Effective Leadership Skills For Social Media Agencies https://ift.tt/2XynL6i If you run a social media agency, chances are you have many young kids working within your organization who are between the ages of 18 to 24. While some might assume this to be a great financial advantage, the downside of having such young employees means that you will need to be able to manage them so that they can deliver at a high level. This means that you will be required to learn effective leadership skills. Effective leadership skills are proven with productivity and achievement of goals. A good leader has certain skills and personality traits which make them effective tools in an efficient workplace. If you want to be a great leader to ensure your agency is successful, here are some essential skills you will need to work on: Effective leadership requires flexibility and adaptabilityAccording to many of the top leaders, a good leader must be able to adapt to different circumstances at any time. If a problem is encountered that requires a different direction, they can change strategy to circumvent and solve the problem. They can also communicate this change in strategy in an easily understood manner. An Effective Leader is Goal Oriented“A leader has a vision and a plan to achieve that vision” says Sean Adams of Motivation Ping. “It is their responsibility to have a grasp of the final goal. A leader has the ability to see the whole picture.” Effective Leaders set high standardsA good leader sets high standards and takes steps to maintain them. They use skills of empathy and relationship management to convey expectations to team members and set clear goals. A good leader uses their own confidence to inspire self esteem in others. Setting high standards motivates team members to aspire to these standards. Good Leaders Are ActiveEffective leadership is active and does not waste too much time being contemplative. This requires the courage to take risks in order to achieve goals. Ideally you are responding to certain situations from a place of strength and wisdom rather than being reactive from a place of stress and anxiety. Leaders Have CompetenceGood leaders are highly competent in their field, they have wide knowledge of the organization’s procedures and structures. Effective leadership requires personal guidance and role modeling. Without thorough knowledge of the organization a leader is ineffective. With this knowledge they can provide constructive and informative feedback to staff. Consistency in Expectations and PerformanceEffective leadership requires consistency in expectations and personal performance. Without consistency in expectations, team members become confused and unmotivated. With inconsistent personal performance, the leader cannot provide a good model for team members. Good leaders have personal qualities of stability and reliability. With these traits a leader remains calm under pressure and uncertain working conditions. Personal Traits of a LeaderAn effective leader has certain personal traits which aid in developing leadership skills. A good leader has self confidence so they can inspire others, they are extroverts and can convey information and rules assertively. Effective leaders have emotional stability and provide consistency for workers. They have passion and knowledge of their work and can relay this passion to others. They are flexible and adaptable and have the courage to take risky decisions. Effective leadership skills require courage and an ability to motivate others. Effective leaders need certain personal qualities and an ability to develop skills which suit the organization in which they work. When these skills and qualities combine a leader can motivate others to achieve high standards and goals. The post Effective Leadership Skills For Social Media Agencies appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog May 25, 2020 at 07:25AM
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Are Single Sign on Social Logins Safe? https://ift.tt/2ZAOGB0 A Social login is a single sign-on process where existing information from social networking sites such as Facebook are used to register on a 3rd party website. Here are the steps to login using Social Login: 1. A user accesses the portal of a third party website asking to register. 2. The third-party website asks the user to register by either creating a unique username and password or use his/her Facebook login to sign in instead. The website then presents a Facebook widget that is complete with the Facebook logo right on its portal. The user then uses this widget to sign in and register. 3. By using that Facebook widget to sign in, the user saves time and effort of having to create a username and password that must be unique to that website. Instead the website will let that user enter by using his Facebook credentials. More often than not the user agrees to use his Facebook credentials for the reason of convenience. He then inputs his username and password onto the widget for verification. 4. Next, Facebook authenticates and verifies the credentials of the user. Once it is verified, Facebook accepts the login creds and communicates to the 3rd party website that the applying user is legitimate and true. 5. The 3rd party website acknowledges as it verifies with Facebook, and eventually authenticates the users login. The website then processes the registration of the user and approves it 6. The user is now a registered member of the website, and can now access the portal using only his Facebook username and password. Convenient, isn’t it? But is it safe? Is it Safe to Use Social logins? Whenever we sign up for a new account on a website, we, as users, tend to want to have it easier (who doesn’t anyway). We try to speed up the process of registering by reusing old passwords or even using passwords that we currently use for other sites. Mostly we end up with one password that we punch in all across the sites that we access. Not really a secure option. We all know that, if you have only one password that you use to access all of the sites that you are a member of, it’ll take just one security breach for your other accounts to be potentially compromised. Apparently, Facebook came up with an idea to solve this problem and created a service that lets it act as a password manager. In a social login situation Facebook supposedly takes care of your security while providing the convenience of just having one password to access almost all of the sites that you visit. Therefore, Facebook essentially acts like your password manager managing for you, for free. Not really. At any point that you use your social login, you are essentially allowing Facebook to share marketing information to that site that you want to register to. Although to be fair, there are certain protocols that they follow to keep your personal information