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Chrissy Teigen has some ideas for making Twitter better https://ift.tt/2ZOqAQ2 The model and actress, who has 11.3 million followers, is known for her quirky humor and epic clapbacks. Over the last few days, the celeb made a few humorous suggestions for the social network. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 June 28, 2019 at 01:50PM
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4 Interesting Ways to Market Yourself to Millenials and Gen Zs https://ift.tt/2IWJP4n For growing businesses today, you can’t afford to ignore the younger generations. Millennials are now the largest living generation in the United States, and Generation Z is rapidly growing in purchasing power as well. But young people have grown up in a different media environment, and they have an entirely distinct relationship with marketing. If you’re going to adapt and thrive with these new cohorts, you’re going to need to change the way you think about advertising. Make Your Brand Stand for Something The rising generations are all about being conscientious consumers. They want their values reflected in the choices they make and the brands they support. Don’t be afraid to put your values on display and make that a key component of your brand. Use your voice and your money as a brand to support a cause you believe in and ask millennials to be a part of it. You don’t need to take a stand or actively support every issue there is out there. Find some cause that unites people, and that truly means something to you and your company, and find a way to support it. Younger consumers want to see their purchases and the brands they support having a positive impact on the world. Produce Engaging, Authentic Content Empty or repetitive advertising doesn’t cut it anymore. To build brand loyalty with customers among millennials and Gen Z, you need to produce high-quality content that reflects the authentic identity of your brand. Above all else, it must be engaging and have value on its own as content. “Create valuable content, whether it’s informative, entertaining or something else entirely,” says Ted Rosenberg, a personal injury lawyer in Long Island. “Create something that will be helpful and answer real questions people have.” Then publish your content across multiple platforms to reach young consumers where they congregate. Make it worthwhile. Start Interacting These new consumers value conversation and community above all else. Brand loyalty is going to come out of a two-way relationship, not just one-way mass advertising. Establishing a presence and a distinct personality on social media is essential. Join Facebook and Twitter and put in the time and effort to engage with people. Entertain people and create conversations to bring people together and build community on the web. That’s how you build a successful brand in the 21st century. Let the Audience Do the Work Building a brand is more important than ever because word of mouth and peer recommendations are more powerful than ever. Young consumers don’t respond to the traditional advertising sales pitch like older ones do. They are much more likely to consider a product if they see their peers using it. By building relationships and making inroads in the market, you’ll establish an audience of consumers that will do the work of spreading your brand far more effectively and efficiently than you could ever do on your own. Try to create content and products that can be shared widely and efficiently. The post 4 Interesting Ways to Market Yourself to Millenials and Gen Zs appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog June 28, 2019 at 12:14PM
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What is Experiential Marketing and How Can it Help Change Your Business? https://ift.tt/2YfQVGo A new media environment requires new ways of connecting with consumers. People are inundated every day with conventional, one-way marketing, and most of it gets forgotten or ignored. Instead of continually trying to put more of your brand in front of more eyes, hoping that something will stick, try to engage on a much deeper level with just a few consumers. It’s time for a paradigm shift. Experiential marketing is about immersing individuals or small groups in a meaningful and memorable experience. It’s about live, entertaining, and participatory content. The goal is to build your brand through the experience you provide, showing your potential customers who you are through your creative and interactive program, but the visible brand doesn’t need to be at the center of it all. You can radically reshape your company and bring new attention to your brand just by giving a few people a unique and exciting experience. Set the Product Aside Often experiential marketing is most effective when you’re willing to step away from the product itself. Let it be more about the experience and not feel like a living advertisement. In 2009, Volkswagen partnered with other agencies to turn a subway staircase into a piano, with each step playing a different note when you stepped on it. It encouraged people to take the stairs, not the escalator, and it gave busy commuters a moment of fun in the middle of their day. The publicity and benefit for Volkswagen have been very significant, even though the experience itself wasn’t about cars and the Volkswagen brand wasn’t stamped on every step. “Customers don’t want to feel like they’re watching another ad,” says John Foy, founder of John Foy & Associates. “A truly immersive experience has to feel authentic, like no one is selling you something.” The piano staircase was effective because the immediate goal wasn’t to sell cars but to create joy. Make Something Memorable Think carefully about who your audience is and what their values and interests are. Effective experiential marketing needs to create something fun and memorable. The experience will help develop a stronger, more authentic bond between the participants and the brand, and any publicity around the event will communicate your brand to an even wider audience. Lean Cuisine created a powerful and deeply memorable experience with a public gallery of fake scales on the wall of a train station. People coming through were invited to write on the scales and describe the ways they would prefer to be measured and judged: not by weight but by their values, by their family or achievements. This campaign sent a powerful message and said a lot about the values of the Lean Cuisine brand by creating something that people will remember. The individual men and women that walked through the exhibit that day and wrote something down won’t soon forget that experience. That’s what it means to create an experience for your audience. Connect with people and communicate something meaningful about your brand with an authentic and interactive live marketing experience. There’s no better way to build a brand. The post What is Experiential Marketing and How Can it Help Change Your Business? appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog June 28, 2019 at 10:42AM
