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How to Use Facebook Automated Rules to Manage Facebook Ad Costs https://ift.tt/2MWa4Yz Need to manage your Facebook ad spend more effectively? Wondering how Facebook’s Automated Rules feature can help? In this article, you’ll learn how to set up automated rules to better manage the costs of your Facebook advertising campaigns.
Why Use Automated Rules for Facebook Ad Campaigns?As your number of Facebook campaigns grows, optimizing them manually becomes increasingly time-consuming. One way to free up some of your valuable time is to set up automated rules. Facebook’s automated rules feature is a hidden gem for improving Facebook ad performance without relying on manual optimization. It can save busy Facebook advertisers time, energy, and resources. By combining different KPI metrics when defining rule conditions, you can design your custom automation workflow on Facebook. It may require some trial and error to find the right automated rules, but it’s worth the investment. With automated rules, you set predefined conditions for key performance indicators (KPIs) such as likes, reach, and leads, and ad campaign elements (campaigns, ad sets, ads, etc.) in your Facebook ad accounts. Facebook will check the condition you set at specific time intervals, and when a campaign meets that criterion, it will take your predefined action, essentially saving you time and money. It’s the “if this then that” concept that automation platforms like IFTTT and Zapier use. If a predefined condition is met, take the predefined action. For example, you might set up a rule that if cost per click (CPC) for a particular ad set increases beyond $X, turn off that ad set. So now that you understand how automated rules work, here’s how to get started. #1: Decide What Campaign Level Your Rule Will Apply ToTo create an automated rule for all active campaigns, ad sets, or ads, open Facebook Ads Manager and click the menu icon (with the three lines) in the top-left corner. In the pop-up menu, hover over All Tools and then select Automated Rules under the Create & Manage column. In the next window, click the Create Rule button in the top-right corner. In the Create Rule dialog box, you’ll find various options to configure your automated rule. All of these options may seem daunting at first, so we’ll look at each one in turn. First, you need to select the campaign level for which you want to apply this rule. Your options are All Active Campaigns, All Active Ad Sets, and All Active Ads. Note: If you prefer to apply a rule condition to only one or several campaigns, ad sets, or ads, check out this guide to setting up Facebook automated rules for only specific campaigns. #2: Select the Action You Want Facebook to TakeNext, you choose what happens when your rule condition is met. The first two options are to turn campaigns, ad sets, or ads off or on. Or you can simply have Facebook send you a notification when your condition is met. Then you can take action manually if needed. The final two options are to adjust your budget or manual bid. You can increase or decrease daily/lifetime budget or manual bid by a certain percentage/amount when the condition is met. #3: Define the Condition for Triggering Your ActionNow you’re ready to set up the rule condition that determines when the rule will run and trigger your action. Select a KPI Metric First, choose a KPI metric from the Results drop-down list. Facebook offers more than 50 metrics to choose from for your rule condition. The most popular options are listed first (Spent, Lifetime Spent, Frequency, Results, etc.). If you’re not sure where to begin, start with KPIs that bring major performance boosts and can be applied in multiple situations. Tip: If you’re not sure what a particular metric is, hover over the “i” icon to the right of it to reveal a tooltip with more information. Choose a Logical Expression and Value Next, select a logical expression to add to your condition. In the second drop-down menu, your choices are Is Greater Than (the default), Is Smaller Than, Is Between, and Is Not Between. What you choose here determines the scope or flexibility for the KPI you selected. To the right of logical expression is an input field. This is where you enter a value for the condition you selected. For instance, if you selected Frequency … Is Greater Than, enter 2 in this box to trigger the action when the frequency exceeds 2. When you’re finished defining your condition, click Add to apply it. Note that you can set multiple conditions in a single rule for more advanced automation. After you click Add, Facebook gives you the option to define another condition for the rule. Click the + button to add another condition. To illustrate, you might combine the frequency condition with a cost per result condition. Restricting frequency to 2 will help stop ad fatigue, but as long as the desired results are less than the target cost, letting ads run poses no problem. It also means that audience has more ad tolerance. Select a Time Range From the Time Range drop-down list, choose the number of days of data for Facebook to look at to assess the rule condition. You can apply the rule based on lifetime data, data from the last 7 days, 14 days, and so on. Modify the Attribution Window The attribution window defines how Facebook will attribute conversions/results to determine conditional parameters. The default settings are 1 day after viewing the ad and 28 days after clicking the ad. To define a custom attribution, select the Custom option and click the Edit Attribution Window link. Then select the number of days for conversions that occur after viewing and clicking the ad. Set a Schedule Under Schedule, specify how often Facebook should review ad account data to check the rule. If you select Continuously, Facebook will check the automated rule condition as often as possible, which is generally every 30 minutes. If you click Set Custom Schedule, you can define days and times when you want Facebook to check the rule. Choose Notification Preferences Facebook will send you a notification when the rule’s conditions are met and the action is triggered. In addition, you have the option to receive notification via email. Note that anyone who has access to the Facebook ad account will receive a notification for automated rules. The choice of turning on email notifications depends on how many rules you set up and how frequently you want Facebook to run them. For a few rules, the email option can work, but if you have more than 10 rules, email notifications can become annoying. There’s another way to see rule changes, which we’ll discuss later in this article. Add a Rule Name The last step is to type in a name for your ad rule and click Create. If you’re planning to set up multiple rules, choosing a descriptive name will help you avoid confusion. #4: Manage Your Automated RulesAfter you click Create, Facebook brings you back to the Automated Rules dashboard where you can manage your rules and view results. Manage Rules Click the Rules tab to see all of the rules you’ve set up, both active and paused. Using the Actions drop-down menu to the right of each rule, you can preview, edit, run, or delete the rule. If you select Preview, you can run the rule to see a preview of which campaigns will be affected. Use the switch to the left of a rule to turn it off or on. View Rule Activity While Facebook gives you the option to receive Facebook notifications and emails about rules activity, it can be a cumbersome way to track activity. If you miss an email or notification, it may negatively affect your campaign performance. An easier way to track activity is to open the Activity tab. Here you’ll see a summary of rule activity. By default, this tab shows data from all of your rules, whether they make any changes in campaign levels or not. But you can filter this data to see changes made at different campaign levels (campaign, ad set, or ads) and only view activity reports related to these filtered rules. To filter your rules, select the Hide Rule Results With No Changes checkbox in the top-right corner. You’ll then see a list of all automated rules that actually made changes in the account. If you click a link in the Changed column, Facebook opens Ads Manager and you can see the exact changes selected in the account. For instance, if you click the first link in the image above, you can see the four ads selected. Tip: If you manage multiple Facebook automated rules, you can check all rules’ activity once a day on the Activity tab and then make any necessary changes to an automated rule based on changes it made the previous day. 5 Facebook Rules That Will Turn Off Non-Performing Campaigns, Ad Sets, or AdsNow let’s look at five rules you can set up to stop non-performing ad campaigns, ad sets, or ads, whichever campaign level you want to control. You can use these rules individually or in combination, and customize them with your input values. Rule #1: When ad frequency increases, it leads to decreased click-through rate (CTR) due to ad fatigue. With a lower CTR, you have to pay more for each impression, leading to decreased campaign performance. This automated rule will turn off the selected campaign level when the CTR goes below a target percentage (5%, for example) along with two other matching conditions:
Rule #2: As discussed above, when CTR decreases, it leads to increased ad costs. With this rule, you can keep CPC/CPA under control when CTR drops below the target. This rule turns off campaigns, ad sets, or ads (depending on what you choose at Apply Rule To step) when the following conditions are met:
Keep in mind that Facebook by default recommends using 8,000 lifetime impressions. However, because this rule is based on accumulated data from “yesterday,” it uses 2,000 impressions instead of 8,000 lifetime impressions as the condition. Rule #3: This automated rule works best when you want to A/B test different ad sets without looking back to determine a winner manually. Instead of direct-cost metrics like CPC or cost per result, this rule is based on a target CTR. At the end of the day, your CTR represents the ad engagement level better than CPC or cost per result. This rule will turn off ad sets when these conditions are met:
