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How to Drive Organic Traffic With Bots https://ift.tt/2OQzuvh Want more website visitors? Wondering how Messenger bots can help? To explore how to bots can drive organic traffic to your website, I interview Natasha Takahashi. More About This ShowThe Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Natasha Takahashi, a chatbot expert and founder of the School of Bots, a community for marketers seeking to master bots. She also hosts the There’s a Bot For That live show, and she has a range of courses including Chatbot Agency Accelerator. Natasha explains how to integrate chatbots into your social media and email marketing. You’ll also discover tips for growing your bot subscriber list and engaging with subscribers effectively. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Listen now: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show: Messenger Bots That Drive Website TrafficNatasha’s StoryIn 2016, after working as a marketer for tech startups and with a few clients of her own, Natasha was planning to launch a social media marketing agency with her co-founder, Kyle Willis. To stay on top of everything happening in social media marketing, she watched F8 (Facebook’s developer conference) remotely, where they announced Facebook Messenger bots. At the conference, Facebook showed enterprise examples, but right away, Natasha wanted to start testing whether Messenger bots would be effective for her clients, which were small- and mid-sized businesses. She thought if she could learn to market with bots really well, she might be able to make her new agency stand out. After about 4 or 5 months, Natasha’s bot marketing was going well for her clients. As is common with bot marketing, her clients had high open and click rates. They also had good conversion and retention rates. Since getting started with bots 2 years ago, Natasha and her agency have built about 100 bots. Today, in addition to her chatbot agency, Natasha and Kyle run School of Bots, which launched in January 2018. They created it as a resource for chatbot marketing and strategy, with free articles, videos, and interviews with thought leaders. Their goal is to provide up-to-date content in a niche that changes quickly. At the same time, Natasha and Kyle launched the Chatbot Agency Accelerator, which teaches people how to build their chatbot agencies and add chatbots to their offerings. Although they didn’t push this program, it’s taken off. They’ve grown the community, and Natasha has been doing a lot of speaking engagements. Listen to the show to hear Natasha share what some of her hopes were as she became an entrepreneur. Why Use Messenger Bots?Natasha thinks right now is the perfect time to build a bot for your company or clients because, with all of the buzz about bots, people know about them but may not fully understand them. Although WhatsApp surpassed Messenger in terms of number of users, Natasha still recommends focusing on Messenger because its users still send more messages per month than WhatsApp users do. Also, Facebook Messenger works with chatbot platforms like ManyChat and Chatfuel, which are designed for non-coders and make it easy to create a chatbot and get results. Right now, other platforms like Slack, Skype, Telegram, and WhatsApp are still just like email in terms of how you can use them to market to users. Messenger chatbots are also a great way to drive traffic to your website now that the Facebook algorithm no longer prioritizes social posting. With a chatbot, no algorithm is controlling what people see; you can control the conversation between your page and the user. Thus, driving traffic with a chatbot is much easier than it is with a regular post to your Facebook page or even an email. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about chatbots versus email. How to Grow Your Bot ListNatasha shares ways to grow your bot subscriber list via your website and social media. On your website pages, you can add personalized slide-ins and chat icons. A slide-in is like a pop-up window that says something like, “Would you like to receive a message the next time we share a blog post? If so, opt in on Messenger.” The chat icons look similar to a live chat icon that says, “How can I help you today?” With chat icons, you can have a conversation on your site via your Messenger bot. The person never has to leave your website to interact with your bot, and the chat tool looks very similar to the live chat features that people are used to. These features let you capture people who visit your site before you begin driving them there. You can add slide-ins and chat icons on your home page and every blog article page. This tactic is similar to the one used to capture emails with a lead magnet. You can even combine email and bot subscription requests, and test delivering the second part of a lead magnet or a discount code via bot. To add slide-ins and chat icons to your website, you use a bot-building platform like ManyChat. The process is fairly easy. Facebook Messenger gives you a little checkbox you add to your website. Then, when people are on your website, they simply need to select the checkbox to be added to your Messenger list. If you’re combining email capture and bot subscriptions, you can add the box to a form. For your bot-building platform to connect your website and Messenger bot, your website needs to be set up with the platform that you’re using. To illustrate, after you set up ManyChat on your site, it allows any checkbox from its platform (and that you add to your site) to connect a user to your bot. However, if you use a form created via your email provider, the process is a bit more complicated. Natasha also notes that Messenger bots require a two-step opt-in. After a user opts in via the checkbox on your site, the user still needs to respond to the bot in Messenger in order to be subscribed to it. Messenger bots work this way so that advertisers can’t blast people’s inboxes. For the second step of the opt-in, the best approach is to ask users what communications they want to see from you. Bots make it easy to segment your audience in deep detail, and you can start doing that right away. Natasha creates a subscription dashboard that asks if users want to be notified about blog articles, sales, or interviews. People can subscribe only to what interests them. In addition to slide-ins and chat icons, your website can also include special links that direct people to your chatbot. You can also add these links to your emails and social media profiles on Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and so on. These links direct people to your bot. Because the link tracks where people came from, your bot can send a specific message based on that. To visualize this, in your Instagram bio, you can add a link to your chatbot. When someone clicks it, they go to Messenger and your bot can say, “Hey there, welcome from Instagram! Thanks for following us. Do you want to get notified when we share a new post?” or whatever offer you’re running at the time. That’s typically how it would work. In email, Natasha recommends split testing links to your website versus your bot or offer two options in the actual email. Your email might say, “If you want to read our latest blog article, click this link to go to Messenger or click this link to go to our website.” In this way, you can slowly onboard your audience to your bot. With email campaigns, people can get confused so it’s important to move slowly. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about the different email providers businesses use. How to Drive Bot Subscribers to Your WebsiteAfter people subscribe to your bot, sending them to your website for a specific reason is important. Natasha emphasizes that you can’t simply ask subscribers to check out your website; you need to give them a reason to do so. If your site has several articles or videos about a specific topic, your bot can mention the series on the topic and lead people through each article or video. After a user says they’re interested in the series, the bot can say, “Here’s the first one. Click here to see it or listen to it.” The link would send them to your site. Between each article or video, you can implement a delay in the conversation and engage with people about your content. The delay can be a full day, an hour, 30 minutes, or however much time you want to give them before the bot says, “Hey, what do you think about it?” After you engage with a user about the content, add another delay before you share the next piece in the series. Typically, your link will open in an embedded browser, which is called a WebView inside Messenger. Technically, your bot subscribers don’t leave the app, so clicking your link isn’t disruptive and doesn’t cause friction. However, you can still use cookies for tracking users with Google and other services. You can also automate bot notifications about new articles on your website. The easiest way to implement this automation is with RSS feeds. (Both Chatfuel and ManyChat can work with RSS feeds.) Alternately, you can use Zapier or Integromat to set up a trigger when new content appears on your site. Then you can use that trigger to send Messenger broadcasts. I ask how Integromat is different from Zapier. Natasha says the two services are functionally similar, but Integromat works with hundreds of apps. Most of the time, as long as you’re using a big provider, it works with the app you want to integrate with your bot. Natasha also mentions a few other ways to drive traffic to your website. On Facebook itself, you can drive traffic with Facebook ads or an organic Facebook post. Simply connect the bot to your post so when people comment, your bot will send them a message. Or if you include chatbot links in email campaigns, you can customize the link so it’s specific to a lead magnet or new blog article. Listen to the show to hear Natasha discuss repurposing a blog article into chatbot content. Bot Campaign ExampleTo show how a bot campaign that drives traffic can work, Natasha shares an example of a recent product launch campaign that generated $48,000 with no paid traffic. The campaign combined three assets in order to grow each one: an email list (Natasha uses ActiveCampaign), the School of Bots Facebook group, and the School of Bots chatbot. Right before the product launch, Natasha and her team ran a free 5-day boot camp that showed people how to set up agencies systematically. More than 600 people registered, and although that isn’t a huge list, everyone was incredibly engaged. Instead of using a typical website form or an ad for registration, School of Bots sent people to the Messenger bot. The process started with the message, “Hey, welcome to the boot camp!” Then the bot checked whether it had the user’s email address and then asked users to either confirm or provide their email address. This ability to check for an email illustrates one of the beauties of bots. Because the bot can check everything that you’re talking to the user about, you can avoid repeating yourself or talking about things that are irrelevant. Next, the bot offered a $97 bot template for free to anyone who referred friends to the boot camp. This tactic allowed School of Bots to get lots of organic traffic to its Facebook group and email list. People invited 5-10 friends, even though School of Bots asked them to invite only one. The invitation process also worked via the bot. The bot asked users if they wanted to invite a friend. They could respond Yes or No. If they clicked Yes, the user received instructions to comment on a post in the Facebook group that told people about the boot camp and how to register. In the comment, the user had to tag the friend who was invited to the group and add the hashtag #template. With this invitation system, the expectation was that the friend would also go through the bot, and School of Bots could capture the friend’s email as well. Also, because you currently can’t automate a process like this with a bot, someone from the School of Bots team had to manually check who should receive the free template. However, you can deliver a freebie automatically with a page post. About 60%-70% of the boot camp registrants participated in the referral incentive. This figure illustrates another important aspect of bots. Because bot conversations are intimate, people need the option to say No. For instance, if you’re collecting an email or offering an incentive, it needs to be okay that someone doesn’t want to provide an email or participate in the incentive. The School of Bots boot camp was 5 days of Facebook Live videos plus a daily workbook. After the boot camp, School of Bots launched the Chatbot Agency Accelerator, which was its first official product launch. The program had been in beta and for sale, but School of Bots hadn’t pushed it until the launch. About half of the sales happened in the first 48 hours, and the rest toward the end of the launch, which lasted 14 days. Natasha credits the chatbot funnel for bringing in a lot of the leads. The Facebook group added about 1,500 new members, and School of Bots added about 900 new email subscribers. Although the campaign wasn’t huge, it generated $48,000 because people were so engaged. The conversion rates and engagement rates were much higher than they would be for a big list. This campaign illustrates the power of intimacy and how much that increases engagement. Moreover, engaging with people over a period of time, like the 5-day boot camp, helped the product launch. Listen to the show to hear Natasha share examples of her bot messages. Dos and Don’ts for Promoting Your ContentNatasha shares how to handle everything from timing messages for users in different time zones to Messenger’s rules for selling to how to prepare for the future of bots. Bot Etiquette: When you’re messaging someone, they usually receive a notification on their phone. Most of the time, you want to be careful about the time of day people receive that notification. If you have users across many time zones, pay attention to the platform you’re using. Certain platforms allow you to send messages at certain times or accommodate different time zones. Natasha says an exception is if your message is time-sensitive. If you’re closing your cart or doing a live interview at a certain time, don’t worry about time zone. In the end, people have opted into your messages, and they know some messages might be inconvenient for them. When you do manage time zone, Facebook collects that attribute for you. In your chatbot platform, you can see the time zone people selected in their Facebook settings and program your bot to send a message (such as a note about a new blog post) at a specific time, such as 9:00 AM for the user’s time zone. With the tagging available in bots, you can send only the articles users want to see. Because messaging platforms are an intimate channel where people talk to their friends, family, and colleagues, any business on the platform needs to