Be useful, be entertaining, or be ignored. It is an amazing fact … social media has been with us for over a decade now. So there are many social media examples that you can learn from.
Many awesome ones that are useful as well as entertaining. And new ones are being created every day.
Businesses have seized upon this as it matured and in 2013 according to a CMO survey by Duke University is 6.6% of marketing budgets (about $4.6 billion in dollar terms) and is expected to climb to nearly 16% over the next 5 years.
So social media is still a small part of digital and marketing budgets.
But in reality, it has just begun.
When choosing to learn from others’ social media marketing campaign strategies, it is always helpful to choose the best of the best.
Those that are most innovative and very eager to try lots of new and different ideas. And not afraid of a failure or two. Real social media marketing innovators. You want to frequently come up when marketers are discussing the best in social media marketing.
Review this article to learn How to Change Your Social Media Engagement
Social media examples… Twitter
Use images for better response rates. For images implement Twitter cards so that any tweets of your content will include visual media.
Many businesses are including images, not so surprising.
The best ones on Twitter are customizing the title tags. You can attribute content to creators and use images up to 500 by 750 px.
The many Pinterest lenses.
Pinterest
This platform has been our best website referral source over the past 2+ years. You can brand pins with your logo to create visual reminders.
Nordstrom, one of our favorite brands, is the most followed brand on this platform.
One of their most creative ideas is to offer free shipping on most pinned items. This creates both online engagement and in-store sales.
One of our favorite platforms for a variety of reasons. You can cross post between G+ (hangouts) and YouTube videos.
This way the video you have created of the hangout and any comments will automatically show up in the G+ news stream, which is a very good value add.
One of the best examples on this platform is Toyota. They call their hangouts Toyota Collaborator.
A great way to incentivize cooperation with customers … and engage and work with them. Think you could obtain some valuable insights in this manner?
LinkedIn
There are many ways to use creative ideas on this platform. Here is one for your consideration: build an interactive resume by adding rich media and detailed descriptions.
Think about including status updates photos, presentations, and demonstrations. Pottery Barn, as an example, showcases images of its products in use illustrating creative menu items.
This does a great job of building more views and engagements.
Facebook
Not a very good platform for business to business engagement.
But an awesome site for our family to share pictures of grandchildren and interesting activities going on in their daily lives.
350 million pictures uploaded every day. Amazing.
Social media initiative examples … YouTube
Does your business like to use videos and are you looking for more?
Take advantage of YouTube’s video editor and combine some of the existing videos to create new videos that show off your products in action. Use Adobe Premiere pro transitions pack to make your videos dynamic and memorable for viewers.
Our business security system supplier, ADT, has an interesting initiative to consider.
They allow viewers to have a look into the homes of athletes who use the ADT pulse service.
Have you tried Vine?
Social media examples … Vine
Are you a frequent viewer of Vine posts? Only 6 seconds to implement ideas, so you have to do well to be great with this initiative.
Lots of applications for this interesting video platform.
One of the best ones we believe is how to do instructions on simple tasks.
Check out some of the ones done by Lowes.
Key takeaway
Building a positive social media community engagement is very similar to making friends. Keep it simple and be genuine.
Being social with a great positive engagement isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business.
Follow these simple initiative examples and you will be leading the way.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media lessons from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
10 Essential Components of a Top Notch Website Design
Chances are if you have been in business for a little awhile, you probably have received at least a few complaints. It can be all too easy to internalize and take these complaints personally and get defensive in your replies back. It is much better if you focus on turning unhappy customers with social advocacy.
So, ok … we have taken a small liberty on Peter Drucker’s quote. We added the part about who creates customers. We are pretty sure Drucker would agree with us. After all, building customer advocates are one of the most important jobs of the business.
Let’s remind us what an advocate is. An advocate is a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular business, cause or policy. For example, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are groups that work to publicize and find solutions for particular issues.
These are your most critical situations. They will most likely affect many (if not all) of your customers instead of just one or a few.
This includes crisis communication issues such as these that you’ll recognize:
Outages
Security breaches
Major product bugs
In these situations, you should default to your specific crisis communications plan. If you don’t have a plan drafted already, I will encourage you to work with your support team, PR folks, and all necessary stakeholders to get a full response plan in place. Including a full list of emergency points of contact.
Product or support issues
These issues may or may not be your fault. They may be a product bug or a perceived injustice from the customer.
In these situations, we recommend a five-step process to de-escalate the unhappy client.
Listen well
The quickest way to take control and begin to turn around a negative customer experience is to listen to the client well.
Repeat back the problem
This may seem like an unnecessary step. However, so many situations wind up escalating because both sides are trying to solve different problems. Simply taking the first sentence or two to restate the customer’s problem can go a long way.
Classify the problem type of problem
Is it an instance where you or your team made an error? In that case, your mindset should be what are you going to do to fix it. How will you make things right again with the customer?
Is it a product bug? You need to replicate and document the issue as thoroughly as you can, and then get it to your supplier or product team.
Is it a perceived injustice or a misunderstanding with the customer? Either you need to help them find a suitable resolution to their pain point.
Respond quickly
Your first response back to the customer should be within 24 hours, and even that is pushing it. In fact, according to Hubspot, 72% of people who complain on Twitter expect a response within an hour.
If you have a resolution for the client within that initial 24 hours, you should apologize for the issue. Then document out the full resolution in your reply.
If you need more information from the customer, your response should be one that reassures them. You should tell them they are in good hands and you will work with them to get this resolved.
If the issue is something more long-standing like a product bug, your response should be one that reassures the customer that your team is taking action. Then keep them apprised of the status
Follow-up after resolution
We recommend reaching back to the customer a couple of days later just to check-in. Even the most difficult customers will appreciate you taking the time to check in with them. This will go a long way in rebuilding trust with this customer.
Product feedback
Feature requests and product feedback are other areas that can lead to some negative customer experiences if unchecked. You ideally should have measures in place to bring in ample customer feedback into your product development process.
In fact, here are ten great tips from Vimeo’s community team for how they organize their community product feedback. However, that’s probably not going to stop such occasional suggestions coming through. When this happens, it’s important to realize these are coming from power users of your product.