Rule #4: This is another automated rule for A/B testing ad sets and ads. Sometimes despite a good CTR, you don’t get the expected number of results for your selected objective. When you check the campaign, it’s too late; you’ve already spent the entire budget for the ad or ad set. This rule will help you solve that issue to some extent. It will turn off the ad set or ad when the following conditions are met:
Facebook defines the lifetime ratio spent as “the ratio (between the number 0.0 to 1.0) of how much money you have spent over the lifetime of your ad or ad set to the lifetime budget.” In other words, it represents the percentage of lifetime budget spent on an ad set or ad where 0.5 represents 50% of the lifetime ratio spent. Rule #5: The result rate represents the percentage of results you received out of all of the views of your ads. As an example, if you get 2 results out of 100 views, your result rate will be 2%. This rule lets you turn off campaigns, ad sets, and ads when the following conditions are met:
This rule helps you control campaign performance by taking advantage of result rate concepts. What do you think? What Facebook automated rules have you set up? How have they impacted your ad performance? Please let us know in the comments. Social Media via https://ift.tt/1LtH18p June 25, 2018 at 05:04AM
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Seven Tips for Eye-Catching Web and Social Media Design https://ift.tt/2lqYhVA Psychology plays a crucial role in web design, and banking on these elements can help you win more customers over. For designing a website, the main role of psychology is on predicting how the user will react to a piece of content or a certain element. Here are seven tips on how to improve the impact of your web design using the concepts of psychology. The goal of different websites will vary, but psychology will influence how engaging the website is to its target audience. Build trust with the right image and colourWhich kind of images do you have on your website? Will the visitors be able to share it with their friends and family members? Having the faces of people on your website can make visitors feel safe. The sense of familiarity also builds trust. Colour affects people in different ways, so consider the use of colour in your website. Children love the colour yellow, but males over the age of 30 don’t like the hue. Lead the visitor’s eye to the right placeHierarchy has an important role in website design. Users need to know where to look, and you can aid them by using the right elements. Using headings, subheadings, block quotes, tag lines, and other groupings can help visitors assess how important a block of text is. Use the same tactic in leading the visitor to do what you want. Contrast, size, colour, and location are all crucial. Photos, for instance, will be the first thing people look at before they read the caption. Use colour to influence user behaviourAs noted above, colour affects people in different ways. You need to understand the psychology behind colours when you design a website. Colours can help you achieve different goals as there is a science behind the colours we see. Colour contrasts, for instance, can help you increase the click-through rate. On a landing page, the buttons often have to be in contrast to the colour in the background. Bright buttons also work better. Colours can also help you create a visual path. Gradients, for instance, will lead the visitor to scroll. There’s a detailed guide to colours and how they influence people and using these guides will take out the guesswork in the web design process. Guide visitors with repeated elements
The same heading format and styles are there for a reason – it allows visitors to identify items right away. By establishing a system, visitors will subconsciously know where to go or what to do which serves as their guide when navigating through the website. Make the most of negative spaceThe unobstructed area around an element is what designers call negative space. If you have a big circle and you place a small dot in the middle, the space between the dot and the large circle is the negative space. Negative space can draw the visitor’s eye especially when there is a contrast in size between the element serving as a focal point and other elements. This technique is effective when you want the visitor to focus on a button, a product, or a certain element. Practise minimalismAlthough the options and content on the website are not under the full control of the designer, it’s also effective to avoid having too many elements on the page. You don’t want your visitor to feel overwhelmed. In the early days of the Interweb, it was acceptable to pack all the content on the page. However, that’s no longer the case, and people find it annoying to have so many things fighting for their attention on your website. Now, you need to keep your message short and focus on what you want to say. Less is more. To supplement the message you want to convey, you can use other elements in your web design to improve the user experience. Do a visual tourWhat do visitors experience when they visit your website? Try to do the walkthrough to see how users feel when they visit your website. Use all the tools you want visitors to pay the most attention to. Don’t let users arrive at the footer of the page without having anywhere else to go to. This is a lost opportunity to catch their attention and have them explore your page more. Psychology is an interesting branch of science, and it can help you improve your web design. Implementing changes while considering user psychology can help grow your business. Related Article: Sydney Web Design Company Reveals The 9 Important Features of Every Good Web Design
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New Facebook Video Platform and Instagram IGTV Video App https://ift.tt/2KbSTUi 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’s new video platform and Instagram’s IGTV video app with Ian Anderson Gray, YouTube Creative Suite for Marketers, and other breaking social media marketing news of the week! Watch the Social Media Marketing Talk ShowIf you’re new to the show, click on the green “Watch replay” button below and sign in or register to watch our latest episode from Friday, June 22, 2018. You can also listen to the show as an audio podcast, found on iTunes/Apple Podcast, Android, Google Play, Stitcher, and RSS. For this week’s top stories, you’ll find timestamps below that allow you to fast-forward in the replay above. Facebook Announces New Community-Centered Video Platform, Management Tools, and Monetization Opportunities: Facebook launched several new features to make its video platform more community-centered and engaging. Facebook is making Live videos more interactive with polling for live and on-demand videos and gamification for live videos. It’s also bringing videos from pages into the Watch tab and rolling out the “top fans” badge to more creators. (5:25) Facebook is also testing a new video template for pages that “puts video and community front and center on a creator’s Page, with special modules for things like videos and groups,” and rolled out the Facebook Creator App for Android globally. The iOS version of the app initially rolled out last November. Along with tools to help video creators grow their communities and manage their presence on Facebook, the company also shared three new monetization products. These include testing the new Brand Collabs Manager, which lets brands discover creators with whom they can potentially establish deals and partnerships, opening the Ad Breaks program to more creators in the U.S., and expanding the new Fan Subscription model to more creators. Facebook is launching a limited program called Facebook for Creators Launchpad, another monetization program to support video creators it thinks fans will seek out on Facebook Watch. The program is focused on creators 1) with longer authentic content that brings people back, 2) who are focused on building a loyal community of fans, and 3) who meet Facebook’s standards and guidelines for monetization. Instagram Debuts New Stand-Alone Video App, IGTV: Instagram announced IGTV, a new app designed for watching long-form, full-screen vertical videos from your favorite Instagram creators. The videos can be up to an hour long and can also be viewed from within the main Instagram app. IGTV will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks on Android and iOS. (23:35)
YouTube Launches New Creative Suite for Marketers: YouTube rolled out a collection of resources to help advertisers tell great stories on YouTube, test creative variations, and measure creative impact. The Creative Suite will focus on delivering insights for brands with the new Video Experiment and Video Creative Analytics tools and storytelling with YouTube Director Mix and Video Ad Sequencing. YouTube is currently working with select brands and agencies to test these new tools and will gradually roll them out soon. (41:05) Facebook Pilots Subscription Groups: Facebook is testing a new paid subscription program that gives admins the ability to create and manage separate, subscriber-only groups and charge members a monthly fee for accessing the exclusive content. Members will be able to sign up and manage subscriptions through the Facebook app for iOS and Android. Facebook states that subscription groups are part of their “overall approach to helping creators and leaders to financially support the work they do to engage their fans and communities.” Facebook is currently testing subscription groups with a small number of group admins. Facebook Offers Autoplay Video Ads in Messenger: Facebook will slowly begin to roll out autoplay video ads inside Messenger this week. The company began selling static ads within Messenger a year and a half ago and is now looking to expand its portfolio to include video ads. Facebook states that these video ads will roll out “gradually and thoughtfully” and Messenger users “will remain in control of their experience.
