Tag: social media

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Social Media

Up and Coming Social Platforms to Keep an Eye On

There are several up and coming social platforms worth monitoring including TikTok for its rapidly growing user base and creative content, Clubhouse for its unique audio-based networking, and Caffeine for live broadcasting. Platforms like Discord and Twitch, though originally gaming-focused, are expanding into wider community and content sharing spaces, offering new opportunities for engagement and marketing.

Smart marketers have been relying on the major social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to promote their products and services, share content, and ultimately grow their businesses. However, rival platforms are being developed all the time and while many of them don’t achieve the same levels of success, (remember Ello? It’s still around but has pivoted), a handful of them could give the major players a run for their money. If you are an early adopter of these up and coming social platforms, your company could get the most benefit.

If you want to remain ahead of the curve, these are six social media platforms to watch.

TikTok

I recently wrote a piece about why you need to pay attention to this one – it’s already proving beneficial for many companies who have taken the chance on using it. TikTok is a huge social media platform with a younger demographic. Research shows TikTok was the fourth most downloaded app in 2018. It’s all about creating short form videos that loop similar to the now dead platform Vine. Users can create and share video content but the competitive edge comes in because it is incredibly simple to add music overlays, AR filters, and other fun effects.

Though the platform has gotten a bit of a bad reputation as being nothing more than a silly lip-syncing platform for children, if your target audience is anywhere between the ages of 16 and 24, it’s a wonderful place to promote your business. It is particularly effective for e-commerce and fashion brands who are looking to work with influencers.

Related: How to Use Tiktok for Your Business

Vero

If you’re struggling to gain ground on Instagram, Vero is an alternative that prides itself on the lack of algorithms, data mining, and ads. Vero users can share content such as TV shows, music, photos, links, books, movies and more. Users can decide who can see each post by choosing between four categories including close friends,  friends, acquaintances, or followers.

Despite the fact that there are no ads on Vero, your brand can still work with influencers on the platform and pay to add a “Buy Now” button to posts.

Because it doesn’t use algorithms or ads, Vero is promoted as a more authentic social media platform. It’s a great option for companies that want to build more meaningful and stronger relationships with their audience. Plus, because users are able to share such a wide variety of content, it helps you learn more about your target audience.

Steemit

Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website that rewards users with the STEEM, cryptocurrency for curating and creating content. When users create content that gets upvoted, they’re paid. When users vote for the content of others, they get paid too. Users can then take their digital STEEM tokens and exchange them for real money.

Though it may seem like this Reddit alternative is all about technology and cryptocurrency topics, it’s not. Users are able to create content on a variety of subjects such as sports, photography, music, and travel.

Though the user base is relatively small right now, marketers can use the platform as an additional channel to share their content and grow their audience while getting paid for it at the same time.

Narrative

Narrative is a direct competitor of Steemit. It too is a blockchain-based blogging platform and social media website that rewards users with NRVE (nerve), cryptocurrency for creating and curating content. Users can suggest niches and bid on them. Niche owners get a certain amount of currency every time someone publishes content to their channel. You also earn cryptocurrency for your social activities such as upvoting content and commenting on it.

Like Steemit, though the platform is relatively small and still in its beta phase, you can use it to expand your reach and earn money in the process. You can publish content that has been previously published on other platforms, as long as you link to the original post to indicate that it was also published elsewhere. In a recent policy change, canonical linked posts don’t qualify for Content Creator rewards – in an effort to reward original content while helping to increase exposure of previously published work.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a social broadcasting platform similar to Twitch. A team of ex-Apple designers created the platform. However, while Twitch focuses mainly on gaming, Caffeine also focuses on the creative arts and entertainment. Users create live broadcasts for friends and followers and viewers are able to interact with people in real-time with emoji reactions and comments.

Research shows 80% of customers would rather watch live videos from a brand than read a blog (thanks for reading this one!), so live broadcasting on a platform like this one could create a lot of attention interaction for you. And, it’s not just limited to gamers. You could host a live Q&A, give a behind-the-scenes tour of your company, livestream product demonstrations and more.

Lasso

Lasso is essentially Facebook’s version of Tik Tok. There wasn’t a lot of fuss about it and it was released in late 2018. Users can create and share short videos with effects and fun filters. They can log in with their Facebook or Instagram accounts to cross-post the videos to their Facebook Stories. The ability to add Lasso videos to Instagram stories is said to be coming soon.

Though Lasso isn’t as popular as TikTok right now, it could become a rival to the top competitors soon. If your target audience is already using TikTok, Lasso is definitely a platform you’ll want to watch.

Though jumping right into all of these platforms at once probably isn’t a good idea, especially if you’re crunched for time or have a limited budget, it is worth taking some time to look at each one of these platforms a little closer. This allows you to determine which ones are best for your business and get in on them while it’s still early. Doing so can give you an edge against the competition.

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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

Keys to Running a Successful LinkedIn Group

If you want to or are already using LinkedIn to connect with your ideal clients and prospects, you may want to consider running a LinkedIn Group. Why?  Starting your own LinkedIn group can be a wonderful way to increase your credibility and thought leadership while attracting a highly targeted group of people.

Benefits of Managing Your Own LinkedIn Group

  • You’ll be able to significantly grow your LinkedIn network which makes it easier to find or be found by your target market.
  • You can message up to 15 group members every month to whom you are not directly connected. Remember that if you are managing multiple groups, the 15 messages are split up among all of them.
  • Position yourself as an authority in your niche or on your topic
  • Create the ideal environment for interacting with clients and prospects
  • Increase your visibility. Because groups are discoverable and accessible from the LinkedIn homepage, and relevant group conversations will appear in the main feed, managing your group and help keep you at the top of mind among your target market.

To ensure your group has the power to become one of the most successful groups on the platform, you must remain committed to maintaining quality wall consistently providing value to your group members here are some tips to help you get started with your own group.

Step One: Creating Your New LinkedIn Group

Creating your LinkedIn group is fairly simple. To get started, click work at the top right navigation bar and select groups from the popup menu.

This will open a list of LinkedIn groups you belong to. Click “Create new group” in the top right corner of the page and start filling in the details of your group.

When choosing your group name, consider is the target audience you want to attract. The more focused you make your niche, the more attractive your those people when they stumble upon it.

If you’re looking to attract people from a certain geographic area, include the name of the area or the city. This way some of the keywords people will search for will make it easier to find your group when people are looking for groups to join.

Remember, your group name cannot exceed 100 characters and can only being used by one group at a time so you’ll need to create a unique group. Don’t make the mistake of starting a LinkedIn group named after your business and use it to broadcast your company updates. People who join LinkedIn groups do not want to be bombarded by your updates so reserve those updates for your LinkedIn company page or a status update on your personal LinkedIn profile.

People join LinkedIn groups to be part of a community of like-minded people where they can have conversations about things that are important to them and to the community as a whole.

It helps to remember how LinkedIn defines groups.

“LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share their insights and experiences, ask for guidance, and build valuable connections.”

Keeping this goal at the front of your mind as you build your LinkedIn group will make it that much more successful.

Step Two: Branding Your LinkedIn Group

You’ll want to spend some time branding your LinkedIn group with a custom logo and cover image. This helps it look more professional which adds credibility and encourages new members to join.

Uour LinkedIn logo needs to be at least 60 by 60 pixels and square. The recommended dimensions for the group cover image are 1776 x 444 pixels. Your images need to be either in PNG or JPEG format.

Step Three: Optimize Your Group Profile

It’s also important to spend some time optimizing your group profile for search visibility. One of the main areas you’ll want to focus on is the about this group section. This allows you to define the purpose and culture of your group. There is a 2,000 character limit but you want to take advantage of as much of the space as possible.

In this space, provide people with a good idea of the content they can expect from the group. Keep in mind that when people search for groups on LinkedIn they will see only the first 200 characters or so of the about section. It will be visible beside the group name in the search results.

You only have a sentence or two to capture a potential members attention and encourage them to join the group, focus on certain key details when writing the first part of your “About this Group” section.

If you’re looking to attract a specific profession or industry, included here. Write a short sentence about what users can expect and the value they’ll gain by joining your group. Make use of specific keywords that will grab your target audience’s attention.

Take some time to consider the various rules you want to implement in your LinkedIn group. Be clear about the rules and guidelines when you set up your LinkedIn group. This ensures you will be able to maintain the integrity of your group and avoid dealing with spammers. Make sure all posts and conversations provide value and are engaging to group members.

You only have a 4,000 character limit for rules. You don’t want to make reading the rules boring and long. For example you can use rules like this:

  1. No network marketing or multi-level marketing of any kind can be promoted in this group.
  2. No political, nonprofit, or religious discussions are allowed
  3. Do not continuously repost the same message in the group over and over again.
  4. No direct sales pictures or spam is allowed. Anyone posting these kinds of content will be warned once and permanently banned upon the second infraction.
  5. Follow this basic rule of thumb: if your message does not provide a contribution of valuable, you shouldn’t post it.

These rules are short, sweet, and only take up 495 characters.

It’s important to police your group rules because if you allow people to spend the group, members will stop visiting engaging because they struggle to find the value. You may even find that lots of people start to leave your group.

All of this in mind, your group number should be encouraged to post if they offer clear value and relevance to your group’s purpose and members.

Next, you’ll set your LinkedIn privacy settings for the group. You’ll have two options standard groups which are visible in the search results. Members are also allowed to invite other members to join. Alternatively, there is an unlisted group that does not appear in LinkedIn search results and only group admins can invite members to join. generally speaking, you’ll want to choose the standard group.

Step Four: Create Seed Content

Before you start inviting members to join or promoting your group, it’s important to post content to the group. If you skip this step, people will assume that it is not active or worth their time to join. It’s up to you as to whether you create the content yourself or curated, but no matter which path you take you should carefully choose the content and make sure it is both of interest and value to your numbers.

Ideally, you should create three or four posts.  these posts can’t include things like solving a key challenge for your target market, discussing current issues a new trends in your industry or choosing topics that you want to create some discussion about using a question or by expressing your opinion.

To make sure all new and existing members always find new content of value, plan to share something new at least once a week. As the group grows and generates more interactivity, you can adjust your posting as necessary.

Step Five: Invite People to Join

With content in place, you’re actively ready to invite people to join your group. The number of LinkedIn members that can join will depend on the type of group you’ve selected.

If you selected an unlisted group, only you and any other group admins can invite people to join the group so you were in complete control of who’s in the group and how big it becomes.

If on the other hand you’ve chosen a standard group there are three ways people can join:

  • You can invite your connections based on how well they meet the membership criteria
  • Other group members can invite them
  • Members can find and request to join your group when they are looking for groups to join.

Any member of standard LinkedIn groups can invite their connections to join. Those members can also approve request to join the group.

While this approach allows you to build your group more quickly, it may also lower the quality of the group so you need to make sure where you are regularly moderating the group by accepting or denying request to join your group, blocking and deleting members who have broken the rules and removing spam.

To help mitigate this issue before it becomes unmanageable, determine membership criteria before you begin inviting people to join. Carefully review member profiles before approval and start with a smaller group and then gauge numbers before you aim to grow your group size.

The default maximum group size is 20,000 members. If you find that your group reaches close to 19,500 members and anticipate that you’ll exceed this limit while still complying with LinkedIn policies, it is possible to contact Linkedin and request that they increase your member limit.

Step Six: Promote the Group

To help your group grow faster, you can promote it by:

  • Encouraging group members to invite connections they believe would benefit from the group as well as contribute value to it.
  • Displaying the group in your profile and encouraged other members to do the same.
  • Sharing the group link with a brief summary in your email marketing messages
  • Including the group link in your email signature.

Take time to welcome new members to your group by @mentioning their name. You definitely need to do this when your group is small and just starting to grow.

To grow engagement levels ask new members to introduce themselves and tell the group what they hope to gain from the community. This helps foster a sense of community among the members.

Once things get up and running you’ll need to spend some time performing group management tasks, such as responding to members, generating new content, and moderating member requests and content.

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Social Media

Memes 101: How Marketers Can Use Them

Memes have taken over social media. Surely, you’re familiar with these short static images, videos or GIFs that depict humorous and relatable content, then spread across the internet like wildfire. People love them. That’s why you should be using them in your online marketing. They’re relatively easy to create and have the potential to really take off. It’s not unusual for a meme to go viral. Meme marketing offers a host of other benefits. Keep reading to learn more about meme marketing, how it works and why you should be using it for your brand.

Benefits of Meme Marketing

The average person spends about two hours a day using social media. Meme sharing has become an ingrained part of online culture. They’re easily recognizable and can be easily modified with your own brand content in a way that makes them appealing. People will want to share them if they find them humorous and relatable. They can provide significant social validation for your business and serve as a kind of word of mouth marketing that works.

You don’t have to invest a lot of money or even time when it comes to creating memes. Half the work is done for you. The key to memes is that they’re so easily recognizable. You have a foundation with an image, video or GIF. You just have to add your brand’s unique touch. Your company can save a lot of money and time by using memes without sacrificing results.

