Calling All Marketers: Don’t Forget About Customer Retention

Read More

Five ways to master marketing on Reddit

After years of being dismissed as the underdog of social, Reddit now rivals major platforms like Facebook. How can marketers incorporate it into their strategies and launch successful campaigns?

In the weeks leading up to the highly-anticipated recent release of Star Wars: Episode VII, consumers were in a frenzy. Coupled with Christmas, the film led to an epidemic of Internet searches as fans sought out coveted Star Wars-related toys.

From its headquarters in London, web analytics company SimilarWeb monitored the action across 200 million devices. Among its findings: LEGO was the top digital merchandiser of Star Wars toys, despite the fact that Disney owns the film franchise. What’s more, much of the company’s traffic came from Reddit.

That’s right: next to Facebook, Reddit was the second biggest driver of Star Wars shopping traffic not only to the LEGO site, but to eBay and Disney, too. According to SimilarWeb, the trend isn’t exclusive: Amazon gets a full third of its global social traffic from Reddit, a site that received a staggering 850 million visits last month.

Most marketers are well past the “What is Reddit?” stage, but let’s do a quick recap. Founded by college roommates in 2005, the “front-page of the Internet” has more than 203 million users and 7 billion monthly page views. It has grown to become the 36th most popular site in the world based on SimilarWeb’s ranking. “It’s not a dark horse anymore,” says Ari Rosenstein, SimilarWeb’s Senior Director of Corporate Marketing. “Reddit has gone mainstream.”

Yet brands continue to struggle with how to effectively work Reddit into their social marketing strategies. “The truth is, most brands and marketers are doing Reddit in a…horrible way,” Rohit Thawani, director of digital strategy at TBWA/Chiat/Day told Advertising Age last year. And that’s a problem, because Reddit isn’t just channeling traffic to retailers and brands. It’s generating salesand gaming engagement, too.

Reddit and its users are notorious for rejecting blatant advertising, so then how can marketers infiltrate it? By respecting Reddit for the unique social ecosystem that it is, and adopting these five strategies.

1. Get involved with the community

Reddit is a social network in its truest form, designed to foster and support connections and conversations. There are few other sites where authenticity is as vital as it is on Reddit, so don’t try to advertise anything unless you genuinely share the enthusiasm of the community and have something relevant to say. Don’t just create an account; become an active user. It’s the single best way to figure out what your audience is actually interested in.

2. Deliver value

That generic ad you use to promote your shoe sale on Facebook? It has no place here. Couple storytelling tactics with category expertise to engage consumers and demonstrate your brand’s worth. Talk about your business in a way that others can relate to. Think content marketing, not social media ad – or users are sure to vote you down.

3. Leverage subreddits

No matter how niche your product, there’s already a subreddit in existence discussing it or a subject that’s closely related. Skulk about and learn to speak the language before making a move. Be human. Find a way to make a real contribution, and let subject context be your guide.

4.Think twice about posting that link

Reddit advertising options include both text and link ads, and many marketers go straight for the link. Rather than push a product link on users, which may be perceived as spam, consider waiting until someone requests it. Better still, opt for visual content like images and videos, or an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) thread.

5. Know that you’re taking a risk

Let’s be blunt: many a brand has tried and failed to market itself on Reddit. Last month, REI’s CEOtook to the site with an AMA, only be criticized by his own employees. Nissan encountered some trouble back in January when users alleged that the automaker was planting questions using dummy accounts.

Before you try your hand at promoting your brand on this powerhouse of a social site, consider the possible outcomes and weigh them against the potential returns. Depending on your objectives and your familiarity with the site, you might find it’s best to hone your strategy rather than draw the short end of the stick. If you’re lucky, you’ll still have that holiday shopping traffic!

Source

Read More

6 Marketing Activities For Small Business And Mid-Market Companies

It’s almost that time of year when you review your marketing plans and set goals for next year. During that process, you’re probably going to look at what worked and what didn’t, and if you’re like many companies we talk to, you’re looking to spend more money and time on digital marketing.