be wary of crossing boundaries or coming across as too aggressive. Messenger is the first of these platforms to use bots, but soon this point will also be relevant to other platforms like WhatsApp, Line, and Telegram. Just as Natasha mentioned in her earlier example, a key way to respect people’s boundaries is to always give bot users a way to say No. Also, even if people don’t want to share an email address, you still need to give the user content and an option to talk with you. Messenger Rules for Selling: When you’re selling with Messenger, you need to follow its rules. If you don’t, you risk being removed from the platform. Be sure to research the terms and policies, and what types of messages you can send to people and when, so your bot continues to be in good standing with Messenger. To illustrate, if someone hasn’t interacted with your bot for 24 hours, you can send them only one message that’s promotional or drives people to a sale. You want to choose how you use that message carefully. After you use it, you can no longer send people notifications about a cart closing or a discount code, because that content qualifies as a promotional. However, this restriction applies only to promotional messages. Sharing educational content, such as a new blog post, doesn’t necessarily violate the rules. In the end, the restrictions on promotional content help keep the platform valuable to marketers. Messenger Bots Versus Email: If you use Messenger bots in the right way, have great conversations with people, and follow the rules, the bot can have better ROI than email. That’s because a bot allows you to have a small but highly engaged list, which leads to a high conversion rate. Engagement matters much more than list size. Because Messenger isn’t saturated with marketing messages right now, people see your messages there more than they see your emails. However, Natasha recommends marketers continue to grow their email list. Instead of leaving email in favor of Messenger, you can add Messenger to your opt-in forms. Then you still have a way to connect with people who don’t use Messenger regularly. Your email list is also important because you own it, whereas you don’t own Messenger. Multiple Uses of Bots: A common misconception is that you can use a bot for only one thing (like answering frequently asked questions) and need another bot to do anything else. However, bots are dynamic tools, and you can do almost anything you’d like with one bot. Tagging is part of what makes bots so flexible. If you create your bot so people can subscribe only to the content topics that interest them, the bot tags their preferences, and you can use those interests for a big campaign or use case down the road. The tags allow you to differentiate between what you send one group versus another, and bots make organizing and editing tags fairly easy. Future of Bots: ManyChat is just starting to expand to WhatsApp and a couple of other platforms. Right now, it’s hard to say how bot-building platforms will work with those platforms. Although it would be amazing if ManyChat added discoverability across platforms like Messenger and WhatsApp, the platforms might want to stay separate. Today, you can combine resources within Facebook by downloading your Messenger bot subscriber list, entering the emails and custom audience information you have into Ads Manager, and running ads only to your list. Looking ahead, Natasha is curious to see whether WhatsApp will add similar functionality. For instance, if you’re using a platform like ManyChat, maybe you’ll be able to download your Messenger list and then capture those same people on WhatsApp. Also, when you think about Facebook’s whole family of apps, Instagram will likely have its own messaging capability. Because Messenger is just the start of bots, Natasha recommends creating a bot even if you don’t know what you want to do with it. You’ll learn how messaging and marketing come together. Then, as this area of marketing grows to other platforms, you’ll be ahead of the curve. You’ll already understand how to communicate with people on those platforms. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about growing Social Media Examiner’s email list versus a bot list. Discovery of the WeekNotaBene is a cool note-taking app that makes it easy to gather and share ideas. NotaBene stands out from other note-taking apps for several reasons. First, you can set up contacts for people to whom you frequently send notes on the fly. For example, you might add team members as contacts. Also, you can share voice notes, photos, screenshots, and text with any contact seamlessly. You don’t need to open another app. It’s a one-stop shop for taking and sharing notes. NotaBene is simple and easy to use. It has a microphone button for taking voice notes. After you use it to record a voice note, you can send that voice note to a contact via their email. The contact receives your voice memo as a WAV file and a transcription of your message so they can listen to or read your notes. You can bundle photos and screenshots into the same note, too. NotaBene is also great for sending notes to yourself, especially if you use a system like Trello or Evernote that gives you an email address. After you set up that email address in NotaBene, you can tell it to send a note to your Evernote or Trello board. NotaBene is free and available for iOS and Android. Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how NotaBene works for you. Key takeaways from this article:What do you think? What are your thoughts on driving website traffic with bots? Please share your comments below. Social Media via Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p October 26, 2018 at 05:06AM
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How to Drive Organic Traffic With Bots https://ift.tt/2OQzuvh Want more website visitors? Wondering how Messenger bots can help? To explore how to bots can drive organic traffic to your website, I interview Natasha Takahashi. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Natasha Takahashi, a chatbot expert and founder of the School of Bots, a community for marketers seeking to master bots. She also hosts the There's a Bot For That live show, and she has a range of courses including Chatbot Agency Accelerator. Natasha explains how to integrate chatbots into your social media and email marketing. You'll also discover tips for growing your bot subscriber list and engaging with subscribers effectively. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Messenger Bots That Drive Website Traffic Natasha's Story In 2016, after working as a marketer for tech startups and with a few clients of her own, Natasha was planning to launch a social media marketing agency with her co-founder, Kyle Willis. To stay on top of everything happening in social media marketing, she watched F8 (Facebook's developer conference) remotely, where they announced Facebook Messenger bots. At the conference, Facebook showed enterprise examples, but right away, Natasha wanted to start testing whether Messenger bots would be effective for her clients, which were small- and mid-sized businesses. She thought if she could learn to market with bots really well, she might be able to make her new agency stand out. After about 4 or 5 months, Natasha's bot marketing was going well for her clients. As is common with bot marketing, her clients had high open and click rates. They also had good conversion and retention rates. Since getting started with bots 2 years ago, Natasha and her agency have built about 100 bots. Today, in addition to her chatbot agency, Natasha and Kyle run School of Bots, which launched in January 2018. They created it as a resource for chatbot marketing and strategy, with free articles, videos, and interviews with thought leaders. Their goal is to provide up-to-date content in a niche that changes quickly. At the same time, Natasha and Kyle launched the Chatbot Agency Accelerator, which teaches people how to build their chatbot agencies and add chatbots to their offerings. Although they didn't push this program, it's taken off. They've grown the community, and Natasha has been doing a lot of speaking engagements. Listen to the show to hear Natasha share what some of her hopes were as she became an entrepreneur. Why Use Messenger Bots? Natasha thinks right now is the perfect time to build a bot for your company or clients because, with all of the buzz about bots, people know about them but may not fully understand them. Although WhatsApp surpassed Messenger in terms of number of users, Natasha still recommends focusing on Messenger because its users still send more messages per month than WhatsApp users do. Also, Facebook Messenger works with chatbot platforms like ManyChat and Chatfuel, which are designed for non-coders and make it easy to create a chatbot and get results. Right now, other platforms like Slack, Skype, Telegram, and WhatsApp are still just like email in terms of how you can use them to market to users. Messenger chatbots are also a great way to drive traffic to your website now that the Facebook algorithm no longer prioritizes social posting. With a chatbot, no algorithm is controlling what people see; you can control the conversation between your page and the user. Thus, driving traffic with a chatbot is much easier than it is with a regular post to your Facebook page or even an email. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about chatbots versus email. Social Media via Social Media Marketing Podcast helps your business thrive with social media https://ift.tt/1LtH18p October 26, 2018 at 05:04AM
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Twitter beats Wall St Q3 estimates with $758M in revenue https://ift.tt/2OPwC1N Twitter came in ahead of analysts’ financial estimates in its third quarter, reporting $758 million in revenue (a 29 percent year-over-year increase) and earnings per share of 21 cents. Analysts had predicted revenue of $703 million and EPS of 14 cents per share. Ad revenue was also up 29 percent, to $650 million, and Twitter says total ad engagements increased 50 percent year over year. However, user growth didn’t quite match expectations, with 326 monthly active users, lower than predictions of 330 million, and also a decline from the same period last year, when Twitter had 335 million MAUs. In the earnings release, the company says its user growth was “impacted by a number of factors including: GDPR, decisions we have made to prioritize the health of the platform and not move to paid SMS carrier relationships in certain markets, as well as a product change that reduced automated usage and a technical issue that temporarily reduced the number of notifications sent.” In a statement, CEO Jack Dorsey similarly suggested that the company has been focusing on the “health” of the community, rather than pursuing growth at all costs. “We’re achieving meaningful progress in our efforts to make Twitter a healthier and valuable everyday service,” Dorsey said. “We’re doing a better job detecting and removing spammy and suspicious accounts at sign-up. We’re also continuing to introduce improvements that make it easier for people to follow events, topics and interests on Twitter, like adding support for U.S. TV shows in our new event infrastructure. This quarter’s strong results prove we can prioritize the long-term health of Twitter while growing the number of people who participate in public conversation.” While Twitter still attracts plenty of criticism for its approach to safety, harassment and misinformation (it was slower than the other major online platforms to ban Alex Jones and Infowars, for example), it has taken steps in the past few months to suspend accounts that were “engaging in coordinated manipulation,” as well as those who tried to get around previous suspensions.
The company says that the average number of daily active users actually increased 9 percent year-over-year, and the investor relations account tweeted that “DAU growth continues to be the best measure of our success in driving the use of Twitter as a daily utility.” As of 7:55am Eastern, Twitter shares were up nearly 15 percent in pre-market trading. Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com October 25, 2018 at 07:18AM
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How to Succeed in Social Media Without Posting Any Content https://ift.tt/2z298M1 Are you struggling to build professional relationships on social media? Want to develop a network that generates business but don’t want to make content? In this article, you’ll discover how to use social media to increase your exposure with prospects and peers without publishing any content.
#1: Unify Personal and Business Channels With Consistent BrandingOne of the best ways to use social media involves very little original content at all. It involves rethinking your approach to social media as a tool for relationship building and communication, rather than simply as a broadcasting platform. It starts with a solid foundation. This means branding your personal and business profiles to accurately reflect who you are and what you do. Remember that everyone who connects with you via your profiles gets cues about you and your business. Take a quick glance at your business profiles to see if your main message is clear to new connections or followers. Think through your personal accounts as well. Here are a few details that need to be spelled out on all of your profiles:
#2: Build Connections From Your Personal ProfilesOne underutilized social media tactic is to use your personal accounts to share subtle messages to support your business. Remember that personal profiles allow you to interact and build relationships too, and a natural extension of those relationships is curiosity about your business. The easiest way to build your audience is simply to add new friends and connections. This technique works especially well if you’re the face of the business or the owner. It’s also a lot easier to get people to interact with a personal account than with a business account. Think about it: You can network your way to request a connection with almost anyone in the world on LinkedIn. Not only that, but you can have thousands of LinkedIn connections. This means you can build a large network of people without ever inviting them to follow your business page. You can apply this same tactic on many other social media channels too. #3: Listen and Engage Personally, Not ProfessionallyWhether they’re face-to-face or online interactions, we’re typically focused on getting our voices heard. However, if you’re willing to listen on social media, you can learn a lot. Listening lets you discover needs you can meet, trends in consumer behavior, and other details about people’s lives. Learn what’s new in your connections’ lives and use that information to take face-to-face conversations to the next level. If you know someone recently spoke at a conference, start a conversation by asking how the talk went. Social media gives