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Study says Tinder, Snapchat users are more OK with cosmetic surgery https://ift.tt/2XbbaUa Thanks to Snapchat and Instagram "pretty" filters, it's easy to imagine what you would look like with larger eyes, a flatter nose, and fuller lips. A new study finds that social media might not just be distorting how we want to look in the digital realm. It could also be related to how we feel about going under the knife IRL. Users of certain social networks and photo editing apps were more accepting of cosmetic surgery generally, and more likely to consider getting plastic surgery themselves, according to a study from Johns Hopkins researchers published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study could help doctors better understand their patients — or decide which social networks are filled with potential new customers. According to the study, people who use more social media overall had higher rates of acceptance of plastic surgery, especially users of Tinder, YouTube, and Snapchat filters. Meanwhile, Instagram filter and VSCO users were more likely to consider plastic surgery for themselves — but not have an accepting attitude toward it in general. "I think most cosmetic surgeons would predict these outcomes," said Amishav Bresler, a senior resident at Rutgers who has published on plastic surgery trends and was not involved in the study. "Social media seems to create an almost competitive aesthetic undercurrent that places incredible pressure on young adults." The study doesn’t claim that using Tinder or Snapchat causes people to be OK with cosmetic surgery. It says that social media use and acceptance of cosmetic surgery are connected in some way. Essentially, the study claims that people who spend a lot of energy on how they present themselves on social media are more likely to be open to cosmetic surgery in real life. The nature of each social network — say, how visual it is, or whether it emphasizes talking to strangers over friends — could also factor into how they feel about it. There is a growing body of scientific literature that documents how social media and photo filters are affecting cosmetic surgery requests. Notably, a study found that 55 percent of cosmetic surgeons have reported that patients have brought in photos of themselves, filtered to have larger eyes or flatter noses thanks to dreamy automatic filters on Snapchat or Instagram, and asked surgeons to make them resemble their filtered selves. This new study paints a more complete picture about some of the attitudes behind those requests. For the JAMA study, the researchers surveyed 252 participants, all over the age of 18, with a mean age of just under 25 years old. They asked users a series of questions about their social media and photo editing usage, including how much time they spend on social media, which platforms they use, whether they edit their social media photos, how often, and which editing tools they use (e.g. Photoshop, VSCO, or Snapchat or Instagram filters). Next, they asked users to rank multiple factors about their self-esteem, their attitude about plastic surgery, and whether they would consider cosmetic surgery. With these answers, they were able to compare the answers between app users and non-users. The study found that people who spent a lot of time on Facebook or WhatsApp had neutral attitudes about cosmetic surgery, perhaps because those services are more about messaging friends. On the other hand, Tinder, YouTube, and Snapchat users were more open to procedures.
The researchers posited that users of visually focused platforms in which users compare their appearance with others, or serve themselves up for comparison, were more likely to be focused on how they looked. "Validation of self-worth is a prominent motivation for people to join and use Tinder, likely contributing to the higher [acceptance of plastic surgery] scores among its users," the study authors wrote. People who used photo editing platforms didn't have differing attitudes from non-users. The researchers think that editing photos may be so ubiquitous that it doesn't necessarily say anything about its users. But of those who used photo editing apps, 13 percent changed their face shape and facial features (as opposed to making edits in lighting, for example). Those people did show increased acceptance of cosmetic surgery. While outside experts described the study as "sound," and said the conclusions made sense, they also noted its limitations. Namely, the sampled user base was particularly young, and not necessarily representative of national averages, nor reflective of the age of most cosmetic surgery patients. Additionally, the study represents a snapshot in time, as opposed to following subjects over multiple years to see how their attitudes evolved. "It would be interesting to note how people's attitude to cosmetic surgery changed over time as they progressed from pre-adolescents with no social media through adulthood," Bresler said. So why is it important to know how social media users feel about plastic surgery? On the generous end of the spectrum, physicians writing in commentary accompanying the study say that it can help plastic surgeons discern whether a patient is a good candidate for plastic surgery. Or, if perhaps social media had caused them to struggle with self-esteem, and they would be better served by a mental health professional than a surgeon. "Facial plastic surgeons are uniquely positioned both to directly help our patients improve self-esteem and to refer for mental health care when there are concerns that go beyond the knife and needle," the commentary authors write. But perhaps, more cynically, it could show physicians which social networks are the most fertile ground for advertising. "The fact that we know that patients who use these platforms are more open to procedures makes sense from a marketing perspective," said Boris Paskhover, a surgeon who peer reviewed the JAMA study, and who has published on the effects of social media on surgery before. "Why do you think plastic surgeons have Instagram and Facebook accounts?" Still, this study could help medical professionals understand motivations for surgery, and suss out how best to help patients. "Although this study does not establish causation due to the scientific methodology, this association should be recognized," Bresler said. "Beginning to understand how social media and the photo editing culture our patients are living in is the first step to navigating our patients through this newly enhanced world." Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 June 28, 2019 at 09:36AM
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The 11 Top WordPress Landing Page Templates in 2019 https://ift.tt/2RPXxZL Anyone can create a website. Just because you own or manage a website, it doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a natural born designer. But the design and layout of your website will have a huge impact on its success. In fact, 48% of people say that the design of a website is the top factor they use when it comes to determining how credible a business is. 38% of people will stop using websites with unattractive layouts. So if you want to create unique and beautiful landing pages without having to design them from scratch, you’re going to want to use pre-designed templates. WordPress is the best place to find these. That’s because WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world, and has been for the past seven years in a row. It controls nearly 60% of the entire CMS market across the globe. With more than 500 new sites launching on WordPress each day, it’s also the fastest growing CMS worldwide. 34% of the whole internet is run via WordPress. So if you were on the fence about using WordPress to manage your site, hopefully now you’re convinced. For those of you who are already using WordPress, you’re ahead of the game. Now it’s time to design the best landing pages for your WordPress site. With so many options to choose from, I’ve narrowed down the top 11 WordPress landing page templates to make the decision much easier for you. 1. LandkitLandkit is extremely easy to use, yet it’s designed for high performance. The hybrid composer page builder makes it possible for you to design your website without having to write any code. It doesn’t use many server resources, which makes it perfect for websites with high volumes of traffic. You can use the Landkit template to functionally present information in a way that’s attractive to your website visitors. Another reason why I recommend Landkit is because the landing page templates are so versatile. They can be used for pages related to things like:
