Category: Content Marketing

Using social media to help grow your business is a great way to widen your audience and increase the traffic to your website. With the constant growth and development of different social media platforms, there are plenty of ways you can use them to benefit your brand. According to Statista, more than half of the world’s population is now using social media. Therefore this means social media is the perfect service industry to branch out to when marketing your brand. Despite having so many users around the globe and so many different platforms, what are the benefits of social media marketing?

Increases Your Websites Visibility

One of the benefits of using social media marketing is that it can increase your website’s visibility. Once you manage to connect with your target audience or any audience at all, you may find your website traffic is increasing. But, before you can assume that people will want to engage with your content or your brand, you should optimise your platform. This way, you’ll make a great first impression, in the hope that the person will want to find out more.

When somebody first clicks on your profile, they will see all of the details you provide. This includes your profile picture, your name, bio and most importantly, your website URL link. If your page is optimised and your content is appealing, people will want to engage. So, having a link in your profile is essential. This way people can visit your website in one click if the link is available, therefore increasing your website’s visibility.

Improved Customer Satisfaction/ Loyalty

Using social media marketing to promote your brand to more people is not only a way to get your content seen and heard but also to build relationships. Most customers will always prioritise companies which have great customer satisfaction and communication over those who do not. If your brand uses social media, a customer is able to easily contact you and hopefully get the response they are searching for. This will increase brand loyalty as the customer may feel more attached. Therefore leading to more conversions and traffic on your site.

Although, it can also work in the opposite way. If you use social media and do not interact with your audience you may be unfortunately painting a negative image on your brand. Therefore leading to your audience and customers stop interacting in with page, posts and website.

Cost-Effective

One of the many benefits of social media marketing is that it is very cost-effective. Whether your brand has a couple of followers or even millions there are plenty of ways you can help it grow. These ways do not have to be expensive, you trial free ways in which to grow your platform. Depending on the social platform you are using, the way in which you choose to grow your audience will differ. Some platforms enable you to grow and promote your brand easily without any ads. Whereas using others will be a lot harder, meaning it may best to avoid the platform or purchase paid ads if necessary.

Despite this being said, there are plenty of ways which you can market your brand for free. This may be doing extra content creation and curation to take your social media platforms to the next level, attracting a larger audience who may convert and increase your traffic.

Although, depending on your brand, industry and audience, paid ads may be a better option for growing traffic. Thankfully, depending on the social media platform the prices for paid ads vary. This way you are able to get better control and trial out different paid ads on different platforms.

Here at Hive Digital Media, we offer a range of services to help you grow your brand. Our marketing strategies are beneficial to any brands no matter what size it is. If you are wanting more information on our services, click here.

Tags Growth, Hive Digital Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Although fancy advertising, publicity and paid promotions are all very good ways of growing your business they are not necessarily the best way to do it. This is because there are plenty of other ways in which you can organically grow your brand at either a very low cost or for free. You just have to find the right way for you and your brand. So, we have put together a list of ways you can organically grow your brand.

Using HashTags

Using hashtags on social media will push your content out to a wider audience. This way you will attract new customers and grow your online presence. Hashtags are becoming more and more used on the Internet and on social media as they have been proven to bring in more views, likes and followers to your website or social page.

The great thing about hashtags is that there are specific times that your hashtags may be trending. Therefore if you base your posting around them times, you will get more views from a wider audience, hopefully increasing conversions or engagement.

Consistent Posting

Whether you’re posting on social media, blogs on the website, or even about new products, you should make your posting consistent. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to post four times a day, every single, day. It just means that you should post at the same time on the same day, every time you post. For example, if you are posting a YouTube video, you should set a specific day of the week which you will post. This way the people who keep on top of your content will be able to recognize and understand when they should be looking out for your content.

You could also try to base your posting on the most popular times to post. These can be found in the analytics section of your pages. You should be able to see the best times for you to post depending on when your followers are most active. Although if you’re just starting out, or you have a low following, it might be best for you to stick to the most popular times to post depending on your location.

Connect with followers and customers

This is another great way to grow your following and your audience. People love to be interacted with, in other words, if you share a conversation with a follower, they are more likely to prefer your brand to a brand that does not interact with them. Building relationships with customers is an essential task you should do when trying to grow your brand organically. This does not necessarily mean that you need to privately message every single one of your followers. But, instead, why not post content they can either relate to or interact with. This way they will allow them to feel like your brand values the audience.