Memes are a great way to engage with your audience. They create a sense of community within your following. People can relate to them and enjoy sharing them with their friends. They also give you brand recognition. People will feel a connection to your brand and will find you more approachable.

A goal of digital marketing is to have your message seen by your target demographic. Memes are a strategic way of doing that. They’re part of the cultural landscape and people naturally relate to them. Memes are meant to be shared, by definition. So it just makes sense to use them in your marketing. Plus, when people share your memes, they are acting as brand advocates and essentially standing behind your product. It shows they like what you have to offer.

Finally, memes give your brand a face. They make you seem more real and invite people to connect with you. These things are essential to building relationships and trust, which are key to online marketing. People will remember your brand and what you stand for when they see your content in the future. Memes lead to brand recognition and can provide a gateway for future interactions or even purchases.

Tips for Using Memes in Marketing

One tricky thing about using memes in your marketing is making sure they adhere to your brand voice. You want them to flow seamlessly with the rest of your content and to be recognizable among your fans. Another issue to consider is maintaining your brand’s values and avoiding offense. Memes are part of the cultural landscape and rely on humor. It’s important to keep in mind that what individuals find funny can vary greatly.

Take time to research current popular memes in order to get a feel for what’s out there and which are commonly accepted. Being edgy and making a statement is absolutely acceptable and is an inherent part of using memes. It’s good to set yourself apart from competitors and to show your brand’s personality. Be sure to take time to research your target demographic and know your desired audience. Those are the people you most want to reach and avoid offending.

Creating memes doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can repurpose existing ones. Sites like Giphy or imgflip provide meme templates you can use and modify for free. Just check out their libraries, find the ones that appeal to you or that seem to fit your brand and then add your own captions or alterations.

You can also create your own original memes. If done right, these have a higher chance of being shared for their creativity and novelty. You can find stock images or make your own GIFs, then add commentary or modify the graphics. You can even ask permission from your fans to use their images, particularly ones that include your company’s products. User generated content is often a hit.

There are lots of ways to make your memes relevant and relatable to your audience. Pay attention to current events and holidays, then incorporate them into your content. You can even create your own brand-specific events or hashtags, using those to promote your brand in a completely unique fashion. Pay attention to meme challenges that are happening on various social media platforms. These can be a fun way to get in on a current trend. The trick is to be authentic to your brand, reach your audience on a level they appreciate and incorporate humor in a way that makes people want to share it with others.

Memes are continuing to grow in popularity. They truly are embedded in the social fabric of our culture. Using them in your online marketing offers your company numerous benefits. Chances are, they should become a regular part of your marketing strategy. Consider your brand image and voice. Then find ways to incorporate them that fit.

These visual, fun and relatable images are far more shareable than blog posts or sales graphics. They invoke emotion, which prompts shares. Even if your memes don’t become viral hits, they can still be incredibly effective ways to increase your brand’s visibility, enhance community, engage users and gain new followers.

Don’t be afraid to be original and to make a statement with your meme marketing. That’s what creates a buzz. Just be sure to take the time to reflect upon your content. You want to be able to stand behind its message and feel confident it is worthy of your audience. Have fun with it!

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Social Media

Developing a Social Media Approval Process for Your Organization

Managing social media for your department, organization or for individual clients can be stressful. This is especially true if there is a team involved in the process. Each stakeholder may have different expectations for social media posts, and it’s imperative that everyone is on the same page in order to avoid problems such as misunderstandings or even damage to reputation. Fortunately, there are some processes you can put in place and tools you can use to help streamline communication. Keep reading below to discover some tips for developing a social media approval process for your organization.

Create a Strategy

Before you can establish an approval process for social media posts, you’ll first need to implement some other procedures so that everyone involved knows their role. First, clarify who is responsible for creating posts and for which client. If there are multiple people working on a particular campaign, determine a command chain of who does what and who is ultimately responsible for final approval. Laying all of this out ahead of time eliminates confusion and ensure each individual understands their responsibilities.

It can help to have your entire social media team, from graphic designers to social media specialist, meet with clients so that everyone has a personal understanding of the brand. Having guidelines readily available for such things as logo placement, hashtag use and prohibited language is also important to ready approval of social media posts. Deadlines should be established, as well. When do key organization and client team members need to receive content for approval? Setting expected deadlines will allow your team to work efficiently and stay on track.

Finally, you should have a social media crisis management procedure in place. Identifying a crisis and having standard practices in place for dealing with such issues will also ease the approval process and help to make sure things don’t get out of hand. Everyone on both the organization and client side should have access to this information.

Choose Your Tools

The next part of developing a social media approval process for your organization is to choose the tools you’ll need to help you in this endeavor. Exchanging endless emails and memos simply isn’t an efficient way of communication, especially when there are multiple team members to consult and deadlines to meet. Fortunately, there are a number of resources that can help to automate this process and keep everyone in the loop with regard to communication. Some are paid, while others are free. Finding a solution that works for your team will be a personal endeavor, but there are some things that can help you choose wisely.

Handling your social media workflow requires you to keep track of necessary information like policies and procedures, maintain efficient and timely communication and share assets. Sometimes, you will need more than one app or tool to do the job. Many programs will work together seamlessly and can be integrated to perform various tasks.

A tool like Airtable can help you create a place where you and your team can keep general information. Other popular resources include CoSchedule, SmarterQueue and Sprout Social. Examples of things you might keep track of in these programs include keywords research, frequently used links, documents, assets, images and team member information. These types of tools create spreads and forms that make submitting and sharing information among the team easy. They can be readily customized to meet your team’s exact needs. Having a place where everyone can view content and preparation materials eases the social media approval process tremendously.

Some social media management tools such as Agorapulse allow for real-team collaboration and possess other helpful features that make obtaining social media approval much more efficient. You can schedule content for approval ahead of time and then forget it, in many cases. These types of programs let you send posts for approval to the required team member and set things up so that they can even move through multiple individuals.

Finally, the tool you choose should be able to handle a comprehensive workflow. Aspects to consider include information storage, team involvement, content creation, approval procedures and reporting. You may need to use more than one app or program to achieve your desired results. The more streamlined you can make the process, the better. Paid tools or upgrades are often necessary to achieve the results you desire.

Team Collaboration

The last part of the process streamlining social media approval for your team is to be sure everyone is onboard and understands the process, as well as gaining knowledge of the tools everyone will use in order to perform their duties effectively. This means you’ll need to implement comprehensive training for everyone involved, both within your organization and with outside stakeholders.

Team members should be aware of the client’s backstory and brand. This helps everyone to use a consistent voice when creating posts. They must also understand branding style such as colors, fonts, graphics and logos. Any other client-specific guidelines should be communicated at these meetings, such as wording to avoid. Teaching everyone what is to be expected will save time and frustration later, making the approval process much more seamless.

Next, you’ll need to bring everyone on board with regard to the use of the tools you’ve chosen for team collaboration. Some individuals may be more resistant to learning new methods than others. Emphasize the importance of working together with a tool that keeps everyone in the loop will make each person’s job easier. It will also increase the odds of achieving better results for the client when strategies are put in place to improve the communication processes.

Take time to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the tools and how they are to be used. This may mean scheduling several social media training sessions or breaking things up by department. You’ll also want to share practical examples of how individuals will use the tools in order to make the experience more relevant and easier to understand. Your team members will be more likely to embrace new tools if they feel a personal relevance and connection to them.

Developing a social media approval process for your organization does require a great deal of research and time investment, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. In the end, you’ll discover your job is much easier and the results you achieve will be far superior than before.

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Social Media

Study: What 100 Social Media Followers are Worth

While a recent study set out to answer what 100 social media followers are worth, it’s difficult to measure the ROI. The value of social media followers lies beyond mere numbers – it’s about engagement and conversion potential. Followers who actively interact with content and align with the brand’s target audience are more valuable. They can increase brand visibility, drive traffic, and potentially lead to conversions. Therefore, the focus should be on building a quality, engaged follower base.

When it comes to the social web, platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram command billions of eyeballs every year. This makes the channels too big to ignore, so you have no choice but to participate in them to avoid missing out on revenue and traffic.

That brings the question of how much time and money should you spend on each social platform. Which ones produce the best return on investment?

Fellow digital marketing expert Neil Patel recently sought to answer the question and surveyed nearly 500 companies who are all using Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. Each company surveyed has been actively participating in all of the social channels for at least three years and have at least 100 social media followers on each platform.

Out of all 483 companies surveyed 159 of them were in the B2B space and 324 were B2C companies. Revenues varied from as little as $10,000 per year to $250,000 per year.  Before we dig into the data remember all of the stats are broken down based on 100 social followers.

Organic Social Media Traffic Over Time

Compared to when each social platform it made its debut, it has become more difficult to generate organic traffic from each of them. Though it’s possible to still generate organic visits your reach has declined. But how much has it declined?  From 2015 to now, we have gone from just over three monthly visitors per 100 followers to two monthly visitors per 100 followers.

Related: How to Turn Instagram followers into Customers

Traffic By Social Network

While it’s true organic social media traffic is dying as each network wants to earn your advertising dollars, certain social media networks drive more traffic than others.  Which one would you guess drives the most?  If you guessed Facebook or Instagram you’re wrong as these two generate the least amount of organic traffic every month.

Pinterest drives the most organic social media traffic at a little more than four visitors per 100 followers. LinkedIn was a close second driving a little more than two visitors per 100 followers followed by  YouTube also driving a little more than two visitors per 100 followers. It’s worth mentioning that although YouTube drives a decent amount of visitors per 100 subscribers, most people using YouTube don’t experience much traffic because they aren’t linking out to their site within their videos. Though it used to be possible with YouTube annotations, those were discontinued in January 2019. Link to your site in the video description and include a video transcript with your URL.

Do More Posts Mean More Social Traffic?

Even though organic reach is dying down, if you post more often this should in theory increase your traffic. In general, posting more often does increase your traffic but after 8 months of posting on each social network, the data indicates that you will see diminishing returns.

The majority of social media algorithms work is based on engagement. The more people engaged with your content the more of them will see your content as you post it. As such, your goal should only be to post content people love and want to engage with. The second you start posting any kind of mediocre content, it will hurt your overall traffic numbers because it means fewer people in the future will see your new content regardless of how amazing it is.

Engagement By Social Network

Speaking of engagement, Which social media platforms tend to have the most engaged users? like Neil, I assumed Pinterest would win the engagement battle since they are driving the most traffic but I was wrong.

Though Pinterest did well, LinkedIn won.  Instagram also did well but this isn’t really a surprise as most people use it for a social network rather than leveraging it for business. That’s why Instagram engagement is high.

Post that don’t contain a link, such as images or videos tend to get the highest amount of engagement. This is also because social sites tend to promote content that keeps people on their site as opposed to sending visitors to your site.

Which Social Platforms are Best for Videos?

If videos aren’t part of your digital marketing plan, it’s something you should consider starting. Even though they don’t wink well on Google they are the future of the internet. When it comes to video, there are two main types: ones that you upload and ones that are live.

The data shows that Instagram produces the best results for video and then LinkedIn and YouTube. But, Instagram automatically plays videos while YouTube is much stricter about what they count as a video View. That said if you’re going to create video content, you should plan to post it on all of your social media Networks focusing the majority of your efforts on Instagram LinkedIn and YouTube.

YouTube won’t give you amazing numbers within the first day of uploading a video but by utilizing YouTube SEO you can continually get views that you won’t see happen on any of the other social platforms.

When it comes to live video, the results are similar in that Instagram and YouTube are the leaders. Live videos don’t generate as many viewers as just posting in scheduling them. The main reason wasn’t that social sites don’t want your live content it’s that when it comes to non live videos, businesses are spending more time leveraging keyword research and optimizing videos for the maximum amount of views. That is quite a bit harder to do with live videos.

Putting keywords in your title and descriptions isn’t enough. Social media sites are able to interpret the sound to see what your video is really about.

Building Your Email List

It’s no secret in the marketing world that the money is in the list. If you aren’t using your social media platforms to collect emails, you need to start immediately. Once you have your email list you can always make it to the people on your list and convince them to buy your services or products.

In terms of converting a visitor to an email subscriber, LinkedIn has the best conversion rate but Pinterest and YouTube also perform well. It’s a common misconception that most of the people on LinkedIn only care about B2B. Everyone on LinkedIn is a consumer who buys everyday products.

The most interesting part of the email collection data is the majority of your social media followers will never convert into email subscribers. But as you continue to share and post content on the social web, the followers of your followers may also see your content which then increases the likelihood of getting more traffic and email subscribers

Revenue

Regardless of how you feel about leveraging social media for your business, the truth is these platforms to drive your revenue and you do not have to spend money on ads to generate that Revenue. Ads of course do help but the percentage of Revenue that each business generated from organic social media traffic is quite impressive. while the percentage of Revenue has declined from just under 8% in 2015 to just under 2% in 2018 and 2019, we’re starting to see the numbers even out.

