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Social media management, especially in small businesses, can often be just another task on the list, however when managed effectively it can deliver compelling results. To help you on your social media way, here are some tips to kick start your social media voice.

1. Plan and Objectives
Like every element in your business you need a clear plan and objectives so you can measure your efforts. Create a social media plan and identify the channels you are focusing on. Begin with just one or two social media channels and when you feel like you have mastered that you can include more. In 2017 Facebook had approximately 2.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, and it’s a fairly easy one to use and monitor, so if it suits your target audience, it’s a good place to start. Creating a social media marketing plan will set you up for success, and help you to avoid any social media mistakes.

2. Social Media Audit
Almost every business has some sort of digital presence, google your name and business and evaluate how you customers may already perceive you. If you are already using some social media channels consider how well they are working for you. Should you consider changing your content or even closing the channel and switching to something which fits your brand and your audience?

3. Be Engaged
How are you going to engage with you audience? Review previous posts which have been successful, listen to your customers and what they are asking. It will give you some great content ideas. Become an industry leader by creating your own content and sharing your own ideas and experiences.

4. Social media is social
Be proactive on your social media, like your customers comments, like their pages share their content and prove to them you’re listening. It’s a social media complement!

5. Traffic for Results
Let’s get real! The point of all marketing activity is to drive leads and sales, social media is no different. Ensure your content encourages customers to visit your webpage and when they get there give them some great information in the form of blogs, special offers or useful tips, your web page will thank you. If you are sharing other URL’s use a shortening tool to keep your posts short and snappy.

6. Measure Your Success
Do a monthly review of your results. Consider the posts that gave good engagement and reach and the ones that didn’t, then you can use that information for your next month’s plan. A content management program will help you post to various places with just one click and ensures your message is consistent and measured.

Skimping out on social media can pose a threat to your company’s overall marketing strategy. The 3 key things to keep top of mind are be proactive, always listen, and be engaging. If you have fun with your social media so will you customers.

A customer journey map is an incredibly useful tool to understand and improve your customer experience.  A great customer journey map documents your customer’s experience from your customer’s eyes, helping you to understand not only how customers interact with your brand, but also identifies opportunities.

We are all consumers of low to high involvement products and services and there is no standard Customer Journey map. What is similar are the emotions that are felt at each stage of the journey.

These range from: excitement, anxiety, confidence and guilt. The goal of mapping the Customer Journey is to intercept the customer at each step and show them that we understand, removing the emotional barriers that provide a negative experience, ultimately impacting conversion timeframes.

The Stages of the Customer Journey in property development are:

Dreaming, Feasibility, Searching, Refining, Purchase, Building and Move In. To capture and remove barriers at each stage of the Customer Journey, the 8 Components below are important considerations:

  1. Represent your Customers perspective.  The customer journey map needs to represent the interactions as your customer experiences it.  It often includes interactions that happen outside of your control, such as a social media interaction or a web search.
  2.  Use research.  A strong customer journey map includes research that gives deep insight (interviews or surveys).
  3. Represent Customer segments. Different segments typically have very different customer experiences and emotions.
  4.  Include Customer goals.  Show your customer’s goals at each stage of the process.  Goals can change as the process unfolds.
  5. Focus on emotions.  Emotions are critical to any experience, whether B2B or B2C, and a great customer journey map communicates and recognises these emotions.
  6.  Represent touch points.  The customer journey map is often built to communicate the order and type of touch points – including those not in your control.
  7. Measure your brand promise. A critical outcome of a great customer journey map is measuring how your experience supports your brand promise.
  8. Include time.  Each customer segment is different and will go through the journey at different rates. Customers also come in and out of market depending on the level of involvement and perceived risk.

A well drafted Customer Journey identifies key emotional and rational barriers providing a solid framework in designing brands, positioning and strategies that tap into all stages of the customer journey to improve conversion and brand performance.

Planning an event is another touch point in your customers journey to engagement or purchase.  It’s also great way to introduce new customers to your brand, or thank existing ones. You want your event to be a huge success, so follow these tips and it will be a knock out.

  1. First things first, what is the objective of your event? Sales, engagement, launch or nurturing
  2. Set targets – how many people would you like to attend and how many leads would you like to convert
  3. Decide what type of event you are going to host. Is it an experience, an introduction, a presentation, a lesson? The best events will connect to your brand to the experience, getting your target audience excited about attending.
  4. Where will you host the event? A venue sets the tone for the event, so make sure you choose the right space. For example if you want people to concentrate on a presentation then it needs to be somewhere without distractions, that is comfortable, if you want to impress your attendees you need to find somewhere breathtaking.  If its a launch event in a park for example, make sure you have all the public space and council approvals in place
  5. Consider your guest list or work out how you can control attendance. You need to make sure the right people attend so work out how you can ensure that you get the guests you want.  If its a mass market event, ensure you have a strong advertising and media strategy in place.
  6. Create a reason for attending. The best way to get the guests you want is to make sure that they have a reason to attend, you can do this by either making the event exciting or by offering some other form of inducement, such as information or a discount.
  7. Data capture, how are you capturing the names and contact details of your guests so they convert to leads
  8. Finally, have fun, enjoy showcasing your brand, its something to be proud of

5 tips for creating an engaging brand

Brand is everything, your brand is your business, it is how people perceive you, how they identify you and how they connect with you. Creating the best possible brand is a core business function. Here are 5 tips for creating a brand with deep insight that will generate interest and engagement :

  1. Customer focused- a good brand understands who the target audience are and is designed to appeal to them. The audience you are aiming to attract needs to be at the core of your brand, it has to attract and hold them.
  2. Brand consistency- Every part of your brand, from your name to your logo, needs to be consistent, they need to work together.
  3. Positioning- a good brand will be ‘positioned’, it will be created with awareness of competitors and is created so that it is differentiated from them, with a key insight that shows your customers you know them.
  4. Simplicity- all good brands are simple, they try to evoke one or two emotions, they try to express one or two values, too much will result in confusion.
  5. Same across different mediums- a good brand will be able to be used in a variety of mediums, from radio ads to newspaper ads, from TV ads to internet ads, while retaining cohesiveness.