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10 Quirky Social Media Holidays 2021

 940 788 Shevy du Toit
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10 QUIRKY SOCIAL MEDIA HOLIDAYS 2021

MAY 04th 2021

The Bright Click

SOCIAL MEDIA HOLIDAYS 2021

If you manage social media accounts and content for your organisation, you are bound to be left scratching your head at times wondering what it is you should schedule next. Feeding the ‘Content Monster‘ takes patience, creativity, and a whole lot of imagination – not to mention the time and resources it takes to share these well-thought-out posts with the world.

Making use of Social Media Holidays is an innovative and fun way to harness that creativity and spice up your content. Everyone loves a holiday or a holiday hashtag and adding popular, relevant content that emits your brand voice can boost brand awareness and provide invaluable engagement opportunities.

Social media algorithms are cruel and unforgiving at the best of times. Engagement is key in making your social media channels work for your organisation and making use of some fun, quirky holidays is a great way to do that. Take care to consider the Social Media Holidays that are relevant to your organisation, fit with your brand’s tone of voice and be sure to determine the accompanying hashtags that match with your messaging. It’s all about giving your customers, potential customers, and loyal followers what they want without spamming their timelines with irrelevant, boring content. Of course, there are going to be some social media holidays that garner more attention than others but they may not necessarily right for your business.

Keep in mind that whilst it is important to make social media exciting, keeping your content genuine and relevant will ensure valuable engagement.  A successful approach includes a winning combination of appealing written and visual content and ongoing two-way conversation with your audience.

Don’t forget to measure and analyse the performance of your posts to see which holidays worked well for your engagement and which holidays to give the boot in next year’s marketing calendar.

On that note, here are ten of my favourite (non traditional) quirky Social Media Holidays 2021.

  • May 4: Star Wars Day #MayThe4thBeWithYou #StarWarsDay
  • June 21: National Selfie Day #SelfieDay #NationalSelfieDay
  • June 25: Take Your Dog to Work Day #TakeYourDogToWorkDay
  • July 7: World Chocolate Day #WorldChocolateDay
  • July 17: World Emoji Day #WorldEmojiDay
  • August 8: International Cat Day #InternationalCatDay
  • September 6: Read A Book Day #ReadABookDay
  • October 4: World Smile Day #WorldSmileDay
  • November 26: National Cake Day #NationalCakeDay
  • December 4: National Cookie Day #NationalCookieDay

You can DOWNLOAD a comprehensive list of Social Media Holidays for the remainder of 2021 here!

Cheers,

Shevy

Need help with your Social Media Marketing?

Call us today on 020 3131 2230 or click here to drop us a line

Running A Successful Social Media Competition.

 940 658 Peter Cox
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Over the years it feels like I’ve run hundreds of social media competitions and each competition guarantees you 2 things:
A) positive engagement
B) immense brand awareness.

It goes without saying that giving something away will be met with positivity, in a world where virtually nothing is free, to have the opportunity of winning something for little amount of work, is clearly very appealing. But it’s not just a case of giving something away for the PR and potential engagement it may bring you, but also to give something back to your customers. So what are the rules of running a successful social media competition? Let’s take a look.

Choose a Great Giveaway

We’ll start with the most obvious first. Choosing a good product to give away is extremely important. You need it to be worth the customer’s while to share and essentially promote your business to their friends across social media; and to do that, the product needs to be exciting.
If you’re a restaurant for example, you may want to think about giving away a free meal for 2 near Valentine’s day, or if you sell your products online you might want to give one of your hero items away for free, alongside a few other treats.

The most important thing to avoid though, is making it boring, but try to keep it relevant to your brand. Afterall, it’s your brand you’re trying to promote here, so give away something relevant, not just a box of Dairy Milk because people cannot resist chocolates (other chocolates are available!).

Make Your Advertising Topical

If you’re giving away a prize during Christmas, make it Christmassy. Or if it’s in Feb, why not attach the idea and branding to Valentine’s day? It’s simple but very effective and it could be the difference between a customer sharing your post to enter your comp, or not.

We recently produced a Valentine’s day giveaway for one of our clients, which will have the winner announced near Valentine’s day; and of course, the artwork was made with this popular occasion in mind.