The decline isn’t just related to social media algorithm changes. It can also be attributed to the fact that businesses are diversifying their marketing approach to take an omni-channel approach meaning they are leveraging more channels. Because of that each one makes up a smaller portion of their total revenue.

Social media is still going strong despite the fact that it has become harder to make things happen organically. You may only be able to generate two visitors a month for every 100 followers you have, but as you grow your following that scales and can generate a hefty amount of organic traffic.

Categories
Social Media

Pinterest’s New Complete the Look Tool

Pinterest has launched a new visual search tool known as “Complete the Look” that recommends relevant home decor and fashion categories based on the context of an image. For instance, if a user searches for a mountain scene Pin, the platform will recommend products found in similar images, such as camping gear, hats, and so on. Pinterest’s visual search tools compete with Amazon StyleSnap and Google Assistant’s Lens.

Why This Matters to Businesses

Pinterest has focused its efforts on its ecommerce features for a while now, since they introduced shoppable pins. The new visual search tool is another aspect of ecommerce for the social platform. With this technology, the platform can recommend home decor and fashion products based on attributes and context of everything within an image a user saves or searches for. As such, brands have the potential to gain more exposure on the platform because more of their Pins will appear through visual search.

Eric Kim and Eileen Li, part of the Pinterest visual search team write, “Complete the Look takes context like an outfit, body type, season, indoors vs. outdoors, various pieces of furniture, and the overall aesthetics of a room to power taste-based recommendations across visual search technology.”

A report from November 2018 revealed that 78% of Pinterest users who engaged with home decor Pins on a weekly basis made a purchase based on the content brands shared. When it comes to fashion Pins, 83% of users who engaged with them made a purchase.

A recent report from eMarketer shows Pinterest is the most popular platform for product discovery, with 47% of users going to the network to find new products. Only 15% of Facebook users and 11% of Instagram users use those platforms to discover new products.

All that said, Pinterest has yet to release details about when the Complete the Look visual searches will be made available to users. At this time, the tool is being tested internally. It will eventually become available within Pinterest’s recommendation tools. When the tool is released to the public, I will update this post with the relevant information regarding the roll out.

Ecommerce brands can use this tool as a virtual stylist. Users can submit a photo of location, for instance, and Complete the Look will help find relevant outfits for them to buy. This would be particularly helpful for people who are traveling to a place they’ve never been, such as another country where the weather is significantly different from the climate they are used to.

Language is Limited

Pinterest released a paper detailing the technology behind the new visual search option. In that paper, we see the phrase, “the overall aesthetics of a room” which is a vague phrase that shows up just how poor our language options are when it comes to something intangible. Yes, we can say a table is a table and a rug is a rug, but it is difficult to impossible to detail why it adds to the overall look and feel of a room.

That’s the point of visual search. It makes it easier to express ourselves through images in areas where language is limited, or subjective. That’s where Complete the Look makes its mark with interpretation of images.

Let’s say I search with an image that has a pair of shoes. In most situations, I either way to know what brand they are, or where to buy them. But, let’s pretend I already own those shoes. In that case, I’d want to see other items that could go well with the shoes. And that’s where the Complete the Look tool will be useful to Pinterest users.

Pinterest’s Visual Search Evolution

Pinterest began providing visual search tools in 2017 with Lens. The service powers hundreds of millions of searches every month. We’ve also seen the introduction of complete automation for Shop the Look for buying Pinned items, and personalized results for Lens Your Look, along with new Catalogs tool that lets anyone upload and convert their entire store catalog into shoppable Pins and a Related Products feature that will appear under product Pins.

The Complete the Look option is an extension of Shop the Look pins, which identifies specific items within any Pin image and connects users to purchase pages for each of the relevant pins. With Complete the Look, the visual search engine will take into account all the products you’ve searched for in the past and provide recommendations based on relative trends and various other factors.

With Shop the Look, users can buy what they see. Complete the Look, on the other hand, crops the main product from the image, searching the scene of the image instead.

It’s harder to train an algorithm to identify the topic of a photo than it is to train it to understand the meaning of text. This development goes deep into using images to drive online conversation. Pinterest splits imagery into two categories: scene images (selfies, street photos, etc.) and product images (a single image on a plain background). Ecommerce generally focuses on product images, but with this technology will be able to build a stronger Pinterest presence by turning scene images into a curated list of product recommendations.

More Happenings at Pinterest

In March, Pinterest hired Jeremy King as the head of the engineering team. He served as both the former CTO of Walmart and the VP of Engineering at eBay, which brings a considerable amount of e-commerce experience. I, for one, am interested to see what this means for the future of Pinterest ecommerce – and I expect good things to keep coming.

Pinterest also announced a new Shopping category in the Pinterest Marketing Partner program. They also said the program is now known as “Pinterest Partners” rather than “Pinterest Marketing Partner.”

Are you a brand that’s excited about the potential this new feature will bring to your marketing and revenue? Do you plan on using it once it is released? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
Social Media

6 Ways to Engage Your Audience on Social Media

There are several ways to engage your audience on social media, some of which are more effective than others. Effective ways to engage audiences on social media include creating interactive content like polls and quizzes, hosting live sessions or Q&As, responding promptly to comments and messages, sharing user-generated content, personalizing content to audience preferences, and storytelling that resonates with followers. Consistency in posting and authentic communication are key to maintaining engagement.

Social media development can sometimes be a beast and leave you and your team frustrated. There are some methods that work for one group and others that work for another. Sometimes, you just have to experiment and take notes on what works and what doesn’t. But what if you’re stuck on where to start?

Take a look at these six ways to engage your audience on social media to help you get started.

Use Hashtags to Build Comradery

Hashtags are extremely popular and have a dual purpose. You can search a hashtag on any social media platform and see what others are saying while using your hashtag. Every business should already have a main hashtag (ie: #sachsmarketinggroup) and create specialized hashtags for major events, contests, or changes in business.

Let’s say you have a donut delivery business and you plan to release a new donut in September. You can create a lot of engagement on social media if you use a hashtag designed for that release (such as #WheresTheDonut2019 or #DonutSurprise92019). When creating a specialized hashtag, search for that hashtag to see if it is already being used and if you can tweak it to make it yours. Continue to use main business hashtag alongside the event/promotion-specific hashtag so that people who discover you through the promotion can easily find out more about your brand.

Use Live Videos to Your Best Advantage

Creating video content is one of the best ways to get social media engagement. Video should be a part of any marketing plan, but it’s even better if you can include live video. Live videos air live on a social media platform (YouTube and Facebook are the popular options) and allow you to see comments posted as you move through your script.

It’s best if you have a script, or at least a general idea of what you plan to cover before going live. Practice can help you figure out how to speak naturally without getting flustered, which is important if you have a fear of public speaking or are camera shy. If you have a script, you definitely don’t want to read from it during the live event – it’s just meant as a guide to help keep you on topic.

What are live videos good for? Product line release parties, introducing new members on your team to your audience, contest and winner announcements, and good content encouraging a call to action. If you want to see how others have used a live video for sales, look for  lives featuring the Paparazzi Jewelry line. The men and women who sell the jewelry on live videos have seen major sales increases and were some of the first people to use lives to sell items.

Use Tools for Better Engagement

One of the hardest things many businesses struggle with is the time factor. Live videos will require a specific time frame that you can schedule in, but the rest can be automated. Plenty of automated tools will post your content across a wide range of social media platforms. Automation is every marketer’s friend because it allows you to keep a steady flow of content without additional work. This can be an invaluable tool for you while deploying your content strategy.

This is especially helpful if your audience is spread out across time zones or primarily in a time zone different from your own. It is also extremely helpful if your business will be closed for long holidays or other special circumstances. It’s particularly useful when you’re a one-person team, or your team has other priorities to focus on.

Be Responsive to Comments on Content

Whether it is a blog post, Facebook review, or a comment on an Instagram post, always make time to be responsive. You want to nurture the positive comments so that people feel like they can speak freely with you. You also want to tackle any negative comments to curb any issues.

It is always worth investigating every complaint, even if the complaints are unfounded (some people refuse to be happy). It is especially important to respond to feedback about any campaigns that are well-received or not. While some people can be particularly ferocious when it comes to a campaign that triggers heavy emotion, those are the comments you will not want to respond. Vicious commenters are usually the ones you don’t want to engage because they are soliciting for an online argument. Save the energy for those that are respectful and to the point.

Contests and Giveaways Are Your Best Friend

If you are struggling to gain new followers or even getting your audience to engage, a contest or giveaway can fix that quick. People love contests and giveaways and are willing to do a few steps in order to win. You can require that they visit the landing page and then a pop up shows up so they can include email and name information. If they want extra entries, they can fulfill other tasks. Blog posts on their website, following on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram, or sharing the contest announcement are few great ideas you can start with.

Offer just two or three extra entry options. Offering too many will overwhelm people and cause them to skip entering the contest. As they spread the word about your contest, more followers are likely to join in and take the time to learn more about your business. If you keep the engagement up and quality content flowing, you will retain a majority of the new followers. Always be sure to learn about the guidelines for running contests and giveaways on any social media platform to keep your accounts in good standing.

Share Content That Is Relevant To Your Audience

The general rule for content on social media is that only 20% of the content you share should originate with you – and not all of that content should be promotional. Social media isn’t about tooting your own horn. The remaining 80% of the content you share should come from other sources – but still be relevant to your audience. You want to establish yourself as a source of credible information, not as a constant sales pitch.

Social media engagement doesn’t happen overnight. Constantly test and experiment, focusing your efforts on what your audience responds to the best. You can always ask them what kind of content they’d like to see more of, then make an effort to give it to them.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Facebook Pixel Losing Effectiveness for Marketers

Keyboard Concept

In the coming months, Facebook will release its Clear History tool. Once it is released, the new feature will allow users to see, manage, and disconnect activity that happens off-Facebook from their user profile. As such, the tool will impact marketers ability to reach a targeted audience on the platform.

What is the Clear History Tool?

The Clear History tool was announced at the 2018 F8 Conference. Facebook says the feature will allow users to see the websites and apps that send Facebook information when they are used. It will also give users the power to delete the information from the account and turn off the ability for Facebook to store the information associated with your account moving forward.

Apps and websites that use features such as the Like button or Facebook Analytics send Facebook information to make their content and ads better and more relevant. Facebook uses the information to improve your Facebook experience.

If users clear their history or use the new setting, Facebook will remove identifying information so a history of the websites and apps you’ve used will not be associated with your account. The browsing history isn’t erased or removed, but instead made anonymous. Facebook still plans to provide apps and websites with aggregated analytics so they can build reports to let developers know whether their apps are more popular with certain genders or age groups. Facebook will do this without storing the information in a way that is associated with your account – and they will not provide information about who the people are to advertisers.

According to the Facebook Newsroom post from May 2018, it will take a few months to build Clear History, since they will be working with privacy advocates, policymakers, regulators, and academics to get input on the approach, including how they plan to remove identifying information and rare cases where the information is needed for security purposes.

What Marketers Need to Know

Providing Users with Control and Transparency Makes for Better Business

When people know how their information is used, it makes them feel better about ads and the businesses they interact with online. Ads are how Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp are made free for people to use. The same can be said for many online services. It’s important to understand that protecting people’s information and advertising are not working against each other; it is possible to do both.

Facebook is Helping Users See How Advertisers Use Their Tools

A large part of the clear history tool is helping people understand how the advertisers use Facebook business schools. Facebook is working hard to deliver this type of transparency on Facebook. They are also open to conversations with other businesses about approaches they may take to help people understand more about what data they share and the value that share offers. Businesses are encouraged to start thinking about ways to educate their consumers regarding their marketing practices.

The New Feature May Impact Targeting

When a user decides to disconnect their off-Facebook activity, Facebook will no longer be able to use that data for targeting. This means that targeting options powered by Facebook’s business tools, such as the Facebook Pixel, can’t be used to reach someone with ads. This includes Custom Audiences built from website visitors and app users. Businesses should remember this when they are developing strategies for these kinds of campaigns in the future.

Until now, marketers have been able to install the Facebook Pixel on their website to match people who’ve visited their websites to who they are on Facebook so they can continue to advertise to them. While the Clear History tool will affect targeting because a portion of users will exercise the control and disconnect their off-Facebook activity, there are still some users who will not mind sharing that information. As such, you may still benefit from using the Facebook pixel and Custom Audiences. It’s likely, however, the audience will be smaller. The Clear History feature will also affect businesses that use the SDK or the API.

Measurement Will Remain Intact

That said, Facebook’s measurement and analytics tools have been designed to protect users’ identities. There is no sharing of personal information such as names and phone numbers in the measurement and reporting tools. As of now, Facebook does not anticipate making changes to measurement once the Clear History feature is live. Because of this, Facebook will still be able to provide accurate measurements to understand the impact of their investment in Facebook Ads, while still allowing people to exercise control over their off-Facebook activity.

The marketing industry is seeing the first glimpse of an entirely new Facebook. This iteration of the social platform is more focused on one-on-one messaging and privacy than it is on public social feeds. While this is a good move for users, businesses may need a bit of time to adjust, simply because the ad targeting options are going to become more limited. As we embark on the new era of Facebook, we must begin reconsidering how to connect with our audiences, both on and off the platform.

