Tag: social media marketing

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Social Media

Top Social Media Trends to Watch in the 2020s

Social media has been evolving quite drastically over the past decade. In the early days, it was all about MySpace. Facebook, launched in 2004, was limited only to college students and Google+ came and went (RIP, Google+) as Google attempted to take their slice of the pie.

What began as a way to stay in touch with friends and family has evolved into a branch of marketing. As social media continues to mature, and we move into the next decade, here are a few trends I expect to see in the coming years.

More Privacy and Better Security

Privacy has always been a concern for many social media users as has security. With major data breaches happening on a regular basis, users are becoming more cautious about the information they are making available via social media. Though not limited to just social media, data shows that as of the first half of 2018 there were 609 global data breaches pertaining to identity theft. In 2018, there were 1,244 data breaches in the United States alone.

When we sign up for Facebook, we are required to provide basic information about us and as we continue to use the platform, we are prompted to fill out other information as well. The data has been collected by the social media giants and used for advertising dollars among other things.

In response to Facebook’s data breach, additional privacy and security measures are being taken to protect user-information, however, we can’t be sure any of these solutions will be foolproof. As technology continues to grow, we can expect privacy and security to continue to improve. Still, it’s advised not to put anything on social media that you want to keep completely private.

New Social Media Platforms

I’ve already written about TikTok and how it has grown massively. Within the past two years, the platform has become a great hit among teens and now businesses are capitalizing on it. But beyond Tik-Tok, there are a number of new social media platforms popping up. Many of these promise not to sell your data and will not be ad-based because they want to be different from Facebook and Twitter.

The lack of advertising dollars puts a struggle on the ability of the new social media platforms to stay afloat,  so it will be interesting to see what happens to them. Recently, the founder of Wikipedia launched WikiTribune – where people are currently on waiting lists for access unless they contribute a monetary donation of $12.99/month or $100/year.

Beyond WikiTribune, other social media platforms that are gaining traction include:

Social Media TV

We consume more online content than ever before, with the Internet going to great lengths to replace TV. With streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the latest Disney+, along with YouTube, there’s no reason to believe that social media video content doesn’t have the potential to completely replace TV.

YouTube data shows that among 18-34-year-olds, YouTube on mobile alone reaches a wider US audience than any television network. Data shows Netflix has over 158 million subscribers as of Q3 2019, and Disney+ had 10 million subscribers within one day after launch.

Millennials are consuming so much online mobile content that Samsung believes they want vertical TVs – and they may be right!

Engagement Becomes More Important

Engagement is already vital to your success on social media. Without it, you’ll have a hard time convincing the social media algorithms that your content is interesting and people enjoy it. In the past, it was a simple as getting a bunch of likes and followers to make your content appear authoritative and popular on social media.

The algorithms have since shifted away from this strategy since it is clear that these can be fabricated by purchasing likes and followers that are from fake accounts. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more crucial to focus efforts on comments, shares, and live features across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Take advantage of video features available to you, because the video will rank better in feeds than text or images, even text and images that have a lot of likes but no comments.

To foster more engagement, ask a question in the post and do your best to reply to all the comments. If you can’t reply to them all, at least make sure you’re replying to as many as you can so that your audience knows you’re paying attention and the social media algorithms see that interactivity and engagement.

As time goes on, we can expect to see the way we engage with our social media audiences shift, but no matter what, the actual engagement will always be an indicator of quality and interest.

Social Media Becomes the Primary Source of News Information

As the internet works to replace TV and newspapers, more people turn to consume information, especially news, on the internet. Many users find the breaking news stories on their feed and use that to navigate to the main news site for more information.

With social media, the news spreads fast, with Facebook and Twitter becoming the main sources of news. Forbes conducted a survey that revealed half of the internet users surveyed say they hear about the latest news on social media before they ever hear about it on a news station. The survey also found a 57% increase in traffic to news sites from social media websites.

“Social on Social” Communities

We already see a lot of social on social activity, because of groups within Facebook and Twitter parties on Twitter. As social continues to evolve, it will become even easier to build a small social community around a niche or topic. As more of these communities form, it will be easier to find and filter information on various topics and niches.

At this point, your social media platform won’t just be a platform, but a platform that supports a platform. It presents the chance for these mini social communities to represent their social media presence as their own platform.

What are your thoughts on these trends? Do you have any other ideas about how we can expect to see social media evolve over the next decade? Share them with me in the comment section.

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Social Media

Creating Personalized Content for Social Media Marketing

Advertising to the prospect or consumer on social media is a growing craft—and an increasing area of competition. Consumers prefer content tailored to them, making them 40% more likely to make a positive buying decision after seeing that content. With so much riding on catching the audience’s attention on social media, creating personalized content for social media marketing has become a major area of focus for many marketers, particularly in the ecommerce sphere.

