3 Things Your Business is (Still) Getting Wrong About Social Media

Does it feel like no matter how hard you try your business just isn’t getting the traction you expected from social media? Sure, maybe you’ve amassed a few thousand followers and your posts regularly get favorited or re-tweeted, but brand recognition hasn’t improved and sales are still stagnant. Or maybe sales are up, but you have no idea whether that’s because of social media, or simply due to increased marketplace demand. On the flip side, top brands like Coca-Cola, American Express and Johnson & Johnson seem to have mastered the art of social media marketing. So, what gives?

If you’re confused about why your social media ROI isn’t living up to expectations, you’re not alone. Consider this: more than half of all marketers (52%) say Facebook is their most important social network, yet 45% of marketers aren’t even sure that their Facebook efforts are effective, according to Social Media Examiner’s 2015 report on the industry. Virtually every marketer (91%) say they still need to master social media tactics in order to better engage with their audience. And only 42% feel confident measuring social media ROI.

Working with an agency for their social media advertising services is one option for improving your social media ROI. But before you even engage with a firm, it’s helpful to have a general idea of what’s working (and not working) with your current approach. This gives you a clear starting point for productive and meaningful engagement. Is an incorrect assumption about social media holding your business back? Here’s what you could be doing wrong– and how to fix it.

Assumption #1: Sharing content on social media is sufficient for building my brand.

Reality Check: Social media may be a powerful channel for sharing content, but you still need to drive traffic back to your website. Sharing content is an important first step towards building brand recognition. But shares alone won’t drive sales. Social media is a means to an end (not the end itself): great posts connect, communicate and turn your website into a daily destination for followers. Remember, your website is home base and it’s here you get to really control what happens and move the lead nurturing process along be that signing up for a e-newsletter, downloading a whitepaper, or receiving a free product sample.

Assumption #2: Likes are a valid metric for quantifying social media marketing success.

Reality Check: Go beyond the like: social shares and followers are important, but are your followers actually clicking through to the content you’re sharing? How deeply engaged are they with your content? If you’re not sure where to get started with social media ROI, Moz has a great (and free) how-to guide to social media metrics. It’s a convenient cheat sheet for which quantitative and qualitative metrics matter most. Keep in mind that superficial social media engagement (e.g., liking a photo or post) is not also predictive of future customer behavior. Marketing Land reports that while “social media enthusiasts” account for 85% of a brand’s social media interaction, they make up only 29% of a brand’s audience. Furthermore, many are designated as “dabblers” and “lurkers” rather than buyers. Digging into your metrics will help you better understand whether your brand is only connecting superficially with these dabblers and lurkers, or truly translating into deeper relationships and ultimately more sales.

Assumption #3: Posting only when you have fresh content is best.

Reality check: Sporadic posting yields (at best) sporadic engagement. In order to build a steady audience, you need consistent posts to drive interaction and interest. The quantity of posts for optimal engagement varies by industry. The real estate industry, for example, posts the most frequently, with nearly half of all real estate firms posting three or more times per week. The nonprofit/education industry posts the least frequently, with barely half posting more than once per week, according to Hubspot. What matters most for all these industries, however, is both the quality and consistency of the posts. Short on content? You don’t have to post something new each day; sneak peaks and teasers are just as effective for building engagement. For example, if your business is releasing a new whitepaper next week, tease out a different key finding every few days in the week leading up to the release. You’ll build anticipation and drive downloads for your content while strengthening follower engagement. That’s a win-win-win.

Bottom line:

Assuming you’re doing the right thing just because everyone else in your industry is too may lead to a lot of likes, but a low ROI. While there’s no secret sauce for guaranteeing social media success, if you’re disappointed with your business’s current social media performance, be sure you’re not making one of these three mistakes. Once you’ve got a clear idea where things went off the rails, it’s much easier to get back on track and improve ROI.

Image via Shutterstock

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5 Proven Ways to Leverage Social Proof for Your Brand

Does publishing engaging content make people want to buy from you?

While this is important, effective content creation is only one piece of the puzzle.

After your target audience has read your blog posts, downloaded your eBooks, and visited your website – they are looking for validation. They want to validate the thoughts and feelings they have already formed about your brand with consensus.

Consensus is one of the six universal principles of persuasion – people will look to the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own actions. In today’s digital landscape consensus comes from social proof.

An ounce of psychology: Why social proof works in marketing

Social proof simply means that people conform to the actions of others, under the assumption that these actions reflect a correct or acceptable behavior (in other words, what the “cool kids” are doing). It takes the form of feedback, reviews, and approval from other people who have tried your product or service.