Categories
Social Media

Are the Days of the Plandid Over?

Oops! Close up portrait of sexy, beautiful, impressed, amazed blonde girl holding her hand near mouth, looking to the side on pink background

In the early days of Instagram, one quick look through your feed revealed a ton of seemingly meticulous photos – of people who looked “natural.” This concept is known as the plandid – or the planned candid. Planning the shots ahead of time ensures influencers get the type of image they’re looking for – one that satisfies sponsors – but one that also appeals to their audience.

The platform has reached more than 1 billion monthly users – and there’s a common theme among most of the photos on the network. You’ll notice things are almost always staged against a bright wall, with carefully arranged lattes and fancy food, Millennial pink, and color-corrected aesthetic. Images that capitalize on these trends do so well on Instagram the look became associated with the platform itself – and gradually made its way into the world beyond. Even those who don’t use Instagram have become familiar with the Instagram Wall – a place in your home with an Instagram worthy backdrop, created for the sole purpose of photography.

The Early Influencers

Influencers are the ones who capitalize on this plandid look more than anyone else – with some of them even creating photo presets in Adobe Lightroom that edit anyone’s photos to fit the aesthetic. But all trends have a shelf life – and as quickly as Instagram welcomed beach photos and Millennial pink, it’s being ushered out in favor of something different. The buzz now is that it’s no longer cool to have the manufactured look – and Instagram is now shifting to authenticity.

The New Generation of Influencers

Young influencers such as Joanna Ceddia and Jazzy Anne, along with many others,  are rejecting the curated feed concept, in favor of an unfiltered, messier, and ultimately more authentic vibe. While the early generation of influencers carried DSLR cameras and learned photo editing to master the “perfect” photo, those rules don’t apply to the rising generation of influencers, who prefer to use their smartphones to take photos.

Many teens are going out of the way to make photos look worse. Huji Cam, a filter that makes your images appear to be taken with an old disposable camera, has been downloaded more than 16 million times – and younger influencers say adding grain to your photos is a big thing right now.

Reese Bluestein is a 22-year-old influencer who has gained more than 238,000 followers in a little over a year by posted unfiltered low quality photos of herself in strange outfits. She doesn’t stress about getting the perfect look for each image, or posting similar looking photos back to back. If she likes an image, she posts it, without caring about the effect it has on her overall feed.

Over the past year, we’ve seen the concept of “Instagram vs. Reality” photos growing in popularity because influencers want to make themselves more accessible. As people become more aware of how prevalent sponsored posts are, beauty influencers have started to abandon the branded shots for the ones that feature empty bottles of the products they actually use. The number of accounts dedicated to calling out celebrities and influencers for the cosmetic procedures they’ve had is rising. Influencers are speaking out about the burnout and stress that comes with trying to maintain perfection, which is fostering the growth in authenticity.

James Nord, the CEO of Fohr, an influencer-management platform, says he sees this shift play out in his clients’ numbers every day. “What worked for people before doesn’t work anymore,” he says. “For the first time, influencers are coming up against this problem of, How do I continue to grow as tastes change?”

He says 60% of the influencers in his network with more than 100,000 followers are losing followers month over month. Just a year ago, you could post a photo of well manicured hands around a coffee cup and get lots of engagement. Now, doing something like that will make people unfollow. Influencers who are still standing in front of those Instagram walls are struggling – and will need to change their approach if they want to maintain their influencer status.

Instagram itself could be in part responsible for the evolution. Instagram began as a purely visual feed of filtered photos, but has morphed itself into something different. Now, it has grown into a true social network where photos and videos are competing against stories, GIFs, and IGTV for attention.

Why the Change?

Instagram walls and museums were built so that normal people could easily take influencer-quality photos. However, the photos worked so well they became commonplace. As a result, they no longer resonate with people like they used to, and now we’re living in “influencer overload.”

The stress of aiming for perfection is just too much. One influencer, LA-based Sarah Peretz, known for her curated, hyper-saturated feed, says she spend months looking for a wall of a certain color – and she interrupted a vacation to take a photo against a roadside casino’s orange wall, she’d had enough. She started shifting her feed away from the traditional aesthetic and experimented with more creative photography. She knew her audience was bored with it, and more interested in Instagram Stories.

As what is “ideal” on Instagram is shifting, brands are on the lookout for ways they can catch (or create) the next wave. People are just looking for stuff they can relate to, so being real is a trend that’s catching on and will stick around a while.

How do you feel about meticulously planned feeds? Are you looking forward to the authenticity movement? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
SMG News

Sachs Marketing Group is a 2019 Los Angeles City Excellence Award Winner

The results are in! Sachs Marketing Group has been awarded a 2019 Los Angeles City Excellence Award by UpCity. Out of 624 marketing service providers in Los Angeles, we were selected as one of the top 20 based on our UpCity Rating, which measures digital recommendability by reviews, search score, domain authority and more.

By having our services listed on UpCity and featured as one of the top 20 agencies in Los Angeles, we’re able to cut through the noise, standout and create trust with prospective buyers. It’s an honor for us to be represented on the City Excellence Award List.

The infographic below goes more into detail on what makes a great agency in Los Angeles and stats that highlight Los Angeles as a marketing hub in North America.

UpCity helps businesses find marketing providers they can trust. The UpCity Marketplace creates and empowers successful relationships between businesses and marketing service providers. We provide transparency and insights to dramatically improve the marketing partner selection and purchase experience. Over 225,000 businesses visit UpCity each month seeking marketing services from over 33,000 providers in over 600 cities in North America. UpCity helps partners in the marketplace grow their business and build their digital recommendability.

Categories
Social Media

Instagram to Hide Like Counts on Photos

Instagram has made plans to stop showing how many people have liked users posts. Posters will still be able to see when someone likes their posts, and clicking through will show them everyone who has done so. Only the poster will be able to see the like count – other users will not.

This is in addition to a recent redesign that makes a user’s follower count much less prominent, according to the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri. Right now the design is being worked on internally but is not yet available to the public.

Why Make the Change?

The change, announced at the most recent F8 Developers Conference, is an effort to make the app a better place to be, by changing the focus from the amount of engagement they’ve earned to just the posts being shared. The Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch, “we’re running a test in Canada that removes the total number of likes on photos and video views in Feed, Permalink pages and Profile. We are testing this because we want your followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.”

It seems to be a response to how anxiety about the damage of social media is negatively affecting mental health and well being. The idea is that by removing some more obvious markers of competition and popularity, social media will become a healthier place to be, with a focus on community. This approach has won the support of many people, such as Kanye West.

Is it Platform Wide?

At this time, the feature is only launched to some users located in Canada. Depending on how successful it is for the test demographic, it’s possible this will roll out to all users. This means no one would be able to see how many likes their posts get.

Why is the test happening in Canada and not in the United States or another area? According to a company spokesperson, “Canadians are highly social and tech savvy, with over 24 million people connecting across our family of apps each month. We wanted to test this with a digitally savvy audience that has a thriving community on Instagram.”

How This Could Affect Influencers

As of now, influencers and other popular people who are paid to post on Facebook use the like metric to help in understanding how popular and engaging a post is. Because these numbers affect how much brands pay them to post, this is a highly important number for influencers.

Instagram said that it was aware that hiding the like numbers could create financial difficulty for influencers and users. Instagram told TechCrunch it was “thinking through ways for them to communicate value to their brand partners” and the idea was still in “exploratory” stages.

Additional Possible Features Coming to Instagram

At the F8 conference, Mosseri announced that Instagram wants to lead the fight against bullying, rather than just working to stop it. He announced multiple new tests of features that aim to make the app less hateful and toxic. These include:

Manage Interactions

The manage interaction feature will set limits on how certain people interact with you, without having to block them completely. This is ideal for situations where you don’t want someone to be able to comment on your posts but you are fine with them being able to still like the posts. Or, if you are okay with them seeing your posts, but do not want to get direct messages from them.

Away Mode

The Away Mode feature will encourage people to take a break from Instagram during the more intense times of their lives, like moving to a new school, or dealing with other stressful events. They do not need to delete their account, but this feature aims to allow users to get a break from the constant flood of notifications and worrying about how they look.

Nudge

This feature aims to warn users if they are about to comment something hurtful. The test ensures users aren’t censored, but still addresses bullying before it happens.

If these features are successful at promoting digital well-being, Instagram will likely roll them out to everyone. Though there currently is not a timeline for when this may happen, I will update this post, or blog about it again, as the information becomes available.

It’s refreshing to see Instagram adding well-being features after the founders left the company. They were big fans of reducing envy and promoting authenticity on social media, which was part of the reason they launched Instagram Stories – giving users a platform to share the unpolished parts of life. Before their departure in September, Instagram released the Your Activity dashboard that shows you the average time you spend each day in the app, and an “You’re All Caught Up” warning that lets people know they’ve seen all the recent feed posts and can stop scrolling.

A 2013 study showed that 20% of all envy-causing situations that experiment participants experienced happened on Facebook. The study also determined Facebook causes toxic envy, saying the “intensity of passive following is likely to reduce users’ life satisfaction in the long-run as it triggers upward social comparison and invidious emotions.” Instagram, because of the focus on imagery and a “manicured” life may cause even more envy, so hiding the likes would be helpful in ensuring we don’t judge ourselves as much.

How do you feel about Instagram and your well-being? Do you feel like you’re constantly chasing likes and find yourself disappointed if a particular post doesn’t get the level of engagement you thought it would? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Categories
Social Media

How to Optimize Your Facebook Page

If you want to be sure you’ll reach your audience, then you’ll want to be on Facebook. After all, 2.23 billion people log in to the social network every month. 66% of U.S. adults report that they are Facebook users, and 74% of them say the use the platform every day. Both daily and monthly users are up 13% year-over-year.

Chances are, your competition is already using it to reach that same audience, because there are 80 million pages for small and medium sized businesses. And if you already have a Facebook Page, you need to be sure it’s optimized. For those of you out there who are just getting started, I’ve included a short section on how to create your Facebook Page.

Basics of Facebook Marketing

Know your audience. You’ll need to create a business page to share relative content and announcements to your target market. Share your page often and encourage others to share the page as well. Include a link to it on your website. Post frequently to keep your page active and likely to be seen. Respond in a timely fashion to direct messages and comments on your posts. Keeping engagement strong not only builds your reputation with your audience, they are more likely to share your content and the algorithms will work in your favor.

Do not use your Facebook Page as a replacement for a website. Treat it like a microsite that complements your brand’s official website.

Creating Your Facebook Page

When creating your Facebook Page, choose the right type of page. Your options are:

  • Local Business or Place: Choose this if you have a single location. If you plan on expanding to include additional locations later, worry not – that’s what location pages are for.
  • Company
  • Brand or Product
  • Public Figure
  • Entertainment
  • Cause or Community

Your Facebook Page should reflect the same branding you use on your website, marketing material, and in the office. Make your profile picture your business logo. The cover photo is a little more tricky, but you can change it according to your marketing campaigns.  The cover photo should be a snapshot of the business. You may use an employee photo, a collage of employee photos, your logo and tagline, or any other image you feel reflects the message you want to share with your audience. You should also fill out the profile as completely as possible, including your company’s mission, contact information, website and email addresses, and physical locations (if applicable).

Locations Pages

If you have one location, start off with a location page. But if you expand to additional locations, you’ll need to get access to Locations. Once there, choose the existing page as your main page. Then, you’ll be able to create locations for your business.

Go to the Facebook Page for your business, then click “Settings” in the top right.

Select “Locations” in the bottom left. This opens the location manager tool in Business Manager. If you’re adding locations for the first time and your page has an address on it, you’ll get a warning message asking you to remove the address from your main page in the page info section. This ensures your main Facebook Page is the parent page, while child pages are created for each business address.

If you have ratings and reviews, you can either hide them or move them to a new page. It’s best to keep them active, because reviews help SEO.

Once you’ve created child pages for each location, fill them out with all the information the same way you did with your parent page: name, address, phone number, username, category, web address, email, and about.

Keep Business Information Accurate

Your business information must be accurate at all times. If you have changes that affect contact information, business hours, business location, or a change in team members and/or ownership, update the Facebook Page immediately. It helps  to make announcements on your page to these changes as well. Keeping the information accurate will help avoid confusion and miscommunication.

It’s worth mentioning that unlike Google My Business, Facebook does not allow you to customize hours for holidays or events. You can use a post or advertising to alert your followers of any deviations from the standard schedule.

Check that your hours of operation are correct when you add locations, especially if the new locations operate on varying schedules.

Claim Your Custom Username

Create a custom username  for each Facebook Page. When you first make the page, the URL looks something like this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/your-brand-name/6598561987=?ref=ts

This isn’t user-friendly or easy to remember. Claiming a username makes it shorter, easier to remember, and easier to find in search. If the name you want is already taken, try adding location information to your brand name.

