Showing posts tagged with: digital marketing agencies

September 3, 2019

Top 5 Facebook Story Sticker Tips

Accidentally landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog while searching for Team Vision Marketing? Please visit our homepage, creative portfolio or client video testimonials to learn more about our  Hawaii advertising agency and digital marketing services.

Top 5 Facebook Story Sticker Tips

Facebook Stories are entertaining, 24-hour content that are easy to create and easy to engage with. While most of Facebook’s 500 million daily users post about their day-to-day experiences, local Hawaii brands can use Stories as an alternative to market their businesses organically on Facebook, seeing that its new algorithm is purposefully deprioritizing business content on the feed. To create an even bigger impact, Team Vision recommends that businesses incorporate Facebook Stories with interactive stickers into their social media marketing strategy.

If used strategically, Interactive Story stickers will not only enhance your Story content, they can also help generate new leads, improve engagement, and increase sales and web site traffic. Brands can also track the effectiveness of every interactive Facebook Story sticker and use the analytics to help their business.

Do you want to learn how to use Story stickers to market your brand on social media? Continue reading this post to learn Team Vision Marketing’s top five interactive Facebook Story stickers tips and tricks to creating engaging Stories to market your business.

How to Access and Post Facebook Stories

Before we jump into our tips and tricks, here are the three ways your brand can post Stories on your Facebook Business Page.

1. The easiest way to post a Story is by tapping on your profile picture with the blue plus (+) sign on your page.

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2. You can also post Facebook Stories from the desktop by clicking on your profile picture with the blue plus (+) sign on your page. However, you will not be able to access any of the Story stickers or other decorative features.

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3. Last but not least, you can share your Instagram Story to your Facebook Story. Look for the small, white Facebook icon on the bottom right corner, which shows up when you view the Story you just posted on Instagram. Forewarning, by using this method, most of your Instagram Story stickers will not translate over onto Facebook. This means that your audience cannot interact with most Instagram stickers on Facebook.

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How to Access and Post Facebook Story Stickers

After you capture a photo, video, boomerang, or upload content from your phone, you can scroll up or click on the Story icon to add the interactive stickers. Tap on the sticker to change its color and look.

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Drive Web Site Traffic With The Swipe Up Sticker

The Swipe Up sticker is the most beneficial Story sticker your brand can use on Facebook Stories. These Call-to-Action (CTA) stickers allow businesses to easily direct their audiences from their Stories to their web site. The Swipe Up stickers will not only help drive web traffic, but they can also help increase sales.

Unfortunately, this feature is only accessible to certain profiles. For Facebook, your business page must be verified (shown as a checkmark next to your profile name) by Facebook to access the five standard Swipe Up buttons: “Book Now”, “Call Now”, “Shop Now”, “Learn More”, and “Get Directions”.

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When your business page reaches 10,000 Page Likes, you can add a Swipe Up button with a custom link. For Instagram, your business profile needs to be verified or have at least 10,000 followers to use their Swipe Up feature.  

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To access this Story feature, tap on the link icon on the top right corner, then add the desired button or assign a custom URL link to the Story.

TIP: If you are just short of 10,000 page likes, you can post the desired link on your page, then pin it to the top of your feed. Then, direct your audience to see the link on your profile page by tagging your profile with the Tag sticker.

Promote Your Event With The Event Story Sticker

This Facebook exclusive sticker is ideal for creating buzz for an event on social media. This is a great way for your brand to spread awareness for an event and track followers who are interested in attending. To add this to your story, select the Event sticker in the sticker menu, then type in the name of your event. You can see how our team used the Event sticker to promote the Made in Hawaii festival on Castle & Cooke Hawaii’s Facebook Story, which attracted 116 unique views.

An event can also be shared on Stories via the “Share to my Story” option on the event page. Once shared, your followers and friends will see a clickable sticker on your Story that direct them to the event page to see all the event details, RSVP, and see who else is interested in attending.

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TIP: Encourage your followers to share your event on their Story.

BONUS TIP: Combine the Story Event sticker with a Swipe Up link to the landing page where people can register or buy tickets to attend the event.

Use Polling Story Stickers To Your Advantage

Just like Instagram, your brand can post interesting, quick polling questions on Facebook Stories to add some fun to your social media feed while increasing audience interaction and engagement. Social media users enjoy interacting with the one-touch Polling stickers, especially since it gives the instant gratification of seeing if your vote is part of the majority. Our team has seen high interactions with our client’s and our own polling stories.

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TIP: Use these polls to survey your audience and use the data to improve your marketing efforts on Facebook. For example, you can ask your followers where they prefer to get the latest news on their favorite brands.

