When Ian Baird started planting lavender on the former horse and hay farm he purchased in Milton, Ont., he had an agri-tourism business
social media marketing ideas in mind. It takes several years for new lavender crops to be ready for harvesting, so Baird had plenty of time to establish demand. He created a Facebook page and used the platform’s paid promotion tools to “tease the market” and attract interested customers who would be ready to visit when the time came to open the doors. “Using Facebook, we could start talking about the farm and build a bit of a community around it before we opened,” he says. How startups make marketing automation affordable for small business. After two summers in operation (plus seasonal pop-ups), Baird has a dedicated audience of more than 17,000 Facebook fans for his company, Terre Bleu, and year-over-year sales growth of close to 400%. “We’re just swamped with thousands of people each weekend,” he says. “We’ve been selling out of product, and we even got our first negative reviews—basically, that there were lineups. We did not expect this kind of demand.” How did the IT consultant turned lavender farmer build a thriving business out of empty fields? Here are his tips for digital marketing success: Build slowly Baird didn’t go all out from day one with a flashy website and accounts on every social media platform. Instead, he gradually developed his promotional tools, starting with a Facebook business page along with co-ordinated advertising. He then launched a simple website
social media marketing packages that featured clear information and professional photography. (He’s since added an Instagram account, but it’s mostly for fun.)Baird took the same incremental approach when developing his business too, letting demand govern his next moves. “Last year, we only opened as a test market with a tiny farm market store,” Baird says. “Based on the success of last year’s test, we built a 3,000-square-foot building this year, and it was off the charts.” And while lavender products are Terre Bleu’s key merchandise, Baird has developed another revenue stream based on the crop’s gorgeous esthetics. “We have a whole business around photo shoots for engagements, weddings and family portraiture,” he says. “We even added the feature this year where you could rent one of our horses to be photographed.”
Social Media Marketing New Year’s Resolutions
We all know there are many things we could do to fix our
social media marketing proposal programs or make them better. But the reality is that no one can do it all at once. Unless your organization has a huge multi-member team, it’s simply not possible to listen to every conversation, respond to every comment or post, moderate every conversation, create unending streams of entertaining and valuable content, and spend unlimited amounts of money on advertising that supports your social channel. However, you can select a few key areas to either do better in or to start to be active in. So this column is just a few things you could choose from as part of your social media marketing New Year’s resolution list. So here goes: I promise to ask myself, “Why would anyone want to be my friend?” I don’t mean you personally, I mean your brand. Why would anyone want to connect with your company? Why would they want to fan you, follow you, listen to what you have to say, and share your stuff? If you are Harley-Davidson or Coca-Cola, this is an easy question to answer. People love those brands and they are part of consumers’ lifestyles. They have built-in appeal and passion. But unfortunately for most of us, our brands are just not that likable. So you have to figure out what kind of value you can present to people as a social connection. Also, it can’t just be a one-time value such as a contest, coupon, or offer. It’s got to be ongoing value. People have to look at your content and say, “This is the kind of information I want in my newsfeed; this is stuff I would want to share!”I promise to be more interesting. It’s important to remember that if you’re not interesting in social media, just like in life, people will stop listening to you. And if people stop listening to you in social media, it’s the kiss of death, because they will unlike you on Facebook, then Facebook will block your content from its feed via EdgeRank, and people will stop paying attention to you. You
social media marketing for dummies have to post things that are interesting and that people can use and will want to share because it’s entertaining, emotional, useful, or it makes them look smart. The reality is all this may not come from you, and it’s alright to find interesting things that may or may not have anything to do with your products or services and share them with your audiences.
SOCIAL MEDIA RESOLUTIONS FOR 2016
1) Refresh your friends and followings. Give your newsfeeds a fresh start by letting go of your unnecessary
social media marketing definition or unhealthy online connections, and only follow the people you really care to get updates from. 2) Limit your Snapchat stories to 1 minute or less. Just because they removed the numbers in the timer, doesn't mean we won't realize your story is ridiculously long. Unless you're DJ Khaled. 3) Slow down with your posts during Fashion Week. Front row snapshots, show invitations, celebrity spottings—keeping up with your social media during Fashion Week is a job in itself. Post less, we all have enough blurry runway pics to scroll through on our Instagram feed. 4) Show some love to your LinkedIn. LinkedIn—the poor neglected child of your social media sites. Update your profile, accept those invitations that have been sitting in your inbox for months and add your latest work to your page—take advantage of the resource, you never know what kind of career connections you can make. 5) Try taking advantage of the "see less" Facebook feature if you're going through a breakup. Not ready to see your ex on social media? Hide their activity from your feed if it'll help heal those wounds. (Or better yet, just delete them).6) If you're still in a relationship, keep it on the DL. We know you treasure the special moments you have with your significant other, but don't rub it in everyone's faces.8) Take a break from the Facetune and other face-editing apps. Often when you use them, you get so sucked in that you forget what looks natural. Unless you've mastered a way to flawlessly cover your blemishes and add a light tan without it looking completely obvious—as it usually does—you're better off with #nofilter.9) Think before you comment and argue. As we enter upon an election year, opinions will fire up more often and conversations will be all the more volatile. This doesn't mean you should stop sharing your beliefs, but just be wary of (and prepared for) what reactions the articles or statements you post will incite. Not everything has to be a political
social media marketing firm rant or a comment showdown—as entertaining as it is for your followers. 10) Chill with the online tests. Do you really need to know who secretly wants to marry you, or which characters from the cast of "Friends" you and your buddies are? (You're Rachel anyways, duh.) These are funny once or twice, but it's not something your followers want to see every day. In fact, each time you sign up for one of these tests, you give that website access to your friends list and personal info. That might not be something you want going around.
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