GC 3720 - Quiz 3

What is a Social Media Style Guide?

-A map to guide how a brand appears across social media channels. -Relates to and is a part of an overall marketing brand style guide. -It should be a living document that can evolve over time.

A Social Media Style Guide Includes:

-Color -Voice -Visual Elements -Guidelines

Step 8: Write Guest Posts

-Contribute content to other relevant websites. -Create an organic channel toward your site and services.

Step 5: Email Conversion Rate Optimization

-Create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with your audience.

Step 7: Create and Plan Where you will Create and Share Content

-Do some research about your audience's preferred channels. -Meet customers where they're at to optimize their experience.

Brand Voice & Tone Characteristics

-Friendly -Funny -Energetic -Sophisticated -Trendy -Political or non-political -Religious or non-religious -Genuine or sarcastic

Step 3: Optimize your Content

-Goal driven creative. -Drive audiences to your website.

Why Image Size is Important

-It avoids pixelation and awkward stretching. -Your photos will be optimized for each social channel's feed. This helps to increase engagement. -It ensures your audience sees the full photo. Incorrect sizing could cut off some of your brand's messaging.

Why do businesses need a social media style guide?

-It helps a brand maintain a consistent personality across all of their social media platforms. -When many different people contribute a variety of skills to any project, it's important to create a framework that ensures consistency of quality and brand personality.

Plugins Require Maintenance

-Managing plugins requires attention. -Like any piece of software, plugins require regular updates and maintenance to ensure that bugs and security vulnerabilities are patched. -Some less popular plugins do not keep up with WordPress updates and may not work properly. -Plugins should be updated before you update WordPress to ensure compatability.

Step 2: Mirror your Audience's Voice

-Match content to the interests of your audience. -Connect your company's brand voice to their coherent voice. -Voice should stay relatively consistent with the personality of your brand.

What plugins do you need?

-Only use popular plugins that have a large install base. -Plugins must "play well together" -Too many plugins running can cause WordPress to break.

How to choose plugins

-Plugins should align with your website goals and functions. -Choose plugins based on your website research and strategy. -Look at what successful competitors are using.

Step 4: SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

-Practice SEO on all blog content. -Measure analytics.

Step 1: Outline Key Business and Customer Needs

-Serve your customers. -Become an authority in your area of expertise. -Know and meet your audience needs.

Step 6: Sales Optimization

-Use sales optimization or CRO (conversion rate optimization) to close the deal. -Use clear and relevant CTAs (calls to action) at the end of each piece of content. -Emphasize your value proposition (meets and eliminates a customer's pain point). -Personalize your CTAs to different customer segments.

Step 9: Use Social to Amplify

-Use the same customer-centric approach to plan your content distribution efforts. -Connect your site only to channels that your audience checks frequently. -Content Curators and Automation.

Brand Voice v. Brand Tone

-Voice is the overall defining sound for your brand personality. -Tone refers to the specific implementations of voice. -You have the same voice all the time, but tone changes. -Voice and tone matter - they humanize your brand and let you take part in conversations naturally. -Use a conversational tone - this encourages people to tell us more and invites people to get to know us. -Seek to inform rather than entertain. -Keep your audience in the spotlight. -The goal is to encourage conversation between the business and their audience.

What are plugins?

-WordPress plugins are bits of software that enable you to easily add new functionality to your websites -Plugins are added either through WordPress dashboard under plugins > add new > search - or manually by downloading the zip file directly and choosing upload plugin.

6 Steps to Create a Social Media Style Guide for your Brand

1. Align your Social Media Profiles 2. Document your Brand's Tone and Voice 3. Create Posting Guidelines 4. Set Image Guidelines 5. Decide How you will Respond in Certain Situations 6. How will you use Hashtags?

What is Content Marketing?

1. Connecting with audiences in authentic ways. 2. A strong content strategy builds long-term relationships. 3. Improves brand awareness and increases sales.

Steps to create a content marketing strategy

1. Outline Key Business and Customer Needs 2. Mirror your Audience's Voice 3. Optimize your Content 4. Search Engine Optimization 5. Email Conversion Rate Optimization 6. Sales Optimization 7. Create and Plan Where you will Create and Share Content 8. Write Guest Posts 9. Use Social to Amplify

Essential Plugin List

1. Really Simple SSL 2. Yoast 3. WP Optimize 4. Duplicate Page 5. Asset Cleanup 6. Ninja Forms or Contact form 7

What is WooCommerce?

A free shopping cart plugin for WordPress.

Duplicate Page

Allows you to duplicate pages for making new ones.

Step 5: Decide How you will Respond in Certain Situations

Document how your brand will respond to: -Public complaints -Competitors -Questions from followers -Internet trolls and trouble-makers

Ninja Forms or Contact Form 7

For building forms.

Really Simple SSL (plugin)

Gets your SSL certificate connected to your WordPress site after setup at host.

Step 4: Set Image Guidelines

Graphics go a long way toward setting the style and personality of your brand - keep these consistent across social channels. -What logos, positioning, and sizing will you use? -What fonts and colors will you use?

WP Optimize

Helps speed up your pages.

Yoast

Helps with search engine optimization and ranking techniques.

True/False: You should only install and activate plugins you absolutely need.

True - Plugins use resources and memory.

Asset Cleanup

Unload javascript on pages not being used.

Step 3: Create Posting Guidelines

Write a clear and detailed description of your brand's content guidelines that include: -How your brand will format posts? -What type of content will you share? What percentage of your posts will be promotional (if any)?

Step 2: Document your Brand's Tone and Voice

Writing down the personality traits of your brand will help avoid posts and content that's not in alignment with your standards.

Area of Focus: Brand Image

The "look and feel" of your visual content. This defines how images and graphics should look. -"visual voice" -ties in with brand standards -colors and logos -images and graphics -look and feel

Step 1: Align your Social Media Profiles

The first step forward creating a social media style guide is to formally list all of the social media platforms that your brand will be active on.

Step 6: How will you use Hashtags?

The hashtags you use on social media are likely to change depending on the campaign and content you are posting. -Will your brand use hashtags on Facebook, where hashtags tend to have lower engagement? -Will you use hashtags on LinkedIn? -How many hashtags will you use in your Twitter and Instagram posts?

Area of Focus: Brand Voice

The tone and "personality" of your brand online. This defines how your brand speaks and engages on social media, whether through post captions, tweets, comments, or replies to fans.