Launched in 2005 by the News Leaders Association, Sunshine Week is a national initiative to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy. This year, Sunshine Week will take place on March 12-18.
Open government is also an important piece U.S. history. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by the U.S. government.
“Those are your records produced by your people, your elected officials. If there is something going on, those are documents we want to share with you. That’s what makes FOIA important.” – Schuyler Kropf, Editor, State Government & Politics, The Post and Courier
Sunshine Week celebrates the public’s right to know what U.S. government officials are doing and why. It also informs people of how to go about requesting that information through FOIA requests.
While anyone has the right to submit a FOIA request, some may be hesitant or feel discouraged to request them due to the high costs or delays put in place. It’s a reminder of why The Post and Courier launched the “Uncovered” project in February 2021. The continuing series, in partnership with close to 20 community newspapers around the state, aims to fill the void of news deserts and shine a light on corruption in South Carolina. “Uncovered” helps obtain information the public needs to know, especially in small communities where local newspapers have either disappeared or greatly lack the resources to file FOIAs themselves.
Thanks to the support of our readers in South Carolina and beyond, The Post and Courier’s investigative and watchdog team can avoid the delays, costs, and roadblocks to accessing records and shed a light on government activity — because it is your right to know.
This effort to question authority, expose wrong-doings, fight injustice, and get to the heart of the issues that matter is central to The Post and Courier Public Service and Investigative Fund’s mission. This is vital work that can’t be done without your support.
How can you help?
To commemorate Sunshine Week, The Post and Courier will raise donations for our Public Service and Investigative Fund through a two-week campaign. This will allow us to continue to bring important and impactful information to the citizens of South Carolina. Make a tax-deductible donation on behalf of our education, climate, and investigative reporting before midnight on the final day of Sunshine Week (Saturday, March 18th).
With your valuable donation, we’re able to submit as many FOIA requests as it takes to ensure South Carolinians are not in the dark.
Let’s be honest, it’s not the year 2005 anymore. Fifteen years ago if you were looking for video marketing implementation, you’d likely find it in TV advertising or on a web browser. Today, however, video is available everywhere: on our phones, laptops, TVs, tablets, and even on our fridges! If you’re not using video as a part of your marketing strategy you’re missing out. Below are a few ways to begin implementing video right away:
Branding
In the ever-changing and tumultuous environment created by social media and COVID-19, video marketing presents a clear outlet to establish and maintain relevance for your brand while respecting safety guidelines. Regardless of whether you’re on a B2B or B2C platform, video marketing is generally agreed to have a great ROI. Video allows you to be much more personal than other mediums. Presenting your product or service over video allows you to build brand awareness, build loyalty and is an excellent avenue for presenting value proposition. Think: why is YOUR brand better than your competitors? Videos are an excellent opportunity for your company to shine through, for you to distinguish yourself, and to separate yourself from the pack.
One of the simplest ways to promote your company is to include clips of employees or satisfied customers talking about your business. Remember with branding to tell a story and to aim for the heart. If people can put a face to the company then they will much more easily connect with what you’re doing.
Advertising
When it comes to paid advertising, video is an easy way to present your product or service. In particular, tailoring your video to platforms like YouTube which has over 2 billion active users a month, gets your company before a huge audience quickly. Most social media platforms include paid opportunities to promote a business via videos. These include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Vimeo, Reddit, and TikTok. Before choosing a platform to promote on, make sure you’re familiar with what will be best suited for your needs. Our guide on picking between Facebook and Instagram is a helpful resource.
More traditional television advertising is also a great way to promote yourself too, but you certainly need to take cost-efficiency into account before going that route. Social media can be a simpler and much cheaper alternative.
Events
For events, videos are an excellent option as well. Before an event include clips from a previous event, you can also show location and venue. These will preview the audience to what they will experience when they attend. It can help with other things too. One of the most useful benefits of video is it can help your website with SEO. If you’re having trouble getting your event to show up on search engines, embedding a video could be just the trick to get you at the top of the page.