Even if they aren’t shouting your product to the rooftops, these are the people who already value your product so much that they are coming to you with suggestions for how to make it better.
You should acknowledge and cherish these customers extra tightly.
Here’s how you can reply to these customers in a way that makes them feel valued and heard even if they are receiving a “no” to their response.
As you get more product feedback streaming into your support team, you should set up a system where you can send feedback around feature requests to your product team on a regular basis.
Your advocates
My first job was working at a cashier at a McDonalds in a mall food court at the age of 16. While the job was far from glamorous, it did teach me a lot about how to handle the “regular customers.” In this case, these were customers who frequented this store on a regular basis. They ranged from being very picky about their orders to expecting the same meal/service each time.
Then there were the ones who would scream at you for only giving them one napkin instead of 3.
Your support team probably has a few regulars of their own. They are the ones who frequent a particular channel on a regular basis and never seem to be satisfied despite whatever resolution you give them.
These are the ones where it can be easy to take personally or just want to blow them off as the “difficult customer.” That’s rarely a wise move.
The best thing you can do in these situations is to try and isolate the root issue behind all of their concerns. Try using a root-cause-analysis. The key to this approach is you can get to the lingering, real root issue of the problem by asking up to 5 WHY questions.
For example, they might be a frequent complainer about specific facets of your product. However, their real issue is that they are trying to cast blame on these specific issues instead of the larger issue that’s impacting their satisfaction.
The 5 WHYS Approach
Here is a technique I really appreciate. Let me explain why.
The vast majority of the time you can get to the root of the customer’s issue in a 15-minute phone call. The simple objective of the call is for you to listen. I can guarantee that you will learn something from the customer in that time and more importantly the customer will appreciate you listening to them.
If you are lucky, you will be able to resolve the problem on the spot. However, in many scenarios, this is probably something you can’t fix.
I love helping people and want to go out my way to help people fix their problems. However, in these situations, the best thing you can do for the customer is pointing them to the best, possible resources where they can get their issue resolved.
Antagonizers
Antagonizers.
This is a specific type of customer that you will likely only see within your online channels.
They are the types of clients that thrive off fueling the biggest audience possible around their issues.
If left unchecked, these customers can create chaos in your community. It requires moderation. In any scenario, you should default back to your community guidelines and craft an email communicating the issue and why the client’s actions violate your community guidelines.
Social advocacy … legal issues
Even if you have tremendous trust in your support team to do right by your customers, you should escalate these concerns to your legal team right away. This isn’t something your support agents are going to be equipped to handle.
The actual response process should be detailed in full in your crisis communications plan.
Really bad people
These are the customers, who are quite frankly just bad (not just challenging) customers. These are the customers who:
Make personal attacks on people, not problems.
Prone to non-constructive feedback, including excessive use of profanity.
Spiteful outbursts
In these scenarios, it’s absolutely in your best interest to nicely part ways with the particular customer.
Regardless of how dicey the situation may be, all scenarios can be made so much better by simply listening, acknowledging and emphasizing with the customer. This can go the longest way even when you are giving the customer an answer they don’t want to hear.
The bottom line
It shouldn’t take more than one unpleasant experience for a business owner to realize that proactive measures are more effective when it comes to customer service than having to respond to an unhappy customer. The tips mentioned here represent just a portion of the steps a business owner can take to set things right with a customer who’s disappointed, angry, or upset.
Although the situation might be slightly different when dealing with a customer who’s downright nasty, the principles applied are still the same: an unhappy customer will wreak havoc on a business’s reputation unless the business owner rectifies the situation.
There will be times when nothing can be done to satisfy an unhappy customer. But employees who handle customer service complaints quickly, efficiently and professionally will minimize those issues and will give employees a sense of ownership in their jobs and the company.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Do you explore and test a lot of new tools on a consistent basis? Perhaps you are a tool addict like me? I am always on the lookout for simple ones that make the biggest difference on social media. This article will discuss my favorite Twitter tools.
Through many experiences, I have often found this passion can be a disability regarding the time required.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 marketers are using content marketing. While more marketers are shifting their content creation efforts in-house, at the same time, the state producing enough quality content is their biggest challenge. And that does create a time drain also.
Marketers certainly need to focus less on producing more content and turn their attention towards providing better quality in their content promotion. And, while content marketing is more than just tools and needs a solid strategy to be successful, there are a plethora of tools out there that can make the job of promoting content easier.
Want to learn more about the best Twitter tools?
The one tool that will do my job for me. Seriously. I know that it doesn’t exist, but I am always on the lookout, and when I am blocked on a project, I play in the app/tool store. I waste time.
Hunting for the best tools in the game, the addictive kind that robs from my productivity. In the end, I would be better off just writing, mustering up a bit of self-discipline.
When I look for helpful, time-saving tools, I often grab ones that make a difference in one or more of these areas. It’s how I got started with Buffer’s sharing app, and it’s how I’ve tested tools in the past.
Each of the time-saving social media Twitter productivity tools I’ve highlighted below are ones I have found most useful. Especially the free ones. Here’s hoping that they can unlock some spare time for you.
Criteria for best tools performance
An awesome tool strikes a subtle balance that makes you happy but does not waste your time. I have found, in my wandering, criteria for measuring the quality of an app for bloggers. I review the apps to see if they are:
Focusing
The best tools allow you to focus on and spend more time in your content world, writing. Your value as a blogger is your ability to string together words that communicate effectively, and being in a flow state produces your social media. The best apps do not interfere with your flow in engagement but facilitate it.
Productive
The best tools produce, adding to your skills and abilities without overpowering. One job as a blogger is to create quality community engagement, so the best ones should add to and accent your work. Many tools can be productivity black holes, and you need someone with experience to help you locate the best.
Best free twitter tools.
Efficient
While producing and managing your excellent content, the best tools also need to be effective. They work hard, fast, and accurately. You don’t have to waste time waiting for the device to work or trying to fix it. Efficient tools augment your flow in writing.
