A Time for Thanks
November 27, 2019
Thanksgiving is upon us, so what better time to say thank you to those who have helped you throughout the year? Social Marketing Solutions is lucky to have a diverse clientele who range from small to large businesses, offer products from books to food, and have helped & inspired us in many ways. And while we’re grateful to them all, we want to especially thank these guys this year.
We’d like to say thank you (and welcome!) to new clients from 2019 such as Chevy Perry, Bedding Shoppe, Dave’s Wholesale Cabinets, and The Wave Hair Salon. We also want to offer up our gratitude to a few long-term clients – Payroll Specialties (who have been with us since the beginning in 2011); Suburban Furniture (Jersey’s premiere furniture store, with us since 2012); Dryer Vent Wizard of Northern NJ & NY Metro (client since 2015 with a knack for vent cleaning and fire safety); Denise K. Rago (our favorite author since 2013); and Top Chef Meals (the best meal delivery service around who has been with us since 2015). We appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for letting us have the opportunity to help you with your social media needs!
Stay happy & healthy this Thanksgiving season and remember to thank those who have helped you along the way!
Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s Time for Holiday Marketing!
September 18, 2019
It’s only a month and a half until Halloween, the 2nd biggest holiday of the year, quickly followed by Thanksgiving, Christmas & Hanukkah, and New Year’s. Have you prepared your holiday marketing plan? If not, now is the time to get your stuff together. The holiday season is the biggest marketing opportunity of the year after all!
Why are the holidays such an important time for marketing? For starters, people are shopping with the intent to buy during the holiday season so this is your chance to guide them towards your products. People also associate the holidays with good feelings – joy, anticipation, goodwill towards mankind – making marketing that much easier. Consumers look to social media during the holidays as a guide to gift-buying, making it the perfect medium for marketing. In fact, 15% of shoppers turn to Facebook for inspiration during the holidays! Finally, consumer traffic goes up 150% during the holidays, meaning there are more potential customers for you to reach.
What are the best ways to reach your audience this holiday season?
- Start by thanking your loyal customers with holiday coupons, deals, and exclusives. Remind them how grateful for them you are and they’ll continue being loyal to you.
- The holiday season is ripe for themed promotions. Take advantage by sprucing up your website visuals to fit the festive spirit.
- Contests and giveaways (especially giveaways!) will amp up your holiday marketing.
- The holidays are a great time to do some good in your community. Partnering with a local organization for a good cause will help build your brand’s image. Just be sure you’re doing good for more than that reason – people aren’t fans of false altruism.
- There’s a reason they say content is king. Creating blog posts & social media posts that tie into the holidays – even something as simple as “top 10 Halloween costumes” – will bring in new traffic.
- Bundle your products or services during this time. Offering combos of products and offering the package at a discount for the holidays is a great way to keep current customers and bring in new ones.
- Make sure your website is optimized for mobile. People love the convenience of using their mobile for holiday buying. But if your website takes too long to load, doesn’t have easy checkout, or offers blurry photos on mobile, you’ll lose business.
- Website traffic and sales increase steadily starting October 1st and going thru mid-November. They reach their peak on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, then stay higher than usual up through Christmas Eve. The point? Start your marketing EARLY.
Make this holiday season your best yet by incorporating smart online marketing into your repertoire early on in the season. Need help staying on top of things? Give Social Marketing Solutions a call at 973-265-2833 or visit our website for more info!
A Peek Into Our Clients Summer Activities
July 24, 2019
We have a wide variety of clients – from authors to furniture stores to meal delivery services and more – all of who are doing great things. We invite you to take a look at what our clients are doing this summer and to participate wherever you can.
1. Suburban Furniture is a fabulous furniture store in Succusanna and a business who likes to give back to their community whenever possible. This July, Suburban is hosting a food drive with all donations going to Roxbury Social Services in Horseshoe Lake in Succasunna, NJ. Roxbury Social Services provides Roxbury Township residents with necessary services and info based on individual needs. They also handle emergency situations in their community.
Here’s how you can help. They are accepting non-perishable, non-expired donations of food and toiletry items the entire month of July. Some of the items needed are baby diapers (size large, only); baby wipes; large bottles of juice and juice boxes; canned fruit; coffee; tea; oatmeal-canister and instant packets; paper towels; toilet paper; tissues; napkins; mayo; mustard; ketchup; and oil. If you’re able to contribute any of these items (or any other non-perishable, non-expired items), they would be entirely grateful. Drop off is at the store, any time during regular business hours.
