Say you were to select a new friend simply based on their voice alone. More than the words they said, you’d be looking for someone who sounded approachable and relatable, right? The same is true of business’ brand voice. It’s less about specific words and turns of phrase you use than the tone with which you use to communicate and connect with your audience.

Looking to create more purposeful prose for your content marketing?

Listen up. These five steps will help you create a brand voice your clients can truly hear.

1. Describe it well

Before you put pen to paper, start asking some questions. Do you aim to inspire or are you tapping into their adventurous side? What is your stance on the use of expletives? Punctuation? Will you punctuate your copy with emojis? How will your words connect with them on an emotional level?

When you have these mapped out, start by writing three adjectives about how you want to come across. Beside those, write out three more adjectives describing how you want the customer to feel.

For instance, if you’re an IT company you might want to come across intelligent and leave your audience feeling informed. Run a greenhouse? Try for fresh fodder that moves your customers to connect with your crops.

2. Distinguish it authentically

The most unique thing about your voice is you. Project a bit of your personality into your copy and you’ll have a better shot at maintaining one of the brand voice fundamentals: authenticity. Often times it’s best to let your business’ core values inform the verbiage. This way, even if you look to other brands or competitors for inspiration, you’ll still be expressing your brand’s distinct personality. More importantly, you’ll be less likely to sound like you’re trying too hard. This is a big one. The overwhelming majority of consumers respond to genuineness above all else.

3. Keep it consistent

From the character limits that restrain you to the landing pages that contain your mission statement, consistency is key. No matter which channel you’re chattering over, it’s important to communicate it with the same emotional expression. Flip-flopping back and forth between clever witticisms and an authoritative brand voice is sure to give readers whiplash. The inconsistency can also decrease your credibility.

Be sure to communicate your new brand voice to the team. It’ll help you prevent any rouge writers from running away with your words. You may even want to formalize an official style guide to keep everyone on the same page.

4. Make it personal

If you find the idea of creating a disembodied voice difficult – or slightly creepy – try thinking about your brand voice as a flesh and blood person. Time to break out those buyer personas and get connected with your target audiences. Select one from each of your core consumers – working moms, rural millennials, small business owners, etc.

Re-familiarize yourself with each, then look at them through the following lenses:

• How do they look?
• What are their goals?
• How do they express themselves?
• Who do they ask when they have a problem?
• What do they do for entertainment?
• And, most importantly, how can your brand help solve their needs?

Exercise a little empathy to fully understand who it is you’ll be chatting at. It’s the best way to turn your marketing communication into a full-blown conversation.

5. Revisit it often

No good brand is stagnant for long. In fact, one of the main reasons you’re honing in on your brand voice is to grow your business. As it expands, you’ll need to continue carving it up from time to time. Once you do, you’ll start to see ways you can help it naturally ebb and flow based on the data you’re collecting about your evolving audiences. This might mean reworking your blog strategy to accommodate new groups. Or, it could involve adopting a competitor’s successful campaign to help you get seen on a new marketing channel. Point is, creating a truly memorable brand voice isn’t a one-and-done activity. It’s a voyage in rediscovery.

Need help creating a strong brand voice? We hear you loud and clear. Contact us and soon your customers will, too.

Are you trying to market in the B2B space? It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a wonderful place to do so. And with their ad platform, it may be somewhere you want to market.

Once upon a time, marketing was all word of mouth. Now, with digital marketing settling in for the long haul, much of that’s changed. Pay-per-click campaigns and other forms of search marketing have all but replaced traditional marketing mainstays.

But sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. For instance, even as it evolves in the age of social media, we’re seeing some marketing tactics get back to the basics.

In its latest iteration, there’s been a resurgence of peer-to-peer recommendation in the form of influencer marketing – a tactic that involves partnering with tastemakers who have high follower counts to publish sponsored posts on social media.

Thinking of implementing an influencer marketing strategy to help increase your brand awareness? Here are six ways to execute it well.

Establish your goals.

It’s hard – if not impossible – to gauge the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaign without first getting clear about what results you’re looking to achieve. Whether you want to grow your social media following, drive more sales, or increase web traffic, make sure you start specific then get to measuring. Different influencers might generate content that aligns better with certain metrics, so clearly defining your KPIs ahead of time is important.

Do your research.

If you don’t reach your target audience, you’re unlikely to generate much engagement – no matter how commendable your content. That’s why it’s important to have a sense of an influencer’s community before you agree to work together. Take the time to get to know their followers. See how responsive they are with them and what kind of brand exposure they’ve previously participated in. You want this to be a good relationship for both of you, so just like any new hire, ‘culture fit’ is key.

Plan for the long play.