I expect a lot of my priority tools, and you should too. Your time is your most valuable asset. All of the tools that I share with you here meet the three criteria for a great tool. You can make your social media more powerful by using these tools.
I have used the Twitter platform for the last 10+ years. Here are my favorite tools. Some I have used from the beginning, some only recently.
Favorite Twitter Tools … RiteTag
RiteTag is a hashtag tool that allows you to view statistics on hashtags to find the best ones for each post. With the free account, you can connect one Facebook and Twitter account, while the paid accounts allow you to connect multiple accounts.
After you install the browser plugin, go to the site you want to share and click the RiteTag icon on the browser’s toolbar. This brings up a dialog box with the site URL and description. You can then add text and hashtags.
Research individual hashtags on the RiteTag website. You can monitor tags you frequently use (such as your brand tags) and get alerts when they’re mentioned on social channels.
Create alerts for specific hashtags. The scoring of hashtags helps you determine when a tag has become overused so you can choose another that will work better for your brand.
Tweet Jukebox is a free scheduling tool that allows you to load a “jukebox” with content, schedule when you want tweets to go out, and then sit back and let it do the job for you. You can create more than one jukebox, load it with thousands of tweets and then send out as many as 100 tweets per day.
Your account comes preloaded with two jukeboxes, one with photo content and one with quotes, to get you started. You have the option to tweet jukebox content once, regularly, or until a specific date.
Add a name for your new jukebox, choose how often to tweet, and then turn the jukebox on. Tweet Jukebox allows you to set schedules for different times on different days of the week. When it runs out of content, it automatically starts tweeting again from the beginning.
Spruce
Spruce is a free, easy-to-use tool that allows you to quickly create images with custom text for Twitter (and Facebook). Choose a picture from the library, add your text, preview your post and publish it. It’s as simple as that.
Spruce makes it easy to find images and add your text. Spruce allows you to upload your images and download completed images for later use. You can check the post and add text before publishing it.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to tweet using the service, so you can create and add them to your scheduler, too.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is a highly useful tool for managing your followers and posts. The functionality of the free account is not bad. Or you can choose from two levels of paid accounts to get more features. These would include Welcome to the Frontpage the left column of the main dashboard, find out more about your followers by exploring different views, such as Not Following Back, No Profile Image, Inactive, Fake (Spam), Influence, and Muted Users.
This allows you to quickly unfollow accounts that don’t offer any benefit, identify spam followers, and more. For example, suppose you want to find people you’re following but who aren’t following you back. Choose the Not Following Back option to see a list of users to check out and unfollow if necessary.
Use ManageFlitter to see accounts you’re following but don’t follow you in return. Hover over a user’s name to bring up details about that person, including his or her bio, location, language, and the average number of tweets per day.
Commun.it
Commun.it is a Twitter relationship management tool. There are three paid plans to choose from, depending on the features you need. You can also access and use the free account, with limited functionality. The dashboard is full of useful information. The view below shows the Actions tab, which allows you to see at a glance who to follow, unfollow or engage with based on the tool’s suggestions.
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
I’ve resisted investing in social media advertising for a long time, believing that there is a host of free and helpful tools and free strategies. I have always felt such tools and strategies can help your businessgrow on social media organically. Here are some of the best Facebookads design factors that can take you beyond this type of thinking.
There are so many inspiring digital marketers who are pioneering the best practices and cool strategies for social media advertising.
As we dip our toes further into social ads here at Buffer, it’s been fun to discover all the greattips we might try. I’ve collected eight of my favorite ones here in this blog post—a list of simple, actionable tips that drive successful Facebook ads.
Best Facebook ads … focus on Facebook relevance score
Ad relevance score is a metric in ads reporting that provides an estimate of how relevant an ad is to its target audience, based on how the ad is performing and other factors.
When your ad’s score is high, it’s more likely to be shown to your audience than other ads. You also pay less to reach more of your target audience.
The score will range from 1 to 10, ten meaning we estimate your ad is highly relevant and one meaning we estimate your ad isn’t very relevant. It will be based on some factors, including positivefeedback we expect from the people seeing your ad (ex: clicks, app installs, video views) and negative feedback (ex: someone clicks I don’t want to see this on your ad).
You’ll be able to see this score once your ad has had about 500 impressions.
Jon Loomer wrote a detailed breakdown of Facebook’s relevance score, explaining what it is and how it’s calculated.
Briefly, relevance score helps explain the way Facebook views your ad and why it might prefer certain ads you’ve created versus others. It is a very valuable metric.
Secret Facebook ad design factors … reverse psychology
When marketing thinkers talk about “the death of traditional advertising,” they may not only mean the shift to digital but a much larger transformation to alternative methods of genuinely reaching the consumer.
According to Indrajit Sinha and Thomas Foscht, authors of “Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New ‘Pull’ Game,” reverse psychology marketing, pull marketing, and anti-marketing may not be familiar buzzwords. However, there is a global change happening regarding defining the most effective ways to communicate with consumers and increase sales.
To accomplish these goals amid overwhelming noise in the digital world, it often takes the most daring ideas.
Regarding alternative marketing, capitalizing on psychological principles is certainly not new territory. Leveraging reverse psychology can be a controversial choice, and certainly a risky one, but even church billboards have seen success with this simple tactic.
Reverse psychology can be loosely defined as a method of getting someone to do what you want by pretending not to want it or by pretending to want something else. This is largely tied in with reactance theory, the idea that people who feel their sense of control is being taken away from them will grab it back by not doing what they are asked.
Blogger Jens-Petter Berget writes, “The reason why reverse psychology in marketing works is that it generates curiosity.” For this reason, it is not a technique that can be drawn upon frequently and remain effective, as it will quickly lose its magic.
Best Facebook ad examples.
Create multiple versions of the headlines or ads
When I write headlines for many of my posts, I try to define 3-4 options. This gives me test options and alternatives for blog posts.
The same idea works with social media ads.
When you read about a successful social media ad, it’s likely that the ad has gone through a few key variations based on these actions:
The theory behind why these button works are that it helps focus your ad to an even greater degree, like a Mario mushroom for your already great copy. Adding a button enhances the call-to-action and primes a reader to take action.