So, please, go by Suburban Furniture in Succasunna, NJ any day during the month of July, between the hours of 10AM & 9PM Monday-Friday, 10AM & 8PM Saturday, or noon & 5PM Sunday with your donations. They’re eager to see you and THANK YOU!
2. Want to be immortalized? Denise K. Rago is an author of a historical paranormal romance series featuring vampires, the French Revolution, and a lot of passion. She’s currently holding a contest – the prize of which is the winner appearing in her next novel! It’s incredibly easy to enter too. Go to Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, or Facebook and leave a review of one or all of Denise’s books. It can be two words, it can be a paragraph, it can be a sonnet. It can be positive or negative or a combination of both. BE HONEST! Once you’ve left your review, head over to Facebook & leave a comment on the pinned post that you've done so. (If you aren't on Facebook, use the contact form on her website to let her know!) Contest ends September 1st, so you still have a little over a month to get your review in!
3. Finally, our client Top Chef Meals has a new blog platform that looks amazing! Head over and take a look, read a few articles, and get some wonderful health tips and delicious food!
We’re proud of our many clients and love sharing with you the many ways they’re improving the community, improving their marketing, and just having fun. Join us in congratulating them and participate if you’re so inclined.
Looking for help with your business? Give us a call at 973-265-2833 or drop by our website to set up a FREE consultation!
CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: SAY HELLO TO THESE WONDERFUL BUSINESSES!
May 7, 2019
We are incredibly lucky at Social Marketing Solutions to be able to work with some of the best companies from a variety of industries. From clients we've been working with for years, to the ones who are brand new to SMS, we work with a vast array of talent and we thought it would be great if we had a chance to highlight one of our awesome clients. Today we're introducing Chauffers Unlimited, Viirtue, and author, Mindy Mutterperl!
Chauffers Unlimited is a returning customer that we are thrilled to come back to our social media clientele. We originally worked with Chauffer’s from 2011 until 2014, when they decided to try to manage their social media presence on their own, but as we know, things got busy, so at the beginning of 2019 they became a customer again! Founded in 1987, Chauffeurs Unlimited sends their professional, courteous, and reliable drivers to your home or business, to drive your own car to whatever destination you choose. They are available 24/7 for all your professional and experienced driving needs, in the comfort of your own vehicle! We started off their return with a Facebook refresh and are now managing their Facebook page with weekly posts, as well as creating and distributing a monthly newsletter on their behalf via Constant Contact.
Viirtue is a brand new customer but Kelly has known one of the founders since high school. Viirtue is a cloud based VoIP service that serves businesses around the United States. They have been hosting SMS’s email services since August 2017 and are an amazing company to work with. We love their hosting services, so when they needed social media help, so it was a perfect fit! While they have only been a customer of a few months, we’re incredibly excited to get to know them, their business & employees, as we promote their business on the social media platforms we are managing daily for them and through monthly blogs.
Finally, we’d like to introduce Mindy Mutterperl, the author of Sustainable Choices, who was a referral from our long-time customer & friend, Denise K. Rago. Sustainable Choices helps readers adopt lifestyle choices beneficial to them, their communities and the planet. Mindy is new to the world of social media marketing, so she has been working with Kelly during their one-on-one social media sessions, which have been focused on learning about Facebook and Instagram best practices and setting up her social media presence for success. We will continue to work with Mindy as she promotes her books and events on social media, focusing on increasing book sales and attendance at her upcoming promotional events. We look forward to continuing to build our relationship with her!
Stop by each of these guys’ social media pages and show them some love by liking their pages and seeing what they are all about. And keep checking back with us as we continue introducing you to more of our fabulous clients. We thank all our loyal clients for their continued business, loyalty and support!
Why Outsourcing Your Social Media is the Way to Go
March 21, 2019
Social media marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business whether it be on a small scale or a large in-depth part of your business's marketing plan. Over 3 billion people across the world use social media every single day and they engage with brands while they do so. Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy can be an inexpensive yet VERY effective way to increase your brand’s awareness, boost sales, drive customer engagement and grow your online presence – along with MANY other benefits. Most business owners know social media marketing is extremely important, however, the problem is many owners don’t have the time to dedicate to planning, executing and evaluating a social media marketing campaign, as well as many owners, are not aware of exactly what they should be looking for and how to effectively share the right social media message. If that is the case, outsourcing can help. This will help save the business time, valuable resources and you can rest assured your message is consistent, clear and a good representation of your brand with the help of a social media manager.