you clues about what your network and customers need, but only if you’re actively looking for them. People love to be heard, and engaging with their posts and content on social media is a great way to stay top of mind with your audience and build loyalty. Every time you hit “like” or “heart,” comment on someone’s post, or even share that post, the other person gets a notification. That notification has your name and face connected to it. If you do this consistently with your network, they’ll naturally become more familiar with you, think of you more often, and view you in a positive light. I’ve seen this technique work well in real estate. Title officers and mortgage originators work largely off of referrals from others in the industry. The more they stay engaged with their top real estate agents, the more likely those agents will send clients their way. Here are a few tips for engaging with and managing your own network on social media. On Facebook, use friend lists to segment people into groups so you can look at posts and updates from people in specific circles. This helps you focus your attention on building relationships with key contacts and avoid the temptation to waste time surfing Facebook. To create or access a friend list, go to your news feed page and click on Friend Lists under Explore. On the next page, select the list you want to view or click Create List to set up a new list. Scroll through the posts from people on relevant lists and start interacting with them. On Twitter, you can set up Twitter lists to follow specific people. Lists can be public or private depending on how you plan to use them. They help you filter out the noise and narrow your focus to specific groups of people. To create or access your lists, click your profile icon at the top right and select Lists from the drop-down menu. Then select the list you want to view. A new page will open up with tweets from only the people who are on this list. If you want to set up a new list, click Create New List on the left side of the screen and then select the users you want to add to it. One of the best ways to get someone’s attention on Instagram is to go to their profile and interact with 2-4 of their recent posts with a heart and a comment. When you do this, it signals to the other person that you made an extra effort to check out their profile instead of simply coming across a post in the main feed. #4: Use Private Messaging to Carry on 1:1 ConversationsMost social networks have private message functions already built into their software. Sixty-four percent of Facebook monthly users use Messenger, which means you can get one-on-one time with people on a platform where they’re comfortable interacting. Going after funding, looking for speaking opportunities, and connecting with prospective clients are just a few ways you can build relationships on social platforms, and private messages let you communicate with key contacts directly. You’ll know your message got in front of their eyes, instead of just hoping that it got visibility through the news feed algorithm. Here are a few ideas to use Messenger to stay top of mind on Facebook:
Try these tips for using LinkedIn messaging to build rapport:
ConclusionSocial media channels often get a bad reputation for being time wasters, but they can also be valuable tools for building long-term loyalty and uncovering new opportunities for your business. Focus on interacting with people instead of just getting the megaphone out to share your own message, and you’ll find that social media is an even more powerful tool than you ever imagined. What do you think? Do you use some of these tactics to build professional relationships on social media? Do you have some tips to add to this list? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. More articles about how to use social media to build relationships:Social Media via Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p October 25, 2018 at 05:14AM
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Getting Through Walls That Stop Progress: The Journey, Season 2, Episode 8 https://ift.tt/2SkjS10
Watch the JourneyIn episode 8, Michael Stelzner (founder of Social Media Examiner) and his team work through people, process, and mindset issues that stop tasks from making forward motion. VIDEO The show begins with Mike and marketing managers Jennifer Ballard and Kim Reynolds reviewing some new data that could drastically impact ad campaigns, potentially saving the company tens of thousands of dollars. Google’s cross-device report (currently in beta) just confirmed something the team has long believed to be true: people most often come to and buy from the Social Media Marketing World site via desktop. Digging deeper, the data points reveal two troubling issues. The number of mobile-only transactions is zero, and only 3 sales received any assist via mobile. The ad budget is called into question. When Kim says that 50% of the budget is currently allocated to mobile campaigns, the decision is made to shut off mobile campaigns immediately. Next, the marketing team welcomes a brand new member when Marketing Project Specialist, Saidah Murphy, officially reports for duty. The first order of business? Mike directs Jennifer Ballard to transfer responsibility for a number projects over to Saidah, before the day ends. Later in the week, Mike is worried sales aren’t moving quickly enough for the team to reach the goal of selling 7000 tickets. He checks in with Jennifer Ballard to get a weekly sales analysis. Jennifer reports a total of 46 physical sales were completed this week. That’s only 12.5% of the weekly goal, which confirms Mike’s suspicions that sales aren’t on track. It’s time for Jennifer to work on a catch up plan. Then Mike confronts a recurring personal struggle he’s facing. He has new staff and systems in place, and loads of free time on his hands, but there’s a big item on his to do list that isn’t getting his attention: Project Genesis. Acknowledging that he’s stalling for some reason, Mike faces the huge stack of half-sorted slips of paper that has been sitting on the conference room table for weeks. Another day, another walk and Mike’s run into a wall. He realizes he’s also got a wall in his head; a voice that says he’s got to have everything with Social Media Examiner perfected before he’s allowed to dabble with Project Genesis. He decides it’s dangerous to let invisible walls in our heads stop up from moving forward. Just like that, Mike finds a hole in the wall. When he passes through, he discovers the view is pretty nice on the other side. Could this be the inspiration he’s been searching for? Checking back in with the marketing team, Mike finds Saidah and Jennifer discussing past bottlenecking issues and resolution tactics. Jennifer’s nature is to handle every query and request personally, and Mike is pushing her to take advantage of the talents of new support staff (like Saidah) so that projects keep moving forward. Having been on her own for some time, Jennifer is learning to embrace the transition and delegate. Finally, Mike dives back into Project Genesis. Current status: 1200 slips of paper sorted and just over 2000 to go. The episode ends with the marketing team in Mike’s office to discuss the results of a recent test. Trouble looks likely because, by all metrics, it was a complete flop. What happened? What advice do you have for Mike to deal with the walls stopping his progress? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments below. Key Mentions:.
