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How to Create an Instagram Content Plan for Your Business https://ift.tt/2K8H2EE Do you want to improve your organic Instagram content? Looking for an Instagram content marketing guide to follow? In this article, you’ll find out how to plan, create, and optimize Instagram content for your business. #1: How to Establish a Content Theme for Your Instagram ProfileThe first step to running a successful Instagram account is to plan your content. Because Instagram is a visual platform, start by defining the look and feel of your business profile. When creating a theme for Instagram, you’ll need to give some thought to:
Take a look at Canva’s Instagram account. They post a lot of different types of content but they’re strict about the colors they use. As you scroll through their feed, the colors change organically, from purple to wine red to any other color you might think of. Other businesses like Lacoste take a different approach. Lacoste primarily uses their brand colors—white and green—and typically each line in their grid contains visually similar posts. How to Use Video Marketing to Increase Your Influence, Visibility, and Sales—Online Training! Another example of an attractive Instagram business profile comes from clothing retailer Madewell. As you scroll through their posts, a certain vibe emerges: chill, sunny, and relaxed. A lot of that effect is achieved by the use of warm colors and photos that feature a bright blue sky. If you really want to impress your Instagram followers, you can turn your Instagram grid into a complex and interconnecting collection of images and videos, like Lancôme does on their Instagram account. Your Instagram visual content style should reflect your brand. To help create the right style for your business, answer these questions:
#2: How to Plan Your Instagram Marketing ContentOnce you know what you want your Instagram profile to express visually, you’re ready to start planning your content. Before considering different types of content, think about what you want to achieve with your Instagram marketing. Do you want more sales? More engagement? More followers? Setting goals is important because it informs the content you publish on Instagram. Also take into account the amount of time you have to devote to Instagram. If you’re a small business, you might not have someone to manage your social media full-time. Likewise, you probably won’t have a lot of time to dedicate to Instagram (which is why all of this initial planning is so important). Be honest with yourself about how much time you can dedicate to Instagram so you know how many posts you can reasonably handle each day. Additionally consider what resources you have for your Instagram marketing. How much can you invest in your Instagram content? Plan Your Instagram Publishing CalendarNow give some thought to the mix of content you’ll be posting every day (promotional images, videos, stories, photos, etc.). Keep things interesting by posting a variety of content, not just one type all of the time. Whether you’re a small business or a big brand, using a publishing calendar to plan your content will help you reach your objectives. It will also save you time in the long run and generate better results. Now let’s look at some different types of content you can create for Instagram. Sharing stats and facts in your posts is great for engagement and shares. Here, HubSpot shares a graphic with a relevant takeaway from their research. Posts with animals and pets, funny images, and the like are also effective for generating engagement from your audience. National holidays and novelty holidays alike can provide content inspiration for Instagram. Create themed content for holidays and events, as in this post from Buffer celebrating Pride month. Educational tips, advice, and other content can help build trust with your audience. This HubSpot post explains why hashtags are so important on Instagram. Motivational and success quotes such as this one from Dove are popular across social media, but they’re particularly well-suited for Instagram. Plus, they’re easy and inexpensive to create. Instagram is also a great place for you to highlight your products. In fact, brands and products are quite popular on this platform with 80% of Instagram accounts following at least one business. You can show your product in action, as GoPro often does on their Instagram account. Or simply highlight one of your products, like Asos does here. Tools to Help Plan Instagram ContentOne way to plan your Instagram content is to use a simple spreadsheet, or even better, a Google sheet so you can easily collaborate with others. Another way to go is to use a project management and team collaboration tool like Trello (available in free and paid plans, starting at $12.50/month). Search for the phrase “trello social media calendar” and you’ll find a few ready-made templates for your purpose. While you can’t schedule your Instagram posts with Trello, it’s a handy tool for the initial stages of planning: defining what types of content to post, deciding when to post them, recording your team’s post ideas, and so on. #3: How to Create Your Instagram Marketing ContentIf you’re a big brand, an agency might do the content creation for you. More likely, you have full-time employees who focus solely on social media, whether it’s strategizing, creating, posting, engaging, or measuring. If you’re a small business, you don’t have all of these resources at your disposal. Because of this, small businesses usually take one of two approaches to creating content:
As a small business, it’s not easy to be prepared and have new content ready every day. If you mostly rely on your availability and time, chances are you won’t get amazing results from Instagram because:
If you initially want to attract more followers, you might focus on posting engaging content such as inspirational and motivational quotes, cute pet photos, and similar types of content that people love on Instagram. If you already have a decent Instagram audience and want to boost sales, you’ll need a different approach—promoting your products, services, and your business in general. Remember: If you want to generate great results from Instagram and ensure you’re doing everything possible to reach your objectives, this is my advice: regularly spend time brainstorming new ideas, putting them into your social media calendar, and creating the content. Here are some important best practices to keep in mind when creating Instagram content:
If you want to create your own videos, consider investing in a few different pieces of video equipment (whichever are relevant): a tripod for your (smartphone) camera, a lighting kit, and a microphone. Tools to Help Create Instagram ContentThere are some great free and paid resources online where you can get quality stock photos and video clips to use in your Instagram posts. Here are a few you may want to try: Get Video Marketing Training—Online!The Video Marketing Summit is ideal for any marketer who wants to increase their visibility, influence, and sales with video. Twelve of the world’s top video marketing experts will show you how to do this on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The Video Marketing Summit is a live online training event from your friends at Social Media Examiner. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MOREWhen it comes to creating social media imagery, Canva (free and paid plans, from $12.95/month) is one of the most popular tools. The free plan offers a ton of helpful features and gives you access to a plethora of templates. The drag-and-drop editor is intuitive to use, and free and paid images are accessible directly in the editor. Canva is handy for creating inspirational and motivational images, adding watermarks to your posts, adding calls to action (CTAs) to images and other text, and making your posts look better with all kinds of filters and editing features. If you opt for one of the paid plans, you can save templates and collaborate with other team members when creating content. #4: How to Schedule Your Instagram Marketing ContentOnce you’ve created your content, schedule your Instagram posts to ensure you’re posting new content regularly. You’ll find many studies on the best times to post on social media, including Instagram. But the truth is, the optimal times for you to post depend on your audience. The best way to find what times work best on Instagram is to start posting and carefully monitor your results. Look for the days and times when you’re getting the best results. Thankfully, Instagram now allows third-party apps to schedule content—images, videos, and GIFs. If you use several major social networks, I recommend a tool like SocialPilot (plans start at $30/month, with a 14-day free trial), which lets you manage all of your accounts from one place. For small businesses, it’s helpful and cost-effective because you won’t have to pay for multiple tools (and lose time going from one tool to the next and back again). SocialPilot lets you schedule your social media posts and offers a few extra features that can come in handy for Instagrammers:
