Tag Archives: social media marketing

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Let’s talk digital by Creative Touch: Are Social Media Accounts the Property of my Business?

I thought long and hard about what the title of this article should be, and it is what it is. As a digital marketing company, we often come across clients who need assistance in marketing a business they just bought. They are all excited about having a social media presence, and getting us, Creative Touch South Africa, on board to sort it all out. More often than not, though, especially when buying over an existing business, there is already a social media presence. Now suddenly there is a dispute as to ownership of these platforms.

Look, it is really quite simple. When you buy a business, you buy it as a complete, operational entity. If you’ve been involved in the selling or buying of a business, you’ll know that when a business is sold there are different business assets that may be transferred as a part of the transaction to the purchaser during the sale.

Traditionally, transferred assets include the existing stock (if any), the equipment, vehicles (sometimes), furniture, supplier information and sometimes, client databases. Nowadays though, most businesses also have web pages and social media accounts that link directly to the business. These web pages and accounts contain information pertaining to the business, including addresses and contact numbers. There will be, on social media specifically, a creation date of the account, which also adds credibility as to how long the business has been online. There will also be existing analytics data, page fans, followers, etc. These are all assets from a marketing point of view. So now many business owners want to know whether these items count as the property of their business. The answer is yes, it is the property of the business. Which means when the business is sold, it stays the property of the business, like all the other assets, and should be transferred to the new owner.

There is sometimes a misunderstanding as to how to transfer ownership of social media accounts. In reality, it is very simple. It depends on what platform it is. Some accounts, such as Instagram, require a user name and password. Some accounts, such as Facebook, require an admin to be added to the page. Facebook can be tricky, because not everybody understands exactly how it works, and the platform used to also allow a business page to be run independently with its own user name and password. This has not been the case though for years, and Facebook business pages can only be accessed if a user is connected to the page via one of the admin roles.

Unfortunately, many people are under the perception because the business page is linked to their own personal profile, handing over the page will impact this. This is not the case at all. On Facebook specifically, you can have multiple “Admins” on a business page. There are other page roles available, such as “editor”, “analyst” and more – all of these roles have a place and a specific function. An owner though, should be “admin” as that gives full control over the page. There is a 7 day period during which a new admin cannot alter the role of any of the other “admins” or even remove them, you can only add. But as soon as the new admin is active, other admins can just remove themselves from the page. Be careful though, Facebook allows an admin to leave a page completely, which is then a headache of note to try and recover from “outside”. Also, if an admin leaves and the only roles left on the page are editors, there can be no new admins added, and an editor role cannot promote itself to the admin role. So be sure to transfer correctly, as the default role under the Page Roles section under Settings is “editor”.

Ideally, in a perfect world, a seller would make provision for the transfer of all the accounts, and keep the necessary user names and passwords secure to be handed over upon completion of the sale. If the seller chooses not to do this, and keep the accounts, there will now be duplicate accounts online, which will make marketing very difficult from a search engine point of view. How does the public know which account/page/channel to visit? If the seller chooses to deactivate all the accounts, this is again problematic, as it would mean that all of the followers and fans would be lost and the buyer would need to start from scratch. This would defeat the purpose of the buyer gaining access to the social media accounts if there is value and goodwill in the original accounts through existing social media pages and followers and subscribers.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances with regards to social media accounts. Speak to the team at Creative Touch South Africa if you require any advice on this or other digital matters: info@creativetouch.agency

 

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Facebook is demolishing like-gating – how does this impact you (if at all?)

Facebook has made some recent changes (what’s new) but the most important change was buried right at the bottom of the announcement:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page.

 

An example of a like-gate on a facebook page tab

An example of a like-gate on a facebook page tab

What does this mean in practice? Well, in the past fan pages used to build apps with a like-gate (or click like to reveal) in order to motivate the public to become page fans before they could get access to more information, such as competition details, promotion details, giveaways and more. This would ensure that only page fans would be able to access this information and of course benefit from it. This was a common fan-building tactic, but has increasingly been losing popularity as page admins sought ways to rather engage with existing fans more effectively than continually attract new fans.

Several years ago, Facebook used to have a feature where an entire page could be like-gated, so page fans could only see page posts once they liked the page. This was also discontinued (thankfully).

How does this impact you? Obviously going forward as from Nov 5, 2014, you will no longer be able to use the like-gate feature on your page tabs. For marketers, this is a fairly important factor to take into consideration. We always found like-gates an effective way to build relevant page fans, because we would encourage our clients to offer relevant (to the brand) incentives to motivate the like-gate clicks. That means the public who became fans ultimately clicked because they were interested in what the brand had to offer, and would by default, also be interested in what the brand had to say via newsfeeds on the page.