The list goes on and on. Landkit makes it easy for you to change the colors to match your website color schemes. It’s also compatible with the WooCommerce plugin, for those of you who are using WordPress for your ecommerce site. Landkit has more than 70 page elements for complete customization. You can choose from 12 header styles, and add use the built-in WordPress mega menu. This landing page theme can be purchased for $49. 2. LandingThe Landing template from Themify is another versatile option for you to consider. It comes with a drag and drop page builder, making it easier than ever before to customize all of the page elements to your liking. Landing has more than 25 builder layouts for you to choose from, based on the type of page that you want to create. There are options specifically created for products, portfolios, marketers, events, ebooks, weddings, agencies, restaurants, mobile apps, personal pages, and more. I like this template because it has a responsive design on all devices, and it’s retina ready as well. Landing has cool header options such as:
These choices are ideal for those of you who want to draw more attention to background images and CTAs on your landing page. Another benefit of Landing is the fact that it has MailChimp integration, so you can use this landing page to collect email addresses. The standard Landing WordPress template costs $59. Developers can buy it for $69. 3. BeOnePage LiteBeOnePage Lite is meant to portray a futuristic and interactive design. This template can be customized to be colorful as well. It comes with a full-screen layout and slider that can be used to display things like images, videos, icons, and other graphics. Another benefit of this template is that it can support several different media files. The parallax effect of BeOnePage Lite ensures that all scrolling will be very smooth on the user’s end. It has a responsive design, with lots of customizable options for you to consider. BeOnePage Lite is a retina ready template that can be used as a landing page for virtually any website. So if you’re looking for a modern WordPress template that’s free to install, BeOnePage Lite should be taken into consideration. 4. FotonFoton was developed with software and mobile app promotion in mind. So for those of you who are creating a landing page to drive mobile app downloads or sell software, this template should be at the top of your list. You can import this template into WordPress with just one click. To customize your page settings, you can take advantage of the drag and drop page builder, which is extremely easy for anyone to use. No coding is required to use Foton. It has WooCommerce integration, slider revolution, and excellent support. It’s also fully responsive and easy to change color themes. Foton comes with free plugins and is optimized for SEO purposes. It has shortcodes designed for portfolios as well, such as lists, projects, sliders, galleries, masonry, and hover layouts. Transitions from page to page are very smooth. The font sets and icons are attractive and easy to change as well. Shortcodes for videos and call-to-actions are definitely ones that you’ll want to take advantage of. The Foton WordPress landing page template is priced at $59. 5. JevelinJevelin is another multi-purpose WordPress landing page template. Some of the top features of this theme include:
There is a great video installation guide, making it possible for anyone to install Jevelin, even if you don’t have experience adding landing page templates to your WordPress site. The fact that it has built-in capabilities with one of the best WordPress form plugins is another added bonus. Jevelin has great reviews from website owners who are using this template on their sites. The drag and drop builder paired with mega menus, custom widgets, social sharing functionality, and ecommerce support make it a popular option. This WordPress landing page template can be bought for just $59. 6. LaunchkitLaunchkit is definitely a one size fits all landing page template, which I’m not saying in a negative way by any stretch. I like Launchkit because it can be used for virtually any landing page for any business type. They offer versatile headers with all different types of media in mind. You can customize headers, CTAs, and forms in a way that positions them for high conversions. Launchkit has simple colors, so your website always looks good, regardless of the screen size or type that it’s being viewed on. Top features of Launchkit include:
This template comes with more than 600 Google Fonts as well. With that in mind, you should check out my guide on the best Google Fonts that go together on your website. For the reasonable price of $59, Launchkit is definitely one of the best landing page templates you can find for your WordPress site. 7. The GemIf you’re looking for a multi-purpose landing page that is optimized for high performance, look no further than The Gem. This template offers a creative design that’s modern and suitable for all different types of websites. There are more than 70 built-in concepts. So you can find a landing page that fits your needs.
These are just some of the many options that showcase the versatility of this WordPress landing page template. It’s fully responsive and looks great on both desktop devices and mobile screens. The Gem is compatible with WooCommerce, making it a top choice for those of you who have an ecommerce shop. With the visual composer, you can easily change elements on your landing pages with the drag and drop builder. The template is compatible with plugins and also comes with premium sliders. You can buy this landing page template for $59. 8. KallyasMore than 35,000 websites are using Kallyas for landing page templates. They have more than 65 live demos, with new ones coming out each month. I always like it when landing page templates offer lots of live demos because it makes it easier to give you inspiration for designing your own website. Top benefits of Kallyas include:
The one-click installation makes it easy for you to start editing your website in minutes. They have demos for things like weddings, makeup artists, bloggers, kids websites, membership sites, news, medical, sports, and dozens more. Kallyas has more than 100 pre-built elements into the template. This gives you seemingly unlimited options when it comes to customizing your landing pages. Kallyas is priced at $69. 9. SoftboxSoftbox is perfect for those of you who want a clean and professional design for landing pages on your website. It’s easy to choose your layout and customize the elements with some of their pre-built options. It works on all major web browsers, screens, and devices. Softbox is retina ready and fully responsive. They have templates designed specifically for home pages, blogs, and interior landing pages as well. In a word, Softbox can be described as simple. But when it comes to your website, simple designs have higher conversion rates. Compared to some of the other WordPress landing pages on our list, Softbox is offered at a lower price point. This template can be yours for just $39. 10. FusionThe Fusion WordPress template is designed with mobile app landing pages and portfolio landing pages in mind. So if you’re looking to showcase one or both of these things on your website, you should take a closer look at this option. It’s an ideal solution for agencies and developers. The pages can be set up so that creatives can showcase their products. This holds true for both firms or individuals as well. The typography is super clean. All of the design elements and whitespace is managed perfectly with this template, so the eyes of your website visitors are always drawn to the right spot on the page. Fusion has a simple shortcode builder and easy customization. Everything integrates seamlessly into WordPress for you to manage. This template has more than 1,500 retina icons, a revolution slider, and the ability to create a gallery with captions. It comes with over 500 Google Fonts, Contact Form 7, and an Ajax loading gallery as well. Fusion costs $49 to install. 11. LeadinjectionLast, but certainly not least, on our list is Leadinjection. As the name implies, this template is designed especially for generating leads. They have pre-built layouts for things like:
As you can see, these lead generation templates are extremely versatile and can fit the needs of nearly any website. The template comes with a Lead Modal plugin, that’s basically a popup on your site that can be used to generate leads. This can be based on timing, exit intent, or other trigger options. Leadinjection has all different types of opt-in forms for your landing pages as well. You can fully customize your CTA, and even add a click to call button for your mobile site. If this sounds like the landing page template that you want, it can be purchased for $39. ConclusionIf you need help designing a landing page for your WordPress website, I’m confident that you can find what you’re looking for somewhere in these options that I’ve listed above. I tried to include something for everyone on here. Some of these templates are made for multiple purposes, while others are made specifically for things like mobile apps, ecommerce, or lead generation. Price is another factor that you can take into consideration when making this decision. While there are some free WordPress landing page templates, the rest tend to be priced between the $39 and $69 range. So keep this list in mind when you’re on the search for the perfect WordPress landing page template. Social Media via Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/UU7LJr June 28, 2019 at 08:59AM It Is All About The Details: Areas To Focus On When Trying To Improve Your Digital Marketing6/28/2019 It Is All About The Details: Areas To Focus On When Trying To Improve Your Digital Marketing https://ift.tt/2RIF1SJ The need for digital marketing in nearly all businesses is obvious. Most people look online to find a business or product. Small details can make a big difference in digital marketing whether it is deciding to publish a blog post on the weekend or during the week in peak traffic hours. Far too many marketing teams leave out a component of digital marketing that could be effective for them for various reasons. Some of these are that they might not have an employee in-house that can handle things like PPC campaigns. The others simply do not think it will work. Email Marketing Landing PagesEmail marketing can be a great way to drum up leads and stay present in the minds of future sales prospects. The landing page has to be great and convince them to do something. This could be to buy or to attend a specific event that tickets are available for. For more tips visit https://landingi.com/blog/a-guide-to-email-marketing-landing-pages as there are different goals for every email marketing campaign. Defining these goals will help the company create the best content possible in the email blast. Quality Content Needs To Be Produced CONSISTENTLYThe one thing that many companies do when it comes to their marketing is investing in generic content simply because it is cheaper. This is basically a waste of money as nobody wants to read generic content on a company blog. They want to read something that educates or entertains them hence them being in the blog section in the first place. Varying content is important as there are far more forms than just written content a company can use. A newer form of content that has become increasingly popular is podcasting and will be covered below. Producing a few types of content is great because one type of visitor might prefer video or interactive content when the other wants a written content. Social Media Has To Be On PointSocial media is the perfect media for any company as it is free to post as many times as you would like. With this being said a company should not flood a person’s feed as this is a quick way to lose a follower. Posting articles that have been published with a comment on the link can help spark engagement from followers who have read the piece. Interacting with customers is also important in digital marketing as the company wants to show customers they care by responding to every comment or complaint. Online reputation is very important in most of companies. Podcasting Can Be Great For Showcasing KnowledgeAs mentioned above podcasts have become increasingly popular. People can sit at work and listen to it, even listen to during a way back home. Podcasting allows a company to show their knowledge on a specific subject in a way long-form content could do. Not everyone wants to read many pages of copy but are more than willing to listen to the summary from an expert. The best podcasters that tackle difficult subjects need to be very clear in their speaking and explain certain things as they would to a person that is uninformed on the topic. In order to improve digital marketing, you must start focusing on above means today. Collect as much data as possible from previous campaigns to see what can be improved or corrected. The post It Is All About The Details: Areas To Focus On When Trying To Improve Your Digital Marketing appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog June 28, 2019 at 07:56AM
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How being sad, depressed, and anxious online became trendy https://ift.tt/2JdzX4S Social media personas built on the illusion of happy, perfect lives are so tired. In 2019, it's all about being Sad Online. "Trendy" emotional distress on social media is part of many must-follow accounts across all platforms. Whether by retweeting the depressing relatability of the So Sad Today Twitter account (at 855,000 followers as of this writing) or commenting the obligatory "same" on a MyTherapistSays Instagram post (currently at 3.6 million). As recently immortalized by a Tim Robinson sketch in I Think You Should Leave, even if you do post pictures where you look cute and happy, it must be accompanied by a self-deprecating caption. The era of being Sad Online is defined by a sense of reverse FOMO, a tacit agreement to redefine being cool on the internet through JOMO (the Joy of Missing Out) — then file it under social anxiety. It's possible, though, that constantly posting about our sadness or anxiety can at times be just as performative as the #posivibes self-care culture that's starting to feel lame.
