It’s no wonder more and more companies now use Social Media as part of their marketing strategies – why wouldn’t you want to get involved when you get to speak directly to millions of users who could be your target audience plus the accounts are free to sign up to.

With research showing that Social Media is here to stay and not just a passing fad, companies can’t afford to ignore this new platform on which to build their brand. However, in order to use it successfully, there are some golden rules which need to be adhered – so before you get going, here are some tips!

1. Set yourself some objectives

You know you need to start using Social Media but where do you start? Before you jump straight in, make sure you’ve set yourself some objectives and have looked into the different sites available – which sites would your target audience most likely be using, for instance?

Plan your Social Media marketing around the rest of your marketing objectives and use it as an extension to your current activities. Setting yourself objectives at the beginning will help you to analyse the ROI to your business further down the line.

Examples of what you may want to get out of joining a Social Media site; increasing traffic to your website via links, building a large number of fans/followers, communicating with your current customers/clients, generating new leads or creating business partnerships.

2. Look professional

Your Social Media should be an expansion of your other online presence – it therefore needs to fit in with your current branding so you are instantly recognisable. Facebook and Twitter allow you to customise your profiles and backgrounds – you can even change them to fit in with a current campaign or season e.g. Halloween or Christmas.

3. Get your messaging right

Once you’ve decided on the right Social Media sites for you, make sure you get your messaging right. You may use two or three different sites – your messaging needs to be adapted per site in order to attract the right audience. For instance, your followers on Facebook may want different messages to those on LinkedIn or Twitter.

4. Promote your presence

Once you are using Social Media – you need to let people know you are on there! They aren’t necessarily going to search for you so shout about the fact you are on the sites. Here are some ways you can promote your Social Media presence:

- include links/ icons/ widgets on your website
- include links in the footer of your emails
- include links in your signature on forums
- add the links to all of your company stationery
- includes links on your printed media
- email your database with a message specifically dedicated to the ‘launch’ of your Social Media profiles
- use paid ads on social sites
- use paid search advertising
- send direct mail pieces to existing clients

5. Decide who is going to be managing your Social Media

Most companies we speak to don’t have the time or resources to manage their Social Media. Before you decide to sign up to any sites think about who is going to keep them updated – if you give the job to someone internally make sure they understand how to use the sites and are good at communicating! Don’t forget they will be the ‘voice’ for your company so you need to ensure they are appropriate for the role.

6. Take time to build relationships

If you’re using Social Media make sure you commit to it and spend time building relationships with your audience, engaging with them on a regular basis. The more time you spend building relationships, the greater your chances of achieving your original objectives. Acknowledge new followers and respond to any queries – liken the process to face-to-face networking and adopt a similar approach.

7. Don’t bore people

One of the big mistakes people make is thinking that Social Media is just to be used as a promotional platform and only ever talk about themselves and their products or services. You need to engage with your fans or followers, give them interesting and exciting content – build ongoing relationships with them.

8. Get the right balance

You don’t hear anything from a business for a while and then all of a sudden you get 4 or 5 different posts in the space of 5 minutes! Or you start following someone and they never update or post about anything – use Social Media in this way and you are sure to lose not gain followers.

Although there is no golden number for how many times you should ‘tweet’ or post a message make sure you get the balance right, experiment at the beginning and work out what’s right for your company.

9. Don’t expect results overnight

Be patient and don’t expect results to happen immediately – you need to build a ‘community’ on the sites. Follow people, companies and organisations who you regularly work with for example. It may take at least 3 months before you start seeing any real ROI from using Social Media and even then results might not be measurable.

10. Think before you post

Don’t forget that once you’ve posted something it’s out there for everyone to see! Even if you do delete something, the damage may already have been done. So make sure you think before you post anything.

11. Make sure you know the Social Media website ‘rules’

Now sites such as Facebook are being used by brands as well as individuals, Facebook has tightened its rules on how competitions are run on the site. Make sure you check these before you do anything – there are plenty of ‘apps’ out there to help support you and create professional looking pages. You could risk having your profile removed if the rules aren’t adhered too, which could be embarrassing!

Still need a helping hand before you delve into the scary world of Social Media marketing? CuCo have a range of options to help you out; from designing your profile pages, offering advice and support, to daily management – contact email hidden; JavaScript is required to discuss your needs.

#1 Have clear objectives
Before you start planning your direct mail campaign, make sure you have clear objectives of what you want it to achieve – are you sending information to new prospects? Or maybe offering a new product/service to existing customers etc.

#2 Always include a letter
This might be an obvious point but if you send out a direct mail pack without a letter it is more likely to be seen as junk mail and look less targeted – unless you are sending out a self-mailer.

#3 Use incentives
If used wisely, incentives can really work within a direct mail campaign. Just make sure you are offering something which you can afford and don’t cheapen your produce/service with too many incentives.

#4 Make the copy personal
Remember when writing your copy that you are writing to another person  - make it sound personal to the recipient.

#5 Spell out the benefits
Rather than just talking about your company and your products/services, let the reader know how it can benefit them – why should they contact you, buy your product, find out more.

#6 Have a clear CTA
Whether you want someone to visit your website, call you or fill in a form to register their interest, make it clear what you want them to do and how they go about doing it. Don’t be afraid to mention the CTA a few times.

#7 Use short sentences and snappy headings which stand out
Most people don’t have time to read through lots of copy to find out what they need – so make your copy short and use clear headings which stand out and break the copy up.

#8 Use relevant pictures
If you are using images, make sure they are relevant to the copy and are of interest to the reader.

