Author: Rallio

Social

Upgrade Your Social Media in 4 Simple Steps

Post author By Rallio
Post date June 4, 2021

The realization that you need to upgrade your social media doesn’t necessarily come naturally. If you’ve had your social media pages on autopilot, posting sporadically or simply relying on the status quo to get by, then you might not recognize there’s a problem brewing.

It’s like when you’ve been driving around your reliable, fuel-conserving car for a number of years. It’s easy to get comfortable with your ride, right? You trust that you’ll be able to pop in your key, turn on the engine, and drive away into the sunset (or the local coffee shop, depending on what strikes your fancy).

Then one day, you turn your key and hear a dreadful gurgle, a noisy clatter, a wheezy cough — or, perhaps worst of all, deafening silence. And you realize it’s time to head to the mechanic or maybe even upgrade your ride altogether.

If the day comes when your social media pages seem to be gurgling, clattering, wheezing, or producing the sound of crickets as your followers fade into the night, then you’ll know that’s the day to upgrade your social media.

Never fear, because the following four simple steps are here to make your life easier. If you complete even one or two of these upgrades, then your social media pages should be humming along again in no time.

Step 1: Create Videos

This step is so easy, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been posting videos all along. Video content is huge on social media, now that anyone with a smartphone has a built-in video camera. All you need to do is pull out your phone and film a short video, upload it to social media with a fun caption, and maybe boost your best video content for better results (more on that later).

Here at Rallio, our video content is professionally scripted and filmed, with carefully crafted story lines and themes. However, you needn’t worry about getting too fancy if you don’t have the resources or time.

A simple how-to video or a quick “hello” to your audience can be enough to breathe life into your social media pages, helping you move beyond just image-based content. You can also use live formats on Facebook and Instagram to build even more excitement and catch your followers in the moment, as they scroll.

We reveal several different video content ideas in our article 7 Proven Video Content Ideas Guaranteed to Liven Up Your Social Media. Read through it to see what types of content might resonate with your audience. Happy filming!

Step 2: Humanize Your Content

Creating video content is a great way to bring an authentic look and feel to your pages, but you can also extend that concept into all your different types of content. Posting real photos of your team, your location and your customers, along with their testimonials, is another way to humanize your content with your audience.

Know what doesn’t work? Bland, stale, “stock photo” imagery of random people doing random things. One of the simplest ways to upgrade your social media is by getting rid of anything that doesn’t authentically represent your business.

Your followers can sniff out a phony from a terabyte away. And on the flip side, they’ll be instantly drawn to your page and your content if you ditch any photos that you, your team or your customers didn’t snap from your own cameras.

Step 3: Crowdsource Your Photos and Videos

By the way, another easy upgrade to your social media is through crowdsourcing content. You don’t have to be the one running around with a camera all day; assign the task to a social media manager, or distribute the task to a few different team members.

You can also get your entire team involved by creating an employee advocacy program. With this program, you can formalize the process of taking and submitting photos, as well as rewarding your team for their contributions.

We go into more detail with our Employee Advocacy Checklist: “Did you know your employees have greater social reach than you do? And that people are more likely to buy something that’s been recommended by a friend or family member? It’s a hard truth, but one worth embracing. The fact is, your employees’ posts are more likely to earn engagements and visibility than content you create and post on your brand page.”

Walk through the steps to set up an in-house program that will help bulk up your social media presence, increase engagement and boost your following.

You can also try our Rallio Activate platform to organize all your assets in one place and incentivize team members. Need a hand creating and scheduling content? Our Rallio Local program gives you even more options to outsource the work.

Step 4: Toss Some Ad Dollars Around

If you’re new to advertising on social media, it can feel overwhelming to know where to begin. However, advertising is a non-negotiable when you’re looking for ways to upgrade your social media. As we write in this article: “Advertising on Facebook and other social media channels helps you to build brand awareness, generate leads and grow your following. [The] winning combination of great content, coupled with ad spend, increases the likelihood of making your content visible in newsfeeds.”

To get started, try boosting your popular content with a small amount of ad dollars. This way, you can push out your content in front of more eyeballs without spending a lot of time or money. In time, you might wish to incorporate additional ads in Messenger, Instagram Stories and other areas in order to increase your visibility even more.

Read through the article referenced above for a complete breakdown on the process. Again, our Rallio Local program can take this task off your plate if you’d rather let our experts get it done for you.

It’s Easy to Upgrade Your Social Media

Maybe you’ve put off upgrading your social media due to time constraints or lack of motivation to get it done. That’s understandable — and that’s why we’ve kept these four steps fairly simple.

As author Mark Victor Hansen says: “Don’t wait until everything is just right. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

The simple actions you take will start to propel you forward into additional actions and successes. This week, commit to just one of the steps above, and before you know it, you might just find yourself making additional upgrades to your social media.

Tags social media marketing

Social

Employee Advocacy Checklist: A Guide to Creating Your Advocacy Program

Post author By Rallio
Post date May 27, 2021

Employee advocacy programs are huger than ever — and it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.

Did you know your employees have greater social reach than you do? And that people are more likely to buy something that’s been recommended by a friend or family member? It’s a hard truth, but one worth embracing. The fact is, your employees’ posts are more likely to earn engagements and visibility than content you create and post on your brand page.

It’s nothing to get worked up about, i.e., don’t take it personally. Instead, team up with your team and create an employee advocacy program they can get excited about. The following steps will help you get started right away.

And remember, Rallio is here to help you with all your social media management and employee advocacy needs. Don’t be shy about reaching out if you’d rather let our experts handle the process from A to Z.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

What are you trying to achieve with your employee advocacy program? Defining your goals with clear key performance indicators (KPIs) will set you up for success. Some common KPIs attached to an employee advocacy program might include:

Increased engagement and reach on your branded content
Brand awareness via content posted on employees’ personal profiles
More leads
Traffic to your website
More qualified job candidates
An engaged work force with X number of participants, contributing to your company culture and morale

Once you know your advocacy objectives, benchmark them prior to launching your employee advocacy program so you know where you’re starting from. Later, once your program has been up and running for a while, you can compare the metrics to see how far you’ve come.

