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Emojis, Engagement and the Release of iOS 10
Apple announced at a press conference marking the launch of the iPhone 7 this week that iOS 10 will officially be released on September 13, 2016.
So, not only are we in store for shiny new iPhones with wireless AirPod headphones, advanced camera options, water and dust resistance and more—we are also going to get a and a host of new features as part of Apple’s updated operating system. This includes new emojis.
Love them or hate them, emojis are here to stay and from a social media marketing point of view, they can be a valuable tool for increasing engagement and communicating with your online communities.
Emojis can speak to your audiences across language barriers, they also convey tone, which can often be misinterpreted online and via text. They can also make your brand appear friendlier, funnier, and up-to-date with younger followers.
Studies have even indicated that internet users respond to emojis because they resonate on an emotional level. We kid you not, neuroscientists have actually studied the effects of emoticons and emojis on the human brain and have found that we respond to these smiley faces in the same way that we would with a human face.
If you aren't already using emojis in your social media marketing campaigns, give them a try. You'll be amazed at the boost in engagement levels.
So, what are we getting with these new emojis? Diversity tops the list. As seen recently on Apple.com, “Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.”
We’ll see female police officers, firefighters and construction workers, dancing men with bunny ears, single parent families, female basketball players, the Rainbow Flag and much more, as seen on Emojipedia. The new-look emojis will also have a better, updated design, will be slightly larger and will also feature more animals, sports, facial expressions, food and drinks. Lovers of bacon, who don’t have the inclination to type out b-a-c-o-n, your emoji is almost here…
DID YOU KNOW?
The word "Emoji" has nothing to do with emotions, it means "picture character" in Japanese
Emojis are different to Emoticons, which look more like this :-( and :-)
July 17 is World Emoji Day
This emoji 😂 was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2015 (!!!)
Nearly half of all comments and captions on Instagram contain emoji characters
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That's it for today's blog. Thanks so much for visiting our site and have fun with those new emojis!
Laura and Jenny
SEO services for rodrigo moraes photography
We are thrilled to announce that Rodrigo Moraes Photography is Cake Media’s latest client.
Rodrigo Moraes is a Maui-based photographer, who specializes in shooting destination weddings and family portraits. We love his work, so needless to say we were delighted when he came to us looking for search engine optimization help for his website, www.rodrigomoraesphotography.com
For those of who who may not know, search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of using a number of creative and technical techniques to improve search engine rankings. The goal is to increase the visibility of a website and to bring in more traffic.
For any independent professional or online business, high rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are crucial when it comes to hooking potential paying customers.
After a complete audit of Rodrigo’s site, we began by meeting with him several times to talk strategy and to find out more about his work and style of photography. We also delivered and discussed a tailor-made proposal, outlining our SEO plans for his business.
We found that Rodrigo's site was content rich in so many ways; plenty of beautiful photographs, great use of video, a blog, plus social follow buttons for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
However, it was clear to us that there were areas in which Cake Media could add to and adjust the existing content to boost SEO.
Aside from providing services for the technical side of SEO (think meta tags, sitemaps, eliminating crawl errors, Google Adwords and so on), there’s nothing we love more than creating fresh written content.
We can’t stress the importance of good content enough. It encourages users to spend longer on your site, it can help them to find all the information they need without navigating away and—our ultimate goal—it will keep them coming back for more.
Any content on your site needs to be consistent, trustworthy and it should convey the personality of your brand. This is exactly why we wanted to spend time getting to know Rodrigo, so we could take on his “voice” when developing copy.
We aren’t about keyword stuffing, we’re all about creating well-formatted, reader-friendly content with the short and long-tail keywords carefully worked in. So far, we have already edited and rewritten sections of Rodrigo’s blog, we have penned a new About page, added in FAQs and Testimonials from previous clients, with lots more SEO strategy happening behind the scenes (we can’t tell you all our secrets).
We must warn you, SEO is not a fast process. It’s something that requires a great deal of patience and it’s easy to see why a lot of business owners may not have time to do things on their own.
That’s where we come in.
Please feel free to contact Cake Media with any questions and we’d be more than happy to help!
Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny
Stories: Instagram's Boldest Change Yet?
When we published our last blog post, discussing a huge year of change at Instagram, little did we know that one of the app's biggest releases was just hours away.
In case you haven't heard, Instagram began to roll out Stories last week. It's a new feature that lets users combine images and video, which are then turned into a reel or "story." These stories can be viewed for 24 hours and don't appear in grids or feeds.
It's not just similar to Snapchat, it's a pretty clear knock off of the clip-sharing platform, who introduced their own 10-second storytelling feature in 2013. As reported by TechCrunch's Josh Constine, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom openly admitted that Snapchat "deserve all the credit."
