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Happy New Year!
How best to describe 2016? Well...it was certainly eventful and, like most, we weren't too unhappy to bid farewell to those tumultuous 12 months, come December 31.
But wait! Last year wasn't all doom and gloom and certainly, in a business sense, it was very good to us.
As sisters who love online marketing but have very different skill sets, we'd casually toyed with the idea of setting up our own company for a while, until we decided to go for it in early 2016. Officially registered as a business in April, Cake Media emerged as a new Maui startup and we are delighted to have worked with so many great Maui businesses since then. Also, we must admit, we've been pleasantly surprised at how our small company has grown in such a short space of time.
We'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone that worked with Cake Media over the last year. Social media management, graphic design, SEO work, content writing, consulting and more, we are so lucky to be doing what we love and feel honored that so many of you have chosen to work with us.
Happy New Year to each and every one of you and here's to a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017!
Laura and Jenny
Instagram: New 'Likes' and Comment Control
Instagram announced more changes yesterday, with a range of comment control features that are intended to make the social media platform a “welcoming place for everyone.”
As seen in Tuesday’s blog from Instagram co-founder and CEO, Kevin Systrom, users now have the ability to like individual comments and—as the feature rolls out throughout the week—you may notice that each comment now has a heart next to it.
As Systrom wrote, “Liking lets you show support and encourages positivity throughout the community.”
From a social media marketing point of view, this is a great time-saving and engagement-building feature. Some Instagram comments certainly call for an individual response, especially when it comes to customer service queries. However, when you simply want to acknowledge a comment or show your appreciation to a fellow user, you can now tap the heart icon in much the same way that you’d give the thumbs-up on Facebook, double tap an image or ‘like’ a tweet.
The photo-sharing platform has also introduced a way of turning comments off on any post, allowing the image to stand on its own and removing the opportunity for cyberbullying and offensive remarks. Trolls, zero. Instagram, one.
Users can also now remove followers from their private accounts, without blocking them and without notification. As Systrom added, “In the past, once you approved a follower, there was no simple way to undo that decision without blocking them. Going forward, if your account is private, you can remove followers by going to your list of followers and tapping the … menu next to any person’s name.”
There’s more. Another addition to Instagram comments is the ability to anonymously report self-harm posts—connecting people who may need help with helplines and organizations that can offer support.
Making the internet a more welcoming place, taking on online harassment and adding another way to engage with fellow users, we are all in favor of Instagram’s latest changes.
Released this week, the new features should now be available to you. Engage and enjoy!
Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny
SEO Work For Aric Becker Photography
It has been such a pleasure to work with Maui photographer Aric Becker in recent weeks.
He is an excellent sports, commercial, editorial and portrait photographer, who relocated to Maui from Seattle in 2013.
For Aric and family, a move across the Pacific brought about plenty of changes, including the need to start his established photography business again from the ground up.
Golfer Jordan Rodgers, shot by Aric Becker on Maui in April, 2016.
When Aric approached us to inquire about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for his website, www.aricbecker.com, we were excited to help him continue with the growth of his Maui business.
For those who may not be familiar with SEO, in short, it is a way of combining a range of creative and technical techniques to improve organic (unpaid) search engine rankings. The goal is to increase the visibility of a website, rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing and, ultimately, to bring in more site traffic and paying customers.
At Cake Media, our client work will always begin with an informal chat and we met with Aric several times over coffee to discuss our services, strategy and to examine the existing content on his site. Once we had a clear idea of what he wanted and how we could help, we delivered a bespoke proposal, outlining our plans for increasing SEO.
Aric is great at getting out there, shooting a wide variety of subjects and cross-marketing on social media. His easy-to-navigate site already had a wealth of high-quality visual content, including shots from portrait sessions, editorial work and photography from local sporting events such as The Maui Invitational (basketball), The Hyundai Tournament of Champions (golf) and the NFL Pro Bowl (football).
However, after completing a full audit of Aric’s site, we knew that we could be of assistance in several areas.
We started with Jenny working on the technical side of things, including research, development and implementation of keyword strategy, adding and/or optimizing URL slugs, title tagging and more.
Meanwhile, Laura began work on content development. Creating unique written content is something that we love to do and It so important to have fresh, error-free, readable copy with relevant keywords on your site. It offers an insight into you and your business, makes for a much better user experience and, done the right way, will drastically improve your search engine rankings.
After interviewing Aric, we rewrote his Bio to tell the story of how he became a photographer. He has a great story by the way, you can check it out here.
We also created a new FAQ page, where site users could easily discover the answers to any immediate questions. This also gave us the opportunity to work in more relevant keywords, to tell prospective customers more about Aric's work and, of course, to encourage users to spend longer navigating around the site.
Then we began the process of working back through Aric’s blogs, dating back to January 2015. We increased the length of the posts, edited the spelling and grammar, added in more background information and—you guessed it—worked in those all-important keywords.
As with any SEO project, this is not a fast process and requires plenty of updates and staying on top of keyword trends. We'll be revisiting Aric's site many times in the coming days and weeks to analyze the effects of our work and to adjust aspects of our strategy accordingly.