Step 2: Create Branded Content

One part of your employee advocacy program should be brand-approved content — the photos, infographics and videos you create and distribute to your employees. If you’re not already creating these, now is the time to start doing so. And if you already have high-performing branded content, you can repurpose these assets and push them out to employees.

As you’re creating branded assets, it’s a good idea to get different stakeholders involved from throughout your company — especially if you have multiple departments. Designate someone on your team to collect quotes, facts, figures, videos and inspirational stories representing different aspects of your industry, company culture, products or services.

This person — a social media manager or whatever you choose to call them — can use this information to create branded social posts. They’ll then distribute the content to your employee advocates.

Step 3: Choose a Technology

Rallio Activate is an employee advocacy platform that allows you to collect images and videos from your work force, as well as organize all your branded assets in one central location. With Rallio Activate, you can leverage your employees as ambassadors via our technology and incentivize them through reward programs of your choosing.

This is where employee advocacy gets interesting, because you’re able to use our technology to amplify your message across social platforms and on personal pages. Brand messages reach further and are more impactful when they come from your employees, and our technology streamlines the entire process.

Activate takes the guesswork out of things, helping you set up your advocacy program for success from the get-go. It also makes it easy to collect metrics and demonstrate the validity of the program as you’re deciding on a budget or making a case for advocacy to internal stakeholders.

No matter how you decide to design your advocacy program, know that technology like Activate is a critical piece for automating advocacy and getting employees excited about your program.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rallio (@rallio)

Step 4: Establish Your Pilot Program

Recruit a core set of employees who can test-drive your program before you roll it out system-wide. Try sending out an internal message asking for volunteers, and then select a number of people from that list as your pilot advocates. Include a mix of people throughout the company — again, so you have different points of view and voices from different departments.

It’s also wise to choose people who are already active on the major social media platforms and have a decent social media following. Don’t discount people who have a small following, however, because their micro audience might be more receptive to your messaging than you might think.

To educate this test group of employee advocates, you can:

Create an employee advocacy document outlining what types of content you are seeking
Hold lunch-and-learn sessions (either in person or online) to describe the program and explain how it works

Step 5: Measure Your Success

Once your advocacy program has been rolled out, begin measuring the success of your program against the KPIs you’ve established. Look at how different types of content are performing and how engaged your employees are. From there, you can decide if you need to tweak your strategy.

Commit to educating your employees on an ongoing basis so they understand the value of employee advocacy to your organization — as well as what’s in it for them. Refine your rewards if needed to be sure they’re fully adopting the program and gaining value from it as much as you are.

Launch Your Employee Advocacy Program Today

Remember, the most important element of your employee advocacy program is your work force itself. Without your team members, advocacy wouldn’t exist. Rather than treat advocacy as a one-time, “set it and forget it” program, you’ll need to continue promoting it internally, educating your employees, answering their questions, giving them content they’re proud to post, challenging them to surpass previous benchmarks, and offering high-value rewards.

To learn more about Rallio Activate, visit www.rallio.com/activate or email sales@rallio.com.

Tags employee advocacy

Social

Why Use Rallio Local for Your Social Media Needs? Because It Just Makes Sense

Post author By Rallio
Post date May 25, 2021

When you use Rallio Local for your social media needs, you’ll get the creativity of a social media expert combined with the efficiency of technology. Reviews, comments and social content are handled for you, so you can focus on your business.

But the real reason you’ll want to use Rallio Local for your social media needs? Because it just makes sense. To illustrate this point, we’ve rounded up a few videos in our “Just Makes Sense” series.

Witch Babysitter

Hiring a witch to be your babysitter might sound like a good idea when your kids are misbehaving. But, in reality, you’re not going to trust your babies with someone whose favorite pastimes include riding a broom sans helmet, or mixing up crazy concoctions in a cauldron. That’s one cooking lesson your kids do not need!

Viking Gardener

You wouldn’t hire a viking to be your gardener, would you? Unless you want your backyard to look like a kid with a bad haircut, you’ll probably want to go with — well, an actual actual gardener.

Invisible Man Aerobics

Taking aerobics classes from the Invisible Man might seem like a great way to tune in to your own body. But what happens when you need an expert coaching you on the proper way to do a double kettlebell snatch or claw-fingertip pushups?

Rely on Rallio for Your Social Media Needs

In working with business owners over the years, we’ve come to identify a few truths about being in business for yourself. One of them is that it pays to surround yourself with people who are experts in their field. That’s why most businesses choose to hire, say, an accountant, an attorney or an insurance agent. They are the best at what they do — so you can be the best at what you do in business.

In our case, we are experts who will handle every aspect of your social media, online reputation, directory listings and even recruiting to an extent. Known as Rallio Local, this in-house team consists of social media strategists who work one-on-one with business owners, using technology to streamline the entire process.

The benefits of hiring social media experts to, well, manage your social media, are numerous:

You’ll get time back in your day as a business owner because you’re not worried about your social media. You can focus on other aspects of your business — all the things you love about entrepreneurship that made you start a business in the first place.
You’ll have trusted marketing advisors who have your back and keep an eye on your pages for any new comments, reviews, questions and direct messages. Nobody is slipping through the cracks when you have our team on your side.
You’ll increase your chances of growing your business faster because your social media marketing will be aligned with your overall marketing strategy. Your dedicated strategist will get clear on your goals and deliver on them.