Followers Can Rate With The 5 Star Rating Story Sticker

Increase engagement on your Facebook Stories with the new 5 Star Rating sticker that functions similarly to the Emoji Slider sticker on Instagram. Ask your users to rate something without the need for them to have to write a detailed written review. For example, for our client, Dole Plantation, we asked Followers to rate their Dole Plantation experience from 1 to 5 stars on their Story feed, which attracted 400 unique views.

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From what we have seen, this sticker does not affect your Facebook Recommendation, so direct your audience to your profile (using the Tag sticker) if they want to leave a recommendation. 

TIP: You can use this to crowdsource new ideas for your brand. Ask your audience how they feel about a new feature or colorway.

Direct People To Your Page with Tag Stickers

The Tag sticker is a great way to grow your Page Views, reach, and engagements. Direct the audience on your Story to interact with your business page, whether it’s to like and follow your page, or to write a Recommendation, by tapping on the Tag sticker. From there, they will be instantly directed to your page.

To add this sticker to your story, tap the Tag sticker, shown below, and type in the profile name.

TIP: Tag affiliated profiles or influencers on your Story to increase the post’s exposure. They might repost your story to their feed! 

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In conclusion, Team Vision Marketing highly recommends local Hawaii businesses incorporate Facebook Stories and Facebook Story stickers into their organic social media marketing strategies. Facebook Stories provide a great opportunity for you to market to your audience on a platform that is openly giving less exposure to business pages. To enhance your Story content, use the trending Story stickers to help your business reach a wider audience, generate new leads, grow engagement, and increase sales and web site traffic. 

If you found this article helpful for your social media marketing planning, please subscribe to the Team Vision Marketing Tips Blog to get the latest news on advertising, social media trends, digital marketing tips and more.

Need assistance with social media marketing or content creation? Team Vision, experts in social media management and digital marketing, is more than happy to assist. Team Vision is a full-service advertising agency and digital marketing firm with over 20 years of experience working with some of Hawaii’s top advertising brands, including Castle and Cooke Hawaii, Honua Kai Resort and Spa, Dole Plantation, and more.

See more of our creative work in advertising, branding, web design, social media marketing, digital marketing and more in our extensive digital portfolio.

Listen to what Dolly Moreno, Director of Sales & Marketing at Honua Kai Resort & Spa,  says about her experience working with Team Vision Marketing as her full-service advertising agency.

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September 1, 2019

Hawaii Search Engine Optimization – SEO Companies

If you’ve landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog while searching for Team Vision Marketing, please visit our homepage, creative portfolio or client video testimonials. If you’re interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization and SEO, please continue reading.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO Tips for Hawaii Businesses  

Updated: September 1, 2019

Chances are, if you own a business, run a business, or market a business, you’re familiar with the term Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and many of you are implementing Hawaii SEO strategies at one level or another. What we’ve found in our 20 plus years of web site design and development experience, is that many small businesses are either overlooking SEO completely, they’re doing it themselves at a very basic level, or they’re assuming their web design company is handling SEO properly – and they’re often not.

This article is designed to provide small business owners an overview of some of the best practices currently being utilized in the world of  Search Engine Optimization and things that we know work because we actively use and test them for our Hawaii clients. That being said, SEO requires a large investment of time on an ongoing basis, it requires some technical knowledge, and it also requires you to consistently monitor changes in SEO best practices and then adapt to those changes regularly. If you do decide to handle SEO on your own, here are a few key SEO tips to get you started. Contact us if you would like more information or assistance with your Hawaii SEO needs.

Why Is  Search Engine Optimization So Important?

Before we get into recommendations to help you improve your web site’s SEO, it’s important to start off with why SEO is so important for your web site. If your web site does not appear on the first page of search results (Google, Bing, etc.) when users execute a keyword search, then your company will basically appear as non-existent to online users. Therefore, it’s critical that you get into the mindset of your customers, determine which keywords they employ most often to search for and find your web site, and then optimize your site’s Search Engine Optimization strategy for those keywords

1. Web Site Design and User Experience for SEO

Many marketers don’t realize just how critical their web site’s design, navigation structure, functionality, content, and even the Content Management System (CMS) are to an effective Search Engine Optimization Strategy. Because Google can’t rely on your keywords and content alone to gauge the value of your web site, design and user experience now play a major role in how Google evaluates and ranks your site in order to provide searchers with the best possible listing results they can.

What are the key indicators Search Engines look at when evaluating web sites for search engine rankings? Here are two of the big ones.

  • Bounce Rate – this reflects the amount of people that go to only one page of your web site and then leave. For example, if you were to search for Hawaii Advertising Agencies, click on Team Vision Marketing’s search result, hit our home page, and then immediately click the back button to go back to the search results, then that would be considered a bounce and reflect poorly on our search engine rankings. If too many people only visit one page of our site and then leave, eventually our search rankings will drop. This is why it’s important for businesses to monitor web site analytics regularly and make adjustments to your web site when you see negative trends such as high bounce rates.
  • Time on Site – this one is self-explanatory. The longer you keep visitors on your site, the better. This shows Google (and other search engines) that you are providing relevant and high-quality content that users who land on your web site are truly interested in engaging with.

