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Weird Facebook bug sees old chat messages pop up for users https://ift.tt/2Rh1dCB Weird Facebook bug sees old chat messages pop up for users
By Johnny Lieu
A strange Facebook problem has seen users confronted with the past. People have reported a weird bug where old chat messages, some from years ago, are popping up again through Messenger's tabs. The issue is particularly troubling for certain users who have seen from messages from loved ones who have passed away, or from people they haven't spoken to in a long time.
A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable the company had fixed the issue in a statement: "Earlier today, some people may have experienced Facebook resending older messages," it read. "The issue, caused by software updates, has been fully resolved. We’re sorry for any inconvenience." It's not the first time Facebook has dredged up memories we'd prefer to forget. When the platform launched On This Day last year, the feature was criticised for bringing up old photos and posts that might be painful or otherwise unwelcome. Facebook later introduced the ability to edit posts and control what memories you see. Social Media via Mashable https://ift.tt/2DCFv97 November 27, 2018 at 09:54AM
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How to Get on Instagram’s Explore Page https://ift.tt/2Ritdpg Instagram is a hot social network, with more than 800 million monthly active users. If you want to get a bigger piece of that audience following your Instagram profile, then every post you make needs to keep the Explore Page in mind. It’s unlikely that all of your posts will make it there – because an algorithm chooses the content that makes it, but these are the guidelines you should follow. What is the Explore Page? The Instagram Explore page is an updated version of the Popular page that was on the network in the early days. The Explore page is different for each user on the network – focused on showcasing content that’s relevant to them based on the accounts and hashtags they follow. The page is a mix of posts you’ve liked, and posts by people whose posts you’ve liked. This is wonderful for businesses because when your followers like your post, it can show up in their followers Explore Page. If you have a photo that gets a lot of engagement, it makes it easier for your post to go viral on the social network. You want to be on the Explore Page because it’ll help you get more likes and followers on Instagram, which could easily increase the revenue you bring in. You’ll be able to earn more customers and sell more to them. The Explore Page will expose your business to a new audience of potential customers, and because it’s different for each user based on interests, followers who find you there will be the targeted audience you’re looking for, rather than a random Instagram user. And, it doesn’t cost you anything. How Instagram Chooses Content for the Explore Tab Instagram selects photos and videos that have a lot of engagement on them in a short amount of time after they’re posted to your account. This means posting content your audience loves, at a time when they are online to engage with it. But, more than likes, the algorithm pays attention to the conversation that takes place – or the comments between you and other followers. Your profile must be set to public – which it should be as a business profile. Believe it or not, we have seen some businesses set to private – which protects your profile content from people who are not following you. The older your account is, the better. It’s not likely Instagram puts a lot of weight on account age, but chances are that if your account is just a few weeks old or doesn’t have a lot of content on it, it won’t be as eligible for the Explore tab, even if you have lots of followers and engagement. The reason is Instagram knows a lot of activity like that doesn’t happen quickly, and they’re paying attention to natural activity just like Google does when they choose where and how to rank websites. How to Increase Your Chances of Being Featured on the New Popular Page Use an automation platform. Using an Instagram bot like SocialCaptain can help you follow people that are part of your targeted audience. It can also like and comment on photos for you, so you can increase your engagement automatically and spend more of your time focusing on the content creation side of things. It also ensures you are building a continuous stream of new followers, which is important to the algorithm. Create content specifically for your target market. You want your content to stand out on the Explore page, so just getting there isn’t enough. If you’re not creating stellar content for the audience, then they won’t engage with it… and engagement is key. But, if you land on the Explore page without something awesome, it’ll just fade away into the noise. You won’t get new followers from it because no one will notice your content from the other stuff they see on their Explore page. Schedule posts at the right time. Scheduling posts in advance not only means you can batch your work so you don’t have to stress creating new content every day, but it means that you can make sure you’re posting at the right time for your audience to maximize engagement. You may need to experiment with various times until you see what works best, and go from there. Your Instagram Analytics will provide insights into the best times for optimal engagement based on your audience behavior. Include a call to action on each of your posts. Tell your audience what you want them to do on each post. Encouraging interation is one of the best ways to get it. Tell them they can “double tap” to like your photos, or leave a comment. When they take the time to leave a comment, take the time to reply to them to continue the conversation. This shows them you’re paying attention and encourages them to comment on future posts. You can also tell your followers to tag a friend in the comments to let them know about what you’re offering. Getting more likes and comments can help improve your chances of showing up on the Explore page. Remember, there’s no way to find out exactly what the Instagram algorithm formula uses to pick and choose the Explore page content. And because that formula changes all the time in an effort to improve user experience, the only thing you can do is consistently step up your game to make sure you’re producing quality content and work on your presence and engagement. It will take time and effort, but the payoff will be worth it. The post How to Get on Instagram’s Explore Page appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog November 27, 2018 at 08:02AM
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How to Use LinkedIn Dynamic Ads https://ift.tt/2ByLGZd Have you heard of LinkedIn dynamic ads? Wondering how to include a person’s name or profile picture in your LinkedIn ad creative? In this article, you’ll learn how to set up a LinkedIn dynamic ad campaign to deliver highly personalized offers.
What Are LinkedIn’s Dynamic Ads and Why Do They Matter?LinkedIn’s ad system allows you to connect with their user base by serving your ad to a targeted audience in the news feed, inbox, or sidebar. You can use these ads to attract new clients, find new employees, and establish or sustain brand awareness. Now you can use the dynamic ads option to personalize the LinkedIn ads you’re serving those users. LinkedIn dynamic ads will pull each user’s name or profile picture from their LinkedIn profile and apply it to the ad template you’ve created, resulting in hyper-personalized ads. With so much competition in every feed—mobile and desktop alike—getting users to notice your ad can be one of the most challenging parts of a campaign. Enter personalization. Personalization is important in marketing, and it’s becoming increasingly important in pay-per-click marketing. Creating content that’s deeply relevant to your target audience will significantly increase the likelihood that they’ll respond to your ad and that you’ll see the results you’re looking for. LinkedIn dynamic ads offer advertisers a way to incorporate an entirely new level of personalization into ad campaigns served on the platform. And because seeing their name or profile picture is a sure way to grab people’s attention, this added level of context has an excellent chance at stopping them in their tracks as they’re scrolling through their feed. What Types of Dynamic Ads Can I Run?The process of creating and using dynamic ads isn’t drastically different from the process of creating other types of ad campaigns on LinkedIn. The following four types of ad units can be run using the Dynamic Ads campaign objective:
Each dynamic ad option will let you add appropriate, relevant calls to action (CTAs) to strengthen the impact of your ad campaign. Note: The Dynamic Ads campaign objective isn’t currently available for sponsored InMail ads. How to Create LinkedIn Dynamic AdsStart by heading to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Once there, click the Create Campaign button in the top-right corner. You’ll be asked to choose an ad product. Click Select next to the Dynamic Ads option. On the next screen, name your new campaign and then choose to place your new campaign in either an existing or new campaign group. Pro Tip: Generically named campaigns make it hard to keep track of which campaigns are which, and the campaign monitoring gets muddled. Be specific when you name your campaign. Rather than use the phrase “dynamic campaign,” opt for “Dynamic Customer Service Job Campaign” or “Follow Tech Campaign.” Once a campaign has been created, it can’t be moved to a different campaign group so be sure you’ve got it placed exactly where you want it. Finally, select the language your target audience speaks. The All (Auto-Translate) option is a helpful feature for businesses that have an audience spanning multiple languages. It helps you scale your campaigns by automatically translating your ad as it’s served to each audience member. This option isn’t available on all ad types. It can only be applied to ad formats with preset headlines and text, such as the job ad or follower ad formats. You can choose from a number of preset headlines and ad text options. Attend Largest Social Media Marketing Conference—in San Diego Preset headlines and text aren’t currently available for the spotlight ad format. Next, choose an ad format. The format you choose will be based on the goal you want your ad to accomplish. Do you want to:
