#blastcreative, what’s all about? If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media, you probably know what a hashtag is. Sadly, you may not know how to use one properly. Just about everyone has seen a tweet or Facebook status update in which #every other #word has a #hashtag attached to it. You might have also noticed hashtags on very long phrases (#kindoflikewhatisbeingwrittenhere). While hashtags do make it easier for others to find your content or to get a certain topic trending, they only really work if they are used properly. Here are a few tips for doing exactly that.

Keep It Simple

First of all, hashtags should never go on long phrases or anything that is too unique. Yes, some writers are good at using this exactly strategy for comedic effect, but they aren’t trying to start a conversation across social media. If you want to grab everyone’s attention with a hashtag, put it on a short phrase that can be easily repeated, preferably one that is a single word. Keep in mind that putting a space in a hashtagged phrase will only result in the first word being tagged, so any phrase you want to get trending should be easy to read without any spacing.

Do Not Hashtag Every Word on Your Post

Putting a hashtag on every word on a tweet or a post not only looks unprofessional, but it will fail to get anybody’s attention. You are essentially trying to start a conversation about every individual word you write. That makes your post read more like spam than anything that is supposed to advertise your services or start a trending topic.

Look for Trending Hashtags

If you’re using hashtags and social media for marketing purposes, it always helps to search Facebook or Twitter for trending topics. By borrowing certain hashtags, you can generate traffic to your website or social media accounts. Just make sure you know what a hashtag really means before you use it. You don’t want to borrow a hashtag that turns out to have nothing to do with what you want to talk about or sell. Using an unrelated hashtag looks desperate at best and offensive at worst. Always know what a conversation is about before you jump in.

For all of your Social Media Marketing needs, please contact us today!

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You’ve seen the minimal, graphical representations known as emojis everywhere – even if you don’t send emails or text frequently. Popular as addendums to notes; or sometimes used as messages all by themselves, emojis are now forging a new niche in advertising, where their capacity for communication has already been employed by industry giants such as Domino’s Pizza and the World Wildlife Federation.

First of All: What Is an Emoji?

An emoji isn’t merely a picture – it’s a character of text in the form of an image. Your browser actually treats it like a language, and the images are uniform in this way. For example, Domino’s might tweet pizza emojis to followers; if you wanted to send a pizza emoji to a friend, you could use the same one as Domino’s. There are, of course, multiple different kinds of pizza emojis; the point is that the same ones available to the pizza giant are also available to you. The word emoji, itself, comes from the Japanese and means “picture, writing, character.”

The verdict is in: people love emojis. They’re a succinct and visually-appealing way to convey a quick message, as well as to immediately identify the company in the breakneck pace of mobile advertising. If your local zoo, for example, tweets out a message with 5 lions as emojis, this could quickly suggest that they just got an import of five new lions – and now would be a great time for that zoo visit you’ve been putting off.

Making Sure Emojis Work for Your Brand

While it’s true that brands can make and use their own emojis, these won’t be considered a part of the official emoji language supported universally by mobile applications and browser. And since the whole point of a company sending out such messages is for public consumption, sending one out that browsers can’t recognize defeats the purpose of advertising.

As is clear, the best way to utilize emojis is on social media platforms. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? The right combination of the two energizes your message, and gives it priority over all the other businesses out there that send out the same entirely word-based tweets and Facebook Wall message week after week.

Businesses That Have Seen Success with Emoji Advertising

There’s a general rule of business: if you want to know what’s successful, watch what the giants are doing. After all, they’ve got expensive and robust analytics at their disposal, and rarely do anything without tons of market research strongly suggesting success. Dove – the soap-maker – uses emojis liberally; in fact, the company made its own, and then made these available for download so that others could use them. Here are a few others:

• Burger King made chicken fries emojis as part of a campaign to announce the return of this food item upon customer request.
• NBA 2016 champions the Cleveland Cavaliers made a string of emojis featuring their current roster of players
• Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and rapper Wiz Khalifa have made emojis bearing their likeness
• Auto giant Ford Motor Company has also gotten into the emoji spirit

By all accounts, then, it seems as though emoji advertising is beneficial. They make it easier to convey a message in the limited space available for getting your message across on a Smartphone or tablet, and some say that they could form a big part of the future of mobile advertising.

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Although it might not seem so at first glance, beauty is one of the more dynamic properties throughout history. From thin to plus-size, you can see different representations of what men and women find desirable in different eras. There was a time when “extra” size was especially attractive, because it suggested wealth and prosperity, for example. Today, in a time when social media and the ubiquity of internet access has made multiple forms of beauty very apparent, the people are responding positively to many of the unique results that are emerging.

