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Here at The Rocket Group the office television is often tuned to MLB Network in the background. I’ve come to the conclusion, based on the commercials, the entire network is paid for by our competitors. Commercials for bulk printers, clip art graphic design, template website, and even social media management companies fill the airwaves between pitches.

These are what we refer to as commodity marketing companies. It’s simple point-and-click-add-a-widget-without-a-creative-thought design. While this approach may work for some efforts and businesses it is not business we are interested in working on.

I spent in almost a decade in and around manufacturing so I know how widgets are made on assembly lines. There is actual little thought which goes into the processes on the line as it is usually all automated by that time.

You can do the same thing to market your company, organization, or campaign – which probably consumes your every waking moment and thought – by buying products from services mentioned above. If you are not interested in taking a creative and original approach to your marketing then you are probably not interested in standing out from your competition.

These commodity marketing services may help you but it is more likely they will grab your money and run. You will be left with an inferior marketing product.

What you need is a real live marketing professional, like ourselves or any of thousands across America, who will look you in the eye, walk your floors, and work with you to develop a brand, a message, and graphic tools for the web and the real world which will connect with the audiences you are trying to attract and retain.

These tools, developed in a partnership with you, will help you succeed in making money, raising awareness, and dominating your market.

If you need creative services for your efforts, contact us or any other marketing professional.

If you need clip art which is probably being used by hundreds of other businesses like yours, then watch the MLB Network to see the companies you should call during every commercial break.

There are more than 500 million tweets sent every day around the world. That’s a lot of information to digest whether you are only looking at you’re the tweets of the folks you follow, by keywords, or by search.

How many tweets a day do you interact with? How many do you ‘save for later’ via @evernote or similar? Asking for a friend…

— Gus Wagner (@RocketGroup) May 9, 2014

We’re able to slow down the firehose of information a lot by using tools like Hootsuite and Evernote ourselves. Another thing we do is hit the ‘Favorite’ button.

You might be thinking, “Gus, you are the ShareThenLike.com dude. Why are you doing something on Twitter which tantamount to Liking something on Facebook?”

I have a couple of reasons (and nice use of ‘tantamount’):

1. I am saving it for later. Hitting Favorite on Twitter adds your message to a compilation list connected with my own profile and I can go back and look for that information at a later date. I often use Evernote for this feature as well but that is a private cloud-based system while the Favorite list is public.

2. I also use the gold star to acknowledge that your great content educated or entertained me. I’d have probably loved to have retweeted the message but it was too long and I didn’t have time or resources to edit it shorter. Remember 120 > 140 and this theory will greatly help your retweets.

3. Finally, I am connecting your content with our News page which is powered by the RebelMouse tool. We like to use this page to add another layer of social sharing to our efforts and your content.

As I’ve said before, Twitter is my favorite social media platform and I use it for almost all of my news, weather, business and fun information gathering. The goal with the content I publish for TRG and clients is to educate, inform, and entertain our audiences. The Favorite feature is another way to do so and to help your content as well.

Keep the great tweets coming and be sure to follow @RocketGroup on Twitter!

UPDATE: This tweet seemed to fit the favor of this post pretty well.

When people favourite a tweet you made 351 days ago. pic.twitter.com/U2fvAmh4Y6

— Adland (@adland) December 7, 2014

Between all the algorithm changes on social media and increased competition from more and more brands committing to online marketing you have probably seen less interaction with your content. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Facebook post, a tweet, or content on your blog, the numbers are falling.

Why is that?

1. Do you know when your fans are online? Facebook tells you in your Insights what days and times of days your audience is on the platform. If you are posting when the smallest amount of fans are online you will be less successful.

2. What’s in it for me? Your audience connected with you to support your business, to learn more from you, and to receive special opportunities. If ¾ of your content isn’t answering this question for your audience you will not receive interaction.

3. Your content sucks.

Your online content, especially on social, has to be informative and engaging. Sure, it acceptable to post the random fun item or dog photo (guilty) but if the majority of your posts are taken from George Takei then you will have problems. If you are posting all links, selling all the time, or posting ugly/blurry photos, you will not have successful interactions.