Companies are wising up to the fact that digital marketing should produce measurable business results, and so you may be setting goals for your online marketing for the first time. Good for you!

We’ve talked before about how an overall plan is really important to making sure that the time and money you spend online gets the best possible outcome (check out #1 in this article). But what tactics should be included in your plan?

Whether you’re doing it in-house or outsourcing your digital marketing, developing an online marketing strategy is only the first step toward achieving your business goals. Here are 6 marketing activities that are essential for successful small and mid-market digital marketing.

Social Media

Although there has been an explosion of social media sites in the last few years (anyone using Periscope yet?), there are 3 sites that offer a very real benefit to businesses as they develop their marketing strategy. The Big 3 — Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are powerful platforms from which to launch and spread a message. When you’re considering how to spread the word through social media, consider your audiences, and if you’re paying for social media advertising, targeted audiences and multiple campaigns offer the greatest benefit.

Analytics

Analytics was once an option only available to businesses willing to invest large sums of money in software and people to perform analysis. Today, there’s Google Analytics (a popular, free option). But if you’re really looking for a wealth of insightful data, you’ll need to dig deeper. Look for software that can tie results back to leads and revenue so you know exactly what works.

Pro Tip: Don’t just scratch the surface. Check out this article on 12 marketing metrics your boss probably doesn’t need to know about.

Voice and Brand Messaging

Branding has been around since the early days of advertising, but brand messaging is growing in importance as small and mid-market businesses seek to gain greater recognition in the crowded online community.

Today’s buyer may spend more than 4 hours each day online, but they have become immune to the headline grabbing ads of the past. If you have only a few seconds to capture a potential customer’s attention, your primary objective must be to promote a consistent, effective message and voice.

A voice and brand style guide can be a powerful tool to keep your online marketing strategy consistent, not just for web messaging and content marketing, but also to keep online complimenting your offline efforts.

Pro tip: Don’t get caught up in trying to please everyone in your company. Think of your primary audiences first when writing communications from your website content to blogs and emails.

Content Creation

Closely related to voice and brand messaging is content creation. Content creation is simply the process of actively engaging potential (and existing) clients by providing them with informative, educational and entertaining information.

Buyers of your services and products expect to find information online that’s focused on their needs. In response, marketers are creating more content, which affects quality.

Cheesy, cliche, and obvious sales pitches are no longer enough. Today’s consumers not only want to connect with you for your product or service, but they also want you to provide interesting content.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO helps your company get found online and where your business will appear when someone enters specific search terms. You want to be deliberate in how you publish content on your website, being sure to include words that your prospective customers use as they describe your product or service.

Search engines tweak their ranking algorithms constantly, and it can be tough to keep up with it all. Moz is a great resource for practical, common sense SEO advice, but don’t hesitate to contact a pro that can help attract more people to your website.

Pro tip: It takes much more than simply putting keywords in a page or optimizing meta tags for proper SEO. Here are some SEO myths you should be aware of.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Your company might have been doing search engine optimization and writing content, but the single most underutilized activity when it comes to digital marketing is conversion rate optimization.

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is simply a fancy way to describe the process of testing different things in order to get more business opportunities from the website visitors you already have.

Pro tip: Did you know that you can make smaller, incremental changes to your website in order to get more leads? Because conversion rate optimization involves writing, design and development, growth driven design is a great solution to scientifically design for better results.

The most successful businesses have learned how to effectively use every tool available in their digital strategy. Regardless of how small or large your business may be, these activities are crucial to the success of your online marketing strategy.

What are you planning on doing differently next year? Next quarter? Next month?

Source

Read More

5 Twitter Analytics Features You Might Not Know About (But Should)

Sometimes, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the questions that arise when you're creating or analyzing your Twitter strategy.

Who follows you? What kind of Tweets do they like (or hate)? How often do they want to hear from you? How quickly do they expect a response? 

As an SMB Marketing Manager at Twitter, I hear these questions from a lot of businesses. The good news is you've got a great tool at your disposal: Twitter's free analytics. With a few clicks of a button, you could be on your way to finding out what's working (and what isn't). 

Not sure which Twitter analytics features you should be using? Below are a few you may not know about (but should). 