How It Works

With our winning formula of local content + targeted ads, your social media pages can begin to produce results for you. Local content = Real, authentic photos and videos of people at your business, featuring employees, customers, owners and other actual humans — not stock photos and sales pitches. Targeted boosting = Advertising your content to your followers and their friends to get more eyes on your page and ensure your content is visible.
Have special offers, recruitment posts or events? Your Rallio Strategist will work with you to get all the details and schedule out posts strategically, as well as boost them for greater visibility.
When your followers engage with you via online reviews, comments or direct messages, our team responds to those engagements (with your input, as needed) within 24 hours. Everything gets pulled into your own dashboard so you can easily see everything in one place. With our Revv technology, we can also help you get new, positive reviews, while negative reviews are handled offline instead of published publicly.
What about changes to your hours, address, phone number or other business information? Your Strategist will make sure it gets updated across the web, using our Business Listings service that’s built right into the Rallio technology.
Our technology can also incorporate employee advocacy, so you can get your team involved in creating and posting content, helping to extend the reach of your content through their personal pages.

The key takeaway? Rallio Local gives small-business owners both the technology and the team to be successful on social media. We understand the complexities of your social media needs and are able to navigate them on your behalf.

Whether you want a lot of help or just a little extra push, we can provide the right solution for your small business or franchise brand’s social media needs. Drop us a line at sales@rallio.com and we can set you up with a quick demo to show you how we can help your business.

Tags social media marketing

Case studies

Case Study: How Rallio’s SaaS Platform Helped Pet Supplies Plus Navigate the Pandemic

Post author By Rallio
Post date May 19, 2021

As a multi-location retail franchise organization with over 570 locations nationwide, Pet Supplies Plus (PSP) relies on strong relationships with its customer base. These customers, known as “neighbors,” are accustomed to friendly service, a large selection of pet products and services, and quick responses to any questions or concerns. As such, when the pandemic forced lockdowns, reduced store hours and other challenges upon the chain and its clientele, it was a turbulent time for everyone involved.

Neighbors were panicked about making sure they could get food and supplies for their pets. We all remember seeing empty shelves and lines wrapping around buildings at retail establishments like PSP as people rushed in to fulfill their essential needs. Meanwhile, PSP franchisees, who had invested time, effort and life savings into their businesses, were unsure how to address the seismic shift to their “business as usual” and didn’t know what the future would hold.

In order to continue serving their neighbors as well as operating under these stressful circumstances, PSP found they needed to increase their usage of social media and digital platforms. More specifically, they needed a way to continue communicating with their audience, responding to online comments and reviews, fulfilling their essential needs, and providing a safe, friendly shopping experience. As more and more people took to social media and platforms like Google My Business to discover their local PSP’s latest operating hours and updates, PSP knew they couldn’t rely on foot traffic alone to connect with their neighbors; they had to entirely alter certain methods of operating their business so they could accommodate their neighbors’ needs while hitting their own numbers.

With Rallio’s help, the brand has been able to address these obstacles and even exceed their neighbors’ expectations. As the preferred technology supplier for PSP, Rallio provides the social media SaaS and employee advocacy platform needed to manage, schedule, optimize and grow the chain’s entire social media presence — from corporate down to the location level. Below, we’ve outlined the major challenges faced by the brand during the pandemic, the solutions we provided, and the results of our efforts. With the help of Rallio’s technology and services, PSP has been able to not only weather these challenges, but even thrive in a time when other pet product retailers have not fared well.

Challenge 1: Restricted Hours

When lockdowns began across the country, COVID-19 regulations required stores to reduce their operating hours. Although such changes would ordinarily be easily communicated through platforms like Google My Business (GMB) and Yelp, the process was not quite so simple at the time: GMB and Yelp had introduced platform limitations that required a lengthy approval process for any changes submitted. This meant that PSP locations were challenged in trying to communicate important changes of hours with their neighbors.

Solution: Rallio’s Directory Listings

Our Directory Listings platform allowed us to update PSP’s hours across hundreds of individual listings and avoid platform limitations. Using our listings technology, our team worked tirelessly to adjust their hours and ensure these critical updates reached PSP’s customer base.

Results

All store locations had accurate listings information across multiple listings platforms, which led to a positive customer experience and reduced the chances for negative reviews. Ultimately, neighbors were kept informed so they would be able to visit during business hours and get essential food and supplies for their pets.

Challenge 2: Negative Online Reviews

As the pandemic unfolded, many businesses, including PSP, were subject to negative online reviews related to various state-mandated safety measures, such as mask-wearing requirements and restricted shopping hours.

Solution: Custom Review Responses

While this type of feedback was to be expected, Rallio was able to help PSP mitigate the effects of any negative online reviews and comments. Rallio’s brand management team worked with PSP’s corporate team to create custom COVID-19-related review responses.

Results

Using the Rallio platform — where reviews are pulled into one central dashboard from major platforms like GMB and Yelp — our Rallio Local team was able to respond to the vast majority of reviews within 24 business hours. A 99% review response rate was maintained across all review platforms for the entirety of 2020.

Challenge 3: Canceled Events

In the weeks prior to the pandemic, custom event content had been created and scheduled out for locations’ social media pages. However, all in-store events had to be canceled due to COVID-19. Therefore, locations needed a way to remove these events from their queues quickly and efficiently.

Solution

Over 200 custom-created in-store event content pieces were removed by the Rallio Social Strategist team, and all PSP neighbors were notified of the cancelations. Through the Rallio platform, additional event closure content was published to 200-plus store social pages.

Results

Our efforts to keep PSP pages updated led to a more consistent and accurate social media presence across locations. It also allowed for hundreds, if not thousands, of neighbors who had RSVP’d to these events to be notified. In addition, the neighbors who rely on PSP-hosted, recurring mobile vet clinics for preventive pet care had the chance to come up with alternate options.

Challenge 4: Alternate Shopping Methods

Due to reduced hours or restricted in-store shopping, PSP needed alternate shopping services to be emphasized and advertised across multiple social media platforms.

Solution

Using Rallio technology, curbside pickup and delivery service content was published to 250-plus store social profiles. Custom ads were created for these services in each individual local market.