How can I improve bounce rate and increase time on site?

Your web site’s design, user interface and content can all affect bounce rates and time on site. The good news is that you can improve many of these items on your existing site if they are not currently up to par. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your current web site. Does your web site look current and incorporate responsive design techniques so that your content is optimized for whatever device and screen size your end user is viewing your site on? If not, you may have to think about starting over and creating a newly designed site. Does your web site include current information, pictures and videos that encourage web site visitors to keep reading and viewing? Does your site feature strong content that provides value to your users and encourages them to share it with others? Does your site funnel users through a path to get them to click on multiple pages until they reach the point of purchase or a contact form? By using a strong design strategy and well-developed content, you will be able to guide users to where you want them to go and then make them feel good about it when they get there. This will increase time on site, lower bounce rates, and improve your overall search rankings.

2. Web Site Optimization for SEO

In addition to having a strong web site design, it is important that your web site be optimized for the following – before you even begin developing your list of target keywords.

  • Fast load times
  • Quality user experience
  • Mobile-friendly/responsive design web pages
  • SSL security (a must since July of 2018)
  • No 404 Page Errors

We’re not going to go into detail on each of these items, because if you aren’t already familiar with these terms, you probably shouldn’t be handing your own SEO. The bottom line? You can have a great web site design, quality content, and even a sound keyword strategy, but if your site doesn’t include the recommended optimizations above, your search rankings will suffer.

3. Crawlable and Accessible URLs

It’s critical that you design your site so that Googlebot’s (and other leading search engine’s)spiders can access your web site and understand everything on it, from navigation, to text and keywords, to videos and anything else you want Google to index. This step is another critical piece of the puzzle. Without it, none of your other optimizations are going to matter.

4. Content Best Practices for SEO

Although the basics of content marketing haven’t changed much in the last year, we have to include a section on Content when talking about current SEO best practices. Here are a few key strategies we recommend.

  • Leverage video content.
  • Update old blog posts with current information.
  • Review and edit the content on your site to make sure it’s still current and high quality.
  • Regularly review and update your backlinks strategy.
  • Optimize your content for long-tail keywords ( long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that contain at least three words. They’re more specific and less competitive than generic keyword terms).
  • Linkless mentions (mentions of other brands in your text without linking to them).
  • Topic clusters (a collection of interlinked articles or pages around one umbrella topic).
  • Longer blog posts (current recommendation is 2,500 words or more).
  • Interactive content.

5.  Compelling Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Depending on which articles you read, some will say that Google no longer uses meta descriptions and tags for search rankings, and others will say that it is still used and important. From our experience in managing and studying SEO results for our clients, we feel it’s still very important to optimize your site’s meta titles and descriptions. Even if they are not used in the search rankings algorithm, there is a high percentage of time that the meta description and the meta title from your web site are used in the search results text. How Google displays your search engine result can determine whether people click on your listing or a competitors, so make sure you develop strategically written titles and descriptions, and monitor your competitors search listings results so that you can evaluate and modify your meta data to remain competitive.

6. Primary, Secondary, and Long-tail Keywords


What are Primary keywords?

As the name suggests, a primary keyword is a keyword that is used before any other keywords on a web page or in an article. It’s the most important keyword on a web site and should be used in a site’s title, domain, as well as in the site content. Primary keywords are the main keywords for which you want your site to rank in search results.

What are Secondary keywords?

Secondary keywords are those which play a supporting role to the primary keywords. They can be a more flexible than your primary keyword. Try to pick words that people are most likely to use when searching for your product or service.

What are Long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to the point-of-purchase or when they’re searching for a very specific product or service. They can be hugely valuable if you know how to use them. For example, as an advertising agency, our primary and secondary keywords might be “Hawaii Advertising Agencies” or “Honolulu Advertising Agencies.” A long-tail keyword would appeal to users searching for a specific advertising agency service, such as “Facebook Ads Management Companies Hawaii.” Long-tail keywords may have less searches, but the conversion rates are much higher, and they are less competitive because they are so specific.

Once you have all your keywords in place, don’t limit yourself to using them on just your web site. Incorporate them into your social media channels and posts, in any website-related blogs, in your e-newsletters, and in any digital press releases.

7. Social Media as part of SEO

Does social media marketing have an effect on search results?

Yes. Social media is designed around mass sharing. Optimizing your social media efforts will drive a lot more traffic to your web site which can positively affect your SEO rankings. The more people that share your content or link to your web site from your social channels, the more visibility and traffic your web site will receive – both important factors in SEO. In addition, we already know that Google crawls and displays personal Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, and LinkedIn pages. And more recently, we have begun to see business pages (i.e. Facebook Pages) being returned as search results for keyword searches that are linked to the Services descriptions that Facebook now offers.