Hashtag HonorCurves

Let’s face it: up until the last few years, during which social media has exploded as a primary means of business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer communications, you were inundated with images of super-skinny models as the overriding standard of beauty. Although both men and women have to deal with looking at models, and then looking at their own body and feeling subpar; most would agree that this is an issue that especially affects women.

Facebook user Sara Sofia Almeida grew tired of always having to compare her body to the popular mass media images. Using the hashtag #honorcurves#, she sought to have all the people out there appreciate their bodies and realize all the amazing things it can do – swim, run, hug people, love, laugh, and enjoy life. Basically, her body positivity contribution was that you should manage your perception of yourself, and don’t let the media define you. Her post received thousands of likes and dozens of comments; the hashtag itself was created by a young lady name Honorine, and has been used nearly 300,000 times to date.

Hashtag BigFinesBreakTheInternet

Yet another movement that celebrates larger women; the Big Fines Break the Internet hashtag was started to help women feel more positive about their bodies; particularly to help combat the results of studies showing that 54% of women between 18-40 feel dissatisfaction with their bodies. The 2014 survey done by Glamour showed that body negativity was actually growing worse, since back in 1984, a similar poll showed that just 42% of women in this age-range felt unhappy. The cause? Big magazines and social media – which proliferate the message that one kind of body is attractive. #BigFinesBreakTheInternet# is seeking to help change that perception.

Dove Gets Into It

Soap and body care company Dove jumped into the body positivity fray and launched a campaign that may be the largest yet. The #ChooseBeautiful# hashtag caught on like wildfire, when it was revealed in a study that 96% of women don’t choose the word “beautiful” to describe their bodies. This social media campaign has springboarded off the success of the Choose Beautiful hashtag to launch the Speak Beautiful variant, which encourages women to talk positively about their bodies with each other, to help realize their gains in self-esteem and self-perception.

A Celebration of Culture and Modesty

Melanie Elturk is Muslim, and despite that religions staunchly conservative appearance requirements for women, she’s taken to social media to show that girls can be attractive even in conservative garb. Her Haute Hijab movement is big on Instagram, where she showcases herself and other Muslim women wearing fashionable headscarves and other accouterments.

To celebrate your business on Social Media, please contact Blast Creative today.

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When you think of social media, the uber-site Facebook is probably the first thing that comes to mind, given the billions of profiles on that platform. However, with an Alexa rank of 2, Youtube is actually ranked higher than that eponymous network. With this knowledge alone, it’s pretty much a certainty that you should be doing everything you can to create a presence on the ‘Tube for your brand; and it all starts with creating a YouTube channel and making your first video.

Youtube: A Method to the Madness
You might wonder – how the heck can I get any videos I make seen by many people? This is a good question; after all, there are hundreds of millions of videos on there, and you’d need to find a way to distinguish yourself from the chaff. So – where do you start?

First of all, YouTube has a subscriber system; this is the key to views. When someone watches a video that you’ve made, there’s a good chance that they’ll subscribe to it. Of course, the better the video, then the greater the likelihood that people who watch it subscribe. But this isn’t the only factor; after all, you may watch 20 videos a day on YouTube – you certainly aren’t going to subscribe to every single one of them, right?

Keywords matter, too. Each of your videos should incorporate a choice word or two that describes your product into the title and in the description box. That way, your video will also show up with a batch of videos with similar content, thereby increasing your view rate.

3 Must-Dos for Building a YouTube Family
This realization leads you to the next thing: you must continually put out good videos. People are even more likely to subscribe to your channel if you consistently put out good content, which then means that videos from your channel will show up on their personal YouTube landing page every time they navigate to the website. So, in sum:

1. Make videos that you would want to watch (which means that pure promotion is out. How many people do you know who skip the show to watch the commercials? Exactly).
2. Remind people to subscribe if they like your video – this is the call-to-action, and it’s as important for videos as it is for copy.
3. Devise a schedule for making videos regularly, so that you increase the rate at which people subscribe, as well as the total amount of money you make from people clicking on the small banner advertisement that show up at the bottom of each video, and at the far right hand side of the page.

As for what kind of videos to make? You’ve got a lot of leeway here, but that doesn’t mean some aren’t generally better than others. Comedy, for example, draws in viewers like honey does flies. Although most businesses can incorporate comedy into their pitch, this isn’t always easy to do consistently, and sometimes, the actual business message can get lost in the laughter.

A tried-and-true method of drawing in viewers is making how-to videos. People are ALWAYS looking for help in that respect; for example, if you’re an air conditioner repair company, you can release a video showing people how to check for problems with their home comfort system, to determine if they need an inspection. For stuff like this, it’s better to target locally, by using geo-targeted keywords such as “air conditioner repair New York.”

