According to Forbes, on average during 2015 businesses with less than $5 million in annual revenue experienced 7.8% annual sales growth. Is your small business feeling that growth? Odds are if you are a small business retailer, the answer is not so much.
There are a number of strategies small retailers can employ to stoke online sales growth. Here are few ideas to get you going. Try them out and see which of these best help you to reach your ideal customer.
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If you have a habit of following people on Twitter, waiting till they follow you back, then promptly unfollowing them… YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
Two days ago, I was followed by two different digital marketing “experts.” I checked out their profiles, and they each seemed interesting, so I followed them back. The very next day I was unfollowed by both of them.
I hadn’t tweeted anything “controversial” in the 24 hours they were following me, so I knew that wasn’t the reason for the unfollow.
Then it dawned on me – these people only followed me to get me to follow them back. LAME. That’s not how any of this works!
Have you ever had the number of your Twitter followers drop leaving you wondering which little bird flew off in another direction?
I’ll be the first to admit that I am curious about who decides to unfollow me. Ego? Maybe. But also I hope to be able to learn something from who decides to unfollow me and when.
Understanding who bails on me helps me evaluate my strategy. Is the content I am posting interesting? Does it provide value? Are my opinions too polarizing?
Understanding when they bail helps me assess my frequency. Am I posting too much? Do I need to spread posts out more?
It’s time to take social media monitoring to the next level (if you haven’t already) – it’s time to go beyond simple engagement metrics. It’s time to take on social listening.
Social listening is a massive and complicated undertaking, but it’s extremely important. Brands that are not monitoring what is being said in the social space about them and their products are missing out on huge opportunities – social listening and gauging social sentiment can help a marketer improve (or maintain) brand positioning and engage directly with actual or potential customers.
There are a number of tools in existence, some available for free and others for a fee, to assist organizations with social media listening. The platforms being monitored depend on the complexity of the tool, and usually how much you are paying for it. Many of them not only monitor social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+, but they also scan blogs and comments, Tumblr, forums, Q&A sites like Quora, bookmarking sites like Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, and other video and photo sharing sites. If set up properly, a brand can use these tools to not only monitor mentions of and sentiment related to their own brand across platforms, they can also measure social sentiment related to specific products, competitors, and industry-related key terms.
Privacy continues to be a concern for consumers, yet most consumers still seem to be willing to give up at least some privacy for the sake of convenience. In a recent study (see complete infographic below), 92% of U.S. internet users worry about their online privacy and, while only 31% say they understand how their personal information is used and shared, 75% feel that they are adequately protecting their online personal data. WHAT??
How can a consumer protect the privacy of their data when they don’t even understand what is happening with the data they share?
It also appears that the level of concern is beginning to plateau. In 2014, the same study indicated that consumers were 74% more concerned about online privacy than the last year. Now, only 45% are more worried – which indicates one of two things: Either consumers can’t get much more concerned that they already are, or consumers are becoming more comfortable with the state of their online privacy.
A MarCom Brainstorm 