1) Get monthly reports.

Your Account home provides a handy overview of your Twitter statistics, with monthly averages for engagement rates, replies, and more. So the next time your boss is asking for a wrap-up, you’re just a click away.

Want an even deeper dive? Visit the Tweet activity dashboard to see in-depth metrics for your individual Tweets. You'll see stats like impressions and total engagements -- and Twitter will even calculate your engagement rate, too.

If you click on a Tweet, you’ll see engagement broken down even further into Retweets, Favorites, clicks on media, replies, link clicks, follows, and more. If that’s still not enough data for you, you can download the data on your last 3,200 Tweets, going back as far as October 2013.

2) Uncover your influencers.

It’s not just about statistics -- your Account home has even more in store! It’ll let you know who your top follower is every month, in terms of reach. You can also see whose Tweet mentioning your handle drove the most engagements. This is a great place to start when you’re looking to kick-off a co-marketing venture or find a business partner.

3) Get to know your followers.

Aside from the fact that they all made the (great) decision to follow you, do your followers have anything else in common? The followers dashboard is loaded with audience insights that can help you answer that question, and many more. You can track your follower growth over time, see their tops interests, and uncover their demographics. You can also benchmark your numbers against the total Twitter user base, and find out what makes your community stand out.

We've also recently introduced personas. This means that, in addition to your followers, you can now get to know specific audiences on Twitter such as parents, millennials, or small business decision-makers.

Once you find the persona that matches your desired audience, you can easily target them in an ad campaign -- it's just one click on your audience insights dashboard. Personas are currently only available to advertisers in the U.S., but we’re working to roll out this new tool more broadly.

4) Check analytics on your mobile phone.

Out and about, but with Tweets on your mind? You can hit the graph icon to check in on a Tweet’s engagements.

          

If you’re checking in on the Promoted Tweets in your Twitter Ads campaigns, you can go even further: the new Twitter Ads companion allows you to monitor and edit your campaigns from your mobile phone. You can change your campaign start and end dates, pause or resume a campaign, and edit your budget and bid.

5) Promote individual Tweets in 1-2-3.

Now that we’ve gotten you into the good habit of checking in with analytics.twitter.com every day, you’ll be ready when one of your Tweets starts to get noticed. If you see that something is resonating with your audience and racking up the faves and Retweets, it could be ready for a wider audience. With quick promote, you can click on the Tweet in your timeline or your Tweet activity dashboard, and promote it with just two clicks.

You’ll be able to target people who are similar to your followers, and those that are likely to be interested in the topics mentioned in the Tweet. You can also refine by geography, to make sure you’re quickly promoting content to the most relevant country, region, or metro area. Our easy budget slider makes it simple to choose the amount that makes the most sense for your business and goal.

We’re stopping at five, but once you start exploring analytics.twitter.com you’ll be amazed at how much you can learn about your content and your audience. Of course, data is only as valuable as the insights it brings to businesses, so take time to get familiar with all the reports and identify the best for your business. We'll be sure to keep the dashboards actionable, easy-to-use, and up-to-date with new, helpful features. Deal?

Source

Read More

Why Did Your Last Social Media Marketing Campaign Fail?

Social media makes us lazy.

We think it is a quick fix to our lacklustre marketing efforts – but it’s not.

Throw a few tweets out, blast some connections on LinkedIn and like a few Facebook pages.

That’s all it takes right?

There is a fundamental problem with the way we approach our social media marketing campaigns.

We are forgetting who they are for in the first place – our target audience.

I want to share with you some common reasons social media marketing campaigns fail and provide tips and tools you can use to increase your chance of success.

Problem 1: We don’t identify a target audience

Whether you are promoting products and services or planning a nationwide protest, identifying a target audience on social media is a necessity.

With that being said, a major reason behind the failure of a many social media marketing campaigns is their lack of commitment to identify a target audience.

This results in us sending spammy promotion to a group of individuals who – quite frankly – don’t care.

How do we change this?

First you must ask these two questions.

• Who will use my products or services?
• How does this demographic gather information?