Results

These services generated additional income across the brand and allowed PSP to continue serving their neighbors throughout the pandemic. In 2020, over $1.7 million in purchase conversions was generated by local social media and vendor ads.

Conclusion: Technology + Team = Real Results

Rallio’s technology and services have been imperative to PSP’s ability to navigate the social landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our technology has enabled PSP locations to stay connected to all of their neighbors via reviews, DMs and comments, as well as get valuable messages and updates out to their entire franchise network and their followers.

On the service side of things, because PSP has a full rollout of Rallio Local services, all of the above was able to be executed by a team of dedicated Social Strategists who use Rallio technology to highlight important services (curbside and delivery) and facilitate valuable connections with their local communities.

Are you navigating pandemic-related challenges of your own, or just need some assistance making sure your social media pages are working as hard as they should be? Contact sales@rallio.com to schedule a no-obligation demo of our platform and services, or visit this link to shop online.

Tags case study

Social

9 Surprising Ways to Be Ignored on Social Media

Post author By Rallio
Post date May 12, 2021

If you’ve been at it for any length of time on social media, it can start to feel like you’d rather shut down every single one of your social profiles than read yet another social media “best practices tip.” We know how you feel. Being a social media technology company, we’re constantly entrenched in the world of all things social.

Not to worry. We’re not going to do that to you today. Grab your popcorn, folks, and settle in for this quick read of several anti-tips you need to know in order to be ignored on social media. In no time at all, people will be skimming right by your content and forgetting you even exist — heck, they probably won’t even see it in the first place with your posts not appearing in feeds!

1. Don’t Be Yourself

Nothing says “likable” like a nice stock photo of someone positioned just so, in a completely unnatural way, in the type of setting you only see in movies and magazines. Like, why wouldn’t you be pausing mid-run to tie your shoe at a park bench, smiling at nothing, with a glorious backdrop of fall leaves and not a hint of perspiration on your brow?

It totally creates a connection with your audience when they see a random stranger not sweating while crushing it on their 6-mile daily run. To increase the effectiveness of this strategy, we recommend you include a few syrupy, basic hashtags like “#blessed” or “#grateful” and don’t in any way make it relevant to your audience. Better yet, try to sell something with an overly promotional and self-indulgent caption.

2: Post Haphazardly

Post on Monday morning. Post on Friday afternoon. Forget about your social media for three weeks. Post in the middle of the night after a night of taking selfies with your sorority sisters. “When will they post next?” is what your audience is thinking. If your social media isn’t a train wreck of random postings with periods of radio silence in between, you’re doing it all wrong.

3. Keep ‘Em Guessing on Your Contact Info

Anyplace that lists your contact information online, make sure it’s slightly different from one site to the next. It’s best if you have at least two or three different phone numbers, addresses and websites floating around out there. Why have just one when you can have a handful? People will think you’re different, unique even. Plus, it’s super confusing to Google, Yelp and other online directories when your contact info is inconsistent, making you harder to find. Who wants all that pesky business, anyway?

4. Forget About Boosting

Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms are after you to advertise, right? Save your money! If you don’t advertise, you can make sure none of your content gets seen by customers and prospects. It’s like you won’t even exist. Plus, with the money you save, you’ll have more money leftover to buy stock photos!

5: Post Lots of Text With No Visuals

Long paragraphs of text are so much more fun to look at than engaging videos and images of your employees, customers and leaders. Be sure to include plenty of run-on sentences, typos and grammatically incorrect phrases to keep your readers engaged. Throw in an inspirational quote or two, and you’re golden!

6. Sell, Sell, Sell

The more you talk about yourself and your products or services, the more likely people are to follow your updates! Your audience is craving promotional messaging from you, not boring updates about your incredible culture, core values and philanthropic pursuits. When you’re tempted to connect with your audience on a personal level, just repeat the mantra quietly to yourself, “Sell, sell, sell.”

7. Don’t Respond to Your Reviews

Someone left a bad review for you? Don’t dignify it with a response. Ignoring them makes you look like the bigger person! If you absolutely must post a response, make sure you get uber-defensive and point out all the flawed logic in your customer’s review. Not only will you drive that customer away, but you’ll also ensure that anyone reading the review doesn’t want to come to your business, either.

8. Ignore Comments and Questions

Along the same lines, don’t bother responding to anyone’s comments or questions on your posts or in your inbox. They’re old enough to figure out the answers themselves, right? And why waste time responding to someone’s comments on your post? Those friendly, supportive customers are probably just faking it, and the angry ones just need a time-out.

9. Operate in a Silo

No matter what, don’t use the insights you gain from customer interactions to improve your products, services, operations or support. People will have plenty of feedback to give you via social media, but you needn’t listen to any of them. Just keep operating in isolation so no one ever bothers you with comments or questions!

Want to Be Ignored on Social Media? Keep These Tips Handy

As you can see, it’s fairly easy to be ignored on social media once you get the hang of it. Of course, if you don’t follow these tips — and instead, you let our experts and technology do the heavy lifting of social media management for you — you may find yourself with a whole bunch of new followers, leads and customers. Your employees might find themselves engaging more with your brand on social media. And you may become much more discoverable and even likable across the web. Consider yourself warned.

Learn more: 15 Social Media Marketing Fails [Infographic]

Tags social media marketing

Social

5 Easy Steps to Run a Successful Social Media Contest

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 29, 2021

Running a social media contest can be a great way to generate engagement on your pages, grow your following and build brand awareness. Plus, it’s a fun way to reward your community for supporting your business.

