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How to Create and Use Instagram Collections http://ift.tt/2frY1To Looking for a way to organize your saved posts? In this article, you’ll learn how to create private Instagram collections to organize saved posts you want to refer to later. How to Create and Use Instagram Collections by Robert Katai on Social Media Examiner.
Why Instagram Collections?When you save Instagram posts you want to refer to later on, they’re added to a private section of your profile. Instagram lets you organize your saved posts into individual collections to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. Here are some ways that Instagram collections can be a useful tool for social media marketers. Analyze Competitors Instagram collections can help you research competitors without using up your marketing budget. Look for great brands or local businesses in your niche and save relevant posts to a collection. Analyzing these collections will help you stay up to date on what your competitors are sharing and how they communicate with their community. You can also see whether your Instagram posts match your competitors’ level of visual attractiveness. Streamline Engagement Collections can be helpful for streamlining engagement with your Instagram followers. Save brand and product mentions you get on Instagram to a collection. Having all of your mentions in one place makes it easier to monitor people who follow you and engage with them when you have time. Create collections that help you streamline marketing tasks on Instagram. Manage User-Generated Content A collection of mentions is a handy way to manage user-generated content (UGC). You might also create a separate collection of UGC that you have permission to use so you’re in compliance with Instagram’s terms of service. Let’s say, for example, that you’re in the sunglasses business and promoting a specific design. You notice somebody has tagged you in a photo, sharing a personal moment wearing your particular sunglasses design. By saving this share in a collection, you can easily engage with the user and find their content later to use as marketing material. Get Inspiration Last but not least, save Instagram images to a private collection for inspiration. Look for pictures and videos that are compatible with the brand image you want to project. Use the images in this collection to spark visual marketing ideas for your campaigns. Here’s how to start creating and using Instagram collections: #1: Set Up Standard Category CollectionsYou can create Instagram private collections in two ways: before you ever find a post you want to save in a collection, or at the same time you find a photo or video that might be useful to you later. If you already know the categories of photos and videos that you want to save, go ahead and create your collections now. To begin, go to your profile and tap the bookmark icon. To create a collection, go to your Instagram profile and tap the Bookmark icon. On the Saved screen that appears, tap the + sign that appears in the upper-right corner. Tap the + sign in the upper right of the Instagram Saved screen. On the New Collection screen, give your collection a name that will help you decide which saved posts belong there. For example, you might name a collection Competitors, User Content, or Inspiration. When you’re done, tap Next. Give your Instagram collection a meaningful name. On the next screen, Instagram shows all of the posts you’ve saved with the bookmark feature. Tap any post to add it to your new collection. Select any saved posts you want to add to your Instagram collection and then tap Done. When you’re finished, just tap Done. You’ll then see a screen that shows all of your Instagram collections. #2: Create a Collection as You Save an Instagram PostIf you find an Instagram post you want to save but don’t have a collection already created for it, you can create the collection on the fly. To do this, tap and hold the bookmark icon for the post you want to save. On the screen that appears, type in a name for the collection and tap Done. Type in a name for your private Instagram collection and tap Done. The Instagram app will then display a notification that reads “Saved to [collection]” to confirm that the image was saved to your new collection. Instagram will briefly show a notification with the “Saved to [Collection Name]” message. #3: Save an Instagram Post to an Existing CollectionTo save an Instagram video or photo post to a collection you’ve already created, tap and hold the bookmark icon on the post. On the Save To screen that appears, tap the collection where you want to save the post. A notification confirms that you saved the post and where. If you tap (rather than tap and hold) the bookmark icon on a post, the post is still saved to a private section of your Instagram profile. However, you’ll need to take an extra step to add the post to a collection. To find the saved post, open your profile screen and tap the bookmark icon to display your saved posts. Make sure the All tab is selected. If you save an Instagram post without adding it to a collection, you’ll find the post on the All tab of your saved posts. On this tab, tap the post you want to add to a collection. Instagram then opens the post. Tap and hold the post’s bookmark icon to organize it into a collection. Note that you can save posts to multiple collections. Alternatively, open the collection via the bookmark icon on your profile. If you tap the three dots in the upper right, you see the option to add to or edit your collection. Tap Add to Collection to see all of your saved posts that aren’t already part of this collection. To add saved posts to your Instagram collection, tap the three dots at the top right and tap Add to Collection. Now select the posts you want to add to this collection and tap Done. If you accidentally add a post to the wrong collection, open the post in the collection. The post’s bookmark icon is black, which indicates you’ve already saved the post. Tap and hold the icon, and the Save To screen displays a checkbox on every collection where the post appears. Tap a checked collection to remove the post from that collection. Tap a checked collection to remove the Instagram post from the collection. Conclusion On Instagram, creating private collections is fast and easy, and organizing saved posts can help you do competitive analysis and monitor your brand mentions and followers (all without spending a dime from your marketing budget). What do you think? Do you use collections on Instagram? How do you use them to streamline your social media marketing tasks? Please add your thoughts and insights in the comments. Social Media via http://ift.tt/1LtH18p September 28, 2017 at 05:10AM
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Twitter’s Apple Watch app has disappeared http://ift.tt/2k5urIC The big Twitter news currently may be the expansion of tweets to support 280 characters instead of just 140, but a number of Twitter users recently spotted another notable change, as well: the Twitter Apple Watch app has disappeared. The app’s iTunes App Store page no longer notes compatibility with the Apple Watch, and users who have updated to the latest versions of iOS and watchOS note the Twitter Watch app is no longer available on their smartwatch. Twitter would not be the first major tech company to stop supporting the Apple Watch, if that’s the case here. Several major app makers, including Google, have abandoned Apple’s smartwatch platform in recent months. For example, Google pulled support for Google Maps on the Apple Watch earlier this year, and retailers including Amazon and eBay did the same. The challenge for these watch apps in some cases has to do with the fact that a smartwatch is not necessarily the ideal platform for traditional mobile app use – like shopping, for example. But with Google, it was likely also too difficult to compete with the better-integrated Apple Maps app that’s designed to work with Apple’s wearable. But those removals went largely unnoticed, which indicated that perhaps these apps weren’t as heavily used as the companies had hoped when the Apple Watch app store first launched. Twitter’s removal from Apple Watch, however, isn’t exactly flying under the radar. It seems that at least some Apple Watch owners appreciated the ability to check their feed and reply from their Watch’s interface. Many are expressing their concerns and complaints about the app’s removal, too – on Twitter itself, naturally. (And in less than 280 characters!)