There's also been a flood of social media campaigns encouraging people to speak openly about their mental health. The social media hive mind has rushed to express their own genuine emotional distress with the intention of helping to normalize, destigmatize, and relate to those struggles. In our haste, though, we might've forgotten the fundamental and vital distinction between sad feels and the terms used to diagnose mental disorders, like anxiety and depression. "People label their sadness as depression and their nervousness as anxiety when the problems that they're facing often don't reflect those psychological problems. If healthy people are convinced that they're depressed, they ultimately identify with the glamorized social media posts, aggravating the phenomenon even more," Jinan Jennifer Jadayel, a graduate student from the International School in Lebanon and co-author of a 2017 study that tracked social media posts about mental health. Social media has increasingly blurred the line between what is authentic and what is performance — even within ourselves. While posting about our upsetting ass vibes may feel more real, for some, it might just be a new way to fit in online. Don't get us wrong: By all numerical accounts, there's never been more people reporting mental health issues than right now — especially the young demographic that dominates social media. A recent Pew Research study found that 7 in 10 teens think anxiety and depression are the biggest problems their peers face. The medical journal JAMA analyzed the CDC's data showing a dramatic increase in suicide rates among Americans 15 to 24-year-olds. Beyond young people, theCDC also cites the oft-repeated statistic that 1 in 5 Americans experience mental illness in a given year. The American Psychiatric Association reported an increase of anxiety and depression among boomers in recent years, too. We are more anxious and depressed than ever before — or at least talking about it more freely. But the trendiness of sad online culture may lead to wrongful self-diagnoses and an inadvertent trivialization of serious illnesses. "More and more teenagers are convinced that depression, anxiety, anorexia, and bipolarity are 'cool' or can make you 'special,'" says Rola Jadayel, another co-author of the social media study and professor of sciences at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. The study focused on a specific type of Tumblr and Instagram post which blatantly glorifies mental health issues through specific hashtags (you know the type). By portraying them as appealing on social media, the research suggests, more people identify with these misrepresentations, which can lead to all sorts of harm.
"For some people, especially when you're young, there is a bit of a pull to join a group. And the group of people with social anxiety or depression feels like one you can easily join," says Natasha Tracy, who developed her own online following by blogging and then writing a book, Lost Marbles, about her severe bipolar disorder. In these jaded times, meme-ing, tweeting, instagramming, and tik-toking about anxiety and depression isn't just for coping. It can act as a guise of honesty — especially to youth desperately seeking authenticity and connection in a virtual social environment that tends to distort it. That's not to say we shouldn't or can't talk openly about mental health issues online. But Tracy believes that the popular social media discourse around mental health is often too far from the truth to be helpful. "There's this group think that starts to believe that's all mental illness is: some mild anxiety and a breathing exercise," she says. "It normalizes a version of mental illness that isn't realistic for those of us who actually have serious mental illness. Someone with severe anxiety disorder is going to need a whole heck of a lot more than breathing exercises, you know." However, what may seem mild from the outside can feel severe to the person experiencing the symptom, and the only real judge regarding impact can be a mental health professional. The problem then isn't that more people are sharing their mental health experiences on social media, but that some people are glorifying or misappropriating those issues without proper context. Obviously' there's also layers of nuance and degrees to what kind of social posts lead to serious harm. Two key factors are involved in the most potent and dangerous posts, according to the University of Balamand study: aesthetic visuals and a person to identify with. That's why the research centered on image-heavy platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, since they illicit the biggest responses and are also the most heavily used by teens, who are particularly vulnerable. While the study didn't account much for video, the researchers believe that those key factors are heightened by that type of content. Since the study published, Tumblr has fallen out of popularity, but young influencers have flocked to Tik Tok and Snapchat. Those platforms are designed for video content that makes followers feel a personal connection to the creator, to see them as aspirationally relatable. And that can be particularly dangerous. Since imagery and influence are involved, it's reasonable to infer that the Instagram marketing of Sad Society clothes (99,000 followers), "Anxiety Queen" influencer t-shirts, or necklaces immortalizing ones' alleged disorder may qualify as some of the more potentially harmful, as opposed to your throwaway tweet conflating laziness with clinical depression. The long history behind the rise of sad online cultureThe concept of beautiful teen tragedy is far from new. Schools teach teens Romeo and Juliet, arguably the hipsters who romanticized suicide centuries before it became cool online. The '90s had its own version of trendy sadness, too. "It's been around for as long as teenagers have been around," says Janis Whitlock, a Cornell University professor studying the confluence of social media and mental illness. "The hierarchy of the most depressed was a '90s phenomenon: Who's the most sad, most anxious, got the most fucked up family? The stigma was always there, too, but within sub-communities there's competition over who's worse off. And now, there's all these new platforms." Social media creates an abundance of small sub-communities where this kind of tragedy olympics reaches an unprecedented amount of people at lightning speed. That isn't always bad, but the virality is undeniable. Being sad online has authentic roots, too, popularized by one of the most influential sub-groups who defined early web culture: Internet Sad Girls. A decade ago the aesthetic of pale, melancholic, artsy angsty teen Tumblr girls grew so popular that it paved the way for pop stars like sad vamp queen Lana Del Ray. Sad internet girls not only had their own manifesto, but a feminist philosophy called Sad Girl Theory, penned by artist Audrey Wollen (who goes by Tragic Queen on Instagram).
While not necessarily encouraging a movement, the theory posited that the trend was a form of political protest. Young girls finally felt free expressing their experiences of pain under patriarchal oppression through web art and personas. That's largely the impetus for social media accounts like Sad Girls Club, an organization with 170,000 Instagram followers aimed at helping women of color with mental illness by providing them with a community. Elyse Fox, founder of the Sad Girls Club, identified with the Sad Internet Girl at an early age because no one else was helping her make sense of her struggles. "It was a bit shameful to be considered a Sad Girl back then. Today Sad Girls have reclaimed the name and use it as a place of acceptance and familiarity, owning their mental woes and creating community," she says.