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe to The Journey on YouTube. Social Media via Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p October 25, 2018 at 05:07AM
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Is 'don't feed the trolls' actually good advice? It's complicated. https://ift.tt/2RgJZF3 It's Troll Week on Mashable. Join us as we explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of internet trolling. The conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't respond to people who send you hate mail online. Don't feed the trolls, the adage goes. They're doing this to get attention, so don't give them what they want. But is this advice truly sound, or is it just something people keep saying because they've been hearing it forever? According to Lauren Hoffman, a clinical psychologist and instructor at Columbia University, the advice is solid from a psychological standpoint. But that's only part of the story. "Research shows that the typical internet troll posts nasty comments in order to provoke others, trigger conflict, and receive attention," Hoffman says. "When trolling efforts are successful in achieving those outcomes, the nasty behavior is rewarded and therefore likely to continue." But what about the trolling that gets worse and worse, even if you ignore it? Hoffman chalks that up to something called an "extinction burst," during which a troll might escalate their behavior in the hopes that something even more toxic will elicit a response. This could mean more vitriolic language, more targeted hate, or more frequent abusive messages — you know, all the stuff that shouldn't be on the internet in the first place. Hoffman explains that if the person on the receiving end of the abuse can "ride out" the extinction burst, the trolling behavior is likely to stop. That's a relief. But what about the time in between? Why should that time have to exist at all? Online creators, including journalists, have often spoken out against the "don't feed the trolls" axiom, particularly people who have experienced trolling themselves. It's easy to understand the frustration: Why should they have to consider their behavior so carefully when they're the targets? Why should they have to tread lightly when all they wanted to do was be online?
Ultimately, it's a framing issue: we as a culture put the impetus to improve a toxic situation on the victim. Writer Film Crit Hulk spoke to this burden in an essay for The Verge earlier this year. "The biggest mistake we ever made with trolls was making the question of abuse about how to placate and fix them," they wrote, "instead of how to empower the people they hurt or manage your own well-being in the face of them." When you're targeted by trolls, the mental and physical toll can be severe. I have lost whole days, felt foggy and anxious for entire weeks because of messages I've received. I've spent even more time agonizing over whether I should respond. (It's worth noting that I am white and cisgender, and that other people on the internet experience much worse.) I also have friends and colleagues who have left social media entirely because of targeted, often violent harassment. And according to Hoffman, the psychological effects of engaging with trolls can veer into the physiological, including "sweating, rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, or trouble breathing." It's a vast physical price for sticking up for yourself. So do we stick up for ourselves? Can targets feasibly be the "bigger person" when the trolls make the rules? As troll culture becomes more pervasive online, it becomes harder to pick a blanket answer. In some instances, it's beneficial to expose troll-y bots — especially if they're spreading political lies. (You never know which impressionable people might be reading.) In other situations — including many instances of hate speech — it's likely best for the target's health to just block and move on. Hoffman agrees. "Pick your battles and set limits for yourself," she says. "Decide what you're willing to ignore, what you might reply to, and what you will block or report." She also emphasizes the importance of leaning on your community. "It's vital to seek social support, particularly from people who have also experienced online abuse, as well as professional support if distress is intense, frequent, or impairing," she says. But we also have to change the way we talk about trolling. There's no clear way to deal with trolls because we can't deal with them — not on a large scale, anyway. That's a job for big tech companies, and it's unclear if they're up to the task. What we can do is stop relying on adages like "don't feed the trolls" without considering a person's specific circumstances. Trolling sucks, after all. All we can do is operate with a bit more empathy. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 October 25, 2018 at 04:03AM
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The 10 types of trolls you'll spot in the wild https://ift.tt/2JfKTif It's Troll Week on Mashable. Join us as we explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of internet trolling. Right now, you are on the internet. Thus, you have probably come across a troll. But the name "troll" is far from one-size-fits-all. In fact, there are lots of trollish internet types skulking around online, looking for the next thing to troll about. Here are the ten types you'll probably come across in the wild. 1. The "Why is this news?" trollThis troll's objective is to say that the thing you're talking about is not worth talking about. This could be any subject at any time: politics, coffee, your own family, an election on the day of the election. Anything! No matter what, the troll will ask, "Why is this news?" Yes, even if it it news. Such is the nature of the troll. 2. The do-no-harm trollPerhaps the most famous example of do-no-harm trolling is Ken M, the hilariously uninformed commenter who still has a shockingly active fanbase on Reddit. The do-no-harm troll's comments are confusing, but not harmful; weird, but not dangerous. They're based on a persona: that of a person who is wildly ignorant, but not necessarily in a toxic way. As trolls go, they are pretty good. 3. The high-brow trollAdmit it: We all know a high-brow troll (or seven) who have the potential to inspire eye rolls every time they open their mouths. High-brow trolls are those people who live to reference New York Times articles to make their points, often calling it "the Times" to let you know they're so dedicated to reading the paper that they're on a nickname basis with it. They don't always feel the need for elaborate clapbacks, especially when there's spelling or grammar in need of correcting. To high-brow trolls, a simple "*their" is the most savage takedown imaginable. The high-brow troll essentially exists to put people in their place while also humble bragging. They love to show off their extensive vocabulary, and if they choose to engage in a more lengthy troll, rest assured that thorough research and numerous facts will be presented. 4. The wet blanket trollThese trolls will stop at nothing to ruin a pleasant discussion, no matter the subject matter. Even the lightest of topics aren't safe from their incessant negative energy. Recently, we were reading a nice thread on what to eat for breakfast and noticed one man popping up under any comment that mentioned eggs. "Eggs are high in cholesterol," he wrote many, many times. "Excellent, if your goal is to die of heart disease." Eggs are fine though, and he's a wet blanket troll. Please enjoy your breakfasts and ignore him. 5. The meme-reliant trollThe meme-reliant trolls of the world are a unique bunch. While they have a lot of opinions and aren't necessarily afraid to share them, they only feel comfortable trolling if they can hide their social commentary behind the lighthearted veil of a meme. You'll rarely catch this troll tweeting directly about politics, but they'll never pass up the opportunity to transform the latest Trump drama into a lawn boy meme. As Midterm Elections approach they won’t outright urge people to vote, but they'll eagerly jump at the chance to retweet that Ariana Grande/Pete Davidson meme. And they take no shame in putting their extensive knowledge of Spongebob Squarepants episodes to use. Meme-reliant trolls enjoy the trolling game — and they’re good at it — but they aren’t out to ruffle too many feathers, which is why they cushion the blow and try to diffuse the tension by delivering their opinions in a hilarious package. 