It is expected that approximately 3 billion people worldwide will have a handle on social media by 2020, whether that’s through a computer, laptop, tablet or mobile device. Therefore, in a generation where digital technology is advancing at breakneck speed, constructing a modern social media strategy is vital for the survival of a company’s online presence.
Digital has increasing relevance in the modern world. Not only do consumers discover company updates through leaflets, poster ads and inside newspapers – it’s now also about LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. According to multiple resources* 88% of businesses now use multiple social media accounts as a part of their marketing strategy in order to reach a wider audience and solidify their brand’s name.
Increased Brand Recognition
Every chance a company has to disperse their content and presence across social media, they should grasp with both hands. A company’s social media channels are simply an extended voice for the brand. The profile pictures, bio and cover photos should all enhance the company’s overall identity, tone and image. Social media accounts should help new customers/readers identify who the brand is and what they do within moments of landing on the page. It should also aid existing customers with immediately recognising the brand.
Competitor Analysis
With the majority of a brand’s competitors continuously seeking methods to remain a step ahead of the game, social media helps to keep track of their latest ventures, projects and launches. Discovering this information aids brands with fresh ideas that could also work well for their own company. Conducting a deeper insight into the engagement and response from competitors’ audiences reveals what ideas worked well and may be worth testing out, knowing a positive result is anticipated. In addition, time is saved through learning which ideas did not perform so highly for others.
Staying Relevant
An audience’s attention predominantly drifts towards the most contemporary brands. Keep the company relevant through discovering current global trends with approaches such as Instagram polls, trending tweets and popular hashtags.
Relationship Building
New companies who wish to expand their audiences quickly, should understand that frequent usage of social media creates a snowball-like effect. Once relationships commence building, followers will tell their friends, their friends will tell their friends, and so on. Additionally, on top of emailing and phone calls,potential customers, clients and partners will also utilise LinkedIn messaging, Facebook messenger, DMs and comments
Driving Traffic
Promoting other areas of a business such as mobile apps, websites or competitions through social media accounts is an efficient way to increase recognition and traffic. New launches will take off and enter the public eye far more quickly with social media backing (and potentially sponsoring.)
If you wish to receive more information please contact us.
Segment your Audience to Create Stronger Marketing Campaigns
Here at Zest Media we love personas. We are content creators producing a range of beautiful Absolutely magazines and web-sites and knowing who we are speaking to improves our ability to engage with our target audiences.
Once you know what your ideal customers (your buyer personas) are interested in, concerned about, working toward, or excited about you can use this information to build content that helps your persona address these issues, overcome these challenges, and reach these goals.
And the best part? You don’t have to wait until your personas are complete before you can start creating this content for them. In fact, the very questions you’ll already be asking in the persona research process can be used as fodder for endless ideas and brainstorming on what to write and publish. It is important to establish buyer personas for your business so you can segment your audience and create stronger marketing campaigns. By using the tools and expertise of our partners at Hubspot we can help you establish your buyer personas – Zest Media is a Hubspot certified marketing agency and experts in content creation. As a starting point this step-by-step wizard will guide you through the process of creating your own personalised buyer persona. Once you’ve started this process we would be happy to speak to you about the next stages in creating bespoke content for you – contact us here to find out how we can help you.
A Diary of my Internship with Zest Media
First, let me introduce myself, my name is Gant Chinavicharana and I am an intern at Zest Media – starting in early June 2017. My role is content generation assistant.
My internship with Zest Media came about through my university, as part of my postgraduate final project. Prior to this internship I had little to no experience working in an office, mostly working freelance, so I was very nervous when I found out I had an interview with Zest. As I leafed through the Absolutely stable of magazines I felt slightly out of place – at the time, a high-end luxury magazine publisher was not a place I could see myself working. My writing has mostly been rather informal in both style and topic – outside of university I run my own video game blog, which I felt wasn’t a natural fit for Absolutely’s magazines and web sites.
That view quickly changed when I arrive at Zest’s open plan office and seeing how relaxed the atmosphere is. Most of the employees dress informally and the enthusiasm is infectious. My interview went extremely well and a few weeks later, I officially became an intern at Zest Media.
