Best Tips of the Year (So Far)

Every now and then, it is nice to reflect on some tips from the past. This week we wanted to look back at some of the best (or our favorite) tips from 2013 so far.

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Create a Media Section on Your Mobile Site

You may be interested in creating an entire media section on your mobile website, rather than simply having a single media page. Rich media such as photos and videos are engaging and help keep people on your mobile site... Read the Full Tip >

Summer is Coming – Will Your Marketing Change?

Summer is fast approaching. More than any other season, summer has distinct characteristics which can and should effect how you market. But, it depends heavily on your demographics and location.... Read the Full Tip >

Consider the Wording in Your Scheduled Social Messages

Squareberry allows you to schedule messages far in advance to publish to Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Profiles, LinkedIn Groups and Twitter accounts. Scheduling messages in advance allows you to plan your communications... Read the Full Tip >

Listen&Count Polls on Your Mobile Website

In the Mobile Management area, you can easily add an interactive poll to your mobile website. In Mobile Content, click “Add Page” and then “Create New Page”. On the Add Page screen, select the “Listen&Count Poll” page type.... Read the Full Tip >

Using Snagged Categories As Planning Guides

Not every tip is a huge, mind-blowing, world flipping idea that will change the way you conduct business or handle your mobile and social marketing. Some tips are small, simple but great. This week’s Tuesday Tip is one of those, offering a simple idea that can lend you a helpful hand in your marketing strategy and planning... Read the Full Tip >

Timely Tips for Local Businesses Near Colleges

Summer is ending. Soon it will be fall. The leaves will change, etc. More importantly, this time of year signals the start of new college/university semesters. Many local retail stores and restaurants service markets filled with college students.

Now is the perfect time to run marketing promotions and hold events to attract new student customers. You don't want to wait until later in the year. At that point, students will have already found other places to go, mostly based on recommendation and word of mouth. You should to not only join but dictate that conversation by starting the new college year off right.

Hold an Event

Who isn't thinking about a party when the semester starts? New and old students alike will want to get out and get social to start their year off. Hold a "New Year Kickoff" or "Goodbye Summer Bash" at your location. This is a great opportunity for new students to check out your business. Just make sure you make a good impression. This will help you draw them back in over the next few years.

Run Promotions

Simple promotions like "Save 10% When You Show Your Student ID Card" can help draw in new business. Your promotions need to be shared by the current students who have been around. New students look to them for advice. Many classes/programs now form special Facebook Groups so students can communicate and offer tips to each other. Getting your promotion shared in one of those groups would go a long way.

How Do You Get Plugged In?

A lot of restaurants and local businesses near colleges are staffed by students who go to that same college. Your employees can help your spread the word about your upcoming events and promotions. Ask them to share your happening on Facebook & Twitter. They may even be able to get one posted on special class groups & pages.

Post About Your Calendars & Upcoming Schedules

Most local businesses are all about getting more people in the door. For restaurants and local retail stores, events and promotions are great way to drive more foot traffic and generate sales.

Post About Your Calendars

Some people may not know about your calendars or your events. Some people may be knew to your organization or only recently started following you on Facebook or Twitter. Some people may just need to be reminded.

Schedule messages that link to the calendar on your website or to your Facebook page calendar. Of course, you want to make sure that your calendar is full of nice events, promotions and snagged events when people start looking at it. You can even setup a message that repeats every month, reminding people to take a look at your social calendars for upcoming events and promotions.

Schedule Social Media Posts About Upcoming Schedule

It is important to let people know about all the upcoming events and promotions you have going on. Some people's social calendars fill up early in the week. As you schedule events/promotions in the Planner of your Squareberry account, schedule messages along with them to let people know what is coming up.

For example, if you have 2 promotions and 1 event happening next week, you could schedule a message for Monday talking about those 2 promotions and events with a link to the calendar on your website or your Facebook page calendar. This gives a nice overview of your upcoming week and can help get people mentally committed to heading to your location.

Create a Media Section on Your Mobile Site

You may be interested in creating an entire media section on your mobile website, rather than simply having a single media page. Rich media such as photos and videos are engaging and help keep people on your mobile site. This post will walk you through the easy steps of creating a "media section" on your mobile website in the mobile management area of Squareberry.

Start With a Sub-Menu

The first thing you need is a sub-menu. On the Mobile Content tab select the "Add Page/Sub-Menu" button. Then select "Add Sub-Menu on the popup. This will take you to the Add Sub-Menu screen.

On the add Sub-Menu screen, provide a name for your sub-menu. This will essentially be the name of your media section. You could call it "Media", "Photos & Videos" or anything else you want. Once you create this, it will be added to the menu structure of your mobile site. You will see the sub-menu on your Mobile Content.

