The Importance of a Blog

Learn about the importance and impact a successful blog can have on your organization.

The Components

A blog is a way for you to tell your audience more about your organization in an easily readable and accessible way. Additionally, blogs can be entertaining. The content should be appealing and relevant to your audience. Each blog should be between 300 and 500 words, long enough to get the point across but short enough to capture and keep the reader’s attention.

Sample side bar.

Included in your blog homepage should be quick links to posts, other social media and a way to subscribe to the content. As seen on the photo on the right, linking to previous posts can increase users’ interest. Adding an ability to subscribe to the blog will ensure that users return to the site.

Choosing a title is another important component of the blog. This goes for the title of the overall blog as well as the posts. The blog title should reflect your organization directly as to avoid confusion from the reader. Each blog post should reflect the content of that specific post in a concise yet creative way.

How to Increase Traffic

One of the most difficult parts of creating a successful blog is increasing user traffic. Most importantly, your blog should be linked to all social media as well as the main website of your organization.

Utilizing social media is an integral part of promoting a blog. Each time you post a relevant blog, you should link it to a tweet, photo, story, or post. This allows followers and users to easily access the information you are trying to communicate.

Also, each blog post should be SEO perfect. SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is achieved through focused key phrases, correct grammar, and relevant content. Perfect SEO allows for your blog to be higher on search engine results, therefore increasing traffic.

Follow these easy tips to ensure you have a successful blog and organization!

Perfecting Twitter for Your Organization

Twitter is one of the most widespread and influential social media platforms worldwide. Perfecting Twitter is key to a successful organization.

What is Twitter?

Founded in 2006, Twitter has grown to become one of the largest social media platforms worldwide. It’s simple to use. There are currently over 275 million users and that number only continues to grow. The ability to reach audiences this large is extremely important and influential.

The Basics

First things first, how do you tweet? A tweet is comprised of 280 characters, so users are able to get their point across clearly and quickly. This helps condense and focus the message you’re trying to convey. Additionally, it also keeps the attention of users for longer, so they are more likely to read what you want to say. Also, you can include links to more in depth information about the topic of your tweet.

Twitter also has a variety of uses; humor, news, politics, and more. This is highlighted on the discover page, where users choose what kind of content they want to look at. Consequently, this page also highlights trending topics, hashtags, and popular stories.

How can this benefit your organization?

All organizations should be on Twitter. This social media platform reaches across generations because of its easy accessibility and readability. Other than tweeting about important events or news for the organization, Twitter is used to interact with your audience. By responding to, liking, or retweeting followers’ tweets, organizations are able to engage with their audience. Additionally, it can be used to track what you are doing well, poorly, or things that can be improved upon.

If your organization is not on Twitter, now is the time to hop on!

What PR Professionals Need to Know About Facebook.

Facebook is an ever-changing social media platform: keep reading to find out how to stay on top of one of the most popular social media sites worldwide.

The Basics.

Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. With over 2 billion users, the majority of the world is connected through this site.

The iconic Facebook logo

For your organization, understanding how to build and maintain a substantial following is the key to the success. First you must create a Facebook page. This is not a group or a person. This page represents your organization as an entity and can be viewed and followed by the public.

There are also features such as Facebook Live and Facebook Stories. These are extremely important to utilize to convey your message.

Facebook Pages.

As previously mentioned, your organization exists on Facebook via a page. You can create one by going to facebook.com/business, and choose “create a page.” From here, you have the option of small or large business, brand or product, and more. Customizing your page to represent your organization is important so that you can reach as many people as possible.

Connect to people with Facebook groups.

On this page, you can repost content from your organization’s website. Additionally, you can post articles and promote other social media from within the Facebook group for your organization. The bigger your following grows, the more attention your organization gets. Also, this is a good tool to use to make big announcements or statements.

Facebook Stories.

Facebook groups now have the ability to utilize the story feature. Stories are a place where organizations can post content for only 24 hours. This remains at the top of the screen and users are notified when it is posted.

Stories are a great way to interact with the group and to keep users interested. By sending the notification when your organization posts a story, they are automatically drawn back to the page. It will increase traffic and popularity for not only the group, but your organization.

Bottom Line.

Facebook is such a popular, well known, and universally used social media platform. Therefore, it is important for organizations to understand how to utilize it to the best of their ability. By creating a group and growing a following, you can reach hundreds of thousands of users.