Remember, if you choose the follower ad or job ad format, you’ll have the option to use the preset headlines and ad text that work with the All (Auto-Translate) feature. The preset text available for follower and job ads are excellent tools, but only when they’re actually working in your favor. If none of the options fits exactly what you’re going for, write your own custom headline. Most content won’t need to be auto-translated to every LinkedIn user across the globe, and you can run a few separate campaigns with correct manual translations if needed. Regardless of the ad format you choose, you can also create your own ad text, headlines, and CTA button copy. However, this will often work to your advantage because you can create messaging you know your audience will respond to. As you’re creating your campaigns, look to the preview area on the right side to see changes in real time. Once you’ve settled on ad copy, choose whether you want to show a user’s profile image in your ad. Check the box next to Audience Member Profile Image to enable this option. Uncheck the box to disable it. In many cases, including users’ profile pictures is what grabs their attention right away and stops their scroll, so consider keeping this feature enabled. The balance of the ad creation process is the same as for other LinkedIn ads. The next step is to choose your targeting criteria. As you choose the location your target audience lives in, remember you can include and exclude specific areas to make sure you’re connecting only with the users you want to find. You can also target users more directly based on criteria such as job title, company name, gender, and so on. Choose your targeting criteria carefully. Your ad will only be effective if it’s relevant to the individual seeing it. Targeting everyone in the computer programming industry for a talent search won’t do you much good if you’re looking for senior developers but the ad is being served to students. Next you’ll determine your budget and bids figures. Your daily budget dictates how much you’re willing to spend per day, and your total budget indicates how much you’re willing to spend overall. Your bids tell LinkedIn how much you’re willing to spend per desired action. Pro Tip: Pay attention to LinkedIn’s bidding recommendations. When you’re placing your bid, LinkedIn will show you what other advertisers are bidding for a similar audience. If you want to be competitive, scale your bid up for more successful campaigns. Then enter the start and end dates for your campaign. Now select your ad rotation preference. This tells LinkedIn if you want the ads in each campaign group to enter the auction evenly, or if you want LinkedIn to optimize for results by most frequently showing the ads most likely to do well. Finally, choose a budget pacing option. You can either set a daily budget or let LinkedIn optimize your spending budget based on the opportunities available. Now your campaign is ready to submit. ConclusionLinkedIn dynamic ads are different from the ad options available on other social media pay-per-click systems, and given the nature of LinkedIn, they can be an excellent fit for certain campaigns. That said, not all of your LinkedIn campaigns can or should use the dynamic ad personalization features. They won’t be a fit for every objective and every message. Focus on LinkedIn ad best practices to create the most relevant, targeted message possible for your audience. That will always be the best way to see results. What do you think? Do you use LinkedIn ads? Have you tested the new dynamic ads option? What’s worked for you? Share your thoughts, experience, and knowledge in the comments below! More articles about LinkedIn ads:Attend Largest Social Media Marketing Conference—in San Diego Social Media via Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p November 27, 2018 at 05:07AM
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SocialUpgrade Review: Powerful Instagram Growth https://ift.tt/2ByQPRh SocialUpgrade Review: Powerful Instagram Growth Facebook and YouTube remain the two largest social media channels when it comes to number of users, but Instagram is close behind at number six (after WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat)—which means it’s an essential platform to be on if you want to raise brand awareness, whether it’s business or personal. However, Instagram is a complicated platform that requires marketers, entrepreneurs, and brand owners to devise complex strategies in order to find success. Has anyone figured out the perfect formula by now? Not really—but there are services that can offer their wisdom and expertise to help you grow your Instagram audience quickly and efficiently. In this post, I’ll be reviewing SocialUpgrade, one of the most effective Instagram growth tools out there. How does it work?Instead of using generated bot accounts, SocialUpgrade is a management service that helps you expand your account’s reach organically. After signing up, you surrender your profile to a growth expert who leverages advanced targeting techniques to connect with new followers. Think of it this way: if Instagram was a game, then partnering with SocialUpgrade is like having someone replace you who thoroughly knows the rules, the best strategies, and understands what it takes to win. Working with SocialUpgrade means working with a real person who knows what they are doing. What are these advanced targeting practices, you ask? They include finding potential followers via hashtags, competitors, locations, and blacklisting. Finding people or making yourself visible with hashtags can be a trial-and-error endeavor, but your growth manager knows which ones are most effective for augmenting your brand. Perhaps you are a local operation searching for potential customers nearby, or want to tap into a competitor’s existing audience—SocialUpgrade can help you with that, too. Some accounts are also better left alone, so blacklisting can keep you from interacting with channels that would ultimately harm you. Between following and unfollowing the right people, responding to comments, answering direct messages, re-sharing user-generated content, posting intriguing content, composing relevant captions, scheduling the best times to post, and more, executing a successful Instagram strategy can be overwhelming and time-consuming. You have a business to run or a brand to create, so you do not always have the time, patience, money, or energy for all of these intricacies. Handing your account over to a SocialUpgrade expert frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your brand while you sit back and watch your Instagram audience boom. What are the other perks?SocialUpgrade offers two plans, Standard and Turbo. The former costs $39 per month, which includes targeted audience outreach, real growth, a tailored strategy, and is safe and secure to use. The Turbo package for $99 per month offers similar features, but SocialUpgrade doubles your exposure to attract as much as three times the amount of traffic and engagement than the Standard subscription (which already promises a significant amount of engagement than you were experiencing beforehand). SocialUpgrade’s customer service representatives are easily reachable, and Turbo package subscribers receive “priority support” for any issues or concerns. Even if you change your Instagram goals halfway through your campaign, your partnering growth manager is prepared to handle your requests and expand your presence online. And don’t worry—SocialUpgrade is safe to use. You may have heard about growth businesses like Instagress being shut down, but SocialUpgrade does its best to work within Instagram’s constraints and keeps your account secure. If you are curious about results, Brandon Taron, owner of Taron Photography, says: “SocialUpgrade has really elevated my social media presence by giving me real feedback on building my body of work with my photography. The ability to target similar material as well as knowing who your competitors are is second to none… Thomas, who’s head of growth management for SocialUpgrade, has been very attentive throughout the entire process to ensure maximum results will be met.” Instagram is a sophisticated platform that can be difficult to navigate for amateur users. Instead of spending all of your energy on social media marketing when you have a brand to create (and other channels to pay attention to, like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest), why not let a growth management expert take do all the work for you? Summary Reviewer Social Media Explorer Review Date Reviewed Item SocialUpgrade Author Rating Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog November 26, 2018 at 06:31PM Building Authentic Connections Through Advertising with Social Media https://ift.tt/2BxyV14 Building Authentic Connections Through Advertising with Social Media No marketing strategy in 2019 is complete without including social media. To make your brand seen and heard in a meaningful way, it’s not enough to do traditional print and broadcast advertising and then call it a day. You have to go where the potential customers are, and that means social media. Social media marketing meanwhile is all about engagement. The goal is to build direct relationships between your brand and its customer base. New media platforms for marketing mean entirely new ways of approaching marketing. It’s not going to work if you copy and paste advertising content from other media into your social media presence. It’ important to understand how the platform itself works first. In traditional media, there’s one source of content that’s transmitting that content out to a broad audience. Marketing in that context simply becomes another piece of content to be absorbed by the audience. On social media, however, there are no more passive audiences. Everyone is a potential content producer, and every audience member has the opportunity to respond directly and immediately. “The key words now are ‘interaction’ and ‘relationship,’” says Charles Brown, board member from the Nursing Home Abuse Center. “People need to be able to really get to know a company, almost as if it were a person.” To engage your audience and convert some of those individuals into loyal customers and supporters of the brand on social media, businesses need to adapt to the realities of the social media environment and connect to users on the same level, producing content, responding and reacting in real-time. Be Consistent Just like in real-life relationships, any effective social media marketing strategy is going to be built on consistency. Users need to regularly see something from you, whether it’s an original post or simply a comment or reaction to something else. Potential customers will disengage or lose interest if they never hear from your brand. You have to put in time and effort to build a rapport with someone and develop a presence. That’s why social media marketing takes patience. It takes time to build up a following and establish a history of activity. You should also consider putting a schedule in place for posts to ensure that new activity is published to the platform on a regular basis. Content can be created in advance and set up to be published automatically at regular times, but you also need someone observing the feed who can respond promptly to other users and follow-up on conversations created by the content. Develop a Personality Through engaging, interacting and producing content, the goal is for other users to be interested enough to follow your content and continue interacting into the future. Not only is that a potential new loyal customer, but that one more regular follower will generate activity on your platform, share your information and slowly bring in more consumers to engage as well. However, no one is likely to engage and invest in a longer-term relationship with your social media presence if your presence itself is not interesting and authentic. To build a relationship with users requires that you create a certain voice and personality for your brand online. If your brand acts like a person on social media, what kind of person is it? This personality, once established, needs to be consistent as well. This may seem daunting, but the good news is that this is a chance to have consumers really get to know your company. The first ingredient in an effective social media personality is authenticity. That means figuring out who your brand really is and what it represents and then channeling that into your online presence. Make it Worthwhile The last piece required for a genuinely effective social media strategy is quality. Regular activity and a brand personality won’t do enough to set you apart and build a following if it’s not accompanied by high-quality content. Your voice needs to be unique and make engagement actually worthwhile for the individuals deciding to follow you and invest in a social media relationship. The content you deliver needs to be in line with your brand and personality and deliver something to the audience. You can be entertaining and bring your audience laughter and enjoyment, or you can start meaningful conversations with insights or analyses. All that’s required is that your content is interesting and that it creates an opportunity for further engagement among users. A community is built when people come together to discuss something or enjoy something together. Providing that something should be your goal. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog November 26, 2018 at 12:24PM
