About Sky Alphabet Social Media Inc. Digital Marketing company in Vancouver, Canada
We are an award-winning social media agency. We deliver audiences and results across all of the major platforms. We have a B2B focus. Located in Vancouver, BC, we excel at Twitter but have excellent insights into how to grab audiences across Facebook, In
Where things get exciting is when social media networks are used with digital marketing tactics. This is how brands can stand out. Fast.
Were the Vancouver social media marketing agency Vancouver loves. Reach out today.
Check Out Our ServicesQamp;A with Steve Yanor of Sky Alphabet
Whats the biggest opportunity brands have when it comes to social?
If youre a public company you simply cant ignore social media. Its too risky.
My advice is to take your marketing budget and carve out $100K and spend it on social media. You know what thats going to do to your market cap?
The rationale for this is that firms routinely plan and spend onerous amounts of time and resources on their investor days. You couldnt fit all of the investors on social media in the worlds largest stadium. Its every CEOs dream come true (→ read more on corporate social media strategy).
The other consideration is that only 60% of large firms have a documented social media strategy. Thats a big opportunity for smaller firms looking to grow.
This is why you see the direct-to-client brands doing so well: they use social to their great advantage while bigger slower-moving brands fight over what you can say.
Say what you want. You know the rules: theyre the same for a press release.
Your shareholders will probably say its about time you started exploiting social! If youre a good brand youll rise.
The bottom line is that any brand with a marketing budget should have a formal social media strategy. Plan your work work your plan.
Social media is one of the most cost effective ways to expand your influence improve your reputation position your brand connect with customers and increase sales.
Why Start a Social Media Marketing Agency?
Social media is the key to making someone catch their breath. To a large extent social delivers a captive audience. Not to mention the social platforms offer creative possibilities you just cant find anywhere else.
Instagram Stories is the new form of television ad. Its micro-targeted and is so beautiful.
A recent industry study showed that LinkedIn has become a top priority for B2B marketers. For professional service firms LinkedIn is an ideal social network.
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-2019/
Digital know-how is no longer optional. Clients has moved past web design. Now youre seeing formats invented for social media elbow into websites. Look at Instagram Stories! Its officially a new web page format now. This is brand new.
With the new Stories AMP format you get animation and a full screen immersive mobile experience right from your own website. You can see it in action here.
We know from experience that consistent social media — hitting singles day in and day out — delivers results. And so does tactical SEO. Drive traffic with social to web pages optimized by SEO. Boom. Thats a winning move.
If youre a web designer that is only doing web design thats a tough sell.
Web design alone just doesnt cut it any more. People are spending waaaay too much time with social media for web design to make a dent like it used to. Web design is still an important endpoint but the filling is social.
A great looking website isnt the number one priority any more. Its social. Its site speed. Its SEO. Its messaging.
On the other side of the ledger you have leagues of pay-per-click firms that are stepping all over themselves. Cost per click is way up and the quality of clicks are down. Where are the good clicks coming from? Social.
Nothing beats pay-per-click like good SEO. But good SEO is tough. It requires a lot of measurement and constant high quality traffic. But with a good social strategy youve got both. Youre wired right into a wealth of audience data and segmentation opportunities.
The thing with social media is that you cant do it ’on the side.’ Its too much work.
Where Are The Best Opportunities?
There are a lot of great opportunities. Combining SEO and social is a killer marketing tactic. Combining Instagram ads with certain Facebook ad formats can deliver impressive results.
Twitter remains criminally underrated.
One of the big advantages we have is that were the only agency to stick by Twitter. Everybody ditched Twitter! We made a long-term bet that is only now starting to pay off. For a lot of our corporate clients Twitter is a superior channel for a lot of reasons.
The number one reason is that Twitter has superior organic reach. Thats the reason why Facebook became so massive: they used to show your audience your posts. Now they dont. But Twitter still does. This is a big deal.
For many clients Twitter is a far far better option than Facebook or Instagram. In a lot of cases its not even a close call.
The number two reason we like Twitter is that Twitter users are loyal. They see a fellow brand on Twitter and a big checkbox gets ticked.
The typical Twitter user also uses other social platforms so you can combine LinkedIn and Instagram to achieve a lot more than if you only use a single platform.
Apart from Twitter we continue to see fat SEO budgets and digital ad spend shift into social media. Forrester was one of the first to conclude that social media is ’the channel that best suits engaging digital-first buyers.’ Its true.
See some pricingWhats a Typical Day at Sky Alphabet?
Busy! We open at 6:30 am. The last post happens at 9:30 pm or later. Were always in the social media accounts of our clients looking for opportunities to engage. There is never a shortage opportunities.
Theres a creative meeting once a day where we review marketing objectives and competitive materials. Were always on top of the creative looking for higher clickthrough rates or whatever the metric is.
One of the best ways is to combine some sort of organic strategy – audience development or content marketing or SEO – with paid Instagram or Facebook ads.
Were transitioning to a 24 hour operation so we can work with brands around the world. We see a lot of opportunities everywhere but the social media and SEO combination is a powerful one.
What Are The Best Social Media Networks For Business?
Anyone can develop an audience on both Twitter and LinkedIn. For B2B brands these two social networks offer very good possibilities just by clicking ’follow.’
Many people are comfortable searching Google but they dont think of searching Twitter or LinkedIn. They should! The search results are from the last week not two years ago. This is especially useful for technology companies.
We wrote a guide to growing your audience on Twitter that any business can use.
Having a good Twitter account sends the signal that a brand knows what its doing.
There is no question that growing your audience takes time. But its worth it.
Especially in the professional services space — lawyers dentists private equity financial advisors fintech companies VC-funded startups where there is loads of competition — mortgage brokers investment advisors accountants decorators real estate agents home security firms plumbers — for all of these competitive categories Twitter is perfect.
Twitter is unrivaled for its access to institutions and VCs. Theres a lot of money on Twitter.
The thing that most people dont know is that a platform like Twitter gives you direct access to anyone that follows you through a secure email channel. What a great feature. So you can rely on that when youre ready.
A lot of people make the mistake of sending these direct messages: thanks for following me and so on. Keep your powder dry. Wait for the right opportunity.
There are some pretty big traps out there. Social media is a public forum. Be clear about your goals.
Do you want to improve your search results? Use social. Do you want to improve your reputation? use social. Do you want to build the value of your company? Definitely use social. There is a long list of use cases that most people havent considered.
Whats Next in the World of Social Media?
Theres a huge side of data with social. Thats the opportunity. And thats where were going.
In many respects social media marketing is still in its infancy. But the process of tapping someone on the shoulder and relating to them is as old as the pyramids probably older.
There are probably cave paintings of people tapping each other on the shoulder and saying hey: theres a lion in that bush!
The voice and awareness components are what social media boils down to: tapping the right people on the shoulder and having an ongoing conversation with them. If they feel like it.
You have to tread carefully. You have to listen and you have to be aware of whats happening in a conversation.
What are Some of the Big Opportunities with Social Media?
If you think of social media as pre-marketing or ’pre-sales’ channel you begin to see the possibilities.
If you see it first as a sales channel then you are headed into the danger zone. Social media is a pre-sales channel. Its a touchpoint. Its where you rack up points for being a good brand and a good online citizen.
Social media a perfect place to be friendly and likeable. Its one of the only places you can show off the finer points of your brand: your sense of humour. Your wisdom. All the lessons youve learned. Its a soft sell but in the process there can be tremendous goodwill and respect established.