Well there you have it. These are just a few of the many Search Engine Optimization tips and best practices that we deploy here at Team Vision Marketing, and there are many more. You didn’t think we’d give away all of our secrets, did you?

If you found this article on Search Engine Optimization interesting and insightful, please give us a call at (808) 536-0416 to learn the rest of our SEO secrets, and find out how we can help you improve your digital marketing efforts? We’ve been a leading full-service Hawaii advertising agency, Web design and digital marketing firm for over 20 years. Take a minute to view some our client video testimonials and hear directly from our key clients on how we helped grow their businesses. Then, search for Hawaii Advertising Agencies on Google and tell us what you find.

Contact Us:

Phone: (808) 536-0416

Email: info@www.teamvision.com

Web: www.www.teamvision.com

Hear from Bruce Barrett, VP of Sales & Marketing at Castle & Cooke Hawaii, on his experience working with Team Vision Marketing.

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Call Us Today at (808) 536-0416.

July 11, 2019

Know The Common Difference: Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

If you landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog by accident while searching for Team Vision Marketing, please visit our homepage, creative portfolio or client video testimonials to learn more about us.

Know the Common Differences: Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

If you’re not in the know, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vital digital marketing strategy that is used to improve a website’s Search Engine Results. SEO  helps drive web traffic to your site organically. You can read more about SEO marketing and additional tips on our SEO Tips for Hawaii Businesses blog post.

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

In this blog post, we provide an overview of the Black Hat and White Hat approaches to common SEO Marketing strategies. By understanding their differences, you can confidently distinguish which SEO marketing tactics will improve or hinder your online presence. 

You may have heard that White Hat or Gray Hat is the preferred and ethical practice of SEO marketing. This idea is prevalent because the White Hat approach follows the Webmasters Guidelines, which lists techniques that have long term benefits for your online presence. These techniques will also reduce the risk of being penalized by Google’s algorithms because they’re geared towards creating a valuable audience experience on your site. Going the White Hat route does require more effort and time on your behalf, but the payoff is well worth it. 

Black Hat SEO marketing includes “quick win” approaches that work outside the Webmaster Guidelines, thus manipulating the search engine’s algorithms to get a higher SERP ranking. Although controversial, these methods do work, but only for a short amount of time and the result of using these taboo techniques may get your web site penalized by Google and other search engines. We here at Team Vision Marketing  highly recommend avoiding the use of Black Hat SEO techniques because they cater to the search result’s algorithms, instead of benefitting your customers with rich content. Remember, the health of your online presence relies on the number of people that visit your site, how long they stay on your site, and how many pages they visit. 

What Happens When You Use Black Hat SEO?

You can’t cheat your way to the top of the SERP unscathed. Although it’s not illegal, Black Hat SEO tactics are shady tactics that violate the Webmasters Guidelines. If caught, Google will send a preliminary warning against your site and lower your ranking, giving you the chance to correct the wrong. Once you fix your SEO issues, you can submit a reconsideration request to restore your ranking. If your site continues to break the search engine’s rules, the site will be excluded from the SERP. Ultimately, this will your weaken your online presence and negatively impact your company’s reputation.

Creating Web Content

Content is one of the top key factors that affect your search rankings. However, your web page’s content is a broad web component that isn’t limited to materials created by you. It also includes the information or materials shared from other content creators.

White Hat:

White Hat SEO marketers understand that Google rewards sites that regularly post valuable content. The higher the rank, the more likely you will receive increased web traffic and new leads to your site.

Knowing this, you should create excellent content that covers trending topics, and that includes popular search words and phrases. Your content should also include credible links and share other high-quality materials, like videos or infographics, that help your audience discover new content creators or in-depth information sources. You should also regularly update older pieces of content with current information.

TIP: We suggest writing longer blog posts (current recommendation is 2,500 words or more). Longer blog posts help make your posts stand out not just to your audiences but to Google, as well. Think about it, longer content means more keywords and backlinks.

Black Hat:

When it comes to creating content, Black Hat SEO marketers will try to use auto-generated content. This is content created programmatically, using a set of rules or scripts instead of original content to trick Google filters. If you come across an online article that is full of grammatical and spelling errors, has duplicated information, is full of spam adverts, or includes nonsensical strings of keywords, it was probably auto-generated.

Adding Keywords and Key Phrases

Mixing in popular, relevant keywords and key phrases in the content, tags, and metadata are important to improving your  SERP ranking. These tactics help direct leads to your web site via search engine inquiries.  

