Tag: Social Media Marketing

Meet Our New Social Media Manager!

February 20, 2017

IMG_9105Van West Media is extremely excited to introduce our new Social Media Manager, Stephanie Cowan! Stephanie will focus on increasing visibility, engagement, leads, and sales for our clients using their social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn. These platforms are a great way for our clients to effectively reach specific audiences and Stephanie is a master at putting together a social media strategy and creating the appropriate copy and visuals to accomplish this.

Stephanie brings to Van West Media a keenly artistic eye, sharp wit, and unbridled enthusiasm and we wanted to give her the opportunity to introduce herself to all of you:

“I am really excited to be working here at Van West Media and have hit the ground running in the social media department. My biggest focus for the first month was revamping our own Instagram account.  I am super passionate about creating unique and thoughtful content that can strengthen our brand’s voice and visibility. I want each piece of content that goes live to give pause and have reason. It is my goal to make every single aspect of a post on social focused and goal oriented. That’s what is so special about social media. You can mold the big picture by obsessing about the nitty-gritty to create something unique, flawless, and memorable.

I have also spent a great deal of time meeting with many of Van West Media’s new and existing clients, learning about their various industries, and helping them curate and tailor their specific social media profiles. This includes understanding their corporate culture and identity as well as their vision and goals moving forward.

One of the reasons I was originally drawn to Van West Media was because of the vast differences and variety between the client base. Some digital marketing agencies focus on certain niche markets, but Van West Media has a wide-ranging and exciting client roster including law firms, financial firms, fashion brands, luxury travel destinations, non-profits, and more. This diverse clientele makes my job uniquely interesting and fulfilling and means that I get to constantly create new, varied, and exciting content.

If you have not yet taken a peek, I encourage you to visit our newly revamped Instagram account! Follow @vanwestmedia for a behind-the-scenes look at all of the great work we are doing here. I look forward to continuing to improve our client’s social media profiles and if you would like to discuss your own company’s social media strategies, please reach out to me so that I can help you.”

-Stephanie Cowan

3 Reasons Why Your Business NEEDS Social Media Marketing

November 15, 2016

Every business owner understands this principle: in order for your business to grow quickly, it needs to be able to reach a wide target audience in the least amount of time as possible. Makes sense, right?

Research reports that 2 in 3 adults use social media. That’s a lot of adults sifting around social media posts every single day. If your business isn’t on social media, you simply aren’t marketing to the over 1.3 billion daily active users between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Here are 3 reasons why your business needs social media marketing.

1. Consumer Reach

Social media is the tool every business needs to reach a massive audience in a small period of time. With advertisement options, organic sharing and referrals, and the mere massive size of the active social media audience, you can reach millions of consumers overnight.

2. SEO

Sites that constantly earn traffic make their way to the top of the organic SEO rankings. What’s one incredibly effective way to direct traffic right to your website? Social media. Content strategies for SEO are the most important part of earning top search engine ranking spots today.

3. Brand Loyalty

Consumers have A LOT of options today. There are millions of competitors in every single niche industry, and it’s not so easy to distinguish yourself from the competition. One incredibly effective way to get around this obstacle is by building brand loyalty for your platform. If you develop an interested and engaged core base of consumers, they will post about your company, tell their friends, and share your content with their hundreds of acquaintances every single time.

Give your business the digital voice it deserves!

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Snapchat’s Biggest Threat is its Own Design

August 23, 2016

If you think Instagram’s new Stories feature looks remarkably similar to Snapchat’s feature of the same name, that’s because it is. Apparently, it’s completely legal to copy draw inspiration from other applications (apps). How? It turns out copyright law doesn’t protect ideas so as long as there are inherent differences in the interfaces of the competing apps. Instagram’s Stories feature is free to use and is formatted like Snapchat which has become the most popular social network among teens.

