Getting The Most Out Of Social Media

82% of buyers trust a company that is active socially

Research has shown that buyers trust a company more when they are active across social media. Not only does this benefit the buyer, but developing a social media presence is also reflected in your social media rankings. This means that if there is a specific action you want your users to take, such as signing up to a mailing list, listening to your latest podcast, or even making a purchase, you’d be more successful directing them to your website from social media.

The point being, when your social media presence has so much influence over your search engine rankings, website traffic and overall reputation, it’s important to know how you’re performing on these platforms. To do this, you need analytics.

Before you start looking through the extensive analytics available on social media platforms, you need to ensure you have clearly defined business goals – when you know what you’re looking to achieve, you know what metrics are most important to you. For example:

• If your goal is building awareness, look at impressions and reach
• If your goal is connecting with your audience, look at likes, retweets, comments, shares and engagement rate
• If your goal is sales, look at your click through rate whilst incorporating Google Analytics for even more information. From this, you can see where your website visitors are coming from, if it’s social, you can see which social. Not only would this tell you which platform you should be putting your time and effort into, but also it could show a significant increase after you’ve implemented a new campaign, for example, which lets you know what works and what doesn’t.

With social media, you’re able to monitor any and all customer feedback, for example any comments made on your content or about your business in general. You can see here what they’re saying about your company, giving you the opportunity in turn to speak to them directly and answer any questions. Regardless of whether this feedback is positive or negative, always respond to it. Negative comments have even more of an impact when they’re ignored by a business, but if you respond professionally and offer solutions to the problem, potential customers are less likely to be put off.

When considering social media from a business perspective, it’s important to know how it could support the organisation’s goals – by understanding the capabilities of each platform. Overall, social media can help you reach a huge, global audience, grow organically as well as drive website traffic.

Finally, it’s important to choose the right social media platform for you, to ensure your marketing efforts here are relevant and reach the right people. See our recent blog on which social media platform is best for your business, for more information. In summary:

• Facebook: for creating meaningful interactions; useful for Retail, Hospitality and Fashion
• Instagram: provide exceptional visual content and create networks / groups through hashtags; useful for Food & Drink, Interiors and E-commerce
• Twitter: creating a community through “networking hours”, finding where your target audience are all talking and what they’re talking about; useful for Customer Service, Education and PR
• LinkedIn: connecting in a professional way, particularly successful if you’re a B2B company; useful for Recruitment, Marketing and IT

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Getting Into Teaching

Interested in teaching?  We have a range of Teaching and Learning apprenticeships at Level 3 (equivalent to two A-Levels) which can be the starting point for getting into the teaching sector. The following apprenticeships are available to you, to begin your teaching journey.

• Learning & Development Practitioner (18-24 months, Level 3)

This role is based on identifying learning or training needs then either designing or sourcing the necessary solution to support them. This role can exist within a wide range of organisations however, this is not limited to educational institutions – the key responsibility being to contribute to and influence improved performance in the workplace at an individual, team and organisation level.

Whilst this role might not be what you expected as a starting point to education, a career in Learning & Development diversifies your skills and experience, whilst playing an essential role in the organisation.

• Learning Mentor (12 months, Level 3)

A Learning Mentor will support the development of learners’ knowledge, skills and behaviours, specifically by applying theoretical learning in practical work environments – either on a one-to-one or small group basis. These learners could be of any age or level such as apprentices, trainees and/or new recruits in the workplace or any vocational learning environment.

This role allows you to encourage and empower a learner’s personal development whilst identifying and correcting gaps in skills or knowledge. From this sector, there are many opportunities to advance your career and increase your opportunities as well as developing transferable skills such as time management and networking.

• Teaching Assistant (18 months, Level 3)

For those looking to get into teaching in Primary and Secondary education, this role is an excellent starting point, working across all age ranges encompassing special educational needs and emotional vulnerabilities. The key responsibilities here include supporting the class teacher and ensuring pupils understand the work set and make progress.

In this role, you’re able to support pupils separately whilst having the opportunity to gain teaching experience and work with classes as a whole.

Options for progressing to higher qualifications:

• Assessor Coach (15 months, Level 4)

This could be an option for those with or without a Level 3 Assessing qualification, but is an opportunity to progress from any of the above teaching apprenticeships. In this role, responsibilities include coaching and assessing apprentices, trainees or new recruits in the workplace, usually on a one-to-one basis and in a range of learning environments.

• Learning & Skills Teacher (24 months, Level 5)

A Learning & Skills Teacher is a higher role, as progression from any teaching background, responsible for teaching young people and adults within all parts of the Education and Training sector; this can include:

– Work based / independent training provision

– Further, adult and higher education

– Offender-learning

– Voluntary sector

To support this, the Level 4 Education and Training qualification allows trainee teachers to teach in a wide range of contexts, expanding the knowledge they’ve already developed and providing opportunities to teach in different environments.

Visit our Apprenticeships and Training Courses page for more information on all the opportunities available to you, and start your career in teaching today!

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Email Marketing Tips 

Email Marketing has been around for a while now, the first one regarded as being sent in 1970 – around 50 years ago! Whilst it has been a staple of marketing for this time, most of its mechanics have stayed the same, although some additional ones have appeared over the years. And now, we go over a few tips and tricks to help your own marketing campaign.

Tip #1; Eye-Catching Content

When designing your Email, make sure the content is attractive and colourful, including images as well as text to spice things up. The more interesting and eye-catching the content is for the email, the more likely your email recipients will read through your email. Just make sure not to go overboard and use moderation, you want your email to seem appealing to the viewer and not hurt their eyes and put them off reading your emails.