White Hat:

The proper way of using keywords is to pair  your content with a blend of primary and secondary (AKA related) keywords. We suggest brainstorming search phrases related to your content or research keywords with tools like Google Trends, Google Search Console, and Google Correlated. You can even use the “Search related to _____” section at the end of the SERP for keyword inspiration (Image 1). 

Hawaii SEO, Black Hat vs White Hat SEO, Search Related Social Media Marketing

TIP: Optimize your content for long-tail keywords (long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that contain at least three words). They’re more specific and less competitive than generic keyword terms. Long-tail keywords are also optimized for voice searches.

Black Hat:

A common Black Hat hack for incorporating keywords into content, according to HubSpot, is keyword stuffing. Essentially, keyword stuffing is using an unnecessarily large amount of irrelevant or repetitive keywords in an attempt to rank higher for key search phrases. This is most commonly seen as blocks of text repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural. 

Here’s an example of keyword stuffing:

Honolulu, Hawaii Search Engine Optimization - Keyword stuffing example
Image 2

Another common controversial keyword hack is hiding text, which is used to trick audiences without raising red flags. This method can trick the search engines into taking account of all these keywords and ultimately result in a higher search engine ranking. 

Here are the following ways Google says that black hat practitioners can disguise text and links:

  • Using white text on a white background
  • Locating text behind an image
  • Using CSS to position text off-screen
  • Setting the font size to 0
  • Hiding a link by only linking one small character—for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph

Getting More Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links are incoming links to your web site. These links help add credibility to your content, as they are considered as a vote of confidence that your content is high-quality.

White Hat:

There are a number of authentic ways you can increase backlinks, but they do require time and effort. Here are our 3 tips on effective, Google-compliant methods of increasing backlinks:

1. Build a reputation as an expert in your field by frequently producing high-quality content, like blog posts, infographics, videos, or reports. Once established, other reputable web sites will want to share your content on their site and add backlinks to your site.

2. Network with popular blogs relating to your field or participate on news web sites as a guest blogger. Guest blogging, when executed within Google’s guidelines, is a highly effective SEO marketing strategy where you publish your content on another web site. This gives you the opportunity to increase brand awareness and create backlinks, thus enhancing your web traffic with a new set of audiences.

3. Moz.com suggests trying out “Ego Baiting”, which is a type of well-researched content that recognizes the excellence of highly reputable bloggers, industry leaders, etc. for the purpose of building a link networking relationship. “The hope is that, by being included, these people feel better about and are more inclined to share the content with a link,” according to Moz.com. This process includes outreaching to the recognized companies or individuals to encourage them to share the link to your “ego baiting” content on their site. 

Black Hat:

Creating Private Blog Networks (PBN) is a Black Hat SEO technique used to increase backlinks inorganically.  PBN are a collection of spam web sites or blogs that will backlink to a central web site (see Image 3). PBN cheat Google’s algorithm by artificially boosting the “trustworthiness” of the central web site. You can easily tell if a website is a part of this scheme if the content of the PBN web sites are basic or repetitive and if they all backlink to one site.

Hawaii SEO Tips - Black Hat vs White Hat Hawaii SEO Blog Post
Image 3

Building Structured Data & Schema

Think of Structured Data and Schema as something similar to metadata. These HTML tags help organize your web site’s data and add more descriptions to your content. This, in turn, helps search engines understand your web site better to create enhanced search results via rich snippets like reviews and phone numbers. 

White Hat:

White Hat SEO marketing will use Structured Data and Schema to enhance their look on SERP by adding extra helpful details that their search audience will find valuable. For example, a boutique hotel will add tags to include room rates (Image 4) or a cooking blog will add tags that will show the calories of their dishes (Image 5).

Hawaii SEO, Honolulu Search Engine Optimization, Black Hat vs White Hat SEO Blog Post Hotel Rich Snippet
Image 4
Hawaii SEO Strategies - Black Hat vs White Hat SEO Blog Post Recipe Rich Snippet
Image 5

TIP: Write strategically compelling tags that will help your site stand out from your competitors. Make sure to monitor your competitors search listing results so that you can evaluate and modify your Structured Data and Schema to remain competitive.

Black Hat:

Someone practicing Black Hat SEO will abuse Structured Data and Schema by providing inaccurate information to fool search engines and users into clicking onto their web site. For example, you can use Schema markups to artificially inflate your positive reviews or ratings with a fake review site, and use structured data to make the fake reviews stand out on search results pages.

 

Conclusion:

White hat Search Engine Optimization is the best way to sustain your long-term online presence and increase your overall web traffic. With our White Hat tips, you can increase your web traffic organically, build strong networks with other reputable sites, and strengthen your site’s credibility. 