Despite being the publisher of luxury lifestyle magazines aimed at affluent audiences, the enjoyable working environment eased off a lot of pressure that weighed on my mind. Working primarily as a content generation assistant, I added to the creation of Zest’s own content. From writing blog posts (such as this one), taking photographs, helping to conduct interviews, to even having the chance to contribute an editorial piece in the magazine – which was published and credited.
Many of the tasks I was given would see me venturing out of the office to various locations, primarily Wimbledon as I was working closely with that edition of the magazine. From fashion events, to restaurant reviews, openings, and new menu previews, there hasn’t been a week at Zest that I was in the office for the whole week. My personal favourite would have to be all the restaurant and food reviews; being a bit of a foodie, getting to try new food and write about it was a lot of fun and makes the whole internship process more interesting and dynamic.
In the office, aside from writing content, I also worked in various research task to support the senior team. Additionally I was also given access to Hubspot, the sales and marketing software with a collection of online courses to teach users about inbound sales and marketing. Completing these courses and their corresponding test would award me with certificates, strengthening my CV and professional credibility. These more corporate tasks gave me more experience with office work, helping me to grow professionally.
Interning with Zest Media is both an excellent learning opportunity, personally and professionally, as well as being one of the most interesting and fun places to work. I can say with absolute certainty that my 6 weeks at Zest has been one of the most valuable experiences in my life.
Gant Chinavicharana
If you are interested in internships at Zest Media please contact us here
Keywords and meta tags play a key role in inbound marketing strategies, and when they are done right, marketers can expect much more lead generation, conversions, and traffic in general. However the practice of using keywords and meta tags are also rife with pitfalls and mistakes are easily made; so here are some tips.
Key Word Research:
A fundamental in many processes is research, and the same applies here. Through research, marketers can find the best fitting keywords for their products. For example, if the product in question is a luxury item, avoid words such as “cheap” or “budget”. While some of those excluded keywords may generate more traffic, prospective customers will not find what they are looking for; potentially even viewing the brand as deceiving by using mismatched keywords.
Make a List
Simple but effective, by making a list of keywords generated through research, marketers can save a lot of time and energy. Create a list for each aspect or factor that can be associated with the product or the brand in general; compiling all of them into one master list for easy access and a time saver in future marketing campaigns.
The Buyer’s Mindset
Entering the buyer’s mindset, and thinking like a customer will allow marketers to see their brand from a different angle. Changing perspective can often reveal keywords that can be associated with the brand from a buyer’s point of view, for example with a luxury item, “expensive”, “high-end”, or “posh”.
Don’t Be Afraid of Long Keyword Chains
While they seem clunky and impractical, long chain of keywords (long tail keywords) are becoming more widely used in online searches. Buyers are coming more and more specific and precise in the product they are searching for, so specific and long chains of keywords are being used more frequently by buyers. Potential customers who use long tail keywords also have a higher conversion rate.
Understand and Use Meta Tags
Meta tags refers to text that would appear in various key locations of a website, all of them will help increase the site’s search engine rank. These can be things such as page titles, meta descriptions (text that accompanies the search result listing for the site, usually offering an insight into the contents), and meta keywords (hidden keywords that are embedded into the site’s code, invisible to the average visitor to the site). By ensuring that every page of the website has meta tags, search engines can offer potential visitors a transparent image of what the site, and by extension the brand, offers, increasing conversion rate.
Be Responsible, Don’t Abuse Keywords and Meta Tags
While keywords and meta tags are a great help, abusing them will ultimately reflect badly on the brand’s image. Using deceptive or un-associated keywords to trick visitors is a common form of keyword abuse, similarly with meta tags. Meta tags abuse can also include an overabundance of meta keywords hidden in the site’s code that has nothing to do with the site. If visitors are drawn to your site through dishonest means, brand reputation will suffer, through honest use of keywords and meta tags, the right audience will be attracted thus ensuring both revenue and a good brand reputation.