Do you need help with SEO? Don't know where to start? Get in touch with us today and we can help!
Thank you for visiting, Laura and Jenny
Let’s Talk Hashtags
As online marketers, we regularly get asked about hashtags—where did they come from, why do we use them and how do we use them across different social media sites?
In this blog post, we hope to answer some of those questions.
First of All, Where Did Hashtags Come From?
Already in use on internet chat rooms where the use of a pound sign would categorize topics into groups, hashtags first gained traction on Twitter where they were used to search for content. It all started here, when techie Chris Messina proposed their use in August 2007:
Initially the idea was rejected, “[Twitter] told me flat out, ‘These things are for nerds. They’re never going to catch on,” Messina told The Wall Street Journal's Elana Zak in 2013.
However, Messina started using the # symbol and convinced some of his peers to do the same. During the Californian wildfires in October 2007, Messina managed to encourage others to label their tweets using the hashtag #sandiegofire. With the subject widely discussed and easily trackable on Twitter, they began to take off.
Fast forward to 2009 and Twitter fully embraced the hashtag, adding hyperlinks to the tags and integrating a search box into profile pages so users could discover even more content.
Eventually hashtags were adopted by Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and well, just about anyone…
Why Do we Use Them?
In the simplest terms, hashtags are just like keywords and adding them to your posts will help you to share your content with a much wider audience.
They will also help you to research your target market, categorize your posts, publicize your campaigns and enable you to find relevant content and communicate with other brands and influencers.
Your online visibility will grow through the correct use of hashtags and and your follower count and number of likes will improve as a result.
How to Use Them
One of the most important parts of using hashtags the right way, is doing your research. Before you start using them to market your brand, try and find the hashtags that are popular and relevant to your industry and location. Make a list and refer back to it every time that you post.
For example, if you are a restaurant in New York City, search for popular hashtags that relate to food and drink in general and then food and drink found specifically in NYC. If you are a real estate business on Maui, find hashtags that are relevant to both real estate on Maui and Maui as a destination.
Whatever you do, don’t use hashtags that have no relevance to what you are posting such as tagging Nike in a post about your restaurant, just to get eyes on your content. Don’t make your hashtags too long (people will not read them and won’t be inclined to reuse them) and don’t use spaces or punctuation.
Also, remember that every social media platform is different and your hashtag strategy should be catered to the channel that you are using. For example, Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post. However, we wouldn't dream of using that many tags on Facebook.
In fact, we wouldn't recommend going above 20 tags on Instagram—the overuse of hashtags is not a good thing, it appears spammy and devalues the quality of the post. A gorgeous picture with somewhere between 15-20 tags is the best formula for us. Check out the leaders in your field, take a look at influencers and find what works for you.
When hashtagging on Facebook, you must take care not to over-tag or engagement will plummet. In our marketing, we try not to hashtag every single Facebook post and when we do, we keep it to a minimum of between one and three tags.
When it comes to Twitter, try and limit them to two per tweet. You only have 140 characters to work with in the first place and studies (courtesy of Quicksprout) have shown that tweets with 1-2 hashtags have 21 per cent more engagement!
That's it for today's blog and we haven't even touched on hashtags for Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr and more (#sorry). Although we have only scraped the surface of hashtag use in this blog, we hope that it can help you in your social media marketing efforts. If you are still confused and would like our help, contact Cake Media today.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful weekend!
Laura and Jenny
Facebook Ads for an Exciting New Client
The popularity of adult coloring books has surged in recent years and today, you can find them on the bestseller lists of almost every bookstore and online seller.
These coloring books—filled with beautifully intricate black and white illustrations—have provided a form of art therapy for many adults, offering a new way to relax, be creative and to meditate and practice mindfulness.
We are privileged to be working with Maui artist Matthew Smith, who has recently released his own adult coloring book, titled Color Me Buddha—Express Yourself to De-Stress Yourself.
The illustrations in Smith’s book are stunning and, as seen in Color Me Buddha:
“His motifs bring to life mythic struggles of man versus beast that will rouse your creative muse. The exquisite details Matt weaves into each of his creations reels you back to a place of solemn contemplation with images of animal strength and feminine grace, before finally drawing you toward the serenity of a tropical garden awaiting your personal touch of color. Let your creative energy flow to reach a place of harmony and meditation as you enter the world of Color Me Buddha.”
Here at Cake Media, we have been providing marketing support to Matt in the shape of Facebook Ads—developing optimized ad sets to raise awareness of his new book, pushing targeted users towards the Color Me Buddha Amazon page with a clear call to action and continuously watching the data and adjusting accordingly to ensure we get the best return on investment.
In addition to our skills with Facebook Ad campaigns, we offer a number of creative and marketing services, including; graphic design, content creation, SEO and social media management.
You may want us to help you from the ground up with every facet of your online marketing, or even just one aspect of getting your name out there, like our work for Matt with Facebook Ads. Whatever your needs, feel free to call us today!
Published by Beyond Words, you can view Color Me Buddha here!
Thank you for visiting. Laura and Jenny