https://twitter.com/illicit/status/913004120134574080
Reddit and MacRumors also noticed the app’s disappearance. Unlike shopping apps or other social apps, like Facebook or Instagram, Twitter’s network has a sense of immediacy which makes it a better fit for a platform that’s about urgency of notifications – that is, those that are worth the interruption. Plus, Twitter’s iOS app allowed you to make granular adjustments to the types of notifications you receive, so getting pushes on your Apple Watch didn’t become overwhelming or feel spammy. And, the app would not push notifications to both your Watch and iPhone at the same time – it would choose to send them to the platform you’re currently using. Twitter has not yet responded to requests for comment about the app’s disappearance, but we will update when one is provided. Image credit: Twitter app screens/descriptions, via WatchAware Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com September 27, 2017 at 11:08AM
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Twitter can keep its extra characters, I want to edit tweets http://ift.tt/2y8ViJE Geez, Twitter, have you not been listening? Yesterday, in an unsolicited act of largess, Twitter doubled the number of tweet characters from 140 to 280 characters for unspecified number of Twitter users. The change was announced by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. This is exactly what we don’t need. Forget brevity. I’ve spent a decade perfecting concise, 140-character tweets, even coining the term “Twoosh” (like a "swoosh") when I hit exactly that number. I have applauded Twitter changes that reduced the impact of including Twitter handles and media on the character count. Tweets are, overall, much richer than they were when SMS forced the 140-character limit (in total, SMS gave you 160 characters). Not only can we squeeze in multiple images, Twitter is home to endless streaming video content, which says far more than you ever could in 140 characters. Even so, the rule of 140 character to accompany that media has remained. It’s the heart of what makes Twitter unique. We have, of course, been begging for a critical tweet change for years: Editing tweets. We wanted it in 2010, and we want it today. In June, President Donald Trump, not six months into his term, electrified Twitter with a bizarre non-sequitur tweet: It started off fine, but ended with “covfefe.” Trump eventually deleted the tweet (a problem in and of itself for a sitting president), but it was obvious what Trump, who has made numerous Twitter errors and deleted just as many, and virtually every other Twitter user needs. So certain was I that this was, finally, the time to get serious about editing tweets, I wrote about it. Sadly, Jack Dorsey didn't read my post. I’m not naive. I get how much editable tweets could change the platform, which some see as the social media of record. To allow editing is to, potentially, let people alter historical record, and I tried in my post to offer some ideas for managing the changes including an audit trail that anyone could view by clicking on the time stamp. Right now, though, our only choice is to delete tweets. Not long ago, I posted a, for me, wildly popular tweet that included an embarrassing typo. With almost 1,000 likes, I couldn’t delete it. Every fresh share was like a little thorn digging into my side. I winced at my horrible typing skills and wished, yet again, for the ability to edit tweets. Instead, we got 280 characters, a change intended to simplify the service to those intimidated by a 140-character limit. I know it's just a test, but these things have a way of sticking. With few exceptions, most of Twitter's platform experiments have become part of the product. The 280-character tweets is 140 more opportunities to make a mistake. At least with 140 characters, we spend considerable time crafting each word. Most people spend more time on that dozen or so words than we do on paragraphs we write in emails. Having 280 characters means we will spend twice as much time editing and polishing our tweets. We’ll be tweeting less and making more mistakes. Granted, no one has to tweet in 280 characters. I’ve posted thousands of tweets with fewer than 140 characters and, yes, have been occasionally frustrated at the constraint. On the other hand, I always appreciate how Twitter forces me to follow one of my core writing rules taught to me by my first editor, the late Monte Temple: Omit needless words. The 280-character tweets will be full of needless words as people get lazy, sloppy and Twitter transforms from its original micro-blog format into a bloated beast of endless nattering. We needed editable tweets, we got more to edit and no new tools to manage our social media prose. Thanks for too much of something, Jack. Social Media via Social Media http://ift.tt/1N1mMj1 September 27, 2017 at 10:20AM
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Looks like Trump hasn't gotten upgraded to 280 characters on Twitter yet. Bless. http://ift.tt/2k3OyGY We may all be able to take a temporary sigh of relief. When Twitter announced on Tuesday that the platform would be adding an additional 140 characters to tweets — giving users the option to compose 280-character messages in the future — everyone had the same fear: What will Donald Trump say with more characters? But if the president's Wednesday morning tweetstorm is any suggestion, Trump hasn't been upgraded to 280 characters yet. Donald Trump used the microblogging platform to embark on one of his infamous morning rants on Wednesday, taking shots at Facebook as "anti-Trump," calling out Fake News, and posing the question of collusion between outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post. And yet, during Trump's Twitter rant, he sent out six tweets, all of which were either exactly 140 characters or less... suggesting he hasn't received Twitter's expanded character limit.