Add Media Pages

Now you need to add media pages to the sub-menu you just created. On the Mobile Content tab, click on the sub menu you just created. This will take you to that sub-menu. Click the "Add Page/Sub-Menu" button to add a page to the sub-menu, which means you are adding a page to your "media section".

Squareberry's Mobile Management area has several page types which can be used in this scenario, including Photo Gallery and YouTube Video. Photo Galleries allow you to quickly upload multiple photos to easily make a touch-friendly photo gallery. YouTube Video pages simply show a YouTube video for quick and easy play.

Alternatively, you can use the Custom page type to add any combination of photos, graphics and videos you want. These pages will all be added to the sub-menu you created, effectively building a mobile media center.

Track How Your Events & Promotions Perform

There is a lot of talk about analytics, metrics and return on investment when it comes to online marketing. Most of the time the focus is on how many clicks your organization gets, how much traffic you see or your number of "Likes" on Facebook. For most organizations, the most important thing to measure is how they actually do in the real world. Squareberry's event and promotion features are designed to help you market real world activities and specials that can lead to greater attendance and higher sales.

Events - Count It

Tracking the effectiveness of your "Events" is pretty straightforward. Simply count the number of people who show up for your event. This can be accomplished by having someone at the front entrance who's job is to count, running a raffle that everyone participates in or by counting "groups" based on number of transactions/checks.

Getting any kind of count can help you in your long term goals. If you track the attendance of your events you will be able to recognize trends and adjust to them. If your numbers begin to drop, you will know you need to mix it up or promote your event in different ways.

Promotions - Count It

For retails stores and restaurants, counting promotions is fairly easy. Your Point of Sale (POS) system should offer a promotion/coupon feature. You can input the promotion manually each time someone shows you their coupon or you can utilize the barcode feature to scan the coupon right off printed coupons and mobile devices. Your POS system should keep track of how many times your promotions was used by customers.

Sales - The Last Word

For businesses, the most important things to track is sales. This is obviously something you will already be doing. You may want to look at sales during periods or on days where you run promotions/events compared with days when no special happenings are going on.

Sales should be the last word and determining factor. You may feel your promotions or events was not as popular as you hoped, but your sales may have still seen a healthy boost and the effects could be ongoing from that boost. Sales numbers will always be king.

Using QR Codes for Your Mobile Pages

Recently we released new enhancements to the Mobile Management area which makes it easier than ever to link directly to a mobile page or utilize a QR Code to send people directly to a page on your mobile website. Every page you create in the Mobile Management area has a unique URL and a unique QR code that points to that page.

Utilizing QR Codes to Boost Your Brand

At the top right corner of the edit screen for each mobile page is a button "Link & QR Code to This Page". Click on this button to get a QR Code for the page you are currently editing. You can easily download the QR Code at that time.

Calendar Pages

Calendar pages are always great to utilize. Add a QR Code to your restaurant menu, in a local publication or on a mail-out. You can quickly send people to your events/promotions page on your mobile site to help draw them in to your location. Calendar pages help you carry people from printed material to mobile-friendly site, from mobile site to real world events and promotions.

Contact Forms

Your printed advertisement, brochure or mail-out can quickly be given an easy call-to-action by utilizing a contact form. Add a QR code on your printed material that links to your contact form. This allows anyone who sees your ad or brochure to instantly contact you via contact form/email. This can help generate leads, generate sales and get registrations.

Photo Galleries

QR Codes are perfect for enhancing printed materials. Local newspapers, magazines and publications can utilize mobile photo galleries and QR Codes to take their printed items to another level.

Start by creating a photo gallery page type. Upload photos related to the article or topic you are covering in the publication. The QR code can then be placed on your printed publication next to relevant information/articles. Now, people reading your publication can easily scan the QR Code and get a touch-friendly photo gallery on their mobile device to enhance their reading experience.

Using the New Image Uploader for Mobile Galleries

The photo gallery page type in the Mobile Management Area allows you to create simple, sleek and touch-friendly photo galleries for your mobile website. Photos are organized into a gallery view and can be viewed as a slide-show when you select an image.

Recently, a new image uploader was put in place for Photo Gallery pages in the Mobile Management Area. This new uploader allows you to upload multiple images at once, making creating photo galleries faster and easier.

Uploading Multiple Photos

When editing a photo gallery page in the mobile management area click the "Add Photo" button. This will bring up a popup with 3 buttons: "Select Files", "Upload" and "Clear". Click the "Select Files" button. This will bring up your system's file browser. To select multiple files on Windows hold the Control button and click on the files you want to upload. To select multiple files on Mac OS hold the command button and click on the files you want to upload.

Then click "Open" or "Select" on your file browser window. The images you selected will now appear in your upload popup. You can select more files, clear the selected files or click "Upload". If you click the upload button your images will being to upload.

Once the images are done uploading you can close the popup and your images will now appear under "Photos on This Page". You can drang and drop to reorder the images in your gallery. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page when you are done.