If you consistently hold enticing social media contests, you should start to see a loyal audience rallying around your brand. Here are some of the major key performance indicators (KPIs), or goals, associated with running a contest on social media:

More eyes on your content. Your social media contests should ask people to like, share, comment on posts and tag others. When people take these actions, it’s more likely that people will see the posts. This is especially true if you boost your content using advertising dollars.
Brand awareness. The above actions can also result in increased brand awareness. More people seeing your content means more people who are aware of who you are, what you do and why they should do business with you. When you partner up with influencers or other businesses that complement yours, you can also be introduced to their followers — i.e., more like-minded people who would be interested in your brand.
Email marketing list growth. In some cases, you may want to ask people to enter their name and email address in order to enter your contest. Make sure you specify terms and conditions and what they’re signing up for, so that it’s clear you’re obtaining permission to email them. Also, this extra step should be in addition to liking, tagging and other forms of engagement within the social media platform itself. Let people know it’s optional and earns them an extra entry. That way, you don’t risk losing people who don’t want to provide their email.
Buzz. When your offer is exciting enough (and it should be!), you’ll build a buzz around your brand. People are more likely to engage with your social media contest if they see their friends doing so. As more and more people get excited about your contest, you’ll get a whole crowd of new followers who want to be a part of whatever you have to offer.

To create a successful social media contest, follow the steps below, and soon you’ll be well on your way to accomplishing the goals above.

Step 1: Define Your KPIs

The goals mentioned above are just some of the major KPIs associated with social media contests. You can drill down further to add lead generation, clicks to your website, specific follower growth numbers (say, 100,000 Instagram followers), and many other metrics.

The point is to make each goal specific to your business so that you can define your social media contests according to your chosen KPIs. If your goal is to grow your following, for example, it makes sense to request that people follow your page or profile in order to enter the contest.

Step 2: Set a Budget

A social media contest doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to meet your marketing goals.

That being said, you do need to budget for certain expenditures if you want to have a successful social media contest. These include:

The human effort required to create the contest posts. If you have a social media resource on your team, this person might be your designated point of contact for all things contest-related. Consider how many hours might be involved in creating, managing and monitoring the contest. Alternatively, you can outsource the work to Rallio, and our team can work with you to create a social media contest.
The giveaway itself. There’s a cost associated with giving away a product or a service as a prize. Decide how many giveaways you want to do each year, and set your budget accordingly.
Advertising costs. For a nominal fee, you can pay to promote your contest in social media feeds, stories and more. Target your specific audience in these promotions to get the most bang for your buck.
Any costs associated with working with influencers. Some influencers will accept free products or services in exchange for promoting your brand, while others are paid influencers. For a small brand, working with micro-influencers can be a good place to start, as you can often work out a trade instead of providing monetary compensation. In addition, working with a complementary brand might cost you nothing, since you both stand to benefit from promoting each other.

Step 3: Write Out the Rules

Refer to each platform’s rules for contests and giveaways so you can stay in compliance throughout the social media contest. From there, write the rules according to the platform, and clearly state these in your contest post.

You might want to focus only on Facebook and Instagram; because Instagram is owned by Facebook, their rules will be similar, and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel on each platform when you run your contest.

Step 4: Run the Social Media Contest

Leading up to your contest, you can build excitement by letting your followers know you have a special announcement coming in a few days. For example, do a five- or 10-day countdown in which you reveal a different contest clue on each day.

Before the contest launch, make sure you have all your assets ready to be scheduled. Create content for each day the contest will run, so you can keep people excited and motivated to enter throughout the length of the contest. Here’s where technology comes in handy! Rallio gives you a convenient way to organize all your assets in one database with a single login for all your social media platforms.

When the big day arrives, publish your first post, and make sure this post and every subsequent one includes the contest rules. Let your followers know the deadline to enter. Cross-promote the contest via email marketing and on your website to create even more buzz.

Step 5: Announce a Winner

Don’t miss the most important part: announcing a winner and letting that person know they won! Contact the winner to finalize how you’ll deliver their prize, and thank your followers for being a part of the fun. It’s so important to let them know you’ll have future contests, so they stick around and don’t unfollow you after the contest ends!

At this point, measure your results to see how you did on meeting your KPIs. Tweak anything that needs to be tweaked. Do more of the things that worked. And keep repeating this process to see your results continue to improve over time. As Social Media Today puts it:

“After your contest is finished, it’s essential to have a post-contest strategy prepared. This means having an idea of what to do with the leads you’ve collected. If the leads or followers you’ve gained are just sitting there waiting, you haven’t finished your job. Incidentally, this is also why it’s important to know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with a social media contest.”

Could you use some help running a social media contest? Get in touch with our experts at Rallio to see how our team can help you create memorable, engaging contests that get results and help you meet your goals.

Learn more: 7 Lessons We’ve Learned From Running 31,307 Social Media Contests

Tags social media marketing

Social

Why Does Social Media Matter for Small Businesses? Our Social Strategists Explain

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 28, 2021

It’s a question that any small-business owner faces sooner or later: Why does social media matter for small businesses? It’s easy to put off the answer when you have other priorities, such as hiring and retention, lead generation and customer acquisition.

But when you start really digging into what social media is and what it can do for your business, you can’t ignore the fact that social media matters a great deal for small businesses. Not only can it help with all of the priorities mentioned above, but it can allow your business to grow consistently and build a strong online reputation.

To answer the question posed in our headline, we turned to our in-house experts, the Social Strategists who help our clients navigate the social media space.

Specialized Social Strategist, Phoebe

Rallio Local is a technology that allows business owners to manage and monitor all their social media platforms in one dashboard with a single login. Our Social Strategists are the creative geniuses who create a personalized strategy and custom content, as well as respond to and monitor all your reviews, comments and messages.

“Social media is really important for small businesses to increase brand awareness, create strong relationships with customers, and story-tell on these platforms that allow you to be so authentic,” Phoebe explains. “Small businesses have really unique and interesting messages to share, and they have these fans out there waiting to find them. So you want them to have a really strong, positive first impression when they see what you’re doing online and read about you and come across your page.

“And once that happens and they interact with you and you engage back with them, you’re creating this foundation and this relationship for them to then do business with you in real life and become a loyal customer for life and share your name with friends and family.”