Black Hat SEO techniques should be avoided as much as possible. While these shady tactics can achieve short-term results, search engines have created specialized algorithms to penalize Black Hat techniques:

  • Florida, which penalizes keyword stuffing
  • Panda, which penalizes content farms
  • Penguin, which penalizes certain bad linking practices

These penalties include lower search engine rankings, a decrease in web traffic, having your web site banned on the SERP, and a crippled reputation. 

If you found this blog post on common White Hat vs. Black Hat Search Engine Optimization techniques interesting and insightful, please give us a call at (808) 536-0416 to learn how we can help you improve your digital marketing efforts. For over 20 years, we’ve been a leading full-service Hawaii advertising agency, web design and digital marketing firm. But don’t take our word for it, please view our client video testimonials and hear directly from our key clients on how we helped grow their businesses.

 

Contact Us:

Phone: (808) 536-0416

Email: info@www.teamvision.com

Web: www.www.teamvision.com

Hear directly from Dolly Moreno, Dirctor of Sales & Marketing at Honua Kai Resort & Spa, on her experience working with Team Vision Marketing.

Recent Blog Posts
Contact Us for Help with All Your Marketing Needs

Call Us Today at (808) 536-0416.

Sources:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331480

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/black-hat-seo

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building/tactics

June 12, 2019

10 Types of Content That Will Boost Engagement

If you’ve landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog by accident while searching for Team Vision Marketing, please visit our homepage, creative portfolio or client video testimonials.

10 Types of Content That Will Boost Social Media Engagement

Are you noticing your likes, reach, and web site traffic from social media posts are dying down? Well, your suspicions are correct. According to SocialMediaToday.com, only 6% of your Facebook and Instagram audiences will see your posts on their feeds.

This is because social media platforms are prioritizing content that evokes deeper interactions among users. Receiving comments and shares, not just obtaining Likes, may be  the best engagement metric to gauge the success of your brand’s posts because they can indicate a wider reach.

This challenges your social media agency to craft organic posts that will incite conversation and shares. But, creating organic content that generates deeper interactions can require more effort than the standard pretty photo and catchy caption. To help inspire you and give you some direction, our team has outlined 10 types of social media content that will boost your engagement!

 

1. Take advantage of trending social media topics

Although there’s a small window of time to capitalize on trending content, these posts can attract more conversations on your feed. After all, these topics are trending because they are widely discussed online. In addition, social media platforms reward profiles posting trending topics by boosting their discoverability, which may lead to stronger engagements.

TIP: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter automatically list the top trending topics in a “Trending” tab or section, which is usually located in the side menu.

2. Create an organic social media campaign!

Developing engaging organic social media campaigns are great for promoting brand awareness and showing off your team’s creativity. Make your campaign inspiring with motivational quotes, informational with industry tips, or humorous with memes.

Recently, we developed the #DreadedAgencyRequests (#DAR) organic hashtag campaign, a humorous collection of client requests we’ve received over our 20 years in the marketing and advertising industry. Our industry peers found our humorous #DAR series amusing and relatable, which generated a lot of new likes, comments, and followers, creating a 100% gain in Instagram followers in just 3 months.

TIP: Pair your organic campaigns with a unique hashtag. Then, encourage your audience to follow that hashtag to view more of their favorite content. By following your hashtag, content from your campaign can reach audiences who don’t normally see your brand’s posts in their feed.

3. Post More Videos

Videos are much more entertaining content for your audience to engage with than static images and graphics. With video, it’s easier to convey information or share a story in a more amusing and relatable way. Videos are also likely to earn more comments than static posts. According to SocialMediaExaminer.com, a study by Mention found that out of 115 million analyzed posts on Instagram, videos earned 46% of the total comments.

TIP: The higher the quality the video is, the more engagements it will receive. However, creating a high-quality video isn’t as easy or as cheap as one might think. There are many elements to consider and plan out before production, including storyboards, talent, lighting, sound, equipment, and much more. If you don’t have the resources or time to produce your own video, consider reposting a video created by another profile,  or create more simple videos on apps, like Ripl.

4. Repost Content

Building your brand’s community by proactively engaging with your audience is just as important as getting engagements from them. By reposting, you are interacting with your audience, sharing meaningful content on your page, and strengthening your brand’s online community. Reposts also diversify your profile with great content that your social media agency team didn’t have to create.

Reposting user-generated content is a great strategy to start with, for two reasons. First, customer reposts are considered as engaging customer testimonials. Second, it’s a great way to show your appreciation to your community of consumers for using your product or services. Most people will feel flattered that one of their favorite companies wants to feature their content on the company’s feed.

Our client, Dole Plantation’s, social media community continues to strengthen due to our Dole Plantation repost program. We found that our reposts perform strongly on our feed, earning a lot of comments, shares, and likes. It’s also a sustainable content strategy that doesn’t require our team to create new content from scratch, which saves our client time and money when used as one piece of an integrated social media program.