Here are some tools we use to enhance our content. I’m not sharing any trade secrets here as you have the same internet we have and have probably found these tools yourself:

1. PicMonkey is a great tool for editing and resizing photographic images. You don’t need to have a degree in Photoshop to run it either!

2. Canva is a fairly new tool which will help you to manage your images, or use their stock images, to create some rather cool graphics. They also have templates you can use but we try to avoid those as it doesn’t take long for your content to begin looking like your competitors.

3. Getty Images has always been the go-to source for news and file photos. They have recently opened up their sharing tools so you can go to them directly instead of stealing them from Google images.

4. No marketer or communicator these days is worth their salt if they are not using Facebook and Twitter ads. These are both very powerful and very targetable tools which will help you to succeed for very small investments.

If you still need help navigating the ever-changing waters of content management, let’s talk. Feel free to reach out to us at any time about launching your success story.

As always, thanks for the time!

One of our favorite things to do when blogging for ourselves it to add a video element to the content. You can see the videos which go with many of our blog pieces on marketing on our YouTube channel, throughout our Blog page, and even with this post.

You can do the same thing to increase the opportunity for potential customers to find you. Video works to help you get found and to establish yourself as a topic expert online.

You’re watching and reading this page right?

Video is a key component of search engine marketing and with the rise of mobile devices, visitors are more likely to watch you talking about your topic than read the words you write. The reason: YouTube is the second largest search engine online.

Yes, Google does own YouTube but the video platform still performs remarkably well separate from its mothership.

Creating content may also seem like a burden but video makes production even easier. Video also gives you another form of content to publish and share through your social and other communication channels.

And it’s simple to do.

Yes, we do make high end video productions and we have access to all the cameras, lights, and tools of the trade we need to do so. For these blog videos, we prefer to use a simple Flip cam, tripod, and white board set up. You can emulate our set up from the photo below.

You can’t even see the safety net!

The one thing not pictured in this photo which you will need is trust in yourself.

You have to exude confidence in the topic you are discussing to make yourself believable to your audience. Practice makes perfect so run through a couple of presentations on video then watch and learn from them. You will see your bad habits and tics (or your wife/husband/coworkers will when you show your work to them) and you will be able to iron the wrinkles out before you post anything on YouTube.

Another thing to remember is to not worry if you don’t go ‘viral’ or even get 1,000 views. It only takes one customer or prospect seeing your video presentation to cover your overheard and make a profit on doing video blogs this way.

Still have questions? Drop us a line anytime and we’ll be glad to help you get started on producing your own video content!

*When using our Flip cams. It’s much more involved when we bring the big toys out to work!

We talk a lot around here about business applications for social media and other online marketing tools but we still get questions about personal use of platforms like Facebook. That’s cool with us because the personal use of these systems is still greater than the business use.

Unfriending is a topic we often get asked about and our recommendation is to never do it. 

No matter what it is, a local business closing, a natural disaster, or a man-made disaster, one thing is for certain: bad news travels faster than good news on social media. Somebody shares, Likes, or comments on some tragic story and suddenly it’s all over your newsfeeds because it seems like everyone is doing it.

The speed of bad news online is just the time it takes to make one click.

Meanwhile, good news gets a very small portion of shareable activity. It’s the same click – and opportunity to add your own pithy comments – as bad news but few seem to take advantage of that ability.

We see this a lot with local business closing announcements, be it a restaurant, a retail store, or anything else ‘mom & pop-ish.’ When the small business posts on Facebook they are soon to be closing there will be hundreds of comments and other interactions stating “Oh, that’s too bad!”or You’re my favorite place, I am going to miss you!” or “L”

What were these hundreds of bad news commenters doing when they were supposedly enjoying the store’s products or the diner’s French fries? Were they sharing the content of the business, checking in when they were there, or posting filtered pics of the plates of pancakes? Probably not.

What more consumers need to do is what we call Share Then Like. Share the good news then Like the content. Sharing is a much more powerful tool, whether it is a Share on Facebook, a Retweet on Twitter, a combination of both on YouTube, or similar action across the other platforms, than simply clicking a Like button.

It took all the thought for me to hit the * while typing this as it does for me to Like something. If I Share something it allows me to add my opinions and thoughts to the content thereby further influencing my friends and followers. TWEET THIS

This is how audiences of audiences are reached – which is always the goal of social media – and its how things go viral.