private, and it’s just some aspects that they share with the 3rd party website. Information that might be shared is behavior tracking for personalized ads and customized content. This is in reference to the Cambridge Analytica Issue. Basically, you as the user surrender some information about yourself to the 3rd party website that will be provided by Facebook. To some people giving up information about their buying habits, may sound like a fair trade for convenience and some level of security. This is the reason they agree to use social logins instead. As for some, it is a concern. According to loginradius.com, in 2016 (the latest available data) over 90% of users use social login to avoid the tedious registration process that most websites require, and there has been no update since. So far, reported Facebook security breaches did not include reports of social logins being used to breach other websites too. A possible unwanted domino effect. Pros of Social Logins • Faster registration process No more having to repeatedly input passwords that don’t match or are too weak. All you have to do is punch in your social login user name and your password, done. Quick and easy. • No more forgetting passwords because of too many passwords to remember • Social logins are generally recognized as more secure than your standard email password logins. Since big companies like Facebook care a lot about their cybersecurity they spend unlimited funds to maintain the safety of their accounts. Cons of Social Logins • If by some rare event that your social login is breached, so does all of your other accounts. • Information sharing about you is being done since you agree to use the social login option. And they don’t have to inform you every time they do it. Privacy Admittedly, security is very much an issue, social networks are not nearly as secure as they try to look like. Obviously, it’s more of a privacy thing. Are you willing to let big tech companies share data about your general preferences? Or What apps you might be using? What you do in those apps, and how long you use those apps? It’s not really clear how the host company shares your information, but yes it’s the trade-off. So, Should I Be Using Social Logins? Given that it has been in use for a number of years now since its first offering, we can say that in terms of security there is some layer of protection involved. Apparently, the larger concern lies in the question of privacy. Overall, it all boils down to whether you’re comfortable with being targeted by customized ads, only because they know what your preferences are. It’s a little bit of your privacy in exchange for an easier time and some peace of mind. Either way, the choice is yours to make. The post Are Single Sign on Social Logins Safe? appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog May 25, 2020 at 06:44AM
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How to Scale Facebook Ads: 4 Ways https://ift.tt/3bVyDA1 Want to maximize the results of your top-performing Facebook ads? Looking for ways to get more leads or sales from your existing Facebook ad campaigns? In this article, you’ll discover four horizontal and vertical ad-scaling techniques for Facebook ads. Horizontal Facebook Ad ScalingTo scale your Facebook ads for reach, try adding new ad sets to your campaign as you increase your ad budget. This process is known as horizontal scaling, and it involves researching new audiences using Facebook Audience Insights. Alternatively, you could create Facebook lookalike audiences, which expand on your existing lookalikes; for example, a 5% lookalike vs. a 1% lookalike. With horizontal scaling, you spread testing across multiple ad sets, audiences, and ad creative. All of the following horizontal scaling strategies can be effective ways of growing and scaling your Facebook campaigns. Note: This article assumes you’ve installed the Facebook pixel on your website. Read this article or watch this video for step-by-step instructions. #1: Increase the Geographic Area of Your Audience TargetingThe type of business you run may determine the size of the audience you’re targeting with your Facebook ads. If your customers are located in a particular area, for instance, you may start by targeting your ads to that spot. But if you’re looking for a way to scale your Facebook campaigns, consider increasing the geographic area you’re targeting. Whether you can do this may depend on the product you’re selling and the distribution system you have in place to fulfill orders. However, if you identify other markets and regions to sell to and see traction from these campaigns, you’re well on your way to attracting new customers. If the products you’re selling can be shipped internationally, it’s worth testing your ads in new locations. Once your Facebook pixel has collected enough data about what your ideal customer looks like in one country, you can apply these lessons to target markets in other countries. To visualize this, if your initial campaign targets customers in the U.S. and those campaigns are seeing success, there’s a good chance the same campaigns may work in other countries as well. When you change the target location of your ad campaigns, you may need to make a few tweaks to your ads, especially if they refer to a specific place. Keep your ad spend small when you’re targeting a new location with your ads. #2: Increase the Size of a Facebook Lookalike AudienceA Facebook lookalike audience will likely be filled with prospects who are similar to your best existing customers. When you build a lookalike, you choose a source audience, which is a custom audience built using data from your Facebook pixel. Facebook then identifies the common qualities of the people in your source audience and lets you deliver an ad to people who are like them. You can choose the size of your lookalike audience—the smaller the audience, the closer it will match your source audience. While a higher-percentage lookalike can increase your potential reach, the audience will be less similar to your source audience. If you want to scale a lookalike audience by increasing the audience size percentage, it’s worth starting off with a small audience and seeing how receptive they are to your ads. If your ads perform well with a small lookalike, slowly scale your lookalike to see if a larger audience is receptive. Successfully scaling a lookalike audience will get more eyes on your product or brand and can be an effective way of scaling your Facebook campaigns. #3: Change Your Facebook Ad Creative and Segment Your AudienceHow your audience reacts to your Facebook ads will depend on where people are in the customer journey. This is why it’s important to carefully consider your objectives for each campaign. For instance, if your objective is to inform cold prospects about your product, a video ad like the one below