What is Personalized Content for Social Media Marketing?

Personalized content is a means for building interest, engagement, and trust in a brand via personalization on social media channels. That is, to the prospect or customer, personalized content is not only targeted, but feels bespoke and valuable. It creates familiarity, reflects the desires of the viewer, doesn’t at all annoy the consumer, and establishes a personalized ad delivery experience.

Above all, personalized marketing is centered around real, relevant data collected via survey, buyer persona creation, or real-time analysis.

Why Invest in Personalized Content?

The statistics have it: customers want brands who know them by name and deliver specific recommendations based on past purchases and cart items. A majority (63%) of customers don’t like generic ad content. To get the consumer’s attention, providing personalized experiences, particularly in a way relevant or not disruptive to their social media experience, has become key to sales conversion.

They’ll Trust the Brand—Even if They Don’t Trust the Platform

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other revelations about who controls, posts, and sways public opinion using persuasive content and data on platforms like Facebook, a post-2016 election American audience remains dubious and skeptical about content posted to their social media platforms. It’s understandable that they wouldn’t trust the platform—which means your brand trust needs to supersede their trust of social media platforms.

After all, they won’t trust the platform, but they still understand that it’s a primary advertising space for brands like yours.

Organic Search is in Decline

Organic traffic—that is, the search results-oriented website hits that come directly from Google and other search engines—is the holy grail of content marketing, proving content to be worth the investment for many brands. However, your organic searches may decline due to multiple factors, including minor adjustments in Google’s algorithm.

Your organic search strategy may be top notch, but inbound traffic should never be about organic search alone. Investing in personalized social engagement is like a back up plan for your business. Think of it as operating with insurance for your content and product pages.

User Control and Agency

In a world where many internet users feel a lack of control or certainty over their lives, they want agency over their experiences. From “dark mode” to social media polling and selection choices, every opportunity for the audience to personalize their experience on social media is potentially a win for your brand.

Using social media, how can you provide users with a sense of control over their experience?

Examples of Personalized Content

Some of the internet’s most popular services rely heavily on serving personalized content. They include:

  • Netflix: This streaming service serves up recommendations for you based on what you like. They hope you’ll retain your subscription and continue to use the service as a result.
  • Etsy: This boutique forum for independent craftspeople, artisans, and antique dealers does a fine job of suggesting further items for purchase or perusal based on what you’ve viewed. Considering the unique nature of each item, their categorization and word-matching process is top notch.
  • Amazon: The internet’s retail giant got that way for a number of reasons, including personalized content recommendations. Add plugins like Honey or Wikibuy to ensure you get the best bet, and the price-matching is basically built in.
  • Spotify: Like music and want to discover more? Spotify offers a gentle push in the direction of music discovery with their platform. You can listen to an artist radio, for example, “The Beatles Radio,” which will play the artist in addition to similar sounding music.

What makes all of this social, though, are the websites’ abilities to share. With a click of the button, browsers can share to friends, family, and followers via email or social media.

This can result in further ad retargeting—that is, when someone shares a piece of content without buying it, they’re later served an ad for the same product (or similar ones) from the retailer and competitors. That’s pretty powerful advertising—not to mention extremely personalized.

How to Create Personalized Content for Social Media Marketing

Creating personalized content for social media marketing should involve as much data as you have about your existing consumer. If you’re not sure where to begin, try this short exercise to personalize a social media message for your audience:

  • Gather your data: Gather all the available data on your consumers. This includes anything from real-time data to existing information about your customers. Examine how you can leverage this data to personalize content.
  • Define your buyer persona: Who is your average customer? Create and consider your buyer persona when creating personalized content for social media marketing.
  • Choose the ideal platforms: Personalizing the experience is all about making sure you’re finding your customers where they live—that is, on their preferred social media platforms. Before you can target ads, you need to find out where they go. Aside from analyzing existing data, you can use buyer persona and demographics information to determine where your ideal customer spends their time.
  • Determine audience segments: Further segment your targeted audience with ads and organic social media content based on recent searches and interests. This is especially important for ecommerce marketers.
  • Move the user to email marketing: A sale isn’t the only conversion that matters: think about that email marketing list. You can create an extremely customized experience when you make a user feel like they have one on social. Asking for their name and preferences at email list sign up allows you to personalize and distribute extremely relevant messages to the consumer on an ongoing basis—an experience that can loop back to social media content, engagement, and ads.
  • Use Facebook and Instagram Stories: Forget text-heavy advertising. Users gravitate towards ephemeral content, like that which appears on Facebook and Instagram stories. The platforms also seem to be pushing “stories” content, meaning your personalized efforts are more likely to become part of the user’s daily experience on these platforms, even if the individual messages themselves are rather fleeting. Effective stories tend to be low in text, and high in graphic and video-rich content.