Sad Girl culture grew up, became mainstream among celebrity and on the internet, then ironically led to an insincere commodification of both sadness and self-care that was the antithesis of its original intent. "It sometimes worries me that people are buying into mental health conversations for the wrong reasons. Companies are trying to capitalize off the Sad Internet Girl movement, but they’re only hot for the moment," says Amani Richardson, editor-in-chief of the Sad Girls Club. "To some, unfortunately, glamorization of mental health disorders is a trend that pays back a high number of followers, providing a false sense of high esteem," adds study co-author Rola Jadayel. It isn't just young influencers, though. Though well-meaning, more and more celebrities are contributing to a certain type of glamorization by "coming out" about dealing with their own anxiety and depression. Inherently, celebrities are idolized by those same young people who are vulnerable to glamorized mental health struggle. And as celebrities, their struggles are often packaged as inspiring narrative missing the harsh realities of facing those struggles. "The issue is that people like myself with severe illnesses like bipolar actually don't see themselves in these public images of mental illness. They don't reflect my reality," says Tracy. "People want to wrap things up in a bow — so everything's going to be OK in the end. But the reality of living with severe illness is that many of us will never see the kind of recovery people with more minor disorders experience." Caught between glamorization and destigmatizationThere is no quick and dirty guide for how we can do sad online culture responsibly. "Both are happening online, with obvious examples of glorification and obvious examples of normalization that allow people to get the support they need," says Whitlock, the Cornell professor. "But there's a lot of gray in between, and the answer of whether or not it does more harm than good depends on who's reading it and what their personal filters for perception are." The answer isn't a wholesale eradication — which isn't possible even if we wanted it. Like many things in 2019, what we need is more careful consideration. For Tracy, she finds the difference between glorifying versus destigmatizing in her blogs by keeping them grounded in reality, entrenched in her experiences without adding frills and leaning in whenever it gets too uncomfortable. "Once we do that, the positive and negative effects of talking about mental illnesses online shrink away because what we're doing is just having a real discussion," she says. Similarly, Richardson ensures the Sad Girls Club pays close attention to their language so it speaks to something beyond comforting, commodified buzzwords like "self-care" and "self-love."
Both Whitlock and the women at Sad Girls Club also emphasize the need to consider what happens after people get virtual support through these online communities. "Is that online feeling of support too fleeting? Does it lead to significant changes in offline behavior that help people get better? Are they more likely to go to therapy? I don't know. But what happens next is a hugely important question," says Whitlock. The sad online revolution we needThere is hope that both users and creators of social media platforms are slowly coming to understand the ramifications of careless trend following when it comes to sad internet culture. Instagram made efforts to block glamorizing content, banning known problematic hashtags like #proana (pro anorexia) and highlighting #socialanxiety posts that are actually about seeking help rather than clothing brands. Even Tumblr, though close to extinct, is cracking down on its free-wheeling policies by pushing support pages and resources for anyone who searches #suicide. What led us to spiral out of control here may help us rein ourselves back in: a change in social media culture can be part of the solution to the problem it created. Humans naturally adapt to new environments, and also build their environments to suit their needs — particularly in the virtual world. "Adaptability is what makes us both wonderful and terrible," says Whitlock. "We can easily forget what's healthy — can adapt to really unhealthy environments quickly. And it so often feels somehow right even when it's not." If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. For international resources, this list is a good place to start. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 June 28, 2019 at 05:32AM
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How to Target Cold Audiences With Facebook Ads https://ift.tt/2LqszWK Wondering how to use Facebook ads to find new customers? Do you want to know whom to target with cold ads on Facebook? To explore targeting cold audiences with Facebook ads, I interview Amanda Bond. Amanda is a Facebook ads expert and founder of The Ad Strategist. Her course is called The StrADegy System. Amanda shares how to determine whom to target with Facebook cold ads. You’ll also learn the next steps after identifying your new target audiences, what type of ongoing analysis you should maintain, and more. Read a summary of the interview below. To listen to the interview, scroll to the end of this article. Benefits and Drawbacks to Remarketing CampaignsMarketers who rely heavily on Facebook retargeting ads are missing major opportunities to find new customers by overlooking cold audiences on Facebook. Retargeting allows brands to rely on established content marketing efforts such as a blog, videos, podcasting, and other social media platforms to draw prospects. The work put into nurturing organic traffic sources allows businesses to target audiences that are already warmed up and indoctrinated into their brand. Brands can then use the attention they’re already getting to position warm audiences toward offers and a purchasing decision. While retargeting seems very cost-effective, each of these initiatives actually requires a great deal of time and effort to establish and maintain. Many smaller businesses don’t have a blog, podcast, or an email list to drive a big organic following. Nor do they have the resources to deliver these types of assets. Using Facebook Ads to Find New CustomersAn alternative to creating a massive amount of content up front is to use Facebook ads to drive cold traffic toward products or services. Brands either pay with their time and hustle up front to market to an established audience or set aside an ads budget to gather the same amount of data that can be used to tap new cold audiences. Cold audiences likely have no clue who you are, which means you can start the indoctrination process immediately and on hyperdrive. Think of targeting cold audiences on Facebook as an accelerant for your ads buy. Listen to the show to hear how Social Media Examiner experiments with cold audiences to test new products about to launch. Establish Cost Per AcquisitionEstablish a budget specifically for targeting and experiment with cold audiences. Testing new audiences allows you to figure out the conversion rates and costs associated with acquiring a new customer. Once you’ve determined your cost per acquisition for new customers, you’ll know what it takes to acquire many more new customers in the future. I add that calculating a conversion rate for a cold audience allows you to hypothesize that a warm audience might convert at a higher rate. As a result, testing cold audiences on Facebook will also lower your overall cost per acquisition in the long run. Use Organic Audiences to Understand Cold AudiencesEvery marketing effort you put toward nurturing warm audiences allows you to understand your target market more intimately and drives success for your cold traffic ads in the future. To