As for which button works best, you might notice that one fits your niche particularly well (“Book Now,” for instance, would be great for vacation spots). For the “Learn More” button, there seems to be growing evidence that it’s the best overall bet for engagement.
Pay attention to mobile traffic
When creating a social media ad, you’ll typically have the option of segmenting the audience by some factors, including those using a desktop/laptop versus a mobile device.
To fully optimize your conversion rate, show your ad to those on desktops and laptops. Don’t show your ad on mobile.
A couple of additional notes here also:
Not only do the most successful social media ads hone in on the device type, but they also keep in mind the location of the ad.
Typically sidebar display ads—like those offered by Twitter or Facebook—see lower click through numbers (they’re recommended as a great option for retargeting). The best results are those that appear natively in the News Feed or timeline. Ezra Firestone calls these “advertisements that blend in with the platform.”
Removing mobile display from your ads is an often-recommended strategy, though there are two sides to the discussion.
Brian Honigman, writing at SumAll, mentions that your ads should focus on mobile first to capture the huge volume of Facebook traffic that accesses the site from mobile devices.
Promote a deal
Social media ad examples.
In a survey of Facebook users, 67 percent of people said they were likely to click on a discount offer.
A simple strategy for a successful social media ad: Mention a discount in your copy.
The custom landing page
If the goal of your social media ad is conversions—sales, signups, what-have-you—then you’ll want to think not only of the ad itself but also where a person might end up once they click.
Picture social media ads as a two-step process:
Create the ad
Create the destination
Some of the most successful social media advertising campaigns include custom landing pages, where the copy carries over from the ad and the action crystal clear.
The more targeted your ad, the more targeted your landing page needs to be
You’ll see this often with e-commerce ads that do a great job targeting a single product and then send the person from the ad to the main product page, full of menus and related products and all sorts of potentially distracting (albeit eminently useful) places to click.
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement in social media marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their brand marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media platforms from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.
– Marty Kohr
Nonversation? Heard that term before? In context with a social commerce business? Hope not. Simple definition: the opposite of a productive conversation.
Many nonversations transpire at elevators, bus stops, and the like. They also occur during business situations, in which participants do not really listen meaningfully to one another. Not what you want for a world-class social commerce business.
We define social commerce business as the use of social engagement to personalize and energize the shopping experience. It provides a social context to shopping and is both a channel and a way of doing business.
So how do we propose to build a world-class social commerce business? Here are 10 ways we recommend to our clients:
It starts with great employees
Employees are your service. Hire for their friendly, caring attitude and train for skills and knowledge. Empower them to be customer advocates.
Make social the centerpiece
Socialize your business. People do business with people, so make it personal. Customers should want to do business with you because of you and your employees. Make your customers “feel at home.” You may have a great location, cool displays, great value, etc. That’s all great, but if your people can’t make your customers feel welcome and appreciated, all of the other doesn’t matter so much.
Share all great service stories
As soon as possible with all of your team. Celebrate the smallest of successes.
Show common courtesy
All the time. This leads to customer respect, which leads to conversation and the building of relationships and mutual trust.
Care for customers
Assume you are the company owner. Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated. Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees, and then follow their lead.
Analyze when things go right.
When a company receives a complaint people usually have discussions to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Next time you receive a letter of praise, meet to find out what went right and how it can be repeated.
All the time
Amazing companies don’t always deliver “Wow!” type experiences, they are just better than average – all of the time. All of the time is the secret sauce.
Attention to details
Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you. Be vigilant … always listening and learning. Try and remember things customers tell you and then show them you listened. Trying new ideas. Put your social commerce business in motion by being adaptable.
Customer experience
One sure way to erode loyalty and social commerce is to deliver an inconsistent customer service experience. One time it’s great. The next time it is barely average. And, the next time it may be great again. Inconsistency creates uncertainty and erodes customer confidence and trust. Lack of confidence and trust leads to giving customers a reason to consider your competition.
Create a customer service culture
It starts by practicing what we call, “The Employee Golden Rule”: Treat your employees the way you want the customer treated – maybe even better.
Now it’s up to you. Choose one customer service strategy to start with. Have a meeting around it. Discuss how to implement it. Then, do it and repeat the process, creating something good for your customers to talk about! Soon you will have a much stronger social commerce business.
The bottom line
This is your time to create and take action on customer engagement insights from successful influencers. With good continuity and persistence, relevant insights will be helpful in developing lasting relationships with your customers.
Lead with initiative and own the moment. Dive in today and notice how much your business improvements grow.
Remember this simple fact. Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in. Let your content marketing success be your difference-maker.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Search Engine Optimization or, (SEO) refers to techniques you can use to improve your website’s ranking and help your business (in any of the search engines that people use today). It can mean the difference between you being at the top or, the bottom and, if you want to attract free Internet traffic and potential customers, it’s something you need to focus on and get it right.
This is true even if you hire an expert SEO firm instead of working on the site yourself. While you can expedite the process with on-page SEO, there’s no ‘magic button’ that will make your website show up in search results overnight.”
Search engine friendly
When designing your website or reworking it you should consider a theme for each page and then assign keywords based upon the theme, be sure to keep the keywords updated as they will change with time depending on what people are searching for. The best way to ensure your website is fully optimized for Google is to hook up with an award-winning outfit such as kingkong.co, who really knows their stuff.
This is true even if you hire an expert SEO firm instead of working on the site yourself. While you can expedite the process with on-page SEO, there’s no ‘magic button’ that will make your website show up in search results overnight.
Choosing your keywords
You want to make a list of keywords, maybe 10 or so for each page and then you can use free tools such as Google AdWords, it will help to generate new word and phrase ideas for you helping you to reach more customers based upon what they search using the search engine.
Title of your page
Search engines will make use of your title page so it is important that a lot of thought and consideration is put into what title you use and how that will be relevant to what people are going to be searching for.
The title should be unique, but also include relevance to your products as well as what the customers might be looking for, it can be tricky so employing the help of a specialist often comes in handy. Click here for ways that a small business can be more competitive.
The page description
You will have noticed that when you use a search engine not only will a link to a website be displayed but you will also see a description of what you are likely to see if you click on the web link.