Get Personal with Messaging Apps

Chatbots and messaging apps have also increased in popularity due to their level of personalization, engagement, and conversion. Automated messaging apps, or even regular Facebook page messages set to answer with a pleasant greeting, allow your brand to answer your customer 24/7, even if it’s just acting like a modern day answering machine service.

Messaging apps can set personalized expectations by addressing customer concerns and providing a time frame for response.

Since 79% of companies surpassing their revenue goals had personalized content plans in play, if you’re not already personalizing your social media content, it’s time to consider it. Ultimately, you may not need a bunch of fancy tools and metrics to begin personalizing a social media experience today—a solid, personalized reply can make all the difference to a concerned or grateful users on social media. If you’re not sure where to start, begin with that kind of engagement and grow.

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Social Media

Why You Need to Pay Attention to TikTok

When it comes to social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are probably the biggest platforms you consider. However new social media applications aren’t far behind. Younger internet users tend to shy away from traditional social media channels and look for the next big thing. TikTok is a potentially explosive social media platform that allows for short video clips to be shared and watched by people with similar interests.

Agencies are already beta testing ad tools built around leveraging the user base from this app. To offer additional insight into what makes TikTok popular, here’s what you should be most excited about.

First a Quick TikTok Primer

TikTok is a Chinese-owned video sharing social network available as an IOS and Android social media app. It is designed to create and share sort lip-sync, talent, and comedy videos. It was launched in 2017 for markets outside of China.

Videos can be anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds long and looping videos can be made anywhere from 3 to 60 seconds long.  it started getting popular with the United States in October 2018. The most recent data indicates that it has been downloaded at least 80 million times in the United States and 800 million times worldwide. Celebrities Tony Hawk and Jimmy Fallon are jumping on the bandwagon.

In September 2019, the NFL and TikTok announced a multi-year partnership including the launch of an NFL account that will bring NFL content to fans across the globe.

TikTok is more popular on Android than iOS devices. Though the user base is largely based in India accounting for 43% of all users, 66% of the network’s users are younger than 30 years old. Users typically spend around 52 minutes per day on the app and in-app purchases have increased 275% year-over-year. 26.5  million monthly active users on Tik Tok are based in the United States.

Built-In Creative Tools

TikTok is incredibly powerful for content marketing and storytelling. There are a number of creativity tools built into the platform to choose from. It can be challenging to advertise on TikTok because it requires highly detailed keywords and serious consideration of where and when you don’t want your ad to appear.

Massive Organic Reach

TikTok offers a similar feed to what we’re familiar with in Instagram Stories. The intimacy of the platform is highly appealing for many Brands. And as the platform continues to grow rapidly, the organic reach is huge for now. There is a lot of potential to go viral like on Instagram back in the early days. It will be interesting to see how this social media platform ages overtime and the users who will adopt it as a marketing channel.

Bringing the Fun Back to Social Media

We all remember the early days of each of the most popular social media platforms. Back before they became so mainstream, people found joy in sharing content and creating connections with their friends and family. Tik Tok is user-friendly and fun. It goes back to what we used to love about social media. Instagram has grown into a well-established platform, but TikTok’s young demographic doesn’t care about getting the perfect shot. Tik-Tok aims to make social media fun again and it is a place where you can really enjoy each other’s company online.

Real-Time Content

Constantly investing in new platforms is a good idea because consumer preferences are always changing. TikTok is built on trends and if a certain song is popular there, it’s possible to focus brands around that content to get the brands into the minds of younger audiences. Agencies can capitalize on real-time content in a way that shows brands actually understand their customers.

Forming Real Connections with Your Audience

Think of TikTok the same way you did with Snapchat when it first became popular a few years ago. It’s a newer platform that engages different audiences but provides brands with the chance to get creative and strategic to form real connections with the audience. The rise of TikTok also goes to show that social media professionals are more important than ever for agencies and investments in those skills should remain a priority.

Quick Results

The content on TikTok is incredibly fast which means there is more of an opportunity to make an impression on the audience. You’ll be able to make more of an impression faster which means you’ll have a greater chance of making money. If the younger generation is part of the target demographic you were trying to reach, skipping out on TikTok could be damaging to your bottom line.

More Powerful Influencer Marketing

Some agencies are using TikTok to power influencer campaigns. Results showed that the campaigns were able to exceed YouTube and Instagram benchmarks because organic reach is rewarded. The ability to connect content together with a soundtrack creates virality in a more powerful way than a hashtag because of the emotional impact of sound.

Do you use TikTok? Are you exploring ways to reach your customers with it? Why or why not? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Social Media

Social Media Marketing Tips for Live Events

Investing time, energy, and other resources into attending live events such as trade shows, conferences, and other industry events definitely made sense in the early days of marketing because you could easily knock out a year’s worth of sales with your pitch and a sponsor booth. Today, attending networking events still present big opportunities to connect with prospects, but the landscape is different thanks to social media and digital marketing.