Thankfully there are a multitude of tools on the internet that will assist you in confidently building a target audience, as well as pinpointing a strategy for how to market to them.

Useful tools

MosaicHub

MosaicHub is a great tool that helps businesses and entrepreneurs identify the thought-leaders throughout their industry. This will allow you to identify who they are talking to and what they are talking about. MosaicHub also offers a resource center where you can create and share your ideas within your industry.

FollowerWonk

FollowerWonk is a great tool when it comes to identifying a target audience. This allows you to search Twitter profiles for certain keywords in your industry, allowing you to find and build relationships with important individuals all over the world.

Problem 2: We don’t create the right type of content

Remember the questions we talked about?

The second question comes in here. When creating content to share on social media, it is important create a piece of content that caters to how your audience will want to view it.

All too often we see a business create a monotonous 3,000 word article and try to share it out to a group of individuals who aren’t willing to even read it. That is essentially like throwing a sheep into a pack of wolves and expecting them to have a conversation.

Well, okay, maybe it is not entirely like that, but you get the picture. Certain content just will not do well with certain demographics.

With social media being one of the leading factors in lead generation these days, it is incredibly important that you are creating quality, shareable content on a regular basis.

This is a great way to build yourself and your business up as a leading provider in your industry and establish trust and respect between yourself and the community.

Articles, infographics, contests and videos are all pieces of content that do very well on social media (Disclaimer: The content must be good!)..

In short, there are two things to keep in mind:

• Is it easy to read and/or visually appealing?
• Would YOU share this piece of content?

Useful tools

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo allows you to search specific keywords and it will show you pieces of content that were most popular based on social shares across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest, and Google+. This will give you an idea of where your audience is and what types of content they like.

FluidReview

Contests are always doing well in the social media world, and will help you raise awareness of your brand throughout a vast community. FluidReview allows a contest creator to set up and manage a contest efficiently through a smartphone.

Problem 3: We forget about timing

Social media is a tool that you need to be using aggressively to achieve success. In the book, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, Guy Kawasaki stated,

“If you’re not pissing someone off on social media, you’re not using it aggressively enough.”

This is a great quote to keep in mind when managing your social media marketing campaigns; however, timing is going to be a key factor in the success of your social media crusade.

To get the most out of your social media marketing campaign it is important to analyze your audience and find out when the ideal time to put something in front of their face is.

For example if you are trying to present a piece of content to the business world, it is probably not a great idea to publish it at 5PM. At this time, most of your audience will be heading home from work and by the time they get home, it will be buried in an hour’s worth of other posts throughout their news feed. In this case, it may be better to shoot for a 1PM publishing time when people are getting back from lunch and checking their social media pages before diving into work.

It is important to understand that every audience’s ideal sharing time will differ. It is up to you to analyze this and strategize your content plan.

Useful tools

Buffer

Buffer is a great way to schedule social media posts. This will allow you to set aside some time in the morning to schedule your posts to publish at the ideal time, and not worry about missing your window of opportunity for the day. It also tracks twitter analytics!

TweetReport’s Twitter Chat Schedule

TweetReport will give you a hub of all the relevant Twitter chats in your industry – providing time, dates, and a short description. Keeping a schedule like this can ensure you will never miss a chance to share your insight and establish a name for yourself in the industry.

Overall, establishing yourself and your brand on social media in today’s world is one of the best ways to build relationships with influencers and customers. While it does require a lot of dedication, these tools can help pave the way to a successful social media marketing campaign without letting it take over your life.

Please feel free to follow me on Twitter and share any tools that you have used to assist in your social media campaigns in the comments!

Thank you for reading.

Source

Read More

How to Incorporate Video Into Your Social Media Marketing Campaign [Infographic]

Did you know that, an estimated 74 percent of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video? And that viewers retain 95 percent of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10 percent when reading it in a text article.

What if I told you videos are shared 1200 percent more times than links and text combined. And that websites with videos have up to 800 percent more conversion than the same website without a video.

It's no secret that video content is on the rise, and to stand out you need to do something that very few others are doing.

