Digital Marketing On A Budget
Not having a big budget doesn’t mean you can’t put digital marketing to work for you and see great results. These are three of the most cost-effective methods for digital marketing. Read more →
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10 Laws of Social Media
If you’re interested in managing a brand’s social media presence or increasing the engagement on your personal social media accounts, there are 10 basic laws you must abide by to succeed! Read more →
4 Easy Ways to be Productive
The New Year is the perfect time to rectify bad habits. Holidays havoc has slowed and the typical schedule has resumed. Kick off your new year with these simple improvements! Read more →
Here’s How Social Media Has Changed Everything
From digital advertising to crowdfunding and social justice, ever since the inception of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter social media has changed the way the world communicates. A newly released infographic “The Conservation Prism 5.0” might be the key to grasping today’s complicated and ever crowded social media landscape.
Originally launched in 2008 by Brian Solis, an author and digital analyst at Altimeter Group, the aptly-named “Conversation Prism” — designed with creative agency JESS3 — continues to be a popular frame of reference among the digital marketing community.
The Conversation Prism is best described as a visual map of the social media landscape. While it hasn’t been updated since 2013, The Conversation Prism is an ongoing study in digital ethnography that tracks dominant and promising social networks and organizes them by how they’re used in everyday life.
In the latest rendition, Solis removed 84 companies, added 141, and created four new categories: messaging, crowdfunding, travel and hospitality, and connecting IRL.
One thing that has remained the same is the center of the Conversation Prism….You!
“It’s meant to remind the viewer that social media is about the people in the center of their online experiences. Social media is much more than a series of broadcast networks. You shape the experiences of others as they shape your online experiences,” Solis said in an interview with Mashable.
The next ring indicates how “you” can interact with a network, how you can impact the networks, while the outer ring shows all the categories of the networks, which “you” can interact with to create your own brand and community.
Check it out below!
The Most Useful Social Media Automation Functions
Did you know that you can put your brand’s social media activity on auto-pilot? It takes some strategy, just like anything else. But there are tools out there that can definitely make you feel like a one-person social media department.
These tools have many different functions, and not all of them are going to be useful or economical for your brand. In fact, everyday social media users have grown savvy to some of the automated tools out there and can spot automated activity a mile away.
You don’t have to go “full robot” – here are the most useful automation functions you can start using right away to politely grow your social media accounts.
Scheduling
For those of us (most of us) who are simply not around to post on their channels all day, managing social media can seem like a daunting task. Signing on and posting takes precious minutes that we could be spending on another task.
Scheduling tools can be found through software services like Hootsuite or Buffer, or, you can schedule future posts to a brand’s Facebook Page for free, right inside the Facebook platform. That way, you can schedule posts out for the week (or the month) in one sitting.
Engaging
There are apps and tools out there to make it seem like you are liking, commenting and engaging with others’ posts on Twitter and Instagram. Typically it requires you to target the type of user, or a hashtag in order for the “robot” to find people to interact with.
Unfortunately, there aren’t yet automation tools for engaging with Facebook posts. You will have to engage authentically there by liking and commenting on existing posts.
Following
On Instagram and Twitter, the amount of followers you get is proportional to the amount of time you spend following other similar accounts. Easy to do for those of us who live on our phones – but for a busy entrepreneur? Not so much.
Auto-follow, and more importantly, auto-unfollow tools are some of the most valuable in the social media world. Nobody in their right mind could sit and follow 400 new users per day with their thumbs, but with automation, it’s more than possible.
We’re getting started on InstaZood after another of our favorite tools got shut down. Give it a try and see how powerful your account can really be!
Need a team to help you delve into the world of social media marketing? Our experts are here to help, and located all around the west coast. Reach out to Social Media Unicorn to get started.
An Introduction to Common Cannabis Advertising Regulations
One cannot enter this space without being bombarded with information about laws, policies and cannabis advertising regulations. It’s undoubtedly the world’s most strictly regulated industry as it emerges from nearly a century of social and political banishment.
That being said, advertising and marketing cannabis stores and products is still an issue. Sometimes because advertising outlets still take a stigmatizing approach to working with cannabis businesses. Take Facebook, for example, which considers cannabis ads as promoting drug use and blocks paid campaigns on the platform. Other times, it’s due to local laws and limitations. Fortunately, it’s easy to adapt to new regulations as they’re released by state and municipality.
Advertising and marketing regulations will vary in each market. But, you can expect some variations of the following basic types of policies to apply in every legal state:
Dispensaries
Most states or cities that allow medical or adult use cannabis dispensaries will set rules on how the outside of the shop can look. Regulations will dictate the zone of town your store can be in, and the signage on the outside. Dispensaries are also limited in where they can advertise their services – making it easy for the big dispensary listing websites to charge a pretty penny.
Product
As the industry becomes more mainstream, it’s commonplace for regulators to control the inner and outer appearance of the cannabis infused products on your dispensary’s shelves. Legal cannabis markets do not allow edibles that look like any commercially marketed candy or food, to avoid confusion and copyright infringement that seems to run rampant in the space. There are other labeling requirements in place, and the dosage of edibles is almost always controlled. Companies will adapt to rules like these, or fade into irrelevancy.