This is your chance to really engage your audience and captivate them so much that they cannot help but to click on your web link and go to your page.
Constant monitoring
SEO is constantly evolving as people use the Internet, so it is vital that your content is monitored in the same way, alterations or changes will need to be made to your website to keep it current and attractive to potential customers. Good examples can be found in Digital Spark Marketing.
More importantly, it must contain information that will drive people to your site when they conduct a search, more views equal more potential customers, if you put enough work in at the start and maintain the same practice moving forward then you should get repeat customers for years to come. Here is some Australian government information about SEO in general, which all business owners should read.
The bottom line
SEO is a complex field and the best way to move forward is to seek out a leading SEO agency, as they have the know-how and resources to put your business firmly on the map.
I’ll admit it – I tend to be a cheapo when it comes to most things in my business. I will buy the generic over the name brand any day. And if I can find some free online best content creation tools for winning visual content, something I’d otherwise have to pay for in my marketing, you guessed it, I’ll do it.
In my quest to find alternatives to the most sophisticated computer apps, I’ve come across a lot of free tools that help take my marketing up a notch. They also save my team’s budget.
I love to share my research, and I wanted to share these tools with you. There will be some occasions where you won’t be able to avoid paying for some tools you need to rock your job.
However, lots of times you can increase the quality of your visual content with just a free resource.
But you have to know the free tool is out there in the first place. So without any further ado, let’s get to the meat of the post. That is the most important free tools you can use to create winning visual content.
PowerPoint Templates
Some may believe that designing in PowerPoint isn’t professional. I am not one of them.
I like to think of it as a visual content testing ground for people who don’t have the budget or time to work with Photoshop.
That way, you don’t have to drop a lot of money for a complex program, only to not get your money’s worth.
Pictaculous
One of the most important elements of design is your color palette. Here you want to make sure your images, graphics, and font colors all help convey your message.
Maybe even drive conversions.
But often, it’s hard to find that exact shade of blue that’s in a photograph you need to use. That is where Pictaculous comes in.
Upload a photo and then instantly get recommendations for colors to use, including their respective HEX codes. Your color palettes will never be uncoordinated again!
Taking screenshots can be annoying if you don’t have the right tool up your sleeve. Often, you can only capture what is visible on your screen. That makes screenshots of long web pages especially grueling.
Or, you have to use 20 different programs to crop, edit, and annotate screenshots.
Well, with Awesome Screenshot, a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, you can easily screenshot anything on the web and edit it directly within your browser.
This extension has become a staple of my browser — I can’t go back to regular old screenshots anymore.
PlaceIt
Even if you have the tool to create a gorgeous screenshot, that’s not always the most professional way to display web page content.
Sometimes, you need a photo of your website, blog, or Twitter profile, but with polished flair. You can try manually customizing your screenshot to fit into a stock photo you already have.
Or you can use PlaceIt as an even better alternative. Upload photos directly into Creative Commons-enabled stock photos, and you’ll see your screenshots come to life immediately.
PlaceIt is probably the best app anyone running an online business could ask for. It allows you to create high-quality images featuring your app or product being used in real life.
All you have to do is upload a screenshot of your product and let the tool do its magic. It will save you countless hours because it does this automatically for you.
This would otherwise take hours of work in Photoshop.
Share as Image enables you to create some potent eye candy for your blog. You can turn any text or image into attractive and shareable content in minutes.
This is due to a wide variety of fonts, high-quality photos, and filters offered by the app itself.
There is nothing like some custom images to help you dazzle your audience.
BeFunky is a multi-functional image editor which allows you to produce beautiful visual content. This is particularly true even if image-editing and graphic design aren’t one of your stronger suits.
Its functionality is not limited to just creating images, though. You can come up with striking collages and your very own custom graphic designs.
Best of all, it is browser-based so that you can access it anywhere, anytime.
Okay, let’s say you don’t have the budget for Photoshop and feel somewhat limited by PowerPoint’s visual editing capabilities. Now what?
What are you to do? If you want to spruce up your images, such as recolor them, add borders, add text, and even insert graphics on top, check out PicMonkey.
The good news is that you can do it all without downloading yet another program to your computer. The whole photo editing process is intuitive.
This means you can spend more time optimizing your blog posts instead of sprucing up its featured images.
If you’re looking for a Creative Commons image, but are finding terrible options through its native search engine, check out Compfight.
While it often surfaces similar content, I spend half the time looking for engaging Creative Commons images than with the native search tool.
Why? This is because Compfight’s algorithm seems to sort gorgeous images right to the top. A bonus for you.
You never have to worry about correct attribution again. This is because Compfight will automatically generate HTML code you can embed on your website to properly credit the original author.
If you’re looking to make interactive infographics and not just plain visuals, check out this free tool. Easily add graphs, maps, text, and even playable videos without diving deep into a design program.
It also has social sharing tools built right into the infographic, so you don’t have to worry about creating a custom Pin-It button.
It’s a pretty nifty tool if you want to create and ship an infographic — fast.
Say goodbye to your weird Microsoft Paint drawings and say hello to polished, professional Google Drawings.
If you have a personal Gmail or your company uses Google Apps, you can use Google Drawings to create custom visual content. One of my favorite features about it is that it comes with an invisible background right off the bat.
This helps so you can create custom shapes that can easily be pasted on top of your other marketing collateral.
It is the perfect way to spruce up an updated ebook call-to-action or even customize a stock photo.
And the best part of all is that you can collaborate with your co-workers on the drawing by sharing the document, just like you would any other Google Document.
Content creation tools … put filters on your images
The foremost stage of making the any Instagram account a successful platform for marketing is to describe your company’s objectives.
The images you upload are a strong replication of your business. They deliver the desired effect to your target market by creating an emotional affiliation with your customers.
It is necessary that your photos have a cohesive approach which integrates with your brand or product.
A Color Storyis the tool that can assist you in this. This tool makes it much easier to tune the pictures and give them a professional texture.
Content creation tools … repost and share others’ posts
If you want to get a good Instagram feed, it is necessary to make a sharing, supporting, and appealing community there. It is one the finest things to do for making your business competent.
