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3 Steps to Improve your Social Media Strategy

Posted on April 10, 2017 by ANS SM Team | Posted in Marketing, Social Media Leave a comment

We have talked a lot about the importance of having a social media presence for your business. Not only is it a good way to open up channels of communication with your customers, but also lets you know first-hand what your customers want. Having that kind of an edge on your product or service offering can be a fantastic way to help grow your business.

These are 3 simple steps that can help you gain traction and see more action for your business. Having a social presence for your business is not the only way of communicating with your customers and marketing your products, but it is a tool that can add value if used properly.

1. ANALYZE your target audience

The nice part about this step is that with the tools available to you from your social accounts you can gather a lot of information about your primary audience. Please note that if you started your business a month ago, you probably won’t get as much information—give yourself some time to build a decent sample of your clientele. Once you’re ready, start collecting the data on your followers.

For Facebook, use Facebook Audience Insights to better understand who likes your page and who is engaging with you. You can also create lookalike audiences on Facebook to further your reach. LinkedIn is a great place to gain insights about industries that make up your followers, how your followers found you (e.g. organic or sponsored), and how you compare to other companies within your industry. This and more is available to you through the analytics tab from your companies LinkedIn page. Another way you can study your target audience is by using Twitter. You can monitor key demographics, languages, and interests on your Twitter account by clicking on “audiences” from Twitter Analytics.

Let me also add that you can get a great head start on analyzing your audience by using the services of our sister company, West Coast Data Services. Their professional team can quickly take your customer file and run a quick analysis that will leave you with a clean and accurate list to help you reach the audience you are aiming at. It’s worth looking into what West Coast Data Services can do for your market analysis! For more information, contact our representative, Patti, at 800-434-1851/

2. DIVERSIFY your message

When you have multiple social accounts for your business it’s best to follow the general platform guidelines for how each platform should be used. In this post I want to give a brief explanation of how to use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn promote your business and engage with your followers.

Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook is a perfect way to communicate all aspects of your business. Users on Facebook like to see business content that is fun, but not too intrusive with sales and promotions. On Facebook you want to post photos, videos, and status updates that are related to your product or service offering. Find more information on how to use Facebook to grow your business here.

Twitter is great for monitoring communication with your business. You want to be tweeting often, and your tweets need to be catchy so that people don’t just scroll past without even a glance. You also want to use twitter to engage in conversations with people and provide customer service. Ask and respond to questions! Find out more about using Twitter for business here.

LinkedIn is interesting because it is A social platform centered around businesses and professionals. It’s the place to share professional thoughts and work-related experience. Use LinkedIn to network with people and companies within your industry. You can also join and create LinkedIn Groups to get more direct communication going about your business. Learn more about using LinkedIn for business here.

3. POST! Post! Post!

Perhaps the most important part of your social media strategy is to be active on social media. This doesn’t mean simply creating an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+. In order to be effective you need to be actively engaging on these platforms. Frequently post to your accounts, but make sure that your copy is relevant and engaging for your audience.

A few closing thoughts

After reading this, you may be thinking: “How am I going to have time to implement all of these steps to get a better handle on social media for my business?”. At American Name Services, we want to see your business succeed. We provide social media help that can get your business’ social sites rolling. If you would like help with boosting your social media for your business, give us a call or check out our website! You can also email our social media manager, Lindsey Lefevor at: lindseyl@a-names.com. We would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below if you found this article helpful or not.

Blog post by Michael Peterson, Social Media Marketer at American Name Services

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How to use LinkedIn to Grow your Business

Posted on January 2, 2017 by emily white | Posted in B2B, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

It seems a bit silly to be writing a blog post about how to use LinkedIn for business – LINKEDIN IS BUSINESS. It’s a business, to network with business professionals. The two most important things your company needs to be actively doing on LinkedIn – right here, right now!

Get your employees active on LinkedIn!

Each and every single team member in your company must have a LinkedIn profile! Not just a profile, but a completely filled out, bells and whistles, all-star profile.
Every team member should be actively posting quality content on LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter if it’s 5 minutes or an hour at a time; every day or weekly – just as long as it’s consistent and quality. Your team members can share content as updates, as Pulse blog posts, or directly in groups to create conversation.
Whenever your team member makes a new connection, a personal message needs to be sent – including a link to your company page as a signature.