Airwaves
For now, cannabis advertising regulations affect the radio and TV due to federal regulations, though local networks have been known to run tasteful ads in several legal states. If you want to get your spot on the air, you have to do it with subtlety and professionalism. Don’t use degrading or stereotypical, cliche’d language in your ad – you’ll only ruin it for the rest of us who want to be taken seriously.
Want to work with serious pros who are up to speed on all the latest in digital marketing tactics and cannabis advertising regulations? Hire your own Social Media Unicorn today.
7 Points of Research & Evaluation for Cannabis Infused Product Brands
Selling cannabis infused products in the modern era is a big business game. Infused edible and topical brands must remain extremely current on the state of the industry in order to keep providing a viable product. Below are our key points to note when researching and re-evaluating your cannabis brand.
Your Competitor’s Branding
Looking at your competitors is how you figure out what you do and don’t want your brand to become. Pick apart their colors, branding, messaging, product design and packaging and decide how you will improve upon them. There’s absolutely no point in putting out a new product if it’s not going to be head and shoulders above its predecessor!
Quality Sourcing
No matter what type of infused product you want to make, in this economy, ingredients are king. Cannabis consumers are among the world’s most health-conscious emerging demographics. That means they expect everything to be healthy, natural and on-point as possible – from the cannabis you extracted from, to the base and inactive ingredients that provide the ancillary user experience. In other words, few will want to buy a high fructose corn syrup-based cannabis beverage made with “trim run” concentrate, so source smart.
Consumer Taste Trends
Think everyone likes sweets? Think again. Infused product brands that do well in the cannabis world are those that think outside the box and cater to eccentric or trendy tastes. Salty and savory brands are popping up with great success to counter the sugary cookies and brownies of old. Canna-butter is going by the wayside in favor of healthier cold-pressed infused coconut or olive oils. Time for you to find your product’s true niche in this market, rather than continue in the old way of thinking.
Dosage Demographics
Not every cannabis consumer wants a 100mg THC brownie – and realizing that is the first step to success on your infused product branding journey. When developing and new product or re-evaluating an existing one, it’s ideal to land your dosage somewhere in between your competitors. For example, if there are only a few cookies on the market and they are 25mg, 100mg, and 250mg respectively, then you should set out to create a 40mg version to offer consumers a unique and different option.
Product & Package Design
How many of your products can fit on a shelf? What does your packaging look like next to your competitor, or in a magazine spread? Does your labeling material or pigment scratch off easily? Would you rather be known as the eco-friendly tight packager, or provide luxurious box-and-padding to house your product? All of these are questions you should ask yourself as retail models and consumer desires in the cannabis industry change.
Retailer Choice
One big part of infused product branding that many entrepreneurs neglect, is where the products are sold. If you have a luxury or high-end cannabis product, do you really want it on the shelves at a “mom and pop” shop in the industrial part of town? Rather, find dispensaries and delivery services who ascribe to the same values that you do. Developing these retailer relationships early on will bring long-term success, much better than short-term sales, and will keep you exposed to the same general customer demographics for years to come.
Brand & Voice
You can bet that your product will attract fans as soon as it hits dispensary shelves. Part of developing an infused product brand is to form a distinct personality and voice for the company. That means deciding which age groups and lifestyles you’re going after. Once you’ve decided, you’ll be able to respond to comments and feedback in a professional manner, while building trust with your social media audience. Plus, you can naturally evolve this personality over the years as your target customers and products change.
3 Lessons Learned as a New Unicorn
3 Lessons Learned as a New Unicorn
A new job always comes with a learning curve, and being a Unicorn is no exception. Within my first month, I’ve learned three very important lessons that will always stay with me.
Find What Works For You
Over the years, the adult-skill that I have struggled with the most has been time management. Having ADD can make managing my time particularly difficult, but since I joined the Unicorns right before 4/20, it was crucial that I had my schedule under control. I’ve combed the internet for any and every “hack” involving time management – and what I learned from it is something we all already know, that everyone is different.
For me, it’s lists – I’ve found that I respond best to visual reminders and cues. “Out of sight, out of mind” is practically my accidental life motto. How do I use this to my advantage? Write. Down. Everything. If it’s something I need to do, I write it down. It doesn’t matter if I need to do it immediately, or in a few weeks – if I don’t write it down I’ll forget it. Every morning, I write (and prioritize!) a new list of tasks that need to be completed. When something inevitably comes up, I add it to the end, and reprioritize if needed. While this might seem like a lot of unnecessary and repetitive work to some people, it allows me to function ten times more efficiently, ultimately making me better at what I do.
Be Honest With Yourself
New people and new environments can be truly intimidating – pair that with a need to prove yourself, and before you know it you’re enthusiastically saying “yes!” to everything that is asked of you. This is when you need to be honest with yourself, in order to be honest with your co-workers. The amount of work that you initially agree to will set the precedent for the workload that you are able to handle – but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing!
Being honest with yourself also means challenging yourself. Just because you’re not particularly excited about the new project doesn’t mean that you can’t absolutely crush it. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, don’t turn down projects simply because you’re afraid to fail either. Failure is simply an opportunity to learn and grow.