A one-off post won’t do much to expand your brand awareness. In fact, it could come off as inauthentic and may actually put off potential buyers. Instead, once you feel confident you’ve found the right influencer, strategize around how you can use them to promote all kinds of content over the long haul. Have them announce contests, co-host an event, or do a takeover of your feed. In essence, the more long-term your relationship with an influencer, the better it will be for your brand.

Employee influencer marketing tools.

There are tons of tools that help you do everything from structure online contests to create digital marketing videos. (ICYMI: We wrote about four free of our favorite social media tools last week.) Whether you want to find influencers or manage your paid partnership, we recommend using tools like Famebit or Upfluence to help.

Stay FTC compliant.

This is a big one. In order for your influencer marketing initiatives to stay on the up and up, you’ll need to make sure you follow FTC regulations. It’s relatively simple to disclose a paid endorsement, sponsored content, or #ad by simply tagging the post with the appropriate hashtag. Instagram also makes it easy to be forthcoming about brand partnerships with their branded content option. Whichever option you choose, just remember to double check that an influencer has somehow identified that they’re being compensated for promoting your brand. Otherwise, you could find yourself in hot water.

This is a big one. In order for your influencer marketing initiatives to stay on the up and up, you’ll need to make sure you follow FTC regulations. It’s relatively simple to disclose a paid endorsement, sponsored content, or #ad by simply tagging the post with the appropriate hashtag. Instagram also makes it easy to be forthcoming about brand partnerships with their branded content option. Whichever option you choose, just remember to double check that an influencer has somehow identified that they’re being compensated for promoting your brand. Otherwise, you could find yourself in hot water.

Go beyond the ‘gram.

Remember that Instagram and YouTube aren’t the only spheres of influence. Since Facebook announced its latest algorithm change (demoting content that isn’t from family or friends), businesses would do well to partner with influencers to get more eyes on their products and services. If you have a younger target demographic, they’re still absolutely active on SnapChat, despite its user flight to IG stories. There’s also the oft-underutilized Pinterest which is full of Pinfluencers ripe for the pinning.

Essentially, influencer marketing comes down to one thing: relationships. So long as you partner with folks that actually care about your brand, the rest is all in the details.

Feeling a little star struck by celebs and social media influencers? We can help you make contact.

Guaranteeing results in a search engine marketing has always been difficult to do. Google has changed the game forever, however, with the introduction of their local services ads.

Whether you’re an SEO specialist or digital marketing manager, you know that online campaigns are measured by one thing: results. But without sufficient data, you’re essentially running them blind. Google Analytics illuminates some key insights. Still, it alone can leave businesses with blind spots. Tagging in some help from Google Tag Manager (GTM) broadens your view, giving you a fuller picture of how users are interacting with your site.

Want to know how a visitor arrived on your site or what outbound clicks they made while browsing? GTM will track any and all activity you outline. The best part is that you don’t have to be a programmer or web developer to implement tags or make important tracking modifications to your site. It leaves your source code intact, freeing the dev team to focus on more complex projects.

For a small snippet of code, there’s a lot of available info. This post covers the basics so marketers can feel confident enough to start working with Google Tag Manager.

Tracking with GTM

Tags collect site information across numerous verticals. Have an activity you want to isolate? Once the container code is added to your pages, you simply use Google Tag Manager’s user-friendly interface to add or make edits from the web.

Use it to track tangible results about your digital marketing campaigns on key metrics like:

• scroll tracking
• form submissions
• conversions
• heat mapping
• remarketing
• file downloads

It’s worth noting that GTM is also universal. Though the Google product works seamlessly with services like Adwords, it also plays well with third party tags from sites like Twitter or Crazy Egg.

Setting up Google Tag Manager

Ready to make tracking codes work for you? Follow these steps to better measure the results of your digital marketing efforts:

1. Log in to the Google Tag Manager page – tagmanager.google.com. (First, make sure you’re signed in to your Google Analytics account if you have one.)
2. Set up your account name (usually your company name).
3. Pick and name your container (web vs mobile vs AMP, etc).
4. Check the service agreement and “create.”

At this point, you may need a developer to help you implement two pieces of script to every page of your site. It’s a good idea to have them help remove any existing tags from your site’s source code and add any customized tags outside the GTM tag templates while they’re at it.

Next, spend a little time learning about triggers and variables in GTM’s help section. It also covers more advanced features like Data Layers and debugging options.

Help with GTM

In the beginning, you’re likely to have questions or issues within GTM. Fortunately, many of the most common conundrums are covered in popular Google forums. Online communities are full of developers who are full of best practices and receptive to requests for help.

Can’t wait two or more weeks for a developer to get to your JavaScript task or help you track the results of your most recent survey? With Google Tag Manager, you don’t have to.