When the event is over make sure to follow up. Give a recap of what happened; interview attendees. Make sure to maximize the event to its full potential. Make sure you’re collecting new leads, creating a newsletter, and offering sponsorships. An after-the-event video can be a great opportunity to generate future leads for those who were unable to attend.
These videos can be simple and silly! Some great ideas include filming a live video showing off the latest inventory, or filming someone on your phone and posting to your feeds. Obviously, product demos can be highly produced affairs, but they don’t have to be! Get creative with your presentation.
Lastly: Go for it!
We know making the step into video marketing can be a scary thing. Many people don’t ever do it for fear of producing something of poor quality, or for fear of failure. If you need help getting your plan off the ground the team at King + Columbus would love to help. K+C has some of the top professionals in the industry and is well equipped to help your business grow wherever in the process you might be. No need to wait, go ahead and start implementing video today!
“Sign up for our newsletter!” A phrase you hear quite often. But what are you signing up for? Depends on what site you are on and what that site may be offering to you. Have you ever wondered what exactly those businesses get from having a newsletter? Seriously. What’s in it for them?
The Post and Courier Newsletter Editor, Emily Daily, shares her insights and expertise in newsletters from her 15 years in media, marketing, and public relations.
Leads to Clients
Newsletters being sent to people that already have an established interest in the company or business. These leads come from website submissions, social media, and anytime a person reaches out to the company for more information. When a person signs up for a newsletter or offers their email address, this individual is considered a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and is ready to learn more about your business. Now, you nurture your lead with follow up marketing emails, letting them know about special offers, information that only subscribers or MQLs would get to learn, and anything exciting that may be internally happening with your business.
“Not only is it important for marketing the business and sharing new product news or upcoming sales or events, but it’s also a way to connect with customers on a personal level. Many successful newsletters are written from a personal point-of-view, often from a business owner, CEO, or editor. This gives the readers a chance to feel like they have a true connection to the company.”
– Newsletter Editor, Emily Daily
Building Relationships
People want to feel like they are getting something from a newsletter. What information does your business offer that can be helpful to your target audience? What makes your business stand out? Offering knowledge and delivering it right to your lead’s inbox developing a personal connection that may otherwise have been lost. Newsletter Editor, Emily Daily, explains:
“The advantage of a newsletter versus a typical marketing email is that companies can create an established group of readers who trust their brand and stay updated with their news on a consistent basis. Every time a reader opens a newsletter from that company, they know it won’t simply be a marketing push – it will have other content that interests them as well. Therefore, newsletters tend to have much higher open rates and click-through rates, especially when they’re sent out on a consistent basis.”
If someone signs up to learn more from you, what will they be learning? Here are some options:
Awareness: New products or services? Perhaps a new team member! Let your audience know.
Expertise: What do you know that can help your audience? What resources do you offer? A guide? Article?
Promotion: What’s going on in your business? Having a sale? Special offer? Holidays are primetime to offer your loyal audience something special!
Coverage: Extra! Extra! Read all about it…in our newsletter! Compile a spot for readers, leads, clients to go to know about everything and anything that may apply to them. The Post and Courier often use this method with our niche newsletters – Breaking News, Sports, weather, climate change, food & dining, and so much more! Instead of taking the time to search the website, we send you the links you want to know about it. A one-stop-shop of information!
Not Just Newsletters
A newsletter is not just an informative way to nurture leads and build client relationships. Newsletters are not only a great way to reach new audiences, but they are also a great way to advertise. Joining an established newsletter series can highly benefit your business. Each newsletter that The Post and Courier sends out has sponsorships. These are businesses advertising within a source that they know reaches their target audience and is a trustworthy, primetime, and amicable form of advertising.
“The benefits of being a sponsor for content like this are unique to broad appeal newsletters. The open rates will likely be higher percentages than general newsletters since the readers are specifically seeking out that content. This means they will also have higher trust in the content of the email. This makes your brand stand out even more.” – Marketing Coordinator, Michael Strong writing about Newsletter Sponsorships.
Adding newsletters and email marketing to your budget can significantly help you save in some areas while continuing to grow and nurture leads.