Never Settle
Super cliché, I know, but hear me out. Now, before you go out and quit your stable office job in order to pursue your dream of being a nomadic juggler, that’s not quite what I’m suggesting. “Following your dream” sounds great in theory, but the reality is that “following your dream” doesn’t always pay the bills.
What I *am* saying is don’t lose sight of your end goal. Figure out what you’re best at – what you undeniably excel at doing – and pair that with your biggest passion. That is your end goal. It’ll probably take time, hard work, and patience to get there, but persevere. Being content isn’t good enough. You deserve to be truly happy.
The 5-Point Social Media Strategy Anyone Can Master
Doing social media strategy yourself is a learning process. There are new rules, trends and influencers to follow any given week. You’ve got to understand algorithms (as best you can, anyway) and principles of copywriting, photography and public relations. It can certainly be a lot to remember!
Whether you manage your brand’s entire social presence, or just have a say in the process, you should know these five guiding principles of social media.
Be Authentic
The first rule of social media is to be authentic! Whether that means embracing your goofy side once in awhile, or telling the truth when your brand has a crisis, the idea is the same.
Engage Regularly
You might think that posting on Facebook about once a week, when you feel like it, is an adequate strategy. While this is the bare minimum to keep a page active on the platform, it won’t help your account gain any users. For the most part, you’ve still got to actively engage with other humans on Facebook in order to see success. That means:
- posting daily or multiple times daily;
- inviting your personal contacts to Like your page and asking others to do the same;
- engaging and adding value in Groups; and, likely,
- running Ads to generate traffic.
Plan Ahead
So you wrote a month’s worth of blogs, tweets, and Instagram posts, but now your 30 days is up and you’re out of material. The content planning process is literally never ending for social media managers. Remember, you’re playing the long game, and regular (even daily) authentic engagement is a must to stay relevant in a sea of trendy new accounts.
Use Spell Check
Typos? Grammar slips? Plain poor phrasing? None of these things make a pretty social media share. Yet, so many are too trigger happy and hit “post” before their content is on point. Run post copy, graphics and spelling past a colleague or friend that you trust. Sometimes all you really need is a second set of eyes on your work.
Be Cohesive
Our last piece of advice is to stay consistently on-brand with all your social media postings. Use the same colors, symbolism, voice and phrasing in ever post. By doing this, you’ll avoid confusing your audience like many brands do trying to capitalize on the latest memes and trends. Instead your fans will recognize your posts seconds before they even see the brand name.
Maybe you know all this already, but for some reason your social strategies just haven’t been sticking lately. Your content may just need a nudge in the right direction, or a second creative opinion.
Brands and individuals making their mark in the cannabis industry, we’ve got your back. Call a Social Media Unicorn to help give your project some much-needed direction.
The Best Types of Posts For Each Social Media Platform
When it comes to social media, far too many brands make the mistake of posting the same exact content on every single platform. This is ill-advised because there are so many diverse groups on social media, and they all hang out in different social environments – and respond to different stimuli as well.
We put together a guide for DIY marketers to help you plan your approach to each top platform.
From humble beginnings, Facebook has become extremely diverse and dynamic. Not only is every demographic present on the platform, it’s also now been segmented into Groups. People and brands providing quality content to their audiences are holding on to their organic growth and influence on the platform, even as Facebook continues to try and monetize almost every interaction.
One thing is for certain about the Facebook algorithm – it favors video posts. Heavily. A strong video content strategy will help you acquire more fans organically. Otherwise, set aside a small budget and learn to optimize Facebook Ads with amazing photography and graphics and some clever copy.
It’s changed a lot over the past year, but Instagram is still the place to be for the hippest and most social-savvy people in the world. It’s where trends are made, and visual content is king. You can repurpose some of your Facebook content here, but really make the captions pop. Professional photography is almost a must these days as outstanding “pinch-to-zoom” resolution photo posts are becoming the norm (especially delectable close-up photos of cannabis products).
There are lots of “tricks” and theories out there for how to hack this platform, but really, Instagram runs on a few key principles. If you engage genuinely, post regularly, and utilize the proper hashtags. How you get there is up to you – as long as you make it absolutely beautiful.
The original microblogging platform is far from dead – in fact, Twitter remains one of the most active platforms for breaking news and commentary on current events, as well as conversations amongst journalists and influencers.
That being said, all your content on Twitter should be newsworthy and put on display the unique voice and vision of your brand. Image and video posts, polls, memes and hashtags are essential parts of the Twitterverse you should know about. Research hashtags being used by your target niches, incorporate them into your tweets, and remember to always engage authentically.
Snapchat
On Snapchat, anything goes. The people following you are doing so for one reason: to catch a glimpse into what you’re doing all day. Again, authenticity is key. Using Snapchat gives you the opportunity to build your brand its very own personality from scratch – or, start building your personal brand as a living, breathing embodiment of the company.
So, in short, you should always share the awesome adventure that is your business with the world. Having partners in the industry who know the rules and trends on each platform will strengthen your influence even more.
Hire us today and learn to finally rock social.