#5: How to Optimize Your Instagram Marketing ContentOnce you have a good schedule and awesome content to post, how do you further improve your results on Instagram? Here are some ways to boost reach, improve engagement, and grow your following. Add Relevant HashtagsHashtags are a hugely important part of Instagram. The right hashtags (and the right number of hashtags) can help you reach a wider audience and attract more followers. If you’re a huge brand with lots of recognition, you might not need to use hashtags all of the time. But if you’re a small- or medium-sized business, make sure you pay a lot of attention to hashtags and use at least one on all of your posts. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on the opportunity to reach more people. Before I share some best practices for using hashtags on Instagram, let’s look at the different types of Instagram hashtags. Branded hashtags: These are hashtags you create that are unique to your brand. You can use them to build up your brand and encourage user-generated content. If you create a branded hashtag, make sure it’s succinct, easy to type, and easy to remember. Here’s how Adobe uses branded hashtags on their profile: Industry hashtags: These are hashtags that are relevant to a particular industry such as #photographer. This type of hashtag is usually extremely popular and has tens of millions of posts. Niche hashtags: If #photographer is an industry hashtag, a hashtag like #foodphotographer would be a niche hashtag. Location hashtags: These hashtags can be very practical for businesses operating in certain locations. You can go for a wider audience by leveraging location hashtags like #london or #newyorkcity, or go more niche with hashtags for certain neighborhoods and communities. You might even try combinations of locations and niches, such as #northlondonfoodie. Event hashtags: Whenever there’s a large-enough event happening, there’s usually a hashtag behind it, such as #fifawwc for the Women’s World Cup. Holiday hashtags: Most holidays have their own hashtags—from national holidays like Christmas, to novelty holidays like #nationalcupcakeday. Ideally, you should leverage as many of these different types of hashtags as possible. Also, constantly experiment with different hashtags to see how they affect your results. Now that you know what types of hashtags you can use, here are some best practices for using hashtags on Instagram:
Tools to Help Find and Use Instagram HashtagsAll Hashtag is a tool for identifying, creating, and analyzing hashtags. To start using it for free, type in a hashtag/keyword and indicate whether you want to search for Top (only the most popular relevant hashtags), Random, or Live hashtags. Your search results will include dozens (even hundreds, in some cases) of hashtags, including similar hashtags to consider. You can copy these groups of hashtags with one click to save them for later use (or add them directly to one of your updates). Keyhole (from $29/month, with a free 7-day trial) is a hashtag, online monitoring, and analytics tool that works with multiple social platforms including Instagram. One feature lets you track a hashtag in real time. In addition to showing the top posts using those hashtags, it will analyze usage over time for that hashtag, show the sentiment behind the updates, reveal the top influencers using that hashtag, and display other trending topics. You can also use Keyhole to track the performance of your own Instagram account and hashtags. As a bonus, you can monitor your competitors to see how their hashtag strategies are evolving and what you can learn from them. Use the Optimal Caption Length for Your ContentThe length of your Instagram caption will depend in part on the type of content you’re posting. If you want to promote a link in your bio and drive traffic to it, it’s best to keep your caption short and simple so people can see your CTA without having to read several paragraphs. If, on the other hand, you want to educate or tell a story, use a longer caption as TED Talks does in this post. Some posts won’t require a CTA, such as a photo of a Labradoodle that someone brought to work that’s just for entertainment and engagement purposes. But generally, you need to add CTAs whenever possible or you won’t get people to take the action you want them to. There are several places you can add a CTA: your caption, imagery, and bio. Whatever action you want people to take—visit a web page, buy something, leave a comment, and so on—make it clear in your caption and content, as GoPro does here. ConclusionWhen you’re a small business without the name-recognition of top brands, getting results from social media can prove difficult and Instagram is no different. A lot of what we covered in this guide will help you create and share content that helps attract more Instagram followers and engagement, including:
While Instagram can certainly be spammy (with its share of fake followers, fake accounts, and the like), there are a lot of genuine users who log in every day to see new content from their friends, influencers, and yes, even from brands. And while you might catch the attention of some of them with great content and the right hashtags, another way to keep growing your following and engagement is to engage with users. Here are some best practices for Instagram engagement:
What do you think? Will you create an Instagram content plan for your business? Do you have any content creation tips to offer? Share your thoughts in the comments below. More articles on Instagram marketing:Get your 2020 tickets! There are 17 tracks of content available from the world's top marketing pros! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p July 29, 2019 at 05:05AM
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How Social Media Has Influenced Online Trading https://ift.tt/2GA3GVd Online trading, be it forex, stocks or crypto, has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. The advancement of the internet, the relaxation of regulations and the willingness of everyday people to delve into what was once the preserve of big financial institutions and professional traders only, has seen forex trading grow into a multi-trillion dollar a day industry. However, there is one unsung hero when it comes to online trading, and that hero is Social Media. Social Media in its many forms has been essential to the growth of online trading. Although ‘Social Trading’ – a form of investing that allows investors to observe the trading behavior of their peers and expert traders and to follow their investment strategies using copy trading or mirror trading – is becoming more and more popular amongst traders, it is the early days of Forex, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp and now Telegram that have propelled online trading to the masses. Initially, the draw of instant posts saw forex trading groups, pages and people able to communicate instantly; essential when there are just seconds to make a trade. Forex trading thrived with Facebook and Twitter. The instantaneous method of communication enabled traders from around the world to follow news, events and signals as they happen. The various Facebook groups and pages enabled traders of every level to swap ideas, discuss trading and form kind of support groups. Professional forex mentors sprang up with massive global followers, passing on forex trading signals to a growing receptive crowd. However, Social media hasn’t always been a force for good in online trading. Anyone versed in the world of Binary Options will tell you how Ads on Facebook roped in tens of thousands of people into a form of trading that nine times out of ten, was just a shady Ponzi scheme, designed to fleece the unsuspecting trader out of whatever their credit card could manage. Once the truth about Binary Options came out, Facebook eventually banned all binary options advertising, as well as clamping down on crypto advertising. As one door closes, another one invariably always opens. In Social Media, the new door opening was the world of WhatsApp and Telegram groups. Facebook’s algorithm and greed limited the audience, whilst a general apathy towards Facebook’s ethics saw the online trading and Facebook partnership peak and decline. Around the same time, people started turning to WhatsApp and Telegram for the instant news, signals and knowledge sharing. Traders still used and continue use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to communicate, stay in touch and keep close to trading and traders, but the dynamics have changed and keep on changing. Trading is different, we have crypto trading now and traders’ expectations from social media are greater than ever before. The post How Social Media Has Influenced Online Trading appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog July 29, 2019 at 01:58AM