Trending topics or relevant marketing is key, so don’t just throw any old thing out there and hope it sticks. Create your campaign with some backbone and reason.

Stick Some Money Behind It

Most of the traffic you receive from your social media competition will be organic, it’s just the nature of virality, however putting some money behind it will give it that extra boost and ensure it reaches everybody possible.

Facebook advertising is brilliant for smaller budgets behind a singular campaign. You could easily stick just £20 behind a post for example and receive hundreds of targeted reach and with the combination of a good giveaway and strong, relevant branding, your customers and potential customers are bound to share.

Get your T&Cs in Order

Here’s a little handy tip… the notes section on your Facebook page allows you to write a page worth of text and what’s more, you can link to it.

This is a good spot to put your T&Cs for your competition. You can outline them in a nice format and not getting too in the way of the juicy part of your marketing, the giveaway itself. And I say “get them out of the way” but this doesn’t mean they’re not extremely important. Every competition needs to have T&Cs, as it covers your back and also protects the customer when it comes to their expectations. You’ll want to detail everything from exactly what the prize is, to when it’ll be announced. Bear in mind that any food you’re giving away should be detailed in the terms for health and safety reasons and of course if you’re giving away alcohol, that the comp is strictly over the legal age limit. It’s easy to forget these details in the heat of excitement when launching a comp.

Email me at peter@thebrightclick.co.uk if you’d like me to send you my handy T&C template for social media competitions. I’d be happy to share it with you, free of charge of course.

Try get a Pic of the Winner and Their Prize

Every campaign needs a good launch plan, a strong execution and a nice round up and by getting a pic of your customer receiving their prize, really shows the human side to your business. You could even arrange to take it to them locally, or when they pick it up, get a photo of them with a member of your staff. The most important thing is that feel good factor and that follow through gives out some nice additional trust.

Well, that’s just 5 things I’d recommend for running a successful online competition. We get thousands of reach and shares and hundreds of new likes and customers for our clients, by simply encouraging them to give something away for free.

When was the last time you ran an online comp? I’d love to hear your success stories and of course if you’d like any more advice on this front, drop me an email at peter@thebrightclick.co.uk

Why is Pokémon Go just the same as your business?

 150 150 Peter Cox
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The saying goes “Gotta catch ‘em all” and the concept of Pokémon Go could be aligned with business. Love it or hate it, think about it; whilst you’re sitting around waiting for leads to come in, there’s hundreds of Pokémon clients out there being snapped up by other trainers competitors. Your job is to ensure you get yourself out there and bring in the right clients or customers for you. And you’re not going to do it by sitting around waiting for them to come knocking at your door.

Speaking seriously though, how are you being noticed? How are you aggressively bringing in leads? And then look at what Pokémon Go is doing. Think about how it’s spreading its brand exponentially and impressively. Social media right? Friends share with friends, who share with friends and social media platforms such as Facebook, with the use of their clever algorithms, put a specific products or services in front of like-minded people with similar interests. For example, people into computer games, who do a lot of walking, of a certain age, who own a certain mobile phone etc.

pokemonAre you on your customer’s map?

This applies to all products, whether you’re a used car business, a plumber or a wholesaler, getting active on social media is the starting block to getting yourself in front of the correct business types or customers. There’s so much more to this when you then start exploring paid social media, re-targeting ads, Google AdWords and SEO, which all manipulate who sees your product purely based on the type of customer you’re wanting to target, thus you catch the leads and not one of your competitors.

Find out more about how we can help you target the correct businesses or customer demographics tailored purely for your business. With a wide menu of services, there’s always something The Bright Click could be doing to help you catch the next lead.

And of course, happy hunting.

Why the automotive industry should be using social media more

 150 150 Claire Archer-Davis
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Coloured cars in a jarTwitter, Facebook and Instagram are not just for teenage girls, you know! People from all sorts of businesses and industries are quickly learning that social media is your one stop shop for simultaneously building your brand and gaining new customers online, and when it comes to social interactions online the automotive industry is lagging behind.

 So car dealers don’t fret! Our top tips for using social media to boost your business should help get you on the right track.