Need help setting up GTM on your site? Tag us in.

Small business owners spend their days wearing multiple hats. One moment you’re sending invoices as accounts receivable, the next you’re approving employee time off as HR. The burden of doing it all on your own can leave little room for managing your brand online.

You know online marketing is mandatory, but the overwhelm is real. Whether you’re using Instagram to increase your digital footprint or Google to boost your search marketing results, these four free social media marketing tools will help grow your online presence, freeing you up to head your other one (wo)man departments.

1. Awario

Monitoring your social media accounts every minute of the day is a tall order, even for massive marketing teams with limitless budgets. Awario lets you listen in on keyword and brand mentions across all your key social media platforms.

These include conversations with and without the #hashtags and provide a portal to reply to users directly without even logging into IG.

Awario takes it a step further, sorting mentions by follower counts so those with the highest number of followers appear first. They’ll even go as far as show you brand-relevant accounts to develop your influencer marketing strategy.

2. Planoly

Planning, scheduling, and publishing your Instagram posts just got a lot easier. With this app, you can manage and edit your posts to perfection, then send them out into the world from your desktop or mobile phone without ever leaving the Planoly platform.

You can create photo blocks and stagger your posts to make your feed cohesive. They’ll help you see which pics look best grouped together so you can pack the most punch to each post. Schedule out a week or month in advance, for a set-it-and-forget-it style approach to the ‘gram.

3. Add Your Business to Google My Business

As a Dallas SEO Agency turned Digital Marketing Firm, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Google My Business as part of our prescribed online marketing suite.

To increase your website traffic, you need a complete business listing profile both on and off Google My Business. The search engines crawl and return all variety of data, including that which they find on social media. Just another reason to make sure your information is accurate and up-to-date.

Start by making sure you’re a verified business, and complete all the listing information. Even small changes like seasonal hours or events you offer should be kept current so they’ll be more likely to show up in the Google Information Panel and beyond.

For more information, see Google’s official Google My Business page. Need some help getting set up? We can help.

4. InShot

Video marketing is a content trend that’s expanding by the day. Whether you want to post to your Instagram stories or simply need a video editing tool that’s easy to learn – not to mention effective – InShot is the app for the job. It can clean up your photos and piece together your social media videos to help engage users through visual storytelling. You can splice videos together, add your logo, layer music, crop or blur your background – anything you need to make your video marketing strategy pop.

You may be a Jack or Jane of all trades, but no successful small business does it alone. Employ these free social media tools to help grow your brand online without adding extra time commitments.

Globe Runner, an Addison, Texas-based digital marketing agency that doubles as a local art gallery, is celebrating the coming of spring with a new quarterly exhibit. For the last few years, the two-time Addy award-winning firm has used its available wall space to highlight artists in the community, offering residents and visitors a shot of culture. This quarter’s talents are esteemed artists Dylan Eakin and Rita Hendricks.

In addition to their ineffable artistic eye, these creatives are also generous, teaming with Globe Runner to give back $600 to Operation Kindness, North Texas’s original & largest no-kill animal care and adoption center.

Globe Runner’s Spring Artist Exhibition

Last Thursday, April 26^th, Head to Head opened at Gallery 550. The gala was one part cocktail party, one part charity event. It was an evening of refreshments, music, and original art that culminated with one lucky family taking home some seriously adorable raffle winnings.

L to R: Eric McGehearty, Raffle Winners, Hendricks, and Amber, Operation Kindness Rep

Above are the winners of a personal pet portrait lovingly crafted by Hendricks. In total, more than $600 in donations from this season’s gala raffle were accepted by Amber from Operation Kindness.

Globe Runner founder and art supporter, Eric McGehearty, warmly introduced both artists then invited guests to marvel at Eakin’s extremely detailed human pencil portraits and Hendricks’ watercolors pet portraits.

As always, Globe Runner is pleased to host these important works and trust the members of our Addison community were as moved as we were by the display.

To see more photos of the event, keep scrolling!

Both artists will be on display at the Globe Runner offices until roughly Fall 2018 when the next rotation is displayed.

Looking Back at Our Previous Exhibition

This past November, Globe Runner held an exhibition for our previous artist: Gary Perrone.

About Globe Runner

Globe Runner is an Addison, Texas-based search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing and digital advertising agency. It has over 60 local, national and international B2C and B2B clients in consumer-packaged goods (CPG), beauty, credit repair, fashion, healthcare, home and interiors, jewelry, legal services and sports. Globe Runner sits on the boards of the Dallas Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM) and the Social Media Club of Dallas (SMC Dallas). The agency’s staff and work have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and AdWeek. They are also proud winners of two prestigious American Advertising Awards.