6. The friendship trollOne of the most heartbreaking trolls you'll encounter in life is probably the friendship troll, a person who you might be very close with, but who occasionally exhibits frenemy behavior. Friendship trolls takes it upon themselves to give their pals FOMO whenever possible. If they hang out one-on-one with a mutual friend, for example, they'll be sure to send photos letting you know that they’re having a great time despite your absence. If they go to eat at your favorite restaurant or see a band you like they might send you some "thinking of you" content. Rather than giving you FOMO, they could have just invited you to hang with them, but of course, they did not. Friendship trolls also aren't afraid to commit one of the ultimate social media betrayals: Snitch tagging. Though their actions aren't always malicious in intent, their thoughtlessness often leads to drama. 7. The broken record trollAnother especially irritating presence, the broken record troll has almost zero range in trolling. They come up with one good troll, think they've mastered the game, and keep it in their back pocket just waiting to whip it out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Broken record trolls also exist in bot form and behind Twitter accounts with very low follower counts. Anyone who joins social media for the sole purpose of scouring the site for posts related to a single issue (like politics, for example) and replying with the same canned insult falls under this category. 8. The existential void trollEver encountered someone online who carries on endlessly bleak conversations, often appears hopeless, and seems angry at the world? That's an existential void troll in the wild. An existential void troll's tweets document the desperate searching for purpose and meaning in this life. Much like the wet blanket, this troll's a real downer, and will make you want to scream things like, "WHO HURT YOU?" and "WHY?" 9. The brand trollBrand trolls are extremely hit or miss. When they’re good (it's rare,) they set brands apart from the competition. But when they're bad, the social impact can be far-reaching and truly mortifying. For every Wendy's and Netflix, there’s an IHOP, Charmin, or Steak-umm just waiting to take things too far. Need some more specific brand troll examples? Check out some of the best and worst in the game here. 10. Bad peopleThese are the trolls who give trolls a bad name. Well, trolling already has a bad name, but it's these people's fault. They're mean, they're bigoted, and they make the internet a worse place for everyone. Maybe someday Twitter will kick them off the platform — cough, Jack, hello — but for now, they remain. Want more clever culture writing beamed directly to your inbox? Sign up here for the twice-weekly Click Click Click newsletter. It's fun – we promise. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 October 24, 2018 at 04:30PM
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Tim Berners-Lee on the huge sociotechnical design challenge https://ift.tt/2q8s9bF In a speech discussing ethics and the Internet, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has tasked the technology industry and its coder army with paying continuous attention to the world their software is consuming as they go about connecting humanity through technology. Coding must mean consciously grappling with ethical choices in addition to architecting systems that respect core human rights like privacy, he suggested. “Ethics, like technology, is design,” he told delegates at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC) which is taking place in Brussels this week. “As we’re designing the system, we’re designing society. Ethical rules that we choose to put in that design [impact the society]… Nothing is self evident. Everything has to be put out there as something that we think we will be a good idea as a component of our society.” If your tech philosophy is the equivalent of ‘move fast and break things’ it’s a failure of both imagination and innovation to not also keep rethinking policies and terms of service — “to a certain extent from scratch” — to account for fresh social impacts, he argued in the speech. He pointed to how Wikipedia had to rapidly adapt its policies after putting online the power for anyone to edit its encyclopedia, noting: “They introduced a whole lot of bureaucracy around it but that actually makes it work, and it ended up be coming very functional.” He described today’s digital platforms as “sociotechnical systems” — meaning “it’s not just about the technology when you click on the link it is about the motivation someone has to make such a great thing because then they are read and the excitement they get just knowing that other people are reading the things that they have written”. “We must consciously decide on both of these, both the social side and the technical side,” he said. “[These platforms are] anthropogenic, made by people… Facebook and Twitter are anthropogenic. They’re made by people. They’ve coded by people. And the people who code them are constantly trying to figure out how to make them better.” His keynote touched on the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal as an illustration of how sociotechnical systems are exploding simple notions of individual rights as people’s data is being cumulatively pooled and linked so that it can be repurposed and used to manipulate entire groups and even societies as a whole. “You data is being taken and mixed with that of millions of other people, billions of other people in fact, and then used to manipulate everybody. “Privacy is not just about not wanting your own data to be exposed — it’s not just not wanting the pictures you took of yourself to be distributed publicly. But that is important too.” Given how the Internet’s ballooning connectivity has swept up and swept along personal data, enabling it to flow and pool far from the individuals who generated it in the first place, Berners-Lee also impressed the need for web users to have “the right to be able to share my data with whoever I want”. And “the right to be able to get at all my data” — praising recent data download efforts from Apple, Twitter and others that let people take their information elsewhere, and lauding the companies for “recognizing that my data is mine to control”. He also touched on his new startup: Solid, which is on a mission to push the envelope of interoperability, via decentralization, in order to transform how people control and share their own data. “The principle of Solid is it’s a new platform in which you as a user have complete control of your data,” he explained. “It is revolutionary in the sense that it makes any app ask you where you want to put your data. So you can run your photo app or take pictures on your phone and say I want to store them on Dropbox, and I will store them on my own home computer. And it does this with a new technology which provides interoperability between any app and any store.” Free speech and fighting censorship are other causes helped by putting people in control of their own data, he argued. “We are not ready for people to use this at home,” he said of Solid. “We are ready for developers to join us in the quest to make new apps, and to make our service more powerful and more secure. “The platform turns the privacy world upside down — or, I should say, it turns the privacy world right side up. You are in control of you data life… Wherever you store it you can control and get access to it.” On the wider societal challenges, as regulators are paying increasing attention to powerful tech platforms, Berners-Lee added: “We have to get commitments from companies to make their platforms constructive and we have to get commitments from governments to look at whenever they see that a new technology allows people to be taken advantage of, allows a new form of crime to get onto it by producing new forms of the law. And to make sure that the policies that they do are thought about in respect to every new technology as they come out. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot of discussion — across the boundaries of individuals, companies and governments. But very important work.” Social Media via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com October 24, 2018 at 12:20PM
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5 Ways to Promote Your Products on Social Media https://ift.tt/2z2pT9M 5 Ways to Promote Your Products on Social Media
Social media has been a game changer for businesses. Along with expanding your audience and interacting with your customers, social networks give you the opportunity to promote your products and generate interest in your brand. Here are five ways to promote your products on social media. 1. Provide Social Proof to Build Confidence in Your ProductTo succeed with product promotion, you have to do more than just post advertisements on your social accounts. Get creative. Provide social proof to build consumer trust in your product. Customers that offer testimonials and reviews act as influencers to promote your products to consumers in a positive way. Post a customer photo of your product in action. Mention the customer in your post (link to their page or mention their username) and link to your product. 2. Host a ContestContests are a great way to generate buzz about your product and expand your brand’s reach. The great thing about a contest is that it allows you to promote your product without actually advertising it. Keep the contest simple and fun. Make your giveaway accessible to all participants, and make sure the prize is worthwhile. Let’s say your shop sold cheap Gucci bags. Giving away a Gucci replica would certainly catch the attention of your followers and get them to participate. 3. Share DealsUse your social media accounts to share your deals and promo codes. Yes, you’re advertising your brand and products, but you’re giving your followers a chance to save money on their purchases. Try running exclusive deals on your social accounts to keep your followers engaged and make them feel special. 4. Add Product Links to Instagram StoriesInstagram feeds are now sorted by popularity rather than chronological order, which makes it more difficult to get your posts seen by followers. Stories are a great way to bypass this and get your brand in front of your target audience. Stories allow you to include mentions and links, which makes it easier for viewers to see and shop your products. When including links in your Stories, viewers can swipe up on the See More tab. Viewers can then be taken directly to your shop or blog where your products are sold. The great thing about the Instagram app is that it opens the page in the same app, so it’s a seamless transition. 5. Make Sure Your Customers Know about Your Social Media LinksIf you run an online store, you should already be sharing the links to your social accounts. But if you own a brick-and-mortar store, you’ll need to tell your customers about your social accounts. Make sure you have links to your social accounts on each advertisement you place, whether it’s an advertisement online or a sign on the street. Put information about your social media accounts at your cash register. Customers will read the sign while they’re waiting to make their purchase. Also, make sure that your employees know to tell your customers about your social media accounts. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog October 24, 2018 at 12:00PM Why We Abandoned Facebook Video Longer Than Two Minutes https://ift.tt/2CUnXF4 Earlier this week, we made the decision to stop publishing three weekly shows on Facebook. I'd like to share some important marketing lessons we discovered and a resource I think you'll enjoy. Here's the video I released on Facebook, announcing the move: https://ift.tt/2RYk0mU Here's why we killed two shows and moved a third one over to YouTube. All of our analysis showed that people are NOT watching video on Facebook. Especially if it's longer than about a minute or two. Why? Facebook is a highway and no one stops to watch video (at least for us.) Instead, they scroll. However, YouTube is where people prefer to watch videos that are longer than a few minutes. Here's what a typical video's retention looks like for us on Facebook: Here's the exact same video on YouTube: And we saw this pattern, over and over. The challenge for us is our YouTube audience is small—21,000 vs 533,000 on Facebook. The hardest decision was moving our 7-minute weekly docuseries (The Journey) exclusively to YouTube. It's a "behind the scenes" reality show that reveals how we do our marketing. Last week's show was about our launch strategy for our conference. Below are instructions on where to find that show. Prior to this week, our thinking was all about distributing the show as far and as wide as possible. My mindset was "go where our tribe is." So we published it natively on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. At first glance it looked like we were getting 10X the views on Facebook. But the retention graphs told a different story. When I actually looked at the data, it was VERY clear that YouTube is the channel where people are actually watching our videos. Publishing Facebook content that people don't watch or engage with is bad for our page. It sends the wrong signals to the algorithm. It's not a smart strategy. So despite a small group of people on Facebook saying they absolutely loved our show, not many more were watching. Also, here is a more detailed explanation of my reasoning: https://ift.tt/2AjWRol So, that's my why. If you want to discover a lot more about how I think and how we do our marketing, this is exactly what we cover each week on The Journey. Here are some important links: How to subscribe to The Journey: There are two important steps. First click on this link and hit subscribe. The important second step is to hit the bell. That will ensure you get notifications when we release a new episode, even if you don't hang out on YouTube a lot. Two of our recent shows worth watching: Leaning Into Launch Day: Me and my team conclude testing and begin a multi-channel product launch. Will our hard work pay off? Watch and see. Analyzing for Improved Results: Watch as we analyze what worked during launch week and begin exploring new ideas. We also prepare for a big launch of "The Journey." I want to thank you for being a loyal subscriber. It's my hope that you follow along with what we’re doing on YouTube. I'm confident you'll discover new marketing ideas and get to know us better. What do you think? Did we make the right decision? Where do you watch longer video content? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Social Media via Social Media Marketing Podcast helps your business thrive with social media https://ift.tt/1LtH18p October 24, 2018 at 11:16AM |
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