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4 Social Media Strategies That Can Help Bring in 23 Percent More Profits

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By Linda Orr

Everything you need to know about effectively and efficiently targeting your audience through social media.

40 percent of the world’s population and 69 percent of Americans aged 18-29 are active users of social media. Social media has revolutionized how companies communicate with, listen to and learn from customers, much like TV advertising did in the 20th century.

A marketing strategy involves identifying a target market, establishing actions to reach that target market and continual analysis and adjustments. A social media strategy, on the other hand, educates engages, and excites your customers and builds brand loyalty. Excited and engaged customers bring in 23 percent more profits. Through video sharing sites customers can quasi-experience products as well, making a purchase more likely. Here are four areas of social media that all entrepreneurs should know.

1. The power of blogging and content marketing.

According to the book M: Marketing, 78 percent of customers prefer to get to know a company through articles rather than ads. Content marketing has six times higher conversion rates and has the potential for a 7.8-X boost in web traffic than other social media tools. In 2018, U.S. adults spent an average of 3 hours, 35 minutes per day on smartphones. Most of this time lends itself towards content marketing. For example, customers spend 11 percent of this time on personal productivity and finances. Customers want content marketing about personal finance management. They want to read it.

If you sell medical devices, you should have articles about any health issue surrounding the problem that your product solves. If you sell makeup, you should have how-to articles about makeup application and likely skin care guides. If you own a restaurant, provide information about food trends, dieting, or perhaps event planning.

To start a content campaign, figure out what your customers might care about and start writing. Local experts may be happy to provide articles because that is free social media advertising for them. Also, content marketing generated toward a political or charitable cause is impactful because 73 percent of all customers want to buy from companies that communicate upstanding moral philosophies.

2. Read and respond to reviews and complaints.

84 percent of customers trust online reviews. Ask your customers to review your company. You can manually check sites, like Google, or use reputation management software to track online comments and reviews. Respond to comments on social media rapidly! 53 percent of customers from all sites and 72 percent of Twitter customers expect a response in one hour, according to M: Marketing. Social media is now the number one place where customers want their complaints handled. No response or a template response are bad responses. Someone inside your company should personally address each complaint.

3. It’s not just about Facebook anymore.

All other social media channels should be used based on your specific target market. 68 percent of Americans use Facebook. Overall Facebook usage has been slowly declining and may be unprofessional. If you have a good webpage, there is no reason to have a Facebook page. It can confuse and overwhelm customers.  A local farmer’s market announces events, like strawberry picking dates, on different sites like Facebook and Twitter at different times. Confusion and added time searching turn customers away. 32 percent of Americans not on Facebook will give up as well. Stick with a robust homepage.

M: Marketing says that the average cost per click on a Facebook ad is $1.72. There is a 0.77 percent conversion rate on these clicks. That means that it costs $223.37 to gain a customer from Facebook plus the cost to create and manage the ad. You will likely not get a return on this investment although there are exceptions.

Two hundred sixty million people use LinkedIn each month; 40 percent daily. Use it for business-to-business content marketing! LinkedIn users prefer more word count per article than other sites. The most read articles, by more than a factor of three, were articles over 1,900 words. LinkedIn also has the highest conversion rate of all the sites. The lead to conversion rate is 2.74 percent versus Facebook (0.77 percent) and Twitter (0.69 percent).

Since Google bought YouTube, it shows up prominently in searches. Seventy-three percent of Americans use YouTube, the highest percentage of all social media forms. With video, you can engage emotion and excitement better. You can post a how-to and other useful videos. Even incredibly professional companies like the Cleveland Clinic use YouTube to demonstrate their innovations and accolades.

Dr. Dre launched “Beats by Dre” using social media. Instagram was influential in building brand awareness, attracting approximately 2.5 million followers. 35 percent of Americans use Instagram. Instagram, like YouTube, is a place to build excitement quickly.

Sites like Twitter and Pinterest have an audience of less than 35 percent of Americans. Pinterest is a great place to show home décor products and vacation pictures and would be helpful in those markets. Twitter can be a low investment place to respond to user comments rapidly.

Third-party bloggers are like a combination of content marketing and online reviews. Disney is famous for its use of Disney Moms. A group of 1,300 select moms receive perks, but not compensation, to visit and blog about their experiences. The moms talk about real issues, like dealing with food allergies or what to pack for a day in the park. Third party blogs are more credible and relatable.