#9 Use a P.S.
Research has shown that people go straight to the bottom of a letter and read the P.S. – summarise the content in your P.S. and use a CTA within it.

#10 Use testimonials
Give your readers more reasons to buy your product/service by providing testimonials from previous and current customers.

#11 Calculate R.O.I
After going to all the trouble of producing a good DM pack, you want to find out if it’s been successful. Use a unique URL for the pack, a QR code or a source code so that you can calculate ROI after your campaign has hit.

#12 Learn from campaigns that don’t work and make changes to the next one
Try out different approaches – if one campaign doesn’t work, try something different for the next one.

#13 Be creative!
Differentiate your pack from your competitors and do something different with your direct mail piece – your pack is going to reflect your company/brand so make sure it sits with what people will see on your website.

Is your direct mail working? Contact CuCo to find out how we can produce a successful direct mail campaign for you 01202 911959.

Google+, Facebook, Twitter and what you should be doing to keep up with the social networking trends…

Social networking is now bigger than ever. With businesses using sites to network with existing and potential clients, it’s seen as a “must” part of any marketing strategy. But are you clued-up on your social networking sites? Let CuCo give you a quick low-down.

Facebook is now world-renowned with more than 300 million users logging on to keep in touch with friends and family. It has also grown as a tool for businesses to interact with their customers via their own Facebook page. If used well, you can raise the profile of your business and your brand by having people approve you and show that they want to connect online.

Through Facebook you are able to strengthen brand identity and your profile, build customer relationships, generate word-of-mouth advertising, steer customers towards your website and also be found by prospective customers. You can also buy advertising space on Facebook to target potential customers.

Facebook has teamed up recently with Skype, “making it easier than ever for people to keep in touch”. They’ve also just launched a page aimed at businesses who want to use the site: https://www.facebook.com/business

Check out CuCo’s facebook page: www.facebook.com/cucocreative

Twitter is also an excellent “cost-free” method of getting your business news out to people who are interested in your products or services. You can benefit by “tweeting” news about your products or exclusive offers, collecting feedback from customers and prospects, passing on news about your sector, commenting on general business issues and letting people know what is going on at your firm.

However, Twitter can be difficult to manage and update when you are busy running your business. It can be a time-consuming process to ensure you are using it effectively.

The latest arrival on the scene is Google+ which rivals Facebook as a social networking site. Google+ requires users to arrange their contacts in different categories or circles. Its default settings embrace Friends, Family or Acquaintances; you can therefore target messages at particular contacts. Although this is currently at a testing stage for personal use, Google are said to be looking at Google+ for businesses in the near future. Watch this space..!

So, do you have time to keep on tweeting? And to ensure your Facebook page is up to date? CuCo can provide you with an expert service in social networking to make sure you are reaping its full benefits and it’s creating new business for you. Get in touch with us to find out more!

Just read a post which got me thinking. I have always thought of the bounce rate as a bad thing, ie people who come to your site and then bounce off it again because it wasn’t for them. But just think about your surfing habits – how many sites you visit, read the page in full, get whatever you want from the site and then leave. I do it all the time, mostly on people’s blogs; you read the post, read the comments, maybe add a comment and leave. Google would class this as a bounce. So just because your visitors may only read one page on your site doesn’t mean that is a negative.

Looking at the chart below, it’s interesting to see the different industry bounce averages. Makes me feel better about our own bounce rates…

Original article here.

The sixth of our technical/terminology articles. Below are some of the common terms used:

Typeface/Fonts
A typeface is a family of fonts. This may be made up of one weight or many, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a co-ordinated set of glyphs. A typeface, in its basic form, is an alphabet of letters, numerals and punctuation marks (how many depends on the designer); it can also include ideograms and other symbols (for example, mathematical or map-making symbols). The term typeface is frequently interchanged with font; these terms had more clearly differentiated meanings before the advent of computers. The distinction between font and typeface is that a font designates a specific member of a type family such as roman, boldface or italic, while typeface designates a consistent visual appearance or style which can be a “family” of fonts. In the example below we see the typeface Hermes, which is made up of four fonts: black, bold, regular and thin.

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The fifth of our technical/terminology articles.

Over time there have been many standard sizes of paper used across the world, but today these have been distilled down to just two, ISO 216 (A4, A3 etc) and the North American sizes officially only still used in the USA and Canada.

ISO 216 evolved from the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. and these are based in a single aspect ratio of square root of two. The base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series – A1, A2, A3, and so forth – are defined by halving the preceding paper size along the larger dimension; therefore if you cut an A0 sheet in half you get two sheets of A1, and so on. This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size, as each size has the same width/height ratio, which allows the easy scaling of work.

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The fourth of our technical/terminology articles. When you lay out a page in a DTP (desktop publishing) program, there are certain areas of the page you need to be aware of. Below are some of the common terms used:

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All the information you will find on this page is courtesy of the Design Council, the national strategic body for design.

There is Design in everything that your see (man-made), whether it’s been done consciously or not. So the question therefore isn’t so much ‘what is design and why does it matter?’ but ‘how can I use good design to make the world around me better?’

How is design different from other activities?

Design makes your ideas tangible, going from an abstract thought/inspirations into something concrete. A designer doesn’t just think and then translate those thoughts into tangible form, they actually think through making things. This ability to make new ideas real from an early stage in developing products or services means that they have a greater chance of becoming successful more quickly. Designers are sometimes caricatured as being self-obsessed, but the truth is they are passionate about the end user of the product or service and how they use/interact with it.

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The third technical/terminology article. Once your sheet is printed there are many other techniques you can specify to add to the design/improve the functionality. Below are some of the common terms for these various methods:

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