To succeed in today’s marketing environment, you must approach your in-person marketing with social and digital marketing tactics in mind to stay competitive. Prospects are engaging both directly and indirectly with marketers multiple times a day instead of waiting to attend an in-person event.

Digital marketing has made industry events more of a challenge since people go online to discover new products and services, and make connections to new people. Prospects will still attend events, but they’re not there because they’re looking forward to your sales pitch. They’re pitched year round, and are more likely to attend a panel or presentation than they are to make appointments or speak to the salespeople at booths.

Rather than waiting for an industry event to meet new people, both salespeople and prospects are actively researching online, making connections on Facebook and LinkedIn, and more.

You still attend shows, and possibly pay for a booth and sponsorship because you know your prospects are there. But, there are ways you can make the event more lucrative for your business that involve doing more than simply tweeting with the event hashtag. Use these tips to get yourself in front of prospects before, during, and after the event, creating more conversations, and ultimately more sales.

Create a Pre-Event Prospect List

Live events, even those that take place over multiple days, pass quicker than you realize. If you’ve invested in attending the event, doing everything you can to make it as productive as possible makes sense. Connect with as many contacts and prospects as you can before the event, so you can plan to meet with people who are most interested in whatever it is you have to offer.

As a sponsor, ask the event organizers for a list of sponsors, attendees, and press connections. Sometimes, you’ll find they won’t share it with you, but if you’re a big enough sponsor or the event is small enough, you can usually negotiate your way to a yes.

If you’re not sponsoring the event, but attending it, you can create your own list of contacts with social listening tools to find out who’s excited about attending. You can locate sponsor and speaker lists on the official event website where you’ll also find contact information. You can use these to create your contact list by hand. To save time, you can use data-scraping tools to pull emails from social media profiles. Email clients to find out if they’re going and if they know anyone else who is – making a freebie offer to motivate them to engage with you. Ask the event directory if you can offer a pre-event giveaway to drive traffic to a landing page to collect emails.

All this said, you should not spam people via email. Any prospects you find this way have not elected to hear from you, so you shouldn’t throw them in your email marketing software. Instead, email them directly by hand, or use a CRM to automate a small portion of the outreach. Because you’re a person trying to connect with a person, everything needs to be organic and genuine, or it defeats the purpose.

Turn to Social Media for Outreach Before the Event

At the event, you’ll be one of hundreds, or thousands, of attendees, depending on the scale. As a sponsor, you could be one of several dozen, or hundreds. Building familiarity ahead of time makes prospects more likely to seek you out or check out your booth during the show.

Email is the most direct way to reach out if you were able to find the email addresses. If you can’t find an email, you can send a LinkedIn message or a Twitter DM. Don’t bother with Facebook messages on a cold connection, because it likely won’t get through and if it does, it may feel a little stalkerish.

Regardless of where your direct touch comes from, it must feel personal and like you just typed it out – rather than sending it to 100 people. Bring value to your prospect so give them an offer or a sales point. Keep the prospect experience in mind and treat them how you want to be treated.

Get Ready for Advertising During the Event

For the best chance of success. You’ll want to set up targeted ads to reach prospects during the event. This is meant to help remind people you’ve already been in touch with that you’re at the event without being spammy, engage prospects you haven’t connected with in a way other attendees or other sponsors have not, and build up an audience to market to after the event.

While you continue to run your usual in-event organic posts, use targeted advertising to extend your reach. Import the list of attendees from the organizers into Facebook or LinkedIn to create a custom audience so you can specifically target the attendees. If the list is too small, you can beef up the list with leads who may not be at the event but wouldn’t mind hearing from you.

If you don’t have access to the attendee list, use geofencing to get in front of as many event leads as you can. It targets ads based on geographic location, but in a narrow and specific capacity. You can target specific places based on the location of someone’s mobile device, so you can target the building where the event is taking place. Facebook offers geofencing up to one mile. Make sure you have installed the tracking pixel to target people after they’ve visited your website.

Follow standard advertising advice, making sure you have an event-relevant offer and message. Direct users to a landing page specific to the event where they can get the offer and find you at the show. Incentivize email capture on the landing page, and install the tracking pixels for the ad platform of your choice so you can remarket to visitors later, while also promoting the landing page itself on any physical marketing collateral to get people to visit.

Connect on Social Media After the Event

There are a lot of marketers out there not doing pre-event marketing, and even fewer do post-event marketing. This gives you the chance to leverage your participation to build a conversation, even if you didn’t meet someone in person at the event.

Contact each person who’s email you collected and email them directly. Connect on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and send direct messages in place or in addition to email outreach. As you execute that outreach, begin a new round of targeted ads toward your updated email list and the audience from the tracking pixel on your landing page. Reference messages relevant to the event and remind leads of the value you provided at the event.