4. Use data to learn, analyze and adapt.

An advantage of social media usage is the available data. You can use social media metrics to gauge attitudes, preferences, and trends. Available metrics are hits, page views, bounce rates, click paths, conversion rates and keyword analysis. There are numerous software packages available to examine each metric. Do not put too much weight on keyword optimization. Google regularly changes its search algorithms so sites should never be designed to game the Google system.

Use social media strategically. Make sure you know your target market. Use the tools to communicate in an engaging, informative, and caring way. Content marketing and responding to online reviews are the most important social media tools. Use the available metrics to revise your actions.

Feature Image Credit: jayk7 | Getty Images

By Linda Orr

Dr. Linda Orr is a Marketing Professor at the University of Akron. She has taught marketing and sales courses for over two decades and is the author of five books and many articles. Dr. Orr has experience in the record, restaurant and finance industries, along with numerous consulting experiences.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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4 Things You Find In Every Successful Marketing Plan

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By Nurdin Budi Mustofa

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been going for a while and you’re considering expansion, your business needs a solid marketing plan. If you don’t have a clear strategy that outlines how you’re going to keep your existing customers and attract new ones in the future, your marketing efforts won’t have a direction and they’re not likely to be very successful. If you think that your marketing plan needs an overhaul or you’re just about to write your very first one, these are the key things that you need to include.

Identify Your Target Market

You can’t run a marketing campaign if you don’t know who it’s aimed at, so understanding your target market is the first thing that you need to do. The best way to do that is to use master data management. What is master data management, you may be wondering? It’s a process that you can use to bring together all of the data that you hold about your customers from sales and marketing, accounts, and social media. By looking at the general trends in your customer data, you can get an idea of exactly who they are. This is essential if you’re going to create a marketing campaign that really resonates with them. If you don’t understand your customers, you can easily end up wasting resources on a marketing campaign that doesn’t connect with them at all.

Understand Your Marketing Goals

The next thing that you need to do is think about what your marketing goals are. If you’re just starting out, you should be aiming to get your first customers and promote your brand identity. If you’ve already been operating for a while, you might be focused on a new product launch or perhaps trying to break into a new market segment. Whatever your goals are, it’s important that you’re clear on what they are from the outset so you can focus on them and not waste resources on other areas.

Research Marketing Tactics

Different marketing tactics have their own benefits and drawbacks so it’s important that you do some research. For example, if you’re trying to increase sales to the older generation, advertising on social media might not be the best route. You will probably have more success with traditional marketing techniques. Think about what your goals are and who your marketing campaign is aimed at and then look at which techniques are best suited to those things.

Set A Budget

The biggest mistake you can make is going in without a budget. If you don’t have a cap on your spending, it’s so easy to keep funneling money into marketing campaigns indefinitely. But it’s important that you’re weighing up the cost of marketing with the return on investment that you’re seeing. If you spend more on the marketing campaign than you get back in sales, you’re losing a lot of money. That’s why it’s essential that you set a realistic budget and stick to it when you’re running marketing campaigns.

If you can include all of these things in your marketing plan, it should be a huge success.

By Nurdin Budi Mustofa

Sourced from Digital Hints

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Why The Best PR Works Hand In Hand With Sales

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By Leslie Licano

You might think that public relations and sales are two separate facets of your business, but you may be surprised to hear that PR works best in direct collaboration with sales to create one congruent experience for your customer. Here are a few ways in which PR and sales can work together.

Sharing Information: Your sales team is out in the field every day getting tremendous feedback and insight into your target market. Why let all that good information remain siloed? Let your sales team help inform the PR strategy by sharing insights, such as what your target market cares about, what they’re reading and what resonates with them. This might help develop a pitch, drive story angles and even identify new media outlets.

Exposure Is Good For All: It’s hard being a salesperson, especially when initially getting in the door to introduce the company. However, PR can lay the groundwork by helping your company get exposure. Instead of getting, “You’re calling from where?” from customers, how refreshing would it be for your salespeople to reach out to a target market that’s already familiar with the brand?

Building Credibility: Thought leadership is the name, and credibility is the game! When your leaders are featured in reputable publications, it can open the door for sales, as it proves that the company is at the top of its game and knows what it’s talking about.