Are your ads getting noticed as much as you’d like? Are you looking for ways to grab your audience’s attention? Successful social media ads entice consumers to watch, listen to or click on the message.
So what are the things you should focus on in your social media advertising, in order to get the most out of your investment?
Script It for Broadcast
Podcasting is a great opportunity to reach a new, attentive and engaged audience.
Whether your ad is scripted like a radio spot or read aloud by the podcast host, it will come across as more authentic than any sponsored Facebook post ever could. The audience knows it’s an ad because it sounds like an ad, and that’s okay.
Don’t underestimate the time and resources this kind of advertising requires, though. You’ll need to either have a trusted podcaster do it for you or be extremely creative with how you deliver your messaging.
Use Video or GIFs
Video has been hot for a few years now, but a lot has changed recently. For example, Facebook has autoplay on video and supports animated GIFs, and Instagram allows all brands to run video ads, where it once did not.
Great content combined with motion is an irresistible combination that gives you the opportunity to engage with consumers on a deeper level. Video marketing can be tricky though, so you need to keep a few things in mind.
First, although many videos on social media feature autoplay, your message shouldn’t rely on audio. Most users of these platforms pop open their app to pass the time in public places. Its highly likely that they won’t have the sound turned on on their phones.
Don’t assume your audience is listening, but do assume they’re watching. Most video ads today incorporate native subtitles, and the best ads use them in creative, visually engaging ways. Utilize this text motion to pull the user in and emphasize words visually, since they cannot hear the emphasis audibly.
Instagram’s latest venture is Reels, a TikTok competitor that is an excellent place for video ads
Second, if you’re thinking about diving into Instagram video ads, know that they’re limited to 60 seconds, with story ads limited to 15 seconds. Familiarize yourself with the recommended video specs for ads on facebook, which apply to Instagram as well. Skip any opening graphics or stills and get right to the story. Also, Instagram was built on an audience that appreciates beautiful and inspiring visuals, so think beyond basic storytelling and consider using a mix of still imagery and video.
Incorporate Humor
Many brands have found success by taking social media advertising and turning it into a parody of itself. Incorporating humor into your ads is an effective way to connect with your audience and entice them to click through to your form or other content. Humor is one of the best emotions to tap into if you want your content to generate engagement, so lighten up and make your audience laugh.
Just know that using humor and sarcasm doesn’t necessarily work for every brand. Your ad content and campaign need to reflect your brand voice and resonate well with your target audience. Done well, it works. If you miss the mark, it can be a social media disaster.
Provide Content Downloads
Instead of simply advertising to consumers, what if you provided useful content? This isn’t a new concept, it’s essential to content marketing, but it’s something you want to embrace.
Develop useful content and promote it with social media ads.
Whether you’re in B2C or B2B, you have something to offer. Content marketers might get thousands of downloads of ebooks on topics ranging from purchasing wholesale hot tub parts to picking the right preschool.
If you need help figuring out where to start, look at your company’s blog and social stats. Which blog posts are the most popular? Which social content gets the most engagement? Build on that. And if you’re still stuck, look at your competitors. What kind of content are they offering? Do that, but do it better.
Once you have your content, consider spending marketing dollars on getting it published on other sites like Reddit, using a traffic tool or promoting it on social media using custom and targeted audiences.
Make yourself worthy of attention
It is becoming harder every year to compete with customers’ attention spans. Apps like Tik Tok and Instagram throw them quick, consumable content that encourages moving on fast. If something doesn’t hook the user in the first 5 seconds, there is an endless trove of content they can turn to instead.
On top of this, people are developing blindness to branded content on social media. It has become so normal to see every 3 posts appear as an ad, that users know when to tune out.
No matter how native your content is, they aren’t likely to want to click on an ad. The trick is to create ads that are valuable enough for consumers to willingly click on them. This means getting out of your comfort zone and seeking new methods.
2021 is bringing more changes to the social media advertising landscape than we’ve seen in a long time. Between redesigns, new apps, and a major shift around user data privacy, businesses have a lot to pay attention to over the coming year.
Here are some of the most pertinent changes and updates that affect advertisers on the largest social media platform.