Invest in your website

The website which looks the part is a great way to kickstart the growth of your company. To start off with nobody likes to use a website that is confusing or full of advertisements. Therefore making your website look attractive, feel attractive, and be easy to use is a great way for you to begin growing your business.

But the look and feel of the website is not the only reason you should invest in a website. One of the most important aspects of the website is search engine optimisation (SEO). You should try to optimise your content as much as you can to help you rank higher on search engines. Here at Hive Digital Media, we focus on not only SEO but also website development to help your website be the best it can be.

Know your competiton

Keeping on track of what your competition is doing in the industry is a great way to plan out what you can do. This will enable you to stand out from the crowd and be unique when it comes to what your audience wants to see. This will lead them to hopefully see something different in your brand and allow them to choose you over all of your competition.

For more information on our services here at Hive Digital Media, click here.

Tags Business, Grow your brand, Hive Digital Media, marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

As the whole of England has been confined to their homes for the past few months, you might be wondering, has the use of social media marketing increased during this period? Teenagers especially tend to spend a lot of time on social media. The lockdown has taken the usage to the next level. This offers businesses the best opportunity to promote their brand whilst there is a higher percentage of people using social media.

Different Platforms

Global Internet traffic rose 40% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, essentially cramming more than a year’s worth of growth into just a few weeks, according to Sandvine.

Social media ads are a great way to get your content out to people all over the world with only a few clicks. If you are active on the most popular social media platforms you will understand a little bit more about how the ads work on specific sites.

For example on Instagram ads Appear not only in the feed but also in the stories. This gives your brand a better chance of being seen by a wider audience. When you see an ad on platforms like Instagram, they appear just like an image posted by a friend, meaning, they will be seen if somebody is just casually scrolling.

Whereas YouTube presents ads in various different ways like at the beginning of a video, at the side, underneath or even on top of the video. They are all different ways to catch users attention without impacting their use of the site too much. This technique allows the user to interact with the ad at any time depending on its position.

Therefore more and more brands have started advertising on social media during the pandemic. This is mainly due to the high amount of people using different platforms. But, also because other ways of advertising are not available at this time. Therefore many brands have to switch up their advertising techniques. To allow them to still get traffic to the sites and pages.

What social media platforms are the best?

The social media platform which you choose entirely depends on your brand. You should consider the results that you are wanting to find. Typical things you should consider are:

Where your target customers are most concentrated (usage, groups, etc.)
Where your target customers are most accessible.
Does your target customers most actively engage with ads.

Please bear in mind that advertising on social media is not something which might bring you automatic results. It may require you to spend some time testing out different platforms or different strategies before you are able to know the best direction for your brand.

Can Hive Digital Media Help?

Here at Hive Digital Media, we offer a range of different services to help your brand grow and increased traffic. To find out more information about our services please click here. If you are wanting to get in touch our online chat located on the bottom right of our homepage.

Tags Hive Digital Media, Instagram, Quarantine, Social Media, YouTube

4 WordPress Tips For Beginners

So, now that some of us are settled into quarantine from the Coronavirus lockdown, it’s worth taking a moment to sit back and consider the best practices and new techniques you can apply to your site. Whether it’s updating content that you’ve already written on your site or adding more compelling imagery to your blog posts. We’ve got some WordPress tips to make your website even better.

Easy Tips for WordPress Beginners

We’ve been using WordPress as part of our web design and development for multiple years. We recommend it to businesses as it’s easy to add content, edit it, and maintain a fantastic looking website. It’s also SEO friendly and, as a big bonus, it’s mobile-friendly and responsive to other devices.

So, here are 5 ways to get the most out of the CMS. These beginners WordPress tips are suitable whether you’re beginners or experts of WordPress in need of a few reminders. Whatever your situation is, you’re bound to find these tips useful.

1. Familise yourself with the Dashboard

If you’re new to WordPress or been using it for years, familiarising yourself with the WordPress dashboard is one of the best things to do. Understanding the Admin dashboard is vital as in there you can change a few things which can make your site a little better.

You’ll be able to update information such as your tagline (important for your SEO efforts), contact email addresses, time zones, date and time formats, language, and even your site title. Web design is often about remembering the little things to make a big difference.

2. Install the Yoast SEO plugin

Yoast SEO is a fantastic way to help shape your SEO strategy. It isn’t an automatic piece of software as it does require you to do some basic legwork, such as defining the keywords you want to use and fitting them into a suitably written title tag and meta description.