That tweet was a neat 140 characters, but then he followed it up with another related message that was also exactly 140 characters.
If Trump had the ability to type 280 character tweets, we assume (and deeply hope) he would have just combined his two thoughts. Others took Donald Trump's tweet storm as evidence that POTUS didn't receive the Twitter update too:
Ideally, if Trump gets the update he'll cut his number of tweets in half. Though we also run the terrifying risk of getting longer, more frequent thoughts from the man. When will Trump have the power?As for why a man as important as the president hasn't received the honor of an early admission to a Twitter update, the company's CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the change will be rolled out to a "small group" of users.
Under normal circumstances, it might seem like a good idea to give the President of the United States access to a feature that would allow him to more efficiently communicate with the world. (But in this case it's okay, Jack — really. America is good. Pls don't.) As for Trump, he shouldn't feel too left out — beloved celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres haven't even received those extra 140 characters yet either. Social Media via Social Media http://ift.tt/1N1mMj1 September 27, 2017 at 10:20AM
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Stop with the 'sleeping selfie' Instagram pose. We know you're not actually asleep. http://ift.tt/2y8MALH Make way, make way. There's a new hot Instagram pose in town. And it goes by the name #sleepingselfie. Now, instead of nonchalantly posing with a downward gaze as if you had no idea a photo was being taken of you—a.k.a. the plandid—the new trendy pose is to straight-up pretend you're fast asleep as you take a selfie. But, like, how does that work? Everyone knows you need to be conscious to operate your phone! Sorry Instagrammers: we know you're not ~actually~ sleeping. A quick Insta search will yield almost 10K photos of 'grammers pretending they're out for the count. But, while this pose might look aesthetically pleasing, the idea of taking a photo while you're supposedly in the land of nod might not pass muster with your followers. Logistically, it just doesn't work. To achieve the look, you'll need to be lying supine with your arms outstretched above your head. Now close your eyes—you need to look like you're fast asleep, remember. Then, use one of your outstretched arms to take a deeply unconvincing #sleepingselfie. Wow, how did you manage to take that cute selfie while asleep? HEY! WE CAN TELL YOU'RE AWAKE.
If you want to make doubly sure you look good, you might have to keep your eyes the tiniest bit open. Don't worry, though: people will still DEFINITELY think you're sleeping. Not satisfied with leaving your compelling nap time pose up to chance? Get a friend to take the photo of you.
Here's a tip: open your damn eyes and smile. Social Media via Social Media http://ift.tt/1N1mMj1 September 27, 2017 at 10:20AM
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How to Create a Content Upgrade That Will Automate Your List Building http://ift.tt/2y8SIU2 I am a big champion of the power of email marketing. There’s no better way to build a community and nurture a relationship with your audience. It’s hands down the most authentic way to prime your prospects, sell them your work, and grow your revenue. So, when a powerful list-building technique comes along, I get excited. After all, a thriving email list is the foundation of email marketing. I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but I’ll point it out anyway. Content upgrades are what’s hot right now if you want to accelerate the growth of your email list. Take a guy like Bryan Harris, for instance. He sees a conversion rate of 20-40% on blog posts with content upgrades. He now averages almost 80 subscribers a day. That’s amazing! Blog posts typically do not convert as well as landing pages because they’re not designed for that purpose. The point of a blog post is to educate, entertain, and inspire. There’s too much going on to get someone focused enough to sign up to your email list. Content upgrades have changed that completely. You can now transform your blog posts into powerful list-building assets. All you have to do is uplevel your posts with a targeted free resource. Don’t worry—I’ll show you how. First, let’s define a content upgrade. What is a content upgrade?It’s a type of lead magnet you give your audience in exchange for their email addresses. The typical lead magnet, like an ebook or an email course, stands alone. It is not attached to any specific piece of content. It has its own thing going on. A content upgrade is unique to a piece of content. It’s usually tied to a blog post. But there are other types of content you can uplevel with a free resource. Webinars, podcasts, and videos are examples. The point is to enhance the value of your content with this additional resource. As you can imagine, there are several ways to achieve that. You can create a resource that helps readers implement what you just discussed. An action sheet, workbook, or toolkit are excellent examples. You can give away something that saves them time, like templates or cheat sheets. The ultimate strategy is to create something that will help them delve deeper into the topic. This is where you give additional strategies, tutorials, case studies, etc. Your options are endless. Let’s look at some examples. CoSchedule published a post “How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing.” The content upgrade? A content repurposing guide and infographic: If you read this post and were interested in implementing this content repurposing technique, you’d sign up for this upgrade in a heartbeat. And that’s why content upgrades are so powerful for growing your email list. They offer something you can’t say no to: value. I’ll give you more examples later. For now, let’s get into how you can create your content upgrades. Step #1: Identify your top-performing contentCan’t you just create content upgrades for your new content? Yes, but it’s not where you should start. If you haven’t created upgrades, you should first capitalize on the traffic you’re already receiving. This is the fastest way to see results. You can identify your top posts with Google Analytics or Buzzsumo. If