The takeaway? Add YouTube to your slate of social networks. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then imagine how much a video’s worth.

Contact Blast Creative if you are interested in our Social Media Marketing Services.

If you are a business owner in any of these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate, or any business owner and want more information on Internet Marketing, please contact Blast Creative today!

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Blast Creative specializes in Roofing Contractor Marketing, we assist roofing companies just like yours to get to the top of the search engines. We are one of the first companies in Billings, Montana to offer search engine optimization as well as Social Media Marketing.

Roofing Contractor SEO Services should consist of more than content writing!  True SEO consists of links, keywords, blogs/content writing, social media and backlinks. You need to be doing all of those things if you want your website to come in the search engines.

If you want to know why your competitor is beating you in the organic search, it’s a simple fact that they are doing more SEO than you! You can’t buy your way to the top of the search engines. You have to earn it, with a lots of White Hat SEO!

Are there broken links on your website? Is your website mobile or responsive? At Blast Creative we do a complete site analyzes and fix what’s broken. We plan out a strategic Marketing and SEO Plan that fits your needs.

If you are a Roofing Contractor in need of Marketing and SEO Services, we are here to assist you. Our program is month to month, there are no long term contracts. Without a contract, we have to deliver month to month.

With so many companies offering Roof Contractor SEO these days, we know that it’s hard to decide what type of Roofer SEO is best for your business. Most monthly services can be quite expensive and you’re required to part with your money in advance with no guarantee you’ll see results.

We not only do SEO for Roofing Companies, but for any company wanting to come up in the search engines, increase phone calls & web leads. If you are looking for SEO Services, please contact Blast Creative today!

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There is a famous saying that goes like this “you only have one chance to make a good first impression.” Nothing could be truer when it comes to writing headlines for your blogs, articles, eBooks or any other online content.  Without magnetic headlines, you may not be able to grab the attention of your reader and motivate him/her to continue reading past your headline.

Statistics show us that an average of eight out of ten people searching for information online will first read the headline, and out of these ten only two will be persuaded enough to read the rest of your content. These statistics, clearly answer the question “what is in a headline?” the answer being “power.” So, if you are an online content marketer or a copywriter, developing magnetic headlines is a valuable skill you should possess if you want to create clicktivism.  Below are some tips on how you can write magnetic headlines:

Start with the Headline
While the headline might seem like the most challenging part of writing (at times it is), you should always try to start your writing with the headline first. That is because the headline is the promise you will give to readers, so it must clearly communicate what you intend to deliver to the reader. Of course, before creating the headline you need to have a clear understanding of your subject matter. Once you have identified your subject matter or what the content of your writing will be, go ahead and create a headline. If you write the headline last, you will be looking for the promise within your content, instead of first making the promise and delivering it through your content.

Newsy headlines, grab attention
Newsy headlines are the type that makes announcements such as discovery, new product release, finding, invention and more.  You can use these headlines to introduce new services or products in the market and to make press releases. People are usually captivated by the concept “new” and are, therefore, more likely to read on to discover “what’s new.” Examples of newsy headlines are those that begin with words such as “announcing”, “introducing”, and “at last.”

“How To” headlines are magnetic
One of the most used headlines is “how to”, simply because this is a magnetic headline that is sure to grab and retain the attention of the reader. These types of headings answer the question, “what is in it for me,” which most readers will ask themselves before reading any content. So, if your content answers the question “how to,” consider creating a “how to” headline such as ‘How to Write Magnetic Headlines.”

The benefit headline will get your content read
A benefit headline is like a carrot dangled in front of a rabbit. The reader will immediately identify “what’s in it for them” from your headline. This kind of headline excites the curiosity of readers, and they will want to read on or click the headline for more details. So, when creating a magnetic headline identify a compelling benefit from your content, and serve it up in your article topic. For instance, “Get Your Online Business Noticed Today, With This Amazing SEO Tool.”

When it comes to writing content especially for online marketing, your headline is your lifeline; because a magnetic headline is what will determine whether your content will become a hit or miss.

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Some people believe that search engine optimization is dying. Not only are Google’s algorithms changing almost too fast for SEO experts to keep up, but SEO itself may soon be replaced by social media as the main source of information online. This is of course a huge exaggeration. Social media is far from our main source of information online. People still use Google, and search engine rankings and hits are still important.

