Twelve Legs Marketing would like to share a big update. Recently, at the American Advertising Federation Colorado Icon Awards honoring the best of the Colorado Springs advertising community, Twelve Legs Marketing was recognized for outstanding work in three significant areas.
Volen Kiskinov was nominated for Media Strategist of the Year.
Jason Carter was nominated AND WON Producer of the Year.
And the entire Twelve Legs team (two- and four-legged alike) was nominated for AND WON Full-Service Agency of the Year.
How did this happen? Dogged pursuit. Throughout our team, we chase what’s best for our clients and partners with all our heart. We love the chase. We can’t get enough of it. It’s why we do it all day long, every day.
Thank you so much for trusting us to be part of your pursuits, helping us to grow as a team, and striving along with us. And know that these awards won’t lessen our love for the chase. In fact, they serve to make our pursuit even more dogged.
To be successful in today’s world as an artist, you not only have to be talented, but also become good at promoting your art.
Don’t be scared of commitment
When we’re surrounded by reality shows, entertainment news and all sorts of information about famous people with big followings, it is easy to fall into the mindset of “oh they were just lucky and became overnight stars”.
Reality is that it takes commitment to build audiences and stand out from the crowd.
Understanding what people like and dislike is important to your content’s roadmap. and
Being able to remain objective is probably one of the harder ones, but you should never take social media response personally when you’re promoting your work.
A big portion of the commitment we make to our clients when we take over their Instagram accounts is to post regularly and use our best judgement on posting what we think is great content.
That’s just the start, however. After posting any type of content, we listen, observe and pay close attention to the insights we have access to. People freely and openly show/tell us what they like.
Have we had moments when we thought a photo or video would b super successful, but it turn that it wasn’t? Of course! But that only pushes us to try again, do it better and not give up.
One thing to be mindful of is, if you are not committed to Instagram (or for that matter anything you do), over time you will likely see a decline.
Instagram rewards high levels of activity. The more you post, the more followers you tend to attract.
That’s not negative by any stretch of the imagination. But it can quickly become challenging, especially if your art takes an extended period of time to complete.
More on ideas for regular posts further below…
A goal without a plan is simply a dream
If you operate by the seat of your pants, you might find yourself thinking about what to post on a daily basis. That becomes becomes tiring and overwhelming, quickly… Believe us!
You end up running into a creative freeze, and the worst outcome – you stop posting.
Unless you’re able to commit to the time it takes to build your Instagram account and constantly generate new content, it will be difficult to gain a big following.
A tip to help you avoid that abyss of no return is to map a topic for each day of the week.
Remember that people love seeing yoru completed art, but they also are curious about “behind the scenes” content. So don’t feel like every post you share has to be about a finished art piece (we know, art is never finished).
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Monday: What inspires you
Tuesday: What gave you the idea for the piece you’re working on
Wednesday: What does the progress of that piece look like
Thursday: Do you use unusual and different techniques
Friday: What do you do when you are not working on your art to replenish your creativity and rest your mind
Saturday: What books do you read
Sunday: And the list of topics can go on and on…
Great! Now that we have the commitment and planning out of the way, we come to the next part of the conversation…
#Hashtag like the pros
Instagram is a visual medium.
But, your content gets much more exposure when you use hashtags. Those are categories of content that people follow. Hashtags also allow you to make your visuals on Instagram searchable.
Good research and experimentation with new hashtags can allow new people to find your art!
When you start a post on Instagram and start adding hashtags, the platform will give you hints on how many times those have been used. The higher the number, the more people use and follow those hashtags.
Choosing your hashtags carefully will also help you succeed. While very popular hashtags can certainly increase yoru exposure, they can be too broad. For example, #art is used in over 35MM posts, but that can also be many, many things.
If you are trying to get your art in front of the right people, what words would they or you use? #oilpainting, #affordableart or #experimentalart might be opportunities to reach a niche demographic, which is looking for something very specific.
Instagram allows you to use up to thirty hashtags at a time. But is there a magic number? Unfortunately, the optimal number of hashtags is different for each account. Our recommendation is to use at least five and experiment to see what works best for you.