Google Released Dedicated App for Podcasts: Google released Google Podcasts app for Android devices. This new dedicated app for podcasts includes access to a vast library of podcasts (over 2 million) and will sync across virtually everything Google, including Assistant, Home speakers, and search. Engadget reports that Google is planning to release “multiple AI-driven features in the months ahead” such as automatic transcription that adds closed captioning to podcasts, the ability to see what’s coming next in the episode you’re listening to, and proactive suggestions for material related to an episode in case you want to dive deeper into the subject.
Snapchat Adds Weather and World Effects to Snap Maps: Snapchat is adding two new features to Snap Map: Weather and World Effects. With the new Weather Effects, users can include animations on Snap Maps based on the weather wherever your friends are. This can include animated raindrops, sunshine, or snow depending on their location. Similarly, World Effects adds “culturally significant” animations to mark nearby events like confetti on your birthday or other holiday-themed effects.
Snapchat Launches First Docu-Series: Snapchat is expanding its original programming to include its first-ever docu-series starring teen YouTube personality Summer Mckeen. The “soft-scripted” show is currently in production and is expected to premiere in September. Variety reports that “Snap wants to build a slate of character-driven serialized narratives focused on the stories of ‘compelling people around the world as they go through dramatic life moments, incredible journeys, and challenging relationships'” and the docu-series format has a huge appeal among Snapchat’s most active cohort, 18- to 24-year-olds.
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Twitter ‘smytes’ customers https://ift.tt/2tub654 Twitter today announced it was acquiring the “trust and safety as a service” startup Smyte to help it better address issues related to online abuse, harassment, spam, and security on its platform. But it also decided to immediately shut down access to Smyte’s API without warning, leaving Smyte’s existing customers no time to transition to a new service provider. The change left Smyte’s current customer base stranded, with production issues related to the safety of their own platforms. Needless to say, many were not happy about this situation and took to Twitter to register their complaints. According to Smyte’s website, its clients included Indiegogo, GoFundMe, npm, Musical.ly, TaskRabbit, Meetup, OLX, ThredUp, YouNow, 99 Designs, Carousell, and Zendesk – big name brands that used Smyte’s feature set in a variety of ways to combat fraud, abuse, harassment, scams, spam, and other security issues. While Twitter had earlier told TechCrunch that it would be “winding down” Smyte’s business with existing clients, what that apparently meant was that it was going to announce the acquisition, then effectively shut off the lights over at Smyte and leave everyone in the lurch. According to reports from those affected, Smyte disabled access to its API with very little warning to clients, and without giving them time to prepare. Customers got a phone call, and then – boom – the service was gone. Clients had multi-year contracts in some cases. And again, to reiterate, Smyte is a provider of anti-abuse and anti-fraud protections – not something any business would shut off overnight. In npm’s case, it even led to a production outage. Twitter declined to comment, but we understand it was making phone calls to affected Smyte customers today to match them with new service providers. The decision to Trust, huh? That’s how it works?
Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com June 22, 2018 at 01:22PM Why Social Media Is Vital To Corporate Social Responsibility https://ift.tt/2K2S8gW Today more than ever, companies are under pressure to be good corporate citizens. They are expected to be at the forefront of change in the world. Consumers now expect these companies to be working alongside them to make the world a better place. And the key to making all this happen is social media. Social media is vital to corporate social responsibility for several key reasons. Social media is how dialogue happens with stakeholdersEvery company has constituents and stakeholders, and it’s important to have transparent, open dialogue with these stakeholders. It’s all about creating an open community, where it’s OK to voice your opinions and make new suggestions. Some of the greatest brands today are those that make their views heard about sweatshop labor conditions, or the state of the environment and global warming, or the need for multicultural diversity. Just name a major issue, and you can find a company supporting it. And sometimes, these stakeholders are people you might not expect. For example, consider your typical energy company – the stakeholders of that company are more than Wall Street shareholders, they also include people who want to see the world become a greener, more sustainable place. These stakeholders want to see energy companies become the champion of clean, sustainable energy. So it’s no wonder the biggest energy companies in the world now run extensive social media campaigns, showcasing all the ways that they are trying to make the world a better place. In the past, companies might have just issued a press release about a new wind farm or solar plant they created. Now, they are maintaining an open, thriving conversation on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Social media is about influencing customers to make the right decisionsCompanies need to be more than just “following the rules” – they need to be taking active steps to influence customers to make the right decisions. Just think of how many subtle reminders you get throughout the day to convert to paperless billing (it’s better for the environment!), to donate a percentage of every transaction to a charitable cause (every penny counts!), or to donate used, unwanted items for a good cause (you can make a difference!). With a single hashtag, companies can start entire social movements. With tens of thousands of followers (if not more), corporations have the power to turn people into conscientious consumers. Thanks to social media, even the simple act of buying your daily coffee can turn into a social statement. For example, are you buying “corporate coffee” or are you buying ethically sourced coffee beans from a fair trade coffee vendor? Or think about the clothes you buy. Are you buying your clothing from a company that is pocketing all the profits, or are you buying it from a company that is sweatshop-free and using only recycled or organic materials? Social media is about turning a company’s own employees into agents of changeFinally, it’s impossible to ignore how social media can help to activate a company’s own employees. Social media offers plenty of reminders of how a company’s employees are participating in local volunteer efforts, or leading the force for change in the local community. A simple Instagram photo of a company’s employees planting a new tree in a local community park goes a long way to demonstrating a company’s real mission statement in the world. Final ThoughtsIn short, social media is now vital to corporate responsibility. It’s more than just a new form of PR to message an audience – it’s about activating a core base of fans, customers and employees to bring real change to the world The post Why Social Media Is Vital To Corporate Social Responsibility appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/xMddWR June 22, 2018 at 12:05PM
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How to Improve Your Customer Service with These 8 Ways to Get Feedback https://ift.tt/2tvhskP It doesn’t matter what type of business you have or how long you’ve run it. Your customers are the lifelines of your brand. Whether you sell products, offer services, or a combination of the two, customer service needs to be one of your top priorities. You could have the best product in the world, but if you don’t treat your customers well, it’s going to hurt your bottom line. On the flip side, you could have a product that’s average, or even subpar, and be extremely profitable if you provide excellent customer service. How is that possible? Well, the numbers don’t lie. According to research, 80% of consumers say they’re willing to pay more money to businesses offering better customer service. But that’s not all. Failing to provide good customer service can result in the loss of your customers. What exactly causes a business to lose customers? Research shows that only 14% of customers stop supporting a business because they are not satisfied with their products or services. And 9% leave because of the price. But look at the top reason why customers leave a business. Nearly seven out of 10 customers will leave because they don’t feel valued. In short, customer service is more important than what you’re selling. Now that we’ve established why improving your customer service is important, it’s time to take steps in that direction. But how can you improve your customer service if you don’t know what your customers want? It’s simple. Just ask them. Getting feedback from your customers is a crucial component of your customer support strategy. It shows them you care about their opinions. Furthermore, the results can help you better your business and ultimately make more money. If you want to provide excellent customer service, I’ve narrowed down the top 8 ways to get feedback from your customers. 