How to use it? Once you update your app, you'll see a series of circular avatars at the top of your IG homepage. Clips from users that you follow will be ringed with a rainbow, tap their avatar and you'll be able to watch their story. Swipe right to go to the next story and, if you want to skip, swipe left. If you want to direct message another user while viewing their story, swipe up.
Here's some great information about how to post to Stories, thanks to 9to5Mac.com.
While the video and image quality is not as polished as what you see in your profile grid, the ability to add filters, text overlays, emojis and cool neon highlighters (for giving cats laser beam vision, of course...) are fantastic additions to IG's features. As is the fact that you can post all the stories you like and they won't spam other users' feeds.
It's an audacious move, one that reminds us of the Periscope launch that swiftly signaled the demise of Meerkat. Dare we say it, it may even spell the beginning of the end for Snapchat.
One thing is for certain, in this year of transformation, we get the feeling that Instagram are not done yet.
Finding Your Online Voice
You have a website, a blog and a number of social media platforms, your online marketing strategy is in place and you’re ready to start spreading the word.
However, you don't know who you want to address, what you want to say or how you want to say it.
It’s a stumbling block facing many businesses and finding the right voice for your brand is crucial when it comes to communicating and standing out on social media.
Giving your company consistent character by using a single, recognizable voice will allow you to enter into more conversations with your followers. It will also add personality to your brand, setting you apart from your competitors. Even better, if consumers like what you’re saying, they will start sharing your content and marketing it for you.
Developing and conveying an authentic online voice for our clients is something we pride ourselves on and will always be one of the first things Cake Media addresses when taking on a new marketing role.
Need Help? Here are Some Key Things to Think About:
Who is Your Target Audience?
Are you a bar, hoping to catch the attentions of the 21-35 year-old market, a hotel targeting families, a pet store going for animal lovers or a cafe, aiming to bring in local foot traffic?
We recommend a brainstorming session, to determine exactly what kind of customers you want to target. This will help you to define WHO you will be addressing online and will allow you to think more about how your brand will communicate.
This Fourth of July tweet from @Macys was obviously written with female customers in mind and is conveyed in a chatty, friendly voice:
What Do You Want to Say?
Will your social media channels promote new products, will you be showcasing recipes and pictures of food and drink, will you be a resource for information about a particular subject such as financial advice or mechanics, are you selling clothes or showcasing a hotel?
Planning WHAT kind of things you want to say to your target audience can help to shape the online character of your business.
Posts from brewing company @newbelgium are targeted at beer lovers/bargoers and are focused on their product line. This gives them a relaxed, informative and often-humorous delivery.
How to Say It
Ask yourself—if my brand had a personality, what would it be? Fun, young, reliable, healthy, older, professional, educational, motherly, whimsical, casual?
Before you start posting, try to have a strong grasp of your online character. It will prove central as to HOW you are going to get your message across.
This tweet from @Target is friendly and relatable. It appears to be targeted at women, it is pushing the Target product line, while maintaining a casual and conspiratorial voice, furthered by the use of a winking emoji.
While it's important to maintain an authentic voice (i.e. your brand's consistent personality) online, we should note that the tone of your posts can change and you shouldn't feel restricted by one single type of delivery.
Think of tone as being the mood your business is currently in and ask yourself - if my brand was speaking right now, what would it sound like? Funny, serious, casual, informative, professional, friendly, sassy?
Telling customers that you are going to be closed for the day or talking up your new happy hour specials—they'd be communicated very differently in real-life. Think of conducting your online conversations in exactly the same way.
Still confused or (we hope not) even more confused? Connect with Cake Media and we can help!
Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny.
Welcoming a New Client: Aloha Mixed Plate
We are delighted to have Aloha Mixed Plate as our newest client at Cake Media!
In early June, we began working on a social media management strategy for AMP and spent a day on site to shoot original pictures and video of their food, employees and oceanfront location. This is a service we provide for all our clients, built into the price of our social media packages.
Our early aims include growing AMP’s follower count, increasing follower engagement levels and boosting their presence on social media, by paying special attention to Instagram and Twitter feeds that need to be populated with content.
On Facebook, where AMP employees had already done a great job in cultivating a following in excess of 10,000, we want to add video content, further images of menu items and to interact with customers in realtime.
With video, a wide selection of brand-new images and a strategy in place, we went into action on June 11.
Little over two weeks later, we’ve already seen some great results, such as a Facebook video post that reached over 12,000 people, with an average video completion rate of 95 per cent. Plus, Instagram and Twitter follower counts which are increasing by the day.
Mahalo for choosing Cake Media to be your social media management team, we are thrilled to be working with you!
Have you followed Cake Media on Instagram yet? Follow us today: @cakemediamaui
Until next time, thank you for reading! Laura and Jenny