Show off your products
Instagram and Pinterest are a car dealer’s ultimate secret weapons online. Not only do they let you build up a stylish and stunning looking portfolio of what you have on offer, they also allow potential customers to covet and share their dream cars with all their friends.

A happy customer says it all
Using the likes of Facebook and Twitter to share photos of happy customers with their brand new purchase will do wonders for your business. Not only will the customer and all their friends and family share the photo, loads of potential new customers will see this free publicity and become aware of your business. Good reviews and messages of thanks directed at your online profiles also give your business a good name.

Interact and engage
Up to date and engaging social media platforms give your business a more personal vibe that allows customers and potential customers to contact and converse with you directly. From asking questions about the cars you have on offer to enthusing about how great a new model is, social media is a great way to be a part of the conversation and get to know your target audience even better.

From driving sales to steering customers in the right direction, get online and get social today!

For more information please get in touch with us here at The Bright Click on: 08433 832732

Sanity, Not Vanity – Reasons Not To ‘Buy’ Fans

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Social mediaOne of our favourite phrases in The Bright Click office is ‘Sanity, Not Vanity’ and in no better case can this be applied than in terms of the number of followers that you have across your social media channels.

Of course it looks great if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of followers, and if you’re a big company or organisation then the chances are that you could well be enjoying that sort of genuine attention.

The main thing you’re aiming for across any social campaign though is to be able to reach a target audience – an audience who are into what you’re doing.

Look at your Facebook news feed – are you following anything that doesn’t interest you? If you were a massive football fan but hated rugby, would you follow rugby teams on Facebook? The likelihood is ‘no’.

So why do your fans follow you? Either because they’re already your customers (and in which case your advocates – incredibly powerful) or because they’re interested in what you have to say.

There’s the ‘sanity’ part – you’ve got an engaged audience who will likely interact / comment / share your content, and as a result, their friends, colleagues and associates become increasingly aware of your brand in an organic way.

So what happens when you have a page full of loads of followers who aren’t into what you do? Well, this is the ‘vanity’ part, and if this is your objective, then you’re probably wasting your time.

Facebook uses algorithms to determine which percentage of your followers see your posts. It’s a complex thing, and it evolves constantly, but only around a maximum of 25% of your audience will see your posts at any given time.

We always recommend adopting a paid strategy alongside your organic strategy too – it’s how Facebook makes its money but it’s also very effective, and probably a topic for another blog post!

However there’s two main things to note here.

The more followers you have, the more diluted your content becomes – if you have 1000 followers then around 250 will see your content.

But if only 100 of these are ‘genuine’ – there’s a good chance that the whole potentially engaged audience following you will miss your post entirely – and how crazy is that..?!

So, you’re not getting the engagement you were expecting and you boost the post. Great idea?

In theory yes, however you’re now paying to reach your 100 ‘interested’ fans, plus 900 who’ve never heard of you, and don’t care about your business, brand, or what you have to say… Not the greatest use of your marketing budget.

And that’s why neither is ‘buying’ fans.

You’ll see loads of sites offering you the chance to ‘buy’ fans and it looks too good to be true – £10 for an extra 1000 fans on your Facebook page seems like an amazing deal, but it’s a false economy and will cost you a whole lot more money, not to mention damage, in the long-term.

Concentrate on growing your audience organically by consistently providing great content, directly aimed at your brand advocates, with a paid boost here and there.

Sanity, not vanity.

Need help with your Social Media Strategy? Call us now on 08433 832732 or contact us here.

What Terms Are Your Customers Using To Search?

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A really quick  blog post about how to make sure your website is set up for search terms that your customers are using to find your business.

Sounds obvious right? That your website should contain the phrases that your customers are searching for?

Well maybe, but it’s important to remember the difference between how you would term the services you provide, in relation to how your potential clients and customers would.

The best example I come across regularly is in the Property Industry. Often, Estate Agents use terms such as ‘letting agent’ throughout their website, and as such they can rank well for the term – for example ‘Letting Agent In Twickenham’. I would argue that from an authority point of view that this a good term to be ranking for in terms of being found for a service that you provide.