Although a marketing environment is different than the halls of a high school, much of the psychological influence behind social proof, and why it works, remains the same. When prospects look at a solution that will answer their pain points or solve their problems, it’s human nature to conform to the actions of those who’ve been there before.

Leveraging social proof can push your brand to new heights, whether you harness its power on your website, in your social media posts, or as part of your content marketing strategy. A number of ways exist to establish social proof, but below are a few that can undeniably build your brand’s trust and credibility in the minds of prospective clients – making them want to buy.

5 Ways Your Brand Can Leverage Social Proof

1. Turn employees into brand ambassadors

Your marketing team may be writing engaging and helpful social posts on your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account – but when posted on a company page, they feel far from personal.

The easiest way for a company to create social proof is through its employees – one of its most untapped resources. When coming directly from employees, posts about how great the company culture is, an upcoming sponsored event, or even a new job opening will always feel more authentic in the eyes of prospects than a corporate post ever will.

Employees have access to fresh and unique audiences that a marketing team has difficulty reaching, and their posts are much more likely to be considered real and trustworthy.

Quick tips for encouraging employees to share on social media:

• Launch an employee advocacy program and create a set of guidelines to keep employees informed.
• If your company is recruiting, ask employees to share the news on their personal social profiles.
• Incentivize social sharing by rewarding employees who have generated the most likes, shares, or clicks, or found the next hire for your company.
• Use employee advocacy tools such as Addvocate or Social Chorus to get everyone on board.
• Create a company culture hashtag, such as Adobe did with #adobelife (see below), and encourage employees to share social posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using it.

Example of employee advocacy using the #adobeLife hashtag:

2. Capture real-time social proof by listening

Social listening is an essential part of better understanding your target audience. On Twitter for example, you should track brand mentions and respond to any questions, comments or feedback as promptly as possible.

To start monitoring your brand mentions, download a free tool such as TweetDeck, and create a stream to follow mentions of your Twitter handle. Then, start favoriting, re-tweeting or interacting with any tweets about your brand. For example, this could be a prospect tweeting about helpful customer support, or an existing customer sharing feedback on one of your new products. The tendency at this stage is to only respond to positive messages, but it is also important to proactively respond to negative comments where possible.

Here is an example of the favorites timeline from KISSMetrics, a brand who regularly interacts with prospective customers on Twitter:

You may also like to track industry keywords on Twitter; if anyone is asking for suggestions on a product or solution, look for a way to get them to check yours out.

Social listening is powerful because it not only builds your brand’s image, but also offers website visitors an interactive and real-time experience. Look to leverage this form of social proof by embedding tweets on your website for prospects to see.

3. Collaborate with customers & influencers

Content marketing and social proof go hand-in-hand. There are countless opportunities for bringing customers – or even influencers, into your content marketing strategy. Partnering with another company or individual compounds the effect of promotion and amplifies your exposure. As this positive energy gains momentum it acts as “proof” that your customers and thought-leaders support your brand.

Ideas for joint content marketing initiatives:

• Co-host your next webinar with a customer, or if possible, an industry influencer. Figure out a way that the event will benefit both of you, and then ask them to help promote it on social media by creating an event hashtag.
• Contact one of your most active customers, and write up a case study. Publish it on your website, upload the slides to SlideShare if relevant, and share it in your nurturing emails.
• Reach out to an influencer via Twitter to request an interview, and publish it as a blog post.
• Ask a customer or influencer to contribute a quote to your next eBook or white paper.
• Create a “Clients Page” for your website to feature testimonials (with logos and headshots).

Here is an example from the HubSpot customer testimonials webpage:

4. Ask your customers to write online reviews

When was the last time you purchased a product – or even went to a restaurant, without first reading a few reviews?

Studies show that 70% of consumers say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, while 79% of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Reviews can make or break a brand, and motivating happy customers to share their experience online – particularly on social, can generate some much needed social proof. So be proactive about generating positive reviews by asking your best customers.

Take some time to research the niche review sites in your industry – such as Yelp, TrustRadius or G2Crowd – and seek to reward the people who have reviewed your product or service. Ask to showcase their photo, company logo, and part of their review on your website or landing page.

Here is an example of a customer review from TrustRadius:

5. Add social share counts to your site

This last one is more obvious than the others – but sometimes it’s the basic ideas that count most for social proof. Adding social media share buttons, such as the AddThis widget, is the quickest way to give readers the chance to share content on their personal profiles.