Following Up: Coming up with a reason to follow up can be a struggle for your sales team. However, a PR win, such as a placement in a publication or thought leadership feature, can be a great lead-in to reopening a conversation. Sales teams can forward these wins with a note saying they thought the client might be interested in the information.

Creating Social Content: PR wins are also a great item to promote on social media. Because they provide such valuable third-party credibility, most companies will share their media placements online to increase exposure for wins. Many also invest in “boosting” the posts to reach specific target audiences or decision-makers. Right message, right audiences, right time.

Website Content: Any articles that don’t secure placement in a publication can be featured on your website. This type of content can become a part of the lead generation funnel, guiding potential customers to your website, helping to collect emails and providing more leads for your sales team.

As Seen On: When a PR firm secures a placement that has a big name attached, such as being featured in Oprah’s magazine or on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the company will be able to include that in their marketing. This can be a very high-performing strategy that can really help the sales team tie everything together for the customer.

PR And Sales, Unite!

Gather the team, and start generating some business. These are just a few ways in which PR and sales can work together to help grow revenue and build business. Make sure that your sales team knows what placements are at their disposal and how they can use PR content to their advantage. Additionally, any insights your sales team would like to provide will surely be appreciated.

By Leslie Licano

Co-Founder of Beyond Fifteen Communications, a SoCal PR and communications firm known for taking clients beyond their 15 minutes of fame.

Sourced from Forbes

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2 tips to increase traffic to your website (without spending money)

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Sourced from Alison Wolf.

Getting organic traffic to your website firstly takes time and patience to do. You will NOT get any overnight success with this!

By being consistent and having a long term strategy, you can start to see you ranking on the search engines and have more traffic to your website.

Top two strategies to driving traffic to your website are:

1. Social Media Marketing

2. Content Marketing

Here I will dive into how both tips can work for you and what steps you should be taking.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is a popular way of targeting specific groups of people. But it is also a way of truly engaging with them and turn them into high-quality leads.

92% of small businesses use social media as they consider it an important part.

When it comes to using social media, unless you are a large business with large teams of staff, only stick to 1 or 2 platforms and dominate them.

Every platform is targeted to different segments of society, so you need to be strategic in choosing which platform is best for you.

– Facebook Targeted towards B2C and generation Y and older (so people born no later than the mid-1990s)

– Twitter Used by a whole variety of different segments of society. Though some businesses will find Twitter more useful than others. To find out if Twitter is a good path for you to take, look at your direct competitors and your target market.

– Instagram A mainly visual platform that is mainly used by Millennials. As a business, you can take advantage of this by using ‘influencers‘ to market your product.

– Pinterest Another mainly visual platform, where you can post a picture that gets redirected to your website. Pinterest is also great for SEO, as Google images show Pinterest images.

– LinkedIn The ultimate B2B platform, where businesses are networking with businesses. If you are in the B2B industry then LinkedIn is the only platform you should be taking advantage of.

Don’t know where to start?

My business partner Josh Turner has done for you LinkedIn campaign management services. You will get a pipeline of clients consistently full of 10-15 appointments every month with high-end clients.

Content Marketing

Content is all about creating content for your target market that they will love and want to use you as their go-to resource, then eventually buying from you. The biggest trick to content marketing is to stay consistent, give value and be useful!

Here is a little guide to how you CAN do content marketing in your business.

– Keyword Research

Keyword research is a must done starting point for any content creator. To do keyword research effectively look at Facebook groups and forums with your target market in and look at what the hot topic of discussion is.

– Blog or Vlog Regularly

Blogging or vlogging (video blog) regularly then you will start to attract regular visitors to your website. Make sure you optimize your blog or vlog with specific keywords (in the vlog description).

– Optimize Your Meta Description

Meta descriptions are the small piece of text under the site title on Google search results. Adding the keyword in the meta description so that you rank higher for the keyword. Using a tool such as Yoast SEO (a WordPress Plugin) will help you to do this effortlessly.

– Linking (internal and external) To Create A Structure

What Google loves the most is when websites have a structure. Google wants to see you linking to other pages or posts within your website. Also, Google wants to see you linking out to other websites. Using external websites to back up what you are saying in your post or an affiliate link is the normal method to do external links.

Those are my top 2 tips for driving more traffic to your website. If you have enjoyed this post then please share it on social media or comment below.