you have GA fired up, go to the Reports section and click on “behavior.” Go to “site content” and then “all pages.” You’ll find the website pages with the most traffic. You can also find this info directly from your WordPress dashboard if you have GA set up there. Buzzsumo is even simpler. Plug in your site URL and press “Go.” You’ll find the posts with the most social shares. Record these in a spreadsheet. They’ll serve as your targets for your new content upgrades. These are for finding your top blog posts, but the same can be done for your podcasts, YouTube videos, webinars, etc. Step #2: Find the gap in your contentTo deliver that extra value, you need to pinpoint the gap in your content. Otherwise, your upgrade won’t be worth opting in for. Select one of your top content pieces found in the first step. Go through it from top to bottom, and consider the following questions. Q. 1: What problem does your content solve?If you’ve created something of quality, it should solve a problem. I understand not all content is instructional or how-to, but the question remains. Think about what knowledge you’re trying to deliver and what purpose it serves for your audience. Let’s look at this post. My goal is to give readers the fastest and easiest strategies to grow their email lists. If I were to create a content upgrade for that post, it would:
This may sound futile. But without going through this exercise, your content upgrade can flop. When I talk about types of upgrades later, you’ll understand why. For now, figure out what your content is trying to accomplish. And your job will be half done. Q. 2: What’s missing?You know the goal of your content piece. Is there a strategy you didn’t mention? A tool required to implement your tactics? Something that fulfills the goal but was not covered in-depth or at all? Find the gap between the objective and what your content does. Q. 3: How can you expand the value?Think of what could’ve been included to make your content more valuable. You want an upgrade that accomplishes the same goal you established earlier, but with an extra kick. When people consume new information, they’re thinking of the ways they can implement it for a positive result. Your audience wants to achieve that outcome better, faster, and cheaper and with more precision, less error, and less effort. That’s the purpose your content upgrade should serve. What content do you plan to create in the future? If you want to make upgrades a key piece of your list-building strategy, here’s what I recommend. Don’t wait till after you’ve created your content to come up with an idea for your free resource. Instead, strategize the future upgrade. How? Leave an open loop. This technique uses the power of storytelling to get readers excited about your content upgrade. Here’s what storytelling does to the brain: How do you achieve that? Briefly mention a tool, a topic, a relevant experience, or an action step in your article. Don’t expand on it in your post. Just mention it, and leave the gap wide open. This way you’re giving people a piece of the story—not the whole thing. The objective is to hook your readers. Then, create an upgrade that closes this gap. I guarantee you, people will sign up to your list just to get the inside scoop. With this technique, you’re utilizing curiosity, a major persuasion factor. Step #3: Select an appropriate type of content upgradeNow that you know what content you’ll cover, it’s time to establish the form. How will you deliver your content? Many people don’t give it much thought. They believe the content is the end-all and be-all. Not true. Content and delivery go hand in hand. Imagine you promise subscribers a quick win, and you deliver your content in a 30-day email course. There’s nothing quick about a 30-day email course. But that doesn’t mean this form isn’t appropriate for a different result. Let’s say you promise advanced in-depth training, and you deliver it in a cheat sheet. The email course would serve your audience way better in this instance. It’s why I use it. It works. You could also use a webinar. Do you see how the type of upgrade you select can conflict with the actual content? You want the two to work seamlessly. Otherwise, your subscribers will feel cheated when they receive your resource. The result? They unsubscribe and never return to your blog again. This is why I placed emphasis on establishing your goals in the beginning. It’s going to help you select the right type of content upgrade. Here are the options available:
These will give you enough food for thought. Ensure you select the form that aligns with your content and its goals. Step #4: Design your content upgradeYou’ve got your content figured out. You’ve got your delivery method aligned with the content. This is where you might have some problems. Or maybe not. Designing a lead magnet can be time-consuming and challenging for some people. For others, it’s a breeze. Here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming for anyone. Even if you don’t have one technical or creative bone in your body, you can do this. And if you don’t want to, you can outsource it for pretty cheap. That’s why sites like Fiverr, 99Designs, and UpWork exist. For those who want to handle it themselves, here’s how. First, I’ll tell you my favorite tools:
That’s it. The best part? These are free to use. Here’s an overview of how you can do this. Step #1: Outline the content for your upgrade in a Google Doc or Word documentWhether you’re creating an ebook, ecourse, or cheat sheet, write out the most important points. This will serve as a skeleton for your content upgrade. Step #2: Expand on your outlineFlesh out your main points. I like to use dictation to get through this faster. This way, you can just speak about your topic and let the tool do the typing. Go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there are no errors. Step #3: Use Canva or Beacon to create a beautiful layoutYou can also do this with Google docs. You can copy and paste images, icons, create tables, and highlight text to create a sophisticated design within a simple document. Then, download your document as a PDF. But if you want to step up your design, Canva and Beacon are the best choices. Step #4: Create an image of your content upgradeThis is so you can place it within your blog posts or on a landing page. One of my favorite