Become Social Media Savvy with the Social Media Conference 2017

20 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Marketing, Public Speaking, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

This September, the Social Media Conference is happening again! We are big fans of the content, even more so this year because our very own Rebecca Caroe is a speaker!

Are you looking to use Social Media to benefit your business but just don’t know how?

Social Media isn’t just for kids these days. In fact, it’s one of the biggest platforms for a business to market in today’s environment. Whether it be Business to Consumer or Business to Business, the Social Media Conference 2017 provides insights on how to utilise these skills to your business benefit.

Expand your knowledge in this field through New Zealand’s biggest Social Media conference hosted by The Online Business Academy for its fourth year.

Rebecca Caroe (CEO of Creative Agency Secrets)

Marketing experts from all over the world come together to talk about their experiences with Social Media, how it helped them in their business ventures and how it can help you market to a larger audience through Social Media.

Listen

Wanita Z (Founder of the Online Business Academy)
John Kapos “Chocolate Johnny” (Chocolatier to Marketing Mogul)
Andrew Baird (Business Coach)
Our very own Rebecca Caroe on “The Art of Pre-suasion: Content, Keywords and Social.”

Discover

Omni channel Experience
Social Selling through Social Media
How to run Live Events

Learn

Be Seen, Heard and Found Online
Build and networking your brand through Social Media Outlets
Win your customers through Social Media
Deal with the difficult customers online

Master

Twitter
Facebook
Snapchat
Instagram
LinkedIn
Pinterest
YouTube
And much more

Seize the opportunity to network with business owners from all over the country and develop connections for your business. Gain information that can assist with expanding your business through Social Media platforms and understand how Social Media aids with keeping up to date with the evolving business world. If you’re serious about expanding your business, you wouldn’t want to miss Social Media Conference 2017.

SkyCity Auckland
September 15th and 16th 2017
8:00am – 5:00 pm

Use the code “REBECCA” at the checkout to get a $250 discount!

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Get early bird tickets for the Social Media Conference 2016

22 July, 2016/0 Comments/in Conferences / Exhibitions /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

Do you want to learn about Social Media to CONNECT, ENGAGE AND GROW?

Then join fellow Business Owners, Social Media peeps and other amazing people who have already registered for the Social Media Conference 2016.

Accelerate your learning of:

+ Social Media Strategy
+ Developing content that will rock your Brand
+ Using live video to project your presence
+ Networking and building online communities
+ Using Google apps to grow your business
+ Using social media to Sell to an International Market like China and the USA
+ How to sell to the new generation of Millennials
+ Combining Webinars and social media for added sales results

With table topics on:

+ Snapchat
+ Instagram
+ Facebook Business
+ Facebook Advertising
+ LinkedIn
+ Outsourcing
+ Pinterest
+ Blogging
+ Podcasting
+ YouTube
+ Facebook Live
+ and much more

If you want to grow your Business using Social Media then this is the place to be.

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The Speakers

Amanda Jordan from Google
Tom Walter form Tumblr flying in from Australia
Robert C Stern flying in from the USA and known as the King of Live Video
Pauline Stockhausen – Speaker at the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego
Natalie Cutler Welsh and Wanita Z Fourie – bringing fabulous information from the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. Both have been on TV, radio and newspapers
Andrew Baird – Digital Marketing and Business Growth Guru
Simon Young – creating magic in International Markets.

Networking

Fabulous opportunities to network. People have made significant business connections during the conference and friendships which extend beyond professional contexts.

Audience

Solopreneurs, small and medium size business owners, and people working in social media roles either within corporates or externally, community managers, bloggers, podcasters and anyone wanting to expand their knowledge and understanding of social media.

EARLY BIRD SALES END JULY 31. Book your ticket today for $560.00 which includes GST, full buffet style lunch for both days, refreshments, access to recordings of the conference speakers, prizes and much more.

Because the audience is geared towards the small/medium size business, payment plans are available. You can see the selection of plans here.

There’s a large contingent of International Business Owners booking and people from all over New Zealand. The seating is limited and is selling fast. Don’t miss out.