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Which CPU Is Best For Gaming And Content Creation? https://ift.tt/32TJuHx Kill two birds with one stone.Not too long ago, it didn’t matter if you wanted to do full-time gaming or get actual work done on your rig. You were stuck with one choice to speak of, which happened to be Intel. The lack of competition meant Intel had a monopoly over the industry and could deal with pricing however they wanted. These days, the script has been flipped a bit. AMD’s first generation of Ryzen had more cores and a lower price point then Intel but didn’t have the best gaming performance. The second-generation improved on this a bit and now, finally, with their new Zen 2 architecture, they’re giving Intel a run for its money. It’s no longer about just benchmarks in games. If you want to sell a high-end processor today in 2019, you need great single-threaded performance as well as multi-threaded performance. The race is definitely on, which is ultimately good for consumers. But if you’re in the market for a processor that can handle gaming and content creation all at once, what should you be looking for? How Much Power Do You Actually Need?Read the title once again, and you’ll probably get the idea that this question doesn’t really have an objective answer. Obviously, it entirely depends on how much money you’re willing to spend, and what sort of work you’re trying to get done. The rest of your rig matters as well. Sure, a powerful processor can handle most of the stuff you throw at it. But you’ll need fast memory, speedy storage, and a powerful GPU to fully get the experience you need for a hassle free workflow. Are you a film maker or photo editor? Then you’ll likely benefit from more a higher core count, and a high end graphics card. You need to decide how much you’re willing to pay for faster render times or if you want that super fluid timeline scrubbing in Premiere. Price to performance is the main issue here, as you’ll want pretty good multi-threaded performance for not a whole lot of money. And what if you are more focused on gaming and streaming? Well you can get away with more single-threaded performance here, but we still recommend more cores for streaming. As they say, the more the merrier and we can’t stress this enough for streaming. A four core processor can handle gaming and streaming no problem, but if you want a fluid experience and play high end stuff, you’ll likely benefit from 6 cores or more. What Options Do You Have?As we mentioned above, competition is also good for the consumer. Thankfully, right now in 2019, we are seeing a grueling competition between AMD and Intel, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a decade. Obviously, we recommend having a look at either Intel’s newest 9th gen lineup or AMD’s all-new 7nm powered 3rd generation processors, also known as Zen 2. It’s not an easy choice of picking between the two. Right now, most people will tell you straight off the bat that Ryzen is the better deal, but Intel definitely intrigues with its raw performance. Let’s not forget it took AMD a whole new architecture to compete with Intel, which means they have their optimization done really well. But enough talk about the future, let’s come back to the present for a bit. Right now we have a tonne of great processors on the market, so we’ll be helping you decide. Ryzen 9 3900X – The Best Value For Gaming And Content CreationOkay, this is just impressive stuff from AMD. Right off the bat, we already know that multi-threaded performance is AMD’s stomping ground. And with more cores, faster ones at that, AMD absolutely obliterates Intel for the money, if we’re talking about content creation. Sure, the price is still a bit hefty, coming in at $500, but Ryzen is offering actually a tonne of value here. First off, this an entirely brand new architecture, instead of Intel’s same old 14nm refreshes. The 3900X has a base clock of 3.8GHz and a boost clock of 4.6GHz. Ryzen 3rd Gen features their brand new Zen 2 architecture, along with the X570 chipset. These chips are running on an impressive 7nm architecture. X570 also supports faster RAM at 3200Mhz, which means overclocking is even easier now. X570 also features the brand new PCIe 4.0 X16, which also improves performance for newer GPUs when they come out. But what about performance? Well, the 3900X has 12 cores and 24 threads, so it kills Intel in content creation. As for gaming, it can still hold its own. And if you’re streaming as well while playing, the 3900X definitely comes out on top. Intel Core i9 9900K – The Absolute BeastAt first glance, the i9 9900K looks just like your regular spec bump from Intel, for better or for worse. It using, a new chipset, the Z390. Oddly enough, this is the only processor from their 9th generation lineup to feature hyper-threading this time around. Intel is still a bit further in terms of raw gaming performance here. We have optimization to thank for here, as most games are still running on Direct X 11. Intel has also done a great job with IPC improvements, as they can still outdo Ryzen in most games. We also have more cores this time around, with the 9900K featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.6GHz and boost clock of up to 5.0GHz. Definitely impressive stuff. The 9900K has an eye-watering price of $488, but it is an absolute beast. Sadly, the fact of the matter is, you get more cores with Ryzen. So you have to pick your poison here. If you want more gaming-oriented performance it’s the i9 9900K, for almost everything else, the Ryzen 9 3900X is a better value. Ryzen 7 3700X- The Best Choice For Most PeopleThe above two processors are powerful, efficient and blisteringly fast. But the prices aren’t exactly affordable for a lot of people. But if you want to get a little taste of Zen 2’s power, the 3700X is another great value. The 3700X features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.6GHz and Boost Clock of up to 4.4GHz. The story remains the same here as well. If you just focus on gaming, the i7 9700K might come out on top on most games, but if you’re doing anything besides that, like streaming, the 3700X comes out on top. For the MSRP of $329, we can’t recommend this processor more than enough. We won’t be surprised to see a lot of people upgrading to this one. Ultimately if you want to get the best out of your 3700X then head over to PCguide’s round up of the best 4k monitor of 2019 and get yourself one because without that high-res you might miss on the sheer power of the added cores of your Ryzen 3700X. Intel Core i7 9700K – Powerful For Gaming, With A CatchThink of the Core i7 9700K as a stripped-down version of the i9 9900K. It has 8 cores and 8 threads, with a base clock of 3.6GHz and a boost clock of 4.9GHz. Just like other 9th gen processors, it also supports Intel’s Optane memory. As we know, right now most games don’t benefit from higher core counts, that’s why for pure gaming performance, the 9700K comes out on top in benchmarks. But that’s really cherry picking things. As we mentioned above, once you throw content creation into the mix, things start to fall apart. In most games we got a better framerate from this processor than any other on this list. But once we started streaming, the Ryzen processors held their own. The 9700K is still a great recommendation for the gamers out there, but if you want to get any sort of work done besides that, the 3700X is cheaper and a better value overall. For the MSRP of $400, the 9700K could be called the absolute best processor for pure gaming. But for the content creators out there, you’ll get better performance elsewhere. However, if you’ve spent most of your budget buying this beast, and you’re in the market to purchase a new monitor, fret not, as we’ve got you covered with this carefully hand-picked list of the best budget gaming monitors available as of now. Final ThoughtsThe fact of the matter is, right now, the Zen 2 processors are a better value for most people than Intel’s 9th gen. Intel will really have to focus on multi-threaded performance to beat AMD in this regard. Still, for pure gaming performance, the 9700K and the 9900K are the fastest processors out there. But if you want to get some serious work done, then Ryzen 3rd Gen is the way to go for now. The post Which CPU Is Best For Gaming And Content Creation? appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog July 27, 2019 at 08:58AM
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Twitter Rolls Out Improved Conversation Features https://ift.tt/2yhnt7s 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 Twitter’s newly enhanced and improved conversation features with special guest, Dan Knowlton. Tune In to the Social Media Marketing Talk ShowListen to the replay of this week’s show below. You can also hear the show as an audio podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcast, Android, Google Play, Stitcher, and RSS. Watch the replay of this week’s show below. About Our Special GuestDan Knowlton is a creative marketer, speaker, and trainer. He co-founded KPS Digital Marketing, an agency that specializes in social and video marketing. Use the timestamps below to fast-forward to our top stories in the replay above.
divider Twitter Releases Q2 Earnings Report: Twitter published its Q2 2019 results and announced the highest annual growth in almost 2 years. This past quarter, Twitter added 5 million daily users, reaching 139 million in total. This is the highest the number has been since Twitter started reporting daily usage statistics earlier this year.
Twitter Tests Reply Labels in Conversations: Twitter introduced a new test in the ongoing series of experiments it has been running to make conversation threads easier to follow. Twitter launched labels and special icons for notable replies within a conversation.
Twitter Launches “Hide Replies” Feature: Twitter is testing a new Hide Replies feature. This option effectively gives users the ability to conceal any replies that are unworthy contributions, irrelevant, or offensive. This experience will eventually be available for everyone around the world, but at this time, it’s only available to people in Canada. Get Video Marketing Training—Online!The Video Marketing Summit is ideal for any marketer who wants to increase their visibility, influence, and sales with video. Twelve of the world’s top video marketing experts will show you how to do this on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The Video Marketing Summit is a live online training event from your friends at Social Media Examiner. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
Twitter Addresses Conversation Gaps by Hidden Tweets: Over the next few weeks, Twitter plans to introduce additional context around tweets that are marked as “unavailable” in conversations due to being blocked, hidden, or for other reasons. The goal is to fill holes in conversations left by these alerts.
