Goodbye to Facebook’s Free Market
Facebook’s changes and what they mean for your business’ or organization’s Facebook page.
Mark Zuckerberg is at it again! Changing Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm to satisfy users and make it more difficult for Facebook page managers to promote their messages to fans…
Why? At the core, Facebook is actually listening to users. And props to them. After all, that is what Facebook is all about right? Creating community, encouraging engagement, and having conversations.
With Facebook Pages becoming so popular for businesses and organizations, users are being bombarded with newsfeed posts encouraging them to, ‘purchase this, support that, like this, enter this sweepstake…’ It must be exhausting, (#FirstWorldProblem).
In all seriousness, Facebook has decided to begin regulating page posts in order to keep their users, (who ultimately determine Facebook’s long-term success), happy and engaged. With so many social media sites, competing for users’ ‘selfies’ and food pics, Facebook is smart to do whatever they can to improve user experience.
What it means for your business’ or organization’s Facebook page:
To put it simply, if you don’t play within Facebook’s new rules you can expect your posts to take a hit.
The “golden rule” for Facebook Pages:
- Remember what Facebook is all about. CONNECTING. Connecting people, creating communities, encouraging engagement and having conversations.
Doesn’t sound too bad right? It shouldn’t be. If you keep Facebook’s mission at the heart of all of your day-to-day page management your page should fair well.
Some tips:
- Post content that is of value to your fans
- Get conversations going
- Share the wealth. Share community articles, other organization’s successes, etc.
- Promote your business/organization when your fans will find it useful
- Throw Facebook a bone – Once in awhile pay to promote a post that is successful (Facebook ‘appreciates’ that)
- Most importantly, develop a relationship with your fans – listen to them, communicate with them, etc. The more engaged your fans are, the more likely Facebook will be to post your page’s content on their page.
Is this bad?
It’s not bad, just less convenient for you.
Before you get too frustrated with these changes, take a step back.
Facebook pages are free, they drive traffic to our websites, e-newsletters, blogs, and other social media sites, they’re mobile friendly, and allow our fans to advocate and promote our businesses/organizations. Not too shabby for a free platform.
O2 Creative is a locally owned and operated agency specializing in websites, graphic design, branding, marketing strategies, SEO, and printing. Our team of skilled and creative designers, web programmers, copywriters, and social media experts work with clients to ensure their businesses stand out. We’d love to discuss any opportunities to help your business grow. Give us a call, send us an email, or stop by our office today. · [email protected] · Phone: 970.726.8021
O2’s Local Media Survey
O2 Creative has been conducting some local media research lately, including the creation of a local media survey. We’re trying to better understand our market; to better understand the different ways that different media can reach consumers in our area. This is all part of our efforts to better serve our clients as a professional marketing agency.
We’ve been contacting various media sources – anything from local newspapers and magazines to local TV and radio stations. With this information we hope to get an idea of how much distribution and exposure each type of media can create for our clients.
We will also be conducting a media survey among local residents and guests. With this survey we intend to better understand exactly what types of media are best for what types of businesses. Where do consumers go to get information about, say, a restaurant? Or a hotel room? Or an auto repair service?
The more responses we get, the more accurate our survey will be, so we obviously hope to get as many survey responses as possible. That’s why we’re offering an incentive: everyone who completes our survey will be entered into a drawing to win a $100 gift certificate to Tabernash Tavern! (Oh, and in case you aren’t familiar, Tabernash Tavern is totally delicious). It’s O2’s way of saying thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our survey. We appreciate your responses!
The survey will be about 17 or so questions long, and should only take a few minutes to complete. It’ll be an online survey that we’ll be sharing on social media and through emails…or if you’d prefer to fill out a survey on paper, feel free to stop by the O2 office and we’ll provide a print copy.
Please keep an eye out for the survey, which will launch some time next week (November 17-21), and please take a few minutes to give us your feedback. Thanks so much for helping us out. Oh, and we wish you good luck on your chances to win that gift certificate to Tabernash Tavern…nom nom nom!
We’ll update this post once we have a link to the live survey, so keep checking back here as well.
UPDATE: the survey is live! Please click here to take the survey.