But our research tells us that the search engine user is much more likely to type ‘Property To Rent In Twickenham’ into Google – so ideally you really want your site to be found for that search term too.

Google’s latest ‘Hummingbird’ update also takes into account the more colloquial nature of search – much of which is stemming from smartphone use and the questions we ask of apps such as Siri which are now helping to dictate the way we search. So we might even ask something like ‘Where can I find a flat to rent in Twickenham?’.

So remember to ‘Tell Google’ what you do – you can do this primarily by featuring the keywords that your potential clients and customers are searching for in your website page titles, headings and regularly in your content. Make sure you link to relevant pages within your site by hyperlinking those keywords to specific pages. And if you blog about the subject – make sure you link back to relevant content too.

Got more SEO questions? We want to answer them for you! Contact us today… thanks for reading.

Written by Matt Davis | Managing Director | The Bright Click

Four Reasons That You Should Be Blogging More

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Blogging is a term that most of us have heard of and is something that has been very much responsible for the exponential growth of the web and what we refer to as ‘content marketing’. 

People use the web primarily as a way to find information on a variety of subjects, and blogging allows people with knowledge on their chosen subject to get their ideas and thoughts out there for the world to read. A lot of blogs are written just for pleasure, or about hobbies (check out my mate Nick Bruzon’s unofficial Brentford FC blog as a good example).

The majority of blog sites (such as Nick’s) are built using specific blogging platforms such as Blogger (now owned by Google), Tumblr or WordPress.

But business websites can also contain a blog and if you’re serious about your site being found online then these days it’s vital to have one, and even more vital to keep it updated.

Blog Example Now considering that we’ve written hundreds of blogs for clients in the last twelve months you’d think that we’d be good at this ourselves – unfortunately we don’t always practise what we preach but we’re working at it! Our last blog post regarding Enhancing Your Personal Brand Using LinkedIn  gave us a huge amount of web traffic earlier in the month – hence why I’m writing this blog post today 🙂

There are loads of great reasons to blog on a regular basis – here are four to be getting on with:

1) Authority – Blogging gives you the chance to demonstrate knowledge and authority on your given subject. It’s a great way of telling people who arrive on your website that you know what you’re talking about. You can have a whole load of generic content and copy on your website that explains the services that your business offers, but nothing demonstrates knowledge and understanding of a subject better than a series of blog posts.

2) Keywords – There maybe a whole range of keywords related to what you do as a business, but these can be difficult to fit into your site on a ‘standard’ amount of pages and navigation without it looking like you’re spamming or attempting to over-optimise your site for these specific words and phrases. Blogging allows you write a series of separate articles on all of these subjects, giving each article a keyword-rich title and featuring relevant keywords throughout the articles – linking back to other pages on similar subjects at the same time which is great for the user experience and navigation.

3) Dynamic Content  – There are other SEO benefits too besides the opportunity to feature extra keywords. For example, every time you write a new blog post, you are adding dynamic content to your site, and this is something that Google loves to see. Google basically needs to show the ten most relevant pages to the search term on page one of its site. It wants to know that someone searching for a term related to your business will find the most relevant, topical information that they can. One of the factors it uses to determine this is how much you care about your online presence – so adding  fresh, unique and relevant content to your site on a regular basis is a brilliant way of demonstrating this to Google.

4) Social Media Content – If you have Social Media accounts that represent your business (and if you don’t, then why not..?!) then your followers and fans want to see updates about the subject that you specialise in – they want to learn more – that’s why they’ve taken the time to follow you in the first place. So blogging gives you a great chance to provide this type of content to your followers. And there’s triple whammy here too. As Google likes to see a diverse range of traffic coming into your website, and shares and re-tweets encourage this from followers of your followers – result! Also – the more traffic you get from Social Media, the more Google deems your site as relevant. The more relevant Google deems your site, the higher it ranks you. The higher Google ranks you, the more search traffic you get. And the more search traffic you get, the more Social Media followers you’ll gain. It’s basically a loop and you the more you put into the loop, the thicker the loop grows and the more you’ll get out of it.

So how often should you blog? Ideally once a week, but once every few weeks is fine if you can’t find the time. Another good way to look at blog content is in terms of how it increases the size of your website. If your website currently has six pages, then blogging every week for a year would add 52 extra keyword-rich pages for Google to find.