That doesn’t mean that social media should be ignored, though. Social media may not be a replacement for SEO, but it does have a huge effect on it. Google’s last algorithm update included Social Media Ranking. If your business isn’t active on Social Media, you could be doing damage to your listing on Google. Here are just a few ways Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter are affecting your SEO efforts.

Social Shares and Link Building

Link building has always been one of the cornerstones of SEO, and in most respects that hasn’t changed. Google still looks at the number of links on a site to determine if it is a quality source of information, but social media has changed the way these links are being shared. These days, links are being achieved through original and compelling content that is shared across social media. For example, if someone finds an interesting article, they will be likely to post it onto their Facebook wall or Twitter feed for all of their followers to see. Many of those followers will in turn post the article to their followers, and so on. Eventually, thousands of people will have seen that article, which translates to page views for the website or blog the in which the article originally appeared.

Links that are shared via Facebook, Google+, Twitter or even YouTube will rank higher according to Google’s search algorithm. Google will assume that this content is being shared for a good reason, and it will show up near the top of a typical search result.

Social Media and Credible Sources

If your content is shared on your social networks and you have several followers, Google is more likely to see you as a credible source. This will mean that your content will always rank higher and be seen not just by your followers, but by potentially thousands of others viewers who will help build your brand and increase your social media presence.

Branding

A large part of social media marketing is branding, which definitely has an effect on SEO as well. Having your brand merely mentioned on a site is often enough to get a boost from Google, even if it is only a mention and not actually a link. In many ways, this is closer to “old fashioned” advertising in that it gets your brand’s name out even if it doesn’t technically involve SEO link building.

The thing to remember when it comes to social media and the changing face of SEO is that content is king. Social media Marketing Billings MT is all about real people reading and sharing content, so SEO experts have their work cut out for them. It’s not about keyword stuffing and other questionable techniques anymore; content has to be genuinely engaging if it is to spread across any social network.

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If you don’t know what Youtube is by now, you’ve most likely been living under a rock the last ten years. The video sharing site grew tremendously quickly and was bought by internet giant Google for $1.65 billion less than 2 years after it went live. Since then, the site has continued to expand.

Earlier this year, a new video sharing service called Periscope was officially launched by Twitter. The app was spotted by Twitter in the early development stage and the company quickly swooped in, reportedly purchasing the app for just shy of $100 million. Periscope has been called a game-changer, much like Youtube was a decade.

Businesses are paying attention and many are wondering which of the two platforms will be more effective at promoting their brand. The answer, of course, depends on your individual businesses needs. Here’s a guide to how Youtube and Periscope stack up against each other.

Youtube

Youtube has been around for a decade and is very well-established. Users create, watch, and share videos. Businesses have some great advantages when using Youtube to promote their brand.

Wide Audience

Youtube videos garner more than 4 billion views every day and it’s the third most visited website in the world. The website is particularly strong with users ages 18-34, outranking even cable television networks.

Easily Re-purpose Content

Business can re-use content they’ve already created, such as blog posts or podcasts, and re-purpose them into videos to post on Youtube. Essentially, you are getting more bang for your buck.

Periscope

Periscope is the new kid on the block, so it doesn’t have nearly as many users and a lot of people still have not even heard of it. It’s based on mobile live streaming, meaning people can broadcast the video they record live, allowing them to easily share with viewers around the world. Users can follow each other and receive notifications when your stream goes live. Old videos are archived so people still have the chance to view previously recorded videos.

Gain Followers Quickly

While Youtube does offer video streaming, users must use an invite link to watch. Periscope on the other hand offers instant following and viewers can tune in to whatever they want, making it easy to gain followers quickly.

Open Market Spaces

Since Periscope is new, there are no heavy weights really and there’s room for shifting. Users can ‘like’ your content up to 500 times, meaning that good content can bring you up quickly and you have a chance to become a top Periscoper.

Works Well For

Periscope’s unique platform makes it a great place to share cutting-edge events, interactive games, situations that need instant feedback, how to’s, recipes, natural phenomena, and interviews.

Which Platform Is Best for Your Brand

Both platforms can be useful and it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Brands that are already well established and have the resources to pursue both should. For smaller companies, Periscope presents a great opportunity to gain followers quickly and become an established authority from the ground up. Once you are more established you can use the Periscope following to break into Youtube.

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As a business owner, your Facebook page and other social media presences make up your owned media assets, that which is controlled by your and your business’s brand. It is important to maximize the potential for new and repeat business opportunities by making your Facebook truly reflect what you are all about. This is especially true of the images you select and portray online as representative of your company. Here are 5 tips to consider that can help make your Facebook cover photo count.