See the complete interview here.

Kayla, Social Strategist

“Rallio Local is a local-specific technology that performs agency-like work; however, us Strategists then come in and we oversee the brand’s marketing plan and we give ideas for what we’d want to promote on social media,” says Kayla. “I think it’s great because you can really build a relationship with your Strategist here at Rallio, and we as strategists really get to know our clients on a personal basis.”

See Kayla’s complete interview here.

Laynie, Social Strategist

Rallio Local is “super effective for business owners because it makes their lives so much easier,” says Laynie. “They don’t have to deal with the kind of complicated and annoying process that marketing and social marketing can be. We deal with the reviews; we create the content; we come up with out-of-box ideas; we do all of that to make their life easier.”

See the complete interview here.

Why Does Social Media Matter for Small Businesses?

If you’ve made it this far and watched the videos above, you should be answering “yes” to the question, does social media matter for small businesses? We’d also like to show you how Rallio can help lighten your load. When you allow our team of experts and our technology to do the heavy lifting for you, you have more time to put back into your business.

Plus, working with our team is pretty dang fun, if we do say so ourselves. Check out the library of video content in our YouTube channel for Social Spots with Roscoe, our “Just Makes Sense” series and lots of other entertaining (and informative) content.

And don’t forget to head over to rallio.com to see our full suite of products and services, including our Revv reputation management app that integrates with your POS system and makes it easy to increase your positive online reviews immediately after every sale.

Tags social media marketing

Reputation

Don’t Feed the Internet Trolls: 3 Ways to Handle Negative Online Engagements

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 22, 2021

In a recent pos t, we discussed how getting a negative online review can really wreck your day — if you let it. The same can be said of people who troll your page, i.e., go out of their way to be confrontational in their comments or direct messages. These so-called internet trolls hide behind their keyboards and spew out nonsense, unkind words or other atrocities.

Internet trolls leave comments for no other reason than to get a reaction out of the person reading the comments.

In this case, let’s assume it’s you reading those comments. So how do you respond when internet trolls make an appearance on your page?

To answer that question, we’ll take the same approach we did in 3 Tips for Responding to Your Online Reviews: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. You’ll see a hypothetical internet troll comment, followed by a suggested “good response,” along with possible “bad” or “ugly” responses.

The key point to keep in mind? Never feed the internet trolls. That’s the tip from Roscoe in our Social Spots video below on this topic. Now let’s dive in a little deeper to help you craft a good response should any trolls decide to crash the party on your social media pages.

Your Candles Are Trash

Imagine you’re a candle retailer who just posted a photo on your social media page featuring a new giveaway. Let’s say it’s a vanilla and lavender scented candle, and you’re offering a free candle to a random winner for those who like, share and tag friends in the comments.

Your followers are super excited about it because your candles are highly coveted. They’re busy trying to win that candle … and along comes an internet troll.

“Those candles are garbage,” spews the troll. “You wouldn’t catch me burning that anywhere near my home.”

Good response: “It’s unfortunate you feel that way. We consistently sell out of this candle, so I would imagine many of our happy customers would disagree with you. To each their own!”

This response is professional and courteous, while still calling attention to the fact that many other people disagree with the troll. Anyone reading this interaction (who isn’t an internet troll themselves) would most likely side with you. You’ll probably even get people chiming in about how much they love your candles. Thanks, troll, for building engagement on that post!

Bad response: “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You probably buy your candles at the local convenience store!”

This one is just asking for the internet troll to re-engage.

Ugly response: “You know what’s garbage? YOU! YOU’RE GARBAGE!”

Get ready for an all-out war, troll-style. You’d best check under the bridge before crossing it on your way home tonight.

Who Can Eat Cake When the Glaciers Are Melting?

Let’s say you snapped a few photos of a birthday celebration at work and posted them on your page. Everyone is all smiles, and your followers love seeing these real-life snapshots of the people behind your business. And then an internet troll decides to crash the party.

“You’re celebrating a birthday while climate change is melting our glaciers? Have fun explaining that to your grandchildren.”

Good response: “We love celebrating the special days in our team members’ lives and letting our followers know about momentous occasions. It’s possible to celebrate while still taking serious matters like climate change seriously, which is why we donate to [XYZ environmental group], limit our carbon footprint, and allow our team members time off to volunteer for causes they care about.”

This could be any kind of social issue, but the point is that you can use this exchange as an opportunity to highlight the different ways you give back and make a difference. (And if you don’t already do those things, you can think about ways to implement such measures.)

Bad response: “What does a birthday have to do with climate change? Give me a break.”

You’re opening yourself up to further attacks here. Nitpickers will point out the plastic forks accompanying your birthday cake.

Ugly response: “Who cares about the planet when there’s birthday cake to be eaten?!”

You’ll soon have environmental groups knocking at your door!

Your Tie Is Terrible

Here’s another hypothetical scenario. You post a video showing how to use one of your products. Let’s say it’s the same candle retailer, showing how to use their DIY candle kit.

The internet troll returns. “lol how about you watch this video about how to tie a tie. Obviously you have no clue how to do it.”

Good response: “Wow, thanks for the tip! I hadn’t realized my tie was a little crooked. Good thing I’m in the candle-making business and not the tie-tying business!”

Most people aren’t going to care about a crooked tie, and this easy-going response calls attention back to the matter at hand: DIY candle kits!

Bad response: “I would watch your video, but I’m too busy selling candle kits to worry about my tie.”

OK, honestly, this is arguably kind of a funny response. However, you’re only inviting more back-and-forth with the troll. Better to end it quickly and move on.

Ugly response: “What does my tie have to do with a candle-making kit? Get a life.”

If it’s not already clear, the internet troll has no life. The internet troll’s entire existence revolves around making your life — and the life of countless other unassuming page owners — as difficult as possible.