You must be an admin to create a username. You won’t be allowed to use underscores or spaces, but you can use periods to separate words. You can also capitalize words to enhance readability because the usernames aren’t case sensitive.

Usernames must be at least five characters long, but cannot exceed 50 characters.

Profile Images

Your main profile image should be your company logo, but you can also use the cover photo space for marketing purposes, as long as it follows Facebook’s guidelines. For those that want to get more creative, you can create a video or slideshow to use in the profile and featured image spaces.

Call to Action Button

Under the cover photo, you can add a call to action (CTA) button that encourages users to interact with your page or contact you to learn more about your business. Your industry will determine the best CTA for you.

For example, if you’re a restaurant, you’d want a “Call Now” button for reservations, rather than a “Sign Up” button.

Go to your Facebook Page. Look to the bottom right of your featured post and you’ll see the blue CTA button. Click it to choose the CTA you want to use.

Manage Customer Reviews and Comments

Interacting with your audience is a big part of social media. When used correctly, Facebook is a wonderful platform for customer service and feedback. For best results, you’ll need to develop a strategy for responding to comments and reviews.

To turn on the reviews feature:

Go to your Facebook Page, click “Settings”.

Navigate to “Reviews” under “General.”

Click “Allow visitors to review this Page”

Using Facebook Messenger

You can, but do not have to, allow people to send messages directly to your page. Messenger is another way to provide customer service, so you must have the ability to respond to messages quickly. Your responsiveness rate will appear on your page, so only implement this feature if you’re sure you’ll be able to maintain it.

To turn on the Messenger feature:

Go to your Facebook Page, click “Settings”.

Navigate to “Messages” under “General.”

Click “Allow people to contact my Page privately by showing the Message button”

Organize Page Tabs

You can arrange the Page tabs based on what you want to communicate to your audience. Some tabs will be higher priority, depending on your business. Some can even be turned off. Facebook has templates to help you see how to organize your tabs, as well.

To adjust them:

Go to your Facebook Page, click “Settings”.

Click “Edit Page” on the left.

Once there, you’ll see the templates, and can change tab order. Drag the three-lined icon to the left of the tabs and move them around according to your needs.

Claim Any Unofficial Pages

Unofficial pages are created by Facebook when someone checks into a business location and there isn’t a Facebook Page for that business. You can claim those and merge them with your business page. This is important so that when people check in, they will tag your page rather than the unofficial page.

Facebook optimization is easy and yet requires a long-term commitment from page creation through business closure or sale. Set up will take time, but once the initial information is all in place, maintaining the page becomes much easier. Experiment with your social strategy to determine what works best for you and your audience.

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Social Media

Preparing for Instagram’s New Local Business Profile Pages

In March, word of Business Pages rolling out on Instagram started making its way around the internet. Though we’re nowhere near an official release, if you want to be among the first businesses on Instagram to take advantage of this feature once it’s fully available to the public, it’s time to do some prep work.

If you’re not on Instagram yet, you need to be. With more than one billion monthly active users and engagement rates 10x higher than Facebook – not cultivating a business presence there could be doing your business more harm than you realize.

What the Business Pages Will Look Like

These pages will be shown in-app, and provide much of the same information you’d find in Google’s Local Knowledge Panels. It’s almost like a Google My Business listing for your Instagram profile.

Credit: Twitter

The pages include a link to the business’s Instagram profile at the top, along with business address, hours, contact information, and website URL.

At this point, there are only a few users who can see this feature and claim their local business profile on Instagram. Claiming the profile is what will allow you to edit and control the information displayed on the page.

Even though we don’t know when this feature will become official, there’s still plenty we can do to prepare for the release.

Your business profile will display the three most recent images posted to the Instagram account. Video content is not displayed on the page. Knowing this is helpful as you plan your content strategy.

Start with Your Facebook Business Profile

Once the feature is fully rolled out, we’ll see a “Claim” button in the upper right hand corner of the business page, if the owner hasn’t claimed it. Users will be able to claim a business page if they also have access to the business’ Facebook page. This means that businesses have control over who can claim their Instagram business page.

Because of this link, it’s safe to assume the basic information on the profile will come from what’s on the Facebook business page. As such, you’ll need to double-check the information that’s there, to make sure that it is still correct and relevant.

This is an especially important step for businesses that have more than one location, because it could cause confusion when Instagram extracts the information. It would be easy to understand a New York store could end up with Boston’s information.

Approach What You Post to Instagram with More Scrutiny

Right now, we don’t know if a business will ever have the option to pin images to the three slots shown on the local profile, or if it will always be the last three photos you’ve posted. If it turns out that it is always the last three photos you post to the account, you will have to be more strategic about what you post your business’ Instagram page.

Going back to the original Twitter announcement, we see a few screenshots. Let’s take a closer look at the one for The Harding Tavern.

With the first image, we get a full view of the bar in the background, with one of their cocktails as the main focus on the image. That’s a great way to promote the restaurant. The second image is of a basketball game, which makes sense given that this was taken around March Madness. They posted the photo in an effort to indicate to their audience that the tavern is a great place to catch the games. The last photo, however, doesn’t do a good job of highlighting anything about the restaurant. It’s only when the user takes the time to click into the profile page to look at the page that they will find out it has to do with an upcoming event with a local brewery.

While the photo may constitute good content for the bar’s current followers, it doesn’t do anything to promote getting new business from the people who are visiting the local profile.

With the introduction of this new feature, it means adjusting your strategy so that you are mindful of appealing to both your current and potential audience. You’ll be able to attract new customers (and Instagram followers) with the business page. It means paying attention to every post and the message you’re sending with each of them, despite the fact that only the three most recent will display on the local profile page.

Start Planning and Posting Instagram Stories

If you’re not already using Instagram Stories, this may be the motivation you need to get started. As a business owner, the Instagram local profile won’t leave you a lot of space to draw visitors in. Beyond the three most recent pictures at the top of the page, there’s not much to judge your business on.

Users are often more likely to look at your stories than they are your profile page, especially when they’re just browsing through Instagram. Clicking through to your profile page means they’ll have to go back to the page they were looking at before.

Instagram Stories, on the other hand, don’t get in the way of the browsing experience. Once the story is over, users immediately return to the content they were looking at.

Think about it from the user’s perspective. If you’re looking for a business in your local area, do you want to have to click each profile link to learn more, then have to click back to your local map? Or, would you rather watch a few stories to learn more about each business, without needing to click back and forth?

Users are going to almost always take the easier option, and Stories are one of the most popular features the platform has to over. Instagram’s data reveals more than half a billion users watch an Instagram Story every day – and there are over half a billion active accounts every day.

Even though we don’t have a target launch date for this feature, there are many sources indicating it is on the way. If you take the time to consider how the feature fits into your current Instagram strategy and think about ways to adjust it to accommodate it, you’ll be ahead of your competition.

Revisiting your strategy regularly is never a bad idea, but using these tips to adjust it now means you’ll definitely be ready whenever the time to claim your local business profile does arrive.

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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.

Categories
Social Media

Lush UK Quits Social Media

Earlier this month, cosmetics brand Lush, announced on social media that they are quitting social media. (Ironic, right?) Lush is a global brand known for their bath bombs, body care products, and makeup. The social media boycott applies only to the UK division, as Lush North America has announced it will continue to be active on all its social media channels.

What’s the Story?

The Instagram announcement, shown above, included a caption that reads:

“We’re switching up social.⁣

Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. So we’ve decided it’s time to bid farewell to some of our social channels and open up the conversation between you and us instead.⁣

Lush has always been made up of many voices, and it’s time for all of them to be heard. We don’t want to limit ourselves to holding conversations in one place, we want social to be placed back in the hands of our communities – from our founders to our friends.⁣

We’re a community and we always have been. We believe we can make more noise using all of our voices across the globe because when we do we drive change, challenge norms and create a cosmetic revolution. We want social to be more about passions and less about likes.⁣

Over the next week, our customer care team will be actively responding to your messages and comments, after this point you can speak us via live chat on the website, on email at wecare@lush.co.uk and by telephone: 01202 930051.⁣”

The same was shared on the Lush UK Twitter and Lush UK Facebook accounts.

Days later, the company posted another announcement across their social channels:

This caption reads:

We believe it’s time to stop talking, and start listening. So that’s what we’re doing.⁣⁣

You can still get sneak peeks and news from our inventors, founders, and everyone else who makes Lush what it is.⁣⁣

You can join in conversations with our staff, friends and shop social media accounts on their pages and on hashtags like #BathArt, #LushLabs, #LushMakeup (let’s face it, anything that starts with #lush).⁣⁣

Plus there are plenty of other places to take a dip into the Lush world, from our shops, events, and Customer Care team, to our digital platforms. Soak up fresh content on Lush Player and Lush.com, give feedback about exclusive products on Labs.lush.com, and engage with us and the latest digital experiments on the Lush Labs app.⁣⁣

Let’s spark passions, and stop chasing ‘likes’.⁣⁣

Here’s to the #LushCommunity, where all are welcome, always. ”

Though as of this writing the accounts are still active, they have not been updated since that status on April 15. Their social following is quite large, with 596,000 followers on Instagram, 423,000 on Twitter, and 202,000 on Facebook. It seems they don’t want to pay to play, so they’d rather use other channels to connect with their customers.

In addition to the main accounts, BBC reports they also plan to close accounts associated with Lush Kitchen, Lush Times, Lush Life, Soapbox, and Gorilla.

Ultimately, Lush UK isn’t getting the ROI on their social media efforts they consider high enough to justify continuing their current strategy. There’s nothing wrong with changing tactics when you find that something doesn’t work out the way you believe it should or the way you want it to. However, when this happens to most other brands, they shift their tactics without completely closing down their social channels.

Social media provides a connection to your audience, but it also provides your business with data you can use to provide better products and services. Letting go of it altogether doesn’t seem like a good move for the majority of today’s brands, especially considering social media is such a highly preferred customer service channel.

Why Lush North America Still Says Yes to Social

Lush North America, based in Canada, handles orders in the United States. They have no plans to stop the use of social media to connect with their audience. Unlike the UK division, it seems they don’t feel like social media is the middleman between themselves and their customers… or, they’re waiting until the decision can be supported in the North American market. Time will tell.

As of this writing, the Lush North America division has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, 313.4K followers on Twitter, and 1.2 million followers on Facebook. The difference in social following between UK and US could easily explain why the US division isn’t so ready to ditch social.

Could This Be a New Trend?

Instead of relying on branded social media channels, Lush says the new strategy will involve a rise of  “Lush personalities” online. In a statement provided to The Independent, the company says, “This isn’t a replacement for the brand channels but an opportunity for our customers to connect one-on-one with people within Lush based on the various categories. This isn’t the end, it’s just the start of something new.”

I believe it means they’re switching from a pay-to-play model on social media to focusing their efforts on influencer marketing. I don’t believe many brands will follow in their footsteps, as it is possible to do both, and to do them both well.

The lack of social signals from the Lush UK side isn’t likely to harm their SEO efforts, because there will still be plenty of people discussing the brand online. I do find it somewhat baffling they’ve decided to abandon ship, but it’s clear they’ve gotten a lot of press as a result. Maybe it’s just a publicity stunt and they’ll return to social channels eventually. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

What do you think about their decision to shut down their social media channels? Would you consider doing the same to find other ways to connect directly with your audience? Talk to me in the comments!

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Social Media

New Features Coming to Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are a valuable tool for many businesses, because it allows them to build a connection with customers and prospects on a platform they’re already using regularly. Coming together with a group of like-minded people allows you to build trust and stronger, more meaningful, relationships.

Why You May Want Both a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group

Though not necessary for all businesses, there are some situations where you may want to add a Facebook Group to your Facebook Page as part of your social media strategy. Facebook Group expert Bella Vasta equates your Facebook Page to your front yard, where people drive by to see what’s going on, and the Facebook Group to your backyard. Your back yard is where you spend time with people you want to connect with – and it’s by invitation only. As the host of your backyard gathering, you don’t just go inside and nap once people show up – you engage and introduce people so they talk to you and to each other.

If your business is conducive to having a group, because you’ve sold members a product and want to provide additional networking and support, or because you want people who are interested in your non-profit organization to come together to spread the word, then it makes sense to create a group and link it to your page.

Let’s take a look at some of the features announced at the most recent Facebook Community Summit, which were rolled out to attendees first.

New Feature 1: Badges

Badges are a feature admins can turn on or off. They are designed to help group members feel special. When the feature is on, unique badges appear next to the member’s name, recognizing them as an admin or moderator, new member, a founding member, celebrating membership anniversary, conversation starter, conversation booster, visual storyteller, rising star, and more. All the badges (except admin and moderator, of course) disappear within about a month after someone has earned them. New members will see this badge for the first two weeks of group membership.

The conversation starter badge is used to recognize people who frequently start meaningful discussions, which encourages group members to contribute more. This badge appears for members whose posts have received the most likes and comments for the past month.

The conversation booster badge is  recognize people who frequently generate meaningful discussions, which encourages group members to contribute more. This badge appears for members who make comments that people find valuable.