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Case Study: feel good joint venture for sporting website

17 June, 2016/0 Comments/in Case Studies, Marketing, Social Media /by Paul Atkinson

Recently Creative Agency Secrets oversaw a joint venture campaign between our client, Rowperfect UK, the premier rowing education website, and manufacturer Crew Stop. The goal of the campaign was threefold:

Raise awareness for National Learn To Row Day (4th June), a popular annual event in the USA but a concept that hadn’t yet carried over to other anglo-speaking countries that Rowperfect reaches;
Encourage the use of rowing gloves and reduce the stigma amongst “hard” rowers of hand protection;
Drive sales of the Crew Stop gloves stocked in Rowperfect’s online store.

Planning & Execution

Planning began in early May, when Rowperfect reached out to Crew Stop and proposed a partnership. As part of the joint venture, Crew Stop would provide gloves to give away to Rowperfect’s readership and art and assets to promote the awareness campaign, whilst Rowperfect staged a global social media campaign, tapping their 6,000+ twitter followers and 4,000+ Facebook fans.

The partnership between Rowperfect and Crew Stop made perfect sense. It allowed Rowperfect to continue to serve as a source of rowing advice and education whilst reaching the wide audience of watersports enthusiasts who had need for the Crew Stop gloves: Rowers, Scullers, Kayakers, Crossfitters, Dragon Boaters, and Waka Ama canoers.

As well as the competition to win gloves in the week that lead up to the weekend of the 4th of June, Rowperfect offered a discount code to new rowers and Creative Agency Secrets helped the client curate a new section on their website specifically targeted at learning to row for the first time. This new niche will be of value to Rowperfect readers into the future and allows the client to recruit new organic readers and clients. This approach aligned with ongoing project of creating new portals for the client’s key readerships: athletes, coxswains and coaches.

On the blog, Rowperfect published a series of articles about the purpose and uses of rowing gloves and advice around reducing the stigma of glove-wearing. On social media, Creative Agency Secrets coordinated the publication of posts advertising the three goals and the use of the hastag #NLTRD (national learn to row day). Rowers around the world adopted the use of the tag to share their rowing experiences.

1st time on the water today for the little man on #NLTRD @CRIStollerBH What a great day! pic.twitter.com/sUQ99rklJy

— Matt Lehrer (@mplehrer) June 4, 2016

Wrangle up a pal or two & head out to the boathouse! We’re going to learn to ROW. #starwars #yoda #NLTRD #learntorow pic.twitter.com/NLmHXshCox

— Rowperfect UK (@Rowperfect) June 4, 2016

National Learn to Row Day in action. Rise and Shine #Worcester #Shrewsbury #QRC #NLTRD pic.twitter.com/yosKlKFs1r

— Quinsigamond RC (@qrcrowing) June 4, 2016

Results

By strategically targeting followers of English-speaking rowing clubs with Facebook boosted posts, Rowperfect more than doubled their social media reach in the course of the campaign, increased awareness and engagement with their brand by adding over two hundred and fifty followers to their regular network, and hit internal sales targets.

For advice on arranging running joint ventures in your industry, or launching digital awareness campaigns, give us a call.

Twitter is Deprecating TweetDeck

29 March, 2016/0 Comments/in B2C, Digital media, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

If you’re a TweetDeck user, get ready for a shock: Twitter is deprecating TweetDeck.

What’s the good news?

If you don’t know about Hootsuite already, you can set up a free account. Hootsuite is very much like Tweetdeck in its appearance and I would recommend migrating to that. You can continue to manage your Twitter conversations with Hootsuite, keep track of retweets and mentions, etc. You can also manage your other social media profiles with Hootsuite, like LinkedIn. And there’s the Autoschedule function which puts your Tweet in the queue to post when the majority of your followers are actually on and looking at Twitter so they’re more likely to see it.

Althought Hootsuite would definitely be an easy migration for current TweetDeck users, I’m a big fan of Buffer because you can set up schedules for when your posts go out. Also, they show you a graph indicating when the best time to post is using their Optimal Schedule (much like Hootsuites Autoschedule, but they don’t have a pretty graph). But you can’t manage conversations through Buffer just yet. They’ve come out with a Beta program called Respond which also looks a lot like Hootsuite but right now Buffer and Respond are two different social media management tools as opposed to Hootsuite, which is literally the two in one.

Besides that, they both allow you to connect a few social media profiles for free. If you went with either of them, it’s likely you would not have to pay for the service. But, really, check out Hootsuite, TweetDeck users, the transition will be smooth, I promise!

