Our Top Three Digital Marketing Articles | December 5

I’m back this week with another edition of my top 3 digital marketing articles. I enjoy writing these articles because they challenge me to stay up to date with marketing news. This week I’m sharing some tips to managing your social media over the holidays, new changes and updates to Google My Business, and how Facebook Stories are growing in traction.

5 Ways to Manage Your Social Media Over the Holiday Vacations by Jay Baer

Social media traffic spikes 73% over the holidays. This is an exciting statistic and can mean good things for your business. However, the holidays often mean your business is operating on a skeleton staff or is closed altogether. This means that responding to customer comments, questions, or (yikes!) complaints could go unanswered if you don’t have a plan. Baer discusses his 5 strategies for prepping your social media for this time of year. By planning ahead, developing a crisis plan, and having backup information easily accessible you can help your staff enjoy the holidays while also making sure that your social media is covered.

My reflections: It’s exciting to know that social media traffic spikes around the holidays. It can mean a lot of great things for your business. And while you can create and schedule a lot of great posts ahead of time so you’re not having to develop content while you’re also celebrating with family and friends, you need a plan to respond to comments, questions, and concerns. The last thing you want are questions or negative comments sitting on your posts without responses.

Manage Q&A on Your Google Listings with the Latest GMB API Update by Erin Jaeger

Google recently launched version 4.3 of their Google My Business API which comes with it several new updates that businesses might find helpful. One of which is that you can create and sync pre-answered FAQs. You can also monitor questions potential customers are asking about your business on your listings. Additionally, you can now add captions to your photos to allow for more information. They also introduced a new query type and added more control over duplicate business listings.

My reflections: Google My Business listings are important for any business. It’s a great marketing tool offered by Google that is perfect for local search relevance. If you’re interested in learning more about it, check out a couple of my posts here and here. It’s always great to stay up to date on the latest updates and how the changes can benefit your business.

Life After the News Feed: Why Facebook is Shifting to Stories (And Why Your Business Should Too) by Ash Reed

The Facebook news feed has long been a popular way to share updates both personally and professionally. Not to mention, the news feed played a pivotal role in Facebook’s rise to advertising dominance. However, over time Facebook has been plagued with some “growing pains”. With it has come the rise of Facebook Stories. Facebook’s chief product officer recently was quoted saying that Stories is set to pass the news feed in popularity as a way for communicating information. Facebook is constantly tweaking the platforming and playing with the way of displaying Stories. However, it is important to note that one thing that will need to be figured out is how to be able to monetize Stories. Currently, the news feed is where ads are but in order to be a sustainable addition, there will need to be some type of monetization for Stories.

My reflections: As marketers, we’re always trying to stay up to date with social media changes and how to utilize them to best promote our brands. Stories can be a great way to connect with fans and potential clients and customers in a real-time way. It’s a great way to showcase the behind-the-scenes of your business, share walk-throughs of new homes, or to put a face to your business and talk about your products. If you haven’t been using video in some capacity in your business, it’s about time to start getting used to the medium because more and more platforms are starting to prioritize it.

Categorised in: Digital Marketing