Common sense advice here, but I see mistakes like using the same hashtags over and over and over (or using hashtags that have nothing to do with a post) way too often (particularly from nonprofits)… As for the practice of using the same long list of hashtags on every post… Don’t do it. Instagram’s community …
Some good points in this post regarding churches using social media as outreach, particularly for youth. It’s important to keep in mind the “how’s” and “why’s” and “where’s” of different age groups and social media use as well. I tell my clients all the time that just like we don’t all listen to music or …
The impression-based market on Facebook ads haven’t resulted in a solid and stable pricing model for most direct-to-consumer companies (or nonprofits, churches, community groups etc). The targeting capabilities are exciting, but the pricing costs for ads have to match up with the returns. So now we’re all flocking to Instagram Stories… Digiday spoke with 10 …
Facebook ads prices are too high and companies are shifting to Instagram Continue Reading >
Wow, this is quite something and a good example of why you should always run your own blog instead of relying on a blog network. Same with podcasting. What a strange turn of events. Patheos was at the center of the Mars Hill Church and Gospel for Asia stories and now they host Mark Driscoll …
Cautionary Tale of Patheos and Having Your Own Blog Continue Reading >
There’s some really helpful advice here for small businesses, nonprofits, and / or churches looking to get a start on SEO basics. You can take a course on Lynda.com or watch some YouTube videos to learn more about what SEO can mean for your group, but the fundamentals here are pretty spot on: SEO isn’t …
Ultimate guide to SEO for small businesses (and nonprofits) Continue Reading >
I often get the question from clients of why I mostly recommend having your own website on WordPress or a self-hosted platform in the age of Facebook. As companies who built their businesses and traffic flow on the back of Facebook over the years have found out, that can be a very precarious decision. Audience …
Owning your own platform is important, and valuable Continue Reading >
Fun post that highlights many of the concerns I hear from clients and friends when I encourage them to blog. Blogging and newsletters are still incredibly impactful for businesses, churches, nonprofits… or just sharing what’s on your mind. Get out there. Be yourself. It’ll be ok. You think that you are a terrible writer. No …
Blogging is still a great way to get the word out about your business, church, nonprofit, cause, or interests. It’s a slow grind in the sense that it can take many months of consistency to build up an audience and see any sort of response that might make you feel like the endeavor is “worth …
Blogging Guide for Churches and Small Businesses Continue Reading >
In fact, research shows that there isn’t a high correlation between reading time and social sharing. As you can see from the graph, the high read time doesn’t translate to shares. Just because someone clicked a share button, it doesn’t mean that they were engaged with the content. Source: How to Effectively Manage Engagement for Stronger Influence
Not April 1… Tide-to-Go will partner with Google Chrome to provide a downloadable extension that will allow users to remove negative content from their social media newsfeed – helping to make more than just clothes a little bit brighter. Source: Tide Digital Advert By S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications: Social Stain Remover | Ads …
Here’s a free and good course on SEO basics. Whether you’re a business, church or nonprofit, you should have some basic understandings of what SEO means to your website and how just a few tweaks can really make a big difference. I went through most of the course and there’s some good info here, especially …
“Nearly all marketers (83%+) who’ve been employing social media marketing for 1 year or longer report it generates exposure for their businesses.” I’m skeptical of these sorts of reports generally, but SME does a good job of presenting digestible data. There are certainly some good takeaways here for businesses of all sizes, nonprofits, and churches looking to …
2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner Continue Reading >
Looks that way. This is potentially huge for small businesses that use Instagram for promotions of their products (I know I follow several boutique accounts promoting everything from pens to knives to stationary)… Instagram just stealthily added a native payments feature to its app for some users. It lets you register a debit or credit …
Will you be able to buy items on Instagram soon? Continue Reading >
Interesting to note here as well: Millennials face a near-future of heavy automation and artificial intelligence that Boomers did not have to face as they moved into their 40’s and 50’s. Jobs, as we knew them thirty years ago, are becoming rarer. The divide between these two groups will only grow. Perhaps that’s another reason that …
When the society — which lists several conservative Christian “founding partners” on the get.bible website — first applied for the rights to .bible, it pledged to provide wide access to “all qualified parties” interested in Bible issues. Soon after acquiring the domain name, though, ABS barred publication of material it defined as “antithetical to New Testament …
Here’s a good read on the thinking behind “local SEO” and how to implement some of the strategies on your website. We do this for a number of clients when we build or revise their sites, particularly churches and nonprofits (and small businesses) who really depend on local search traffic in fundraising or awareness campaigns. …
From Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Study I recently had a question from a friend who attends a small church with a smaller budget but interested in marketing and outreach their congregation about the pitfalls of church marketing. “Sam, why does church marketing fail?” So with her permission, here’s my response… The reason most church marketing …
Good read about what to do “now” with Facebook advertising… The Facebook privacy quake has already forced the Facebook to change the way they handle and collect consumer data. That’s changing their advertising platform. And there’s more to come. Source: Facebook Advertising: What’s Changing, What’s Not, & What To Do
I’ve long argued that “links are dead” (going on a decade now). Some of that was hyperbolic to discuss the need for a better mechanism to derive value or information from one site to the next or from a marketing campaign. It looks like Google might be moving beyond links as well and towards more …
Also good advice for churches and nonprofits doing social media marketing on a shoestring budget: Bots manipulate credibility by influencing social signals like the number of aggregated likes or shares a post or user receives. People see a large number of retweets on a post and read it as a genuine signal of authentic traction …
Don’t fall for lots of likes and retweets Continue Reading >