Shuttlerock | New Zealand Software for User Generated Content

24 March, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital media, Marketing, Marketing ideas, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

PLEASE NOTE: Some of the details in this article have been rectified per recent conversations with Shuttlerock. These new details are noted below! Thanks for your feedback, Shuttlerock!

We’ve come across marketing software created by a business here in New Zealand called Shuttlerock. It sounds sort of science fiction-y and futuristic – something you might see in a Rae Bradbury novel. In a way, it could be next gen technology in content sharing and revolutionize how businesses aggregate and manage user content to their benefit.

What Shuttlerock does with user generated content…

If you’re a business and have social media channels, have you ever wanted to capture all your customer feedback and testimonials in one place? Sure, leaving it in the platform from which it originated is perfectly acceptable. But, what about putting it in the one place in which your put the majority of your efforts, i.e. your website. Right now, this information has to be collected manually and configured in an appealing way so that your traffic, your customers and followers, can see: Hey! Other people like this product and have gone so far as to say something about it on the internet!

Including content aggregation, Shuttlerock takes it a few steps further

Besides collecting user content for your team to sift through, sort, and put on display on your website, Shuttlerock also helps you promote your brand to get more user generated content. How? Contests and promotions, of course! We know that one of the best ways to get engagement online is to incentivize your followers to promote you and your brand. You can get them to share their visual content promoting your brand and reward them for doing it. If done right, you’ll get a flood of content that you can then share, directly on your site. Not only do you get to share their excitement with your other followers but they’ll also be excited to see that their content is being shared with the world. What better way to encourage and reward loyal followers!

Who is using it and how.

Shuttlerock operates in its home country of New Zealand and now Japan and the US. In recent Shuttlerock news, Lady Gaga used the program to allow her followers in Japan to upload their content to her website. These photos, directly from the source (her fandom), will be collected and used to create a poster for her Japanese ‘Cheek to Cheek’ album. Now, that’s innovative.

What I find interesting about it.

This program puts power into the hands of your marketing team in a way that can really make a difference for the brand. For one, your team can manage the content via apps, as well as share their own related content, which gives the brand a more approachable, human aspect that’s approachable. And, for two, they will have social proof of what is and is not working for the brand that can be shared with upper management. I find that extremely valuable for businesses to really make a dent in their market and bring exactly what their customers want based on their feedback.

The cost.

So, the only thing that I’m hung up on is this bit: the flat fee of $500 per month. For big businesses with marketing budgets that would make you swoon, $500 a month is a drop in the ocean. However we can’t forget about smaller businesses with much tighter marketing budgets – to whom $500 a month is completely unattainable. Shuttlerock, there’s nothing inherently wrong with your fees. I’m just suggesting you have a tiered option for businesses big and small. It could be based on company size, or social media following, even the amount of content that gets shared. Just saying.

UPDATE: From our recent contact with Shuttlerock we’ve been informed that the fees are $5,000 per month and are focusing on enterprises… BUT! they’re currently powering their way through some key partnerships with the goal to, eventually, have options for small and medium enterprises. Until then, we’ll look on Shuttlerock with starry eyes!!

But, way to go!

In a world where brands are continuously vying for attention from consumers, having visual, word-of-mouth content directly from other individuals on your website is amazing. And, as a consumer, seeing that other people just like you or from all the way across the globe also like this particular product, it just makes it more endearing! You want it, seeing and knowing that other people want it and are willing to share their opinions about it, all over the web.

Be Innovative with How You Get Testimonials

25 February, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Email, Marketing, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

When you’re new, or growing, and need social proof to prove your worth to the world

So, you’re starting out your business and you know you’ve got a good thing going. But something you don’t have yet from your clients: their endorsement of you and your brand or your product. Sure, they’ve told you they liked working with you and, of course, that made you feel good on the inside. But, with the interwebs, you need to have hard proof that says someone used your services and liked it enough to write it down in a social internet space. Like Google Reviews. Or Facebook. Or even just in an email and with your clients’ blessing. Okay, so, how do you do it?

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, or deduced from the title of this blog post, we’re talking about testimonials. Or reviews. Either or, they can be one in the same, if they contain ratings and words as friendly companions in whatever social app you’re using. There are multiple ways to get those testimonials so that, when a new possible client happens to Google you, lo and behold, they see other people like you and have used you and have provided their friendly feedback. Well, we rolled out with a fun and ‘give-back sort’ of way to request from our clients and those that have worked with us in the past. I think you’ll like it.