Related: Chat With a Strategist: Phoebe

Starve the Internet Trolls

If and when you have to deal with internet trolls, the best course of action is to avoid stooping to their level, and put an end to the conversation as quickly as possible. The more you try to argue, explain a point or express frustration, the more delighted the troll becomes.

A few other helpful hints:

If need be, you can prevent a troll from continuing to interact on your page. The major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram have built-in features to manage your comments, including deleting, hiding or reporting comments, or even blocking a person from your page.
If you see a profile that appears to be fake, report it through the social media platform.
Being professional and courteous wins out over rude and confrontational, every time.
Instead of feeding internet trolls, starve them. The less you interact with — even ignore — their comments, the hungrier they will become. Eventually, they’ll move on.

If you lack the time to deal with internet trolls, consider letting Rallio do some of the heavy lifting for you. Our dashboard pulls all of your comments, messages and reviews into one central inbox so you can easily see and respond to them all. We also have Social Strategists who can do the responding for you through our technology, if you would rather let the experts deal with your trolls.

Head over to rallio.com to see how it works and request a demo. We promise not to invite any internet trolls to the meeting.

Social

15 Social Media Content Ideas for Small Businesses

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 15, 2021

People are using social media all day, every day, all around the world. As a small-business owner, you might be wondering how to reach the right people on different social media platforms. It all begins with creative, compelling social media content ideas.

And we’ve got plenty of them for you.

Why is it important to post great content, you ask? Statista reports, “In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025.” The numbers are only growing, so it’s critical that you tap into opportunities to connect with your desired audience.

The way to do that is with content that’s memorable, informative, entertaining and even inspiring. That way not to do that is with content that’s forgettable, self-promoting, canned and even boring.

In the interest of helping you post the best content on your business social media pages, we’ve rounded up some of our best content ideas from previous blog articles — along with a few new ones to keep you busy. If you start posting this type of content regularly, and pair it with an advertising budget, you should see your follower and engagement growth start to climb.

1. Team Member Spotlights

Whether it’s “Team member Tuesday” or any other day of the week, spotlighting your employees makes for great social media content. Ideas can include snapping photos of star employees and sharing a few fun facts about them, inviting your followers to share any testimonials about favorite team members, and filming videos with your team to ask for their product or service recommendations.

Not only do these spotlights help to generate engagement, but they also can help you share about your products or services in a non-promotional way. For example, having a team member recommend a top-selling product is a subtle way to promote your product without coming across as salesy.

2. Throwback Posts

You’ve heard of throwback Thursday, right? Try digging up old photos from your first days in business, or even of yourself before you even thought about going into business for yourself. Tell your followers who’s in the photo and what’s going on, and use the #tbt hashtag to spark conversations around the topic.

3. Holidays and National Days

Are there any holidays or “national” days, weeks or months happening right now? See National Day Calendar or Days of the Year for social media content ideas throughout the year. Look for opportunities to tie these days into your business, too. For instance, Relaxation Day on Aug. 15 is perfect for massage businesses or other companies focused on self-care.

You can also post about in-house birthdays, engagements, baby showers and other special events. Make it even more special by hosting a lunch for your team or sending flowers!

4. Pandemic Posts

Are you reopening after a closure, expanding your business with curbside and online shopping, or otherwise taking any special steps related to COVID-19? Be sure to share some details on any special services you’re offering or safety protocols you’re following during the pandemic.

5. A Day in the Life

Post pictures and photos showing what it’s like to run your business behind the scenes. Let your followers know what it takes to bring your products or services to life, including all the awesome team members who are a part of your business.

6. Personal Touches

What do you like to do when you’re not busy running your business? You’re probably busy all the time, but don’t forget to take a few moments every day to unwind — and snap some photos while you’re at it. Even if you just stop long enough to have a cup of tea and read a book, your followers will appreciate seeing how you “take five.”

7. Pets and Kids

While you’re at it, take some photos of your home life, kids, pets and neighborhood (if you’re comfortable doing so, of course). Rather not overshare? Take a photo of neighboring businesses you support, and give them a shoutout by tagging them.

8. Hashtags Galore

As mentioned above, hashtags can help to generate conversations around a certain topic. Look them up using the search feature or by viewing trending topics (especially on Twitter). You can also check out some of your favorite brands to see what kinds of hashtags they’re using for more inspiration.

9. Contests and Giveaways

A contest can be a great way to inspire many different social media content ideas and generate engagement around your brand. Make it specific to your brand, or to a certain holiday or time of year. For example, it could be as simple as filling a jar with chocolates and asking people to guess how many are in the jar around Valentine’s Day. The winner gets a special gift — maybe a free product or service.

Be sure to ask your followers to like the post, tag friends and share with their own networks. The post will get even more organic traction when your followers get in on the fun.

10. Sneak Peeks

What lies on the road ahead? Do you have special products or services launching soon? Are you remodeling or upgrading your location?

Give your followers a hint of what’s to come! Share any progress photos or a glimpse of all the exciting things ahead (without giving away competitive intelligence, of course).

11. Customer Testimonials

Let your customers do the talking by featuring their testimonials on your page. If possible, get a photo of them and post it along with their kind words.

12. Influencer and Employee Posts

When you have employees and influencers posting brand-approved assets on your behalf, you’ll never run out of social media content ideas. They can also promote your brand on their personal pages, helping to build confidence and trust among people who aren’t familiar with you.

As noted here, about half of employees in one Weber Shandwick study said they’re already posting messages, pictures or videos in social media about their employer. The Rallio Activate platform allows you to activate and incentivize employees and influencers to help spread awareness and reach for your brand. Schedule a no-obligation demo to learn more.

13. Entertainment Content

Invite any in-house musicians, singers, actors or other performance artists to create videos showing off their talents. With video content soaring in popularity, you can’t go wrong posting this type of fun, entertaining content for your followers.

14. Stories and Reels

Stories and Reels (Instagram’s answer to TikTok) will let you get creative with video content, too. Reach your audience in different ways by making yourself visible in these newer mediums.