Tip #1: Make Your Photo Relevant

Making your Facebook cover photo relevant is an important consideration when choosing what to put on the cover. Your cover photo is a way to communicate who you are and what you are about to those who following you. If you are in the business of making widgets, your cover photo should reflect this. Your mission is to keep the idea of your company first and foremost in the mind of any visitor; maintaining relevancy helps you keep that idea before them as customers seek to interact with you.

Tip #2: Make Your Photo a Call-To-Action (CTA)

Your Facebook cover photo provides you with a way to direct traffic to your website. Simply provide a link in the description that appears when a user clicks on the cover photo and you have created another way to bring additional traffic to your website(s). Changes in Facebook’s cover photo policy gives you the flexibility to add more descriptors and create specific CTAs that can

Tip #3: Link Your Cover Photo to Your Profile Pic

Think for a moment how the cover and profile photos look on your current Facebook page. Are they in any way related and do they provide a consistent look and message to someone viewing your page? Use photos on your Facebook cover that provides consistency in terms of message, look, branding or relate to a campaign you may be promoting for your business. If you owned a chicken farm and your company’s logo were an egg, maybe a cover photo featuring a group of chickens in the yard with information about the business would be a good way to link your company brand with what it is you are selling.

Tip #4: Stay on Message

Keep your cover photos topical and relative to your brand and messaging. If you are running sales and specials reflective of a particular season or featuring a product or service, it is certainly advisable to upload a cover photo that highlights this. However, advertising your Black Friday specials or alerting visitors of a huge 20% off sale loses relevancy when the period for such a special has past. Manage your images carefully and be sure to remove those images that may cause confusion or be otherwise false and misleading relative to what is happening to your business.

Tip #5: Let Your Cover Photo Speak to Your Brand and Image

There are many good examples on Facebook of companies who link the messaging in the Facebook cover photos to their brand. Some of these examples are as simple as placing a logo or other recognizable image of the company somewhere in the cover photo. Be sure that any inclusion of your brand image is an organic one and not something that seems inappropriate or out of place, in context with what is being communicated in the image.

Contact Blast Creative today for all of your Social Media Marketing needs!

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You have a business and you know that social media can be a powerful weapon in your marketing scheme. It’s become almost standard practice for businesses to have their own Facebook page, but what about all the other social media sites out there? The truth is there are a dizzying number of social media platforms that can be utilized for business. People are now constantly asking how do you know which one will best boost you brand. The answer’s really much easier than you think; here’s where to start.

Tips for Choosing the Right Social Media Platform

Research: You won’t find the right social media channel without doing a bit of exploration to see which one is compatible with your specific business. Think about what product or service you’re offering and what resources you have available to dedicate to social media. Though social media is largely free, it does require your valuable time.

Don’t Get Sucked into What’s Popular: There are new social media channels popping up all the time. Don’t get tempted to sign up for every single site just because it’s popular. Stick to what is most relevant and effective to your business. It’s better to have solid social media campaigns on one or two channels than mediocre attempts on many.

Develop a Social Media Strategy: Create a clear and implementable plan before choosing which network you’re going to be using. By drawing up a plan, you’ll be able to stay focused and work out which strategies will be most effective to get things done.

Stick With It: Social media can become time-consuming and frustrating, but don’t let it get you down. Be consistent and over time the results will start to come in.

Go Where Your Audience Is

Knowing your audience is the key to all marketing success and it rings true for social media platforms. Don’t spend hours on LinkedIn if you’re trying to sell food recipes, try a more visual platform like Pinterest. Many businesses are trying to be on everything popular, but it’s much better to strategically plan where and what you’re going to post to be the most effective.

Here’s a rundown on the major social media platforms and what audience they serve.

Facebook

This is the one network that everyone is on and should be on, with some 1.15 billion users (1 million active users). It’s pretty much a guarantee your audience is here at least part of the time so make a mini website via Facebook if you haven’t already.

LinkedIn

For a more corporate or professional social media experience choose LinkedIn. Think services like coaching, consulting, copywriting, web development, business development, recruitment, and so on.

Twitter

Twitter now has 450 million users, 65% of whom are female and split in the ages of 25-34, 35-54 and 45-54. It pays to tweet often and make copy that’s catchy and intelligent, not to mention 140 characters or less.

YouTube

If you’re looking for a younger (majority 18-34) audience, Youtube boasts 1 million unique visitors each month and can be a powerful video marketing tool.

Pinterest

While it began as a tool for artists and creatives, Pinterest has found plenty of room for people selling products and services, given they’re attached to great images. There are 30 million users here, 80% female, with the largest audience 45-54. It can work well for mediapreneurs, entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, service providers and e-commerce related brands.

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