The visual storyteller badge is used for members who share photos and videos that other group members find valuable.

The rising star badge is used to recognize new members within their first month of membership that contribute to the community. This appears for the members that receive the most comments and reactions on their posts and comments.

Other badges include founding member – only available in newly created groups, greeter, and link curator.

Badges are available for groups with more than 50 members. They tend to work better with smaller groups, but can work for larger groups as long as the group strategy aligns with their use.

New Feature 2: Group Units

When you create a Facebook Group, you choose a Group type. If you choose to use the Social Learning Group type, you’ll be given access to Units. In the past, admins published posts and over time, the post decayed so it was hard for members and admins to find and refer to again. Now admins can pin posts to specific units so it’s easier to find. Units allow you to categorize important information in your group.

If you want to use Units, but didn’t choose the Social Learning Group type, you can change your Group type to get access to this feature.

New Feature 3: Group Post Formatting

The ability to format your group posts with H2 headers, bulleted text, bold, and italic is designed to help you accentuate and differentiate the message you’re trying to get across in the group. It aims to pull attention in the group feed and members’ news feeds to draw more attention to your group.

New Feature 4: Group Rule Violation Notifications

Members will violate group rules, and that leaves admins in a tough spot. You can delete their posts, reach out to them directly via message, or ban them without explanation. With this new feature, you can send a message to the member that alerts the rule that was violated, and if you choose to, add a personal message to provide more clarity. You can also mute the member for one to seven days so they can see posts, but cannot comment, rather than banning them from the group without explanation.

New Feature 5: Group Activity Log Filters

In the past, the activity feed for groups was a list of events that could be scrolled, but was not searchable. Now, admins and moderators can filter the feed to show removals, memberships, and other admin activity. The feed is also searchable by member name and by date.

New Feature 6: Subscription Groups

I’ve briefly discussed subscription groups already in my post on Facebook Group monetization. Facebook Subscription Groups gives you the option to charge anywhere from $4.99 to $29.99 per month for access to special sub-groups that contain exclusive posts that are not available to members of the main group. You’re free to choose what to offer based on what you believe your members will pay for. Members pay their subscription fees through Facebook Payments, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Opting for Google or Apple Pay manages payments through the respective app stores, which will take a cut of the fees. It’s possible Facebook will take a percentage of the fees in the future as well. This feature may not be able to available to all users yet, but will continue to roll out.

With these new features, Facebook Groups are much more user friendly for both members and admin. Not only are they easier to manage, but these features also make it easier to grow membership and engage participants.

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Social Media

Leveraging Google Maps New Public Events Feature

In a feature that could directly compete with Facebook Events, Google Maps is now allowing users to create public events with specific locations. Though it has yet to be publicly announced as of March 25, 2019, the feature has been confirmed through a dedicated help center article.

Google began highlighting public events in Maps last year, but until now, there hasn’t been a way for regular users to add event information to Maps. Google announced last year at their 2018 I/O conference that they were going to be heading down a path to make them more social, and this appears to be one of the ways they’re doing it. In addition to the public events feature, Maps has also gotten more social with augmented reality directions, personalized recommendations, and the ability to vote on restaurants with your friends. These developments were also announced at the 2018 I/O conference, with no formal release date at this time.

According to Android Police, the implementation is laggy right now, with events taking up to an hour to appear on the map. Not only this, but it appears to be available only in certain regions – and not available to all users within the region. It may have something to do with a user’s local guide status, as it could be problematic to allow every single Google Maps user the ability to add events. Local Guides are users who have earned that status with previous contributions to Google Maps – with check-ins, photos, reviews, and answering questions from other users.

As the feature gets a full rollout, I’d expect to see it become more clear as to the regions and users the feature is available for, and anticipate the time until the post is live on Maps to shorten dramatically.

What You’ll Be Able to Do With the Public Events Feature on Google Maps

You will be able to broadcast events related to your business, such as restaurant openings, concerts, open mic nights, art gallery debuts, etc. without having to send invites or spam social media posts for marketing purposes. That’s not to say you can’t still use social media to promote your event, but Google Maps will provide additional exposure.

If you don’t already have a Google My Business listing, now is a great time to search for your business and claim the listing. This will give you the ability to control what Google displays to users who search for your business, while also helping your overall search rank.

Google has made public events available on Google Maps for sometime now, letting users browse nearby events from a long list of categories including classes, nightlife, concerts, outdoors, and more. Like these, any user created public events will be viewable on the map and searchable for all users with the Events tab.

At this time, the event creation feature is only available for Android users, and there’s no official word on when we can expect it to roll out to other platforms. If your Google Maps app doesn’t allow you to add your own public events, check for updates on Google Play. If that still doesn’t work, be patient, as it’s possible the feature hasn’t been introduced for your location or specific device yet. Based on the fact that it can take up to an hour for an event you create to be live on Google Maps, the feature is still in development.

How to Create an Event on Google Maps

You can add events to a Google Maps listing from the Contribute tab in the Android app. Once in the Contribute tab, there’s another tab for events. To start creating an event, tap “Add a Public Event.”

When creating an event, specify the name of the event, the location, start and end times, category, description, and website where users can for more information about the event. There’s also the option to add photos to draw more attention to your listing. You can use photos of your venue or past events.

How to Edit or Delete Your Event

Unfortunately, at this time, it does not look as though events will be automatically removed from Google Maps after their end time has passed. That means you’ll have to go back to edit and delete the event when it’s finished.

You’ll go back to the Contribute tab, then back to the Events tab. You’ll choose the event you want to edit or delete, then tap “Edit this Event.”  To edit, just change the details and information as desired. If you want to delete the event, look for the “Delete this event” option on the editing screen. Follow the on-screen steps to delete the event.

I’ll post more, or come back to update this post with additional details once things are announced and/or fully rolled out. These developments are not only giving marketers and business owners additional tools for reaching their customers, but are giving Google users a richer experience.

The 2019 I/O Conference is coming up next month – from May 7th to May 9th. I can’t see what they’re coming up with next!

If you’re an Android user, check to see if the ability to add events to Google Maps is available to you yet. If so, comment and tell me your region, and whether or not you’ve achieved local guide status. A colleague of mine who lives in South Carolina who is a Level 5 Local Guide does not have the ability yet, and has updated the Maps app through Google Play. She’ll keep an eye out and let me know if it changes soon, but so far, I’ve not been able to identify any kind of rhyme or reason to who has the ability and who doesn’t.

Categories
Social Media

Ultimate Guide to Choosing Instagram Hashtags for High Engagement

Instagram has more than one billion monthly active users, with more than 500 million of them using the platform every day. In terms of social networks, only Facebook and YouTube have more logging in. What’s more important for businesses, however, is the fact that 60% of those users turn to Instagram to find new products. That’s plenty of reason for your brand to consider adding Instagram to your social media strategy. If your brand is already using the platform, but looking to get more engagement, it may be time to review your hashtag usage and strategy.

What are Instagram Hashtags?

Instagram hashtags are used as a way to categorize content. Users can follow hashtags as well as individual profiles, so using hashtags is a great way to grow your audience as people can use them to discover your content. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but you do not need to use that many for every post.  You can include them as part of your caption, or include them in a comment after you post to your account. If you choose to post the hashtags in a comment, you’ll want to do so immediately after posting. This is because Instagram displays the content in the hashtag feed based on the time the photo or video was posted, not based on the time the hashtag was added.

Step One: Do Your Research

It’s tempting to use the most popular hashtags, but that won’t do much in terms of engagement. Because the hashtags are so widely used, your post will only be visible in the top posts for a few minutes before other content pushes it down the feed.

Plus, Instagram has a list of banned hashtags due to spam activity. Many of these hashtags are seemingly harmless, and people who don’t realize they’ve been banned still use them. Some banned hashtags include: #dogsofinstagram, #books, #adulting, #women, #killingit. Using banned hashtags doesn’t do any good for your account, and can harm you in the long run. Instagram may think you’re a bot, and could shadowban your account. If you’ve been shadowbanned, that means your account is banned, but Instagram won’t tell you.

Doing hashtag research beforehand can help you see what the current hashtag landscape is like, so you can make sure you’ll get engagement and avoid associating your brand with things on a hashtag that may have a negative connotation.

There are many hashtag research tools out there, such as Hashtagify, Display Purposes, and RiteTag. Using these tools, you can explore possible hashtag options and make a list of the ones you may want to use on your profile. You can also research the competition and industry leaders to see what tags they are using.

Step Two: Use a Mix of Generic, Niche-Specific, and Branded Hashtags

To maximize your reach and engagement potential, aim to use a healthy mix of generic hashtags related to your brand or the content you’re posting, those that are specific to your niche, and some branded hashtags you’ve created yourself. Need inspiration for creating branded hashtags? Check out these five campaigns, from brands like Airbnb and KitKat that did well.

When creating a branded hashtag, check to make sure it’s not already being used. Keep it short and easy to remember – often your brand name is enough, and you can create variants as needed for various marketing campaigns. Encourage your followers to use your branded hashtag when posting content that features your products or services. And when you see someone who has used your branded hashtag in their content, give them a shout out to show appreciation.

When choosing hashtags, you want active ones, with thousands of posts that are fairly recent. It’s when you get hashtags with millions of posts that you’re running into the highly popular ones that won’t give you much bang for your buck. Avoid hashtags that are used hundreds of times a minute.

Step Three: Test Hashtags

When you’re first starting out, try a variety of hashtags. Test the number of hashtags you use on each post. While many marketers say five or six is good enough, others say 11 is the magic number to use for maximum engagement. Really, it all depends on your audience. Some audiences don’t mind a lot of hashtags – and you can hide them to keep them from cluttering your captions. However, other audiences may feel that consistently using 30 hashtags on every post is spammy. That’s why testing what works for your audience is important. Generalized advice like this can help you get started on the right foot, but because no two Instagram audiences are the same, you must do the work on your own, too.

Pay attention to your Instagram Analytics to see which posts get the most engagement. This way, you can determine which hashtags are influencing your success. Keeping the hashtags relevant to your content and varying them across your posts is the best way to get engagement. When you have enough data to notice trends, that’s when you’ll know which hashtags are the most effective.

In addition to testing hashtags, you’ll also want to test varying your post times, as certain days of the week and times of the day are prone to more engagement. Following that part of your analytics will help you learn when the majority of your audience is online so you can schedule your posts accordingly.

Step Four: Rinse and Repeat

Your Instagram analytics data will help you guide your strategy in the future. Paying close attention to the data will help you see where you’ve made missteps and where you’ve succeeded. When you find something that worked well, rinse and repeat it. When you find an area where you’ve made a mistake or could improve, adjust your tactics and test again to see how the outcome changes.

Hashtags are a crucial part of the Instagram experience, but choosing them randomly could be a waste of time and effort. By investing time in researching them ahead of time, keeping a list of the ones that work well for you, and experimenting with how many you use can help you boost engagement, increase your following, and improve brand awareness.

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Social Media

Facebook Group Monetization 101

If you’re the admin of a popular Facebook group, it may be time to put that group to work earning money for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to monetization, as a lot of what will work for you depends on your niche, level of engagement, and group size. To attract major brands, it’s safe to say you’ll need at least 10,000 members in your group, but if you have a highly engaged audience willing to spend on high-ticket items, you can get by with 3,000 to 5,000 members.

Let’s look at how to get your Facebook group ready to earn money, and some of the ways you can bring in cash.

Prepare the Group for Monetization Opportunities

Create a Website Filled with Value-Driven Content

While your Facebook Group is where the action is, it’s important to have a website that’s similarly branded because building your business on rented land, since the Facebook platform doesn’t belong to you, leaves you susceptible to losing your audience at any given time. Your website needs to define your target audience and show the value your brand brings. Set up the Facebook tracking pixel to allow for remarketing to people who’ve visited your website, as this can help you grow your group faster.

Develop Downloadable Assets

These will make it easier to build an email list of people you can reach out to over time. Email marketing helps improve your ability to deliver sales for brand partners and earn more money at the same time. Create assets, such as checklists, guides, resource lists, and other things your audience is interested in. Giving these things away for free to get people to join your list makes it easier to sell to them later.

Use Search Engine Optimization

Take time to learn about SEO. You’ll need to create targeted content for your website and work on generating organic traffic to grow your brand and your Facebook group. Doing so will give you even more affiliate marketing potential and add to your passive income stream.

Generate Media Coverage

Media coverage helps you build backlinks and referral traffic, which are essential for SEO. It also helps spread the word about your group to boost your membership, and may even help you get on the radar of some brands you’d like to work with. Start with Help a Reporter Out (HARO), and look for

Create a Media Kit

This is essential to helping you land sponsorships and advertising campaigns, and will even allow you to command a higher rate. Include your group stats, website traffic stats, member demographics, rate card outlining the packages you offer, and case studies of past partnerships.