Unfortunately, marketers like ourselves are in the minority on facebook. There has been pages who would blatantly use the like-gate to just build “any” fans, offering prizes not relevant to the brand at all, such as iPads, holidays, etc. The page fans that results from these kind of incentives really only clicked on the like-gate to stand a chance to win, not really because they wanted to engage with the page newsfeed posts.

This brings us to why facebook decided to take this step, and we get this straight from facebook:

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Facebook tells us that the average user would see 1,500 stories in a given day. Facebook’s algorithms bring that number down to a much more manageable 300. In order for Facebook to be a desirable place for users, the best and most relevant content needs to be surfaced.

Facebook uses many signals to determine what users see. But like-gating confuses those signals. Does a user really want to see content from that brand? You can see from what I said above why this is not always clear. Users may have clicked on a like-gate because of an attractive incentive, and not because of a need/want to engage with the brand. This might mean in practice that the user is now “forced” to engage with content via personal newsfeed that is not relevant or interesting to the user. This might harm the user experience. A negative user experience results in a user spending less time on facebook, which ultimately negatively impacts paying advertisers on facebook. The implied reason here is fairly obvious – advertisers need users to be online in order to target them.

In the famous words of Douglas Adams: Don’t Panic! Yes, it is still important to increase page likes. There are definitely a lot of ways to effectively build page fans, and more specifically page fans who WANT to engage with your brand. The end of like-gating is actually a very positive move. Marketers and page admins will just have to get more creative with their methods. This should also mean an overall improvement on page post quality on facebook. And you can still use third-party apps to collect data such as email addresses from page fans – which means building a database for emailing promotions and newsletters.

Speak to us at Creative Touch – Be Sociable about your company’s social media requirements, and more specifically how we can assist with your facebook page strategy.

 

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Why Social Media Marketing Should Be Taken Seriously For Your Business

We are an advertising agency, with our roots firmly established in the Garden Route. Our motto has always been to deliver the best service to our clients, and offer the best advise with regards to budget-spend that leads to maximum return on investment (ROI). We even used to own our own publications – some of you may remember some of the titles: Vibrant Living, Business Bulletin and Garden Route Property Finder amongst others. Some of these publications we sold, and the last one, Business Bulletin, we closed down ourselves after a successful 12 years. Why you may ask?

 

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Well, let’s start at the beginning. Advertising and marketing is my passion. It has always been, and it will always be. There is nothing as satisfying as a client who becomes a friend and who trusts us to build their brand, while they focus on the nuts and bolts of growing the business. Our core services has always been brand assistance, be it graphic design, copywriting, print solutions – whatever the client required. We would design advertisements for local newspapers (including our own) for clients and  assist with annual strategy planning around marketing budgets.

We started realising that people don’t really read as much physically printed matter as they used to. The forward-thinking publications are all moving online, and you often see people, wherever they are, cluthing a smartphone or an iPad or tablet, browsing the internet. Our target audience has moved online – and that is where we firmly believe our clients should be marketing themselves.

We’ve simply moved our advertising agency online, and opened a strong social media leg: Be Sociable. Social media is an excellent marketing platform choice – with the constant change-over to technology, and with iPads, Tablets and smart phones becoming more accessible and more affordable, more and more people are online. It simply makes sense to advertise your product where your target audience already spends a lot of time. Less people pick up newspapers, magazines, booklets, etc, and prefer to spend time online. Also, as with all responsible businesses, we realise that our eco-footprint makes a substantial difference in the world we inhabit, therefore advertising in printed media really makes little sense. Also, if you compare print media costs to online media, there is simply no comparison. You get far more results online for less expenditure.

Here, I cannot put it better than Marsha Friedman, and I agree with every word.

What tends to be happening now, though, is that businesses are realising that they should be on social media, but they are using the wrong approach.  I remember when the internet first gained prominence and it became apparent that having a website was essential for any commercial enterprise.  Back then, web designers were not plentiful and few people thought to hire a professional to create a site. They felt that any web presence was better than none at all and they found people they knew who were “into the whole internet thing” to help them.

As an advertising professional, when I saw a website that didn’t represent people well or looked amateurish, I’d ask who created it. Invariably, I’d get answers like, “My nephew did it,” or “I bought Web Design for Dummies and did it myself,” or “My son has a friend who just graduated with a degree in computer science.” While those days have passed for websites, I’m afraid I am seeing the same thing happen with regard to social media.