1. Create surveysLeveraging customer surveys is the most logical place to start your quest for feedback. Depending on what you’re using the survey for, the questions and potential responses can vary. It’s important to have a clear goal when you’re creating these. For example, if you’re trying to improve your customer service, you don’t necessarily need to ask the customer about a specific product. That said, surveying customers about a previous purchase shows them you value their opinions, which they perceive as good customer service. The idea is to get your information and get out as soon as possible. Customers don’t want to fill out a 20-minute survey. People are busy. In all honesty, they’ve got better things to do. I recommend using an online resource such as SurveyMonkey to create your surveys. You can create an account for free and have access to templates and pre-written questions about specific topics. Obviously, you can customize those to fit your business and goals. Once your survey is complete, it’s easy to distribute it electronically to your customers through all your marketing channels. Since time is of the essence here, keep your surveys short and limit them to a handful of questions. Don’t ask obvious or misleading questions. Don’t ask questions and provide answers you want to hear. You may be doing things wrong. Allow your customers to share that information with you. Sometimes you need to give your customers some extra incentive to fill out a survey to get as many responses as possible. A discount off their next purchase should be sufficient. 2. InterviewsInterviews might not work for your business. It’s much easier for brands with brick and mortar locations to conduct interviews than for online businesses. Sure, ecommerce companies can still interview customers. But they’d have to set up a Skype session or phone call to do so. This isn’t impossible, but it’s more of a hassle. But those of you with physical store locations can interview customers when they shop in person. The best time to do this is after the customer has checked out and is getting ready to leave. You don’t want to bother customers while they are shopping because it could potentially prevent them from making a purchase. Since it’s not the most common practice, this strategy could really help you gain an edge over your competitors. Nearly 90% of marketing experts believe that improving the customer experience is the top factor for differentiating their brand from the competition. Before the customer leaves your store, politely ask them if they have five minutes to answer some questions. If you tell them the interview is going to be five minutes, you’d better stick to five minutes. Conduct the interview away from the register so it doesn’t hold up your line. It doesn’t need to be in an office, but go somewhere with some privacy so other employees and customers can’t hear the responses. Introduce yourself and explain why you’re conducting the interview. Establish a rapport with the interviewee so they feel comfortable answering your questions honestly. Make it clear that you won’t be offended by their responses. Some customers may be hesitant to provide negative feedback if they are saying it directly to your face. You’ll need to let your guard down and ask questions in a way that gives them the opportunity to say how they truly feel. The great thing about an interview, as opposed to a survey, is that the answers are more authentic. Customers have a chance to tell you what’s on their minds, without having to select from a pre-determined list of survey responses. Record your interviews, with the customer’s permission, of course. That way you won’t have to scramble to write notes while they are speaking. Again, you can offer an incentive to customers who take the time to answer your questions. Thank them for their time, and give them a coupon. 3. Add a comment box to your websiteThis one is pretty simple. Include a customer feedback form on your website. That way, people who are visiting can see this as an opportunity to share their opinions. Here’s an example of a basic version of a comment box on the BuildFire website: You have different options with these comment boxes. As you can see in the example above, this form requires you to include your name and email address with the message. But you could provide the visitor with an anonymous option. If customers do provide you with their contact information, it’s always in your best interest to reach out to them when you receive the message. This is especially true if they are voicing a complaint. Apologize for any inconvenience you may have caused them. Offer a solution. Let them know that you value them as a customer and that you’ll make improvements to ensure this won’t happen again. Thank them for reaching out to you. Here’s something else to keep in mind. Don’t be discouraged by negative comments. You should be thankful the customer told you about their poor experience instead of leaving without saying a word. In fact, only 1 out of 26 customers will complain if they are unhappy. The other 25 will just give up on your brand and stop buying. When a customer gives you negative feedback, you still have the opportunity to make things right. Not all is lost. You can turn a negative experience into something positive by mending that relationship. 4. Third-party reviewsYour business is on websites such as Yelp, Google Local, and TripAdvisor. Just because you don’t control those websites doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Make a habit of checking those listings weekly, at a minimum. If you are getting tons of reviews, consider checking more frequently. For starters, you want to make sure the information listed on these sites is accurate. I’m referring to your hours, phone number, menu, pricing, etc. But you also need to consider the customers who willingly took the time to write about your business. Good comments. Bad comments. You want to pay attention to all of them. All too often when we talk about customer service, it seems like businesses automatically jump to the negatives. While it’s important to be proactive about those poor experiences, it’s also necessary to keep track of the positive ones. This will reinforce what you’re doing right. You’ll know what you should continue doing instead of changing something that customers are happy with. 5. Live video broadcastJump on the live video bandwagon. Facebook. Instagram. YouTube. All of these marketing channels have live streaming features you should be taking advantage of. While this tactic isn’t quite as intimate as a focus group, which we’ll discuss shortly, it gives you the opportunity to reach a high volume of customers at the same time. Here are some of the top benefits of live video streaming, according to brands, retail companies, agencies, and other marketing executives: As you can see from their responses, a more authentic interaction with the audience ranked first on the list. This authentic interaction is great for getting customer feedback. That’s because customers can comment in real time while you’re broadcasting live. Everyone else watching can see those comments as well. Respond to comments. Depending on how many people are watching your stream, it can be overwhelming to keep up with comments. That’s okay. Take your time to go through them. The great thing about these live streams is you can save them and refer to them at a later time. Read through the comments, and take notes. Group similar statements so you can prioritize what needs to be addressed first. Live video is great for customers as well. They can watch it on their smartphones from the couch as opposed to being bothered when they are in your store. 6. Focus groupsFocus groups aren’t nearly as popular as some of the other feedback methods. This is mainly because the logistics are more complex. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore this option. Even if it’s not your top choice, conducting a focus group should still be in your arsenal of potential ways to get feedback from your customers. An ideal focus group is conducted in person, with all the participants in the same room. Groups of six to eight customers should commit between 30 and 60 minutes of their time to participate. Being in a room together will allow them to feed off each other. One person could say something that another customer may not have thought of. As a result, it could trigger a response based on that customer’s experience. Focus groups are great for testing new products and ideas. Allowing your customers to be part of the innovation process will make them feel valued, the importance of which I have already talked about. Customers who participate in focus groups should be compensated much more than those who fill out a survey online. Your customers who complete a survey may get 20% off their next purchase. But it’s not unreasonable to provide a $50 or even $100 gift card to customers participating in focus groups. You should also provide them with some food when they arrive. 