Face-to-face events are still effective and special for the same reasons they’ve always been. They put your target audience in front of you in a high concentration for reasons associated with what your business does. Simply because marketing to these audiences has become more of a challenge doesn’t mean you should throw them out completely. As a marketer, you have a ton of tools at your disposal, so you should be using them to make the most of events and connections both in-person and online.

How do you engage with prospects before, during, and after the events you attend?

 

This post was selected as one of the top digital marketing articles of the week by UpCity, a B2B ratings and review company for digital marketing agencies and other marketing service providers.

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Social Media

Creative Ways to Use Instagram Stories

If you’re looking to grow your Instagram following and engagement, you should venture into using the Instagram Stories feature. Similar to Snapchat, these don’t appear in your feed, and are only available for 24 hours. There are 500 million daily active users,  and ⅓ of the most viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses, so if you’re not including Instagram Stories as part of your social media marketing strategy, you should be. Here are some ways to use the feature so you’re not left with the same old boring and bland content over and over again.

Instagram Takeover: Guest Host

If you want to reach a larger audience with your Instagram Stories, you can host a takeover with another Instagram user with a following similar to yours. You’ll want to make sure the collaborator has a highly engaged audience so when they introduce your content, there’s a better chance those people will follow and engage with you, too. Partnering with an influencer this way is a great way to build buzz for your brand. Read more about how to execute an Instagram Stories Takeover here – because it’s not a good idea to hand over your account password.

Doing this regularly keeps your content varied and encourages people to come back for more. You can choose multiple people from your company for a “Day in the Life” story, or partner with other businesses in your industry to swap stories for the day, too.

Poll Your Audience to Learn More About Them

One of the best ways to boost your Instagram engagement is to use the poll feature in Instagram Stories. Though the feature isn’t really new anymore, using it increases the chances your audience will do something for you. And if they do something for you once, they’re likely to continue to do things for you in the future.

Ask simple questions and give simple answer options. You can use the poll feature for a bit of market research without your audience ever really knowing that’s what you’re doing. For instance, if you have a product you want to make available in multiple colors, but you can’t decide which ones will be the best, you can simply ask what your audience’s favorite color is, and leave the options you have to choose from. Then, make the product available in the most popular answers.

Use the Messaging Feature

Instagram wants to serve people the content they want to see, which means engagement is critical to your success. Using Stories to encourage people to message you will boost your engagement rate. However, before you use this option, make sure you’re genuinely interested in interacting with your audience, and have the time to respond to what people message you. If people take the time to message you only to find they are ignored, you’ll have wasted your effort. Messaging with your audience is a great way to build relationships with your audience – and after all, that’s really what social media is all about.

Tease Your Audience

If you’re planning a product launch, use photos and video to tease about the upcoming launch. It’s a wonderful way to warm up the audience and prime them to buy once you’re ready. Take a look at this example from J. Crew, who used Stories to tease the launch of new rose-colored glasses.

Show Some Love With Shoutouts

Doing shoutouts to members of your audience helps build relationships with people you like and share similar content. Using Stories allows you to keep your feed clean and aesthetically pleasing since you don’t have to interrupt your style with screenshots of another user’s account.

Post a screenshot of the user’s account with text that says who they are – telling your audience to follow them, too. Or, post a photo of yourself, with a bit of text telling people who to follow.

Swipe Up

The Swipe Up feature is only available to Instagram Business profiles with at least 10K followers, so if you’re not there yet, keep working on growing your following with these other tactics and keep this one in your back pocket until you get there.

Swipe Ups are a great way to get people to engage with your content and drive traffic back to your website.

For instance, the Minimalist Baker, shares new simple plant-based recipes. In the daily story, she shows you how to make the recipe so it’s fun to watch. And to make things easy for her audience, she always includes the full recipe with ingredient list in a Swipe Up. It’s fun and engaging, but still gets traffic back to her website.

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Social Media

5 Ways to Use Pinterest to Strengthen Your Brand

Many businesses think of platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn in relation to marketing products and services. The reality is that consumers today are incredibly visual, and these sites alone may no longer be enough to keep their interest.

Enter Pinterest.

While it started out as more of a personal indexing site where people swapped recipes and craft ideas, it’s far from only that today. Pinterest has veritably exploded, attracting viewership (sharer-ship?) from all over the world.

That’s exactly what makes it such a compelling choice for businesses who rely on heavily visual content (like video or images). Using Pinterest can strengthen your brand and improve brand awareness, too.

Here’s the secret to Pinterest success!

What’s Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media platform that relies heavily on visual content. Users can create “boards” with themes and then save content they find on the web to their Pinterest accounts. The boards operate similar to an index or file folder. It’s easy to go back, skim the photos, and click through until you get back to the main article or blog post you originally “pinned.”