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How to Increase Your Sales ?ith Instagram Stories https://ift.tt/2Rfm3C6 No social media marketing strategy is complete without Instagram. But there is much more to Instagram than just uploading pictures and videos to your profile. With a standard post, you’re somewhat limited to how much content you can upload in a given day or a week. Let me clarify. Technically, you can post as much as you want. But that strategy won’t work. On average, most brands post about 10 times per week. Uploading content more than once or twice per day to your Instagram profile will have a negative impact. According to a recent study from Sprout Social, 58% of consumers say it’s annoying when brands post too much on social media. And 46% of users will unfollow a brand for doing this. But you want to share your content with your audience. Sometimes, posting once or twice per day isn’t enough to get your point across. That’s when you should be leveraging your Instagram story. Unlike a traditional post, your Instagram story won’t flood the timelines of your followers. You can upload more than ten pictures or videos to your story, and it won’t hinder anyone’s experience. This isn’t the case with posts posted directly to your profile. Instagram has more than 400 million daily active users. One-third of the stories with the most views are uploaded by businesses. Taking advantage of this feature is a great opportunity for your brand to generate sales on Instagram. It’s worth mentioning that the longer your Instagram story is, the less of a chance it has of being watched in its entirety: That said, nearly 60% of people will watch your entire story that has 20 frames. That’s more content than you would upload with traditional posts to your profile in an entire week. You can create a new Instagram story every day since the old stories disappear after 24 hours. This means you get to start off each day with a clean slate. There are many different approaches to Instagram stories that drive sales. That was my inspiration for writing this guide. I’ve identified some of the best examples of Instagram stories from a wide range of brands. Using these approaches in your Instagram posting strategy will help you avoid stale content for upcoming posts. This is the approach you need to take if you want to generate more sales on Instagram. Set up a shoppable storyFor years, in order for businesses to directly drive sales on Instagram, they had to rely on adding links to their bios to drive followers to product landing pages. That was ineffective since the user had to take too many additional steps. But Instagram recently rolled out an update allowing brands to increase product sales with shoppable posts. With a shoppable post, you can tag products in an image, the same way you would a person. When a user clicks on the tag, they are directed to a landing page that gives them the opportunity to buy what you’re selling. Clicking on a shoppable tag has far less friction than having to navigate to your bio. While many brands are taking advantage of shoppable posts, many don’t realize they can also use shoppable stories. The same concept applies here. On your story, just tag an item from your product catalog. Users who view the story will have an option to click on the tag and be directed to a page where they can complete the purchase. If you want to directly drive sales, this is one of your best options. You can add dozens of different products to your Instagram shoppable story. Or maybe you’ll take another approach and use your entire story to promote one product. Whichever option you choose, you’ll be able to generate more sales with these strategies. Run a pollPolls on Instagram stories are a great way to drive engagement. Unlike with a shoppable post, participating in a survey won’t directly drive sales, but it will still pique your followers’ interest. Polls can triple your engagement metrics on a story. That’s because they are easy. All a user has to do is click on one of the two options to participate. Plus, that’s the only way they’ll be able to see how other people have voted. Here’s an example of how Microsoft Surface used this strategy in a sponsored story: It’s a very simple question. They’re asking what’s more important to users, power or portability? Here’s the catch. When users swipe up, following the “learn more” CTA, they’ll discover this product has both power and portability. You’ll see more of this swipe up style CTAs throughout this guide. Take advantage of the swipe up feature. According to a case study from Marketing Land, 15-25% of users who see these links on Instagram stories are swiping up. MeUndies participated in this study. On average, 20% of users who saw its story swiped up to learn more. And 90% of those people have never visited the website before. Adding a poll to your story increases your chances of getting higher engagement rates and, hence, makes it more likely that users will click your CTA. You’ll be able to generate more sales as a result. Showcase testimonials to increase brand credibilityTestimonials are one of the best ways to increase credibility of your brand, products, and services. In fact, 92% of consumers refer to testimonials when making a purchase decision. Further, 88% of consumers trust a testimonial as much as a recommendation from someone they know. And 72% of buyers say they trust a business more after reading a positive testimonial about it. Adding a testimonial to your story will definitely increase your chances of driving sales. Here’s a great example from Mack Weldon: It used a testimonial from Men’s Health to add credibility to its product. If a reputable magazine such as Men’s Health says this is the best underwear for the gym, then they must be, right? That’s the idea behind this testimonial. As you can see, Mack Weldon is also taking advantage of the swipe up feature. By clicking this CTA, users will have a chance to buy products directly from the landing page. This process limits friction, which improves conversion rates. It’s much more effective than asking your followers to navigate to your website by opening a separate web browser. Conversion rates for that method would be much lower. Partner with a social influencerYou can also use influencers to increase your product’s credibility. This strategy works for the same reasons as testimonials do. Followers will see a promotion from someone whom they trust and follow their recommendation as a result. With influencer marketing, you don’t even need to post any content on your story. Instead, you can have the influencers with whom you’re working promote your brand with their own stories. Take a look at how CALIA by Carrie uses this strategy: CALIA by Carrie partnered with professional surfer and model Anastasia Ashley. Anastasia shares this content on her own story, so it’s viewed by her followers. Now people who may have never heard of this brand are exposed to the promotion. This strategy is a great opportunity for you to increase your reach. With this widened exposure, you’ll have a better chance of getting more followers and increased website traffic. Both of these metrics can help you drive sales. Encourage interactivityThis strategy is similar to that of the story polls, which I talked about earlier. The whole idea behind encouraging interaction with your followers is they engage with your content. Keeping people engaged will help your brand, products, and services stay fresh in their minds. Check out this example from Tropicfeel: Tropicfeel is a startup company that makes the ultimate travel shoe. All of their promotions target people who like to travel. Everyone travels for different reasons. Adding this content to its story gave users a chance to share their answers about their travel preferences. The level of engagement it takes to complete this survey is much higher than just clicking on a poll. A user has to take a screenshot, then add the same image to their own story with their answers circled. Then, Tropicfeel shared those responses back on its original story: It’s a clever strategy. If you plan on doing something like this, you can’t expect the participation rates to be extremely high. That’s because it takes extra effort. But it’s still effective. Even if some followers aren’t participating, they’re watching the story to view responses from other people. All of this makes the company’s target audience think about traveling and potentially planning their next trip. Maybe its followers need new shoes before their next excursions, which would entice them to make a purchase from this brand. Repurpose user-generated content (UGC)In the last example, you also saw repurposed user-generated content. The only difference is it was produced as part of a campaign. But that doesn’t have to be the case. There will be instances when your customers tag you in their stories without any encouragement from you. Maybe they put on a new pair of sunglasses they just ordered from your ecommerce shop and want to show them off to their followers. So they upload an image to their story and tag your brand. You’ll be notified any time your brand is tagged in a story. From here, you’ll have the option to share that same content to your own story as well. Look at how Patara Shoes uses this tactic: Repurposing UGC accomplishes several things. First, this type of content will have the same effect as a customer testimonial, which I previously discussed. Sharing a story like this also shows your followers you’re willing to repost content your brand is tagged in. This gives them some encouragement to do the same for a chance to be featured. With more of your followers posting about your brand on their personal