The holiday season is fast approaching! When it comes to social media and the holidays, you may be wondering what you can do to increase engagement and create a lasting impression that helps your business year-round.
After all, you don’t want to waste time and resources not getting results.
That’s why in this free one-hour webinar, you’ll learn from our experts on:
Strategies to gain engagement and beat the algorithm
Using social media ads to reach your target audience and sell more
Why you need to combine your social strategy with other marketing channels to increase your success year-round
Want to learn more or work with one of the experts featured in the webinar? Visit their website:
Our panelists were gracious enough to answer some of the questions listed below. Have additional questions? Comment on this post.
Online Marketing
How can I increase my conversion rate?
A lot of different things go into conversion.
First, you've got to prime your audience, and not just promote your products all of the time. Share content and information that gets them to know, like, and trust you.
It's also about combining all of the strategies we talked about in the webinar with other channels as well. Make sure you're using your website as your hub and linking back to it and don't forget about email marketing. We find that customers are most likely to buy from email marketing. See our Small Business Now Report for more information.
And then of course social media ads.
Remember, not everyone who hears or sees your information for the first time is going to buy from you right away. They may need to learn more about you and understand what it is you do.
Google My Business
Is Google My Business only for businesses that have a physical location? What about online businesses?
Google My Business is a wonderful free tool for any business or organization that meets with clients/customers/members face-to-face. It can be used for service-based businesses, even those without a physical location, and nonprofits. For example, an electrician or plumber who runs his business from home will most likely be approved for a business listing. Simply hide your address so you don't have potential customers showing up at your front door.
Online only businesses generally aren't approved for a Google My Business listing. Go to google.com/business to see if your business qualifies for a business profile.
Can you explain more about posts on GMB?
From the Google My Business dashboard (on desktop), navigate to the Posts tab in the left hand menu. This will open a new window with options for a variety of posts: Offers (promotions with expiration dates), What's New (news, blog posts, etc), Events. Be sure to add an image and a call-to-action. There are a few scheduling tools to help manage Google My Business including OneUpApp, MetriCool and Social Pilot. Click here for a walkthrough of creating posts. *Any links we provide from non-Constant Contact sites or information about non-Constant Contact products or services are provided as a courtesy and should not be construed as an endorsement by Constant Contact. We do not provide support for non-Constant Contact sites.
How can I ask for reviews through my GMB page?
Click on the Share A Review Form button from the home page of your Google My Business dashboard. This will generate a link to share anywhere.
Is it necessary to have a website for your business if you're using Google My Business?
While Google My Business is a fantastic service, we always recommend having a website for every business. Use posts on your business listing to drive traffic to your website.
Social Media Advertising/Posting
What social platforms allow for advertisements?
All of the big platforms offer advertising: Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.
What is the lookalike feature on Facebook?
The lookalike feature allows you to take your existing customer or email list, upload it into Facebook and when you create an ad, the system will look for people who look like your existing customers. When creating an ad through Constant Contact, you can create your own lookalike audience.
How would you recommend tailoring social media advertisements to businesses specifically? My company is a distributor that only works with companies, we do not do business with the general public. We can never seem to find the right users or keywords to target on advertisements to build clients / engagement.
For social media platforms, you should move to Linkedin as your focus. It provides the ultimate experience in finding and targeting exactly the right businesses and decision makers. For Google Ads, be careful to build a campaign using key phrases rather than keywords. Keywords may trigger the ad to show to a larger audience who are not businesses or in your target market, whereas search phrases or long tail keywords will help ensure that you are appearing in front of the right people. - Aaron
How large an audience can an ad reach?
There really aren't limits. However, you generally don't want to reach such a large audience. To make it worthwhile, you want to target people who are most likely to buy from you. Start by thinking about who your existing customers are, their interests, likes, etc. so you can target people like them.
I’ve used Facebook ads several times. I can see the results but they are not converting. How do I reach them? Can you capture e-mails in Facebook ads?