If you want to integrate with and get support from your Instagram audience, it is important to reciprocate your content, and you should remain very engaged.
Make sure you are sharing the content in a way that can create a strong relationship with your followers.
There is a tool, “Repost for Instagram,” available for both Android and iOS platforms which makes it much easier to repost the Instagram pictures.
Reposting to your feed while sharing the content and giving credits to other users.
The bottom line
For social analysts with general needs, there might not be a clear, must-use option. But as your focus grows more specific, some graphics tools should emerge as favorites.
Use this list as a guide — you’re sure to find a social media design tool that works with the platforms you value and delivers the information you need.
What are your go-to resources for creating beautiful infographics? Let us know in the comments.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s teamwork, collaboration, and learning? Creative ideas in running or facilitating teamwork or continuous learning workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on tools and APPS from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
9 Things to Know About Creative Visual Design Content
8 Presenter Mistakes That Are Rarely Made Twice
Know These Great Secrets of Collaboration and Co-Creation
How Good Is Your Learning from Failure?
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business
People use the same two or three search engines for all of their needs, but they use different social networks to cover different aspects of their lives. They want to create tactics.
The same person may use LinkedIn for their professional life, Facebook to keep up with friends, Twitter to get the latest news, and Instagram and Pinterest to share pictures.
But there are other social networks, smaller ones, that have other uses as well.
And although they are “smaller,” they still have tens or hundreds of thousands of users. If a large percentage of these users are in your target audience, that should justify being active on that network.
Here’s the big benefit of smaller networks: barely any other business uses them!
Think about it. The biggest businesses need a huge audience, so they stick to the biggest social networks.
The small and medium-sized businesses typically just copy the big businesses (or most of them do).
But that leads to one problem:
All the social media strategy guides and tools are designed for the “big” social networks. How are you supposed to know what to do?
This process will work on just about every social network out there.
One of the reasons why very few businesses take advantage of the smaller networks is because they are harder to find than the ones that everyone talks about.
Expect to have to dig around for 30-60 minutes to find the best one for your business.
Keep in mind that you don’t need a network to have millions of users to make it a good target for your marketing.
And there are hundreds of social networks that fit this criterion, so it’s just a matter of finding the right one(s) for your business.
A good starting place is this Wikipedia list, which has about 100 different networks. Each network has a description to help you determine whether it might be right for you.
An important note: don’t expect every network to look and act like Facebook and Twitter.
At first, you might not be sure if you can find a way to turn users into customers, but in most cases, there’s a way if you’re willing to be creative (more on that later).
What networks are based around
All networks have their own purpose—their own sort of niche(s).
Ideally, you’re looking for networks that align with your business’ niche(s).
Most networks are based on certain types of interactions, interests, or locations. Most are a combination of the three.
For example, Badoo is a social network with 20 million active users, but it’s mainly popular in Latin America and certain European countries such as Italy and Spain.
Or consider Meetup, which allows people in certain cities to create groups around interests. This is a great network for local businesses because you can engage people in your area in person.
Finally, Classmates is a network dedicated to reconnecting with high school friends. It’s essentially one specific part of Facebook.
There are many networks that are location independent. They focus on specific interests. They can get really specific.
For example, Ravelry is a social network for people who love knitting. If you owned a business related to knitting, you couldn’t find a better place to interact with your audience.
For now, write down all the networks you think might have your target audience.
Time to answer a HUGE question
Here’s what you need at this point: an account plus a plan to get users to your website.
If you need help with a plan, review this social media strategy, and then modify it to suit your network.
The huge question that you need to answer right now is:
Do you want to commit to this network for several months?
The reason why this is so important is because your results on almost any social network will be slow at first. It’s only after consistently being active and executing your strategy that you will be able to drive significant traffic.
So, if you don’t think you could do it for longer than 5-6 months, you might as well not start.
That’s the mentality you need to possess to succeed with your plan.
Let me illustrate this for you…
If you go to my Facebook page right now (just search “Neil Patel” on Facebook), you’ll see that even in the worst-case scenario, I still get over 100 likes and several shares. Note that only a small percentage of traffic actually “likes” the share, so it drives considerably more:
That seems good, right?
The most important key to social media success
Do you get it?
How you execute your strategy on a consistent basis will either make you or break you. That’s why I devoted an entire section to it.
Besides having the right mindset, you’ll also need other things, namely content.
Not all social media sites are built on content, but most are.
And when I say content, I’m talking about articles and guides that you can share with the network community through your profile…just like you would by posting on Facebook or tumblr.
Part #1 – Decide what kind of content you need
You probably already know this because of your earlier research.
Figure out what role content plays in the way users interact.
On the knitting network, users shared tutorials and tips on the forum. Sharing good content there could help you build up your reputation and make more connections.
On tumblr, you share content by posting it to your blog. You can even repost entire blog posts there as long as you credit the author.
On networks more similar to Facebook and Twitter, you need short messages to share. Some will be short descriptions with a link to a blog post, but some will be interesting messages like inspirational quotes.
Once you know what type of content you’ll need, move on to the next part.
Part #2 – Find proven content that attracts shares
The first goal of sharing content is to share something that your followers and community actually value.
When you do that consistently, it does many good things. It:
first creates, then deepens your relationship with your followers
optional: allows you to build relationships with the authors of the content you share (extra bonus!)
If you’re serious about success, you need to find a way to do this
What’s the key to social media success?
Consistency (just reminding you).
So, now that you know what content and how much of it you need to post, you need to come up with a system that will help keep you on track.
The two components of such a system are: its efficiency and ease of implementation.
Having to log in and make a post every X hours is not easy or efficient. You’ll likely miss some posts that you’d like to make, which will slow down your results.
Luckily, there are some ways to design a system that’s better, mostly through automation.
Determine what can and should be automated
It would be great if everything could be automated because it would take no time on your part, but it can’t be.
Some things can’t or shouldn’t be automated:
Curating content – don’t just share any content. Take the time to read posts so that you can share the best ones.