Need more help or advice on how to get the most out of blogging? Email us today or give us a call on 08433 832 732. 

Thanks for reading 🙂

Written by Matt Davis | Managing Director | The Bright Click

Enhancing Your Personal Brand Using LinkedIn

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LinkedIn_ExampleOn Tuesday of this week I was fortunate enough to be asked by Nicki Kavanagh at The Juniper Co to take part in a webinar at their head office in Aldershot.

The webinar was aimed at members of their exclusive Alumni Group and was part of a series of events on how to enhance your personal brand, and the part that Social Media can play in doing so.

It was a very enjoyable hour, and in the Q+A session towards the end, I was asked some questions about LinkedIn and Twitter.

As I gave my answers to these questions, it occurred to me that many people aren’t using LinkedIn to its full potential – particularly in terms of their personal brand.

Think about going for a job interview – you’d do your research, you’d update your CV, you’d wear smart clothes, you may even have a haircut (as Dan says to me – which hair did you have cut..?!) – but the point is that all of these things, plus the way you then present yourself in the interview, form part of your personal brand.

So please do bear in mind the importance of presenting yourself in the same way on the Social Networks that you use – particularly on LinkedIn as the perceived  ‘professional’ platform of choice.  A potential client, customer or employer checking you out online may see your failure to keep your online profile up-to-date as a potential shortcoming.

So to help you avoid this scenario,  here are a few tips to help you present yourself in the best way online:

1) Profile Pic – is your LinkedIn profile pic one of you lying on a beach with a sangria and a sombrero? Or having a bit too much of a good time in the pub? Then consider changing it to something a little more sober – a simple head shot or you working in your current role for example. If you’re a teacher, a photo of you teaching is perfect for example. If it is a head shot – try and be smiling 🙂

Oh and the cardinal sin – no profile pic – there’s no excuse not to have one! How will anyone know if it’s THAT John Smith from the networking event…?

2) Your Biography – Make sure it’s filled in and don’t be scared of bigging yourself up, you’ve got a few seconds to make an impression so spend some time thinking about that killer opening line – and also how that works in conjunction with your profile picture, try and make sure the two marry together nicely if you can. First impressions are everything and online you have even less time to make an impact so make it count.

3) You Current Role – Most people create a LinkedIn profile as they are either looking for work or setting one up to network as part of a current role. However when they then move roles, the profile can simply be ‘left behind’. Bear in mind that your LinkedIn profile ultimately reflects YOU and YOUR brand – not that of the company that you work for. So if they’ve asked you to set one up, make sure that when you leave the company that your LinkedIn profile comes with you. Setting up a new profile for a new company is all well and good but someone searching for you and finding five different profiles of you working for five different companies with no end date is going to be confused. Either delete old profiles or make sure that your new profile is as up to date with your current role as it can be.

LinkedIn_Expertise4) Ask for recommendations – you’ve probably seen the ‘endorsements’ section of LinkedIn that has emerged in recent months, where you can simply endorse someone as LinkedIn asks you ‘Does Matt know about Online Marketing?’ However I’ve subsequently kindly been endorsed for random skills by people I’ve never worked for or with!

The real weight comes from recommendations, where previous colleagues and clients can write a recommendation on you as a person – adding huge value to your personal branding online. It’s great ‘Social Proof’ that you know what you’re talking about!

5) Demonstrate Your Knowledge and Authority – Make sure you post regularly about what you do and the results that you’re achieving. Do you write a blog? Make sure you link to it. Did you win an award? Post a photo of you receiving it. Seen something interesting in the news about what you do for a living? Post the link as an update. LinkedIn is the perfect platform for you to demonstrate exactly what you know about your specialist subject and role within the company. Make sure that anyone landing on your profile is impressed immediately!

Need more help with LinkedIn? Or maybe you want us to just check out your profile and let you know how it could be optimised further? Drop us a line here.

Written by Matt Davis

Looking For A New Job? – Good, Because We Are Looking To Recruit

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We are pleased to announce that we are now looking to recruit the next member of our fast-growing online marketing team.