Looking for a blog writer in the B2B niche, then send me a message by clicking here

Sourced from Alison Wolf

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Facebook pulls Conservative Party adverts for breaching rules

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By Neil Shaw.

“Good. My thoughts on this kind of stunt are unprintable.”

Facebook has taken down Conservative Party adverts which used edited versions of BBC content.

The corporation told the social network that the adverts infringed on its intellectual property rights, after claiming they could “damage perceptions of our impartiality”.

“We have removed this content following a valid intellectual property claim from the rights holder, the BBC,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

“Whenever we receive valid IP claims against content on the platform, in advertising or elsewhere, we act in accordance with our policies and take action as required.”

One of the adverts the BBC was concerned about included an edited clip of BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg saying “pointless delay to Brexit”, followed by newsreader Huw Edwards stating “another Brexit delay”.

It also used a caption, saying: “A hung parliament = gridlock. Stop the chaos. Vote Conservative.”

Mr Edwards welcomed the move, tweeting: “Good. My thoughts on this kind of stunt are unprintable.”

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said last week that it was “clear” the footage was “not edited in a manner that misleads or changes the reporting”, adding that viewers can “judge for themselves”.

The move comes at a challenging time for Facebook, as the tech giant faces pressure to ban political adverts altogether in the midst of a General Election.

It’s rival, Twitter, has banned political advertising on its platform, while Google has said it will no longer allow voters to be targeted by advertisers based on their political affiliation.

Last month, the Conservatives edited a video of Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer to make him appear unable to answer a question on Brexit.

In the minute-long video which was posted on the party’s Twitter account, Sir Keir was questioned on ITV’s Good Morning Britain by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid over Labour’s Brexit policy.

The video ends with Sir Keir staring at the camera after being asked by Mr Morgan: “Why would the EU give you a good deal if they know you are going to actively campaign against it?”

However, in the original interview Sir Keir replied to the host.

Feature Image Credit: Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at a press conference in Millbank Tower, London, while on the General Election campaign trail.

By Neil Shaw

Sourced from WalesOnline

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Tips From A CEO and Top Influencer On Developing A Best-In-Class Influencer Program

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By Kimberly A. Whitler

One of the most enjoyable parts of shifting from practitioner (GM/CMO roles) to professor has been the opportunity to connect with a variety of people I would not have otherwise met. Once such person is Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium and a leading influencer of CMOs (see here). As somebody who works with firms around the world and has amassed a very strong social following (@TamaraMcCleary – 307,000 twitter followers), she is an expert with deep insight. I have had a series of discussions with McCleary regarding her perspective on influencers and “influence” more generally. Below, McCleary provides advice to CMOs on how to develop an influencer marketing program for their brand. To read Part 1, which identifies the six different types of influencers and how to spot a “real” from a fake influencer, see here.

Kimberly Whitler: What tips can you provide a CMO who wants to develop a best-in-class influencer program?

Tamara McCleary:

1. Have an outcome for success defined before starting the program. What do you want to achieve? How will you measure success? When I consult with brands, I reverse engineer success by clearly identifying desired outcomes, understanding executive-level expectations, and evaluating KPI’s the program will ultimately be measured against.

2. Do your due diligence when seeking out an agency to help you organize a successful program. Obtain multiple bids (get a second or third opinion, you may be surprised). Look at various companies and don’t just settle on the first one that comes to you. In order to not only make your initiative successful, but secure a bigger budget for your next round, engage with companies that have demonstrated success. Don’t go for the least expensive (or the most expensive), but rather, go with the one which can prove and has demonstrated success and which you are most comfortable with.

3. Think through the compensation structure. Paid, unpaid or hybrid? Are you going to pay your influencers to be involved with your program or just provide inside knowledge, invite them to special events, etc.? Will you go with a hybrid approach where many of your influencers are unpaid but a limited number are paid for their participation? There are a variety of different ways to go when it comes to working with influencers.

4. Understand the process. Make sure the company you decide to work with explains their process thoroughly, and get your results in writing. If the company you are considering is not utilizing analytics in the selection of influencers beyond vanity metrics, you’re not working with pros and abort mission. At my organization, Thulium, we employ a heavy emphasis on engagement metrics to weed-out the false appearance of influence. Remember the purpose of an influencer program: you deserve substance for your spend, so don’t settle for empty fluff.