Interacting with users – you can’t automate authentic conversation. If you’re ever commenting or messaging a user, do it yourself.
Your strategy needs to be refined
It took me years of trial and error to figure out how to create a solid system for the big social media sites. And it’s still not perfect.
Your strategy is likely good if you followed all the research steps, but it could always be improved.
And just a few small improvements can lead to a much faster growth rate in the long run.
So, how do you refine a system?
As you use the network more, you might notice that some things you’re doing aren’t as effective as they should be.
However, the best way to refine a system is by using data. Data doesn’t lie.
To start with, you’ll need to pick a few metrics to track. I recommend two to four.
When I say important, I mean pick those that influence the amount of traffic you can drive to your site. Even if you’re not driving much traffic now, it will make a big difference in the future.
Using Facebook as an example, I can tell you that the important metrics are:
Page likes – the more page likes, the bigger the audience that I can share my content with (and that can click through)
Status likes – friends of followers who like a post also see it, potentially growing my audience
Status shares – the more shares, the wider my reach
Comments – more interaction will add social proof to my content
Metrics are pretty similar across different networks, but make sure you’re focusing on those that can influence your traffic later on.
Now, you just need to collect data by running your initial strategy. Thirty days is a good test period.
At the end, check your metrics. See how many shares and likes you’re getting. If it’s not as much as you’d like, come up with an idea to improve your system.
It may be to post more, post different content, connect with different types of people, and so on.
Then, do another cycle of 30 days. If the results improve, integrate the change into your system, and come up with a new idea.
Always keep trying to refine and improve your system.
The bottom line
Social media sites are one of the best sources of traffic.
But just because a network isn’t named Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean it can’t help your business.
Smaller social networks often have far fewer marketers on them than larger ones do, which makes any type of marketing on them much more effective.
If you follow the steps I laid out for you in this post, you can find golden opportunities to establish yourself as a big fish in a small pond.
Even small networks can drive thousands of visitors per month to your website if you do some work.
Consumers are bombarded with advertisements (such as valuable links) in their email inboxes and on social media sites. So much so, that they have become “blind” to online advertising. Mobile marketing is gaining traction because of the rising ineffectuality of online advertising and also because consumers spend a considerable number of their waking hours on their mobiles.
SMS marketing, especially, is proving to be an efficient way of reaching out to customers and increasing traffic to a marketer’s site. In this article, we provide a few ideas regarding effective links you can include in your SMS messages to clients.
Coupons
Entice your customers to visit your site by sending them SMSs that contain links to coupons. They can access the online coupons by typing in the keyword you’ve provided in your SMS and can then receive a discount on a product or service that you offer on your site.
To create a sense of urgency, you can send them a link to coupons for a sale that is only happening for a day or two. This may motivate customers to visit your site and see what’s on special. Always aim to make your customers feel that they’re special and important to you by using phrases such as “VIP customers” or “selected customers” in your messages.
Reviews
Another effective way of boosting traffic to your website is by asking customers to review your products, customer service, or business. Since you can only type 160 characters in a message, you can provide a link to a third-party application such as Google Reviews in your SMS, or you can send customers to your website’s review page.
Apart from driving user engagement through reviews, it’s also vital for your business to collect as many online customer reviews as possible. Research shows that customers are increasingly relying on reviews to make informed purchasing decisions. Once you’ve started generating reviews, you want to make this content accessible on your product pages for the convenience of your customers.
Engaging Content
You can also stay in touch with your customers by sending them messages that contain links to new blog posts, articles, or videos that you’ve posted on your website or social media pages. Since your customers are bound to access the content on their phones, you need to ensure that it’s in a mobile-friendly format. Although customers generally prefer videos, infographics, or shorter blog articles, this is especially the case when they’re accessing content on their phones.
You also want to ensure that you provide your customers with engaging content that is relevant to them. You may end up alienating your customers rather than encouraging them to interact with your brand if you send them irrelevant content. For this reason, it may be a good idea to sort your clients into subgroups that share certain commonalities so that you can more easily personalize your messages and provide them with appropriate content.
Adding SMS marketing to your marketing strategy is an effective and cheap way to reach your customers and increase traffic to your site. You can avoid any negative reactions from your clients by asking for their permission before you send them marketing SMSs. Once you have their permission, you can count on SMS marketing to greatly improve your customer relations.
It is a fact of the internet that every click, every view, and every sign-up is recorded somewhere. And theoretically, available forever. Depending on your view, this is either very creepy or fantastically interesting. As I can be a data nerd at times, I fall firmly in the second camp. Watch and learn from these social mediastatistics.
With a little effort, you can discover all sorts of interesting stats about most anything. We spend time keeping up with social media sites and users, so we’ve collated the best of them in this bumper facts list.
Social media use isn’t quite universal—but it’s getting close. Seventy percent of the U.S. population now has at least one social networking profile; more than half use two or more social networks. The number of worldwide social media users is projected to grow from 2.1 billion last year to 2.5 billion by 2018.
For the curious, these represent a series of numbers that boggle the mind, users counted in tens and hundreds of millions, and time in millions and billions of hours.
For marketers, knowing the statistics behind the social networks can help define strategy, allowing focused targeting of users.
There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day. (We Are Social, 2015)
Your mobile social media campaigns need to be optimized, and since mobile ads are relatively cheap and easy to produce, you can afford to do a little A/B testing to see what resonates with your audience.
Social media statistics … Facebook continues to be the most widely used social media platform, with 79% of American internet users. (Pew Research, 2016)
Based on total population, (not just internet users) 68% of U.S. adults (there’s a good chance your customers are included here) use it.
Here are some more stats about paid ads:
Instagram saw $595 million in mobile ad revenue in 2016. (WordStream, 2017)
That number is only going to increase this year.
Facebook ad revenue increased by 59% year over year in Q3 2016. (Seeking Alpha, 2016)
That’s almost 7 billion generated from ad sales. So, yes, it’s time to start advertising on Facebook.
More than 3 million businesses are advertising on Facebook. (Facebook, 2017)
Appeal to your audiences pain points with paid ads, and harness Facebooks enormous reach.