This role is full-time, although a part-time role would also be considered for the right applicant.

Our business is growing quickly and that’s largely thanks to the commitment, hard-work and expertise of our small but dedicated team.

We have recently moved into new offices next to Twickenham station in order to support our continued growth and to create a great working environment for our team.

So who are we looking for?

Ideally you will be interested in marketing, specifically online, and will have a passion for digital and technology.

This role would best suit a school or university leaver but all applications will be seriously considered regardless.

We will provide full training but previous experience or knowledge of online marketing strategies would be a bonus although by no means essential.

Our clients expect us to be pro-active, provide value and deliver excellent account management – we pride ourselves on this and would look for the same levels of service from the successful applicant. If you’re the sort of person who enjoys ‘going the extra mile’ then we want to talk to you…

We’d expect you to enjoy learning and to be pro-active in implementing strategies and techniques in an ever-changing and incredibly fast-moving environment.

Flexibility and adaptability are also key in the areas that we work in – we work in a relaxed environment but every now and again the pressure gets turned up and we need to be ready to react when this happens.

We are a small company so as clichéd as it sounds, teamwork and a willingness to help others plays a huge part in how our business moves forward.

The main day-to-day activities will be centred around Social Media management on behalf of our clients – representing our clients’ respective businesses by promoting them and engaging with their customers and clients online.

There will also be elements of other marketing involved including Google Adwords, SEO, Facebook Ads, e-marketing, blogging, web design and more.

If you think this could be your cup of tea then please get in touch.

Email matt@thebrightclick.co.uk with your CV and a covering letter and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Matt Davis
Managing Director
TheBrightClick Ltd
07723 352 927

The Zoopla Power 100 – What’s It Really About?

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Social MediaProperty search website Zoopla recently announced the launch of its Property Power 100 – a list of the top 100 Estate Agents in the UK based on their Social Media output. We have several Estate Agents as clients so were very interested to see how the criteria for this was judged. Due to confidentiality agreements we can’t disclose who has come where in the table – however I was intrigued to see the criteria that Zoopla are basing their Power 100 on. 

The main criteria is as follows:

Retweets; Which can increase your influence by exposing your content to extended follower networks.

Mentions; People looking for your attention by mentioning you. We also take into account the differences in types of mentions (e.g: “via”).

List Memberships; Being included on lists curated by other users (demonstrates your areas of influence).

Followers; Follower count is another factor in your Score, however we heavily favor engagement over size of audience.

Replies; Replies show that you are engaging your network.

These are all relevant criteria, but looking through certainly the top ten of those listed, there seemed a real varying degree of how each agent was implementing these. The top agent at the time of writing seemed to be doing a lot of retweeting, rather than having much of its own content retweeted for example. It also seemed to be doing a lot of mentioning, rather than being mentioned. It did however have followers approaching the 20,000 mark.

The reason I find this list so interesting is that Zoopla is taking something as subjective as Social Media and forming a league table from it, and although there are of course a number of measures and reports that can be gained from Social Media marketing, by its very nature it is dynamic, changeable, and based largely on opinion and subsequent engagement.

And different forms of online marketing can mean different things to different businesses.

For example, one of Zoopla’s guidelines suggests not tweeting every property that you are instructed on, as users can find this boring and it can make them subsequently dis-engaged.

However if I was looking  to rent or buy a house, I think I would find it quite useful to have a full list of the very latest properties to be able to look at in real-time on Twitter. A separate account for this purpose could be doubly-effective and a great sales tool don’t you think?

When we have implemented this tactic for clients, we have seen a big uplift in traffic to websites from the respective Twitter accounts. And Google likes it when relevant traffic is coming from Social Media direct to company websites – in fact it’s now a major SEO factor. So from an SEO point of view, it can easily be argued that having a list of your properties on Twitter is a very good thing indeed, as our clients’ page one ranking testifies.

We have been advocating the use of Social Media by Estate Agents for a couple of years now, and we see some great results across the board, so for highlighting how important it is for Estate Agents to adopt, I applaud Zoopla wholeheartedly. However in my opinion, I think that the overall placements on the list should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Written by Matt Davis.