Thanks again, everyone!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]
Click here for our last blog: Holiday Cards from O2
Professional Communication
At O2, we work with all sorts of clients in a wide variety of markets, industries, and locations. One of the biggest factors in successfully working with such a variety of clients is successfully communicating with each client. We think professional communication is important for every business, so we thought we’d share some tips and tactics that have helped us become better communicators in our business:
Meet regularly. This is perhaps the best way to communicate. In-person, face-to-face meetings help us to get on the same page with the client and really get the creative ball rolling. You’re always welcome to stop by the O2 office, and we’re also happy to come meet you at your business. Or, if you’d like to get even more casual, we’ll gladly meet with you over a drink somewhere around town.
Communicate across multiple mediums. In addition to in-person meetings, we’ll regularly talk to our clients over the phone, via email, Skype, or even on social media. Each of these mediums can be convenient and effective ways to communicate, and can even offer their own unique advantages.
Address issues immediately. If there is ever any confusion or misunderstanding, we try to clarify the issue ASAP. Multiple mediums of communication come into play here too: for instance, if we’re not sure about something in an email, we’ll contact clients by phone to seek quick clarification.
Be timely. Communication should always be timely! This is especially important when keeping a campaign or other project on track. When we fall behind in communication, we fall behind in the campaign.
As a creative agency we genuinely care about the success of our clients. We want each of our clients to be as successful as possible in their respective market, and the success of a project is directly related to the quality of professional communication. This is why we put so much effort into communicating, and encourage our clients to effectively communicate with us as well. If you don’t communicate with us, we can’t work as hard for you.
So whether you’re a current client, or you’re just curious about working with us, please communicate! We’d be pleased to discuss all the opportunities we might have to create a more successful business together.
To communicate with O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]. Or contact us on Facebook or Twitter. If you’re in our area, just stop by our office at 345 Zerex Street in downtown Fraser, CO. You can also mail us at PO Box 1349, Winter Park, CO 80482. Or, feel free to Skype us too!
Click here for our last blog: Facebook insights
Facebook insights
At O2, we use social media for lots of different marketing initiatives. In particular, we use Facebook a whole lot. Part of marketing on social media and Facebook is learning about your audience and understanding who is following you. So how do you do that?
Well, Facebook is making it a little easier to gain insight from your audience with the aptly named “Insights” tool. To use Facebook Insights, look for the Insights tab located on the top left of your profile page above your cover photo.
Clicking on the Insights tab prompts a wide collection of data and interactive graphs about your Facebook page. You’ll first be presented a quick overview of your page insights, including likes, reach, and engagement (more on the engagement metric later in this post).
In addition to the overview, there are several other tabs you can click to gain more specific info about your page. You can gather data about your page likes, including paid likes, organic likes, and unlikes. You can learn about the reach of your page, which is basically the total number of people your page “reached” over a certain time. The Visits tab shows you the number of times your timeline and each unique tab on your page was viewed. The Post tab gives you insight into each particular post on your page. The People tab offers demographic information about your audience – gender, age, location, and so on.
But the insight doesn’t end there. Facebook also offers the Export option, which you’ll see near the top right corner of the Insights tool. This feature allows you to export numerical data about your page and download it as a spreadsheet (e.g. an Excel file). These spreadsheets include an extensive collection of data about your page – likes, reach, engagement, etc.
We could go on and on about each metric, though for this post we’ll just briefly discuss one metric in particular: engagement. The engagement metric offers insight into the daily or weekly activity between your page’s posts and your audience based on several measures:
- Likes: the number of likes each of your posts get in a particular time frame
- Comments: the number of people actually commenting on posts. This is a great way to gain insight as a marketer, since you get to read precisely what your audience has to say about your page and posts
- Shares: the number of people who share your posts. This is also great for marketing, since your fans are helping you spread the word about your page. Shares can exponentially increase the overall exposure of an individual post as well as your page
- Clicks: this is every single click your page received in a particular time – clicks for a like, clicks for a comment, clicks for a share, clicks on a photo, clicks on a link, and so on
This is just a brief overview of the Insights feature on Facebook. Give it a try some time to learn more about your own page’s audience. Of course, if you have any questions, or would like to further discuss more about Facebook Insights, or about social media marketing in general, contact us today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: an ode to summer
O2’s ode to summer
This week marked the first snow accumulation here in the Fraser Valley. We at O2 really enjoyed seeing the changing seasons on the surrounding mountainsides. We also enjoyed the spectacular snowy fall photos that have been trending on social media. So cool to see fall and winter in the same pic!