You can also repost content that is on-brand but not directly linked to it, like quotes, memes, stats, or anything that you think your audience will enjoy. For example, for Castle & Cooke Hawaii, one of Hawaii’s leading real estate developers, we repost homemaking and home improvement content, including delicious recipes and simple DIY crafts, to diversify their feed.

TIP: Make sure to get permission to repost other people’s content, preferably by having them sign a waiver, and properly credit the original posters. Without these extra steps, you can potentially face legal issues.

5. Post Questions & Fill-In-The-Blanks

Remember, comments are social media metric gold! The more your posts get, the more discoverable and viral your post will become. Comments can also give valuable insight into your follower’s likes and dislikes.

Naturally, a practical strategy to boost the number of comments on a post is by asking audiences to share their opinion on a hot topic. Your questions can include something about your industry, brand, or something fun, like your audience’s favorite ice cream flavor. Your brand can also take this opportunity to get to know your followers better by having them share something about themselves, like what their favorite things to do in Hawaii are.

Another option that’s more convenient for your audience to interact with, are fill-in-the-blank questions. These questions usually require a one-word or very short answer, and they are just as effective.

TIP: Make sure to ask questions that don’t require long answers from your followers. The key to increasing audience interaction and participation is to make the interactions as convenient as possible.

6. Implement a Stories Poll

Polls are an effective option to entice audience interaction and feedback with their easy, one-click format. They can be sales orientated or fun and conversational, like this poll on what’s the best way to #DoleWhip, which we posted on our client’s  Instagram Story:

Hawaii Social Media - Dole Plantation Instagram Stories

TIP: If the polling topic is interesting enough, the  results can also act as bonus content! On Instagram stories, you can easily share the results of the poll before it disappears. Keep your followers on edge by sharing updates on the current poll results.

7. Host a series of Ask Me Anything (AMA)

Popularized on Reddit, AMAs are essentially Q&As. This social media trend is a great opportunity for brands to educate and connect with their audiences. With AMAs, brands can accomplish:

– Raising brand awareness
– Showing more brand personality
– Establishing your brand or key team members as business influencers
– Help your team learn more about what your audience’s interests  are, and what questions/concerns they may have about your company, products, or industry

Whether your social media team answers questions in a live stream or by writing replies in the comments, this type of content will boost your engagements.

TIP: Instead of hosting one general AMA session, organize them into a series where each AMA session covers one topic at a time. For example, if Team Vision hosts an AMA, each session would be broken down into “How To Start Your Own Hawaii Agency”, “How To Create A Successful Marketing Campaign”, or “How to Increase Your Social Media Engagement.” By breaking up your brand’s AMAs into focused topics, your team can receive better questions and you can provide more specific answers. It also gives your audience the flexibility to tune in on the AMAs they are most interested in.

BONUS TIP: If you choose to live stream your AMA, promote it beforehand. Although Instagram and Facebook will notify your followers when you’re live streaming, promoting it can draw an even bigger crowd and build up the hype.

8. Run a Social Media Contest or Launch a Giveaway

Entering for a chance to win a free prize is irresistible for anyone, which is why social media contests and giveaways are one of the most popular posts on many business feeds. Whether the purpose is to build hype for a new product, promote your hashtag, or create user-generated content, these posts can help drive a strong increase in engagements.

TIP: Keep the rules simple and geared towards interacting with the post. For example, have participants share the post on their feed or share why they should be selected as the winner in the comments below.

9. Post Accomplishments & Company Milestones

Your social media audience is made up of more than just your customers, they are fans of your brand. Winning awards, accomplishing goals, and reaching company milestones are the type of meaningful content many of your followers will want to interact with!

TIP: Posting accomplishments is  also a great marketing opportunity to boost your company’s clout, if it’s publicized properly. To avoid coming off as arrogant, celebrate your brand’s accomplishments with the team. Post a group shot of your team (with the award) along with a message that shares how proud and thankful the company is for their talented team.

10. Take Your Social Media Followers Behind-the-Scenes

The behind-the-scenes action can be just as engaging as the end product. Audiences enjoy seeing what it takes to plan an event, set up photo shoots, or create a project from start to finish. It’s also great for building hype or extending the buzz around an event, premier, or new product release.

Of course, not everything happening behind the curtain is interesting, and just like a magician, you might not want to give everything away. To keep the audience engaged or overly informed, capture the highlights of the process. You can also keep your followers on their toes by making the caption a little vague on what is going on in the photo.

TIP: Try having your followers guess in the comments on what is going on in the scene. Our secretive behind-the-scenes Instagram post of our team filming a Castle and Cooke Hawaii social media video ad for the recently sold out Waipahu real estate community, Pu’uwai Place, is an effective example.