This infographic (featured below) from Salesforce, illustrates important marketing tips that you need to know to integrate video into your social media strategy.

Source

Read More

Learn from the Experts: Instagram Tips

Instagram is still relatively new territory for marketers, but it’s quickly becoming one of *the* essential platforms for all sorts of businesses. The challenge is knowing how to create the sorts of content that will look appealing, and not too sales-y, in users’ feeds.

In today’s post we’ve gathered a handful of tips from Instagram pros that will help businesses gain traction on the photo- and video-sharing platform.

Ready?

#1: Be Consistent ~  Studio DIY/Jeff and Kelly Mindell

Know your brand inside and out! Create brand ‘filters’ or key identifiers for your account and stick to them. Start by defining a do’s and don’ts list to determine what your brand is and is not. For example, Studio DIY is bright, colorful photos with even composition and captions that highlight personality! We both keep to that aesthetic when sharing content which lends itself to a much more cohesive brand experience when visiting our Instagram feeds.

#2: Offer a Unique Perspective ~ Rebekah Radice

Whether you’re taking a picture of your latest event, product or creation, be unique in your content and perspective. Steer clear of simply throwing up pictures for the sake of it. Be strategic in what you share and engage your audience through appealing context that tells your distinct story. Every image has the power to connect your business to a new audience. Why not make your feed bold, beautiful, vibrant and perfectly aligned with your business or brand?

Highlight what’s special about your business, product, service or area.Christi with Love From the Oven is a perfect example of this in action. Every one of her pictures makes me drool. From buttery pretzel bites to mouth-watering peanut butter cheesecake bars, Christi makes me want to click through to her site and bake, bake, bake!

#3: Use Hashtags Strategically ~ Cyrissa @immersephotography &@sparkle.society

I love using hashtags to “move up the food chain!”  As a photographer, I’m up against a lot of competition and I always try to make it easy for my brides to find me!  If I’ve shot a wedding at a venue (or engagement session whose wedding will be at that venue), I’ll tag them in the photo, geotag their location, and use their hashtag.  All these things help my brides find me… because who do they usually book first?  The venue and the church!  Instagram makes it easier for me to reach my ideal clients.

#4: Use Scheduling Tools in Moderation ~ Christian Karasiewicz

One of the most requested features on Instagram is the ability to schedule Instagram posts. While Instagram doesn’t currently offer a native tool to allow you to schedule posts, there are a number of third-party tools available that can help with this.

Some of my favorites include: ScheduGram, Latergramme and TakeOff

When choosing between a scheduling tool remember, each of these tools has its own unique pricing and features so choose the tool that fits your situation, not just the tool that everyone else is recommending you use. Scheduling should be a part of your Instagram strategy, not your whole strategy.

I recommend scheduling content when you know you won’t be available to post. For example, if you’re attending a conference, giving a presentation, or writing a blog post.By scheduling Instagram posts in moderation, this allows you to keep fresh content in your channel to keep your audience engaged.

#5 Never Leave a Comment Behind ~  Sue B. Zimmerman

The best way to create authentic relationships on Instagram is to engage in conversation. I know this is time consuming but Instagram is where we grow our community the fastest and we want to respond to every question and comment to make our followers feel connected and valued. The same principles hold true for our company on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. (For more great tips from Sue, read our entire interview here.)

#6 Learn from the Experts ~  The Instagram Blog

On Instagram’s own blog you can learn how to perfect specific kinds of shots. In recent months there have been features on “Taking the Perfect Action Shot,” with tips from X Games photographers (@wilhelmvisualworks); “Capturing the Perfect Time-Lapse Video” with tips from Kevin Lu (@sweatengine), a New York based photographer who is on a quest to capture time-lapse videos on his iPhone; and “Cinematic Portraiture” with tips from Spanish photographer Lucia Fernandez Muniz (@luciafernandamuniz)

#7 Be Strategic with the One Link You’re Allowed in Your Bio ~ Jim Belosic, CEO, ShortStack

For personal use, Instagram is fun and spontaneous. But if you want to use it as a marketing tool, you have to be a little more calculating with it. I suspect the businesses that are really killing it on Instagram — Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nike, etc. — plan their posts well in advance. But even if you’re a smaller brand, or a one-man show, you can still develop a great presence on Instagram by using the link in your bio to connect to a landing page that holds the same posts you put on Instagram, but allows you to collect leads, promote your ecommerce site, gain subscribers to your blog, collect entries for a giveaway, etc.