Twitter Rolls Out Detailed Follower Listings in Notifications: Twitter rolled out a new format for follower notifications. This includes a larger profile panel within the Notifications tab and enables the ability to follow back directly from within the alert.
Twitter Sunsets SnappyTV Live Video Editing Tool and Replaces It With LiveCut: Twitter is sunsetting its live video editing tool, SnappyTV, at the end of December 2019. Twitter will replace it with a new dedicated editing and publishing tool called LiveCut. Users who already have access to Twitter Media Studio should have access to LiveCut now.
Twitter Adds Broadcast Scheduling Feature to Media Studio: Twitter’s new broadcast scheduling feature in Media Studio will allow broadcasters to plan with production teams and capture people’s attention before the broadcast starts.
Other News MentionedWant to catch our next show live? Click here to subscribe or add our show to your calendar. Get your 2020 tickets! There are 17 tracks of content available from the world's top marketing pros! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p July 27, 2019 at 05:03AM
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An inside look at the startup behind Ashton Kutcher’s weird tweets https://ift.tt/2Mgwi9B In 2017, Matthew Peltier walked barefoot into a pitch meeting with venture capitalists. Young, male, man bun intact, he certainly resembled the stereotypical successful entrepreneur, but it was his startup, an app designed to bring social media stars and their fans into conversation, that drew skepticism. Shimmur, as it was called, ultimately succeeded in raising about $7 million from Greycroft, Arena Ventures, Luma Launch, Right Side Capital Management and Techstars, according to PitchBook, but the business never took off. That is until a pivot to direct messaging in 2018 attracted the support of Hollywood talent manager Guy Oseary and his Sound Ventures investment partner Ashton Kutcher, who jumped on board to relaunch Shimmur, now known as Community. The Santa Monica-based company has raised nearly $35 million in the form of two convertible notes following a recapitalization that occurred alongside its rebranding earlier this year, TechCrunch has learned. Investors, including the Sony Innovation Fund, have valued the text marketing platform at upwards of $200 million, sources tell TechCrunch. A spokesperson for Community, however, said there is currently “no valuation attached to the company” because of the nature of the recap and convertible notes, and declined to comment further on fundraising activity. Community has yet to complete a public launch and is in the process of onboarding both companies and celebrities. We’re told efforts to generate attention for the business will increase in the next couple of weeks. Shimmur was initially conceived of in 2014 as a Reddit-style mobile application that encouraged users to join “Tribes,” or groups, where they could create and upload content about their favorite YouTube or Instagram stars. Social media accounts affiliated with Shimmur went dark in 2017, and in early 2018 the site began redirecting to Digits.Chat, a service currently in private beta assumedly linked to Community. Now in their second act, Peltier and Community co-founder Josh Rosenheck are committed to building a platform for influencers and fans to interact at scale. Questions of Community’s business began to surface in January 2019, when Ashton Kutcher took to Twitter to subtly promote the service with a phone number and a simple request to text him. Naturally, many assumed the tweet included the actor and investor’s personal cell number. In reality, he’d been working with Community to develop a better method of communication with his followers. This week, the actor resurfaced on Twitter to promote the service again. This time stating that the phone number included in the tweet would be “the only place [he] responds to public queries” because the “open web has just become too toxic.”
While Kutcher has used his large Twitter following to spread awareness for Community, Guy Oseary has remained mum. Sources tell TechCrunch, however, that Oseary is a “co-founder” of Community, further evidence he’s put money in the business and perhaps adopted a co-founder title because of the nature of his investment. Oseary is not only a co-founder of Sound Ventures alongside Kutcher, but he’s also a longtime executive at Maverick, an entertainment and music management business behind the likes of Madonna and U2. His network would be much more valuable to Community than VC dollars. Sound Ventures, Kutcher and Oseary’s venture capital fund, did not respond to a request for comment. Community declined to name its investors, but did say Oseary is “not a co-founder,” declining to provide additional details on his affiliation with the business. On its website, Community describes itself as a tool that enables its clients, e.g. influencers, musicians, athletes, brands, actors, their agents and others, to have direct and meaningful communication with their “community members” using a 10-digit phone number provided by Community: “Imagine getting to know and interact with your audience as individuals—with names and faces, interests and opinions, hometowns and pronouns. Imagine reaching every single one of them,” the company writes. Peltier, in the company’s first blog post published in June, emphasized the power of text messaging, citing an Adobe statistic that 90% of text messages are read within three seconds. Peltier also described Community’s business model, noting that they are not an ads business, rather, clients pay Community monthly or annual service fees “for 100% audience reach and limitless segmentation, in a climate free from bullying and toxicity.” Community’s terms of service agreement additionally states that once a subscription is initiated, clients can create and send text marketing campaigns to promote themselves or products with members of their community. If Community sounds familiar — it should. Its efforts to leverage SMS to facilitate celebrity-fan relationships is akin to SuperPhone. Founded by musician Ryan Leslie in 2015, SuperPhone is a mobile messaging platform designed to meet the needs of entrepreneurs, entertainers and anyone else that juggles clients or sales contacts. “SuperPhone is the first foray into personal relationship management,” Leslie told TechCrunch last year. The startup has raised a total of roughly $5 million at a $10 million valuation, according to PitchBook. In a blog post addressing Kutcher’s January tweet, Leslie welcomed the competition to the text marketing space. “The game is changing, messaging is here to stay, and platforms are stepping up to help you leverage the power of this currently undervalued direct communication channel,” Leslie wrote. “This is my game. SuperPhone was conceived, developed, deployed, and battle-tested years before this week’s A-list endorsement of text over social.” We reached out to SuperPhone for comment and in a very on-brand reply, a spokesperson for the business told me to submit my phone number to Leslie here and “unlike Ashton, Ry will text you right back once you introduce yourself.”
Commence the battle for text marketing dominance.
Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com July 26, 2019 at 07:37PM Twitter Q2 beats on sales of $841M and EPS of $0.20, new metric of mDAUs up to 139M https://ift.tt/2Zj9dqQ Two days after Facebook reported growing numbers (even amid its regulatory turmoil), its social media counterpart Twitter today announced its Q2 results. The company made $841 million in overall revenues, up 18% on a year ago; with EPS and net income respectively at $1.43 and $1.1 billion, a huge bump due to a “significant income tax benefit” related to the establishment of a deferred tax asset for corporate structuring for certain geographies, Twitter said. Without that, non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.20 on non-GAAP adjusted net income of $156 million. Monetizable Daily Active Users — Twitter’s new, preferred audience metric — is now at 139 million, which Twitter says is up 14% on a year ago. The figures beat on revenues and edged out estimates for EPS: Analysts were expecting earnings per share of around $0.19 on revenues of just over $829 million for the quarter. A year ago, Twitter posted an EPS of $0.17 on sales of $710.5 million, and last quarter, the company handily beat analyst expectations on sales of $787 million and diluted EPS of $0.25. GAAP operating income for the quarter was $76 million, down from $80 million a year ago. The US continues to be Twitter’s revenue engine, the company said. It accounted for $455 million of its sales, up 24%, while international revenue was $386 million, up just 12%. Japan continues to be Twitter’s number-two market, up 9% and accounting for $133 million of its overall sales. Meanwhile, advertising continues to be the most important revenue stream for the company (one reason why mDAUs is now its preferred metric, too). It made $727 million in advertising revenues in Q2, up 21% on a year ago. Twitter noted that video ad formats “continued to show strength,” singling out its Video Website Card, In-Stream Video Ads, and First View ads. Data licensing, the other component of Twitter’s business model, was $114 million, up just 4%. One of the more notable figures in this latest report is a new metric called “monetizable daily active users”, which Twitter has introduced to replace monthly and daily active users. mDAUs is based on Twitter users who logged in or were “otherwise authenticated and accessed Twitter on any given day through twitter.com or Twitter applications that are able to show ads,” according to the company. The advertising aspect is the key part: Twitter’s previous metrics, the more established MAU and DAU figures that other companies typically provide, did not distinguish which users were served ads, and which were not. Twitter’s argument has been that MAUs and DAUs are not a great picture of the company’s business prospects because of that fact, and so it announced some time ago that it would stop reporting these figures, moving instead to mDAUs. Be that as it may, it’s notable that the MAU figure had been a problematic one for Twitter: in the last quarter, the company’s MAUs were 330 million, a drop of 6 million users compared to a year ago, and people had been using the generally sluggish growth (and sometimes decline) of those numbers to underscore the contention that Twitter had a growth problem. Moving to mDAUs is a way for Twitter to de-emphasize that view and to put a spotlight on more encouraging numbers: those that show Twitter is increasing its advertising base. Nevertheless, Twitter acknowledges that it’s not standard, and so harder to use as a comparable against anything other than Twitter itself. “Our calculation of mDAU is not based on any standardized industry methodology and is not necessarily calculated in the same manner or comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies,” it noted in a recent letter to shareholders. The company is still relatively young, and continues to tinker and make changes — some big, some small — to both its backend and user interface. Some have been made to address some of the larger issues that people have been (often critically) vocal about, such as coping with harassment or making the site more user-friendly for power-Tweeters, new adopters, and everyone in between. Others are to continue building Twitter as a business, which means making it more advertising and media-partner friendly. Not all the changes are always positive. There’s been a fair amount of backlash over the company’s new destop design, which it introduced this month and features a much wider section of the page dedicated to the main news feed. I’m guessing this is in part to lay the groundwork for featuring larger media files, which should help it continue growing revenues in those areas. Indeed, this week Twitter announced a deal to stream Olympics coverage, likely helped by showing NBC that it is making efforts to make the experience a more pleasing one for Twitter users, but it’s not all about entertainment: the larger newsfeed will also help Twitter sell more advertising, too. It will be interesting to see how and if it proves to be a headwind in future quarters. Updated with EPS figures based on non-GAAP diluted net income provided by Twitter in a separate note to TechCrunch (figures that it, frustratingly, didn’t publish in the actual shareholders’ letter) Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com July 26, 2019 at 11:01AM
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Rory Brown, Managing Partner of Nicklaus Brown & Co., On Creating a Strong Password for Your Virtual Bank https://ift.tt/2ygHxH7 No matter where you venture on the internet, data security is always a concern. Virtual banks take security very seriously, featuring some of the strongest security protocols in the banking industry. However, no amount of online protection can help you if your password is weak. Security starts with the individual, and choosing a strong password that’s hack-proof is the first step to protecting your vital banking information. What Makes a Good Password? The best password is a long, random string of letters, numbers, and symbols, such as the following: dtB5*d$3H72xM89#y. It would take a bank of computers working around the clock hundreds of years to guess that password. Of course, random strings of characters are very difficult to remember, and so this password fails for reasons other than security. Thankfully it’s possible to create strong passwords that aren’t impossible to memorize, as long as you follow a few simple pieces of advice. Avoid Simple Words or Phrases Single words make terrible passwords such as “sun” or “red.” These can be guessed by a computer program in minutes. Adding an extra word doesn’t help much, particularly if the two words are related, such as “sunblock” or “redwine.” Dictionary words are attractive because they’re easy to remember, but they don’t do a good job of protecting your accounts. The exception to this rule is a string of random words at least four words in length. It’s the length of the password and the random, unrelated nature of the words that make a password so hard to crack. Add some numbers and special symbols, and the password is uncrackable. An example would be “applebookcatdoor1!3^5*.” Longer is Better Most websites now require at least eight characters for a valid password, but that isn’t nearly long enough. At a minimum, 12 characters should be required. Remember that passwords are uncovered by hackers using rapid, brute force guessing. The more characters your password has the more possible combinations exist, and the longer it will take to guess. Include upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers and special characters. Many sites now require passwords to include some or all of these, but you should make it a habit to include all of them regardless. It’s important to note that obvious substitutions don’t improve passwords either. For example, dollar signs and 3s are frequently substituted for Ss and Es. Don’t Use the Same Passwords for Multiple Sites It’s hard to remember passwords for every site you visit but consider the alternative. If a hacker breaks into the server for a website you have an account with and steals your password, they’ll have your access to every site you have an account with, including your virtual bank. Since not every site takes security seriously, using the same password everywhere is a bad idea. If keeping track of different passwords is a concern, download a password manager. These apps will store your passwords and keep them fully encrypted so that only you can see them. Keep the Hackers Out Choosing a reasonably long password that’s meaningful to you, and randomly inserting some capital letters, numbers and special symbols will create a password that is complex enough to keep your virtual bank account safe. For additional information about virtual banks, view Rory Brown’s website. About: Mr. Rory Brown has focused on financial technology and investment management for 30+ years. Rory Brown is currently working on a new app that will help consumers navigate online banking. The app will connect clients with the best virtual banks in the world, where they can get comparisons on rates for home loans, auto loans, and more. The post Rory Brown, Managing Partner of Nicklaus Brown & Co., On Creating a Strong Password for Your Virtual Bank appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog July 26, 2019 at 09:45AM