that explains what your product is and does could be a useful way to grow awareness of your brand or product. When you’re creating new content for your ads, always keep your campaign objectives in mind. Become the Social Media Marketing Rockstar for Your BusinessMeet your secret team that makes you look like a social media genius and empowers you to embrace change! We’re a genuine community of marketers from your friends at Social Media Examiner. And we’re here to support you. Think of us as your career insurance policy. We keep you focused on what matters. We make sure you won’t be left behind as the changes keep coming. Join the Social Media Marketing Society. Get access to monthly online training, expert support, and a thriving community of marketers who will empower you to succeed. CLICK HERE TO ENVISION A BETTER FUTUREOnce you’ve run the video ad, you’ll be able to track the data and metrics. You can see not only how many people watched the video but also what percentage of the video they watched. If your video is a success, you’ll move cold prospects to the next stage of your funnel, where you can focus on nurturing them as prospective customers. After you run an ad campaign and get insights into the behaviors of your customers and prospects, segment your warm audience. To illustrate, for a video ad, you segment by how much people watched—25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of your video. You may also want to look at how many people visited your website as a result of your ad campaign via the Facebook pixel and then design ad creative specifically targeting those visitors. Whatever metrics or data points you look at, segmenting your audience will give you an idea of where best to focus your ad efforts. As you begin to scale your ads and attract leads, your pool of warm prospects will undoubtedly grow. Now you can really focus on moving potential customers down your sales funnel. For an eCommerce store, you might have insights into how many people abandoned their cart on your site in the last 30, 60, or 90 days. You know that potential customers who have abandoned their cart are close to making a purchase, so retargeting this group may help you convert some of these would-be buyers into paying customers. If you have a lot of prospects visiting your site but not converting to buyers, that may indicate that something is wrong with your offer or your website. The more insights you can get into what is and isn’t working with your campaign, the better equipped you’ll be to create more successful marketing campaigns in the future. Vertical Facebook Ad ScalingThe most obvious way to scale your Facebook campaigns is to increase your budget. If you’re just starting out and aren’t in a position to increase your budget substantially, steadily increase your ad spend instead. With this approach, you’ll not only begin learning how Facebook ads work but also give Facebook time to adjust to your increased ad spend. #4: Increase Your BudgetIncreasing your ad spend every 3–5 days is advisable early on, particularly if you’re beginning to see good returns from a set of ads. This type of scaling is known as vertical scaling. A sustainable way to see if your ad spend is giving you the results you need is to keep a close eye on your return on ad spend (ROAS). If you’re spending $50 per day on ads and those ads are leading to $300 in sales per day, you have a ROAS of 6.0 so you know your ads are working. If you see these results, you may think that if you keep increasing your ad spend, your profits will continue to grow. This is where some caution may be necessary. Often, when you start increasing your ad spend, your ROAS ends up staying the same. Continuing the previous example, suppose you raise your daily ad spend to $100 per day and you still see sales of $300. Your ROAS has dropped to 3.0, which may indicate that your set of ads is reaching its maximum potential. Of course, if you still see a profit or a positive ROAS, you may want to keep that particular ad set running. It’s important to keep an eye on your campaign to make sure your ads remain effective and so you can implement small changes if needed. ConclusionBrands and businesses of all sizes rely on Facebook ads to reach new customers, nurture prospects, build brand awareness, and ultimately grow. If you can get your ad campaigns right, you’ll have unlocked a powerful method to grow your business. Before you start any Facebook campaign, decide what kind of customer you want to attract, what their demographics are, and what you want to achieve such as getting more leads or increasing sales. Whatever your marketing and advertising goals, there are plenty of strategies you can implement to scale your Facebook campaigns successfully. When scaling your campaigns, take a deep dive into the analytics of each campaign you’ve launched so you know what’s working and what’s not. And as mentioned throughout this article, if you decide to scale the budget for your campaigns, do so in slow increments. This will give you the time and opportunity to test strategies without overspending. What do you think? Will you try any of these tactics to scale your Facebook campaigns? What tips do you have for scaling campaigns? Share your thoughts in the comments below. More articles on Facebook advertising:Join thousands of fellow marketers. Receive the training and support you need to accomplish your marketing objectives! Join Now Doors close soon! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p May 25, 2020 at 05:02AM Why keeping it Simple is the Perfect Mantra for SEO https://ift.tt/3geQl50 KISS (Keep It Simple, Silly) is often held up these days as a tired acronym, but in the case of SEO it is, these days a more accurate position to hold than the popular ‘content is king’ mantra. This is because, while content remains the single most impactful weapon in the SEO armoury (and arguably the simplest), the overall strategy must be straightforward enough so that it is relatively transparent – for a whole host of reasons, not least any future handover. But KISS is also a philosophy that developers should and do try to follow. A recent communication from Martin Splitt, search developer advocate for Google included the following statement. “You might shoot yourself in the foot when you don’t expect it, so why would you build something more brittle if all it does is solve a non-problem?” The fact is that there are many people out there who understand enough developing, SEO and the relevant technology to position themselves perfectly to advise companies that their sites need changing and restructuring when in reality the cost will far outweigh any potential benefit. Martin Splitt went on to nail this point home. “These are things that worry me a lot and, oftentimes, it is either very over eagerly excited developers or SEOs who understand enough