profiles, you end up getting social influencers free. These people may not have thousands of followers as the influencers whom you’re paying, but their content is still valuable and can lead to additional sales from anyone who sees their stories. Follow a progressionEarlier I talked about how you can upload lots of frames to your story each day, which isn’t recommended for a traditional post. But the frames shouldn’t be random. If you refer to some of the examples you looked at so far today, you wouldn’t want to combine all of them into one story. I see brands make this mistake all the time. They forget that their Instagram story should actually tell a story. This means it needs to follow a logical progression. Here’s an example from Thule: The story starts with a date. This will grab the attention of anyone watching and make them curious as to what’s happening on this date. As a result, they’ll continue watching to learn more information: As the story continues, they’ll learn there will be some type of celebration. Users will continue on: Now things start to get more specific. Thule shares the time of the celebration and hints at a product launch. This story had seven frames. We looked at just three. Imagine if all three of these frames were combined into one. That would be way too much text on the screen. Now imagine if seven frames of text were crammed into just one. It would be overwhelming and difficult for people to read. The message would be lost. A progression like this makes it easier for people to consume it and more likely that they will do that. If you’re trying to introduce a new product or event to drive sales, you can do it over several images or videos as opposed to just one. I’ll show you another example of this type of progression below. Introduce your teamI love the idea of showing your employees on your Instagram story. This concept adds a human element to your brand, which goes a long way. It allows your followers to see you’re more than just a company. Real people they can relate to are the driving force behind your operation. Let’s look at how Allbirds did this on its Instagram story: As you can see, this story follows a progression as well. Instead of showing its employees out of context, the company starts the story by saying it wants to share images of where the team has gone with the product. Here’s one example from the dozen or so posted: Maria, an employee from the supply chain team, wore the company’s product to the Great Wall of China. This story shows that its employees stand behind their products. They own them and actually use them. But if you don’t have this type of content to share on your story, it doesn’t mean you can’t introduce your team. Another way to do this is by showing behind-the-scenes looks at your operation. Any time an employee achieves something, you could share that accomplishment on your story. Again, this strategy will humanize your brand and make you more relatable to your followers. These types of posts are perfect for your story. Promote a new product launchAs I said earlier, you don’t want to flood the timelines of your followers with promotions all the time. This is annoying and will eventually cause people to unfollow you. But if you have a new product coming out soon, it’s a big deal. You want to start promoting it as soon as possible. That way, your customers are ready for it by the time it’s released. Use your story to accomplish this. Here’s a simple example from Vuori Clothing: It’s a great way to use the 2018 holiday season to drive sales. You can go into greater detail about your products in your story, depending on what you’re promoting. For example, you could upload a video tutorial to your story showing how to use the new product. Combine this strategy with some of the other tactics on this list and have a social influencer do the same thing for you. Building hype for your products before they launch increases your chances of generating sales when they finally become available for purchase. ConclusionInstagram has become a powerful tool for brands. But that’s only the case if you’re taking advantage of all the features available. Simply posting content to your profile isn’t enough. Plus, you should be uploading only one or two images or videos each day. You have much more flexibility with the amount of content you post to your Instagram story. Promote your products directly by using a shoppable story. Run a poll and encourage interaction to drive engagement. By showcasing testimonials, partnering with social influencers, reposting user-generated content, and introducing your employees, you’ll be able to add more credibility to your brand and products. All of your stories should follow a logical progression. If you follow the tips and examples I’ve outlined above, your Instagram story will help you generate additional profits. How is your brand using Instagram stories to drive sales? Social Media via Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/UU7LJr November 26, 2018 at 10:05AM
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Building Authentic Connections Through Advertising with Social Media https://ift.tt/2Bzrzdz No marketing strategy in 2019 is complete without including social media. To make your brand seen and heard in a meaningful way, it’s not enough to do traditional print and broadcast advertising and then call it a day. You have to go where the potential customers are, and that means social media. Social media marketing meanwhile is all about engagement. The goal is to build direct relationships between your brand and its customer base. New media platforms for marketing mean entirely new ways of approaching marketing. It’s not going to work if you copy and paste advertising content from other media into your social media presence. It’ important to understand how the platform itself works first. In traditional media, there’s one source of content that’s transmitting that content out to a broad audience. Marketing in that context simply becomes another piece of content to be absorbed by the audience. On social media, however, there are no more passive audiences. Everyone is a potential content producer, and every audience member has the opportunity to respond directly and immediately. “The key words now are ‘interaction’ and ‘relationship,’” says Charles Brown, a board member from the Nursing Home Abuse Center. “People need to be able to really get to know a company, almost as if it were a person.” To engage your audience and convert some of those individuals into loyal customers and supporters of the brand on social media, businesses need to adapt to the realities of the social media environment and connect to users on the same level, producing content, responding and reacting in real-time. Be ConsistentJust like in real-life relationships, any effective social media marketing strategy is going to be built on consistency. Users need to regularly see something from you. Whether it’s an original post or simply a comment or reaction to something else. Potential customers will disengage or lose interest if they never hear from your brand. You have to put in time and effort to build a rapport with someone and develop a presence. That’s why social media marketing takes patience. It takes time to build up a following and establish a history of activity. You should also consider putting a schedule in place for posts to ensure that new activity is published to the platform on a regular basis. Content can be created in advance and set up to be published automatically at regular times, but you also need someone observing the feed who can respond promptly to other users and follow-up on conversations created by the content. Develop a PersonalityThrough engaging, interacting and producing content, the goal is for other users to be interested enough to follow your content and continue interacting into the future. Not only is that a potential new loyal customer, but that one more regular follower will generate activity on your platform, share your information and slowly bring in more consumers to engage as well. However, no one is likely to engage and invest in a longer-term relationship with your social media presence if your presence itself is not interesting and authentic. To build a relationship with users requires that you create a certain voice and personality for your brand online. If your brand acts like a person on social media, what kind of person is it? This personality, once established, needs to be consistent as well. This may seem daunting, but the good news is that this is a chance to have consumers really get to know your company. The first ingredient in an effective social media personality is authenticity. That means figuring out who your brand really is and what it represents. Then you need to channel that into your online presence. Make it WorthwhileThe last piece required for a genuinely effective social media strategy is quality. Regular activity and a brand personality won’t do enough to set you apart and build a following if it’s not accompanied by high-quality content. Your voice needs to be unique and make engagement actually worthwhile for the individuals deciding to follow you and invest in a social media relationship. The content you deliver needs to be in line with your brand and personality and deliver something for the audience. You can be entertaining and bring your audience laughter and enjoyment, or you can start meaningful conversations with insights or analyses. All that’s required is that your content be interesting and that it creates an opportunity for further engagement among users. Community is built when people come together to discuss something or enjoy something together. Providing that something should be your goal. The post Building Authentic Connections Through Advertising with Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Social Media via Social Media Explorer https://ift.tt/2onGYog November 26, 2018 at 10:02AM
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5+ Black Hat Social Media Techniques Your Brand Shouldn’t Use https://ift.tt/2FJ2dy9 What is “black hat”? A villain. Or, an underhanded trick or technique that breaks a rule or set of rules. If you’re engaging in black hat on social media, that means you’re trying to make your accounts look better than they really are. This could include…
Tisk, tisk, tisk. How shady. And, not a good business idea either. Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. Why black hat is badIt’s lazy. It does more harm than good. And… It can ruin your reputationPeople engage with you on social media, based on truth. If they find out you’re trying to dupe them, kiss your reputation and followers goodbye. There’s no real gains, anywayYour fake followers won’t stay around very long. They aren’t even real people, interested in your products or services. Forget about trying to impress with inflated audience numbers that don’t deliver real value. Trade that black hat in for a white one. Be the do-gooder. Still not convinced? Some specifics… 5 black hat tactics to avoid on social media1. Buying followersWhat is it?Just like it sounds, buying followers for your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms. Versus growing and grooming them, naturally, over time. Why avoid it?