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9 Popular Ecommerce Products to Sell Online in 2019 https://ift.tt/2yc03QL The ecommerce industry is booming. People are buying products online more than ever before. Nearly anything you can imagine can be purchased on the Internet and delivered to your doorstep. It’s a great time to be a consumer. But as an entrepreneur, you can leverage this craze by creating your own ecommerce shop. You can take advantage of this opportunity and start an online store from virtually anywhere with Internet access. While technology has made it easier than ever for consumers to buy, it’s also easier than ever before to start an online business. Sure, there are a handful of things that you need to figure out. You’ll have to create a website, choose an ecommerce platform, pick a web hosting service, and learn how to market your brand online. But before you get ahead of yourself and start all of that, you need to figure out what you’re going to sell. Lately, I’ve been talking to so many entrepreneurs who want to sell online, but they just don’t know what to offer. That’s what inspired me to write this guide. Using in-depth research and trend analysis, I’ve come up with a list of nine popular products that you can sell online in 2019. Use this guide as an inspiration for your ecommerce shop. 1. GroceriesWhen most people think about selling products online, they automatically think of new gadgets or products that are designed for everyday use around the house. Or they try to think of something innovative that will solve a common problem. However, it seems like people rarely think to sell food. Consumers are buying everything else online, so why not groceries? It’s something that everyone uses on a daily basis. Take a look at the current and projected growth of online grocery sales in the United States alone. By 2021, experts predict that this will become a $30 billion industry. Furthermore, the online food and beverage industry is growing at 18% year-over-year While the majority of grocery shopping still takes place in physical store locations, the ecommerce grocery movement is the way of the future. So this is a great chance for you to jump on board before the market gets too saturated. There are seemingly endless opportunities here. You could sell anything from snacks, to produce, to prepared and pre-packaged meals. Ultimately, there is plenty of money to be made in this space if you’re able to carve out the right niche. Just make sure you educate yourself about the legal aspects of selling food online, as the regulations are different from selling other products. 2. Electric scootersIf you live near any major American city, you’ve probably seen the rise of electric scooter usage over the last couple of years. Depending on the area, this trend has seemingly taken over the streets and sidewalk. Companies like Bird, Lime, and Razor are pioneering the scooter ridesharing industry. Even bigger names like Uber and Lyft have entered the e-scooter space. The idea behind ridesharing scooters is great. Essentially, riders just use a mobile app to locate and start a scooter. Then they ride to a destination and park it anywhere. They are charged based on usage and everything is handled through the mobile app. With this trend growing in popularity, it seems like more and more people want to own electric scooters, as opposed to just using the rideshare options. In 2018, there were roughly 44 million electric scooters and electric bicycles sold worldwide. That number is expected to reach 50 million in 2020. This is a great opportunity for you to seize. That’s because high-end products can be sold at a higher price point. Research shows that the average cost of an electric scooter is roughly $300. But some high-end models can retail for more than double that amount. 3. Virtual reality headsetsVirtual reality and augmented reality are increasing in popularity. If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know that augmented reality already made my list of the top mobile trends that are dominating 2019. I also wrote about how augmented reality is impacting the future of SEO. But now I want to take a moment to talk about the business opportunity for the virtual reality market. First, let me clarify the differences between AR and VR. AR uses overlays on computer-generated screens to put digital figures into real-world images. For example, AR can be used on a smartphone to play games like Pokemon Go. As the name implies, VR puts users into a virtual world, using more specialized and sophisticated equipment, like a VR headset. Take a look at the growth of VR and AR users in the United States. As you can clearly see from the graph, both VR and AR users are growing each year. There are more AR users, simple because augmented reality is easier to use and doesn’t require special equipment. With that said, the number of virtual reality headset users is still continuing to grow and carve out a good-sized market share in this niche. In 2017, there were roughly 11 million VR headset users in the US. That number has already doubled and will reach 26.5 million users by 2021. There are lots of potential consumers to target with this product. According to a virtual reality headset review by The Verge, VR headsets have quite the price range. Inexpensive headsets can be bought for less than $100, while higher-end models retail for upwards of $800. 4. Smart speakersAs long as we’re on the technology subject, I figured this would be a good time to talk about smart speakers. This is another trend that’s growing in popularity. Today, in 2019, there are more than 74 million smart speaker owners in the United States. However, this only makes up 26% of US Internet users, meaning that there is still plenty of room for growth in this space. China has that most smart speaker owners in the world, with 85 million. But this makes up just 10% of the country’s total Internet users. Again, this proves a high global demand for the product, with tons of room for growth in the category. Speaking of growth, look at the number of households in America that have a smart speaker. There was a 78% growth rate between 2017 and 2018. Here’s a crazier statistic. More than half of smart speaker owners have two or more devices. This means that current smart speaker owners are still potential customers for you. This product is a great opportunity to sell online via your ecommerce shop. 5. Vapor productsE-cigarettes and electronic vaporizers, better known as “vapes” are growing in popularity. There are several different components to vapor products. There is the device itself, which operates by heating a liquid solution. Then there are the flavored liquids, usually containing nicotine. Plus there are other accessories as well, and these products come in all different shapes and sizes. Just to be clear, I’m not here to talk about the health risks of vaping or anything like that. Nor am I encouraging the use of e-cigarettes or nicotine products. But like every other product on this list, I’m simply identifying market trends and sharing the information with you. These trends are telling me that it’s a hot category. By 2023, the global vapor market is expected to reach $43 billion. That’s a 15% compound annual growth rate for five years. The figures are impressive, to stay the least. There is definitely a market for this product, and plenty of money to be made by selling vapor products online. Just make sure you comply with all of the legal regulations associated with selling vapes and accessories through an ecommerce shop. 6. JewelryJewelry is another product category with seemingly endless opportunities for online sales. You can target men, women, children, and teenagers with high-end diamonds, low-end rings, and everything in between. There are so many options for products and targets in this industry. Plus, you can even make jewelry by hand. More than 2 million handmade jewelry products are sold on Etsy. Studies show that the global online jewelry market is expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 16% between now and 2022. According to Shopify, ecommerce only represents 4-5% of all jewelry sales worldwide. However, that number is expected to be 10-15% by 2020. What does this mean? Jewelry sales, like most products, are starting to trend in the ecommerce direction. There is so much room for growth in the coming years with this product category. 7. Digital courses and learning materialYou don’t always need to sell tangible products on your ecommerce shop. You can also sell digital goods like ebooks or online learning courses. This is another booming industry. According to Forbes, the e-learning industry is going to reach $325 billion by 2025. There are so many potential customers here as well. In fact, 77% of corporations in the US use online learning tools. E-learning increases retention rates by up 60%. So if you’re good at something, take advantage of it. Teach others how to do whatever it is that you know best. Product content like blogs, ebooks, and videos. Then sell those digital goods online. The best part about this is the low overhead. Your only costs will be running your website, processing transactions, and your time. Everything else is just straight profit. 8. DronesThe drone market is segmented into two categories.