of the technology to be dangerous with it.” So, the point is that ensuring and demanding simplicity and transparency, both as a business owner and SEO is beneficial. You are less open to trouble and unnecessary cost as a business owner and as an SEO you will earn a reputation of trustworthiness and that is worth its weight in gold. In addition you are less likely to cause yourself, and your clients, problems. One of the biggest problems caused by unnecessary tinkering can be crawling errors. The amount of websites Google find that are linking incorrectly is apparently staggering. Internal and external links are equally problematic and errors in both stem predominantly from SEOs who are trying as Martin Splitt puts it, to “reinvent the wheel.” Linking is simple and when it is made complex it may seem to have worked but can lead to sporadic failings that often involve crawlers. A misinterpretation of function and cause and effect on the part of SEOs is also responsible for many common Javascript issues. One classic example of the damaging effect of tinkering in this area is that an SEO looks at his or her site and sees that Google has dropped it from the index. Often, when investigating such issues you would find that an SEO has looked at robots.txt, which has advised against taking a given URL. However, if this URL happened to be Google itself, the search engine will not be able to even see the site’s content at all, irrespective of how meticulously the JavaScript API is constructed. Arguably, of course, the issue is not entirely one of needing to KISS, but also the age old saying that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. If the SEOs in question understood the pitfalls, you could argue that these sorts of things could be avoided. But on the whole, there is little to be gained from over-icing the cake. The overuse of JavaScript is almost certainly an example of this. The best advice, as offered by Google for many years is to build websites for the sake of users, not search engines. The subtle tweaking for search engines should be more of an afterthought, long after the site is optimised for users, across all platforms. John Hinds is a director at Lojix, a digital marketing agency based in Yorkshire. The post Why keeping it Simple is the Perfect Mantra for SEO appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog May 24, 2020 at 09:39AM How to Avoid Feeling Insecure on Social Media https://ift.tt/2LUPEQh One glimpse at the Instagram model’s perfect smile brings a spike of negative emotion. Why can’t your smile look that good, your clothes look that nice, or your friends look that happy? Social media insecurity is a well-documented phenomenon. The human brain is programmed to always try to understand your place in the social hierarchy. It’s both a tool for motivation and a tool for survival. You need to know what is possible so you can strive to achieve it, and you need to know who’s better than you so that you can either follow or avoid them. Social media, however, makes that totally sensible system spin out of control. A window into every life Throughout most of our existence on Earth, humans existed in tribes of hunter-gatherers. Human tribes were groups of 50 to 300 people. Not coincidentally, the latter is also our upper limit for keeping track of names and relationships; scientists estimate that we can keep track of three hundred people in our lives, and we can comfortably maintain about 150 stable relationships. More than that and we start to get confused. Our value assessment systems mentioned above were developed to deal with this state of affairs: to tribes of three hundred people at most. Back then, having status meant having a slightly nicer piece of animal skin, or being able to throw a spear further than the others. There wasn’t such massive income inequality in the world or such a massive number of people competing for attention. It used to be that the best smile you could see was the prettiest smile out of three hundred people. Now, if you follow an influencer, you’re likely seeing the prettiest smile out of billions of smiles. A smile that has been further improved through thousands of dollars of spending, many photography tricks, and just a little bit of photo editing to make it perfect. It’s not fair to compare any person’s smile to that supercharged image you see on social media, but your brain doesn’t know that, hence the insecurity. What can you do about it? There are a series of steps you can take in order to avoid feeling bad about yourself when browsing social media. Most of them have to do with putting into context the images you see on screen and understanding that they’re not real, not really. They’re as real as the exaggerated displays of might you see in superhero movies. Here are some things you should remind yourself whenever you feel insecure on social media. 1 – Most of the best pictures are heavily staged and edited. 2 – People only show the best part of themselves online, glossing over their flaws. 3 – Anyone can fake a great smile, no matter how cranky they really feel. 4 – The people who make you feel insecure are also full of insecurities themselves. 5 – You would also look great if you spent that much money on yourself, and had a team around you managing your image. Of course, it’s also good to take breaks from time to time and make sure to follow normal people on top of those who look like they have perfect lives. Finally, if you deal with anxiety on top of feeling insecure, it’s always good to implement some natural calming remedies into your routine. Check out Cibdol.com if you’d like to learn more about those. The post How to Avoid Feeling Insecure on Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog May 23, 2020 at 07:35AM
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Facebook Shops and Shops on Instagram: New Business Tools for Marketers https://ift.tt/2ZBUfyO Facebook Shops and Shops on Instagram: New Business Tools for Marketersby Grace Duffy / / Leave a Comment Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore Facebook Shops and Shops on Instagram with special guest, Allie Bloyd. Tune Into the Social Media Marketing Talk ShowListen to the replay of this week’s show below. You can also hear the show as an audio podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcast, Android, Google Play, Stitcher, and RSS. Watch the replay of this week’s show below. About Our Special Guest
Use the timestamps below to fast-forward to our top stories in the replay above.
divider Facebook Introduces Facebook Shops: Facebook announced a handful of updates “to help small businesses adapt and make it easier for people to discover and shop for things they love” earlier this week. The main product announced is Facebook Shops, a new version of an existing Facebook feature with a similar name, Facebook Page Shop.