Here is an example of social media share buttons from JeffBullas.com:

If you’re new to blogging, it might be best to only have share buttons – with no counter – since share counts will probably be low. But, when you start gaining a dedicated readership, placing a counter on your blog posts shows readers that others find your content worthy of sharing, subconsciously nudging them to follow in the footsteps of their peers.

When done well, these five actions will transform the perception of your brand. Leveraging social proof is a powerful tool for marketers, as it demonstrate to prospective clients that your solution is a legitimate part of your industry’s conversation.

Of course you need to talk about your brand – but it’s far more compelling to showcase how current clients and industry players are talking about your products and services.

About the author: Valerie Levin is the Director of Inbound Marketing at Penguin Strategies, a B2B marketing agency focused on bridging the gap between sales and marketing, and leveraging inbound marketing to generate qualified leads for clients.

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Using Twitter's Quote Feature for Better Engagement

Twitter just added a feature that we Twitterholics have been dreaming of! No, its not the Twelfie Stick, though I'm sure lots of people actually wanted that one, it's better.

In the past responding to a tweet was a bit of a hassle. You'd either reply to the tweet knowing that anyone coming across that tweet later would see it entirely out of context, or you'd add a comment to a retweet and edit the heck out of the original tweet to get it all to fit. No more!

Now when you hit the retweet icon you'll see a new field with the option to add a comment to the original tweet, then simply click the tweet button and the message will be shared with your followers as a tweet.

Followers will see both the original tweet and your comment together, making it much easier for them to add their own two cents. Nice huh?Just like retweets you can delete your quote. Just find the more button on your tweet and you'll see an option to delete. Easy peasy.

Why should you care? 
This will allow a much richer conversation to happen on Twitter, and it holds the context of your message which will definitely lead to more discussion. And for those who simply hit retweet and forget about it, you'll be prompted by the new field to maybe say something and add value to the conversation. It will be worth it, I promise.

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5 Ways Images on Twitter can Put Your Tweets in the Spotlight

Like this post? Pin it for later. Spotlight by Shutterstock.

If you have been paying attention you would realize that Twitter is becoming more and more visual as a social platform.

Images on Twitter not only get retweeted more, but photos, graphics, slide presentations, videos and GIFs grab attention on this traditionally text-based social network.

In this post, I share 5 ways to use Images on Twitter to put your tweets in the spotlight!

SpotLights by Shutterstock

It is well documented that images on Twitter get retweeted approximately twice as often. Dan Zarrella (the Social Media Scientist) did extensive research to prove it and let’s face it, images on Twitter catch attention. There’s no doubting it.

Want the Skinny about Images on Twitter?  Buffer’s mega-article explaining the stats will motivate you! Buffer quotes research by people like Dan Zarrella  as well as their own research into the use of Twitter.

Click here or click on the image below to read the full article. The team at Buffer include great tips for how to leverage the power of images on Twitter – this post was released after images began to show innately on the newsfeed, and is still highly relevant!

In summary, the team at Buffer found that Tweets with images get more Clicks, Retweets and Favourites. You have to love that!

So let’s jump in and look at some ways that you can leverage the power of images on Twitter:

How to Use Images on Twitter to Catch Attention on the Twitter Feed

#1  Set up Your Blog for Easy Image Sharing by Others on Twitter

Let’s start with the easiest first.  If you have a blog and you have images on your blog, you are missing a whole bunch of free marketing if you don’t set up Twitter Cards.

I won’t reinvent the wheel – Kim Garst produced an awesome article about how to set them up, so be sure to check it out.

Twitter cards are great in that they pull in additional information from a post, including images, and add it to the tweet. Here is an example of a tweet with Twitter cards enabled (showing the full summary):

When someone tweets your image, the image and expanded description goes with it.

In the example above, all Social Media Examiner had to do was set up the Twitter Cards – now whenever anyone tweets their article, the image and description goes with it.

Don’t miss the opportunity for others to do your marketing for you!

Want to learn more about how to create visual content? Click here.

#2  Use a Twitter-Size Template

If you want the tweet to show up natively in the Twitter Feed, I have a tip for you. Size it to fit the preview image exactly. Here are a few images that I posted during Social Media Marketing World last year that were “sized” to suit the Twitter Preview:

Quick Tip:  The images above were created on a Canva template. I would keep a tab with the template “open” on my laptop after creating the first image, then when I heard a great quote from a speaker, I just had to change out the text + add images to create another quote image – Voila!

It’s super easy to be responsive and create original content quickly!

By using a template that is sized perfectly to Twitter you can easily create a series of images to post at a live event (or at any time!).  The templates worked so well in the above example I was able to post them while the speakers were still on stage.