Tip #2 Easy to Understand

A very important part of an email is for the recipient to be able to read and understand the email with ease, use words that are easier to understand and aren’t complex, make sure spelling and grammar are also on point as well – these can really change the meaning of sentences and understanding what is being said. That being said, you don’t have to use the simplest of words for them to understand, if you do that, you might come off as condescending, avoid using slang too, not everyone uses the same slang as you do and might not understand what you’re meaning, plus most of the time slang isn’t very professional.

Tip #3; Content Balancing

Finding a good balance of content length is vital for having an appealing email, you don’t want paragraphs advertising your product or service, no one will read that. And you definitely don’t want it to be too short, where you can’t even fully mention what you do or at least in a well explained way. And those two reasons are precisely why it is important to find some middle ground, although you’d probably want something on the shorter side – easier to read. 

Tip #4; Personalisation 

Making your email more personalised to the recipient will also make them more likely to open and read your email. Making the recipient feel like someone is actually emailing them rather than receiving some advertisement, will also increase the chances of responses back, don’t forget to be friendly as well. But like in a previous tip, don’t go overboard and be over friendly, it might come off as unprofessional and put them off.

Tip #5; Implied Consent

Whilst the UK is in the process of removing GDPR, for now let’s use it like it’s still valid, it’s against GDPR to cold call someone, and email marketing can get pretty close to that. Something that’s worth a shot and is completely GDPR compliant is gaining what’s called ‘implied consent’. This is where you can email someone first asking how they are, if they’d be interested in your service or product, and if they respond positively and not negatively – you can begin the advertising phase.

Tip #6 Experimentation 

When you’re looking for what design works, send out some emails to different recipient groups of roughly the same size and see which design gets the best responses. Compared to 50 years ago, there’s many different things you can use now to track how well the email did: 

• Open rate

The amount of recipients who have opened the email 

• Click-through rate

The amount of recipients who have clicked a link in the email 

• Unsubscribe rate

The amount of recipients who have unsubscribed from receiving emails 

Using these, you can use the statistics gathered from different tools available to decide which email design is better, a high open and click-through rate with a low unsubscribe is the way to go.

Tip #7 Best Timing

When sending your emails, timing is perfect for getting noticed. What’s considered the best time to send emails is considered 9 am to 11am – during working hours is also considered a good time. It’s also considered better to avoid sending during rush hours – 8am and 5pm.

Conclusion

Whilst some of these tips depend on your type of business, most of these can apply to all. Try to find a method that works for you using these tips, or adapt from these. 

 

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The career options in digital marketing 

Digital marketing is one of the fastest growing markets. Nearly every business needs it and will now choose it over traditional marketing methods. Here are some of the career options in this sector…

• Social media manager

As a social media manager you will be responsible for tasks such as social media strategies, creating content and advertising. Social media managers also identify trends among customer interactions to help plan digital campaigns.

Skills / behaviours needed for the role include –

• Good communication skills
• Knowledge of online marketing channels
• Have good knowledge on SEO and Google analytics 
• Creative and imaginative thinking skills
• Ability to deliver creative content

Typical responsibilities may include – 

• Communicate with online followers, respond to queries
• Monitor SEO and track web analytics
• Stay up to date with social media trends 
• Create and publish creative content daily
• Set marketing objectives and create reports

• Blogger

As a blogger, your primary job will be to write, edit, and publish content to a website or blog. Your goal is to increase traffic to the site by writing content that is relevant to and educational for the reader.

Skills / behaviours needed for the role include – 

• Creativity and adaptability 
• Creative writing experience
• Strong understanding of the companies target audience
• Exceptional writing, research and communication skills
• Have a good understanding of technology software

Typical responsibilities include 

• Generating, pitching and researching ideas for blog posts
• Maximising site traffic by using search engine optimisation (SEO) keywords
• Creating engaging and interesting topics people will read
• Write, edit, publish and advertise promoting content
• Advocating and educating your audience on your product / service

• PPC manager

As a PPC marketing manager, your role will be to oversee pay-per-click campaigns. You will be responsible for running client campaigns in Google Ads and on Bing, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Skills / behaviours needed for the role include –

• Ability to think creatively and identify and solve problems
• Attention to detail
• Ability to learn new industries and new business types quickly and can apply this knowledge to internet marketing initiatives and achieving client goals
• Ability to clearly and effectively articulate thoughts and points

Typical responsibilities include 

• Keep up to date with search engine and PPC industry trends and developments
• Monitor and evaluate search results and search performance across the major search channels
• Manage, review, and perform daily account responsibilities associated with Google Ads, Bing and other search engine and social media platforms for a variety of clients
• Provide creative copy suggestions and graphical ad templates

• SEO manager

As an SEO manager, you will oversee the company’s overall SEO strategy from planning to implementation. Your main objective is to improve the company’s ranking in search engines, particularly Google.

Skills / behaviours needed for the role include –

• In-depth knowledge of research principles and methods and experience in analysing data 
• Critical thinker and problem-solving skills
• Ability to work in a team and independently
• Can use your own initiative

Typical responsibilities include 

• Plan, develop and implement a SEO strategy
• Regularly perform thorough keywords research
• Monitor redirects, click rate, bounce rate, and other KPIs
• Suggest improvements in process and productivity optimisation
• Stay up to date with the latest SEO and digital marketing latest trends and best practices

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