Facebook Shops is rolling out now and will be “more widely available in the coming months.” The company provides insights on how it built Shops with privacy in mind and details how to get started on its Facebook for Business site. Instagram Debuts Shops on Instagram and Ability to Shop Directly From Explore Tab: Instagram offers a new place for users to discover products and brands, Instagram Shops. Like its counterpart on the flagship Facebook site, Instagram Shops is an immersive online store that can be accessed on a business’s Instagram profile or Facebook page, as well as through the feed, stories, and ads. Instagram shops are “free and simple” to create and the feature is being expanded to all businesses globally on Facebook and Instagram in a phased rollout. Become the Social Media Marketing Rockstar for Your BusinessMeet your secret team that makes you look like a social media genius and empowers you to embrace change! We’re a genuine community of marketers from your friends at Social Media Examiner. And we’re here to support you. Think of us as your career insurance policy. We keep you focused on what matters. We make sure you won’t be left behind as the changes keep coming. Join the Social Media Marketing Society. Get access to monthly online training, expert support, and a thriving community of marketers who will empower you to succeed. CLICK HERE TO ENVISION A BETTER FUTUREStarting this summer in the U.S., Instagram Shops will allow users to browse products and explore collections directly through a dedicated Shopping tab found within Instagram Explore that will take users directly to a brand’s shop or shoppable posts. Eventually, Instagram users will be able to jump into a shopping experience from the app’s main navigation bar “in just one tap.” Once in a shop, customers can even seamlessly purchase products in-app or from a web browser where checkout on Instagram is enabled. Facebook Launches Capability to Sell Products Through Live Video: Along with the new shopping experiences rolling out to both Facebook and Instagram, the company is currently testing the ability to sell products in real time through Live Shopping.
Facebook Will Connect Loyalty Programs to Personal Facebook Accounts: Facebook says it’s testing a way for customers to connect company loyalty programs to their Facebook profiles. Then businesses can manage those loyalty programs through their Facebook Shops accounts. In March, Facebook launched a new pilot program in the U.S. with a handful of businesses that would connect a customer’s existing brand loyalty membership with their Facebook identity. For instance, customers of beauty brand Sephora could easily view their points and rewards within the Facebook app.
This week, Facebook appears to be expanding this program to include ways to help small businesses create, manage, and surface a loyalty program on Facebook Shops. However, the company didn’t share any further details. Want to catch our next show live? Click here to subscribe or add our show to your calendar. Join thousands of fellow marketers. Receive the training and support you need to accomplish your marketing objectives! Join Now Doors close soon! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p May 23, 2020 at 05:05AM
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4 Ways to Effectively Maximize Link Building in Your Social Media Strategy https://ift.tt/2Tv5THU Long gone are the days of businesses solely using traditional marketing methods to grow. That’s not saying that traditional methods are dead, because they’re not. But traditional marketing methods aren’t the only way to bring awareness to a company or brand. Today, social media is a major component of any effective marketing strategy. When it comes to link building through social media, you can’t deny its power. Social media allows your brand to improve its SEO efforts, boost engagement, and expand your reach, making it a marketing force to be reckoned with! If you’re not too familiar with link building, a simplified definition of link building would be techniques or tactics used to get more links to your website from other websites (backlinks). It’s important to understand that link building isn’t an easy task but when it’s done properly, it can do a world of wonder for your business. That’s why so many businesses turn to the best link building sites for link building packages to meet their business needs… Social media just amplifies your link building efforts. The funny thing about utilizing social media in link building strategies is that it’s not this new phenomenon like people tend to think it is. The reason people think that is because they weren’t utilizing it properly in the first place. For one, to effectively use social media in your link building strategy, it’s going to help if you at least have a basic understanding of what each platform offers. For example, if you’re familiar with Instagram, you know that one of its big features is the “Swipe Up” option that links users to your landing pages. When you have a complete understanding of the social media platforms you’re using, it’s going to help you hone in on the specific approach to take in maximizing the full effectiveness of your links. Let’s take a closer look at how to best utilize link building in your social media strategy. Getting the Most From Link Building Through Social MediaImage Source: https://ift.tt/2GVBFWd Cross-Link Social ProfilesCross-linking is the very reason why businesses need to have more than one social channel. Businesses can’t possibly expect potential customers to always find them… sometimes you have to just make it easier for your audience to find you. Why? Because believe it or not, if someone is following your brand on one particular social channel, they more than likely going to be willing to follow you on other social channels as well. So, to keep their interest, you need to make it easy for them to find you on other social channels. The best way to do this is through cross-linking. You can cross-link in several different ways too. For example, one way to do this is to provide a link to your Twitter account in your Instagram profile. This is going to create and promote consistency within your brand across multiple platforms, which will build trust with your audience as well. And not to get cross-linking confused with cross-posting, we recommend that you make sure you optimize the content you use for each network and make sure the post you create belongs on a particular social channel. Utilize Calls to Action (CTAs) in Your Profile BioA CTA is a prompt to encourage some type of action from your audience. Your CTA could be to fill out a contact form, subscribe, or to purchase a particular product, as long as it encourages your audience to do something. Using CTAs with social media is very beneficial because regardless of the platform you use, it allows you to push a product or