15. Storytelling

Working on your storytelling skills is a surefire way to improve your social media. Think about the “story” behind any given post, and share those stories with your followers. For example, do you have a 90-year-old grandma who brings your team home-baked cookies? Or a mail carrier who goes above and beyond to deliver your mail? Feature these “unsung heroes” in your posts with a great story.

Go Beyond Social Media Content Ideas

Keep in mind, your work is not done once you post something to your social profiles. All the content ideas and social media posts in the world won’t mean much if you don’t engage with your followers. By engaging, we mean:

Replying back to their social media comments, direct messages and reviews
Boosting your content to make it more visible to followers and their friends
Handling any customer service inquiries in a timely fashion (yes, social media is a customer service medium)
Responding to job applications if you have an active recruiting campaign
Basically staying on top of your social media 24/7

If all of the above sounds exhausting, and if even these content ideas seem overwhelming, feel free to schedule some time with us. We’d be happy to throw some ideas around of how Rallio can assist with your social media management.

Tags social media marketing

Social Uncategorized

Reverse Case Study: How the Pandemic Proved the Value of Local Social Media for Massage Heights

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 8, 2021

When Shane Evans and her husband, Wayne, co-founded Massage Heights back in 2004, they had a vision to provide professional, affordable massage therapy services. Now a thriving franchise with dozens of locations across the United States and Canada, Massage Heights continues to expand. Their Retreats offer not only a path to wellness for guests, but also career opportunities for countless massage therapists, estheticians and franchisees.

As the preferred technology supplier for Massage Heights, Rallio provides the social media SaaS and employee advocacy platform needed to manage, schedule, optimize and grow Massage Heights’ entire social media presence — from corporate down to the location level. Individual Massage Heights locations are paired with a Social Strategist to help automate their social media and execute a unique content calendar each month.

Since implementing Rallio technology and services, Massage Heights has experienced month-over-month growth in the number of engagements and followers on social media. Still, faced with unprecedented challenges and the forced closure of their Retreats when the pandemic first hit, Massage Heights needed to pivot quickly and decide how best to move forward with their social media.

In the following “reverse case study,” we’ll walk you through the process of how Massage Heights handled pandemic-related decisions and where they are in the present day.

Challenge

At the start of the pandemic when lockdowns began, Massage Heights Retreats were mandated to close temporarily. Given the marketplace unknowns and the nature of their services, conducted in close proximity to their guests, it was hard to imagine when franchisees would be able to reopen.

Solution

Faced with these closures, Massage Heights wanted to be proactive in trimming costs for a short time to ensure they could weather the pandemic. As such, they elected to pause their Rallio Local services for all locations starting in April 2020. The plan was to restart their social media services with Rallio on July 1.

Yet even with most locations temporarily on pause with Rallio, a small number of locations chose to continue posting locally three to four times a week. A total of three locations posted consistently throughout the lockdowns and the halt of their Rallio Local services.

Results

For the brand overall in March 2020, before pausing their Rallio Local services, Massage Heights’ average daily engagement had reached its highest point ever, at 46 average daily engagements. With everyone turning to social media during the pandemic, and Rallio Local continuously posting for them three to four times per week, they were seeing amazing results.

However, once Massage Heights paused their services in April, their average daily engagement dropped by 86.9%. Throughout the three months they were on a pause, from April through June, they averaged 6.34 daily engagements brand-wide.

In July 2020, Massage Heights was back open with many different safety protocols put in place, such as mandated masks and enhanced sanitization procedures. Guests were asked to bring their own water bottles, and couples massages were out of the picture. At this time, Massage Heights restarted their Rallio Local services — and their numbers tell a story. In the first month alone, they increased their average daily engagements by 216%.

In addition, the select locations that continued to post three to four times a week on social media during the hiatus experienced the following results:

Number of followers

750% higher in April compared to brand average
200% higher in May compared to brand average

Engagements

23% higher in April compared to brand average
45% higher in May compared to brand average

Conclusion: Local Social Media Is a Must

Massage Heights experienced a severe drop in engagement after pausing their Rallio Local services. Without regular local content getting posted on their social media pages, followers simply weren’t hearing from their local Retreat anymore.

The select locations that continued to post on social media continued to see growth on social media, demonstrating the need to continue marketing efforts despite the pandemic or any other interruptions to business as usual. A year into the pandemic, our advice holds true as written in Why You Need to Keep Up Your Marketing Despite the Coronavirus:

“People are social distancing, self-isolating or quarantined. Now, more than ever, they need to hear from you — with messages of hope, reassurance that either you’re still up and running or you’re following necessary safety protocols (depending on the nature of your business), and perhaps some levity here and there.

Moreover, with more people likely to be on their phones, using their mobile devices to stay in touch, order online and connect with the world, you have an opportunity to connect with your audience like never before. While now is not necessarily the time to blast people with your usual promotions, you can, and should, adjust your strategy to support current times and be of service.”

Let Rallio Help

While hitting pause on your marketing during uncertain times may feel like the best business decision, consider your long-term goals before deciding to cut your marketing budget. More often than not, the continuation of marketing efforts will position you for growth following any bumps in the road — as demonstrated by Massage Heights’ results after restarting their Rallio Local services.

In these uncertain times, it helps to have a company like Rallio on your side. We understand that franchisees have many responsibilities in running a successful business. And in recent years, social media and reputation management have become critical items for your success.

Engage the Rallio Local team of social gurus who will do the heavy lifting for you to create ridiculously engaging, hyper-local content; make sure local targeted audiences actually see and engage with that content; respond to all your social comments and online reviews; and make sure you’re highly visible even in the event of a business disruption like COVID-19.

If you’re looking to maximize your results on social media with a team that cares about your results, we would love to chat with you. It all starts with a quick demo that you can schedule with our Rallio Local team.

Tags local social media, social media marketing