Instead…
2. Posting the exact same content across networksWhat is it?
Instead…
3. AutomationWhat is it?Using bots to win followers, derive backlinks, gain ‘likes’, and generate comments. Why avoid it?
Instead…
4. Spamming social networksWhat is it?Posting unrelated, extraneous, and otherwise irrelevant links on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or wherever. Sure, go postal on social, but be real and do with intent. Why avoid it?
Instead…
5. Sharing shady pages or content that employ any of the following tricks…5.1 Stuffing keywordsWhat is it?A shady technique to manipulate a site’s search ranking. By adding keywords and phrases galore to your web pages, even ones irrelevant to content on the website. Such as…
Why avoid it?
Instead…
5.2 Hidden textWhat is it?Any text search engines can view, but readers can’t. Web site administrators use hidden extra and irrelevant keywords to boost page rankings. Want to mess with search engine guidelines? Here’s how…
Are you doing these? Don’t. Why avoid it?
Instead…
5.3 Buying or exchanging linksWhat is it?Buying links or exchanging links with other sites. The more links back to your pages, the more relevant you are, right? True that… as long as they’re related to the content on your site. Otherwise, you’ll look foolish and silly once more. Why avoid it?
Instead…
Solid links increases your chances to form a friendship, partnership, or further mentions. None of that will happen when choosing and using links unwisely. 5.4 CloakingWhat is it?It’s a website returning altered pages to search engines crawling your site. Meaning, a human would see different content and information than what search engines would see. Websites cloak content to improve search engine ranking. Why avoid it?
Instead…
5.5 Article spinningWhat is it?A technique for creating the illusion of fresh content. A software program ingests a single article, munches on it, then pukes out a few different articles. Yuk, huh? New articles appear on your site, with new words, phrases, and terms—fooling search engines. And it might get passed some search engines. But humans will know… Why avoid it?
Instead…
5.6 Using Doorway pagesWhat is it?Doorway pages (also known as Gateway pages) are keyword-rich, content-poor pages designed to trick search engines. They contain loads of keywords, but no real information. They focus on calls-to-action and links that send the users through to a landing page. Why avoid it?
Instead…
See the Black Hat pattern?Break the rules, pay the dues. People, social networks, and search engines will know if you’re breaking the rules. Your reputation and rankings will take a hit. Affecting your site and social accounts for days, weeks—maybe forever. People will stop following you. Your brand will sour. What are you going to tell your boss then? Feeling lonely out there in the world of social media? Need more followers and want to be the hero, not the villain? Hootsuite has tools to help you schedule, publish, and monitor content across your channels. Try it for free. Social Media via Hootsuite Social Media Management https://ift.tt/1LdunxE November 26, 2018 at 09:21AM
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How to Run a (Successful) Cross-Platform Social Media Campaign https://ift.tt/2RcF7B1 When you start planning a social media campaign, one of the first things you need to figure out is what network—or networks—you’re going to run it on. Not all social media platforms are the right fit for every campaign, but you can get real results by figuring out which combination is best for your brand. I spoke to Hootsuite’s expert social media team—Social Media Specialist Christine Colling, Global Social Engagement Specialist Nick Martin, and Social Marketing Lead Amanda Wood—to find out top tips and tactics for running a successful cross-platform social media campaign. Continue reading to discover:
Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. How to run a cross-platform social media campaignWhy you can’t just post the same message across networksWhile you may have read the title of this post and said “Easy! Just copy and paste the same content to all my different networks, duh” it’s my civic duty to tell you that you’re misguided. Have you ever seen what it looks like when somebody uses an Instagram-level of hashtags on a Facebook post? Or when someone tags somebody else and the tagged person’s username is different on different platforms? Not pretty—or professional. Every network has a different set of required specs for content, so if you’re posting an Instagram image to Twitter the quality might be poor. Not only that, but, as we explain in our post Stop Posting the Same Message on Social Media (And Do This Instead), “things like caption length, image formatting, and vocabulary differ by platform. Sharing the exact same post on all of them means you might accidentally end up inviting your followers to retweet you on Facebook, or Pin your post on Instagram.” How embarrassing. It’s also important to make sure you aren’t boring your audience. “You want to do anything to avoid audience fatigue,” Martin explains. “If you’re posting the same content on all of your channels, you risk audience members seeing the exact same thing from you over and over again.” If you’ve ever experienced this from a brand, you know just how annoying it can be. Instead, think of your campaign as a story you’re telling across different mediums. You want the story to feel connected and cohesive, but not repetitive. Continue reading to find out exactly how to do this. Tips for running your campaign on 4 key networksOur social media team has found that each network is best suited for a specific type of content. They share their experiences and insights—along with issues particular to each network—below. Once you know who your audience is, it becomes much easier to create content that will resonate with them. For Facebook, our team has found that Facebook users want more storytelling content instead of being continuously served ads.So it’s important to find creative ways to intrigue our audience. “When it comes to Facebook, our audience wants a story. We can’t simply post something like a stat. It needs to be creative and visual,” Colling explains. “Because of this, we have found that video performs really well on Facebook.” Facebook is especially useful when it comes to the overall brand awareness aspect of your campaign. “Facebook allows you to lean on your brand to peak users’ interest,” Wood explains. “It’s a great network for educating and inspiring your following in order for them to take action. Through this, you’re able to build a lasting relationship with your audience and customers.” Takeaway: when designing your campaign, consider using Facebook for storytelling and education focused posts that contribute to brand awareness objectives, particularly in video form. Before you share your campaign on Instagram, you need to think about whether it fits into your overall strategy. Our Hootsuite Instagram feed features user-generated-content and lifestyle content, so sharing a campaign post wouldn’t align with our strategy. However, we have found great success sharing our campaigns to Instagram Stories and IGTV. It’s all about finding what works best for your brand. “It’s also crucial to understand that it’s likely your audience is viewing your Instagram content on mobile,” Wood explains. “Make sure your campaign content is mobile-friendly and doesn’t require multiple steps or complicated user-interfaces to serve your purpose.” For example, if you’re running an ad on Instagram Stories for an upcoming webinar and your audience has to swipe up to register, make sure there aren’t any barriers such as pop-ups or passwords. You want to do everything you can to ensure they are able to fulfill the action without abandoning your site. Takeaway: In a mobile world, it’s important to simplify the process as much as possible for your audience. The fast-paced and news-focused nature of Twitter means you have to be extra conscious of the campaign content you post there. “Twitter is very value-driven,” Martin explains. “We’ve found that the Twitter audience responds well to very clear CTAs and direct information.” If you’re advertising a campaign webinar, Tweet out the key elements of your message—date, time, topic—and leave any teaser info out. The Twitter timeline is jam-packed with content and distracting visuals, so you want to make sure your message doesn’t get lost in the crowd. Our team has found that social cards (a digital postcard), GIFs, and static images work great for campaigns. Social cards allow your brand to clearly share crucial information in a visually-appealing way, and other images such as GIFs fit in with the way users are interacting with Twitter. Again, it’s about knowing your audience on the platform. If you’ve seen your followers engage with GIFs in a positive way or notice a boost in webinar sign-ups after sharing social cards, you can take this data and apply it to future campaigns on Twitter. Takeaway: Give your audience the key information they need—right away. When it comes to LinkedIn, your audience is looking for very specific content. “LinkedIn users are on the network with the goal of improvement,” Colling explains. “They are looking to advance their careers, get expert advice, and learn new things, so it’s important to create campaign content that speaks to these needs.” Where a video you shared on Facebook might be about brand awareness and feature more storytelling components, you can switch up the video’s main message for your LinkedIn portion of your campaign to show your audience exactly what they’ll learn