Section 5 Media Marketing Blog

Facebook has made things a little difficult for marketers. First, there was free earned media. Then there were paid ads as a way to attract and engage millions of followers. But now they've created restricted access. Facebook has systematically reduced access to a brand's fanbase back in 2012. That's when they restricted a brand's organic reach to about 16 percent. And in 2013, the restricted it even more. A recent study shows that around 2% of a brand's fanbase actually see brands posts. A lot of marketers assume that brand reach will soon be down to zero.

It's been almost three years since Instagram launched their stories feature. Back then Snapchat had already been the leader when it came to ephemeral (disappearing) content. But back in 2017, Snapchat when their IPO hit the public, their user growth hit a wall. This was when Instagram Stories' user growth reached a rapid increase. Now, in 2018 they're holding steady at over 400 million users! This is double the amount of Snapchat users.

Back in 2016, Instagram implemented a new algorithm. Surprisingly, the algorithm actually delivers one of the most consistently relevant content compared to other social media platforms. However, this switch wasn't well-received by its users. In fact, it led to Instagram users only seeing about 90% of their friends' posts. Which is definitely a good thing, because prior to the update they were missing 50%!

By now, we all know that the best social media strategies are ones that have consistent follower growth, engagement, and likes/clicks. And Instagram is one of the best platforms to quickly achieve this! Building your brand on Instagram doesn't have to be difficult. When you compare it to SEO, it really is one of the best ways to compete against bigger brands.

Marketing has a lot of moving parts, but when it comes down to it, there are some core concepts to it. And relevancy and personalization are some of the most-implemented ones. In fact, targeted, personalized messages are proven to increase customer engagement by at least 74%. The same thing goes if you want to improve lead generation. It's a great way to nurture specific needs and interests of a brand's target audience. As well as providing incredible value.

As a growing brand, you need to ask yourself if you're building links the right way. Maybe you still using outdated practices. Here's the thing, there are a lot of link building tactics that still matter. And there are some that are actually just a waste of time. Today we'll cover the rules of link building, as well as, the top three ranking factors in Google. Let's dive in, shall we?

Content strategies have one function, and one function only, to gain valuable insights into customer behavior. Customer insights are an essential part of any highly-effective content. The main goal is to convert. In today's digital landscape, we can end up with a little too much customer data at our disposal. Even with all this data, it can still be difficult to identify your audience. Or worse yet, know who they are or what they want.

If you take a moment to think about all the links on your site, there's probably a good deal of them. Especially if your site has been around for a while. Plus your backlink profile (the total links that go back to your site) is more than likely filled with low-quality links. This happens for a variety of reasons. Bots and auto-republishing tools, small low-ranking/quality blogs are doing one of two things:

If you're a small brand, finding time to do everything on your list can be pretty hard. There's so much to contend with... Instagram posts, social media maintenance, ad creation, and content marketing. All of it can leave you wishing the days were longer. Especially if you want to actually GROW your brand. This is when marketing automation comes into play. But if you're curious as to what it even is, we're here to help!

SEO (search engine optimization) has been around for a very long time. You can use it for a plethora of goals, like reaching new audiences, getting traffic to your website, spreading knowledge, and driving growth. Even though SEO has been around awhile, it has changed A LOT. Back in the day, it was only used as a way to stuff as many keywords as possible into content. Not to mention filling pages with tons of backlinks. It was definitely a black hat tactic.