Before the holidays, our Chief in Command, Rebecca, came across a non-profit organization called StarJam. Briefly, I just want to let you know that what they do is amazing. Through music and performing arts, StarJam lifts kids with disabilities up, helps them to learn new skills, and gives them confidence. Just take a look at the photos they have on their website, every time I do I just want to be a part of that! Anyway, back to the story. Rebecca wanted Creative Agency Secrets to be able to give to StarJam. We also, you guessed it, wanted to get testimonials. Testimonials in one hand, giving to a good cause in the other… hmm. There’s got to be a good way to put these two together.

And SMASH!

It’s the holidays, right? We can send out a good will email to our clients! WE will donate money in your name to StarJam if you can write a few words on Google about your time with Creative Agency Secrets. So, we reached out to StarJam to get their permission, find out if they felt comfortable with our plan, requested a few images to use and then started crafting an email.

Key items we made sure to have in our email

Make your headline engaging
Make your text interesting to read
Tell the reader what you’re doing or what you’re asking them to do

4. Hyperlink to wherever they need to go or whatever you’re referring to

5. Use images

The main thing we wanted to make sure to do was inform our followers HOW to submit a review. Some people don’t have Gmail. I know, crazy world, but we had to come up with a foolproof way to say ‘This is easy! Here, we’ll show you’.

Voila! We created this easy to read image with everything needed to tell our audience how to do what we were asking them to do.

Then what? Well, we could wait around with baited breath. But, by this time, it was Christmas and we decided we’d come back to it in the New Year with fresh eyes and suntans.

And when we did… no reviews! We could have been sad and wallowed a bit but that’s now how you get good reviews. So we sent a follow-up email. Sort of a, “Hey, we know you were busy over the holidays, but…” reminder. Good idea, right? Of course.

But when you’ve asked the same way twice and you still get no response

You try another tactic. This time, we called, or in some cases walked over to, those who had worked with us in the past to ask them, oh so kindly, to provide us with a review while we donated to a good cause in their name. Sometimes it just takes the glimmer in your eye, the inflection in your voice, or just good ole human contact to make the connection you need.

And now we’re on the MAP!

Tips to those using Google reviews!

For one, you need 5 reviews to be able to see your star rating.
For two… even if you have 5 star ratings for all 5 of your Google reviews… somehow you still only rate 4.8 stars

Number two will remain a bit of a mystery.

I hope this helps any startup businesses out there looking to get on the map as well with testimonials and reviews. As they say, right now, the BEST way to get business is by word of mouth. And online rating systems like Google, Facebook, and others are the next best things with the worldwide web!

How to Get Better Engagement on Facebook and Twitter

4 November, 2015/0 Comments/in Case Studies /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

Return on Investment is incredibly important, and when it comes to soft marketing tools like Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to think that putting up a link and a bit of text would get your followers from your page to your website and buying. But social media is, and has been, a marketing tool that requires just as much finesse as print, email, and other traditional marketing tools.

So, how can you get better engagement on Facebook and Twitter?

The latter half of this month we worked to promote an international conference held simultaneously in London and Sydney called the Change in the Age of Disruption. The conference was put on by the Change Management Institute, a global non-profit institute. The goal was: increase ticket sales using Twitter, Facebook, and email. Engagement was down and it was time to get them paying attention. Collectively, we came up with a marketing plan for post ideas. People love variety in their content and they love images. Your images should grab their attention enough for them to stop, read your copy (and make it short, because you don’t have a lot of time with them) and hopefully get them to click through to wherever you’re leading them.

For this particular conference, our one-two, one-two needed to have key elements to get followers to play along.

Ask questions to get the audience listening
Offer links to articles that related directly to them
Inform them about the conference, news from and about the speakers
Conference-adjacent information like local restaurants and hotels in the area
Ticket details

After having a bit of a soft start for the first week to make sure we had the right footing, we launched into putting this content up with images we felt could make the audience pause for a moment with us and, hopefully, be more aware of the brand. Once they were aware of the brand and felt connected to it, they would be more likely to want to buy tickets and attend the conference.