tools to do that is Skitch. I use it to take a snapshot of the individual pages of the content upgrade. Then, I overlay them in Canva to create an image. Like this: Step #5: Create a compelling call to action image to place within your blog postsAgain, you can use Canva to do this. Here are some examples: Here’s another: It doesn’t have to be fancy. You can use a feature box like this: Step #5: Set up the delivery of your content upgradeAt this point, you should have all the assets created for your upgrade. The task now is to set up delivery. Step #1: Host the file in WordPress or with your email management softwareSome email systems, like ConvertKit, allow you to host files. This makes it super simple to deliver them to subscribers. The alternative is to use your WordPress account. Go to your dashboard, find the “Media” tab and “Add New.” Upload your file. You’ll receive a downloadable URL (“file URL”). Anyone with the link can now access your content upgrade. Step #2: Set up a follow-up email in your email management systemThis is what you’ll use to deliver your content upgrade. Place the link you got in Step #1 within your email. At this point, you can set up a system to segment subscribers. Let’s say someone opts in for a content upgrade on list-building. You can tag them to be transferred to a separate list designated for people interested in this particular topic. Most email software allows for segmentation. When you segment subscribers this way, you are better able to deliver emails aligned with their interests. It keeps them engaged and your unsubscribe rate low. Step #6: Promote your content upgrade and watch your list growThe only thing left to do is to promote your content upgrades. The goal is to get them in front of as many eyes as possible. Place them prominently within blog posts. Do it several times. When you share your content on social media, let people know there’s an additional free resource that comes with it. A good way to promote your upgrades is to repurpose them. It’s not necessary to create a new resource for each piece of content. If you’re covering the same topics, your upgrades will be relevant to other content you create. ConclusionIf you really want to take your list-building up a couple of notches, content upgrades are a must. They enhance the value of your posts and give your audience a reason to hop on to your email list. In some instances, content upgrades are more powerful than stand-alone lead magnets. Why do people shy away from them? It can appear to be time-consuming and complicated. In some instances, that’s true. But if you follow the steps in this article, you’ll have everything you need to quickly and painlessly create content upgrades. Why not transform every piece of content into a list-building asset? That’s the kind of transformation that impacts your bottom line. Try it out, and watch your email list numbers go through the roof. Do you have any tricks for creating high-converting content upgrades? Social Media via Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/UU7LJr September 27, 2017 at 10:00AM
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How to Make Products That Don’t Stink http://ift.tt/2fpe4B6 Crappy products are marketing poison. Even if you’re a stupendous marketer with certifications from the world’s most prestigious universities, there’s only so much you can do advertise something that’s not great. Trying to sell an item with obvious room for improvement is like trying to bluff your way through a round of Texas Hold ‘Em with a pair of deuces; you probably won’t succeed. Here’s the bottom line: if your product stinks, nobody will buy it. Rambus CMO Jerome Nadel believes in the simple philosophy that better products are easier to sell. His team gets involved in the early stages of product development to make sure the company is delivering high-quality products. Rambus, a technology licensing company, functions in the digital realm and therefore needs to constantly be on the cutting edge. Since Nadel and his team know the needs of Rambus clients, they can ensure Rambus products meet consumer needs. They never stink. Nadel talks about being a “design-led CMO” on the Renegade Thinkers Unite podcast with host Drew Neisser. You can listen to the episode here: Here are some key takeaways from Nadel and Neisser’s eye-opening discussion. The Product Circle of LifeMarketing happens in stages. A consumer problem arises, so we create a product that solves it. Then we advertise that product by showing how it offers a solution to the initial issue. Finally, consumers interact with the product and provide insights on how we can make the next answer we sell even better. As marketers, we often fail to incorporate the full story into our selling strategies. Nadel explains where disconnect occurs. He says, “What user experience professionals focus on is the upstream concepting of, what’s the narrative that makes product great? Not just in terms of its features but how should it work and how does it support use cases? Often what marketers are focused on is telling stories about why products are great.” We have to be diligent when connecting user experience and product-centric stories. It’s important to not only understand what we’re marketing, but also why. The only effective way to do that is to work with the product from square one. Design-Led MarketingThrough storytelling, we can advertise items better. As Nadel notes, “If you connect the stories that made the product great with the stories that reinforce and articulate their greatness, you have sort of [the] beginning to end of full marketing.” What is your product all about? How is it undertaking the problem it set out to solve? Before we can answer these questions, we have to address them at the drawing board. This is where design-led marketing comes in, the idea that marketers should get involved in the product development process. “Design-lead marketing embraces design-thinking,” Nadel says, “and is fundamentally connected to the product or service conception through, what I would speak to, is design methods.” Communication is a must for this ideology to work. You can’t seamlessly connect product conception to marketing execution without getting on the same page with the development team. Advertising from the Outside InEvery design-led CMO needs a plan. Nadel’s strategy