Just be mindful to not become a spammer… Too many hashtags or irrelevant hashtags to the topic you are discussing will actually work against you. The engineers behind Instagram make sure to hunt down people trying to game the system.
Great, we’ve started a post, selected our hashtags, the next thing to think of are tags.
Connect with the right people
When the content is appropriate, giving a shoutout or including someone else in your conversation makes you more… social. Let’s not forget that we are talking about social media here, after all.
Tags send direct notifications to the parties you want to include in your content. They are great ways to show affiliation, support or start a conversation around a topic.
Don’t just tag people for the sake of tagging, just like hashtags, tags should be used appropriately.
Also, don’t get upset if you don’t get a response. Even though the other party gets a direct notification that you’ve mentioned them, they might be busy, not sure how to respond or… simply miss their notification. Don’t give up!
Last but not least, let’s circle back to a word we used in the beginning.
Instagram insights
We know that not everyone gets glitter in the eye like we do when numbers enter the conversation… But that is the best place to get objective information on how your content is performing so you can focus on creating more of that to further grow your Instagram community.
First things first, Instagram has two types of accounts – Personal and Business.
If you want to tap into knowing the reach and engagement of your content, you will need to switch to a Business account. That is free, easy and you can always revert back to a personal account if needed.
Once you’ve enabled your business Instagram account, you can see what content gets the most exposure (think of the visual, the hashtags and the tags you might have used), as well as when are people most active, and get some demographic information.
Who has a headache?
The world of Instagram goes even further than what we’ve discussed today, and the opportunities are huge!
We hope the information has been helpful to you. If you decide to tag us on Instagram with a question, our tag is @twelvelegsmarketing
Sadly, we may never have a definitive answer to those age old questions. But what about the most profound dilemma of all…
Should you outsource your marketing or keep it in-house?
Whether you’re a 3-person startup, a blossoming business with dozens of employees, or a large and established organization, there are pros and cons to both options. Ultimately, it all comes down to your unique situation. Here, we’ll focus on some of the key benefits to hiring a marketing agency—and a few best practices for getting the most out of your partnership.
Marketing Agencies Are Cost Effective
Let’s start with obvious: hiring a full team of talented marketers is not only challenging and time consuming, but also mighty expensive. According to the recent 2020 Salary Guide: Creative and Marketing, their combined salaries alone will set you back more than $850,000/a year, and that’s before you open your big heart and offer benefits.
Chief Marketing Officer: $164,000
VP of Marketing: $145,000
Digital Strategist: $79,750
Marketing Manager: $78,000
Content Strategist: $73,500
Copywriter: $72,500
Web Designer: $69,250
Video Editor: $59,500
Social Media Manager: $59,500
Account Executive: $55,000
Maybe you’re just looking for help with digital and video. Perhaps content and copywriting is your current need. Or website development and social media could be a concentration right now. A marketing agency can provide specialized focus and expertise depending on your budget and business needs, and if it’s the full service treatment you seek, any good marketing agency will provide the services of all those specialists for far less annual cost.
Pro tip: Commitment = savings. Quality agencies prefer to avoid small, one-off projects. Partnering to share in long-term success often makes the most financial sense for all involved.
Marketing Agencies Can Scale…Fast
If you need to raise awareness, increase leads, drive sales, launch a campaign, or overhaul your website, starting from scratch internally is a herculean (and time-consuming) effort. Posting the job, pouring over resumes, several rounds of interviews, checking references. When you finally get the right person or people in place, then begins the on-boarding, training, and finding the right tools and equipment to help them succeed.
Even if you currently have a team in place, there’s always a constant battle of turnover and new talent acquisition, more training, more implementation…
When you hire a marketing agency, they come pre-equipped to hit the ground running. It’s all about fast and efficient innovation, and your ability to boost your efforts and scale increases exponentially. Outside experts and specialists from marketing agencies are ready for all phases of your mission-critical projects, so they can begin, progress, and reach full maturity in a fraction of the time.
Pro tip: Sharing is caring! If you have current messaging, brand guidelines, customer personas, past collateral, examples of marketing you like/don’t like, etc., it can greatly expedite the process and help your agency partner succeed even quicker.