User data privacy changes
Facebook has wrapped itself up in an ongoing conflict with Apple. As Apple emphasizes the importance of user’s data privacy, Facebook has growing concerns about how this limits advertisers’ ability to efficiently target people.
As Apple’s latest privacy-focused iPhone operating system rolls out to phones across the globe, Facebook is implementing changes to ads manager that prepare for limitations and delays on ad analytics and user data. The biggest thing Facebook is recommending advertisers do to prepare is create and prioritize 8 “events” that report how users interact with your website after clicking on your ad.
The redesign of Facebook was loved by many, and not-so-loved by many more. Regardless, it’s here to stay. The primary change to note is that the design places more emphasis on Groups and Events – the “two biggest reasons people visit Facebook every day.”
Business manager settings have also shifted around as a part of the redesign. If you find yourself unable to find certain features, there is a way to get back to the old interface for your business page.
Users can no longer opt out of Facebook’s redesigned interface.
To do this, rather than clicking on your page from a shortcut on the main Facebook “feed” page, start in the business manager homepage, business.facebook.com. From here, you can select any of your pages in the center of the screen. Clicking the “Go To Page” button will bring you to the page interface you’re likely much more familiar with.
One thing I’ve found is that it is much easier to search and sort through your page’s posts in this interface. The redesign has removed the “posts” tab entirely from pages.
This frustration with the redesign is alleviated somewhat by the “creator studio” feature, which shows valuable data on your posts and allows you to boost posts through your content library. But for those who are familiar with promoting their page though an older interface, there are still options for you.
More text is allowed on ads
Facebook once penalized ads with higher amounts of image text in auctions and delivery. As of September 7, 2020, this has seemingly been changed. All warnings and labels that previously told advertisers that overusing text would limit their ad’s reach have been removed. It’s hard to say if this means the policy changed, or if Facebook simply no longer warns advertisers about this.
Hashtags on Facebook
While most creators will steer clear from adding hashtags to Facebook posts, the platform is implementing recommended tag listings within the post composer. In September of 2020, the test had only expanded to a specific audience, as not all users see the new listings. It could be a good way to broaden your conversation. Statistically, they do seem to be taking flight, but implementing them may or may not be worth the added effort.
New “Collab” app
Facebook has begun rolling out its latest TikTok competitor. While the Facebook-owned Instagram already has “Reels” to compete with the short-form video content app, Collab will focus on collaborative music making.
Advertisers should be paying attention to Collab, Facebook’s latest answer to TikTok.
The standalone app recently came out of public beta testing and launched on the App store in December 2020. It is not fully clear yet how advertising will play into the service, and if the existing ads manager platform will adopt Collab ads.
With the meteoric success of TikTok, it’s worth paying attention to all competitors in 2021.
Image owner rights
According to the social media behemoth itself, about 3 billion people use Facebook’s platforms, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In other words, where Facebook goes, its other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp are sure to follow.
Facebook announced in late 2020 that “certain partners” can claim ownership over their images, and then moderate their usage across Facebook’s platforms. As it stands, this implementation could affect re-posted content on Facebook and Instagram in various ways. The current options that an image owner has when it identifies unauthorized usage are:
– Let the image stay up
– Issue a take-down notice
– Or use a territorial block, making it invisible in copywritten countries
Facebook Business Suite
As Facebook continues to roll its main platform and Instagram together, as shown by the merging of messages on both apps, the company has introduced another platform for content creation and scheduling.
Business Suite helps users to:
Save time – Post to Facebook and Instagram at the same time and manage posts in one place to stay connected to both communities. Stay up to date – Get all your Facebook and Instagram messages, notifications, and alerts in one place so you can stay up to date and respond to all your customers more easily. View business results – See what is working with Facebook and Instagram insights and learn what your customers are looking for.
While the message management tool is the same as Pages Managers, there is also a user-friendly analytics integration, making it easier to get an in-depth look at post performance.
As this tool is rolled out, keep in mind that Facebook intends to make Business Suite “the main interface for businesses of all sizes who use Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.”
