigns.  Another fun way to get people interacting with your photos is to ask followers to “caption” the photo.  This creates “buy-in” from the followers and makes for a fun way to inspire creativity. 

  1. Ask for opinions. Let your followers know they matter. A powerful way to solicit comments are merely by asking.  According to a hubspot study, the way you phrase your questions will determine the likelihood of response success. 

What Works: Ask your fans a “Which would you rather” question about 2 new services you are contemplating offering.  This will help with creating a sense of “ownership” and anticipation from your prospects.  For more on generating comments, read this blog. 

  1. Fill in the blanks. Fill in the blank posts are another fun way to up your rankings. Use this opportunity to be light and even humorous! 

What Works: While we generally post close to subjects regarding our business, fill in the blank posts can actually deter out of your industry zone.  The more entertaining the post is, the higher the likelihood of generating responses.   Tie it into the local weather, news or hot topic. 

  1. Like vs. Share. Like vs. Share posts are a nice little trick to utilize the draw of visuals while still extracting that opinion benefit mentioned above.

What Works: Post a picture/visual of two opposing sides (A and B) that people have strong views on and ask them like the picture if they want A to win or B to win.  Note: This one won’t really give you qualified leads but is an easy way to increase your edgerank.

How to track engagement:

Using Facebook insights you can easily track each post and its success or lack of in generating engagement.  It’s very important to track both your overall page engagement (how many people are clicking on your page and its tabs) as well as the individual posts engagement rates.  Once you have at least 4 weeks’ worth of data, you can start creating campaigns based on what you know your audience responds to best!

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, E-Marketing, , LinkedIn, Marketing, SEO, , Tips, Training

5 Actionable Digital Marketing Resolutions For 2015

As we wrap up 2014, now is a prime time to look back at what successes we’ve had at work and where we may have room for improvement.  Many business leaders are projecting the next year’s potential growth along with strategies to increase business development.  While there are many known general methods to market a business, here is a list of 5 very specific actions you MUST take to stay ahead of the curve in 2015.

5 Specific Marketing Action Steps to Take in 2015:

marketing trends 20151. Use Facebook “custom audiences” for ads. Facebook has recently launched a new way to target your ads to your current contact lists.  You can import emails or phone numbers in the audience tab in ‘ads manager’.  Then when you create the ad, you can choose that custom group to show it to. 

Why it works: With Facebook targeting options you can narrow your ads even more by age, location, and interests.  This will increase click-through’s substantially as well as provide you with more options such as Facebook offers, deals and more to present to your interested lists that you could not otherwise through email. 

2. Build your personal brand on LinkedIn. Since rolling out the ability to post blogs and articles directly on the LinkedIn platform, many savvy leaders have begun to leverage their knowledge and expertise to further their personal and business brand awareness. Make sure your profile is updated and start planning the types of posts you can contribute on the largest business networking social media site. 

Why it works: When you post quality content on LinkedIn, you position yourself as a thought leader in your industry and build yourself a positive reputation with potential customers or referral sources.

3. Get on Google My Business. Google+ has been slowly creeping up on Facebook as the second largest social networking site since it launched in 2011. Google provides you with the platform to create a personal identity along with a business page, locations for your company and it all gets tied together under Google My Business.

Why it works: Having all these elements updated and posting relevant information to your page can actually help you rank higher!

4. Brand your visuals for Pinterest. Pinterest currently has 70 million users and that number is growing by the minute. People pin articles, blogs, websites, recipes, shopping, lifestyle dreams and work ideas onto their boards, and the one thing they see when searching the site is the visual associated with the content. Make sure that each piece of collateral you produce is branded well and also includes a quick catchy title.

Why it works: By placing your logo on all your visuals, you are expanding your reach to each and every person that searches for that topic on Pinterest.  When you place a CTA title on the visual, it will increase the clicks and provide viewers with a sense of motivation to read more.

5. Re-purpose your blogs. Pick 5 of your most popular 2014 blogs and expand on them.  Take those blogs and create a “part 2” for each. Or turn one into into a whitepaper or e-book. 

Why it works: By re-purposing your successful content that you already know is popular, highly searched for and engageable, you can collect leads and take potential customers further down your funnel.

2015 will bring us many new opportunities to build our audiences and see marketing success.  Which of these actions do you plan to implement into your strategy?

 

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , How to, Marketing,

Facebook Updates Its Posting Preferences For Pages

If you manage a business page on Facebook, your life just got easier!

Facebook has officially rolled out a new posting feature which allows admins to effortlessly elect if he/she wants to post as the page or as him/herself through a more straightforward means.  Way back in the day (yesterday), in order to toggle between the two identities, one had to click on the settings in the upper right hand corner of the whole page and change who you wanted to post as.   This was a confusing process for many page managers.

Where to find the new posting settings:

Now, each and every page post has its own spot where you can click and choose if you want to post, comment, share or like as yourself or as your page. You can also choose to comment, like or share as any other page you currently manage.  See visual below for reference:

Facebook post preference

Ways to utilize the new Facebook posting preferences to your benefit:

  1. You can create momentum on your page posts a lot faster. You can now easily write a post as the page, and quickly switch to your own persona to comment on said post.
  2. You can connect pages you manage. If you are running multiple Facebook pages for industry related businesses, why not increase both company’s exposure and engagement by commenting on one’s post under the name of the other?  This is a sure way to increase the likes of both pages!
  3. You can comment on posts of pages you do not manage- as any of your pages! Go ahead and bring exposure to your page by posting effortlessly on bigger brands! All you have to do is click on the little gray page flag in the upper right corner of the post and choose the page you want to comment, like or share as. See below for an example.

coca cola facebook page

Follow Pop Digital Marketing on Facebook for more tips!

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