TL;DR: If you want long-term, exponential growth for your small business, one of the smartest investments you can make is in a good content marketing strategy. While it takes a few months to see big growth, once you hit “critical mass” you’ll start seeing massive increases in sales and profits. More
Happy Friday, everyone.
Yesterday, I saw a blog post announcing Pablo, a new offering from Buffer. With Pablo, you can create new, attractive images for your social media posts in 30 seconds.
It’s very similar to ShareAsImage, a service I gladly paid to use.
But since it comes from Buffer, I bet they’ll be working hard to make it better.
Including attractive images in your social media posts isn’t great for organic Facebook reach anymore, but it can be really good to engage your audience.
Even though you won’t get an automatic boost from having an image (like in the good-old days), the audience engagement could easily translate into sales.
Visit https://bufferapp.com/pablo to give it a try.
(The above image only took me about 15 seconds to create, including the time it took to upload my logo.)
Those running a Facebook page have been really hurt in the last year or so. Thanks to spammers, organic (non-paid) reach has declined to sometimes 6% of what it used to be.
That means of all the people who should be seeing your content, only 6% actually do see it in their newsfeeds.
Yikes.
For some business owners, this means Facebook is no longer a viable channel to reach their audience. The amount of work it takes to manage a good Facebook campaign simply isn’t worth the cost for the ROI.
But those business owners that understand the new changes won’t have much of a problem adapting. In fact, because so many brands will struggle to keep up, those that can easily embrace the “new” way of using Facebook have the potential to rise to the top.
I’ll explain strategies for this (and other topics) in my upcoming newsletter. It’ll be a brief monthly report on what’s changed and how your business can adapt.
Since it’s written for small business owners, it’ll be focused on adapting without spending a ton of cash, too.
Stay tuned. More info is forthcoming.
Here’s an example of the problem with digital sharecropping (or planting your crops on land someone else owns): if the landowner decides to change the rules, your livelihood is wrecked.
Case in point: Pinterest just went through and removed all affiliate links on its pins (except those who were using its preferred system, that is). This means the blogger affiliates who spent thousands of hours creating pins to get affiliate sales had their businesses wiped out overnight.
As Venturebeat reports, Pinterest released this statement:
We are removing affiliate links to ensure we’re providing the best possible experience for Pinners. Recently, we observed affiliate links and redirects causing irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior. We believe this change will enable us to keep the high bar of relevancy and quality Pinners expect from Pinterest.
It’s like a hurricane hit, and blogging affiliates who rely on Pinterest don’t have insurance.
Great digital marketing (especially content marketing) uses multiple channels to reach the desired customer.
However, most business owners don’t quite get what that means. They’ll think they “own” a digital marketing asset (like a Facebook Page) but not realize that asset could disappear at any time.
But smart digital marketers know how to mix both owned and “borrowed” channels to full effect.
I’m launching a newsletter soon that will give small business owners the kinds of insights they need to see what’s coming and how to prepare for sudden disruptions (like if a popular social media network decides to shut down).
Stay tuned.