The Influence of Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the largest and most powerful social media platforms available, however it is not utilized to its fullest extent by many organizations. Read more about the power of Pinfluencers, the Pinterest Influencer.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a unique social media platform. The idea is that it resembles a board where you can pin different ideas and inspirations to your personal (or organization’s) board. These are organized by ideas, topics, or any way that you may see fit. The posts, also known as pins, are then displayed as images. This is an easy to read and aesthetically pleasing way to reach an audience. Many of the most popular categories revolve around food, events, and clothing inspiration.

What is a Pinfluencer?

In the social media world today, influencers are an almost necessary accessory to building your audience and popularity. An influencer is a person with the power to influence others to follow a trend or make a purchase. They aid organizations in growing their audience and reaching new demographics.

A Pinfluencer is an influencer that specializes in Pinterest. These Pinfluencers are popular on Pinterest itself, with a large following and therefore a large audience to reach.

Specifically, their boards are usually devoted to a certain trend, whether it be fashion, food, music or something else!

Working with a Pinfluencer involves an open conversation about what you want to see projected into the social world. Also, they then re-pin your pins and photos onto their own page.

Their followers trust their judgment and opinion. Followers know that influencers will only pair with organizations they are passionate about.

Do you need a Pinfluencer?

While Pinfluencers may not carry as much weight as YouTubers or Instagram influencers, they are crucial in the Pinterest world. Pinterest resonates with both young and old audiences. This makes it an important social media platform on which to have success. Also, it relieves the stress of building your organization’s own page from the ground up.

Check out these Pinfluencer pages to get a better idea of what they do!

https://www.pinterest.com/ohjoy/

https://www.pinterest.com/poppytalk/

Perfecting Instagram in an Insta-second

Perfecting Instagram is a necessary component to successful social media strategies. Follow these tips for ways to improve your organization’s Instagram account.

What even is an Instagram? Created in 2010, it has become one of the most prominent social media networks on the globe and has only continued to grow in popularity since is foundation. With over one billion users, its ability to influence large groups at any given time makes it one of, if not the most, important social media network that any successful organization must utilize.

If you aren’t quite sure how to tackle such an impressive network, fear not! Follow these tips and tricks to both engage and build your Instagram following to aid the success of your organization.

1. Utilize the story feature!

Instagram recently released a feature called “Insta-stories” in order to compete with Snapchat. With this feature, you have the ability to upload a multitude of photos that remain visible to followers for 24 hours. Additionally, these stories can be pinned at the top of the page so they can be viewed after the 24 hour expiration date.

Image result for instagram pinned stories
Story highlights stay pinned at the top of the profile.

Highlight important information that you want to project to your following so they can easily recognize and access it on your Instagram page.

For example, if you are doing giveaways, highlight them at the stop of the screen so followers can look back on old contests and winners.

Depending on your organization, you can get really creative with this feature! If you have offices in a multiple of cities, they all should have access to the account and when they post stories of things relevant to that city, it can be highlighted at the top of the page.

Another interesting part of this Instagram feature is that the user can choose the cover photo for the highlight. It can be an actual photo or a user generated graphic, so get creative!

2. Encourage user interaction!

Engage, Engage, Engage! Encourage followers to interact with posts. One easy tip is to caption the photo by saying “tag a friend.” Not only will this generate interaction with your followers and the post, it will also attract people who may not already follow the account. This helps get the word out about your organization.

Responding to user comments is another great way to generate interaction. Commenting back and tagging others is a great way to create a forum for discussion amongst users and increase your following.

A simple way to get feedback from users

Check out this blog post to learn more about follower interaction: https://later.com/blog/how-to-increase-instagram-engagement/3

Another great tip is to use Insta-stories to ask your followers questions. This makes them feel like their opinion is valued. Followers must feel as though their voice is heard and this is a great way to get their feedback.

You can also find out a lot about what their interests are and therefore what you should post about. This is easy and free research, take advantage!

3. Visual appeal!

Visual appeal is an extremely important part of a successful Instagram! Followers want to see eye-catching and interesting photos. Make sure you are putting your best foot forward as Instagram is the easiest way to show them what you’re really about.

These photos should be high-quality! Use a professional camera or photographer to grasp the important moments you want to share. After all, Instagram is about capturing one moment in time and sharing it with others. The more visually appealing the photo, the more likely people will be drawn to your account.

These are some easy tips on how to improve your Instagram account. Take advantage of the free advertising and get your followers engaged!