Marketing Agencies Stay Ahead of the Trends
The marketing world never stops evolving. More than ever before, today’s digital age requires us to not only keep up—but stay ahead of all the tactics, techniques, and trends that seem to shift almost daily.
And with that fact comes a hard reality: very few in-house marketers can keep up. They’re so bogged down in day-to-day tasks—simply checking the box and moving onto the next assignment—that learning, growing, and adapting with the industry always seems to sit on the back burner.
Marketing agencies are different. It’s their job to fully understand the latest Google algorithm updates, overnight Facebook policy change, content marketing best practices, SEO nuances, and everything else moving the needle in the marketing world.
On top of all that, you can rest easy knowing your marketing will benefit from unprecedented access to the latest marketing tools and platforms. We’re talking premium-level softwares, services, and analytics reporting that would cost you a lot of time and money to implement and learn.
The expansive, cutting-edge suite of industry research, trend monitoring, and social media listening tools used by Twelve Legs Marketing would cost your in-house marketing team thousands of precious budget dollars each month, for example.
Pro tip: Trust in your agency’s process.Becoming a “client” may be a transition for you. If results don’t come overnight, know that your success is your agency’s success…you chose them for a reason.
Marketing Agencies Reduce Your Stress
CEOs and Marketing Directors who choose to keep everything in-house have to manage employee stress, squabbles, and the inevitable interoffice politics that can often derail progress. Professional development, performance reviews, and everything else that comes with managing a team is laborious.
Agencies on the other hand, are set up to manage themselves. The good ones employ a full team of experts who are fine-tuned to function as one cohesive unit, with a full suite of internal processes, procedures, and daily check-ins to ensure each client receives the care and attention they deserve.
Ultimately, this gives you the freedom to set your marketing efforts on auto-pilot with the knowledge that your goals are being met and objectives exceeded by a trusted team of skilled professionals.
Pro tip: Lay it all on the line. If there are tensions or challenges among your in-house teams, executives, and decision-makers, tell your agency. Keep it professional and on-the-level, but full transparency makes it easier to execute and deliver on a collective vision.
Is Hiring a Marketing Agency Worth It?
Are there benefits to keeping marketing in-house? Absolutely. Homegrown expertise, ease of communication, and 24/7/365 commitment to your brand vision and company values, to name a few.
But as we’ve shown, agencies certainly offer a lot of value.
Many businesses choose to use a combination. Maybe you have a talented writer on staff, but digital marketing is just too far out of your comfort zone.
As a video and digital marketing agency, we have one of the most important obligations.
Preparing businesses and companies of the future … for the future.
Not only does the competitive nature of future business drive new businesses to stay relevant, but it urges existing organizations to get back into the fast lane.
Yeah, video is the “fast lane” … surprise.
One of the most effective and efficient ways a new business can overrun an existing and established company is by reaching a larger audience through video marketing.
290 Million Americans are online. That’s 89% of the US population.
77% of those Americans have a social media account, YouTube being amongst the highest in popularity and use.
Video marketing is taking a ’95 Subaru Outback and merging into the left lane, passing a Mercedes-Benz McClaren.
And not with speed, definitely not with speed … but simply because the driver of the Mercedes is too old and scared to keep up.
Sometimes the tortoise outsmarts the hare.
No matter how much an existing company may be worth, being able to effectively reach more people wins every time.
The longevity of anything, car or business, depends on how well you nurture and take care of it.
Video is that nurture your business might need.
Do You Know How Easy It Is To Make Your Company Visual?
It’s pretty easy.
Behind only Google, Youtube is the 2nd most used search engine in the world.
It is estimated almost 5 billion videos are being watched on YouTube every day. This is either absolutely mind blowing to you, or you probably already knew that YouTube contains mind- blowing truths.
When people want to learn about products/services, conduct research, learn how to do something, dive deeper, or even relieve their boredom, they “Google It.” Or…they YouTube it!
YouTube is the 2nd most utilized search engine monster behind Google.
Don’t forget, YouTube is 2nd in searches per day AND Google owns YouTube, so that helps.