Here’s what our bio link looks like: 

And when you click on the link, you’re taken to our Campaign, which looks like this:

Source

Read More

Does Social Media Sharing Matter?

On virtually every site you visit on the Internet, you’ll find social media sharing icons. Share! Pin! Tweet! Like!

Do these activities matter? Does all of that sharing create any kind of tangible benefit for the site? Instinct would say yes, but we cannot run a marketing department on instinct alone.

To answer this question, let’s put together a formal hypothesis: if sharing matters, there should be an association between the number of shares a page gets versus the number of page views that a page gets. While we cannot establish sequencing and causality, we can at least hypothesize that sharing a page should have a positive correlation to page views. Conversely, an unshared page should receive fewer page views.

It’s also important to note that we’re not examining clickthroughs on links or any other down-funnel metrics. We just want to prove or disprove a positive association between social media shares and page views.

Let’s first get our data. I’ll use data from my personal website so as to avoid revealing anything under NDA. I started by identifying the content to check. I’ll use my blog posts for the last 18 months:

From here I’ll load them into Excel, clean things up, and match them with the appropriate social shares using SHIFT’s proprietary social scanning software:

Now we do a Pearson correlation, plotting the total number of social shares on the x-axis and the total number of page views on the y-axis, then fit a trend line to the plot:

We do see a relationship, a reasonably strong one, between social shares and page views. The slope of the line is measured with a term named R-squared. R-squared is .61; if you take the square root of r-squared, you get an r-value, which in this case is .781. What does that value mean? The generally accepted meaning of r values is:

+.70 or higher Very strong positive relationship
+.40 to +.69 Strong positive relationship
+.20 to +.39 Moderate positive relationship
-.19 to +.19 No or weak relationship
-.20 to -.39 Moderate negative relationship
-.40 to -.69 Strong negative relationship
-.70 or lower Very strong negative relationship

Thus, we can say there’s a very strong positive relationship between social shares and page views. We cannot say which is the driver; does excellent content that garners page views in turn drive social media shares? Or do social media shares drive page views? The data cannot answer this question for us.

To dig a little deeper, which social network shows the greatest association between social shares and page views?

We see that for this data set, LinkedIn matters the most (r of .71), followed by Facebook (r of .65), then by Twitter (r of .39, a moderate positive relationship), and finally Google+ (r of .32). Across the board, there is a relationship between social shares and page views.

Social media shares matter; they simply matter unevenly. The discrepancy above means that sharing might matter more on some networks than others, or that some content resonates better with certain social audiences than others. Given that my site is a B2B-focused website and blog, it would make logical sense for strong affinity between LinkedIn and the content.

What would you do with this information? Test, of course! The first logical test would be to see if distribution matters more than content. I’d turn off my social posting for a week and see if it’s my social sharing that’s driving page views. If page views drop like a rock, then I’ve begun to establish causality. If page views remain constant, then I know it’s not my social sharing that’s driving page views, and I must develop a new hypothesis.

Alternately, if not sharing isn’t an option, I could increase the amount of sharing I do. Instead of sharing a blog post once a day, I could schedule it to be shared 2, 3, or even 4 times a day. This would test causality as well – if I saw page views increase by a proportional amount, I’d know that sharing was driving the results.

To get even more advanced, I could choose to increase sharing on the underperforming networks while leaving sharing the same on the networks that are performing well. I’d be looking for those networks to have more shares, and if I’ve established causality with page views from a previous experiment, I’d look for page views to increase commensurately.

Do the same level of data-driven analysis on your own content. Identify what content gets shared the most, which networks it is shared on, and what causes what. You’ll develop a strong understanding of what’s really working as you build your audience, create engagement, and ultimately drive business results.

Source

Read More