service any time you make a new post about it. If you post a snippet of a tutorial in your Instagram story, you can simply include the statement “Link in Bio,” and people will know exactly where to go to see the rest of your tutorial. Also, when you post links in your bio, regardless of platform, the links are easy to switch to match the product or service you’re promoting at the time. Use Shortened or Branded URLsWith shortened or branded URLs, it’s simple… they’re just more appealing than long, drawn-out links and it’s ideal for social media because they’re just easier to share with followers and boost conversions… the shorter the link, the better. The same rule applies to branded links as well. Your branded link still needs to be shortened but include your brand name. Also, branded links appear more trustworthy and authoritative… this is extremely important because there’s a lot of “spammy” stuff on social media and the last thing you want to do is appear “spammy.” Grab Attention With High-Quality ImagesSocial media is the poster child for high-quality images… it’s practically a virtual photo book! The best way to generate more clicks and traffic to your site is to not only incorporate shortened URLs but to place those shortened URLs with high-quality images. With social media, the highest chance of getting your posts seen is to include images with every post. Just make sure the image is relevant to the link you’re posting alongside the image. Final ThoughtsSocial media is a very effective way to utilize link building. The main thing to think about from this post isn’t what you link to, but what you link to is very important… The key takeaway here is HOW you link. How you link is what’s going to be the biggest determining factor as to how effective your links will be on social media. Take the time out to create a clear strategy on how you want to use link building on your social media channels to ensure your efforts won’t be wasted. The post 4 Ways to Effectively Maximize Link Building in Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog May 22, 2020 at 04:25PM Apple’s handling of Siri snippets back in the frame after letter of complaint to EU privacy regulators https://ift.tt/2WRtchj Apple is facing fresh questions from its lead data protection regulator in Europe following a public complaint by a former contractor who revealed last year that workers doing quality grading for Siri were routinely overhearing sensitive user data. Earlier this week the former Apple contractor, Thomas le Bonniec, sent a letter to European regulators laying out his concern at the lack of enforcement on the issue — in which he wrote: “I am extremely concerned that big tech companies are basically wiretapping entire populations despite European citizens being told the EU has one of the strongest data protection laws in the world. Passing a law is not good enough: it needs to be enforced upon privacy offenders.” The timing of the letter comes as Europe’s updated data protection framework, the GDPR, reaches its two-year anniversary — facing ongoing questions around the lack of enforcement related to a string of cross-border complaints. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has been taking the brunt of criticism over whether the General Data Protection Regulation is functioning as intended — as a result of how many tech giants locate their regional headquarters on its soil (Apple included). Responding to the latest Apple complaint from le Bonniec, the DPC’s deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, told TechCrunch: “The DPC engaged with Apple on this issue when it first arose last summer and Apple has since made some changes. However, we have followed up again with Apple following the release of this public statement and await responses.” At the time of writing Apple had not responded to a request for comment. The Irish DPC is currently handling with more than 20 major cross-border cases, as lead data protection agency — probing the data processing activities of companies including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter. So le Bonniec’s letter adds to the pile of pressure on commissioner Helen Dixon to begin issuing decisions vis-a-vis cross-border GDPR complaints. (Some of which are now a full two years’ old.) Last year Dixon said the first decisions for these cross-border cases would be coming “early” in 2020. At issue is that if Europe’s recently updated flagship data protection regime isn’t seen to be functioning well two years in — and is still saddled with a bottleneck of high profile cases, rather than having a string of major decisions to its name — it will be increasingly difficult for the region’s lawmakers to sell it as a success. At the same time the existence of a pan-EU data protection regime — and the attention paid to contravention, by both media and regulators — has had a tangible impact on certain practices. Apple suspended human review of Siri snippets globally last August, after The Guardian had reported that contractors it employed to review audio recordings of users of its voice assistant tech — for quality grading purposes — regularly listened in to sensitive content such as medical information and even recordings of couples having sex. Later the same month it made changes to the grading program, switching audio review to an explicitly opt-in process. It also brought the work in house — meaning only Apple employees have since been reviewing Siri users’ opt-in audio. The tech giant also apologized. But did not appear to face any specific regulatory sanction for practices that do look to have been incompatible with Europe’s laws — owing to the lack of transparency and explicit consent around the human review program. Hence le Bonniec’s letter of complaint now. A number of other tech giants also made changes to their own human grading programs around the same time. Doyle also pointed out that guidance for EU regulators on voice AI tech is in the works, saying: “It should be noted that the European Data Protection Board is working on the production of guidance in the area of voice assistant technologies.” We’ve reached out to the European Data Protection Board for comment. Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com May 22, 2020 at 09:40AM