illustrate this idea, Amanda uses the example of a Facebook page post that gets little or no traction. If the page post doesn’t garner any engagement from an audience you’ve already spent time warming up, it likely won’t resonate with cold audiences either. Test new products or ads with your established audience before putting them in front of a cold audience to see if it’s interesting or worthwhile. Once you’ve used your warm audiences to find the best performing creative among warm audiences, start testing those ads with cold audiences. Determining Whom to Target With Facebook Cold AdsEven with diligence and recommendations from Facebook Audience Insights, the first time you run ads to a cold audience is almost always going to be a guess. Each time you click on a product or service that’s similar to yours, Facebook Insights provides more recommendations, pages, and interests, but which of those you choose will ultimately be a gamble. Even with a laser focus on the possible audiences based on your competition, competitive research, or other avatar activities done on behalf of your brand, there’s no guarantee that your cold ads are necessarily going to perform well. Amanda admits that she’s constantly surprised what interests actually come to the top of the pile. However, there are several tools and techniques you can use to help define whom and how to target with Facebook cold ads. Use Facebook Audience InsightsFacebook Audience Insights, found in the Facebook Ads Manager, offers a wealth of information and data that can be a starting point for building cold audiences on Facebook. Collecting as much data as possible from the demographic and interest categories found within the platform, Facebook Audience Insights gives a general ranking for audiences you can target. To find Facebook Audience Insights, go to the menu and find the option called Audience Insights. On the left side of the screen, there are different parameters you can select, such as demographic information. Closer to the bottom, there’s a section with every category Facebook uses for interest targeting. These categories can range from big broad topics—such as news and entertainment, food and dining, and so on—to names of other companies, brands, or bloggers. For instance, Social Media Examiner is a Facebook interest. Advertisers click on each interest category to see a deeper list of subcategories, audience size, key demographics, psychographic information, and similar pages associated with it. Facebook Audience Insights also uses actions on and off Facebook and third-party data to provide the number of ads per month that are clicked by people who have a similar affinity for a particular interest. The number of ads people click per month within each interest group is a broad average across the total user base. As you go through a list of interests you’re looking to target, document how many people are clicking on ads per month in a spreadsheet. You’ll find that the numbers typically range from about 15 up to 50 ads per month. Amanda advises sorting your spreadsheet in descending order based on the user clicks per month and homing in on topics that settle in about the 75th percentile, which is ideally between 13 and 17. Don’t choose interest audiences at either extreme—being click-happy on ads or rarely clicking at all. Interests at the top tend to be spammy, questionable, or simply too broad. Search Top Facebook Audience Interests on InstagramOnce you’ve determined your top 10–20 interests to target, go to Instagram and follow their profiles. Once you follow them, Instagram recommends similar people or profiles to you. These can be additional target audiences that you might not have previously considered or that Facebook might not have suggested to you. To visualize this, say you sell a revolutionary baby pacifier. First, you go to Facebook Audience Insights and drill down into the baby categories and key demographics for your ideal customers. Use them to develop ad sets to test your ads. You should be able to generate about 10 different interests based on how those people respond to your ads. If one of these interests for your product happens to be Scary Mommy, which is a popular parent blogging brand, you could begin following Scary Mommy on Instagram. Once you do, Instagram will automatically begin surfacing other brands similar to Scary Mommy. The other brands being suggested are new interest categories you can target too. Establish Audience Size and BudgetWhen it comes to ideal audience size, every single Facebook advertiser has a different answer. Amanda recommends you start with a specific, niched-down audience size between 100,000 to about a million. Then only stick with audiences of around 50,000–80,000 and up to about 5 million from there. When you set up campaigns, choose two to five interests to initially test cold audiences depending on your ad testing budget. Test each interest group separately, rather than combining them, until you know how each variable performs for you. Testing each interest ad set individually allows you to understand exactly what might be successful and what might be tanking an ad set. Once you know what works, you can group your interest targeting and begin testing your creative. Once you’ve found some ideal audiences and are ready to test your creative, limit variables when it comes to your ads. Running the exact same ad to all three to five of your target audiences allows you to isolate what you’re testing and quickly rule out what isn’t working within your test. Expect to spend three or five times as much as your product is worth on testing audiences to get a feel for your conversations and results during your first few campaigns. Take the time to experiment and find out what is and isn’t working at each stop of your sales process. When something doesn’t convert, use these insights to make adjustments and improve your ads. Measuring Facebook Cold Audience CampaignsWhen testing your ads, look at everything from the ad itself to the click-through rate, cost per click, and number of clicks. This data tells you how your ads are resonating with the audience you’re targeting. Measure Click-Through RatesStrong ads usually garner a click-through rate of 1.5 or higher in the news feed. If your click-through rate is below 1.5, that’s usually an indicator that your audience isn’t matching up with the message you’re putting in front of them. How to Use Video Marketing to Increase Your Influence, Visibility, and sales—Online Training! Amanda notes that this only relates to news feed ads, but not ads in Facebook’s right-hand column. Ads on the right side naturally don’t receive as many clicks, but their CPM is also much lower to compensate for the lack of performance. Choose PlacementsIt’s fine to run ads in all placements at the beginning of your testing phase if you like. Amanda advises mixing it up and doing a split among Stories, news feed, and even in the right-hand column to optimize your placements. If you simply choose all placements rather than split-testing your ad placements, Facebook Ads Manager will provide the breakdown by placement. Look at the click-through rate for each and every placement on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger and see what’s working for you. Look Beyond ClicksIn addition to measuring clicks for your various ads and ad placements, you also have to measure the activity happening after people click on your ad and the conversions. This is the number of people landing on the page, opting into your service, time on site, or making purchases. If you find an ad drives a lot of clicks but not a lot of sales, keep it running for as long as people continue to make it all the way through your sales cycle. Some sales cycles might take upwards of a month. In