Hawaii Advertising Agencies, Social Media companies, branding, social media, digital marketing, hawaii, Team Vision

There you have it, Team Vision Marketing’s Top 10 recommended organic social media content ideas that will help increase engagement on your company’s posts. Just remember that the best business social media pages have a healthy mixture of content, and it  might take some experimenting to get just the right mix.

Have you tried any of these content strategies on your brand’s social media channel? Tell us in the comments below. To get the latest news on social media trends and marketing tips, subscribe to the Team Vision Hawaii marketing blog.

If you need help with your organic social media marketing or content creation, reach out to our team for expert assistance. Team Vision is a full-service advertising agency and digital marketing firm with over 20 years of experience working with some of the top Hawaii brands, including Castle and Cooke Hawaii, Honua Kai Resort and Spa, Dole Plantation, and more.

See more of our creative work that spans beyond organic and paid social media campaigns in our comprehensive portfolio.

 

Contact Us:

Phone: (808) 536-0416

Email: info@www.teamvision.com

Web: www.www.teamvision.com

Hear from Harry A. Saunders, President of Castle & Cooke Hawaii, on his 20 years of experience working with Team Vision.

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June 5, 2019

Video Advertising is Growing – Are You Making the Shift?

Video Advertising Experiences Rapid Growth – Are You Making the Shift?  

As digital marketing strategies evolve, brands are turning more and more to video ads to promote their products or services in a fresh, creative way and to connect with their audiences. Videos add a jolt of excitement to any digital marketing strategy if they’re produced well and combined with a solid programmatic strategy – and as an added benefit, videos also have a very positive effect on your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. According to GeniusMonkey.com, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a creative video compared to 10% when reading it in text. Forbes says that video “creates an immediate, real and authentic route of interaction and connectivity with audience members”.

Still not convinced that you need to add more video advertising to your creative marketing mix? Take a look at these quick statistics:

  • 46% of users take action after viewing a video ad (GeniusMonkey.com).
  • Embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80% (Forbes).
  • An email with a video is 96% more likely to get a click-through (GeniusMonkey.com).
  • 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it (MarketingProfs.com)
  • 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI (SocialMediaToday.com).
  • Marketers who use video can increase their revenue 49% faster than non-video users (SocialMediaToday.com).
  • 43% of consumers want to see more video content from marketers (SocialMediaToday.com).
  • By 2019, video marketing will make up 80% of online content (Forbes).
  • According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year.
  • Video ads spending will grow nearly 30% to $27.82 billion in 2018, which means video ad spending will make up 25% of US digital ad spending (emarketer)

Social Media Video Ad Revenue
Image Source

  • US digital video ad spending in 2022 will surpass $50 billion (emarketer)

Video Ad Spend ForecastImage Source

So, what does this all say about video advertising?  Videos provide an effective marketing tool and they strongly influence the audience’s buying behavior. “…Viewers are more than 85% more likely to make a purchase after watching a product video.” (GeniusMonkey.com). Also, according to Forbes, 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions. Team Vision Marketing recommends that brands and marketers should seriously consider adding more video ads into their marketing mix to take their digital marketing strategy to the next level. In fact, many major brands are allotting more of their online marketing budget to video development and video editing, but keep in mind that the ads need to be entertaining and authentic in order to engage the audience.

Convinced you need to create more video ads and don’t know where to start?  Well, creating quality video ads can take a lot of time an effort. And in a world that’s moving more and more toward videos in advertising, you will likely need to start producing new web, advertising and social media videos on an ongoing basis.  Unless you happen to be a small business owner with a background in video editing (and have the time to do it), you’re likely going to need to look to an advertising agency or digital marketing agency. That’s where we come in.  If you’re in need of television commercials, long and short format video development, drone videos, promotional videos or social media videos, please give us a call at (808) 536-0416, or use our website inquiry form at www.www.teamvision.com/contact.

Our team can help you create well-produced video ads as well as help you integrate those ads into your marketing and social media campaigns.  Browse through some of the creative videos in our web site portfolio at www.www.teamvision.com/portfolio and view our client video testimonials at www.www.teamvision.com/clients.

Hear from Harry A. Saunders, President of Castle & Cooke Hawaii, on his experience working with Team Vision.

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Sources:

https://www.emarketer.com/content/video-swells-to-25-of-us-digital-ad-spending

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/20-essential-video-marketing-statistics-infographic/527305/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/04/24/the-growth-of-video-marketing-and-why-your-business-needs-it/#45d911c27c2d

https://www.geniusmonkey.com/blog/video-marketers-have-the-advantage/?utm_source=GeniusMonkey&utm_medium=EmailNewsletter&utm_campaign=VideoMarketersHaveTheAdvantage

https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2018/33914/nine-types-of-video-to-help-you-close-sales

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/02/03/video-marketing-the-future-of-content-marketing/#506d874e6b53

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