The first snows also signaled that summer is officially over. Like, for real this time. We took a moment to reflect on what was a great summer for all of us, and reminisce about some of our favorite moments from the warmer months.
Eric and Philip both enjoyed their first summer of camping in their new RV camper. They took the camper to some of the most colorful corners of Colorado’s Favorite Playground and beyond, enjoying the glamorous style of camping (“glamping”) that the RV affords them. The whole family enjoyed camping, including their son Jacob…
…and the pugs too…
…well, maybe not so much for Sophie.
Jaryd looked back on some cool camping trips of his own, including a hike-and-camp on the 4th of July. The Fraser Valley’s fireworks looked incredible from up on the Continental Divide!
Brad, of course, enjoyed yet another summer season of fly-fishing. He also got a cool camera capable of underwater photography, which allowed him to capture some stunning images of trout. It’s also apparently proof that, yes, sometimes he actually does catch fish. Sometimes.
With that said, we’ve accepted that summer has passed, and we’re ready for the snowy season. The snowfall also got us excited for all the wonderful winter activities in Colorado’s Favorite Playground. Time to get ready for some skiing and snowboarding!
As an agency, we also realize the winter months are among the busiest of the year for local businesses, and we’ve already been preparing for it. (Remember to get your winter marketing planned today!)
So what was your favorite memory from the summer? Are you excited for another snowy winter? Which season do you like more??
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Winter marketing
Summer is gone, September is here, and the seasons are changing yet again in the Colorado Rockies. (Labor Day really just came and went?? How’d that already happen!) We even had a dusting of snow along the Continental Divide this morning.
With the summer tourist traffic winding down and shoulder season just around the corner, now is the time to think ahead to winter in Grand County. The snowy months mean skiing, snowboarding, and lots of other cold weather fun. They also mean some of the heaviest traffic of the year, which means the busiest time of the year for many local companies.
To be prepared for the winter season’s business boom, your business needs to begin planning its winter marketing today! Getting your marketing and advertising initiatives in place means you can be fully prepared to capitalize on the snowy season’s tourist traffic.
Good marketing takes time. There’s plenty of planning, research, and coordination that can go into a campaign, not to mention graphic design, production and printing that may be involved. Starting early also means you’ll have time to fine-tune your campaign; to get your marketing message just right. This will not only help you attract more customers once they start arriving this winter, it can also make your customers aware of your business before they even get here.
Want to attract new customers with some posters and flyers, or a social media campaign? Want to increase your brand awareness with promotional products? Want to improve your online presence with blogging and search engine optimization? To have these and other marketing initiatives ready for the winter season, start preparing today.
We at O2 are about to launch a little marketing campaign of our own: we’ll be sending out direct mailer postcards to our clients and leads.
These postcards are a friendly reminder to get your marketing lined up in time to make the most of the upcoming ski season. When you see them, remember to contact us so we can get started soon!
Whether you have something specific in mind, or you just need help creating some effecting marketing initiatives, we can help. Contact us at O2 to start planning your winter marketing today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: a year in the new office!
Writing tips from O2
At O2, we write a lot. We write blogs for clients, write content for websites, write copy for advertisements, even write creatively in our free time. We recently discussed a few practical tips and tricks that have helped us become better writers, and we decided to post a few of the writing tips from O2 in this week’s blog:
Create an outline. Determine how you want to begin your written piece, how you want to present the main points, and how you want to conclude your work.
Take notes. If you come across a creative thought, write it down. You may have a great idea right now, but unless you make a note of it, you may not even remember it by the time you sit down later to write.
Use the fewest words possible. Try to keep your writing economical and to the point.
Let your imagination take over. Don’t hesitate to let a creative impulse take your work in an unexpected direction, especially in the initial draft stages.
Write a first draft. Your first draft is the most important, since this draft determines the ultimate direction of your writing. With that said…
Don’t sweat the first draft. Your first draft will never be your best, so don’t get upset if it just isn’t where you want it to be. Allow yourself time to revise your writing.
Sleep on it. After writing your draft, don’t be afraid to leave it be until tomorrow. Many of your best revisions are the ones you’ll make the next morning with a fresh mind.