As social media has become an integral element of all mainstream media, some people regard it the same way they used to regard websites—as a good addition to their marketing tactics, but not so essential that they need to approach it with a professional sensibility. As with any marketing outreach, social media done badly will actually set a person back rather than move him forward.

At the end of the day, social media is serious business. Done right, it can create a base of thousands of followers. Done wrong, it wastes time and energy and, most important, gives people the impression that social media marketing isn’t important. In fact, it has become one of the most critical and fundamental components for any marketing strategy, which every company needs to put in place.

Speak to the Be Sociable team and book a free session with one of us – we will happily evaluate your current social media presence and advise you on the best way forward.

10 reasons to hire a social strategist and community manager:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re not on social media, then you’re not where your audience is—and you’re missing out. The social media potential for brands is astonishing, and it includes:
•    An endless stream of information and trends that are happening in your industry
•    The chance to check out your competitors to evaluate what you are doing right (and potentially wrong)
•    The ability to engage one-on-one with your audience and form a more personal connection
•    Tracking mentions of your brand online so you can offer customer service through social media and answer inquires (as well as dispel myths)
•    Content creation and curation
•    Community-building
•    Increasing advocates of your brand through word of mouth marketing
•    The opportunity to increase trust and  credibility with your community
•    Social media can be used for sales

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What is social media marketing?

Day after day I hear the same questions from clients: What is social media marketing? Is it important for us to know anything about this? Will it impact my business?

The answer to the last two questions are easy. YES. Yes, it is important to know as much as you can about using social media marketing tools for the benefit of your business. And yes, it will impact your business. Whether you know about it or don’t know about it, or use it or don’t use it, or believe in it, or don’t believe in it – this has no relevance. Social media marketing can in a way be compared to the law of gravity. If you jump off the top of a building, you will fall. Your belief system with regards to the law of gravity will make no difference to the consequences.

IF YOU’RE LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE, YOU PROBABLY HAVE SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA. YOU MAY BE ASKING WHETHER SOCIAL MEDIA IS OVERHYPED, WHETHER SOMETHING ELSE WILL REPLACE IT, OR WHETHER IT’S JUST A BIG, FAT WASTE OF TIME.

Now the first question is the real challenge. What is social media marketing?It is almost easier to answer this with what social media isn’t. Some people will tell you that social media is a “here today, gone tomorrow” fad, but those are the same people who are waiting for the eight-track tape deck to come back.

No, social media isn’t a flash in the pan. In fact, it’ll just keep evolving into something better, which is exactly what happened when personal computers (PCs) first came on the scene. The evolution of the personal computer from a simple word processor to a complex web of interconnected minicomputers is similar to the evolution of social media from simple networks to the Web 3.0 technology it’s becoming today. Both technologies continue to morph and evolve. And both technologies are here to stay.

Social media marketing isn’t traditional marketing. You can forget about the days of big advertising agencies thinking up creative one-way communication campaigns, or just throwing large media budgets at developing adverts for magazines, newspapers, radio, etc. Social media marketing is way more complex and fluid than traditional marketing – and more importantly, it requires an entirely new mindset.

Social Media marketing isn’t just for young people. The fastest-growing segment on facebook is women older than age 55! And the largest demographic on twitter is the 35-39 age group. So, yes, change that mindset. Social media isn’t just for young people – it is for anybody who is interested in using new technologies to grow their sales and revenue.

Social Media marketing isn’t a Youtube video. Just because you’ve uploaded a youtube video doesn’t mean your company has now run a social media campaign. Social media is about communicating across a wide variety of channels for a sustained period of time. It is about really managing that facebook fan page, linking it to your blog and youtube channel, and maintaining your completed Linkedin company profile. It is about updating Pinterest, linked to you facebook account, and making sure that your information is fresh, readable, watchable and of interset to your consumer.

A social media campaign is similar to a marriage. You can’t expect to have a good marriage if your primary means of communication is a single conversation for ten minutes every morning.

Social media isn’t always online. Don’t forget that a great deal of social media marketing happens offline – after people have turned off their computers/smart phones, etc. Your online audience continues to communicate with each other off-line, and this also impacts your business.

Social media marketing isn’t something that cannot be measured. Like any marketing, social media marketing can definately be measured. The great news, of course, is once you take the time to measure your social media marketing, you might discover that it is a significant source of products. Measure your social media marketing, track your ROI (return on investment). If you track your ROI, you can increae profits. And that should be a great thing!

The social media landscape is pitted with obstacles and potholes for those who venture into it without a map. For advice on navigating the landscape, call Jolindy Dreyer on 082 780 9209.