7. Follow-up emailsAfter a customer makes a purchase, you should send them a follow-up message, asking for their feedback. I’m sure you’ve seen these before. Here’s an example of a short survey from Venmo embedded directly into an email: As you can see, this survey is directly related to customer service. In addition to embedding the survey into the email, you could also provide a link for the customer to provide feedback through a platform like SurveyMonkey, which I talked about earlier. You may even decide to send a link to the comment box on your website I previously mentioned. Just realize that any additional steps a customer has to take to give you feedback will decrease the chances of it being completed. Don’t be annoying. All too often I get three or four emails from a company asking me to provide feedback for my most recent purchase, flight, etc. You don’t want to be that person. If they don’t respond after the first message, you could send one more reminder. But that’s it. If they still haven’t given feedback, you could always try again in the future after their next purchase. 8. Social media commentsYou need to stay active on social media. But in addition to posting content on a regular basis, you also have to track what your customers say about you. Don’t ignore your notifications. Read through your comments and direct messages. Do this on all platforms. Facebook. YouTube. Instagram. Use the Twitter advanced search query to find out what customers are saying about you, even if they don’t tag you directly. Check out these comments from a post on the Lululemon Facebook page: The first comment is positive, and the second comment shares some criticism. But do you notice something they both have in common? Lululemon responded to both of them. As I said before, you need to treat both positive and negative feedback the same. In both instances, you want your customers to know you value them. More than half of consumers say they expect brands to respond to their feedback. If their comments are negative, that number jumps from 52% all the way up to 72%. ConclusionIf you can’t keep your customers happy, your business is going to struggle. It’s a fact. Customers care more about customer service than they do about the quality and price of what they’re buying. That’s why it’s so important for you to find ways to get their feedback. But there is no one-size-fits-all way to do this. Not all customers will respond to all tactics. In order to get responses from as many customers as possible, you’ll need to try different approaches. This will also help you get accurate results. Refer to this list of my favorite 8 ways to get customer feedback. Ultimately, this will help you provide enhanced customer service. What method is your company using to get feedback from your customers? Social Media via Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/UU7LJr June 22, 2018 at 10:06AM Twitter buys a startup to battle harassment e-cigs are booming and a meditation app is worth $250M6/22/2018
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Twitter buys a startup to battle harassment, e-cigs are booming, and a meditation app is worth $250M https://ift.tt/2luEQLE Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley Editor Connie Loizos and I jammed out on a couple topics as Alex Wilhelm was out managing his fake stock game spreadsheets or something. (The jury is out on whether this was a good or bad thing.) First up is Twitter buying Smyte, a startup targeting fixes for spam and abuse. This is, of course, Twitter’s perennial problem and it’s one that it’s been trying to fix for some time — but definitely not there yet. The deal terms weren’t disclosed, but Twitter to its credit has seen its stock basically double this year (and almost triple in the past few years). Twitter is going into a big year, with the U.S. midterm elections, the 2018 World Cup, and the Sacramento Kings probably finding some way to screw up in the NBA draft. This’ll be a close one to watch over the next few months as we get closer to the finals for the World Cup and the elections. Twitter is trying to bill itself as a home for news, focusing on live video, and a number of other things. Then we have Juul Labs, an e-cigarette company that is somehow worth $10 billion. The Information reports that the PAX Labs spinout from 2015 has gone from a $250 million valuation all the way to $10 billion faster than you can name each scooter company that’s raising a new $200 million round from Sequoia that will have already been completed by the time you finish this sentence. Obviously the original cigarette industry was a complicated one circa the 20th century, so this one will be an interesting one to play out over the next few years. Finally, we have meditation app Calm raising a $27 million round at a $250 million pre-money valuation. Calm isn’t the only mental health-focused startup that’s starting to pick up some momentum, but it’s one that’s a long time coming. I remember stumbling upon Calm.com back in 2012, where you’d just chill out on the website for a minute or so, so it’s fun to see a half-decade or so later that these apps are showing off some impressive numbers. That’s all for this week, we’ll catch you guys next week. We apologize in advance if Alex makes it back on to the podcast. Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts. Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com June 22, 2018 at 08:44AM
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5 Social Listening Tools That You’ll Actually Want to Use https://ift.tt/2ML4iJ4 Reputation management is more important today than it ever has been in the past. In years gone by what somebody thought of your business in the next city over mattered as little as what somebody on the other side of the globe thought about your business. Today things couldn’t be more different. The internet is written in ink, not pencil and anybody, anywhere in the world can share an opinion about your brand that could potentially cause serious harm to your business. We shouldn’t be too pessimistic, but it’s important to be truthful about the potential that the public has to control the perception of businesses in this day and age. With such a large risk hanging over the head of every business it’s important that we be as proactive as we can be with our reputation management. Rather than waiting for a hashtag about your company to be trending, take control of the narrative a few minutes after it first appears on the web. Reputation management works the other way around too. By spotting positive brand mentions quickly, you can reply to them, boost them around the web and allow them to have a far larger impact than they originally intended. If you’re smart about it, you can even search these positive mentions out in a time of crisis and use them to drown out the negative press that you’ll inevitably get on a regular basis as a successful company. You don’t have to look far to see how online messages can tarnish a brand reputation. Take Uber for example who has repeatedly struggled with unsafe and occasionally criminal drivers who have hurt or stolen from their customers. These incidents might be incredibly rare, but it doesn’t seem that way when they trend on Twitter go viral online. As a result, Uber has joined the rest of the worlds biggest companies in using a social listening tool to monitor their reputation actively and to nip problems in the bud before they start. Similarly, they’ll be able to use it to boost positive mentions and hopefully spin the narrative of their business in a beneficial direction. What is a Social Listening Tool?A social listening tool allows you to see what people are saying about you or your business on the internet. These tools are powered by a network of scrapers which crawl the internet in hopes of finding mentions of your brand name or whatever keywords you typed into the tool. When they find them, they show them to you in the dashboard, giving you the ability to react to them far before they get out of control. The majority of these tools started by only showing your social media mentions, but the most advanced tools like Awario have progressed to showing your comments across the web, including on websites. This is far more powerful because often reputation issues can start before social media and although it might not seem this way, Facebook and Twitter are only a fraction of the internet content that is published on a daily basis. Awario: The Leader in Social Listening ToolsThe standout leader in the field is Awario, an enterprise-level software that is available at a consumer price. Awario gives you the ability to scan the entire web, not just social media so that you can see when somebody writes a comment on an obscure blog that tarnishes your brand name, or when there is a Reddit post about your company. It’s believed that Awario scans far more pages than any of the commercial alternatives, processing over 13 billion web pages each day to ensure that you never miss a mention. The crawl rate of a tool is incredibly important because the faster the crawl rate, the earlier you’ll see a comment, giving you potentially days more to think of a response