There’s actually a military category too, but that’s not really relevant for ecommerce purposes. While you might be tempted to just target the average Joe who wants to flow a drone around his neighborhood, you might want to consider the commercial market as well. Check out the growth of commercial drones over the years. Between now and 2025, the global commercial drone market is expected to grow by roughly 700%. Now is the time to jump on this trend to get your share of the action. You can still go after consumers as well. The unit sales of personal drones dominate 94% of the market. However, this only represents 40% of the total revenue share, since commercial drones are typically priced higher. 9. Clothing and accessoriesIt may sound simple, obvious, or boring, but the online clothing industry is huge. But in order to be successful here, you definitely need to go after a niche. Trying to sell to anyone and everyone will be too competitive to survive. By 2023, revenue from online clothing, footwear, and accessories in the US is expected to surpass $145.7 billion. That’s up from $93 billion in 2017. 58% of Americans have purchased clothing online. Again, this is another industry where you have tons of options. There are different types of people to target, and countless options of products to sell at varying price points. Ultimately, there’s lots of money to be made selling clothes online. ConclusionThere has never been a better time to sell products online. Starting an ecommerce store is easy, and consumers are continuing to buy products on the Internet more and more each year. But what should you sell online? Use this list as a reference. Unlike other similar posts that you’ll find online, I took the time to actually research industries and trends. I didn’t just pull random products out of thin air. That’s why this information is so valuable. If you can set up your ecommerce shop around these trends, it has a much greater chance of being successful. Social Media via Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/UU7LJr July 26, 2019 at 08:37AM
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How to Get Your Videos Discovered on YouTube https://ift.tt/2YmQTvm Is YouTube video part of your marketing plan? Want more people to find and watch your videos on YouTube? To explore how to get your videos discovered on YouTube, I interview Tim Schmoyer. Tim is a YouTube expert whose channel has 500,000 subscribers. He hosts the Video Creators podcast and his course is called Video Labs. Tim shares which factors help increase the likelihood that your video becomes discoverable on YouTube. You’ll also find out how to improve YouTube audience retention. Read a summary of the interview below. To listen to the interview, scroll to the end of this article. Why Marketers Should Take a Second Look at YouTubeOne of the biggest reasons for marketers to consider YouTube is search visibility. YouTube, the world’s second-largest search engine, is owned by Google, the world’s largest search engine. Today, when people are searching for results on Google, more YouTube video content is popping up in those results alongside blog posts and text-based articles, which is great. But, if you’re not making content that will rank on the world’s second-largest search engine, that’s a pretty big missed opportunity. There’s a lot of potential to pick up traction there. Tim says he’s heard several people who are making full-time income from their website say that when they added YouTube to their content marketing, it brought in more revenue than any other part of their business. Why? YouTube allows them to show viewers how their products work and build a human connection with them. How to Use Video Marketing to Increase Your Influence, Visibility, and Sales—Online Training! While Tim is quick to note that not everyone will see the same results, he says several of his clients have actually sold their blog and kept their YouTube channel because it converts better. About YouTube’s AudienceCommon pushback Tim hears when he talks about YouTube is that the platform is so saturated and people wonder if it’s too hard to get in or if it’s still worth the effort. To address the pushback, Tim shares that nearly two billion active viewers log into YouTube every month, which is up 5% from just 9 months ago. These people aren’t passively going to the platform; they’re actively subscribing to and following channels, watching and commenting on content, and engaging. What’s more, YouTube reaches more U.S. consumers 18–49 years old in an average week than all cable TV networks combined. And they’re spending more than 250 million hours per day watching YouTube, which is close to 39% higher than this time last year. The audience age on YouTube is very broad, Tim says. He worked with a lifestyle channel that was actively targeting women age 60 and older. The channel had 400 subscribers when they started, and within a year, it had surpassed 100,000 subscribers and was logging millions of views a month. How Does YouTube Differ From Google?A lot of people assume that because Google owns YouTube, both probably follow a lot of the same rules and principles. That’s true in some regards, but they’re very different platforms. What works on Google in terms of keywords and tags won’t necessarily grow your channel on YouTube. On the homepage of Google, there may be a few account links at the top, but for the most part, it’s a blank page with a search box in the middle. Google wants to deliver results that either answer your question right there on their page or move you to a website that can give you a more in-depth answer. The homepage of YouTube has a ton of things going on. The search bar is kind of hidden and it’s not the only option. There’s a big ad right at the top of the page, and several videos YouTube thinks you’d be interested in. The goal of the page is to get you to browse video and start a viewing session. YouTube is also selling their own products: YouTube TV and YouTube Premium. The way people discover content on each platform also varies. To illustrate, based on your past engagement and views, YouTube will serve suggested videos they think you might like right on the homepage, whether you’ve entered a search or not. It’s very similar to recommendations on Netflix. YouTube is always trying to bring people back to the platform, hold their attention, and keep them there. So as marketers who want to do well on YouTube, it’s really important to craft content that supports those goals. How Does YouTube Differ From Facebook?People aren’t typically going to Facebook to search for how-to DIY content such as “How do I fix my lawnmower’s battery?” Instead people are scrolling (browsing) through the news feed. When they see a video that catches their eye, they’ll stop and watch. People on YouTube are specifically looking for content to watch. Once they’re on the platform, then they start browsing. How Is Video Discovered on YouTube?There are a number of ways people discover video on YouTube, including:
If you want YouTube to suggest your video, you need to help them accomplish their goals of getting people back to YouTube, getting people to watch, and holding viewers’ attention longer. Ultimately, YouTube wants people to engage with as many videos as possible, subscribe to as many new channels as possible, and see as many ads as possible; which is really what they’re all about. Create Video That Brings People Back to YouTubeOften, the videos YouTube puts on a viewer’s homepage have broad appeal but it’s also influenced by what the viewer is watching. For instance, if you spend half an hour watching new videos from Social Media Examiner, Google postulates that you’re on a big Social Media Examiner kick and will put more of the channel’s videos on your homepage every time you come back to the platform. Suggested videos can also be influenced by the days you watch certain videos. To visualize this, a viewer who knows Social Media Examiner publishes a new video every Tuesday and Friday comes back to YouTube to watch those videos on those days. YouTube learns from this behavior and will save them the trouble of navigating to the channel by putting Social Media Examiner’s new videos right in front of that person on Tuesdays and Fridays. As a marketer or channel owner, you can use this to your advantage by having a posting schedule. The consistent production of video on a certain day can be an incentive to bring people back to YouTube. If YouTube can conclude that’s the reason they’re coming back, your videos stand a better chance of showing up as suggested content. Making your content part of someone’s weekly routine to the point where YouTube will promote your video to the homepage means that people start their viewing session with you right in front of them and yours is the first video they watch. That’s really valuable. To track the traffic from people browsing YouTube’s homepage, open YouTube Analytics and click on Traffic Sources. Create Video That Encourages People to Watch to the EndWatch time—the length of time someone spends watching your videos both individually and collectively—is one of the primary metrics Google uses to determine the value of a video. When YouTube surfaces a video, they want to know if people watch it, if they click through, and if they’re engaged. If someone does click through, do they watch for 2 seconds and leave, 10 seconds and leave, or do they stay for a full 10 minutes? This is where audience retention comes into play. Tim says the top creators he knows (channels with 60–100 million views a month) are intimately familiar with their YouTube audience retention graphs. Those creators use those graphs to craft each video in a way that holds their audience’s attention to the end. For example, one client discovered that a portion of his viewers dropped every time he said the word “module.” He stopped using “module” in his video and the retention graph flattened out. People watched for a longer period of time, which raised the value of his videos in the platform’s eyes. Tim’s friend Grant Thompson from the King of Random studied his graphs so closely that he was able to produce an 80-page editing checklist. He can hand his raw footage and the checklist to anyone who knows the mechanics of editing video and get back a video that’s 100% every single time. Another friend, Jeremy from J. House blogs, knows exactly how many seconds he can talk and how many seconds his