It’s also the responsibility of the business to create a shareable environment with your content and through your IRL business. Here are some things you can do:

1. Post real world calls to action for customers to post photos, check-in, and interact with your business in your store, in your personal conversations, and even on your receipts. TWEET THIS

2. Make it easy for the audience to find you online by publishing the full addresses of your web and social locations. Putting F and T logos in your ads is useless. TWEET THIS

3. Pay attention to who is interacting with you on social – good or bad news – and interact with them as your brand page or account. TWEET THIS

4. Say ‘Thank You’ to your fans and followers more than you think you should. Gratitude goes a very long way. TWEET THIS

Thank you (see?) for the time today and let us know any time if we can do anything to help you reach more of your customers and prospects than you currently are!

UPDATE to #ShareThenLike

See Also:

Quit Liking Things on Facebook

Share Then Like: The Manti Te’o Story

“What happened to my reach on Facebook?” is a common questions we get here at The Rocket Group. Whether it is emailed or spoken directly to us there are usually a few more exclamation points than question marks in it. The broad answer is, “Facebook happened to your reach.”

The honest answer is, “Quit worrying about your reach on Facebook.” More about this in a moment. TWEET THIS

Research has shown that Facebook started making adjustments to its algorithm in December, 2013 which dramatically impacted organic reach of Facebook posts. In the months since then we have seen some accounts with organic (non-paid, non-shared, non-interactive) reach other their content as low as 1{1ccf3f7051f621f207bf0b5abe66fecd9fcbebd6ccca57cd81eaf6422f6a0a70} of their fan base. Facebook did all of this with the goal of creating a richer user experience for its 1.2 billion account holders.

And to make money for itself and its investors.

Even the big boys of Facebook marketing are having trouble. Walmart and Disney, with a combined 80 million Likes , are having trouble breaking 1{1ccf3f7051f621f207bf0b5abe66fecd9fcbebd6ccca57cd81eaf6422f6a0a70} engagement rates of their content. Their troubles lead us to a couple of conclusions.

Content Matters

Your content should be engaging, inviting, and informative to your audience. With large audiences like the two mentioned above or smaller audiences, which is what you probably have if you are reading this, you can’t be selling all the time. Look at the content on the two Facebook pages of Walmart and Disney. The majority of the posts are about deals, products, or special offers. Selling all the time on social media does not lead to audience interaction. TWEET THIS

Monitor Your Audience

Facebook gives you almost all of the tools you will need, unless your audience is in the millions, to monitor your audience and your content in their Insights tool. With this tool you can see who your Facebook audience actually is in age, gender, and location as well as know what time they are on the platform, what types of your content they interact with the most, and how many times your content has been hidden or reported to Facebook. If you aren’t reviewing Insights at least once a week, you are doing Facebook wrong.

Prepare to Pay

If you want to truly reach your audience of Likers, or folks similar to them, you will need to pay to do so. The Facebook advertising tool is one of the most powerful applications in marketing. For very affordable rates, you can reach more of your audience, Facebook users who match the demographics of your audience or customer profile, or anyone in the world if you know enough about them. We have run successful client ad projects on Facebook which have grown sales, audience numbers, and brand recognition for dozens of dollars a month. The self-serve ad tool is powerful and effective but there are deeper tools available like Power Editor which are more robust and useful.

So why shouldn’t you care about reach? Because, despite popular belief, no page ever reached all of its fans with any one post. Not even Facebook’s own page posts reach all 1.2 billion users. Many factors make this so: fans not being online, the limited shelf life of a Facebook post, and your content not being interesting.

What you should focus on is creating relevant content which the members of your audience who do see it when posted will interact with it. Your interaction numbers are the ones you should be looking at: Shares, comments, even Likes. The more of these you earn the better the reach of your content.

As always, feel free to reach out to us anytime if you would like to have a deeper conversation about this topic or anything else regarding the marketing of your business, organization, or campaign.

See Also:

2 Facebook Page Changes You Should Be Aware Of

Quit Liking Things on Facebook

Beating the Facebook Algorithm At Its Own Game