and to get a handle on the situation. Competitors to Awario offer only a fraction of the daily crawl rate, making it far more likely that you’ll miss a mention and be blindsided by negative press. Awario is a leader in the industry because their technology is far more powerful than the competitions, giving you the ability to see a larger percentage of all of the messages about you on social media and across the web. It’s not just their backend that impresses either. Their frontend customer dashboard is incredibly intuitive, prompting you to type in keywords that you want to monitor, as well as giving you the ability to select advanced options including negative exclusion. This feature is imperative in a social listening tool. Let’s say you’re monitoring the word “Honda,” you don’t want to have to scroll through thousands of “for sale” posts. Which is why you’d probably exclude keywords like “sale,” “buy” and “cheap.” Awario makes this incredibly easy, which is why they are the go-to social listening tool for small businesses through to enterprise level customers. Once you’ve set up your keywords, the tool will start searching the web, and within a few seconds, you’ll have thousands of recent mentions to look through. With their simple dashboard, you can scroll through the mentions in a tab on the left and see them in more detail on the right. Plus, if you only want to monitor a certain part of the web you can filter for a specific social media or type of post by clicking on the icons above the mentions feed. Awario has three separate packages to choose from, starting at less than a dollar per day for small businesses and startups, though to an incredibly powerful plan for enterprises. Regardless of the power that you need, with 13 billion pages crawled on a daily basis Awario gives you clairvoyance, preventing you from missing a mention ever again. Google Alerts: A Free AlternativeAlthough Google Alerts comes with only a fraction of the features that Awario has, it’s completely free and is a useful tool for small businesses and startups who are strapped for cash. Where Google Alerts falls short of Awario is that it only tracks the web pages that Google crawls, which means that you miss out on social media comments, Tweets, and other replies. This is less than ideal, but for a free tool, it’s hard to complain. But for mentions outside of social media, Google Alerts is almost certainly the most powerful tool available. No other company comes close to Google for the number of pages they crawl on a daily basis. It’s quite literally what sets them apart from their competition in the search space, and therefore you’d expect that their alerts tool would be equally well-fed with new information. For business owners who care about social media mentions a tool like Awario is a clear choice, but for monitoring websites and blogs, Google Alerts does a fantastic job. While you can log into its dashboard, most users choose to have any mentions sent directly to their email each day, making it quick and easy to track what people are saying about you online. While Google Alerts isn’t packed with features, for many people that’s a benefit. If you’re searching for a simple, intuitive and smooth social listening tool that’s free of charge, it’s going to be hard to beat Google Alerts. There are free alternatives available, but crawling this many web pages is expensive, and therefore no free service is going to compete with commercial software like Awario or a free tool by a data company like Google Alerts. Mention: Scan the WebIf Awario doesn’t impress you for some reason but you’re still in the market for a commercial listening tool that scans both the web and social media, Mention is a great alternative. While it only crawls an estimated 1 billion pages daily, 1/13th of what Awario does, it’s got a beautiful interface that could make it ideal for larger companies. The businesses that lose out from a smaller crawl rate are small and medium-sized businesses. Large enterprises like Honda and Ford are typically getting mentioned on the biggest websites in the world, while Tim’s Local Bakery in Boise, Idaho might only be commented about on a local blog. Search tools like Mention are likely to direct the majority of their crawl budget to the biggest websites because this is the most efficient way for them to get information. However, the smallest businesses are the ones who miss out. As a result, Mention is a great choice for larger businesses, but smaller companies would probably benefit from using Awario instead. Similar to how Google Alerts works, Mention gives you an intuitive dashboard to log into where you can export your data in PDF or CSV where you can analyze it and manipulate the data. But if reputation management is only part of your job you might prefer to opt to have Mention send all of the previous days mentions directly to your email address. This convenience factor can’t be overstated. It’s not unlikely that many days there will be only one or two messages that are worth responding to and having to search through a list in a dashboard isn’t the best use of your time when they could be emailed to your instead. TalkWalker Alerts: The Bare BonesThere is a niche group of people who prefer not to use brands like Google and Microsoft because of their data collection tactics and for these people Google Alerts is a no-go. One free social listening tool that is a worthy alternative is TalkWalker Alerts. While it’s impossible that they’ll ever have a similar amount of data as Google, they do a fairly good job considering the service is free. For a small local business who might only be mentioned infrequently and for whom a large PR scandal is incredibly unlikely, a tool like Awario or Mention might be overkill. In this case, TalkWalker Alerts is a wiser choice because it’s available free of charge and it gives you the option only to be emailed about the best mentions. For a one-person or small team, this feature is invaluable. Rather than wasting your valuable time looking through hundreds of mentions, you can only hear about the most critical ones, allowing you to focus on your efforts and have the biggest impact. For this feature along TalkWalker Alerts is worth considering if you’re only searching for a free social listening tool. Reputology: Monitor Your ReviewsThe previous few tools that we’ve discussed have all had a similar approach to social listening. Either they scrape the entire web in hopes of finding every mention of your brand, or they crawl the main social media platforms to give you an insight into the mentions, comments, and tweets that you have. Reputology is slightly different because they focus their attention on the most common review platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews. Reputology’s customer base is probably completely different from Awario. While Awario serves businesses who are mentioned across the web, Reputology is ideal for local businesses whose most likely PR problems will occur from bad reviews on Yelp and other platforms. Every local business knows how harmful a single 1-star can be, especially if you’ve only got a handful of reviews and therefore it can greatly impact your average. The fantastic thing about quickly seeing bad reviews is that you as a business owner still have the opportunity to change that negative review into a positive one if you act quickly. As a restaurant owner a customer might have had a terrible experience the night before, but by acting quickly, giving them a refund and offering them a free meal, you could even get that negative review removed. But without being able to see the reviews as quickly as possible and act rapidly, it’s unlikely that you’ll have any impact. After all, are you likely to take a company’s response seriously if it comes a month after the problem? Probably not, but if they reply the same day or the next morning, your response might be different, especially if they appear sincere and apologetic rather than combative. The post 5 Social Listening Tools That You’ll Actually Want to Use appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/xMddWR June 22, 2018 at 08:00AM Your Social Media Profile https://ift.tt/2K2B9LO If you haven’t got a brand, you haven’t got a life. This is especially true on social media. The better your profile on social media the better your chances are at succeeding in your personal life and in your business. Today we will examine how best to boost your social media profile, so it will withstand the scrutiny of cynics and dazzle the wide wide world. And remember, the so-called ‘truth’ on social media is as flexible as a snake without a skeleton!
What’s in a name? Your username is the key to other people finding you on social media. If you want them flocking to your sites, think twice before using something like httr://twitter.com/boogerbreath. Some handles that would be more successful are variations on such usernames as FreeBeer or IGIveMoneyAway.
Your profile photograph Let’s face it; most people are as homely as five miles of bad road. So the purpose of a social media profile picture is to HIDE your natural features, not DISPLAY them. This can be done by wearing a colorful ski mask. Or photoshopping an old photo of Tom Cruise, adding a mustache and/or breasts.