For more information or help regarding usage of keywords and meta tags, please contact us by clicking here.
Zest Media, publisher of Absolutely, London’s fastest-growing group of lifestyle magazines, is expanding its digital division. Following the highly successful launch of absolutely-weddings.co.uk and absolutely-mama.co.uk, an exciting opportunity has arisen for a digital designer intern to work alongside our UI Designer. The role is based in our offices in Old Street and is for a minimum two month duration.
WHAT YOU WILL DO:
● Help build and grow a leading brand, working collaboratively with the senior team as well as executing your own visions independently.
● Bring your designs to life.
● Communicate your ideas and vision.
● Refine your work through rigorous iteration.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
● The foremost quality for this position is creativity.
● You believe in creating elegant fashion and compelling designs. The details matter to you, and you do not stop till your designs are perfect.
● You know that a good design requires research and multiple iterations. As part of that, you’re able to accept feedback and make rational decisions.
● The details matter to you. They really matter to you.
● You can work independently and reliably.
SKILLS:
WordPress is your best friend! Proficiency and experience in Adobe Creative Cloud with a good eye for typography.
We welcome experience with front-end development (HTML, CSS and Java) and understanding of interaction design, UX and UI principles.
Please send CV and portolio to [email protected] accompanied by a covering letter.
By strategizing a bespoke content strategy, you are pinpointing exactly whom you are targeting, at what stage in the buyer journey you’re targeting them, and the method you’re utilising to successfully reach them.
Below are some key steps you must incorporate when strategizing your content plan in order to make sure that your marketing output is working.
First up, define your goals. These may be the following:
Marketing goals
You may be looking to increase your website traffic, or the number of leads coming in, or you may be seeking less tangible goals such as building your brand awareness or establishing yourself as a thought leader within your market.
Business goals
You may have clear cut business goals, where you’re looking to grow your revenue or client retention levels.
Other goals
It may be something else entirely, like strengthening your output by increasing the quality and volume of your content marketing.
Secondly, identify your personas (the semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer). Do this by researching the following:
Who they are
This will be their demographics, including their gender, age, location and ambitions.
What they want
These will be their goals – what they want to achieve – and their challenges – the obstacles in their way.
Why they want the product
This will be their objectives – how they make buying decisions and their requirements – and their conflicts, what their frustrations with providers are.
How best to appeal to them
You’ll be working out the marketing message they respond to and the best way to pitch to them buy thinking about where they go for information, what type of content they read and what platforms they engage with.
At this stage, you should be ready to start mapping out your content. Using your knowledge of where your personas digest their content, utilize paid for, owned and earned for online and offline channels to push out your content.
At Zest Media, we brainstorm highly targeted content ideas that incorporate personas and life cycle stages, so the content is reaching your ideal audience on the channels they use, at the times they use them.
Remember, if you don’t strategize, you aren’t sending the right content to the correct customer, meaning your content is failing.
To find out more about honing your strategy skills or to say hello, get in touch.
Content Marketing and Positivity – What’s the Connection?
Although we love what we do on an ongoing basis, the positive energy at Zest is higher than usual as we lead up to the long holiday weekend and leave work behind for a few days. But how can content marketing harness this upbeat mood? And what is the connection between positivity and content marketing?
According to Yahoo’s recent Receptivity of Emotions study, which is based on respondents from the UK, US, Germany and Canada, reaching consumers when they’re in the right mood could increase the impact of content marketing by 28%. Other key findings found that this upbeat mood kicks in around lunchtime, so it’s best to reach your audience between 11am and 12pm. Moreover, according to this study, here in the UK consumers are ‘upbeat’ 46% of the time.
Knowing your audience and providing them with relevant and valuable content to your target market is the key to delivering a successful content strategy. Is the content in your blog posts what your audience want to read about, or are they just what you want to write? Statistics show us that over its lifetime one compounding blog creates as much traffic as six decaying posts. Make your content marketing work, keep your audience happy!
Zest Media’s dedicated and happy house team produces over 250,000 unique content pieces each year. How can we help with YOURS? Contact us here.