Now…I could give you the dimensions, but let’s face it, they often change. Instead,  I’ll give you something better.  Go to Canva – and choose their Twitter Template …the template is the best size for Tweet sized images.

Sometimes it is effective enough just to change out colour, font or background.Peg Fitzpatrick is a wizz at making shareable images. I watched Peg create these speaker quotes at an event we were both speaking at recently. She came prepared with templates ready to go – each with a different background colour!

All Peg had to do was make a few clicks and add/change text and background colour and boom – new images in just seconds:

#3  Pre-prepare your Tweets for Live Chats

When it comes to having your tweets stand out, the bar has been raised people.  Raised!  …in a super fun way.

I had a few minutes to spare last year and I dropped by #BlogChat. I love doing Twitter Chats or “Tweet Ups” and I wrote about them here.

Basically it involves a group of like-minded people getting together to chat under a particular #hashtag on a common topic of interest at a regular weekly time.

There is often a guest user and a moderator who adds questions and helps the guest respond and replies to some of the questions or topics.

The nature of Twitter means that these chats become very busy under the hashtag feed, with a lot of conversations going on. Enter Mr Problogger,  Darren Rowse. (by Mr Problogger, I mean that Darren founded Problogger, one of the most successful site about blogging).

Darren was the guest “blogger” at this particular #BlogChat.  Oh my.  Darren came prepared. Here are just 2 of a dozen or so visual tweets he prepared earlier:

Darren’s tweets stood out. Got noticed. Drove the conversation. Helped people to follow along.

If you are holding a tweet chat or event, and you are a speaker or guest, consider pre-preparing some tweets that will start the conversation.

Even text based tweets will impress your guests but if they include images, you will blow the participants away.  And you may just save your hands typing so much as, you know what they say – a picture tells a thousand words!

#4   Make your Twitter Feed Image-Centric

Savvy brands are recognising the power of Images on Twitter. When I want to know what works, I often visit a few key B2B brands that I know do “social” well.

Let’s face it, if a B2B brand can make social work with what could be considered boring content, then there’s hope for the rest of us to do it right, isn’t there?

So I turn to brands like General Electric to see what they are doing. And guess what?  Their Twitter Feed is very image-centric:

Here’s just a taste, but please, click on the image (or click here) and scroll through their feed). Note all the pretty pictures?  Most of their posts are visual:

Scroll on down – each tweet is insightful..and illustrated!

General Electric get it!  They would not be posting this way unless it impacted their Retweets and engagement, trust me.

Check out these brands too:  HubSpot and Constant Contact. When you want to know what works, watch what these guys do (on any platform) – especially when it comes to visual content.

Constant Contact post a lot of video as well as images, photo headers for blog posts and behind the scenes photos of their team. Again, watch closely what these guys do on social. They “get it” too!

#5   Send a Personalised Tweet with an Image

There’s one thing that stands out to me – it’s a personalised tweet. I don’t have an issue with automation for the sake of sending out great content from your own blog or especially others you want to promote .. but when it comes to engagement or sending a personalised tweet, you just can’t automate it.

One type of tweet I have noticed some “savvy” creative approaches to lately, is the thank you tweet. This might be for a retweet or to follow up on a meeting or just a thank you for a follow – when people that go the extra mile to say thanks with an image… it really stands out on my newsfeed.

Here’s an example of a clever “thank you tweet” for a an attendee at a webinar I did recently:

Krithika goes the extra mile with a pictorial, personalised thank you tweet!

Now as with all good things, automation can come along and ruin it. I have noticed a lot of generic thank you tweet images lately, but Krithika, in the image above “gets it”.  She personalised her tweet so I knew that it was just for me – by mentioning my webinar she attended, this tweet became super personalised.

And it stood out on my mentions feed – because it contained an image. There are 3 ways this tweet is super personal, over and above the actual image:

• It includes my name
• It mentions the webinar
• It contains a hashtag which shows she listened to the content.

It can take a little extra time to create these images to tweet, but it’s worth it when it comes to standing out.

Take George’s example below to thank me for following. Again, super-personalised while leveraging the power of visual content to catch my attention:

You can’t get more personalised than seeing your name ON an image.

How can you personalise your tweets?  If there is someone in your industry you want to catch the attention of, consider using an image tweet.

Your Turn

Do you love visual content on Twitter? Do they stand out for you and do you use them yourself? Leave a comment below and tell me which of the 5 strategies you are considering implementing in your own Twitter Strategy.

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