in your webinar (for example) or why other professionals will be watching the webinar. FOMO is real on LinkedIn, but with some quick changes to your copy and visual assets you can easily create content that resonates with your audience there. Takeaway: Focus on posting educational content that helps your audience improve an aspect of their lives—and be clear about why they shouldn’t miss out. Tracking cross-platform campaignsDetermine your goalsWhen determining metrics for your cross-network campaign, it’s important to have your ultimate goal in mind. Are you trying to get leads? Event sign-ups? General brand awareness? The metrics you measure will depend on your campaign goals. Like content, your metrics could be different according to the networks you’re running your campaign on. While general engagement (likes, comments, etc.) will usually be tracked across platforms, specific metrics such as Swipe Ups for Instagram Stories or Retweets on Twitter should be acknowledged and defined in your strategy. Like many aspects of a cross-platform campaign, metrics are not always a one-size-fits-all solution. Test and adjust as necessaryWhen running a campaign across multiple networks, you have to be extra diligent about metrics and tracking. “A campaign isn’t something you can just set and forget, especially if you have budget behind it,” Martins explains. “We’re constantly checking in on how our campaigns are doing and move budget around if necessary. We’ll often see that a campaign is doing much better on one platform or another due to the type of content, so will shuffle the budget accordingly.” Tracking and measuring success allows you to better plan for your next campaign. “Like most businesses, we have different sets of audiences on our different networks,” Colling explains. “Because of this, it’s important to pay attention to the type of content that resonates with each target audience, and metrics help with this.” Our team recommends testing content with your audience, and cutting out any audience groups that aren’t performing. For example, you may notice that your campaign is really resonating with female executives. If this is the case, it might make sense to stop putting budget towards male students and redirect that budget towards your better-performing audience. By constantly testing different content and tracking the metrics of each platform, you can easily figure out how to make your campaigns more efficient in the future. How to use Hootsuite for cross-platform campaignsHootsuite can help with your cross-platform campaign in multiple ways. When it comes to getting the word out about your campaign, Hootsuite Amplify can be a huge help. Amplify will enable your company’s employees to share your campaign to their own social media community in a way that’s more personal. With 76 percent of consumers trusting information shared by others over content shared by brands, this could make a huge difference for your campaign. You can also use Hootsuite to add UTM tags to your content to track your campaign more easily. With UTM parameters, you can see what content is performing best, measure and prove ROI, and refine your social media strategy overall. Keeping track of your campaign’s moving parts across different networks can be another huge challenge for marketers. Hootsuite Planner allows you to survey all your scheduled and published content, create new posts, and organize existing ones. Find out more about Planner here. Running a cross-platform social media campaign is no easy task, but with the above tips and Hootsuite’s tools you’ll be on your way to success in no time. Make sure to check out this list of examples of top social media campaigns for inspiration, too. Run your cross-platform social media campaign with Hootsuite. Easily compose, schedule, and publish posts to all the major social networks from one dashboard, while tracking results and testing performance. Try it free today. Social Media via Hootsuite Social Media Management https://ift.tt/1LdunxE November 26, 2018 at 08:25AM
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13 Facebook Engagement Tactics for Your Business Page https://ift.tt/2KxsdLq Do you want more organic visibility in the Facebook news feed? Wondering what types of posts and content are working for others? In this article, you’ll find 13 ways to create Facebook posts that generate meaningful interactions and improve organic news feed visibility.
Why Is Facebook Engagement So Important?First, let’s recap why engagement is so important for successful Facebook marketing. Engagement on a Facebook post happens when the post makes a sufficient impact on people (and often sparks an emotional involvement) that they feel compelled to respond. Regular moments of impact and emotional involvement with a target audience are obviously at the heart of successful social media marketing. Human nature being what it is, seeing reactions and comments on a post will trigger curiosity and therefore more attention and impact. However, for many businesses, the ultimate goal is to have their posts shared because the content (and the business name) will reach a whole new audience and the sharing itself adds an endorsement, or social proof, to the post. Attracting engagement is also central to the visibility of your posts in the Facebook news feed. In January 2018, Facebook announced big changes to the news feed algorithm, giving priority to posts from friends and family. Facebook explained, “posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to” would now get more visibility in the news feed. To get your business content ranked in the news feed, you need to create posts that attract long comments and/or encourage sharing or discussion. So creating engagement is central to successful Facebook marketing. Note that Facebook continues to demote posts that use engagement bait as a way to beat the algorithm. These posts encourage responding with a single word or an emoji, or ask people to tag friends in the comments. So how can you ensure that your posts will attract engagement? The first step is to do a little research about what’s working for you and others. What’s Working for You Now?Facebook offers in-depth analytics of all of the activity on your Facebook page on the Page Insights tab. Navigate to Posts in the left navigation and check the time that your audience is most likely to be online. Use this information to help you plan your posting schedule. Scroll further under the Posts tab and review whether you’re:
Next, analyze your recent posts to see which have received the most engagement. Focus on the numbers of comments and shares received because these interactions will impact the Facebook algorithm and your Facebook marketing results the most. You can also find out which posts reached people who aren’t yet fans of your page. Pro Tip: If you want to review your information in more depth, you can download your data from Insights and import it into Excel, where you can then segment and analyze it. On the People tab of Facebook Insights, you’ll discover information about your audience and the people who are engaging with your Facebook posts. Review these details regularly to ensure that your content is optimized to attract the right people for your business. What’s Working for Other Businesses?To get inspiration for new types of posts, scan the pages of other businesses that appeal to a similar audience and see which posts are generating engagement. Pay particular attention to the type of media (images, video), format of the media (multiple images, images with text, video length, with captions or without), type and length of copy, tone of voice, and frequency of posting. Alternatively, use a tool such as BuzzSumo to research your competition on Facebook. If you have the Large BuzzSumo plan ($299/month, paid monthly; available as a free 7-day trial), you can use the Facebook Analyzer tool to search for posts that attract the most engagement. Filter your search results by engagement type to get in-depth insight into what’s working for other pages. Depending on which type of engagement you’re aiming for, you can also see the best times to post content relating to a specific keyword. It also gives you insights into the type of media to use and the amount of text to include in your posts for maximum engagement. You can even check the optimal time of day to share your post to attract specific types of engagement. Although every audience is different and you’ll only find the best posts for your audience by testing content on your page, BuzzSumo’s insights give you a great starting point to work from. Armed with knowledge you’ve gained from your research, here are 13 tactics you can use to create Facebook posts that generate meaningful interactions. #1: Collect Questions via Comments for an AMAEncouraging your audience to ask you questions is a great way to attract engagement and responses. This tactic works best if you designate a theme or topic for the questions, set a cutoff date, and explain when the questions will be answered and by whom. Get creative about whom you put in the spotlight to answer questions. It could be your staff, suppliers, experts you work with, colleagues you’ve met at an event, or others you partner with. You can either share the answers on your page as a video or document or answer the questions via Facebook Live to generate even more engagement. The York Minster cathedral ran a series of Q&A sessions involving stonemasons who were visiting as part of a stone-carving festival. To broaden the scope and potential reach of the Q&A, they shared the call for questions on Instagram and Twitter, as well as on their