wife can talk before people leave the content. He knows how many seconds he can go before showing another clip of his kids, what type of music is going to impact audience retention, even how long he can use a specific genre of music. The benchmark percentage of an audience watching to the end of the video varies by audience. The average viewing session for 2-year-olds watching a kids’ channel is going to be very different from average viewing session for 30-year-old guys who want to learn how to fix a car. That said, Tim generally wants to see 50% of the audience who clicked Play to watch to the end of the video. To view your retention graphs, open YouTube Analytics and click on Audience Retention. Encourage Longer Watch Time on YouTubeOnce you’ve gotten someone to watch your video, how do you improve watch time? Stop telling people they can leave and encourage them to stick around. So often, Tim sees creators and marketers end a video by copying what they’ve seen on television—with a sign-off, a farewell, or a goodbye similar to, “Hope this was helpful, let me know what you think, see you guys in the next one.” He says a lot of creators give those signals even before the end screens come on. Get Video Marketing Training—Online!The Video Marketing Summit is ideal for any marketer who wants to increase their visibility, influence, and sales with video. Twelve of the world’s top video marketing experts will show you how to do this on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The Video Marketing Summit is a live online training event from your friends at Social Media Examiner. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MOREThat’s a very strong signal to the viewer that your video is over, there’s no additional value coming, and they may safely abandon it. Instead of signing off, deliver good content to the very end of your video and use end screens. As the end screens show, say something similar to, “Now that you guys know X, I want to share Y and take it to a whole new level. Click the video on your screen right here, and I’ll see you guys over there.” You’re encouraging someone who just gave you the maximum amount of watch time on video A to click and watch another video, and another, and so on. An average click-through rate (CTR) on a new video is around .7%–1%. Using the tactic above, Tim has seen CTR rise to 42%. As you grow a library of content that supports this approach, your whole channel gets a lift. To illustrate, one of Tim’s clients went from 2,000 subscribers a day to over 39,000 subscribers per day; they just blew past 2 million subscribers and approximately 90%–93% of that traffic comes from the YouTube homepage. Another way to keep people watching YouTube longer is by getting them into a short playlist of content where they watch not only one video, but a second, third, and fourth video. Other Factors That Affect DiscoverabilityThe two main things marketers can control on YouTube are the quality of the content we publish and its metadata; the title, description, tags, and so forth. But you can’t simply slap on the metadata and trust that your video is going to rank better in search. Video optimization did work that way many years ago, but Google realized the best result for a search query isn’t necessarily the video that repeats a keyword five times in the description and crams it 14 different ways into the tags. Metadata is still important, but today, the game is about rewarding viewers with relevant content and keeping them engaged, as opposed to merely attracting clicks from viewers who don’t stay to watch. If people abandon your content pretty quickly, your video won’t rank well. So the bigger goal should be to optimize videos for people, not for algorithmic robots. Viewer signals are more important then metadata. To explain, Tim shares a real-world example from one of his searches. His daughter wanted to learn how to draw a cat so he opened up YouTube and typed in, “How to draw a cat.” The first result that showed up was a video titled, “How to draw a cute husky puppy.” While there were no cat-related keywords on the video, the thumbnail image of a husky puppy did vaguely resemble a cat. As people who clicked on the video stayed to watch until the end, Google and YouTube specifically learned that it was a relevant result. The video wasn’t served because it used the right keywords, it was served because it delivered the right value. A Note About Titles and ThumbnailsOn YouTube, the customer journey doesn’t start with the video itself, it actually starts with the title and the thumbnail. They set an expectation, and viewers click in anticipation of the expectation being fulfilled. It’s very important that your video immediately delivers on the value promised by the title and thumbnail. This is especially necessary for non-subscribed people who have never heard of you before. You can’t open your video with something along the lines of, “Hey, welcome to my show, my name is Tim, and here I am hanging out with Michael Stelzner on the Social Media Examiner podcast. And I am really glad that you tuned in.” Using that intro, you’re likely to see a steep drop in your audience retention graphs. In 10 seconds, half of your audience could be gone. Why Keeping Viewers on YouTube Works for MarketersWhen the goal of marketing is to get people to a place where they can buy your product, keeping viewers on YouTube can feel like the opposite of that goal. To address this, Tim shares another client story. The guy was doing one video every weekday, totaling five videos per week. The goal of every video was to generate sales. The call to action of every video was basically, “Hey, go buy this thing from my website.” He was doing okay and generating about $20,000 a month for his business. He shifted to making four videos per week to encourage people to watch more content, and one video a week that encouraged people to visit his website and buy from him. It’s important to note that the sales video wasn’t like a commercial. He was still teaching his viewers something, but at the end, he would say, “And to take this to the next level, buy X.” The whole channel saw tremendous lift and his channel growth almost doubled over the course of a few weeks. What’s more, he went from doing $20K a month to $100K a month. The key realization was that he had been trying to accomplish too many goals with each piece of content. He wanted every video to get a lot of views, get a lot of subscribers, generate a lot of sales, and rank number-one in service—and then do well on Reddit, too. Nowhere in marketing does one piece of content support 15 goals. Make each piece of video content revolve around a very specific goal—community, discoverability, or sales, for example. If the goal of your video is to be discoverable, make high-value content people can click and watch even if they’ve never heard of you before. Once they’ve been introduced to your brand, you can encourage them to watch more content where you continue to deliver value. I share that we employ a similar model on the Social Media Examiner blog. At the end of our blog posts, we don’t ever tell people to go buy anything. Instead, we encourage them to get something for free by subscribing to our newsletter in which we’ll deliver our daily articles so they never miss out. Each month, we add close to 15,000 email subscribers to our email list. How Long Should YouTube Video Be?Is there a sweet spot for video length? Tim says the short answer to this question is no. There’s not enough data to provide helpful guidelines. Rather than asking how long your video should be, you should consider how well you can hold someone’s attention. If it’s 10 minutes, do 10-minute videos. If you can hold attention for 2 minutes, do 2-minute videos. It’s about how well you tell a story. On YouTube Red, for instance, each Cobra Kai episode is about 45 minutes long. Tim says he watched 13 episodes in two viewing sessions but notes that he watched the videos on a television. People watching YouTube on televisions might have longer viewing sessions because it’s a more passive viewing experience than leaning in at your desktop or watching on your phone. Even as far back as 2012, when people said video shouldn’t be any longer than 2 minutes, a 30-minute documentary titled “Kony 2012” told a great story and broke all records in terms of how quickly it grew to 1 million views and beyond. I share that after two seasons of producing Social Media Examiner’s docu-entertainment show, The Journey, we found the sweet spot to be 5–7 minutes and see anywhere from 40%–55% audience retention. Discovery of the WeekURLList is a free bookmarklet that allows you to bring a whole bunch of URLs together in one place and then share them out with a single link. One use case that isn’t explicitly stated on their site is to create a large list of URLs for all of your different product landing pages and then use that one URL in your Instagram bio. Another use case would be to curate the URLs of your favorite podcasts, and then include the single URL in a post on social, “Here are the 10 podcasts that I’ll never unsubscribe from.” As you drop each link into the bookmarklet, you can edit its description and even add some metadata. URLList is free and very easy to use. You can create a list anonymously or log in to save, manage, and edit your lists. Listen to the show to hear more about URLList. Key Takeaways From This Episode:Listen 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 getting your videos discovered on YouTube? Please share your comments below. Get your 2020 tickets! There are 17 tracks of content available from the world's top marketing pros! Social Media via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p July 26, 2019 at 05:06AM How to Get Your Videos Discovered on YouTube - 364 https://ift.tt/2LIaHb0 Is YouTube video part of your marketing plan? Want more people to find and watch your videos on YouTube? To explore how to get your videos discovered on YouTube, in this episode I interview Tim Schmoyer. Tim is a YouTube expert whose channel has 500,000 subscribers. He hosts the Video Creators podcast and his course is called Video Labs. USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our Video Marketing Summit We'd love you to review our show on Apple Podcasts. Social Media via Social Media Marketing Podcast https://ift.tt/1LtH18p July 26, 2019 at 05:00AM |
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