Just like you had to learn how to do the financial side of your business or learning the ins and outs of how to provide a great service or product social media is an area that involves much learning, time and attention. Facebook., Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many others may seem simple to set up, but then what? What posts are going to get the best response? How are you going to engage with your fan base and what specifically you are sharing can quickly become an overwhelming task to effectively execute. Social media marketing involves knowledge of analytics, knowledge of trends and changes in the industry along with SO much more. Without knowing all of these things, you’ll just be screaming into a black hole missing a great opportunity to take advantage of social media marketing. Outsourcing to a company that focuses solely on managing, updating, and monitoring your online presence will help you get the most out of your online brand and reach the largest customer base with the message you want your target audience to be able to easily identify your brand, what you offer and how they can get in touch with you. Social media managers use the most effective tools possible providing you with the best return so you can focus on what you do best – and we handle the rest!
Social media marketing requires a lot of time. It’s not an area where you can simply spend 5 minutes a day and move on. By outsourcing your social networking efforts you’ll be taking your time back to focus on your business, while your brand is still growing, allowing you to make more money $$$. You can continue to use the time you save to focus on your customers and focus on what you know and love – all while your business continues to grow!
The only constant thing about social media is the change – which happens quite often. Social networks change, trends change – all the time and it’s A LOT to keep up with. Social media professionals are able to stay on top of all the current news, trends and changes and we are able to adapt and adjust accordingly. Don’t worry about trying to sort through and navigate the social media changes – we’ve got you covered!
Outsourcing your social media marketing saves you time, saves you energy and resources, it also helps grow your brand awareness while allowing you to focus on the important aspects of your business – and all while making you more $$$. It’s simply the easiest, fastest, and most efficient way to go about your social media marketing campaign for your business. Social Marketing Solutions, LLC takes the stress out of social media by managing your presence on a variety of networks, on a daily basis while creating content for networks, helping with your blogs and newsletters and much more.
If you’re ready to take your social media marketing to the next level, contact us today – email us at Kelly@SocialMarketingSolutionsLL.com or give us a call at (973) 265-2833! We look forward to discussing further with what is best for YOU.
Celebrate National Try Something New Day!
February 27, 2019
Using social media for your
- Promotions – random holidays are the perfect time for promotions. For example, February 11
th is White T-Shirt Day , so if you have a clothing company where are whitet-shirts available, you could have a promotion for that day. Do a buy one, get one free coupon or give away a whitet-shirt with every $25 purchase. The possibilities are limitless! - Contests – Picking a holiday that’s related to your business and creating a contest around it creates a fun environment for your audience and enables you to get your product to them in some way. Take July 1
st – Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day; if you own an ice cream shop, you could have a contest for people to come up with their best creative ice cream flavor, vote on the best one, and then as the prizegive them some ice cream (or let them create their flavor to try it out). It’s pretty win-win for everyone involved. - Be Part of the Conversation – Celebrating quirky, random holidays on social media makes your business a part of the conversation. Take September 19
th which is International Talk Like a Pirate Day (you might be familiar). This one is a fairly popular random holiday – in fact, in the past Facebook created the ability to change the language of your account to “pirate” just for this day – which means it will be trending on social media the entire day. Simply acknowledging it by posting a quick “Arrgg,matey !” or putting up a picture of your favorite pirate (Jack Sparrow, of course) will get eyes on your business. - Celebrate The Good – It’s a big, bad world out there, so sometimes it’s wonderful to just do or say something nice. There are plenty of holidays that celebrate
joy and the good things, like November 20th which is Beautiful Day. Just posting something, well, beautiful to acknowledge this holiday (or others like it) is a great reminder to your audience to enjoy the good things and a great reminder that your business is run by people just like them. - Show Your Appreciation – There are plenty of random holidays on which to show your appreciation for your customers, such as September 15
th , National Thank You Day. Any day is a good day to say thank you to the many people who help you stay in business, of course, but acknowledging them on days made especially for that purpose will get more people to see your appreciation. Whether you simply post a graphic saying “thank you”, do a giveaway, or upload a quick video, your customers will be happy to know they’re appreciated.
Social media should be fun and it should be creative. There are plenty of ways to get yourself in front of the public, but the use of offbeat holidays will make you stand out. No matter how you use them you’ll be remembered for being part of the conversation and for doing something different from the rest of the crowd. A site we like to use to find these holidays
Author
- Kelly Jones
Social Media Manager