In a sad sense, video is a remedy for our intensifying laziness. The average person in today’s age would much rather just watch a video rather than … well … do anything else really.
Why read about something when you can easily listen to someone else tell you about that something?
It’s just the way things are going. And not just for the younger generations …
8 out 10 people between the ages of 18-49 watch YouTube.
So better yet, watching videos is no longer cool. What’s cool is MAKING videos.
If you already know about something and consider yourself an expert, why not make life easier for the lazy-minded and tell them about it in a video?
If it’s tied to a product or service you have, you might just get their business—or at the very least, they share it on social media.
55% of millennials say pictures and videos are the most important part of a mobile shopping experience. Also, visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared than any other type of content.
So we know the audience is there, we know the ROI is there, we know it’s the direction marketing has gone. But maybe you’re still wondering what kind of video you’re going to make.
That’s okay, just keep reading.
Where Do I Start? How Do I Make Videos?
Don’t start with commercials. They’re more difficult, more expensive, and gain less traction. Down the line, when you’re as big as Geico, then go for it.
What you can do is answer questions. What do people want to know about your business, product, or service? What differentiates you? What insight do you have? Tell the world, and do it with a flourish. Video is a terrific opportunity to personalize your brand and relate to your potential customers.
Answering these questions in a video for an online audience gives you or your business a much higher chance to be discovered.
Optimization can come in many different shapes and sizes. You can optimize a YouTube video with the title, description and tags. You can optimize a social media post with hashtags. You can optimize yourself with a funky hairdo and colorful clothes. Whatever stands out.
But how does video help your business, or more specifically, your website, stand out?
Well, surprise surprise, Google is king. And we want to make sure Google views you (your site) as the most knowledgeable, trustworthy and user friendly for whatever industry you’re in.
Turns out your audience is 80 percent more likely to read content if it’s paired with colorful visuals.
Google takes that statistic into account, sees your video paired with the complementary content you wrote and says “Hmm, they’ve got moxie, we’ll give them a shot.”
You’re On Your Way Towards Skyscraper Content
Build your content better than your competitors with skyscraper content.
Skyscraper Content: Website content that takes into account what others are writing about, then separating yourself from the pack with better keywords, photos, videos, links, backlinks, .pdfs, and so on.
Well, Hello
Now you may understand more clearly why it’s no secret we offer video and digital marketing here at Twelve Legs. We want our clients to be in the fast lane and we want to build the tallest skyscrapers, together.
Anyone can scratch the surface with video and also with digital, and there are many success stories, but if you want to learn more and accelerate your business by cruising in the fast lane, don’t hesitate to Contact Us.
We recently hosted a small networking event here at the Twelve Legs offices in downtown Colorado Springs.
It was a true joint effort, not only among our team, but also our event partners—ANB Bank and local non-profit Pawsitive Kidnections.
In the end we had about 50 professionals turn out for a fun and productive evening. It was a pleasure to welcome our current clients, prospects, and friends to check out our (relatively) new office space while enjoying good food, good drink, and good company.
If you’re considering planning/hosting an event at/for you business, good for you! It can be a very rewarding experience, but it does take a fair amount of effort. We learned a few things from our recent event, and wanted to share some quick tips to keep in mind and questions to ask if you’re preparing for a company event of your own.
Determine which organizational employee is best suited to plan or act as the liaison to your selected event planner. Clearly communicate your intentions to this employee.
Decide the main purpose of your event and don’t try to combine too many objectives or dilute your intentions. Will it be a customer appreciation, prospecting, employee appreciation event, or something else altogether?
Decide on the size and budget for your event. Plan on a 20 to 30% attendance rate based on invites sent (with very few RSVPs).
How will you send the invitation? Hard invite, Facebook, email, or a combination of all methods? Will you send reminders?
Do you have enough employees available to meet and greet your guests to maximize your objective?
Every event will be a little different, and every company will have its own objectives. But if you answer the questions and check the boxes above, you’ll be on your way to a smooth and successful event that impresses your attendees and leaves you feeling accomplished.
Which Online Quote Request Option Is Best For YOU?