begins seeing the product from a consumer perspective. He explains how Rambus visualizes itself from an outsider’s point of view. “We’re thinking about use cases and stories that are created to design the product or service, and are natural and believable,” he says. “So they should be used in promotion, and I really advocate this approach.” Nadel’s team uses those initial use cases to move consumers down the funnel. “The stories that we create in product concepting, and the use cases around that should be what we reinforce downstream,” he says. “[When] we make better things, they’re easier to promote and sell.” Consumer needs kick off the selling process and bring it to the goal line at Rambus. Living ProductsProducts need to evolve over time. As new consumer problems arise, we need to keep providing unique solutions. Products aren’t static, as Nadel points out. He talks about the metamorphosis of marketing, saying, “More and more again, as we’ve gone from a hardware society to a software society, to everything is just service. Everything becomes a verb and there’s movement around it.” If we think of products in verbs, we can be ready to make the necessary adjustments when it’s time for change. A company is like a living body; it changes over time and has a lot of moving parts to coordinate. All the departments have to synchronize with one another to provide a great end result. As long as your organization can work together and solve consumer problems, your products won’t stink. The post How to Make Products That Don’t Stink appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer http://ift.tt/xMddWR September 27, 2017 at 09:30AM
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So why oh why is Twitter doing #280? http://ift.tt/2fxYuqK Late yesterday Twitter announced the unthinkable for time-pressed journalists everywhere by revealing it is testing doubling the character length of tweets. Farewell sweet brevity of 140chars. Hello pointless extra blah-blah-blah #280. But why oh why is Twitter doing this? “In all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting,” wrote product manager, Aliza Rosen, in a rather wordy blog post explainer about the move — which even included a graph! Though not a graph of Twitter’s user growth not growing. (Here, I fixed Rosen’s explanation to fit it in far fewer characters: ‘We’re trying to fix our growth problem.’) While Rosen talked about Twitter wanting “every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter”, there was no specific discussion about how Twitter’s 140 constraint might be exacerbating problematic speech in the public domain. By, for example, turning nuanced discussion into polarized arguments and irascible abuse. Or “shouty crap” as a colleague more concisely put it. (Also not in Rosen’s post: Any graphs detailing Twitter’s problem with abusive behavior on its platform.) But even if Twitter didn’t want to explicitly discuss the problem of trolls and bullies on its platform, it may be hoping the expansion to 280 characters encourages people to tweet less, well, “shouty crap”. Which is indeed a possibility. Though there is also the flip-side possibility that — for example — the current president of the U.S. will just get double the amount of newsworthy tweet space with which to threaten nuclear annihilation. Or, to put it another way…
Whether Trump, with 280 characters locked and loaded, will suddenly lose the urge to tweet at “Rocket Boy” (10chars) — and instead feel moved to address the “Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea and supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (103chars) does seem rather unlikely though. So sure, the case for 280 posits there’s at least an opportunity for nuance to exist inside a (double-sized) tweet. But the con says that really depends on who’s doing the tweeting. (Or the ‘ttwweeeettiinngg’ as it should really now be termed.) Here’s my TC colleague Josh Constine demonstrating how it’s perfectly possible to fit a lot of high quality information into Twitter’s existing 140 character limit without shouting and/or being otherwise tactless/impolite.
Ergo, it ain’t tweet size that matters Twitter — it’s what you do with the characters that counts. But regardless of whether 280 characters leads to a wider evolution of tone on Twitter — and in the case of Trump, when/if he gets handed the nuclear codes to #280, to a new deal on diplomacy and a less destablized geopolitical world (we can but hope!) — @Jack & co can at least console themselves that advertisers will find plenty of uses for all the extra marketing real estate Twitter is going to be giving them. See for e.g.
So, from Twitter’s point of view at least, there are a fair few potential pros stacking up under the ‘let’s kill the tweet’ nuclear option, alongside their main concern here: Trying to assuage investors. Pros like being less likely to be blamed for an overly concise tweet triggering nuclear war. While disrupting the workflow of the (small) hardcore of users who rely on Twitter to be a reliably dense and largely self-manageable digital information network in an increasingly misinformation saturated and algorithmically controlled world is clearly a lesser consideration. And at this point in the rapidly escalating story of social media’s impact on democracy and society who, indeed, can blame them. Even if more social media doesn’t necessary sound like a great solution to problems being exacerbated by social media. Whatever the social media giants say. Tech tweets on #280Below is a flavor of opinions on Twitter’s #280 experiment surfaced from the tech space — which runs a pretty full gamut of views on mega tweets — from supportive (and/or sarcastic) to indifferent to excited to horrified to snarky to creative to critical to navel-gazing to, well, hopeful that the change might finally break their addiction to Twitter… Can’t wait for #bringback140.
Featured Image: Bryce Durbin Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com September 27, 2017 at 07:17AM
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3 Ways to Measure Your YouTube Performance http://ift.tt/2k3nhEn
Wondering how to analyze the impact of your video content? In this article, you’ll discover how to measure the performance of YouTube videos. 3 Ways to Measure Your YouTube Performance by Victor Blasco on Social Media Examiner.