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Facebook Organic Reach: How to Develop an Engaged Following https://ift.tt/2WXwyQ9 Want a more engaged Facebook following? Looking for creative ways to leverage organic marketing rather than ads? To explore how to develop an engaged organic following on Facebook, I interview Fallon Zoe on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Fallon is an organic reach expert who specializes in Facebook. Her Facebook-focused membership community for female business owners is called the Secret Mermaid Cove. You’ll discover why Facebook is a valuable platform for building an engaged community and learn how to leverage multiple Facebook features to achieve organic growth. Fallon’s BackstoryFallon loved MySpace in high school but initially didn’t like Facebook at all. She always liked marketing and communicating with people online, though. Fallon remembers the first time she saw somebody doing live video on Facebook in 2016, shortly after it launched. The person was just sitting in their kitchen, using their mobile phone. They had 50 people watching them live, and they were just talking to those people, chatting it up and having a regular conversation. Fallon thought it was mind-blowing. She worked in a store at the time and thought how lucky she would feel just to have 50 people walk into her store in one day. This person on Facebook had 50 people sitting there watching them online and talking to them. Fallon thought, “This is magic. What is this?” So Fallon dove into learning about live video. Somebody else on Facebook was hosting a live video challenge for 30 days so she jumped into that. After the 30-day video challenge, on day 31, Fallon decided to keep going. She talked about what she knew at the time, which was how to market and connect with people and she also shared business tips. It was pretty random; she didn’t have much of a strategy behind it at all. At the time, she didn’t plan to be doing this for 4 years. But she was excited that she was actually having fun again with something so she just kept going. At the time Fallon started doing all of this on Facebook, she was in network marketing. Before that, she’d had her own jewelry business: she made her own jewelry and sold it wholesale to stores throughout the U.S. It had been really difficult to run a business, travel to all of those locations to sell inventory, and create orders. Fallon had always wondered how she could use the internet to make doing business easier. She noticed other people successfully using Facebook for their businesses and thought it would be a good way to get more exposure. That way, she didn’t have to run all over the place trying to talk to people in person. Now Fallon teaches other people how to get started and grow organically on Facebook. Her Facebook page just hit more than 20,000 followers and she built that community without ever running a single ad. Building a Successful Community on Facebook Without Using Facebook AdsFallon says Facebook groups are great but you don’t have to use them to build community. Nor do you have to rely on advertising. You do need to learn how to attract people to what you’re doing. People love talking about what they enjoy and they love inviting others to come find enjoyment in those same experiences. Tap into that. Start With Your Personal ProfileFallon encourages building community in as public a setting as possible so you have more reach and exposure, and more people can find you. That starts with proper use of a Facebook profile. Fallon sees two different kinds of Facebook users: creators and consumers. When we first start our Facebook accounts, we’re typically consumers. We’re just on the platform to fiddle around. Around 2016, Fallon was primarily using Facebook as a consumer to communicate with friends and family. She has a pet bird—he’s actually part of her brand now—so she joined Facebook groups about birds. Soon, a majority of the people on her friends list were other bird people. When she made the shift to using Facebook as a creator for business, a lot of people on her friends list pushed back. They were there to see bird stuff. But she wasn’t creating bird stuff anymore—she was shifting. She had changed so she needed to change whom she spent time with to go in a different direction. So she went through her friends list and deleted everybody who had a bird in their profile picture. When you shift from being a consumer to becoming a creator who’s building a personal brand or a small business, your personal profile needs to reflect that change so you attract the right community of people. If you struggle to attract the right people to your personal profile (where you have an advantage), then you’re going to have a harder time attracting people to your business page. Where should you hang out on Facebook to be able to find the people you’re looking for? Most people think that if they’re in social media marketing, they should hang out on social media marketing pages. The problem is that the people hanging out on those pages are typically other social media marketing creators. You want to move outside the box and go swim in a different part of the ocean where there’s fish. Fallon personally likes going to other types of business pages. She specifically works with women so she’ll hang out on beauty pages. While a lot of the women on those pages are there to learn about makeup, some of them are hoping to start their own beauty brands or create their own social media beauty following. Fallon can help them do that. Leverage Notifications to Grow Your NetworkOne key organic growth tip is to get into other people’s notifications with your name attached. If you can get this action down, you’ll be able to build organically on any social media platform. Fallon likes to go to verified pages just because they’re typically bigger and more creative in their regular content. She goes through that creative content and checks to see who’s engaging. She focuses on her target audience: women, ideally in a certain age group, and typically in the U.S. She’s looking for people who are active on someone else’s page because they could be active on her page as well. Let’s say somebody left the following comment on a page: “Oh, that lipstick looks awesome.” If you reply to the comment, that sends the person a notification. You can like or react to the comment. If somebody tagged their friend in a comment somewhere, you can react to that comment. Now, two people are going to get a notification. Anytime there are multiple people tagged in a comment, Fallon will react to the comment itself and she’ll also respond in the comments. If 20 people are tagged in that comment, all 20 people are going to get a notification from her and she has just leveraged her time. She also likes to go to other people’s profiles directly. The business page that she’s on is just the middle ground. She likes to see who’s interacting, who’s commenting, and who’s giving heart reactions on posts. When somebody reacts to a post, there’s a selection of different reactions. Fallon goes straight to the heart list and then to each person’s profile. She likes and comments on their profiles directly. Become the Social Media Marketing Rockstar for Your BusinessMeet your secret team that makes you look like a social media genius and empowers you to embrace change! We’re a genuine community of marketers from your friends at Social Media Examiner. And we’re here to support you. Think of us as your career insurance policy. We keep you focused on what matters. We