There is a social aspect to Pinterest, too. You don’t necessarily need to search the broad web for a topic. The Pinterest platform is effectively a search engine, giving you the ability to browse the items others have already found and saved. From there you can add them to your own boards. Boards can be public or private based on how you set them up from within your profile.

As a business owner, it’s important to not only pin your own content, but to share related content from others as well. You’ll also want to make sure your website has social share buttons so visitors who like what they see can “pin” your pages to their own boards right from your website.

Complete Your Profile

Once you’ve created a business account, take some time to complete your entire profile. Update your logo or photo, make sure your username makes you happy, and write something short but engaging for your “About You” section. The more detail you include, the easier it will be for people to get to know you and your brand. This is a great place to throw in a couple of your main keywords so you’re easy to search.

Once you’re done with the “About You” section, Pinterest will ask you to confirm your website. This is critical as it confirms and proves you are actually related to the business you claim to own. You’ll need to paste a short piece of coding into your website’s index page. Pinterest will give you instructions, but you can also ask your web developer to handle this step for you.

(Extra hint: you can also embed Pinterest images on your website using this embed guide. This is really useful for driving traffic to your Pinterest page).

Setting Up Your Boards

While your business account will be an ongoing project, one of your first goals should be to set up boards for each of your product or service categories. Think outside the box, though. Let’s say you sell t-shirts. Set up boards for shirts for men, women, children, babies, and even unisex designs. Then, create different boards for different themes – shirts for readers, artists, sports enthusiasts, etc.

How deeply you drill down into a specific niche is entirely up to you. You may find different boards get attention throughout the year. Baseball season may mean you’re pinning new designs to style boards for men, women, and children, or sports. You might even find it’s time to break out a separate “baseball” board.

You don’t have to sell a product to be successful on Pinterest; services can do very well here, too! Don’t be afraid to flex your services in the same way.

Are you a graphic designer? Create different boards for the types of work you’ve done, uploading samples of your business cards, pamphlets, or website layouts. Are you a photographer? Create separate boards for school photos, maternity photo shoots, and wedding photography.

Consider the SEO Impact

You can sometimes upload images directly to Pinterest instead of grabbing pins from outside websites. No matter what method you’re using to populate your board, you should always consider how what you share impacts search engine optimization (SEO).

Remember: the end goal is traffic to your website, phone calls, and purchases. You don’t want to drive traffic elsewhere unless you have to.

Make sure you write descriptions for each item pinned, complete with details about what the person is seeing and how they can find out more information. Don’t be afraid to plug in a related keyword, but only do this if it fits into your text naturally. Don’t forget to include a URL to the related page on your website.

Partner with a Strong Designer

You may have a great graphic designer on your team already. If not, consider hiring someone to take professional photos or create stunning visuals for your website and social platforms. Brands doing well on Pinterest typically have amazing, eye-catching photos pinned.

This means overhauling what’s found on your website as well as what you might pin independently. Show your products, events, staff at work, or samples of your finished pieces. Certain photo styles work better than others. For example, lifestyle photos do really well on Pinterest; so do photos of completed crafts. This doesn’t mean you can’t show your products, but it means you need to stage your photos so they don’t scream “catalog” or “sales pitch.”

Don’t Forget to Engage

Pinterest’s feed is different than the feed on either Facebook or Twitter.  Business owners tend to shy away from engagement here more than on other sites, usually because they don’t understand how to approach it.

(If this is you, hey – we want to help! Hit this link to find out more).

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to spend hours per day on Pinterest to get real results from it. Instead, just set aside a short block of time to visit people who share your original pins. Thank them! Follow people in related niches, create a few non-branded boards and repin other people’s content, and ask your customers to pin content related to their purchases. Consistent effort in this area will bring results.

Pinterest is a really fun platform that lends itself really well to many different content styles. Millions of people turn to the platform daily for ideas and inspiration. Will they find you there? If not, you may just be doing your brand a disservice.

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Social Media

IGTV or Instagram Live? Here’s How to Pick

Video is the lifeblood of the Internet. It fuels our entertainment, lets us advertise products, and even has the potential to teach, inspire, and change the world. Now, even Instagram is getting into the game and letting people record longer clips.

Instagram actually has one of the most robust video platforms on the market (aside from YouTube, of course). You can upload a very short video to your permanent feed, go live, or upload longer-form videos to IGTV.

Instagram live and IGTV are by far the most  popular right now, but how can you be sure which is right for your campaign?

Take a look at this guide to find out.

What is Instagram Live?

Instagram live is similar to Facebook live in that you can use it to stream a real-time video to friends on your personal timeline or fans on your formal pages. The main difference is that Instagram treats live videos more like stories, deleting them after 24 hours. This creates a sense of urgency.