5. Have a plan for your influencers. Do you know what you want your influencers to do? Do you have a clear strategy for utilizing them? One of the biggest mistakes organizations make when bringing in influencers is a lack of focus and specificity. You run the risk of not getting the most bang for your buck if you leave it up to the influencer to know what you expect of them. Clarity of vision, and focus, paired with a well-defined strategy and most importantly solid execution and continued follow-up are mission-critical to the success of any influencer program.

6. Think long-term. It’s important to look at an influencer program as a long-term relationship-building program. A long-term program will allow your brand to create true brand advocates, powerful brand evangelists, and raving fans.

In prior articles I’ve written about why U.S. marketers are losing the influencer battle, what marketers can learn from top CMO influencers, and mistakes marketers make when working with influencers, there is a common theme—relationship development. The more marketers approach influencers with a partnership mentality versus a transactional/legal mentality, the more likely they are to generate authentic influence. And this is one place where the east is beating the west (see Harvard Business Review article here and HBR podcast here).

Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler and @TamaraMcCleary

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Kimberly A. Whitler

Sourced from Forbes

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‘Facebook support is like going to the DMV’: Confessions of a frustrated media buyer

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By Kristina Monllos

Ad buyers have a lot of gripes about Facebook’s ad platform, but it still reigns supreme because it offers targeting and efficiency buyers say they can’t find elsewhere. But for ad buyers that temporarily lose access to it, the biggest problem might be how disconnected its sales, support and product teams are. One media buyer, who buys media for his e-commerce business as well as for other brands, discovered recently that his account was disabled and access to advertising tools revoked and has been unable to speak to a human about the issue.

In the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for honesty, we hear from the buyer who details how difficult it is to navigate Facebook’s support team. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’ve been having trouble running ads on Facebook. Tell us about that.
I’ve been running ads for seven or eight years. I’ve run ads for fashion companies, my own companies and spent multiple millions of dollars on Facebook ads. This year, I got disabled. I wasn’t running ads at the time. I thought it was done in error. I submitted an appeal and got an instant response that it was final. The next day, I got an alert that not only was that account disabled but I’d lost access to all advertising tools. It’s been a while since that happened. It’s a bummer, considering I make my living through running Facebook ads for other people and/or managing some of our ads for our company.

What have you done to try and fix the issue?
I have some friends at Facebook that I’ve reached out to and asked about it, but that hasn’t been much help. Other than that, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten a human reply. Their live chat is kind of a joke. It’s just a person who responds back to you and links you to their support forms. They don’t have access to do anything on behalf of you. They can just tell you where to find information. If you already have the links, it’s a dead end. Also, when you’re disabled, you’re not able to submit appeals anymore.

You said Facebook support isn’t helpful. Can you elaborate?
Their support team doesn’t talk to salespeople which doesn’t talk to the policy and compliance teams. All of that makes Facebook’s support a black box and a shit show. If you have an ad rep and you’re spending enough money, it doesn’t matter. You can send a text and all of a sudden you have your stuff fixed and it’s restored within five minutes. If you’re not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month [you don’t get that kind of response]. Also, during this whole process, I’m still getting calls from Facebook marketing experts like, “Hey, Q4 is around the corner. It would be really nice to increase your budgets.” I’m like, “This is the third time you’ve called me in seven days and I haven’t had ad access. I would love to spend some money, but I can’t.” They still call me, and I also get automated emails from Facebook for an advertising account that’s disabled and linked to a profile that’s unable to use advertising tools.

What would you like them to do?
All I’m trying to do is get in touch with a human to understand why I was disabled in the first place. I believe it was in error, but if I did something I’d like to know what I did so I can not do that again. But if this is a final decision, maybe the internal team should share that so their products aren’t sending automated emails or suggesting people who are banned or disable to try new things. They should talk to each other, but none of them do. Facebook support is like going to the DMV.