#1: Assess Video Watch BehaviorYouTube provides powerful analytics data that lets you evaluate how your videos are performing and how you might improve your content in the future. To access your analytics, open Creator Studio and select Analytics in the left navigation. Open Creator Studio to access your YouTube analytics data. Under Watch Time Reports, you’ll find data about video watch behavior and the audience viewing your videos. Watch Time In the Watch Time report, you can see information about watch time and views. “Watch time” refers to the amount of time (in minutes) that viewers have watched a video. “Views” is the number of times a video has been watched. This metric used to be the main way to assess a video’s popularity, but don’t be fooled by this number. While it’s great to have lots of views, this metric only shows the number of times a video player loaded; it doesn’t say much about viewer engagement or whether the viewer wanted to see the video or kept watching. The YouTube Watch Time report reveals total watch time and views for your YouTube videos. Audience Retention Audience retention is an important metric because it indicates how well your video content keeps viewers’ attention. You can determine on average how long people are watching your videos (in other words, when they’re dropping off). Above the graph, click Absolute Audience Retention to see the number of views for every part of your video. If the majority of viewers are leaving within the first few seconds of watching, they were likely interested enough to click on the video, but it didn’t hook them. If viewers drop out around the middle of the video, they were interested but something happened. Maybe it was a technical issue, like the sound dropping out, or maybe the video was just too long. In any case, you can use these insights to improve your future videos. Absolute Audience Retention reveals the number of views for different parts of YouTube videos. Click Relative Audience Retention to see how well your video is performing in relation to similar YouTube videos. Relative Audience Retention lets you benchmark YouTube video performance against similar content. The average view duration metric indicates the average amount of time viewers watch before dropping off. YouTube lets you filter this data by geography, content, date, and other information. You can also view the average percentage of the video that was viewed; that is, the average percentage of a video your audience watches per view. Demographics Knowing more about your viewing audience will help you determine if your video is reaching the right people. On the Demographics report, you can see an overview of the age, gender, and geographic location of your viewers. When you open this report, you see a chart based on age ranges and gender. See a breakdown of your YouTube audience based on age and gender. Scroll down below the chart to find options to sort the data by geography and device type. These useful insights can help you optimize your content, tags, and thumbnails. Playback Locations On the Playback Locations report, find out where your videos are being streamed from, such as a YouTube watch page, the URL for your video, your YouTube channel page, or other websites or apps that have embedded the video. Find out where viewers are watching your YouTube videos. Traffic Sources Open this report to get insights into how and where your viewers found your video. This data helps you learn more about your viewing audience. For instance, you can determine if viewers found your video through YouTube search, suggested videos, or external sources such as embedded links on other sites or social media links. Discover how viewers are finding your YouTube videos. Is your video ranking high in Google search and YouTube search? If not, it may be a good indicator that you need to adjust your keywords and tags. Devices The Devices report shows the different devices and operating systems that your audience uses to play your videos. See the devices viewers are using to watch your YouTube videos. #2: Evaluate Audience EngagementYouTube’s Engagement reports give you an overview of the quality of your viewers. There’s no point in having millions of views if people aren’t interacting with your brand. Subscribers Of course you want to have a large number of channel subscribers. It means those viewers were so captivated by your videos that they didn’t want to miss the next one. In the Subscribers report, you can track the growth of your channel’s subscribers over time. If you see a significant loss in total subscribers, it may be an indication there’s something wrong with your content. Track YouTube subscriber growth over time. Likes and Dislikes On the Likes and Dislikes report, you can find out how many people liked and disliked your videos over time. This data is a reflection of emotional reactions; however, because videos generally have no more than 1% of viewers register likes and dislikes, this data isn’t very representative. Unless you notice a huge increase in dislikes, don’t fret over this metric. Find out how many people liked or disliked your YouTube videos. Comments The number of comments for your videos is another good indicator of engagement. It demonstrates the viewer’s intention to interact with you, which is important for any social network. You can view the overall Comments report for your channel or for each video. Remember to always read through the comments to analyze whether you received positive or negative feedback. Sharing Shares is an interesting metric because it shows how many times your content has been shared on social media using the Share button. This metric indicates that viewers not only watched your video but were also engaged enough to share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other sites. See how many times people shared your YouTube videos using the Share button. #3: Calculate Referral TrafficSo far, we’ve talked about the main metrics you’ll find in the YouTube analytics dashboard. This data helps you better understand your audience and how they’re engaging with your content. If you want to find out how much traffic YouTube is driving to your website, you can connect your Google Analytics account with your YouTube channel. Connect YouTube With Google Analytics To connect your channel, sign into Google Analytics and click the Admin button. From the Property drop-down list, select Create New Property. On the next page, enter your YouTube channel’s URL and then click Get Tracking ID. Write down the tracking ID. Enter your YouTube channel URL to get a tracking ID. Now sign into YouTube and go to your Advanced Settings. Scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your Google Analytics tracking ID, and then click Save. In your YouTube settings, enter the tracking ID you generated in Google Analytics. Now you can start tracking YouTube analytics metrics in Google Analytics and see the impact your channel has on your website. View Referral Traffic From YouTube Once your channel is connected to Google