Bio con brio The secret to a great bio on social media is to concentrate on assertions that cannot possibly be proven, one way or the other. For instance, if you say you have a degree in philosophy from the Washington Theological Union, which, according to Wikipedia, closed down for good in 2015, how is anyone possibly going to call your bluff? Or you can claim to have spent your childhood collecting elephant dung at Ringling Brothers circus to donate to urban gardens. Since they folded up their tents and disappeared six months ago, who’s to know any better? The post Your Social Media Profile appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/xMddWR June 22, 2018 at 05:52AM
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Curiosity Marketing: A Better Way to Win Loyal Customers https://ift.tt/2tsC4Kp Want your audience to ask about your products? Wondering how to spark people’s interest? To explore how to use curiosity in your marketing, I interview Chalene Johnson. More About This ShowThe Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Chalene Johnson. She’s a marketer, speaker, and teacher. She’s also the author of the book Push and founder of 131 Method, a site that helps people get healthy and lose weight in non-traditional ways. Chalene explains how authentic connections and a little bit of mystery keep your audience interested in your content. You’ll also discover tips for creating cliffhanger content and answering people’s questions. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen NowListen now: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show: Curiosity MarketingChalene’s Story Most people know Chalene from her work in health and fitness. She’s appeared in many infomercials and exercise DVDs. However, she’s been successful in fitness because she loves business and helping people solve problems. In fact, Chalene has spent a large part of her professional life teaching people about marketing, building an online business, and developing passive income. Chalene finds that marketers often copy other people who are successful (or assumed to be successful). But when you do that, you lose authenticity and fail to listen to yourself. You do things that don’t come naturally to you and don’t tune into what you like, what would grab your attention, and how you would like to be talked to. When Chalene finds herself thinking she should do what her competitors are doing, she reminds herself of her passion for her own message and desire to serve others. Also, you don’t know the ins and outs of someone else’s method. For instance, you don’t know how big their team is, how much experience they have, how much traffic they receive, or what they want their lifestyle to look like. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts on the problems with following someone else’s playbook. Why Is Curiosity a Powerful Concept? People want to connect the dots, and when they can’t, their curiosity is powerful and motivating. For example, when a child can’t see what’s under the bed, they imagine something’s under there. In business, your goal is to get people’s attention, maintain it, and engage with them. Curiosity can help you accomplish those goals. Nowhere is keeping people’s attention more challenging than on TV, where you see shows like Storage Wars pique viewers’ curiosity before cutting to a commercial. Storage Wars is a cable TV show where abandoned storage units are auctioned off. Sometimes they’re filled with nothing; sometimes they’re filled with amazing treasures. To keep you engaged, just before the show cuts to commercial, the door on the storage unit slides up so you can glimpse inside. Then you’re left wondering, “Was the unit a bust or was there something valuable in it?” Chalene thinks it’s important to translate this tactic to marketing to keep people’s attention. The longer you have someone’s attention, the more likely you are to build trust. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts on cliffhangers. Chalene’s Strategy Chalene’s strategy for curiosity marketing is built on authenticity, growing your community, and asking questions. To make these concepts easy to remember, she has a phrase for each part of her strategy. Borrowed Words Are for the Birds: When the language in your copy or social media video uses someone else’s language, your words don’t feel authentic. Only the words that you use feel natural. When someone’s being inauthentic or they’re uncomfortable, it’s so easy to identify. This comes across especially on video, even if viewers register the effect only on a subconscious level. Also, authenticity has leveled the playing field for the person who doesn’t have Hollywood looks and isn’t incredibly articulate on camera. People trust someone who seems more like their neighbor. To illustrate, when Chalene created an infomercial for PiYo, she partnered with Beachbody, which hired a celebrity spokesperson, a scriptwriting company, and a studio audience that clapped and applauded to create the appearance of being on a TV show talking about PiYo. Chalene talked to the camera only briefly, and when she did, she read someone else’s words from a teleprompter. VIDEO This infomercial didn’t do well. After a year of testing, the PiYo infomercial never did more than break even. When CEO Carl Daikeler told Chalene that Beachbody was done investing in the infomercial, she asked to create an infomercial using her words. Carl agreed but said he needed the ad in 2 weeks. Chalene filmed the PiYo infomercial herself using her iPhone. She knew exactly who the customer was, what she needed to hear, and how to talk to her. Instead of using a script or hair and makeup, Chalene held up her iPhone and talked to her customer in authentic words about how the customer was feeling and why the PiYo program was created for her. VIDEO After Chalene and Beachbody tested that infomercial about a month later, it held the number-one spot for the majority of the year. In fact, it was the infomercial of the year last year and is still performing well. Because Chalene filmed the infomercial on the wrong settings, it’s completely grainy, but it performs well because it’s authentic. This authenticity is important because marketers are competing for the same audience. However, the audience has almost become jaded by marketing techniques and tactics. Everyone wants to avoid being scammed, taken advantage of, or bamboozled. Your audience needs to trust you to feel in charge of their own destiny. In fact, right before this podcast, Chalene met with a group that does Facebook ads. They were talking about the fact that native social videos turned into ads outperform everything right now. In other words, the person in the video doesn’t even know the video will be an ad. But because they’re speaking passionately about their topic, their video ends up being the best content. On social media, Chalene can tell when someone’s delivery is perfect and contrived, and they’re searching for the right word or reading from a script on a podcast. She doesn’t buy it, believe it, like it, or relate to it. To avoid this problem while recording video for the PiYo infomercial, Chalene pretended to talk to her Aunt Nellie, who isn’t judgmental and loves how quirky and funny Chalene is. If you’re nervous, you can use Snapchat and Instagram Stories to help you practice the 10-second soundbite. The more often you do it, the better you get. Chalene also finds that most people fear the comments. In this case, she recommends turning off the comments until you feel comfortable. Or think of comments as evidence that you have viewers. Also, remember that the more viewers you get, the more weird and obscure the comments will be. That’s just proof that people are watching. Don’t Tell Me You Plan to Sell to Me: Right now, a big mistake marketers make is obviously gearing up for the sale. Or the sale is the first thing that viewers see because marketers lead with their product, disappear, and then suddenly return to the news feed for another a launch or promotion. With this approach, you’re like a fair-weather friend. To keep your audience’s attention, be consistent. Marketers also tell their audience they plan to sell when they put all their products in their bio or use their product or service name as their handle. Chalene often sees small business owners make this mistake. Say someone’s interested in the makeup line you represent. If your audience loves the way your makeup looks but already knows the company you represent, they’re going to Google it and buy the makeup from your competitor or read negative reviews that aren’t appropriate or authentic. So if you share the company and product names, you lose control of that relationship. A better idea is getting your audience to ask, “What brand of makeup do you wear?” Then you have a relationship. Also, in your bio, it’s better to talk about your interest such as beauty, fitness, or whatever topic best describes your content. Also, this tactic doesn’t work in every situation. You don’t necessarily need to remove your domain name from your bio. In most instances, you can send people to the link in your bio. However, if you’re in a competitive market where lots of people offer the same product or service, Chalene recommends sharing your email address so people can reach out to you. Before you start pitching your product or service, you need to have a relationship with your audience. Someone who’s had a conversation with you is more likely to check out your website. Although building relationships and having conversations take more time, that’s how social media works right now. People crave real conversations and attention from the person they’re watching. For example, when your favorite broadcaster goes live and the live notification appears, you want to jump on the live video. Although you could watch the video anytime you want, you watch the live video because you want that broadcaster to notice you. Curiosity marketing validates your potential customers better than any other type of marketing. It says, “I see you, I hear you, I’m listening to you, I’m talking to you.” That connection is powerful. I add that creating authentic content and getting to know your tribe are important because people are more sophisticated now and know when you’re selling to them. Also, algorithms are there to prevent you from creating salesy marketing content without paying for it. In a world of marketers signaling when they’re going to sell, the ones who don’t look like marketers are the ones who’ll succeed. Chalene agrees and explains how you can generate sales without making a sales pitch. Piquing people’s curiosity is important. When you create a gap that people want to fill, they’ll decide for themselves to ask an additional question or log on the next time you’re live. The same gap makes people curious enough to stay through the commercial. To illustrate, if you share your journey of creating a new product or event that you want people to attend, you give people a lot of the information. It’s exciting, and they know it’s something different but don’t know what it is. It’s like teasing your product without being too obvious. Chalene might say, “I’m working on something really exciting. I wish I could