Within three weeks time, for Facebook and Twitter, followers increased by 7%

Below you’ll find the Twitter Analytics snapshot from September and October:

Our snapshot for a month-over-month view of Twitter Analytics reflects:

164% increase in tweet quantity
89% in tweet impressions (how many people saw the tweets)
189% increase in profile visits
128% increase in mentions (how many people were using the Twitter handle in their tweets)
94% increase in follower quantity from the followers gained the month before

Overall, the increase in posts and content type really helped to get people interacting, watching and paying attention. For Twitter, using applicable hashtags also helps to get new eyes on your content and this will help contribute to engagement increases in most cases.

Facebook Analytics are a little different and we’ll give a brief overview of just a couple of them. The below graph is a reflection of the increase in visits from September to October.

Visits translates to: someone goes directly to your page. This means whatever content you’re posting and is showing up in their feed (if they’re following you) is engaging enough to get them to come find you. Or, they come in from a Google search or from the social media buttons on your website.

With post reach, you would think that all your followers see your posts, which would be amazing, but in truth only a percentage actually do.

When you’re not boosting your posts, only your followers will see your content. So, when you follower base increases only a little at a time, you don’t see much of an ‘organic’ reach. Organic translates, simply, to the number of people you didn’t have to pay money to Facebook to get to see your content.

And as a quick overview, these were the statistics from Google Analytics for the conference website for September and October. As compared to the month prior, more visitors were returning to the site who had previously visited.

Whereas the sessions, or the length of time a visitor spends on a website, dramatically increased which meant people were finding the content there worth reading and decided to stay a while.

In the length of time spent for the conference, the overall engagement went up significantly!

Without having paid to reach more followers on Facebook or for Twitter ads, you can still see that the time spent creating more posts, using images and graphics, writing short copy and using hashtags with a well-laid plan can really get people paying attention to your brand. And if they’re paying attention to your brand, they very well may end up becoming a loyal, buying customer or advocate for it as well.

Can Staff Destroy your Brand using Social Media

27 May, 2015/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Digital media, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

We had a great event with MyHR this morning to answer this question for business owners.

Clue – the answer is “yes”!

The longer answer is that it will probably only be a total destruction if you do not have clear policies in place or if your company has something to hide and is not clearly communicating to customers, staff, stakeholders and shareholders.

The slide decks by Rebecca Caroe and Jason Ennor are below.

Watch the video on the Creative Agency Secrets YouTube Channel.

Any questions – please get in touch. We are happy to offer a free 20 minute phone chat to prospective clients.

Internship at Creative Agency Secrets

16 May, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Johan Ericson

My time as “The Intern”

My name is Johan Ericson and I’m a marketing student from Sweden. I’ve just completed a three-month internship at Creative Agency Secrets and feel that in a short space of time I’ve learned a lot. Aside from having the benefit of getting to know the people and work environment at CAS, I got to experience how a marketing agency works in the real world. With a broad range of daily activities and interesting one off tasks, I quickly found myself dealing with actual work for actual clients. Some of the skills I have developed during my time at Creative Agency Secrets:

Blogging: One of the first things I did as a intern was to start a blog, “The Intern“. Through this assignment I learned how to use WordPress as well as learning to write and when to publish my content.

Social Media: Having managed multiple Social Media accounts for clients across a range of mediums in Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). I’ve learnt some of the theory behind Social Media (what to post, when to post etc) as well as some of the technological tricks you can use to drive traffic back to your website. Learning both the theoretical and technological aspects of Social Media have helped develop my skillset and increased my competence in this area.

Google Analytics: During my time, I’ve learnt how website success can be measured. I’ve learnt about the importance of reducing bounce rate, and how the information gained from analytics helps make websites better for both the user and the administrator.

Client Meetings: After spending time with clients and planning and preparing for meetings, not only has my level of comfort increased in these situations but I also have gained a greater understanding of the needs and pressures potential clients have which allows us to help them better.

Marketing Tools: During my time with Creative Agency Secrets, I’ve learnt to use many different marketing tools. This has allowed me to better help clients and broaden the range of skills and services I can now offer.

During the brief time I spent at Creative Agency Secrets I feel I’ve learnt a lot and gained a well-rounded experience. I’ve developed my skillset and have a better understanding to real life marketing which will help me to take the next step forward in my career.

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