Posts on Linkedin that contain images have a 98% better comment rate (LinkedIn), and posts with links have a 200% higher engagement rate.
If you’re using LinkedIn as a part of your strategy (which you should be), listen up.
Facebook posts that pose questions generate 100% more comments. (HubSpot)
If it’s engagement you’re going for, try surveying your followers a little.
80% of marketers indicated that their social media efforts increased traffic. (HubSpot, 2014)
Your persona is already on social media, waiting for great content to show up on their timeline — all you have to do is provide it for them.
Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (HubSpot, 2017)
Facebook by far is the most important platform for marketers, with 62% of selecting Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 16%. (Social Media Examiner, 2017)
Facebook continues to hold the top spot as the biggest social media platform, but you’ll see that several other statistics suggest this might not be the case for long.
Social media statistics worldwide.
Most marketers aren’t sure their Facebook marketing is effective: 40% of marketers don’t know if it is working, and 53% have seen declines in their news feed exposure. (Social Media Examiner, 2017)
Facebook’s pay to play approach has led a lot of marketers to look elsewhere. Combine that with the next statistic, and you’ll understand why most marketers aren’t sure how well Facebook marketing is working out for them.
A surprising 93% of social marketers regularly use Facebook ads and 64% plan on increasing their Facebook ads activities. (Social Media Examiner, 2017)
Despite the drop-off of unpaid marketers using Facebook, many have given in to the pay to play approach, seeing a lot of success with paid ads.
Social media statistics … At least 91% of marketers want to know the most effective social tactics and the best ways to engage their audience with social media. (Social Media Examiner, 2017)
46% of web users look towards social media when making a purchase. (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
Social media is a great source for seeing real-time feedback from the customers of a business that you are considering purchasing from. This is why it’s important to have a dedicated social media team that can engage with fans and handle customer services problems quickly and professionally.
Most top brands are on Facebook (99%), followed by Twitter (97%), Google+ (70%), Pinterest (69%), and Instagram (59%). (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
While you might want your brand to be where the top brands are, this also shows that there are opportunities to reach your persona on social platforms where the top brands aren’t there to compete.
B2B marketers invest in social media to increase brand exposure (83%), increase web traffic (69%), and gain marketing insights (65%). (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook. (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
If your brand is targeting consumers, the odds are in your favor that you will find customers on social media.
The most common type of content posted by brands on Facebook is photos (75%), followed by links (10%), statuses (6%), albums (4%), video (4%), and other (1%). (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
The top 5 reasons why people follow brands on social media are; promotions and discounts, latest products information, customer service, entertaining content, and ability to offer feedback. (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
There should obviously be a balance between self-promotion and discussion with your social media posts, but the top reason people follow your brand is to stay updated on what you’re offering — don’t be afraid to show them.
Social media user statistics.
The average Twitter user follows 5 or more brands. (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
In the early days of social media, people were hesitant to mix brands and personal relationships on their timeline. However, Twitter users have always been more loyal to brands than Facebook users.
83.8% of luxury brands have a presence on Pinterest. (Marketing Tech Blog, 2014)
Pinterest users love to create boards dedicated to dream homes, dream vacations, and anything else that wish they had — such as luxury items.
Snapchat’s Daily Video Views Have Increased 400% year over year. (Bloomberg, 2016)
This presents one of the biggest opportunities to stand out, as Snapchat ads are viewed 1 million times a day, and its video views are now bigger than Facebook’s.
eBay is the most engaging brand on Twitter. (Dotrising, 2015)
If you’re going to study a brand to see what works for social engagement — learn from the best.
50% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn when making purchase decisions. (LinkedIn)
LinkedIn has always been the place for connecting professionals, so why not leverage your brand too? Chances are your prospects on LinkedIn are even more qualified.
There were over 4.4 million videos uploaded directly to Facebook in February 2016, generating over 199 billion views. (ReelSEO, 2017)
Video marketing is a powerful tool that personalizes your brand and increases conversions. And with the advent of Live Video, that trend is only going to continue.
A significant 61% of marketers plan on using live video services such as Facebook Live and Periscope. (Social Media Examiner, 2017)
And 69% want to learn more about live video.
Top brands on Instagram see a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21% which is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times higher than on Twitter. (Hootsuite, 2016)
Instagram has become a powerful platform for marketers, and its potential cannot be overlooked any longer.
In 2015 Facebook influenced 52 percent of consumers’ online and offline purchases, up from 36 percent in 2014. (The Drum, 2015)
This shows the importance for retailers to manage the social media channels which will have the biggest direct impact on purchase behavior.
95% of online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking. (MarketingSherpa, 2015)
Where does your audience lie? Think about your personas and see where they are most likely to follow your brand.
71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand is likely to recommend it to others.(Ambassador)
We are in an era where the user experience is king, so use your social media as a customer service tool to increase brand engagement and win new customers. These next few stats will prove it…
30% of millennials engage with a brand on social at least once a month. (SproutSocial, 2017)
If this is who you’re targeting, regular updates that pop up in your customer’s news feeds can go a long way.
This is a BIG no-no. People are looking to connect with brands before, after, and during their purchase. Create brand loyalty by engaging back with your audience. You want them to interact with you and your brand, so it’s only fair.
There is a total of 1.3 billion Twitter accounts, but only 320 million are active. (Business Insider, 2015)
While we don’t want to say Twitter might be on the downslope, especially with them rolling out a new ad program, Twitter’s market share is teetering. Reddit has occasionally passed Twitter as the number 3 social networking site in the top 10 platforms based on market share. We will let you draw your own conclusions.
YouTube (and even just YouTube mobile) reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. (YouTube, 2017)
Video content has gone from nice-to-have to MUST have.
68 percent of Instagram users engage with brands regularly, and Instagram has 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook. (SelfStartr, 2016).
The Instagram trend isn’t going anywhere as other industries (besides retail) start using Instagram as a part of their social media marketing. Oh, and the most Instagrammed food, in case you were wondering, is pizza.
More to learn: Best Facebook Ads … 8 Secret Design Factors for Successful Marketing
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement in social media marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we all are looking to take our success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creativeideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
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All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
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Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
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