Set up a company page!

Think of this as your landing page on LinkedIn – this is where all the traffic will most likely end up after seeing your amazing employees out in the LinkedIn world.
Optimize your company page for search – use keywords and focus the first 156 words of your company description.
Post quality content from your company page on a regular basis. Focus on industry related articles, blog posts, and infographics that will set you apart as a thought leader and a company that keeps up on industry trends.

Of course there are other things you can be doing, like paid ads and social selling. However, to start off right and build a strong foundation, put into place a deliberate strategy for your employees to continually improve their profiles, and have time to make new connections and curate quality conversation starting content that will drive potential clients to your absolutely stunning company (landing) page.

By Emily White, creative specialist at American Name Services.

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Social Media for Your Organization

Posted on May 16, 2016 by ANS SM Team | Posted in Digital Marketing, Social Media

Social Media for Your Business

Everyone is asking; “How do I use social media to promote my business?” From the freelancer, to the entrepreneur, to the fortune 500. Although, hopefully, most fortune 500 companies are defining the way to use social media rather than playing catch-up, like many small businesses. The dilemma is that not all social media platforms are created equal and not all social media plans will make sense for all companies and organizations. For this reason, companies must research the different social platforms, explore posting options, engagement, and more to determine if each platform is relevant to their client base or reasonable for the content the company would like to distribute.

Too often many small companies feel as if they desperately need a social media presence, but don’t know where to start or what to do. When people understand what one does as a social media specialist, the requests start to roll in… Can you look at my accounts to see if I’m “doing it right”? Would you be interested in running the Facebook page for my company?

The other often asked question to a social media team are about every possible social media platform. “Have you thought about using Tumblr?” “Have you heard of or even experimented with Periscope? No. What?! Why not, it’s over a year old?” “How about Meetup? Have you considered how having a presence could be potentially beneficial for you R&D department as well as connecting with your consumers?” These types of inquiries can be overwhelming and make small businesses feel as if they are behind the times. It is important to not get caught up in the social media-hype, but rather look at all the different platforms against the needs of your company.

The response to all of these questions is simply, “What is your intention as a company with any social media presence, and what are you trying to accomplish?” With social media nearing a decade of business related activity; it is more than a buzz word or fad. It has proven its relevance for businesses and organizations. However, as the article Social Media is Not For Every Business points out, the Social Media world is not a “one-size-fits-all”. The standard four; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram may be more than enough to connect with your consumers. This is the best place to start, and even then, not ALL four of these basic social media platforms will be worth the resources needed to invest for the potential outcome.

Let’s look at these standard four, what are the reasons your company would need to have a presences on each:

Fantastic for business-to-business communication, professional networking, and promoting business services.
Connecting your employees to your business. Every company needs a company landing page. This allows employees to connect their current job with the company logo and page.
Putting your employees to work. Assist your employees in developing an all-star level profile. As well, set into practice an active presence on LinkedIn; adding clients and individuals met at conventions to their network of connections, and participating in groups and discussion boards.

Facebook

Keeping your followers updated on products and services as well as engaged with your brand. Facebook is the easiest and generally most used interface to promote reaction, discussion and sharing.
Consider unique ways to use Facebook yard sale pages, interest groups, and events to find new clients and engage with existing customers.

Twitter

Valuable for its potential for business-to-business communication, professional networking and engaging with consumer followers.
This is the place to over-post. Best practice is to post more than three times a day. It’s recommended to re-post your companies original content up to 3 times a day.
If your company has content that can be shared in succinct tidbits that are engaging conversation starters.
Twitter allows for quick, in-the-moment, unintentional and deliberate collaboration and customer service.

Instagram

Excellent for visual businesses.
Experience the power of the hashtag; discovering trending and relevant hashtags as well as developing new unique hashtags is integral to gaining momentum.
Great for understanding your business’ brand and style. Being visual forces your company to portray all that it is, through imagery only.
Fabulous playground for connecting with new collaborators and clients.

Do you need guidance for your business or organization with your social media accounts? Call Patti Thompson at American Name Services today 800-434-1851.
Here’s a brochure of our social media packages.

by Emily White, Creative Specialist at American Name Services

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