Facebook page. If resources allow, consider running a regular Q&A session so fans can touch base with your brand and gain valuable insights on a consistent basis. #2: Share an Offer in the News Feed to Generate Messenger ConnectionsFacebook Messenger bots are an increasingly popular way for businesses to amplify the results from their Facebook marketing. Many bot solutions designed for small businesses, such as ManyChat, let you provide an automated response to comments added to a post. You can ask people to comment on your post and explain that they’ll receive a freebie in their Messenger inbox when they do. This tactic works well if you have a value-based lead magnet to offer and want to build a list in Messenger. You can also use it to share an offer or a voucher and build a list. Once the bot tool has been created, the voucher will be delivered to the Messenger inbox of whomever comments on the post. An offer post like this one will attract lots of comments, which (provided the comments are longer than a single word) will signal to the Facebook algorithm that you’re sharing quality content and more of your audience should see your posts: #3: Illustrate Sentiment With EmojisPosts that include emojis generally have higher like, comment, and share rates than those that don’t. Using emojis also helps you portray your business as friendly and makes your content more memorable. But not all emojis are equal. Check out this emoji guide to make sure you use the top-performing emojis for click-throughs and engagement. #4: Share a Shout-Out for Content Created by Your Fans and CustomersSharing photos or content sent or posted by fans is a great way to show how much your community and customers matter. Just remember to ask permission and credit the creator. That feeling of goodwill is likely to result in more engagement overall, as well as on the individual Facebook posts. #5: Run a Comment ContestA fast and effective way to increase engagement is to run a contest or giveaway on your Facebook page and ask people to comment on a post to enter. If you ask entrants to also share a photo, your contest can supply you with a stack of user-generated content to share, provided you clearly state that you intend to do this. Remember that you can only ask participants in a Facebook contest to like or comment on a post, post to your page, or message your page to enter. You should also make it clear that “the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook.” Even a simple question can be turned into a fun giveaway, but if you’re stuck for ideas for a fabulously engaging contest, check out this article. #6: Ask for Audience FeedbackPeople love to be included and feel like they matter. How better to make the most of this human trait than to ask your audience for feedback or help with making choices in your business? This tactic can work wonders for increasing engagement. #7: Anticipate and Meet Your Community’s Needs With ContentProviding information your audience wants and finds helpful not only attracts comments and shares, but it’s also the third most common reason consumers decide to buy from a business. (And that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?) While this veterinary group’s Facebook page has fewer than 1,000 likes, sharing useful and timely information about an outbreak of parvovirus helped this post generate loads of engagement from their audience. The better you know and understand the people you want to attract and interact with, the easier it is to share information they value. This post from a supplier of premium carbonated mixers absolutely nailed what their audience needed: And don’t think you have to create all of this information yourself. You can get great engagement from sharing content created by others too! The social team for York Minster knows they’re a tourist destination so this post supplies their audience with the relevant information they need: #8: Pose Open-Ended QuestionsWhat better way to get someone talking than to ask them a question? While you want to avoid engagement bait tactics, asking a question in your Facebook post is a quick and easy way to attract responses. You can make the question lighthearted and fun, as in this post: Or use it as a great opportunity to share behind-the-scenes details about your business. If you’re feeling brave, dive in and ask about a topic you know is slightly contentious. Questions that evoke strong feelings can work very well—just make sure the ensuing discussion stays polite! Note that the business below responded in a friendly way to all of the answers and added value by referencing extra information on the topic. You may even find that asking a simple question helps you accumulate user-generated content (if you ask for it). #9: Tap Into What’s TopicalSharing Facebook posts that discuss what’s happening in your audience’s world is a great way to encourage responses. This lets you join in the conversations that people are already having, so your presence becomes more like that of a friend than an entity that’s trying to sell. And humans respond much better to friends than salespeople. All businesses talk about the seasons and key moments in every marketing calendar. To really stand out, create posts that align with news that you know your audience cares about or that affects them. One of the remarkable happenings this year in England was that the national team did uncharacteristically well in the World Cup, and all of a sudden most of the country turned into fervent supporters. York Minster shared a video of their organist playing his version of the football anthem and it was a hit. If you’re stuck for ideas, check out calendars of national days and international days for inspiration. For local businesses, you might want to talk about events and issues that affect your community. Another approach is to chat about the TV shows your audience will be watching. In this Facebook post, beverage company Innocent refers to the Great British Bake Off TV show, which they know a lot of their audience watches. Notice that their fun take on film titles inspired by the show encourages fans to comment with their own versions, even though they weren’t asked to! An extension of this tactic is newsjacking, where you create a post referring to a big, current news story. To do this well, you need to be able to act fast to capture the moment before too many others do (and while it’s still relevant). A good tip is to monitor what’s trending on Twitter. Become the Social Media Marketing Rockstar for Your Business Save $425 Sale Ends Nov. 27th! #10: Talk About Community Involvement and Impact Beyond BusinessPeople love businesses that stand for more than just making money. On your Facebook page, share updates about non-profits you support, fundraising activities you’re involved with as a business, or any community projects you’re working on. Sharing news about the positive impact you’re having beyond your business (even if it’s only on a small scale) will often attract more engagement than your other post types. #11: Invite the World to Laugh With YouShare a human moment or something mildly frustrating and turn it into a funny post to attract responses from everyone who can relate. The key here is to know your audience really well so you understand their pet peeves. In this post, Benefit makes lighthearted fun of themselves and all of the other Instagrammers who have tried to create the perfect Boomerang clip: People want to connect with people and feel understood. When you create a post that your audience identifies with, your engagement can go through the roof. To illustrate, Innocent attracts comments and shares by tapping into the favorite British subject—the weather—in their own inimitable way: You don’t have to be a professional comedian to make people laugh. Funny things happen every day in business, so just telling those stories can attract a load of comments and shares. Alternatively, why not pass comment on the ridiculous things that are a part of everyday life for the people in your audience? This is a trick that professional comedians use over and over again. And it’s something that Innocent does incredibly well. It goes without saying that the better you know your audience, the easier it will be to make them laugh. #12: Use Scroll-Stopping Media to Attract AttentionThe first stage in creating engagement is to attract attention to your posts in the Facebook news feed. Using images and video that stand out without being garish and speak to your target audience is essential. However, not all images and video are created equal. Overused stock photos won’t draw eyeballs to your posts, so it’s much better to use photos that you’ve taken yourself. News Feed ImagesYour images don’t have to be professional or perfect. Get into the habit of taking quick snaps on your phone, maybe add an interesting crop or filter, and you’ll soon build a gallery of unique visuals. To add extra pizzazz, consider creating a collage or adding a frame, overlay, eye-catching effect, or text. You can use web-based tools such as Canva, PicMonkey, or Easil; or apps such as Wordswag or FrameMagic (iOS only). If you’re wondering what to include in your images, remember that we’re instinctively drawn to human faces in the news feed. This may well be because facial expressions are universal, across all cultures. Also remember that you’re not restricted to sharing just a single image or video in a Facebook post. Try adding more than one image or using a carousel format to attract more eyes to your content. Facebook states that ads using the carousel format deliver a cost per click that’s 20%-30% lower than standard link ads. There’s every chance that this uplift in effectiveness translates to organic posts too. Alternatively, consider creating animated visuals and/or creating GIFs as an eye-catching alternative to static images. There’s a whole raft of tools and apps available that make this a viable option for even the most non-techie marketer. Post Native VideoIt’s long been an accepted truth that Facebook video posts attract more attention than any other type of post. One BuzzSumo study found that of the top 20 most shared Facebook posts in 2017, only three weren’t video posts. However, certain types of video perform better than others. One factor that influences the amount of engagement on a video post is the length of the video. Another factor is the amount of text in the post itself. The takeaway from BuzzSumo’s review of 100 million Facebook videos is to aim to create videos that are 60-90 seconds long and post text of 84 characters for optimum engagement. If you’re stuck for video topics, the same BuzzSumo study found that people on Facebook share and engage the most with these video types:
But don’t just settle for the standard landscape video presentation. In a study of more than 33,000 Facebook videos, Wochit found that square videos get 275% more views, 482% more shares, 523% more comments, and 349% more reactions than the average landscape video. And 2018 has seen a massive increase in the sharing of vertical video, with the majority of vertical video viewers agreeing that the format is more engaging than landscape video. These tips from Facebook will help you make the most of the vertical format. To craft an attention-grabbing headline for your video, check out the Wochit study, which includes analysis of the most common three- and four-word phrases used in Facebook video headlines and the number of views attracted. It seems that titles suggesting we need to know about something will motivate us to watch more videos than other titles will. If you want to use video and even the thought of creating one using your phone puts you off, use Facebook’s slideshow feature and splice several images together for a quick and simple solution. You can even download it when you’re done to share on other sites too. Another option is to use a tool such as Lumen5 to create a video from your Word document or blog post, or Wave.video for simple video creation. However you create your video, make sure it has captions to cater to the high percentage of Facebook users who watch video with the sound off. If your video doesn’t already include captions, Facebook will generate them for you. Keep in mind that although accepted marketing wisdom says a post with a video will get more engagement than a post with an image, that’s not always the case. This Buffer study found that posts with images attract the most engagement. How well your visuals work depends on your audience and the image or video in question. Plus, people like variety. So use a mix of both! Here, two similar posts attract very different amounts of engagement. The post created with multiple images attracted many more views and much greater engagement than a similar post containing a video. Go LiveOne of the quickest ways to ramp up your Facebook engagement is to go live on your page. According to Facebook, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. In a separate Agorapulse experiment, the Facebook Live videos analyzed attracted over 1,300% more comments than the uploaded video posts. Whereas shorter uploaded videos seem to generate the best response, it’s important your Facebook live streams are long enough to allow people to join and engage. A BuzzSumo study found that Facebook Live videos should be a minimum of 15 minutes long to gain maximum engagement. To get the most engagement, make sure to promote your Facebook live in advance. If your audience doesn’t know you’re live, they won’t join the stream and you’ll miss the opportunity to engage with them. Doing a thorough job of promoting will also make sure you bring new people to your page who’ve never met you before. For maximum results, go live at regular times every week so your live show can become a diarized event for your followers. If you want to create extra buzz and engagement around your live video, consider running a contest based on comments posted during the live stream, or share a special promotion for the duration of the live broadcast only. #13: Tell a Significant Story With Emotional ContextWe all know that marketing and storytelling are a match made in heaven, but sharing a story on your Facebook page, preferably one that tugs at the heartstrings, can also be fantastic for engagement and shares. It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out tale to be effective. Just a simple story that’s relevant to your customers or community can work. This veterinary practice shared a sad story with a happy ending, and attracted masses of comments and shares as a result: Basics to Have in Place Right Now To get better engagement with your Facebook content, make sure you have these basics covered. Know Whom You Want to Attract on Facebook It sounds simple enough, but the better you understand the people you want to attract, the easier it will be for you to be able to create posts that are relevant and relatable. They’ll naturally attract the right people because you’ll be able to speak their language and show how much you understand their situation. For instance, you might describe your ideal customer as being a mother of two children younger than age 8 years, living in a specific location. But this profile needs to be much more detailed. Is this a mother who’s committed to staying at home to raise her family, or juggling a career and childcare? Does she have a partner, or is she a single mom? What about her income level? How does she spend her leisure time? Dig deep enough into the details about your ideal customer to know what their daily routine looks like, what challenges they face, what really matters to them, what their aspirations are, and what their short-term goals are. For more tips on creating buyer personas for a wide variety of industries, check out this article; for advice relating more to a B2B brand, start here. Define Your Brand Personality You also need to develop your brand voice and determine why you’re different. It sounds harsh, but if you’re boring or sound like every other business in your industry, who’s going to be interested? Riverford Organic Farmers is very clear (and vocal) about its vision, mission, and beliefs. Prioritize Relationships by Modeling Engagement Creating engagement doesn’t usually happen in a vacuum. Sustained engagement will result from the relationship you’ve built with your audience over time. Ideally, aim to build a community where people talk not only to you, but also to each other, and where people help each other out. Riverford has built such a strong community that they got massive support on their Facebook page when they announced a price increase. For best results, lead by example. Be kind, supportive, and helpful, and respond to comments, including negative ones, fast. Research shows that people expect brands to respond within 4-6 hours on Facebook. Show that you’re willing to go the extra mile when you deal with questions and you’ll foster goodwill, which helps boost engagement. Here, Fever-Tree puts in the effort to help a customer, and the customer support person signs off with his name, which helps build trust: Respond to Comments on Posts The more responsive you are to people who comment on your posts, the more likely they are to continue to respond to you. Also, we know that the Facebook algorithm counts discussion as a strong signal of quality content, so the more you respond to comments, the more algorithm “bonus points” you’ll collect! Being responsive also can help boost your profits. People are more likely to buy from brands that are responsive on social media. You can be helpful and humorous at the same time: … or just plain funny. I’m sure that half the reason this page gets such consistent engagement is that anyone who responds waits to see what quip Innocent will answer with! You can also use replies to comments to add a (humorous) human side to a business that may otherwise find it tricky to do so: ConclusionBe sure to consistently check what’s working by reviewing your Facebook page Insights. It’s likely that the Facebook posts you predict will attract a ton of engagement may not end up performing as well as other posts. At the end of the day, it’s your audience that decides what’s engagement-worthy, not you! Be ready to try different tactics too. If you notice that your link posts get very little engagement, try posting the link that you’d love your audience to click on in the comments of a post that’s designed to maximize engagement. This could be a great way to send interested people to your website without sacrificing engagement on your posts and therefore losing any advantage you may have gained with the Facebook algorithm. Remember that what’s at the center of attracting more engagement on Facebook is being human. Humans go on Facebook to interact with humans. So the more human your business can be, the better results you’ll get. What do you think? What Facebook post engagement tips will you try first? Do you have any tactics you’d like to add to this list? I’d love to know! More articles about Facebook marketing:Become the Social Media Marketing Rockstar for Your Business Save $425 Sale Ends Nov. 27th! Social Media via Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/1LtH18p November 26, 2018 at 05:03AM |
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