social media » NDG Communications, Inc.

What you say and when you say it means everything on social media!

Do you want more people to see your Twitter content? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.!

In a recent article from the NDG Knowledge Base, you’ll find out the best times to post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more.

Do you want more likes and shares on Facebook? Create content people want to actually share!

Another great article reveals that the biggest factor for creating engagement is creating content that is relevant to both your brand and your customer. Click here for more great insights into creating engagement on Facebook.

On Friday, several NDG Communications team members and I attended the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit on Intelligence & Insights on the Future of Communications at Gannett headquarters in McLean, Virginia. We learned some interesting new things and found affirmation about the effectiveness of tactics we’ve begun to employ for our clients—and ourselves.

For example, when it comes to online content, presenters reinforced the importance of micro-targeting—the more focused and relevant the conversation, the better the engagement and response. Make your messaging so specific to your target audience that they not only read it, they start to see themselves in it.

In terms of social media engagement, we were reminded of just how critical it is to talk to and about your prospects. Research has shown time and again that when companies talk about themselves, engagement drops. But, talk about your buyer—what’s important to them, what’s trending in their world, what keeps them up at night—and watch engagement go up!

Click here to learn more about the event.

Infographics are hot on the marketing scene right now. An infographic is an eye-catching graphic representation of information, trends, or statistics. Whether for real estate, healthcare, or any industry, infographics can make facts and figures much more interesting.

Lately, I’ve had the pleasure of designing a number of new infographics, including this one detailing some fun facts about our agency’s culture.

How can you make infographics work for you? First, the text in your infographic should be brief, representing the basic facts and figures you wish to convey. Second, successful infographics offer intriguing titles and perspectives about topics that draw people in. Third, effective infographics are presented in a visual style that delights and inspires.

And when it comes to building links and generating online publicity, infographics have the power to take your message viral, especially on social networks. Marketing doesn’t get any better than other people spreading your message for free, and infographics are one thing that people definitely love to share.

Click here for more insights into how infographics can be a smart and cost-effective vehicle for marketing your brand.

Micro-blogging service Twitter turned 6 years old this week (though the service was actually launched to the public four months later).

Many people, myself included, were “Twitter naysayers” when the service first rolled out. With a majority of users at the time employing Twitter as a public diary of banal topics, and with the only access to the platform via a desktop web browser, it was difficult to imagine Twitter ever being more than just a niche social network.

But in six short years, Twitter has become a staple in many people’s lives, having become the locus of their communications—socializing, newsgathering and vetting, and general information sharing. Today, Twitter has 140 million users and delivers 340 million tweets per day, up 40% from just six months ago.

Instantaneous interconnectedness is what Twitter serves its users, and in turn, the world. And perhaps one of the biggest reasons for this success was the massive and unrelenting rise of mobile technology.

Twitter truly was born for mobile, before there was a mobile web world. It’s easy to forget, but Twitter was launched almost a year before the very first iPhone, before mobile apps, and before the “mobile technology” culture that has grown exponentially over the past few years. It is highly likely that Twitter could never have become the valued property it is today without mobile integration.

As a result of Twitter going mobile, the service can be accessed anywhere at any time, meaning fresh news and sharing can happen almost instantaneously. In fact, big news often breaks first on Twitter now, before it could ever be reported via radio, television, or even mainstream news websites.

So, happy birthday, Twitter. You’ve changed the world for the better, improved communication between individuals and groups, and even aided revolutions that overthrew oppressive regimes. Not bad for a six-year-old.

As we continue to explore social media marketing, I got to thinking about Klout—a service that measures your social web influence and scores you based on your Facebook and Twitter activity.

The service has many benefits. For brands, the service identifies your most influential topics and, more importantly, helps you build brand awareness by connecting with more influential people.

In addition, you can offer influencers a perk, then—assuming they like it—they will likely spread the word through their social networks. Since people generally value others’ feedback and recommendations over traditional advertising, that social share is great for your brand.

Currently, the makers of Klout are working to measure activity on Facebook pages, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Last.fm, and Flickr.

Klout is not the only service out there measuring social web influence. There’s also Kred and PeerIndex, to name a couple. Click here to read about similar tools.

Curious to know which homebuilders have the most Klout? Click here.

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that Timeline for brand pages will be pushed live on March 30.

One benefit to the new layout—photos will become a main focus. According to Dr. John Medina’s book, Brain Rules, “we learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words,” meaning better and faster brand recognition and engagement.

The purpose of the Facebook brand page will be less about selling and more about telling an authentic story and sharing your company culture. This is another opportunity to express what makes your company unique and build an emotional connection with fans.

Here are a few things you can do to prepare:

Start thinking about your company’s cover photo. It’s the perfect spot to showcase a new product or promotion.
Go through your company’s history and mark milestones to share on the timeline and show a more complete story.
Make sure all of your information, photos, and videos are up to date.

Check out the links below to learn more about Facebook Timeline for brand pages:

While the number of social networks continues to grow, only a few of them have unique value to you and your clients.

The latest one on our radar—“Pinterest”—is a great example of just such a network, and here at NDG, our “pinterest” was sparked right out of the gate. This unique photo-sharing website allows users to “pin” images to theme-based boards, which can be shared and commented on.

Instead of tearing pages out of catalogues or bookmarking countless websites, now you can store images quickly and easily on Pinterest just by adding them from your web browser.

But Pinterest isn’t just for personal use. Companies are using it for design inspiration and brand promotion—you can capture and share the essence of your brand and company culture through pictures, hold contests, and observe the types of people that are liking or repining your pins.

Who are the early adopters? West Elm, The Today Show, and Travel Channel are already on Pinterest. Will you be next?

Click here for 5 Hot Tips for brands on Pinterest. Or, click here to learn how to use Pinterest to boost consumer engagement.

Over the past few months, we’ve added quite a few new articles and e-books to the NDG “Knowledge Base,” our internal library of online content.

Looking to drive more traffic to your website via Facebook? Check out “Beyond the Facebook Business Page: How to Generate Traffic and Leads with Facebook,” an interesting new e-book publication from HubSpot. Learn how to make Facebook a major part of your marketing strategy with tips on keeping your content fresh, instructions on how to advertise successfully, and more. Click here to download this free e-book today.

Content Marketing vs. Traditional Advertising, an infographic from Marketo, shows how content marketing—the creation and sharing of content to promote a product or service—is competing with traditional advertising, and benefiting marketers. Some of the most popular content marketing tactics include social media—with 55% of marketers using Twitter, 54% using Facebook, and 38% using YouTube to distribute their content—e-newsletters, and blogs. Click here to see the infographic.