If the ads aren't converting, I'd look at whether you are using a multi-touch campaign. Selling on the first look to cold strangers is not the norm, so set your expectations accordingly. Yes, you can capture their e-mail in Facebook ads by using the "Lead Ad" objective when building your campaign. They engage the and and they are allowed to touch the form and it autofills their information and they don't even need to type it in themselves. - Aaron
What is the best way to engage with social media for a brand new business with no current followers? What kind of "first posts" would be most effective?
Start by asking your friends and existing clients to follow you. They know you best!
For posts, you should let your new audience get to know you. Announce your new business and what you can do to help. Share your expertise and show them you're experienced.
How do you determine the best time of day for social media posting? Is it simply trial and error?
Within most social media platforms, there are analytics or insights. Reviewing these stats on a regular basis will reveal important information about your audience and content. First, you'll want to focus on reach and engagement and replicate those posts that have performed well. Secondly, pay attention to the day and time of previous posts that performed well. Armed with this data, schedule your future posts accordingly. Always, always test and measure. If you're not measuring, you're not marketing!
Is there an easier way for scheduling social posts for the week ahead of time?
Our social posting tool has scheduling options for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
I have been experiencing difficulties posting links to my social media accounts when I send out a post to my email subscribers. What should I do?
It's hard to tell what might be causing this. If you're trying to do this in Constant Contact, contact our support team so they can troubleshoot with you one-on-one and see any error messages you're getting.
What tool do you recommend for the most efficient use for creating, scheduling, and posting social media posts/emails for a 22-store retail chain - each with their own Facebook page? Hootsuite doesn't seem to handle the load efficiently and I would like some more features than what’s available in accounts.
I am currently in a trial. Our company has a robust website and ecommerce presence. Our store wants to expand sales primarily through pointed emails. What are the practical benefits to Email Plus vs the standard Email package?
Email plus includes marketing automation, plus polls, surveys, and event registration. Plus a few additional options like customized pop-up forms for growing your email list. You can find a full breakdown of the two packages here: https://www.constantcontact.com/pricing/compare-plans
Thanks for putting out this webinar. How do you feel about building an email list via a purchased email list?
This is never a good idea! Constant Contact does not allow the upload of purchased lists. Also, in some cases it is considered illegal and will cause a lot of issues when sending email. You are better off putting in the work to build a list of people who actually want to hear from you using list building tools to grow your list organically. Read more on our Blog about purchased email lists and why they should not be used.
Can you provide the links to the resources mentioned during the webinar? Several were named such asa fun polling app and an app that allows you to easily upload video to social media sources.
For the video upload app, one of our guests recommended StreamYard. Keep in mind that this is a third-party app so we cannot provide support when using it.
We're not able to recall us discussing any polling apps. We have a Poll action block for Email Plus customers if you're looking to increase engagement in your campaigns. If you're able to recall a point in the webinar or provide a timestamp, we can look more into it.
I'm the marketing rep for a health clinic. A lot of the tips shared here cater toward someone selling product, etc. It's not really relatable for us to post giveaways or promotions, etc. I do feel like my social media posts align with consistency and quality. Our target audience also might consist of past patients, new patients, randoms, other providers, and lawyers. The posts I post, pertain to reminding who we are and what our clinic provides. For businesses like this, is it safe to say, we post more to have a clean and clear picture of who we are when someone does come along to visit the page, more so than foot traffic and engaging? I love the idea of more engagement and interactions, but I'm not sure that's what my company is looking for me to do on social media. Any advice? Thanks so much. - Arianne
Hi Arianne. Using social media to improve and boost brand awareness is certainly considered to be among "best practices" especially in an industry such as yours. I suggest using a content calendar that will offer space for the occasional "company culture" type post that will drive engagement and help your content be seen by your followers. For example if you support a local charity, or have a team-building event, consider posting content around those topics. People love to feel like they know the businesses and organizations they work with or support, and having well-rounded content can help you achieve that. ~Melanie Diehl, panelist
Hello Adrianne, In addition to Melanie's suggestions, you can also incorporate some educational content in the form of video. You can use some of the staff to record them. ~Karen Leonard, panelist
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