The software is designed in an intuitive way and is hugely popular across many industries. Once you’ve learned the basics you’ve got an ideal setup to structure your landing pages or blog posts to capture key search engine positions.

3. Optimise Your Images

WordPress is fantastic for SEO purposes, as we’ve established, and Google loves it. However, you can easily take your efforts a step further by optimising the images you upload to your site. Include your keywords in the image description sections to ensure your picture gets ranked in Google’s image search results.

You can help to optimise your images by filling in vital parts like the Alt Text, Caption, Description and Title. It is best to try and include your keyword or phrase within the text also.

4. Use a Variety of Authors

It looks better to have a range of authors on your blog rather than one individual. You can set your staff to write a post a month to have a steady range of authors going, who you can add through in the Users setting on the WordPress toolbar.

Some blogs make the mistake of posting without any information on who the author is (whilst others don’t even include a date of publication), which can be immensely frustrating for readers. In the internet era, people like to put a face to a name.

If you would like to talk to us on how we can turn your content into leads and revenue, then just hit the ‘Let’s Talk’ button below.

Let’s Talk

Tags WordPress

10 Reasons Why Content is Important for your Business

Content can sometimes be overlooked when it comes to websites. However, it does more than just filling up your web pages. It can be the starting factor in building confidence amongst your current and future customers too. It helps you create a great brand persona and drives traffic to your website where your products and services are.

The benefits and perks of content marketing aren’t just limited to reaching audiences and generating revenue. As there are other benefits too which cannot be measured as monetary benefits. In other words, content marketing is growing and is definitely showing no signs of slowing down.

Why Content Matters?

Content is a huge part of any marketing strategy. Simply, because it holds an important position in the hierarchy of marketing tools. It helps to build any brands presence online and is extremely useful in reaching current and potential customers. It is also one of the main things that could make or break how a company comes across online.

Here are 10 examples of how and why content matters in all industries.

1. Building your online presence

One of the greatest benefits that really shows its importance is the ability to build an online presence. Creating and sharing unique content on what you offer builds your presence. If you share relevant content about what your brand does, you’re bound to make a connection with customers coming to your site.

2. Improved brand reputation and awareness

As mentioned before, content is important to maintaining and building an online presence. However, in order to stand out from the crowd, you need to have some unique selling points for your brand. By publishing and promoting your brand, you should be able to improve your own brand reputation.

3. Better visibility through SEO ranking

Posting SEO friendly and quality content will help your website and web pages place better in search engine results. With the use of backlinks, ranked keywords and imagery, the more likely you are to rank better. Content is important for increasing your visibility and brand awareness.

4. Gain control of your brand narrative

When creating an online presence, you can take full control of your brand narrative. As perception can sometimes matter more than reality. This is why content is important for any business to maintain a unique identity. Creating content engages an audience that may not be otherwise engaged.

5. A key part of any marketing strategy

Content is important in any marketing strategy these days. As it holds a vital position, high-quality content is a must to succeed. It helps any marketing strategy in six different levels; research, ideas, placement, creation, publishing and promotion.

6. Maintains customer loyalty

Customer loyalty for a brand is crucial. Having well-defined content is important for your brand as it helps retain customer loyalty. With customers usually being the first to see and view your content via emails or social channels. As they’ll be most engaged with what you have to say.

7. Gives you an edge on your competitors

In this overly crowded and competitive world, it can set you apart from the competitive world. In every industry, there are what are known as competitors and we are all competing for the so-called top stop. With creative and unique writing, you could just get the upper hand on what really engages with your customers.

8. Educated about the industry

The first place people turn to for information is the internet. By creating original content about your industry, you are ensuring that accurate information is available for online users. In relation to SEO, having high-quality content is important for bringing customers to your site.

9. Customers expect it

Having a website with minimal information is possible and can do well online. However, nowadays, consumers expect you to provide enough information about your products and services that you are selling. The more information, the more likely customers can come to an informed decision.

10. Increased revenue generation

Let’s be honest, this is the ultimate goal of every marketing plan there is. A well-developed writing policy goes a long way. Not only in attracting new customers but also retaining and expanding the sending choices of existing ones.

If you would like to talk to us on how we can turn your content into leads and revenue, then just hit the ‘Let’s Talk’ button below.

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Tags Content Marketing