make sure you won’t be left behind as the changes keep coming. Join the Social Media Marketing Society. Get access to monthly online training, expert support, and a thriving community of marketers who will empower you to succeed. CLICK HERE TO ENVISION A BETTER FUTURENext, she waits for those people to send back friend requests to her. She feels it’s a lot more open than sending mass friend requests to people, which isn’t very effective. As a rule, she tries not to send out friend requests when networking with people. Another technique is networking via her personal profile with top fans of other business pages. You can find the Top Fans list on the Community tab of a business page. Fallon looks for a few specific things in people’s profile pictures. She prefers people who have a picture of their face—not a dog, a flower, or a child—because if they’re willing to show their face on Facebook, they’re probably a little more open to communicating with others. She’s also looking for people who fit into her target audience, which is females of a certain age group. When she finds the right people, she clicks over to their profile. Then she drops what she calls a “Fallon bomb” in their notifications by liking and commenting on multiple posts so people get three or four notifications at a time. She makes genuine comments on their posts that would require a response. To illustrate, if they shared a cooking recipe on their profile, Fallon might comment, “That recipe looks awesome. Do you cook at home a lot?” If they don’t reply to her comment, then they’re probably not going to respond at all. Why does this work? What’s the first thing we all do when we get notifications from somebody we don’t recognize? We check out their profile to find out who they are. Everybody does it so leverage that human behavior. The goal is to get into as many new people’s notifications as possible (people who aren’t your current Facebook friends) because you know that they’re going to come and check out your profile. Be sure to have Facebook events, good content, and some live videos to attract them to what you’re doing. This is the best way to drive traffic to your profile organically, without any ads. Leverage Facebook EventsBecause everyone in your event gets notifications anytime you post to the event, Facebook events can put some high-powered fuel behind the content you’re already creating, whether they’re run from your personal profile or your business page. Take Facebook Live video, for example. It’s preferable to pre-schedule a live video and share it to the event ahead of time. Alternatively, you can go live from either your page or your profile and share it into the event feed. Either way, everybody in the group gets a notification and more people are likely to actually watch your live video. You effectively boost the live viewers by hosting the event and can refine your friends list by seeing who’s there. Here are some tips to help you maximize the impact of your event. Use Your Page and Profile to Co-Host the EventCreate the event from your business page, then co-host the Facebook event via your personal profile. Post about the event on your personal profile and invite people from your personal profile friends list to your page’s event. You can see who’s interested in your content by noticing who clicks ‘going’ or ‘interested’ on your events. You can focus on strengthening the relationship with those people and interacting more with them on their profiles. Deliver Value on Day 1 to Encourage Event Invitation SharesLet’s say you’re hosting a week-long series on a topic and it starts on Monday with the grand finale on Friday. Don’t leave your awesome stuff for the last day because most people won’t make it to the end of the event. Make sure that your juicy stuff is always on the first day and pour it on them. That way, they’re more likely to pass along that event invitation to their network for the first day versus the last day. Leverage Your Facebook Page and Profile TogetherOne of Fallon’s favorite hacks is leveraging her personal profile and business page together. In addition to the examples mentioned in the Events section above, she’s found many more ways to make this magic work for her. As she creates content on her business page, she tags her personal profile in around 90% of the posts, especially live videos. She doesn’t just use the tag feature, she actually tags her name from her profile in the description of the post or the video. Create the video as your business page—say, Social Media Examiner—and then tag your personal profile: “Mike[tagged] had this really great idea on how to do xyz.” When you do that, you’ll get a notification on your profile that says, “This page tagged you in a post. Do you want to allow it to your timeline?” Allow it, and that video you created as your page is also going to show up on your personal profile’s timeline, natively. It’s in two places at once and will get better reach because you’re co-authoring it from your personal profile. We’ve already gotten people to come to your profile by going to their profiles to like and comment on their posts. When they view your profile, they’ll see post after post on your timeline tagging you from your business page, and they can like or comment on any of those posts. Then you can invite them to like your page because they just liked a post that was authored by your page, even though it’s showing up on your profile timeline. These tactics and strategies can work for businesses of any size but are really specific to a small business. It’s for the person who maybe doesn’t have a budget for advertising. Or it can help somebody who’s just getting started and the thought of ads is overwhelming. It’s for the person who has more time and maybe not so much budget. Key Takeaways From This Episode:What do you think? What are your thoughts on creative ways to leverage organic marketing on Facebook? Please share your comments below. Join thousands of fellow marketers. Receive the training and support you need to accomplish your marketing objectives! Join Now Doors close soon! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p May 22, 2020 at 05:04AM
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Facebook Organic Reach: How to Develop an Engaged Following - 407 https://ift.tt/2XlP5UV Want a more engaged Facebook following? Looking for creative ways to leverage organic marketing rather than ads? To explore how to develop an engaged organic following on Facebook, in this episode I interview Fallon Zoe. Fallon is an organic reach expert who specializes in Facebook. USEFUL INFORMATION: Explore the Social Media Marketing Society Download the Social Media Marketing Industry Report We'd love you to review our show on Apple Podcasts. Social Media via Social Media Marketing Podcast https://ift.tt/1LtH18p May 22, 2020 at 04:57AM |
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