this case, it would be completely understandable if the ads weren’t performing after a week. Attribution Windows for Cold AdsThe attribution window for cold ads should mirror your sales cycle. If it takes 7 days to make an offer in your email sequence, your attribution window has to be at least 7 days. Based on Amanda’s own company data, targeting people who opt into learning more about her program over a period of 12 weeks guarantees conversions for every single one of those 12 weeks. This is all because the ad content manages to keep her company top of mind, despite not selling in the nurture sequence afterward. Although the attribution period for Amanda’s products is longer than the default 28 days attribution window Facebook gives us, she maintains a 28-day click, one-day view attribution window. Next Steps After Finding the Right Cold Audiences on FacebookEstablish Ad FrequencyOnce you’ve managed to zero in on new target audiences and creative that’s driving your ideal number of clicks, conversions, and cost per acquisition, the next step is to turn your attention to your ad frequency. Amanda’s data proves that brands can still have a profitable ROI even though audiences are seeing their ad multiple times. However, anything less than a frequency of 3 is advisable. Duplicate Interest TargetingIf your audiences are large enough to support doing so, duplicate the interests that are working for you. This speeds up their exposure to audiences. Let’s say you have an interest with a two-million-person audience and you’re spending $50 a day on running ads to them. In this case, it will take you a month and a half to serve impressions to all of those people. By simply duplicating your ad set and maintaining the same spend per ad set, you’ll be able to target the exact same audience in half the time. Amanda emphasizes you should duplicate but not double your budget. Increasing your budget shifts the rate your ad account will begin spending and affects your results. By experimenting with this, Amanda discovered that going from a $100/day ad budget to a $1,000/day ad budget increased the cost per click by almost 10 times. It’s too much! Taking this same $1,000/day ad budget and using it to run 10 $100/day ad sets for 24 hours always wins out in comparison. Not only are your ads not competing with one another, each of those ad sets will also return at a very high rate. This makes it worthwhile for advertisers. Lookalike AudiencesOnce your interests are performing well, the next step is to implement lookalike audiences. These are essentially audiences based on a source pool of Facebook users who have similar attributes. For instance, a lookalike could be an audience similar to your purchasers. Enter this audience into Facebook. As long as you have at least 100 audience members, Facebook will categorize them, find their similar interests, and do a bit of profiling based on similarities among all of these source audience members. Using this information, Facebook will create an audience that’s 1% of the population within the country you choose to target. Lookalike audiences give advertisers access to more similarities without actually having to specify certain interests to target. Instead, it leverages Facebook’s powerful algorithm to generate an audience that’s just as, if not more, targeted than your interests would be. One drawback to lookalikes is that they tend to be very broad. Starting with an interest allows you to be more specific around who and what you are targeting. For this reason, don’t begin building your ad sets with lookalikes. Lookalikes don’t allow you to see what audience members are purchasing, if they’re clicking, or if they’re converting. Once you have answers to these questions, you can confidently start using Facebook lookalike audiences to find a million more people who have these similar attributes. Ongoing Analysis for Discovering New Cold AudiencesYour custom audience targeting will run out of steam and stop working at some point. This is especially the case if you’re doing cold audience targeting at scale. Eventually, you’ll have to find new cold audiences on Facebook using new interests and lookalike audiences. Uncovering new cold audiences requires ongoing analysis of each step of your customer journey. Examine your ad click-through rates, conversions, cost per acquisition, and revenue as you’re changing cold audiences. Try to understand how each benchmark is evolving and why. Sometimes finding new cold audiences to target is simply a matter of adjusting the audience size in a country or region based on your customer data. In the pacifier example used previously, imagine you discover that 90% of your purchasers are female. Based on this customer data, you select the broad category of “females in the United States between X and Y ages.” Even if you add no other interests or lookalikes, the Facebook algorithm will find the right customers for you. Refreshing your ad creative is one to way to make your cold audience targeting more “set it and forget it” and grow warm custom audiences as well. Placing an engaging video or other content that prompts a cold audience to linger, click, like, or swipe on an ad makes them retargetable as a warm custom audience in the future. This allows you to stay top of mind and get in front of them over and over again. Discovery of the WeekFireflies.ai is a service that seamlessly records, transcribes, and tracks your phone calls and meetings. Integrate Fireflies.ai with your calendar, email, or any number of web-conferencing platforms such as GoToMeeting, Zoom, Google Meet, and others and Fireflies.ai will track your meetings. Once you begin a call, it dials in as an attendee and captures the audio and transcript as you speak. Once your meeting concludes, you’ll have a searchable reference of the conversation. Fireflies.ai offers a basic version with unlimited meetings and transcribing for free. However, there’s a 60-minute limit on meetings, and transcripts are only stored and searchable for 30 days. Having a Pro or Business account (starting at $40/mo/seat billed monthly) eliminates these restrictions and includes additional integration with CRM services and other business tools. You can request a demo on the Fireflies.ai website. Listen to the show to hear more about the quality of transcription with Fireflies.ai. Key Takeaways in This EpisodeListen to the Interview NowThe Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. Where to subscribe: iTunes/Apple Podcast| Android| Google Podcasts| Google Play| Stitcher| TuneIn| Spotify| RSSWhat do you think? What are your thoughts on targeting cold audiences with Facebook ads? Please share your comments below. How to Use Video Marketing to Increase Your Influence, Visibility, and sales—Online Training! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p June 28, 2019 at 05:02AM How to Target Cold Audiences With Facebook Ads - 360 https://ift.tt/2LqszWK Wondering how to use Facebook Ads to find new customers? Do you want to know who to target with cold ads on Facebook? To explore targeting cold audiences with Facebook ads, I interview Amanda Bond, a Facebook ads expert. Show notes: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/360 Social Media via Social Media Marketing Podcast https://ift.tt/1LtH18p June 28, 2019 at 05:00AM
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Facebook to ‘evaluate’ deepfake policy, according to Mark Zuckerberg https://ift.tt/2ISp0H0 The founder spoke on the issue following criticism over a manipulated video of Nancy Pelosi. The company did not remove the video from the platform, resulting in it going viral on the site. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 June 27, 2019 at 02:32PM |
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