While you can use Instagram live for marketing purposes, it won’t have the same long-lasting impact as a pre-recorded video. It’s better to use it for limited-time sales, branding, behind-the-scenes footage, or lead generation.

Instagram also offers better interactivity. You can still engage with your audience while streaming on Instagram live. There are options to moderate comments, pin your favorites to the top of the stream, and even turn off comments if they’re becoming distracting or off topic. Live videos don’t cost much to produce and you can make them on the fly, giving you tons of opportunity to engage with your audience.

What is IGTV?

IGTV is a newer feature designed for brands that want to delve into longer-form video content. Regular video in your feed is limited to 60 seconds, but IGTV videos run anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes. The app allows for vertical video, instead of square, and you can use it separately or within the regular Instagram app.

It also comes with some pretty flexible and useful additional features. Videos don’t expire; plus, you can upload a strong video description or even add a hyperlink to the description. That means no more directing people to your “link in bio.”

The IGTV app also includes extra creative tools. Add stickers, use branding watermarks, or just jazz your video up with filters before publishing.

Should You Use Instagram Live or IGTV?

It’s not really a matter of using one over the other. In reality, both have a place in your marketing campaigns. Instagram live videos are better for bringing a little extra attention to static posts published on your timeline. Their shorter nature also makes it easier to promote flash sales or drive extra engagement quickly.

Using IGTV gives you an endless number of possibilities for expansion. Use it for regular weekly and monthly updates, instructional videos on how to use your products, how-to and DIY tutorials, customer service tips, and just about anything else you can think of. Come up with a creative series, find a great backdrop, and start recording.

How to Make Better Instagram Videos

No matter which content type you choose, there are a few actions you can take to ensure your videos get noticed.

Here they are:

  • Grab attention fast. Make sure the first few seconds of your videos are eye-catching and compelling to entice people to stop and watch.
  • Include text in the first few seconds. This will entice people to turn the sound on. Captions are fine!
  • Tell a great story! It doesn’t matter how long it is. People want to feel engaged and a part of what you’re doing. That’s true whether you’re going for a walk or wrapping a gift.
  • Don’t skimp on quality materials. Invest in a tripod and good lighting so your brand and products always look great. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on lighting to make your videos look professional. Grab a couple of pieces on Amazon and you’ll notice a world of difference.
  • Don’t be cold. The more personal your attitude, the more your followers will relate and engage. Be human – stop stressing over the occasional um.
  • Plan great hashtags. The hashtags you choose should be a mix of generic and branded content to make it easier to find your videos.
  • Keep time limits in mind. A video you record in the Instagram app for your feed can be up to 60 seconds long, but a video in your feed or story can only be 15 seconds long.
  • Show followers what they want to see. They don’t need to hear the entire history of the development of each product in your line on a live feed. Just show them how it works and point out some of the most notable or cool features. Save the history for your IGTV segments.
  • Visuals are important. People get bored and there is a lot of “noise” on the internet. Use bright colors and startling images to make your content stand out.
  • Focus on one goal at a time. Create a plan – and stick to it. Instagram users live in a fast-paced world where smaller nuggets of information are easier to absorb.
  • Avoid being spammy. Try not to make your videos look like ads (even if they are). Your videos should blend into the rest of the feed, grabbing attention without screaming “buy me” at consumers.
  • Focus on dimensions. Remember, ITGV is vertical, not horizontal – this is a really common error.
  • Planning to promote a video? Make sure you include a thumbnail shot. You won’t be able to upload a separate image.
  • Be consistent. Both in your publishing schedule and your brand’s visual assets. Use similar colors and styles so that people begin to recognize your brand and look for your new messages.

The good news here is you don’t have to choose between Instagram Live and IGTV. Both platforms are an important facet of any Instagram video marketing strategy. So, grab your marketing team, start putting some ideas together, and get to work. You just might find you’re amazed at how much you can grow your audience with a consistent, engaged video presence.

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Social Media

9 Social Media Trends to Watch for in 2019

The New Year is right around the corner. With it will come brand new advice from every social guru you follow. While you want to keep up with upcoming trends, you don’t have to throw your entire social strategy up to this point out the window. Make sure you go into 2019 with the following ideas in mind:

Video to Text Ratio

Video will continue to be a huge part of social in 2019. Right now, a combination of video and text is a great strategy. Tipping the scale a little more toward video in the first quarter is suggested. Video should be a priority, with text coming in at a close second.

Live video will become more important than ever, so you’ll want to create a strategy that incorporates regular live feeds on both Facebook and Instagram. Even though live video comes with its own set of technical issues, followers are more likely to accept errors because the real-time aspect makes brands more relatable.