Ways to Monetize Your Facebook Group

There are many ways to monetize your Facebook group that could easily expand into a series of blog posts all on their own, but we’re going to cover three of the most popular options here today.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money from your group because no matter what niche or industry you’re in, there are products and services you can promote to your members. You’ll get paid when members make a purchase. You can search for your industry/group interest + affiliate and see what comes up. Or you can join a platform like ShareASale or Commission Junction and see what brands and programs are there. Experiment with various products and services to see what your audience responds to the most, and go from there.  You can also use the Amazon Associates affiliate program because these days, most everyone buys products at Amazon.

Brand Sponsorships

Marketers are starting to see the potential of using Facebook Groups, since the organic reach of the Facebook Page has meant the number of fans someone has doesn’t really matter anymore. As the group admin, you’re the primary influencer, and this where your media kit will work for you.

Think about the brands and services you use and love, and what members of your group can get value out of. Contact the companies and let them know you’re brand-friendly and would be willing to work with them to share their products and services with your group members who are part of their target audience with a sponsored post campaign.

Charge a Membership Fee for Premium Content

Facebook now offers Subscription Groups, which lets group admins charge anywhere from $4.99 to $29.99 per month to get access to special sub-groups that contain exclusive posts that are not available to members of the main group. The content can be live videos, mentorship, or expertise – or any combination. You choose what to offer, based on what you believe your members will pay for, bearing in mind that you will always have some members who will not pay to upgrade their group experience.

Members will pay via Facebook Payments, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Apple Pay and Google Pay will be managed through the iTunes Store or the Google Play store, if members choose one of those payment methods. The app stores will take a portion of the subscription fees, and Facebook will likely eventually take a cut, as well.

This monetization approach will require some kind of premium exclusive content on your part – and it needs to be on-going to justify members keeping their memberships, so take time to plan your offerings in advance to be sure they’re ready when you need them, and offer the value your audience expects.

No matter which path you choose to use for Facebook group monetization, if your business benefits from the group interaction, you can use it to generate additional revenue. Whether you’re using it to sell your own products and services, affiliate products and services, or something else entirely, the key is not to over do the sales. If your group becomes nothing but a sales pitch or sponsored posts, you’ll lose members and engagement. Remain true to the purpose of your group – community and interaction. The money should be a bonus – not the main focus.

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Social Media

Creating a Community: How to Better Manage a Facebook Group

Having a presence on social media is critical to brand awareness. While your marketing goals are ultimately always going to be conversions, your social media goals should include relationship building and engagement as well as the eventual benefit of converting followers into sales. The organic algorithm associated with fan and business pages doesn’t allow for as much visibility as most would like, but creating a Facebook group can tie directly to your page, opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

What’s the Goal of Your Facebook Group?

There are two main goals you can have for your group. The first is to offer a free space where you create a community around your niche. Here’s an example; do a quick search of Facebook groups for any hobby you’re interested in. You’ll instantly find a long list of social media communities sponsored by both individual gurus and social media managers. Some are backed by larger training companies or agencies instead.

While your objective isn’t to give away everything you know for free, you can use this as a space to share information and tips. It’s also a great place to encourage your more experienced group members to share with those who are just starting out. This type of group could be open to the public, closed, or secret.

The second option is to create a limited or exclusive group for your supporters. This could be people who have made a purchase, for example, so you can offer a better customer service experience. Or, it might just be for people who pay to access a course you write on a specific subject (on a third-party platform or within the group itself). This format works best when you make the group privacy settings closed or secret.

Consider the Visibility

It’s definitely important to consider your visibility when you are managing a group. Here are your main options:

  • Public – Anyone can see the content within the group. The friends of members will see activity in their newsfeeds.
  • Closed – Anyone can find the group in a search, but only members can see the content within the group.
  • Secret – The group is not visible in searches. Members must be invited by another member. Only members can see the content inside.

You need to know your goals for the group when choosing a privacy setting. Groups in the infancy phase can be altered from public to closed or secret and vice versa. Once groups reach 5,000 members, you can only increase privacy; you’ll no longer be able to change a closed or secret group back to public.

The majority of groups are closed to prevent spam and improve engagement. Secret groups should be reserved for online courses, customer service, and specialty groups where you profit directly from the content shared within.

Group Management Tips

Once you know your goals and have your settings secured, post regularly and encourage engagement. The larger your community becomes, the more difficult it may be to control the content and advice shared. Consider the following as you work to align your group’s content with your niche and goals.

Give the Group a Great Name

Your group should be associated with your business page, so it doesn’t need the same name. Think of something catchy and consider including a keyword to make sure it’s better optimized. If you’re on the edge, give it a name that includes something catchy and add “by Your Business Name” at the end. Group names can be a lot longer than page names, so you have quite a bit of room to work with. Remember, a catchy name will catch the eyes of your members when they see it in their feeds.

Create Clear Rules or Guidelines

Set clear expectations for your group from the start. While you want to encourage people to share their ideas, you may need to set rules preventing self-promotion. Many groups only allow moderators to post links to outside articles.

Consider including rules about behavior, bullying, vulgarity, and other inappropriate types of content. It’s your group. You can set the rules however you’d like. Simply make them clear by creating a post or document that is marked as an announcement and pinned to the top of your page.

Lead Your Group

Don’t let your community run away with your group. Make sure you are offering insight and ideas, even in your free mentoring communities. The more visible you are, the better the group will serve your business.

Treat Your Group Like Your Page

In other words, make sure it’s optimized with all of the information you’d want your visitors to be able to find. Customize your group header image, fill out the “about” section, include a link back to your website, and optimize your group settings. Make the group visually appealing – and join the group with  your relevant pages.

Encourage Admin Participation

While it’s fine for there to be just one admin, most groups do better with more than one. Add a second person as an admin and encourage them to participate so the group recognizes their authority. There will be an “admin” tag under the name of anyone in this role. Shake things up by giving each admin a theme or creating a weekly post in their own series.

Create a Posting Schedule

The only way to maintain engagement in your group is to have a consistent posting schedule. Yes, your group posts will have more visibility in the newsfeed than a regular page post, but they still depend on engagement for broader reach. Make sure you are posting in your groups at least once per day. Utilize the post styles offered by Facebook. Polls, images, live videos, and text all work. Mix your business/niche related posts with some fun content to shake things up from time to time.

Create Hashtags

Create a couple of hashtags specific to your group so you can easily search for questions based on those subjects. For example, tell your members to use a certain hashtag for questions or comments about your core subjects — like #FacebookQ or #TwitterQ if you’re running a social media group. This will help you to easily search for the most relevant conversations or questions pointed directly to group admins.

Engage, Engage, Engage

Really — engage. You don’t have to reply to every single comment, especially if group members are having a back-and-forth conversation. Do try to have at least one admin comment on each new post. It’s important for group members to see they are getting value from the people running the group. This helps with brand awareness and will build the trust level necessary for you to eventually convert some of your members into customers.

Running a Facebook group can be a lot of fun, but time consuming. Set limits and share the work with your partners. You’ll be pleased with the way your community grows over time!

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Social Media

YouTube Working to Combat Predatory Behavior

YouTube has certainly had its fair share of press in the past couple of weeks. First, there was hysteria about the “Momo Challenge.” This turned out to be a hoax.

Then, there was the announcement that the platform would be taking action to combat predatory behavior against children in comment threads. This all started with a content creator who identified suspicious comments from questionable users on videos made for or by children. Many of the comments were suggestive or contained links to extremely illegal websites. Worse yet, the same people were abusing the site’s “related videos” algorithm to make it easier to find the links.

The good news is that YouTube immediately did the responsible thing and took action. Ultimately, all of this hardship is spurring on new changes to make the platform safer and more reliable for people (especially minors). This has a direct effect in video marketing and advertising.

The Official Announcement

Changes actually took place over two phases. The first phase was announced on February 22, 2019, on YouTube’s support channel. YouTube made it clear that the video publishers themselves haven’t done anything wrong; it’s the people abusing the system in the comments who are the issue. They found a litany of inappropriate comments directed at children and teens featured in many popular videos.

The platform started by removing thousands of comments. They also terminated offending commenter accounts and channels. To further their efforts, YouTube reported content deemed illegal to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The second update appeared on YouTube’s blog on February 28, 2019. Platform officials announced the decision to completely disable the ability to leave comments on content that features young minors. While needed, this change does significantly impact thousands of businesses who market to children and families.

Will Any Videos with Minors Have Comments?

The act to disable comments was not initially applied to all minors. YouTube’s update is rather vague about the exact ages, but they are initially targeting the change towards videos featuring younger minors as they seem to be more at-risk when it comes to predatory behavior. They will start to look at channels and videos featuring older minors to determine which are more likely to attract predators  over the next several months.

YouTube did state that some channels will be allowed to keep their comment features turned on. These creators will be subject to close scrutiny and have to take a very active role when it comes to moderating comments on their videos. They are also continuing to work towards developing stronger comment moderation tools and classifiers.

Why This Is Important to Marketers

YouTube recognizes the fact that creators use comments to maintain regular levels of engagement with their followers. Some creators fear they will not be able to maintain their viewership if they can’t engage. On the other hand, the fact that comments are disabled on a channel does not mean the creators can no longer monetize their videos. People who qualify for monetization won’t see any changes in that regard.

YouTube is definitely feeling a monetary pinch on a corporate level, though. A lot of the most recent controversy began when YouTuber, MattsWhatItIs, released a 20-minute video, “Youtube is Facilitating the Sexual Exploitation of Children, and it’s Being Monetized.” Matt describes a “wormhole” that allowed pedophiles to use the algorithms to leave links to child pornography in the comment sections of different videos while also connecting privately and sharing secret links.

He also presented what he believed to be evidence that the soft-core content being shared on YouTube is also being monetized. As a result, major advertisers like Epic Games and Walt Disney, among others, paused their ad spends on the platform.

The Issue for Marketers

The issue here, from a marketing perspective, is two-fold. There are marketers with YouTube channels of their own, looking to promote content, but there are also marketers paying Google to have their ads featured in various locations throughout the site itself. The problem is that neither the creators nor the advertisers have any control over where the ads end up. It’s all up to Google and YouTube’s algorithms.

While an ad might meet Google’s guidelines, it might be awkward for a piece about an adult product to play before a video intended for a less mature audience, even if the channel is following all of YouTube’s terms of service. There is also a fear that an advertisement could inadvertently end up showing in the middle of a video that is predatory or that contains some other form of illicit content. This is harder to detect if the videos themselves are unlisted or secret.

This leaves brands concerned about the safety of their own reputations. When people see an ad embedded in a questionable video, they almost immediately assume the brand is associated with the content. As a result, they are demanding ad platforms make a more concentrated effort to streamline the visibility of their ad content.

What You Can Do

The majority of business owners and brands using YouTube to advertise or monetize won’t have a lot of trouble working within the terms of service. Those who feature products geared towards children may need to get a little more creative about their video marketing efforts in the coming months, focusing a lot less on featuring young children and more on the products themselves.

At this point, it’s difficult to tell exactly how YouTube will treat the channels of local or larger brands as opposed to those that feature children in craft, toy review, and other entrepreneurial channels. It initially seems as though these may be among the channels that are able to keep comments enabled with higher levels of monitoring.

If you are an advertiser, you’ll want to contact your account representative to find out what Google is doing to make sure your ads are showing on videos that are deemed appropriate and safe for your brand. We’re not saying you need to run out and suspend the advertising campaigns that are working for you (in fact, that’s the wrong move altogether in most cases) but we do highly recommend you monitor the placement of your hard-earned ad dollars.

There is absolutely no doubt that the safety of children should be the number one priority of everyone operating in the online sphere. App developers, social media platforms, and everyone with a hand in the creation of technology has a responsibility to make sure what is put out for consumption is not only safe for children to see, but also combats predatory behavior.

At Sachs Marketing Group, we can help you navigate this difficult sphere and market your videos effectively. We also specialize in reputation management if you’ve found yourself in a situation where you’re being unfairly associated with a platform’s mistakes. Reach out to us today!

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Social Media

10 Reasons You Need to Start Focusing on Facebook Stories

Tired of fighting to get your content seen in the regular Facebook newsfeed? Not sure how to organically bypass the regular algorithm? You might be missing out on a really compelling feature: Facebook Stories.

This often-misunderstood feature originally allowed personal users to share snapshots of their lives for a limited length of time. It has since been opened up to businesses, but many have difficulty trying to determine why they should even bother with it. It’s just not intuitive at first, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

Let’s clear up the confusion, shall we?

Enhanced Visibility

It doesn’t matter if you’re on desktop or on a mobile device; Facebook Stories are incredibly visible. They’re right at the top of the main news feed – above the fold on mobile and to the top/right on desktop.

Why is this so important?

Stories have the potential to be the first thing a person sees when they log into Facebook. This means you have the opportunity to grab the attention of people who might not necessarily see all of your regular posts because of the normal algorithm.

Free Marketing

A lot of Facebook’s business tools for visibility come with a cost. Stories show in the same place whether they’re from a personal profile or a brand page, meaning there is no advertising fee associated with their use. Who doesn’t like free?