Use a thesaurus. Sometimes finding the right word can make the difference between good writing and superlative writing. (Yup, we checked the thesaurus for that one.)
Proofread, over and over again! In addition to proofing your own work, have someone else proofread as well. It’s important to get a second set of eyes on a piece of writing.
Think about your audience. Consider who will be reading your work, and try to write in a voice that will communicate with them. Sometimes it even helps to imagine you are writing to a familiar friend.
Read it out loud. Hearing each word out loud will help you really understand the voice of your writing. This also helps you proof your work, since you can often catch those hidden errors when you hear the writing out loud.
Don’t get frustrated. If you’re experiencing the dreaded “writer’s block,” don’t try to force it. Just step away for a moment. Work on something else, go grab a fresh cup of coffee, or just take a walk to clear your mind.
Have fun with it, most importantly of all! Think of writing not as a homework assignment, but as a fun way to express yourself. Once you can really enjoy the writing process, you’ll become increasingly comfortable as a wordsmith, and your creative voice will really start to shine in your work.
These are just a few quick writing tips we discussed. There are certainly plenty of other tips, but this post is already getting a little lengthy. If you have any other tips you’d like to share, please do!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: D&M’s promotional products mix
O2 in Mountain Bike Capital USA
One of the best things about living and working in Colorado’s Favorite Playground is that Colorado’s Favorite Playground also happens to be Mountain Bike Capital USA. That means you can also find O2 in Mountain Bike Capital USA! We pride ourselves on being a bike-crazed community, and with virtually endless bike trails, bike shops, bike events and bike activities, the bike fun just keeps on coming.
Bikes are our preferred means of summertime transportation. We can often be seen pedaling around town during the warmer months, and also ride our bikes to work whenever we can. Anyone who has stopped by the O2 office lately can attest to this.
But biking is far more to us than just a means of transportation. It’s a means of adventure! We’re always eager to explore the miles and miles of trails in our area, whether it be a chilled-out cruise on the Fraser River Trail, or a rambunctious ride on rugged mountain trails.
Part of working in Mountain Bike Capital USA means we also get the opportunity to market Mountain Bike Capital USA. We’ve been working closely with the Winter Park & Fraser Chamber of Commerce to develop Mountain Bike Capital USA’s Facebook and Twitter pages (<–click to like/follow!) Check ’em out on social media to get the scoop on all things Mountain Bike Capital USA: news and events, bike park updates, area trail info, and more.
We’ve also had the privilege to promote Granby Ranch’s downhill mountain bike park, which is quite the thrill indeed. No really, if you haven’t tried downhill biking, try it…SUCH a rush!
Members of the O2 team also plan to be out and about at the Colorado Freeride Festival, this weekend at the Trestle Bike Park. The festival features some of the world’s most talented mountain bike athletes, so you bet we’re going to check it out.
So if you see O2 in Mountain Bike Capital USA, don’t be a stranger! Come say hi if you see us at the downhill bike parks, or give us a wave if you see us cruising along a trail. Happy pedaling from O2!
To contact us at O2 Creative, give us a call at 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: Photography tips from O2
Blogging about blogs
At O2 Creative we offer many different services to businesses both large and small – graphic design, web design, marketing and advertising, even promotional products. But did you know we also offer blog writing service as well?
That’s right. At O2 we can create relevant professional blogs that will benefit your business in a number of ways. From a marketing perspective, blogs are a great way to communicate with your market. They create a personal side to your business to which your customers can relate.
Blogs really build your business’s online presence as well. When we write blogs for clients, we include key terms that help to improve search engine optimization (SEO). This means your blog is optimized to make it easier for Google and other search engines to find you, which in turn helps customers find you. Blogs bring a bump to your website traffic too.
What if your business just doesn’t have the time to blog? That’s where our blog writing service comes into play. As an agency, we can research your blog, draft your blog, revise your blog, publish your blog, even take photographs for your blog. We can be your creative agents both in the field and online. We can write just about any sort of blog you’d like as well, from technical and informative to adventuresome and fun.
So if you think your business can benefit from a blog, contact us at O2 today. Trust us – a blog really can help to attract customers and generate attention for your business. After all, you’re reading our blog right now, right?
To contact O2 Creative, call us at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].