Long-Form Content

Video aside, make sure the content you are creating is valuable. This means taking more time to focus on long-form content that provides a valuable punch as opposed to short nuggets of information. Many publishers are focusing on content at least 1,000 words long; most only publish content at 1,500 words or more. Experiment with long and short form blogs to see what works for your audience.

Data Security and Trust

This year saw an endless number of scandals due to security and data breaches. Earlier in 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook allowed unauthorized third-party access to the personal data of more than 85 million users. Just this month, they announced a second breach that accidentally exposed private user photos.

While you can’t do much to control the security of major social networks, you can make sure your own message is crystal clear. Communicate with your fans without always clamoring to collect data on forms. Social networks are asking business owners to be more transparent than ever in social marketing. With Facebook, anyone who visits a page can now see ads run by the page whether they are targeted or not.

Artificial Intelligence is Here

Are you using messenger bots to communicate with your customers? If not, you are likely falling behind. While the technology is still new, these tools can increase your response times and customer service turnarounds – when properly implemented. This method of communication is particularly appealing to millennials, who find it easy and engaging compared to the frustration of waiting.

Hootsuite recently predicted that more than “85 percent of all customer service interactions will be powered by AI bots” by 2020. Facebook and WhatsApp are now paving the way for integrating these technologies.

Personal versus Business Branding

To clarify, personal branding doesn’t mean you have to open your personal profiles to the public. It means that consumers are becoming more curious about the faces behind the brands they know and love. The public wants to know your company’s CEO is real and involved, not just a talking head.

What does this have to do with your marketing efforts? You need to become more visible about who you are and what you’re all about. Create separate brand pages for your business owner or public leaders, and cross-promote them along with your brand’s main social platforms.

Hiding behind your logo is a thing of the past. Real people and honest human interactions on social media, within guest blogs, and through public appearances (online and in person) are what build trust.

User-Generated Content

Brands are already deeply involved with UGC, but we should see exponential growth in this area throughout 2019. You should let your customers share photos and experiences, and then share them yourself to your own channels (with permission and credit). Most consumers perceive this type of content as authentic. It’s also a terrific boost to organic engagement in a marketing world that focuses on paid strategy.

Social Stories

The stories function on Instagram and Facebook continues to gain traction. Both show remarkable results compared to Snapchat because they allow brands to share quick snippets of information in a format that piques the interest of curious followers. The quick turnaround time from publication to disappearance creates a sense of urgency. Stories are cheap (sometimes even free) to create and allow you to generate regular content without overwhelming your main feed with too many posts.

Paid Strategies

Like it or not, Facebook and other social media platforms are pay-to-play in reach and exposure. We looked at a Facebook page with 100,000 “likes” the other day; some of their posts had as few as nine reactions. NINE!

According to HubSpot, brands saw around 16 percent organic reach in 2012. By 2018, that number fell to six percent. Brands seeking success on Facebook will need to set aside at least a small budget for paid promotions.

Some Users Share Content Privately

Users are still sharing content, but they’re sending content via private messages and text instead of sharing to their public timelines. This makes it harder to track how much engagement your content really achieves. This doesn’t mean you can’t continue to create and share great content, but it does mean you must pay attention to platform changes, so you can adapt to (and create more of) the things your audience reacts to most.

If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s change. 2018 has been a year of change; a whirlwind of sorts. 2019 isn’t likely to be much different, but you can put yourself in a better position to deal with it. Spend some time each day reviewing social media and marketing updates. Staying on top of changes as they play out makes it easier for you to adapt your strategies as the year progresses.

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Digital Marketing

SEO and SEM: What’s the Difference?

You might be familiar with search engine optimization or search engine marketing, but are they one in the same? While SEO and SEM are often lumped together or referred to interchangeably, they are in fact different. Both methods work to improve online traffic and leverage brand awareness, but it is important to be able to differentiate the two.

So what’s what?

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO, a component of the larger concept of SEM, is the process by which a website is optimized for keywords and web development to improve natural (or organic) search engine results. SEO evolves continuously in order to best respond to changes in search engine algorithms and includes both on-page and off-page components. These components range from keyword optimization and blogging to high quality back links and social sharing. Organic search results are often affected by social networking platforms and social media development as well.

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

SEM is the process by which websites increase their visibility and traffic through advertising and optimization. These strategies will include SEO tactics, as well as paid search, pay per click (PPC) advertising, reputation management, and boosted social media marketing.

To clarify, the two terms are very closely related, but SEO is more specifically a central component of SEM. Marketers often try to substantiate that one is better than the other, but it really depends on what your campaign is trying to accomplish. While organic SEO can be a sustainable, long-term approach, PPC or other paid SEM methods will show more immediate ROI. Whether you choose to utilize organic SEO tactics or paid SEM tactics, digital marketing campaigns will see substantial impact on traffic and brand awareness as a result.

Click here to read more from Social Media Today.

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