Analytics, you can find out how many of your website’s visitors came from YouTube. To view this data, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals. Navigate to Referrals in Google Analytics. In the search bar, type “youtube.com” to see the total number of sessions driven from YouTube. You can also view the average session duration and bounce rate (the percentage of your visitors who exited your site after a single-page session). This data gives you a snapshot of the quality of visitors you got from YouTube. Review data about referral traffic from YouTube. If you want to look at the conversion rates of different social networks, go to Social > Conversions. Go to Social > Conversions in Google Analytics to view conversion data. From the top menu, choose a conversion type, which is determined by specific goals such as purchases or newsletter subscriptions. You’ll find the conversion rate and value from YouTube visits, along with other social media sites, integrated with your Google Analytics account. Conclusion Analyzing YouTube metrics might seem overwhelming at first, but it’s crucial to assessing your channel’s performance. Find out more about viewers, how they discovered your videos, whether they liked your content or got bored, and more to help you improve your future videos. What do you think? Do you regularly review your YouTube analytics data? Which YouTube metrics matter to your business? Feel free to comment below! Social Media via http://ift.tt/1LtH18p September 27, 2017 at 05:02AM
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Twitter trials an expansion beyond 140 characters http://ift.tt/2xvv57z Twitter for the first time is expanding beyond its 140-character limit, the company announced today. The social network says it will now try out a longer limit of 280 characters in select languages, including English, in order to allow people to share their expanded thoughts without running out of room to tweet. The feature will initially be made available to a small group of users for the time being, as the expansion is considered more of a test than a large, public rollout for now. The company says that it came to the decision to expand the character count because it realized the character count limitation more heavily impacted those tweeting in some languages — like English, Spanish, Portuguese or French — as compared with others, like Japanese, Korean and Chinese. ![]()
As the company explains via a blog post, the latter group could convey about double the amount of information in one character, compared with the former. Twitter then studied what that meant, in terms of tweet length in various regions, and found that only 0.4 percent of tweets in Japanese have 140 characters, but a larger (9) percent of English tweets did. It also found that most Japanese tweets are 15 characters on average, compared with 34 characters for most English-language tweets. Because of this, the new, 280-character limit will only roll out to those languages affected by “cramming,” which Twitter says is all languages except Japanese, Chinese and Korean. The change is a notable move for the social network, whose users for years have been debating the merits of an expanded character count. While some have argued that doing so would make Twitter feel less restrictive and more likely to encourage longer conversations, others have said that Twitter’s focus on brevity is its biggest differentiator, and, in fact, the very essence of its service. Twitter, for its part, has historically nixed the idea. Just last year, for example, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded to a report that Twitter was testing a 10,000-character limit for tweets by saying that the 140-character limit was “a beautiful constraint” and that Twitter “will never lose that feeling.” In more recent months, however, the company has started to distance itself from the 140-character limit — a move it made because the service is now regularly used to share posts that extend beyond just text. With Twitter’s ability to host photos, GIFs, polls, video and quoted tweets, it needed a way to allow users to both post media and their thoughts, all in the same tweet. In Spring 2016, Twitter stopped counting that sort of media toward the character count, then this March more controversially changed the nature of how @replies worked on its service. Again, the goal with the change was to free up more space in tweets for users’ own thoughts and comments — this time, by moving the @reply out of the tweet’s text field to become a piece of metadata instead. New Twitter compose screen no longer shows character countAlongside this change, Twitter is also updating the user interface so it no longer counts down the characters until you near the end. Instead, a circle will fill in as you approach the limit, and you won’t know how many characters you have left until only 20 remain (or 10 for Japanese, Chinese and Korean language users). As to why Twitter is finally dipping its toe in the water of a longer text limit at last, that answer is stated in Twitter’s announcement. “In all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting,” the company says. (A Twitter spokesperson clarified to us that this understanding is not the result of having already publicly beta tested the 280-character count, but rather its observations of how different language users tweet. That is, in markets where there’s more room to tweet, people tweet more.) Twitter product changes haven’t impacted growthThe big picture here is that Twitter hopes that by making its service less confounding to use — with things like arbitrary character limits on tweets — more people will use Twitter. And “more people” is something the social network needs right now, given its flat user growth and declines in revenue and its ad business. But at the end of the day, it may not be technical limitations or their removal that’s slowing Twitter’s growth. It’s the fact that, despite its efforts to crack down on abuse, many still see the social network as a too-public forum for attacks, trolling and other sorts of mistreatment. (This isn’t at all aided by Trump’s continued use of Twitter to broadly troll naysayers and make threats of war.) Beyond this, Twitter has struggled to police its platform in other ways — like handling the bot problem, for example, or making sure that ads from neo-Nazis don’t show up. It also has ignored a top product request from users for years: the ability to edit tweets. (But “never say never,” we’re told, when asked if this would ever arrive.) Twitter says the new 280-character count will initially be available to a small, randomized but representative group of Twitter users on iOS, Android and desktop web. The test is not expected to last long — only weeks — before Twitter plans to make a decision regarding a broader rollout. Featured Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunchSocial Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com September 26, 2017 at 04:26PM |
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