What Does It Mean to Have a Positive Online Presence as an Athlete?
What is Social Media Marketing?
In today’s online world, relationships are as important as ever. We now find ourselves, as a society, drawn into social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Yelp, Google+, FourSquare, Pinterest, Tumblr, and others. This is where we share ourselves. This is where the brands and products that we like get a chance for a personal endorsement. This is the new way we interact with each other–both with friends and with businesses. Social media marketing is the idea that your online social presence should be active and engaging so that your business can foster the relationships with its stakeholders for years to come.
Additionally, social signals are playing an ever-larger role in search engine optimization–no one knows the exact percentage (it’s not released to the public), but social media is roughly figured to be about 5-10% of a website’s ultimate placement for keyword terms. A stronger presence online only translates into a stronger ranking in search, more exposure in the community (both organically and through search engine rankings), and a place to reach your stakeholders faster than any media outlet ever could.
Social media is big. For many businesses, social media didn’t exist for most of the business’s existence. Today, however, social media has become a major part of most consumers’ lives. The Dines Group social media approach comes from a completely unique and integrated marketing point of view. Our social media management pulls from multiple in-house marketing disciplines and stays true to our client’s overall brand strategy and marketing plan. Our social media specialists work closely with the data analytics, account managers, and SEO specialists on each client team to deliver the right messages at the right times to the right audiences. At the Dines Group, there is no scatter-shot social media marketing—everything we do is calculated and targeted.
Experts in Social Media Marketing
Your business has probably been approached by those claiming to be authorities in social media management. In truth, many clients come to us with having tried another agency or professional prior who didn’t have an understanding of content strategy, search engine optimization, Twitter cards, copyright laws, PPC, average response time, CTR, compliance laws, deflection rates, geo-targeting, URL shortening, analytics, retargeting, and so on. These are social media accounts where someone simply posted things, without thought of how all aspects of marketing are both represented and affected by social media properties. Here at the Dines Group, our social media team works to make sure that our client’s content meets their brand strategy goals and their postings maximize the value of all that they do—from SEO to offline advertising—in a means to ultimately increase revenue or awareness. You can call us experts if you would like, but we would rather you use the words “educated,” “experienced,” and “determined” to describe our social media marketing specialists.
Ghostwriting and Social Media
For some clients, we provide full-scale social media training. For others, we actually take on the work ourselves. When a business, athlete, or celebrity is unable to find the time to truly commit to a social media marketing plan or is not interested in getting involved in social media, our experienced staff steps in and manages the entire process for them. It’s not that our clients are not smart and capable, it’s that they are dedicated to other aspects of their businesses or careers in such a way that the time and dedication it takes to truly succeed in social media is not viable for them. When we take on a client in a ghostwriting situation, we spend time getting to know the client’s emotional brand—Who are they? Where are they going? Where have they come from? We work closely with clients to develop an entire content strategy prior to any social media work, and we generally create marketing plans and projects so much so that by the time we’re managing a client’s social media, we know their brand, career, personality, and/or business almost as well as they do. From the knowledge and from consultation with other specialists on the team (SEO, for example), we work to great lengths to develop and deliver the most perfect social media marketing possible.
Social Media IS About Your Bottom Line
A lot of thinking about social media is that it’s a branding opportunity, a PR mechanism, or a way to engage fans and followers. Yes, it is absolutely those things, but that doesn’t mean that social media should be designed and executed without thought to increasing one’s bottom line. Revenue generation and value should be important goals guiding any social media marketing plan. From paid advertising to posts that inspire action to retargeting to viral events, social media offers multiple ways to put your products and services in front of new and regular customers.
Imagine if Disney tweeted: “Star Wars Early Release, Click for Clues to Find Tickets to See Movie First.” Suddenly, not only would those who saw the post on Twitter respond, but likely major media outlets, web sites, and others would all pick up on the tweet and create a story around it. There would be a massive outpouring of retweets, buzz, information, and more about this one simple tweet. The link, however, would tie back into a website where Disney can capture and measure demographic information about the users. The website could then direct followers on an Indiana Jones-like adventure throughout different real-world and online locations (partnerships and co-sponsorships with other businesses), encouraging people to take action (make purchases or learn about a business offering or test drive a car and so on). The winners each become their own PR story that Disney can also promote, and the entire search for the “golden tickets” is something the nation is following. When the movie is shown first in this one location, the showing provides the video clips and interviews needed to produce a new commercial with real fan reactions—all before the official movie is released. This is the kind of social media approach we encourage, with a complete content strategy and increased revenue or awareness drive the social media communications.
Our Social Media Marketing Plan
When we meet with our clients, we discuss the places in which their customers can be found online. We look to where opportunities exist in social media. We teach our clients and share with them the tools used to create compelling content. Then, we execute by making sure that your social media properties are alive and well, constantly engaging your followers and fans. We help facilitate sharing and conversations. We design promotions, contests, email newsletters, and more to help broaden the net that we cast. We take your business and deliver a vibrant, on-brand execution that turns your online presence into a living entity that your online fans and followers will embrace.
Why The Dines Group Will Improve Your Social Media Strategy
At The Dines Group, our entire agency grew up on social media in one way or another. From the early days of Commodore 64 online bulletin boards to the great flocking to MySpace to the birth of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and more . . . we’ve been there. We’ve not only embraced the different technologies, but we have been studying the science behind them for decades. We’re experienced in what content and copy drives action. We’re ready to help you gather more friends and followers. We know how the different signals relate to online website rankings in the search engines. We’ll share all of that knowledge with you as we develop a plan to take your company into the social media world. We’ll even create and post your content and manage your analytics.
