For some businesses, January is a quiet time of the year, for others, it is their busiest and the time when their annual income is made. Horrific bushfires across Victoria and NSW have had a significant impact on many businesses who rely on the tourism dollar at this time of the year. Those businesses who are in the fire areas will have a lot on their plate right now, but it is not just businesses close to fires, but from a tourism point of view, all regional areas are suffering.
Quiet times are good times to do some marketing maintenance. Some suggestions from us for actions that should not take a lot of time, but can make a big difference to your digital and social marketing include:
Social Media Account Management
Who is managing your social media accounts? Many of us add admins to our accounts as necessary but removing them after they have left the business or moved on in some other way, is not always automatic.
Why not start 2020 with a quick check of who has what rights on your accounts? If someone has left, remove them unless you have an agreement to leave them on for a certain amount of time in case to help out if needed.
Passwords
I’m pretty sure that many of you reading this can’t remember when you last
changed your password. One of the best defences to hacking your accounts is to
regularly change your passwords and to keep them robust and unique.
According to Cis Security, a strong password consists of at least 10 characters and includes a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. A unique password is a password that is only used with one account.
Visual Content
We know that social media is very crowded and it is hard to stand out. Images can make the difference. Content with relevant images gets much more engagement than content without images.
Start with Banner and profile images
Some of us created our banners and profile pictures when we created our accounts years ago. Check that they:
- Are still relevant and contemporary
- Reflect your brand
- Are of good quality
All platforms have information on the preferred sizes of the images for banners and profiles, use this information to make sure your images fit and are easy to identify brand markers such as colors and logos.
Image posts
Every post needs an image or video. Try using this downtime to develop an image library that you can use in 2020 and beyond:
- Take photos of staff, stock, local area,
- Make short videos that highlight attractions, activities, flora and fauna or whatever attract visitors
- Use an image with every post. Make sure that:
- They are relevant to the post
- You are not breaching copyright
- They are good quality
- They cannot offend your audience (or part of your audience)
- Make your own images to highlight testimonials, ask a question, announce a competition, etc.
- Keep an eye on your analytics to see which images resonate with your audiences
Download relevant photos from free photo sites, the list below is from Hubspot, I have changed their order to reflect the ones that I use and recommend first and those that I have not tried further down.
- Pixabay
- Pexel
- Unsplash
- Picjumbo
- Picography
- Gratisography
- IM Free
- Burst by Shopify
- Morguefile
- Reshot
- Stockvault
- Negative Space
- Kaboompics
- FancyCrave
- RawPixel
- FoodiesFeed
- StockSnap
- Freestocks
- Splitshire
- Life of Pix
- MMT Stock
- Jay Mantri
- ISO Republic
- New Old Stock
- Refe (Free)
Video posts
Find out what your customers want to know, if you are a tourism business it might be the local sights, ten best places to swim within 20 ks, 5 best car games for children etc.
Make some short, informative videos that you can use on your social accounts.
Insights
When did you last look at your insights? They are available across all
sites; but some are better than others in the information freely available.
This is a great way to see what your audience is interested in and is not interested in. (I will try to do an insights blog next week in case you are not familiar with the insights available to you).
Business Groups
If you still have time, why not look up business groups in your area?
- Check out Business Victoria which has lots of resources
- Chamber of Commerce in your area
- Economic Development Unit in your local Council
- Facebook groups
We are more than happy to give you a hand at this terrible time. Get in touch and we will be able to work out what you need and how we can help you.