The Stories feature is a bold move on Instagram’s part. Prior to the release of Instagram Stories, there were obvious differences between the two platforms. Snapchat, with its disappearing photos, was geared more towards short-term, in-the-moment glimpses of a user’s everyday life. Instagram, however, provided a variety of filters used to create and amplify aesthetically pleasing images and videos, perfecting an album of the best parts of a users’ life for the long-term. Although it’s not the case for every user, Snapchat stories tempted users to post every day, while Instagram posts were not necessarily published as frequently.

Is Instagram declaring war on Snapchat?

…Or is the platform simply just trying to inspire more content creation from users?

The two features of Snapchat and Instagram share a lot in common:

  • Both allow 10-second clips
  • Both stories remove images after 24 hours
  • Both let you reply to stories
  • Both allow you to add custom text
  • Both have filters
  • Both have a built-in marker
  • Both let you save the media to your camera roll
  • Both show who views your story

The differences between the two are few:

  • Instagram lets you “rewind” stories
  • Instagram lets you post sections of your story as an Instagram post
  • Unlike Snapchat, Instagram doesn’t show you who screenshots your story
  • Instagram does not feature geo-filters or facial-mapping

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Whatever Instagram’s intentions may be, two things are apparent. Firstly, the new Instagram feature cannot single-handedly crush Snapchat. It may have some impact on Snapchat’s numbers – but not enough to completely sway the minds of avid Snapchat users to switch over Instagram 100 percent of the time. Secondly, the aforementioned information doesn’t mean Instagram Stories don’t have potential. In fact, it has several factors going for it. For starters, Instagram Stories is very well made; it is easy to understand and navigate in a way that is much more user-friendly than Snapchat. Most importantly, Instagram has taken a powerful hold on the social world by creating a network which allows users to easily follow new people and “experience” places all over the world through the eyes of another person. This existing sense of community makes it so much easier to have access to the everyday lives of users you may be interested in without having to find them through a username the way Snapchat users create their list of friends.

It will be interesting to see if Instagram’s new feature takes off right away or if it will be another Instagram Direct scenario (which only gained traction about three years after its initial launch). What will be even more interesting is to see how Snapchat will react to this whole ordeal.

In the past, Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) has repeatedly tried and failed to buy Snapchat. It seems to us this feature launch might be Facebook’s way of saying it’s done trying to acquire Snapchat and is taking on their niche with the highly successful Instagram app.

Your move, Snapchat.

Win $1.5 Million with Esurance Post-Superbowl Commercial

February 3, 2014

With pricey commercials during the Superbowl, Esurance used their savvy saving skills by grabbing the first commercial slot after the Superbowl. They not only saved $1.5 million by purchasing this commercial instead of one during the game, but they spread the word about it to their viewers.

The tactic was carefully planned and worked out accordingly by starting with a celebrity spokesperson. Many know John Krasinski as “Jim Halpert” from the popular NBC television series The Office and because of this, Esurance hired him to capture your attention. From there, they started to deliver their message.

By using their savings, Esurance encouraged viewers to help promote the company with by tweeting with the hashag #EsuranceSave30 to win the money they saved from placing their commercial after the Superbowl. By incorporating social media and giving their viewers incentive to participate, Esurance became a trending topic almost instantly. What added to this was how they made each tweet with the hashtag another entry to win the $1.5 million. This helped achieve constant promotion rather than a one time deal so that Esurance would remain a trending topic until Wednesday night, when they would announce the winner on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel.

The marketing doesn’t even stop there. Insurance companies are there to help you “save money” and Esurance also correlated this with their tactic of promoting their company. Many viewers don’t fully understand or realize that they were informed of Esurance and their insurance savings, but it has been engrained in their minds. Not only has the thought of saving been engrained, but the name Esurance has as well and that name will stay in their minds until the winning announcement Wednesday night.

By giving people incentive to promote for your company through social media, which is the fastest marketing tool, Esurance became the buzz everywhere since the Superbowl ended last night. This trending topic will remain trending and be constantly spread through all friends and family for the next 3 days. This makes Esurance the most influential Superbowl commercial this year (even though it was played after) because with $1.5 million to win, who wouldn’t want to join in on this promotional deal? Don’t miss out and start hashtagging #EsuranceSave30 today!