You can also cross-post your Instagram stories from one platform to the other, leveraging your efforts across both platforms. One story has the potential to give you the chance to really experiment and analyze where your story efforts are doing best.

Time-Sensitive Marketing

Because story posts are more visible, they’re a great place to post limited-time-only deals and specials (sometimes referred to as flash posts). A story only lasts 24 hours; people who aren’t clicking on your brand’s icon may miss out on something great.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) , is a very real thing. Offering great discounts or specials via Stories alone will train your audience to check them on a regular basis.

Better Influencer Outreach

The Facebook algorithms have definitely changed in the past year or more. Now, they place heavy emphasis placed on personal interaction. Businesses are faced with the pay-to-play concept or they get very little visibility. People are also becoming wary of seeing too much from big brands, but they’re not necessarily against seeing content from individual influencers. Partnering with influencers with large Facebook audiences will give you quick access to a very engaged group of people.

Natural Stories

People who do still like hearing from brands want to feel like they’re connected on a personal level. This means less pre-planned content and more on-the-fly videos, stumbles and all. Consumers aren’t looking for super-professional, highly-edited stories. They’re looking for authentic interactions. Sit down in front of the camera and start talking.

Don’t worry about a script, the perfect background, or anything else. Show your customers what’s happening behind the scenes.

Facebook is Invested

A lot of people accused Facebook of simply copying a similar idea from other social platforms, but they’ve shown consistent and dedicated effort when it comes to developing this part of the site. Facebook added features that allow users to cross-post stories from within Messenger or Instagram. Post once, appear three times for enhanced visibility. More changes are being tested on a regular basis. They’re constantly adding filters, enhancements, and additional tools.

Simple Branding

Facebook makes it easy to brand simple stories without a lot of graphic design work. The built-in filters allow you to add effects, stickers, text, and components that will give your brand a consistent look in the stories feed. While you can of course have special artwork designed, you can still post on the fly with relative ease.

Event Design

Facebook Stories makes it easier to advertise upcoming events; this is perfect for event planners, concert venues, and similar venues. Your videos, slideshows, and announcements will all enhance the user experience, drumming up interest as you build up to the big day. You can even collaborate to allow other people you are connected with via specific groups to share clips relevant clips.

Experimenting with Voice

In addition to enhancing events, Collaborative Stories allow brands to give different people within their organization the chance to share their own personalities. Your CEO may be strictly friendly business chat, while your marketing team may be bubbling with fun ideas and colorful content. Your followers will feel like they’re getting to know your brand’s “family” on a more intimate level.

Growing Popularity

According to Business 2 Community, Facebook estimated Stories will surpass the regular newsfeed sometime in 2019. While nothing has rolled out yet, Facebook is looking for ways to monetize stories as well. This means you’ll want to have already figured out how to incorporate great stories into your strategy so you are already visible when it comes time to advertise.

Tips for Creating Better Stories

Ready to get started? Anyone within your organization with admin access to your page can post a story. People with mobile devices can record and post on the go, but you can also use a desktop to upload more refined content from time to time. Keep the following in mind:

  • Adding text? Change the font to better match your overall brand. Facebook gives you several to choose from.
  • Move the text around. You can change the angle or move it to a different place on the screen. Position it in a place where Facebook’s icons won’t cover it up, or where the image itself isn’t compromised.
  • Upload multiple images to create a slideshow story, keeping the attention of your audience for longer.
  • Create a Stories content plan separate from your main feed. You don’t want to post the same content in both places.
  • Don’t be afraid to post selfies, photos of your work day, or personalized/branded quotes. Let Stories be the place where your audience gets to know the faces behind your brand.

Facebook Stories are here to stay. While they may be limited by their 24-hour existence, they can have a huge impact on your brand awareness strategy. Make sure you post consistently to maintain your new level of visibility and engagement.

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Social Media

Social Listening: What You Need to Know

While it’s important to have a social media presence, simply posting daily or running sponsored ads isn’t enough. You definitely need to understand your target audience and find new ways to create brand awareness. But what happens once you’ve put your brand out in front of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people? Do you just sit back and wait to see what happens next?

Nope. You start listening.

What is Social Listening?

Social media is just that: social. You can’t simply throw a bunch of information out on the web, hope it sticks where you want it, and wait for the sales to roll in. You have to become an active participant in the communities you’ve created and, more importantly, you need to remain consciously aware of what people are saying about you in the online sphere.

The act of social listening is a critical component of overall community management. The feedback you see on social channels, whether sent directly to you or simply posted in a public venue, is going to play a role in not just your online engagement, but in the development of your customer service processes as well. What you learn via social listening will give you a better idea as to what your customers like and dislike, helping you identify pain points for improvement.

Why Social Listening is Important

A lot of business owners think that the identification of the target audience or demographic is something that is reserved for the start of the marketing process. The truth is that your audience may evolve with your business. Social listening helps you to better understand who is talking about you and why.

Even better? It’s not all about you.

Social listening can help you to better understand what your target audience is saying about your competitors. This information will help you figure out what you offer that they don’t, how you can solve problems they aren’t solving, and where you’re positioned in the marketplace in comparison.

What to Look For

The first thing you need to understand is that social listening is not the same thing as social media monitoring. The latter is for collecting, reviewing, and analyzing data. On the other hand, monitoring is all about the numbers – impressions, likes, comments, shares, mentions, and follower growth.

Social listening is about analyzing the mood of the people who are talking about you. The fact that your brand was mentioned 1,726 times on Twitter may seem like something to be proud of until you realize that 80 percent of those mentions are gripes about a product that doesn’t perform properly.

So what should you be looking for? Look for any mention of the following, whether written in full or in the form of a hashtag:

  • Your full brand name
  • Industry-specific keywords
  • Your company’s branded hashtags
  • Your unique product or service names
  • The names of your CEOS or high-profile employees
  • Your competitor’s names, CEO names, and hashtags
  • The handles your brand uses on any social media channel
  • Your general business slogans or specific campaign slogans

Note that, once again, you need to look for mentions of your brand written out in full and not just hashtags. A lot of people will hop on social media to write a complaint (or praise) and will not take the time to look up hashtags or handles. They’ll just write a simple sentence and an entire conversation will follow.

What to Do with Your Social Listening Data

Ok, so you’ve gathered quite a bit of data and you’re looking at what people are saying. Some people are happy, some people are mad, and some are neutral and exploring their options. What are you going to do with all of this information?

Improve Your Customer Service Experience

Seeing complaints or concerns about your products and services? Make sure you are engaging with these customers whenever possible. People are prone to complaining online before they actually contact customer service for help, if they ever take it that far.

Reaching out to those who have questions, concerns, or complaints to solve their problems is a great way to build brand loyalty. People who feel cared for are often repeat customers.

Mitigate an Online Crisis

We’ve all seen stories about brands that have been annihilated online thanks to a bad review. A story is picked up by a big blogger or the right influencer and suddenly people who have never heard of a brand are leaving comments and reviews. A brand’s online reputation can be destroyed within hours. The sooner you identify a problem, the sooner you can take action (hopefully before it goes viral).

You may not be able to avoid all of the damage, but you can certainly minimize it.

Revamp Your Social Strategy

Social listening should definitely be a part of your overall social media strategy. This type of campaign will tell you exactly which platforms are more responsive to your message and which need work. You’ll also be able to easier identify whether or not you need to make some changes to the types of content you’re producing. You may even find new influencers who are mentioning your products, giving you the opportunity to build stronger relationships for future campaigns.

Product Ideas

One of the coolest aspects of social listening is the ability to figure out what gaps there are in the market. This is why it’s so important to monitor what is being said about your competitors as well as your own brand. You can make improvements to your existing products, develop new services, and so much more.

Social Listening Tools

Social listening is a bit of work. Not being able to rely on hashtags and handles FAQ alone means it can be easy to miss social mentions. Social listening tools make it easier to plug in all of your data and do all of your listening work from one place.

Of course, there are a lot of choices out there. Differences in features and price tags are especially common. Test drive a few to see which are best at helping you meet your goals and get access to the right information.

If you do opt to use a tool, make sure it can pull data from as many social platforms as you feel necessary. It should also offer  data analysis and be easy to use.

Not into do-it-yourself options? Outsource the process to a marketing agency instead. Having someone to stay on top of social listening can greatly reduce your workload, freeing you up to focus on more important tasks.

At the end of the day, social listening isn’t going to solve every brand issue. What it will do is give you the information you need to shift gears, create solutions, and build better online strategies. You’re going to be amazed at the way better social listening transforms your approach to online marketing.

Categories
Social Media

8 Things You Can Do to Better Utilize Your LinkedIn Profile

If you’re like a lot of other people, you might have a LinkedIn profile…but it never really sees the light of day. Maybe you log in once a year and tweak it slightly, or you log in regularly but don’t really “get” how to use it effectively.

That might be a mistake!

Professionals and business owners who don’t utilize their profiles are leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. You are missing out on incredible opportunities to network, form valuable partnerships, and maybe even find a new client or customer.

Ready to give LinkedIn another go with fresh eyes? Here are some things you can do to better utilize your account and profile.

Update Your URL

Did you know you can update your LinkedIn URL just like you can on other platforms? Taking this one step makes it easier for people to find you. Got to your main profile, click edit, and then look for the option to update your URL under your photo.

Try to use your first name and last name whenever possible. If that’s taken, add your middle initial or some sort of industry monicker. After all, it’s a lot easier to find Sachs Marketing Group or Eric Sachs (our owner) than it is to find Eric2347809.

Update Your Headline and Summary

Your little headline is going to follow you around LinkedIn, showing up everywhere you comment or post. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point, with a few concise words about what you specialize in. Save the longer description for your summary section, but try to have a little fun with it. You have a lot of space to talk about your accomplishments, but don’t let it read like a resume – inject it with a bit of personality!

Review Your Job Description

One of the biggest mistakes we see people make on LinkedIn is creating a profile with jobs – and then never updating their employment history again. We’ve received prompts from LinkedIn asking us to congratulate people on ___ number of years with a company we know they’re no longer working for. How awkward!

Make sure you treat your LinkedIn profile like a resume, keeping it up to date at all times. A three-month update schedule helps; otherwise, just update every time you experience a major change. This is also true for business accounts, too, if you keep a record of clients or partners.

One more thing: this advice applies whether you’ve moved on or not. Check from time to time to see if your responsibilities have changed and need to be updated. What you were doing on day one may be different at month six or year two. Do you have a new title or new responsibilities? Make sure they’re clear.

Clean Up Your Connections

Most people who started out on LinkedIn years ago tried to build a network of people they knew. Some of these individuals were just starting out, too, and we’re working on the same outdated advice (add as many people as you can).

This isn’t Facebook. There is no reason for you to be connected with some guy you haven’t seen since third grade unless you have something industry-specific in common. You don’t need to connect with your bestie or with your mom unless you’re confident they’re also using LinkedIn to create a proper business network. In those cases, the potential for a future connection is more important than your personal relationship.

You don’t have to accept every connection request you receive, either. Review the person’s profile, assess whether or not the connection has some quality, and consider sending a private message to the person before you make your final decision.

Actually Network with People

Let’s say you really want to work with a particular company but you aren’t sure who to connect with. Start by looking for the main business page and then follow it. You’ll likely see a list of people on LinkedIn who have noted they work for the company. Choose the ones at or near the level you’d like to network with and send a request.

Don’t send empty requests, though. Make sure you are doing your homework first. Let the person know that you’ve been following the brand on social, compliment something they’ve been doing, and let them know you’re interested in what they have coming up. This is not the time to send a sales pitch or babble on about yourself. Connect and let the content you publish speak for itself.

Check In Daily

Using the platform daily doesn’t mean you need to let it turn into a time-waster. Hop on, quickly skim your newsfeed, leave a couple of comments, share a piece you find relevant (with a thoughtful comment of your own), or create your own unique post. You can spend a little more time, but try to limit yourself to once or twice per week. That’s when you can spend more thoughtful time in group chats or publishing a full-length article right to your profile.

Publish Articles Regularly

The people networking with you on LinkedIn are looking to connect with people who stand out in their areas of expertise. Take advantage of the article publishing platform by regularly publishing opinion, news, or tutorial pieces at least a couple of times per month, if not weekly. People who appreciate your knowledge base will end up coming to you to do business, making the platform into a funnel for warm leads.

Keep an Eye on Video

As of right now, text content seems to do better on LinkedIn than any other format. This includes video content uploaded to the feed. LinkedIn is getting ready to roll out a “live” video function. We’ll be keeping an eye on how things progress and whether or not this format becomes more popular.

This new feature might not be live yet, but you can still use video on LinkedIn, even right now. Upload your videos to the site; just use YouTube or some other platform as the host. You’ll still enjoy the same benefits.

LinkedIn is a more serious social platform, but it’s a great place to have a lot of fun with industry leaders, too. Show off your knowledge (without acting cocky), be inviting and engaging, and be willing to give as much as you hope to take. Do your best to avoid sounding desperate, even if you are in need of quick work. Think of it like a microcosm of give and take; the more you give, the more you’ll get!

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