tell you.” Or, “the new event that we’re putting together is mind-blowing, and people are getting great results. We’re scheduled in July.” This way, you’re also giving your audience lots of information. Chalene initially discovered the power of this approach by accident. While she was Snapchatting, a technical glitch failed to post the last four videos in a series. The next morning, she woke up to endless comments asking about the event and how to get more details. Likes Wear Thin; Questions for the Win: When you’re creating content, focus on what will make people curious or intrigued 80% of the time. Your goal is for your audience to ask questions and engage in meaningful conversation. Don’t worry about likes or shares. For instance, Chalene saw a woman post a photo of herself in a really cute workout outfit. Her body looked amazing, and in her post, she wrote about how she had transformed her body. She included details about the program she used, how long it lasted, and how people could click the link in her bio to purchase it. Below this attention-grabbing image, people asked hundreds of questions about her outfit. Her audience didn’t ask about the workout program because she didn’t create curiosity about it. To generate curiosity, the woman could have shared how much her outfit cost and where she got it. Then she could explain how her workout helped her gain confidence to buy the outfit and didn’t hurt her joints. With this approach, no one will ask about the outfit. Instead, they’ll ask the right questions. In this example, Chalene wouldn’t even say, “Hit me up if you have any questions.” I ask Chalene to talk about what it means for likes to wear thin. Chalene says that when you’re developing your own social media strategies, always ask yourself whether the strategy you’re using would work for you, personally. The approach that would work for you is what will work for your tribe, the people you’re trying to attract. With this point in mind, Chalene notes that if likes are your measure of success, you’re going to be disappointed because people are clicking Like less frequently. If you look at your own behavior, you can see why: everyone is following a lot of people, and clicking Like is an extra step. After you swipe through a carousel of photos on Facebook or on Instagram, you’ll move on and forget to tap Like. So likes don’t tell you who’s curious. Likes tell you people gave you an obligatory tap, and obligatory taps don’t pay the mortgage. Relationships are how you change the world, serve other people, and sell more. I ask Chalene to share how she keeps people curious and asking questions, using her 131 Method as an example. Chalene says for a program like 131 Method, people are curious about what you’re eating, why, and how. If Chalene says the program is about “clean” eating, people will want to know what that means; they might ask whether the diet is plant-based. With this technique, you need to provide enough information so your audience can follow along but not so much that they don’t have any gaps. When we don’t know anything, we’re not curious. When we know a little about something, we’re curious. When we know everything, we’re not curious. Your audience won’t need to ask questions or follow you anymore. They come to their own conclusions. Chalene recommends being thoughtful about what you want to discuss in your next post or live video. She intentionally leaves pieces out because she wants you to be curious. In other words, she doesn’t flood her audience with a fire hose of information. Instead, she drips it out to keep people engaged. You can also simply be a little bit vague. Leave out the things you would like people to ask you about because that creates an opportunity to connect. If you create content that documents your day, create some interest by leaving out some details while still letting your audience follow the journey. Over the last 2 years, Chalene has shared what she’s learning and why she’s passionate about it, and has given people enough information to make them curious. She might share people’s testimonials or how a person who struggled with Hashimoto’s disease and weight loss resistance lost weight after learning how to diet phase. Diet phasing is what the 131 Method teaches, but Chalene won’t mention that part. However, she does include the phrase “diet phasing,” which most people aren’t familiar with. I mention that a book I wrote in my copywriting days, Writing White Papers, talked about making up a phrase that may become an industry maxim eventually and that has some intuitive meaning. Later, when you talk about what to look for in a specialist, you can mention that phrase. Chalene says after she had that experience of waking up to bajillions of questions, she started wondering how that happened and why there was so much curiosity. Right away, her questions led her to the great copywriting experts. She found that copywriters have been generating curiosity forever. They’re really good at it. For example, in the P90X infomercial, the phrase used to describe the secret to P90X was “muscle confusion.” It makes people curious because they know what muscles are and what confusion is, but what the heck is muscle confusion? Don’t be afraid to use words that people can understand a little bit but want to know more about. A really simple way to keep people curious is to take them on a journey where they want to know how it turns out. You’re not trying to sell anything. You just want to keep people’s attention. For instance, Chalene recently suffered a hamstring avulsion, where the hamstring muscles were torn 17 millimeters from the pelvic bone. The orthopedic surgeon told Chalene she was on the cusp but would need to have the hamstring surgically reattached. Another expert who knew Chalene’s background and what she’s into said, if she wasn’t opposed, they could try an alternative healing process. Chalene loved the idea and has been taking her social media family on this journey by sharing all the things she’s doing and her progress. They’re staying tuned to see whether the alternative method works or if she’ll need to have surgery. It’s a nice outlet for Chalene and also keeps her audience involved. Every day, she receives a message asking for an update. The main takeaway is to focus on how you can keep people’s attention longer. Don’t think about selling something but instead about how to keep people engaged. That’s the win. Your audience needs to have a relationship with you. If you have that relationship, they trust you and will sign up for your offer. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about being authentic and how live video can help. Tips for Keeping Your Audience Curious A cliffhanger is a simple way to keep your audience curious. To illustrate how this works, Chalene makes up an example. If she was really excited about a new supplement from her doctor that’s supposed to promote cellular regeneration, she might share that she’s going to get a treatment right now and will let you know how she feels when she’s done. Then, Chalene will intentionally wait until the next day to post an update. When people start asking for an update, you know people are paying attention. It’s almost like gamification. A lot of websites and social media platforms like Fitbit and Facebook spend a boatload of money trying to figure out how to keep us coming back. Marketers need to do the same thing. You can create short little updates in many different ways. For instance, you could use Facebook or Instagram Stories, a static photo, videos, and so on. On Pinterest, when you click an infographic and then want to see the rest of the story or other tips, the platform takes you back to the original poster’s website. Short updates are similar because they leave your audience wanting more information. Although you might be afraid of how much time this level of interaction will take, Chalene emphasizes that it’s worth that time. To scale with this approach, Chalene created text replacements on her iPhone. As an example, Chalene was talking to people on Snapchat about the Marketing Impact Academy. It was her biggest-ever launch of a $2,000 program. Although Snapchat is her smallest platform, she had the biggest return on investment there because she used this process. When someone asked a question, Chalene used a text replacement function on her iPhone that turned her shorthand into everything she wanted to share with them. You can turn OMW into the text “on my way.” Similarly, you can tell your smartphone to turn a letter sequence like MIA into a long message that answers a common question. To find this feature on an iPhone, tap Settings, General, Keyboard, and then Text Replacement. Android phones have a similar feature. Chalene uses text replacements to interact with everyone she can every single day on Instagram and Snapchat. Without text replacement, that could take a lot of time. However, she can write four or five sentences by simply typing two letters. People wonder if it’s really her, or they’re impressed she takes the time to answer their question. Whenever Chalene posts content and knows people are going to ask where she got something and how much it cost, she simply creates a little abbreviation that writes a paragraph. Then she can reply to each person in detail. You develop a great sense of appreciation and reciprocity when you communicate with your audience that way. Listen to the show to hear more about how Chalene uses text abbreviations. Discovery of the WeekSmart Compose is a cool new feature inside the brand-new Gmail. With Smart Compose, Gmail predicts what you’ll type and gives you suggestions to help you finish your email quicker. For example, after you add your recipient’s email address, Smart Compose might suggest a subject based on subjects you often use for that recipient. To accept a Smart Compose suggestion, you simply press Tab. The meeting scheduling capability also works well. In the body of the email, you might mention scheduling a meeting, and Smart Compose will suggest next week. You might write, “Are there times,” and then Smart Compose will suggest, “that work best for you?” You can continue to press Tab to fill out the email. The process works pretty seamlessly. To use Smart Compose, you need to have the new Gmail and turn on experimental features. To switch to the new Gmail, you click the gear-shaped Settings icon in the upper right and select the option to try the new Gmail. For a corporate account, the administrator of your account needs to activate the new Gmail so that all the people who work for the company can access this option. To turn on experimental features, click the Settings icon, select Settings from the menu that appears, and then select the Enable Experimental Access option. Smart Compose is available when you access Gmail in a desktop browser such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Listen to the show to learn more about Smart Compose and let us know how it works for you. Key takeaways from this episode:What do you think? What are your thoughts on curiosity marketing? Please share your comments below. Social Media via https://ift.tt/1LtH18p June 22, 2018 at 05:09AM |
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