The Best of the Best From 2021’s Blogs, Part 1 | Social Joey

Whether you were more than ready to send 2021 packing or feeling immensely blessed by the year that was, odds are that you took a few minutes as the year drew to a close to reflect.

That’s pretty normal—most of us pause to think about what happened in one year as we move forward into another one.

Well, here at Social Joey, we’re doing that, too! In particular, we’re pausing to take a look back at all the blogs we sent out into the world in 2021.

When we parsed back through all 24 blogs, we felt a little bit of nostalgia and a little bit of “whoa, man, we really were going through that.” Read on to join us for the look back!

Are You in the Know About Social Media Lingo?

We started the year off with a primer to what business owners need to know about the social media world and its specific vocabulary.

This blog defined everything from the basics—a Facebook account—to the granular—Open Graph tags. Think you could use a refresher on social media to start off this year? Click the link!

The Secrets to Marketing Your Franchise Opportunity on LinkedIn

In this blog, we talked about using LinkedIn as a franchise development tool.

While you can capture the attention of potential franchisees on other social media platforms, LinkedIn is different. As a networking site, it offers a perfect opportunity for brands to highlight their franchise opportunity and what makes it shine.

“As more of us spent more time at home during late spring and at different points throughout the year, social media use hit an all-time high. This includes a significant increase in both users and engagement for LinkedIn, probably as job seekers looked for opportunities.”

Are You in the Know About SEO?

In our first February blog, we returned to our primer series—offering a breakdown of some marketing basics.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, makes the world go ‘round these days. Staying in front of your audience requires a polished, engaging, mobile-friendly, keyword-driven website. Looking to up your SEO game in 2022? Take a peek back at this blog, where we offer some basics about improving your SEO.

Your Guide to Facebook Business Pages—And What’s Changing

The saying “The only thing constant is change” is especially true when it comes to Facebook for businesses. These days, it’s essential to use Facebook to market your business, but it can also be complicated and feel overwhelming.

This blog broke down some of the latest changes to the platform and what they meant for business owners.

Empathy in Marketing: Why It Matters in a Post-Pandemic World

The beginning of March marked one year into the global pandemic, and that’s where we focused this blog. After a year that wasn’t easy for anyone, it was important to share the message that empathy can make a big difference for brands.

“Instead of building a solution and then looking for a customer, find your customers—listen to them—and then build your solution.”

How Does Facebook Know What I’m Thinking?

You know you wanted to know the answer to this question! In this blog, we broke down some truths about how Facebook works.

Yes, we talked about how creepy it is, but we also talked about how beneficial that information can be for businesses. The depth of data available through Facebook is really unparalleled.

A Year Later, It’s Time to Take a Deep Breath

Nearly all of our blogs focus on something related to marketing, because, well, we’re marketing experts! But for this blog, we changed things up.

After a year of delving into heavy topics and having our daily lives disrupted and routines changed, we thought it was time to share some basics about taking good care of yourself. If you’re feeling stressed or burned out as you start out the new year, this would be a good blog to look back at.

3 Ways to Shine a Light on Your Business Post-COVID-19, Take 2

Sometimes, you put the cart in front of the horse. That’s what we did in 2020 when we wrote a blog about what to do “post-pandemic.”

So, in April, we revisited the topic. But the funny (not funny) thing about it is: We still aren’t post-pandemic, so this may be a topic we see again.

The bottom line about post-pandemic marketing? It will be different.

Is Your Marketing Human Enough?

This blog was really a fitting follow-up to our blog about post-pandemic marketing. The reality of life these days is: We are all going through hard times.

What consumers want most is to feel that the brands they choose to patronize are less focused on the numbers and more focused on the people they’re serving. That’s why marketing will never be totally automated or run by robots—it has to be human.

Words We’d Like to Banish (Plus Other Thoughts About Word Choice)

If we were actually giving out “Best of the Best” awards, this blog would take the top prize!

It was by far the blog that garnered the most engagement from readers and social media users. What can we say? Overused, abused words are a frequent source of annoyance for many folks out there!

What’s Going on in Franchise Marketing?

For our first June blog, we took a good, hard look at what franchise marketers were facing.

Constant changes in the world and the economy shook up franchises across many industries, and the labor shortage (and need to hire) made an impact on marketing. Many of the suggestions in this blog still hold true, so it’s a good one to revisit if you’re marketing a franchise!

Turns Out, There’s a Lot of Buzz About Overused Words

We weren’t kidding when we mentioned above that our blog about words to banish was a hit. It was the “talk of the town” for a bit, and we heard from our readers about other words they wanted to get rid of.

That’s how ended up with blog No. 2 about overused words! And this blog reflects a great technique you can use in your own marketing efforts—user-generated content. Let your readers tell you what they want more of.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our look back at 2021’s blogs in our next blog! Need a hand with your social media marketing in 2022? Get in touch today to get started.