This is a problem specific to your account. Have you heard of other people dealing with similar situations?
I know it’s not just me. There are Facebook ad buyer groups and media buyer groups where people are also confused about if they’ve gotten banned in error, if it’s automated or if it’s scrutiny in the media or if they’re trying to tighten the grip. And I follow a lot of the media buyers on Twitter, and they have similar issues. I don’t have a lot of faith in getting my account back. I don’t know what the next steps are. Do I get a new IP address? New credit card? New legal entity? New Facebook profile? All just to run Facebook ads. If there’s any relationship to the future account, entity, Facebook address could be instantly revoked if the account is somehow connected with your old one. That’s what one of the reps from Facebook suggested to me: “In the meantime, if you want to spend money for Q4, I would suggest making a new profile.” You work at Facebook, and you’re suggesting that I make a new profile?

Do you think it’s scalable for them to have more human contact?
It’s hard to scale it, for sure. At the same time, if it’s hard scale [how do you have] marketing reps calling people five times in a row while they’re banned? Obviously they can scale trying to get me to spend money. I can’t spend money. I would’ve already been spending money on the first call. You’ve wasted their time and mine. Equip the marketing experts, the people who are doing the outreach with the same level of elevated access or permissions as someone on the policy team. Or have them looped in immediately [on the shutdown of an account] so they’re not wasting their time.

With all of the trouble you’re having on Facebook, have you considered other channels? 
We have, but Facebook has been the best way to target people and the best solution. It’s where we’ve spent the majority of our marketing budget over the last year, about 85%. Twitter doesn’t really have the optimization tools or the targeting tools. At least, they aren’t as sophisticated. Every time we’ve tried there, it’s just been a massive waste. Within Google, we tried recently and the CPC was just so high. It’s like $30 a click, whereas we’re paying $2 or $3 a click, for example, on Facebook. It’s just not feasible.

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

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How To Create A Marketing Plan For Social Networking

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By Mitrovman Mitrovski

Need to Build a Marketing Plan for Social Networking? That’s not an easy task. Many of us have difficulties in understanding what it is. Let alone making one from scratch.

Simply put, every action you take on social media should be part of a broader marketing strategy. This means that every post, response, like, or comment should be guided by a plan directly geared toward achieving business goals. That may sound complicated, but if you take the time to build a comprehensive social networking strategy, the rest will come naturally. Anyone can do this if they properly approach that matter.

What is a social media marketing plan?

img source: hubspot.com

It summarizes everything you plan and hopes to accomplish in your business by using social networks. The plan should include checking your orders, where you want them, and what tools you will use to achieve this. In general, the more accurate you are in creating a plan, the more effective you’ll be in implementing it. Try to be concise. Do not make a plan that’s so broad or demanding that it is virtually unattainable. The plan will guide your actions, but it will also be a measure to determine whether or not you are moving towards success.

You can follow this simple plan to create your strategy.

1. Create your social network goals

img source: martechtoday.com

The first step in any strategy on social networks is to set the business goals. When you define goals, that allows you to react quickly. Especially if the campaign you are running doesn’t meet your expectations. Without goals, you don’t even have the means to measure success or proof of return on investment (ROI). The goals should be aligned with your broad marketing strategy. That way, the efforts you make on social networks go directly to the realization of your business ideas. If your social media strategy is proven to support your business goals, you are more likely to pay back and make new investments. Go beyond benchmarks such as likes or retweets. Focus on advanced metrics like leads, conversion rates, and web referrals. It would be a good idea to keep track of your goals by using the SMART backbone. This means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

2. Check your social networks

Before creating a marketing plan for social networks, you should evaluate their current benefits and the way you use them. Therefore, using Content, Strategy & Branding literature is a fantastic read.

This means you need to find out who you are connected to, then what social networks your target audience is mostly using, and what your social media presence is like compared to your competition.

3. Create or improve your accounts

img source: jakpost.net

When you’re done checking your accounts, it’s time to refine your online presence. Choose the one that best fits your business goals. If you still don’t have an online profile that you should focus on the most, create one having a wider audience and goals in mind. If you have one, maybe it’s time to update and improve it. This will give you the best possible results at the end. Remember that every social network has a unique audience. Therefore, each of them should be treated differently.

Profile optimization helps you generate more web traffic to your online business. Cross-promotion of accounts on social networks can increase the reach of a post. Profiles should be completely populated, and images and text should be optimized for the particular network.

4. Create a content plan and an announcements calendar

img source: fireflydigital.com

Good content is certainly essential for success on social networks. Your social media marketing plan should also include a content marketing plan, consisting of content creation strategies and the announcements calendar. Your social network content plan should answer some of these questions:

  • What kind of content are you going to post online?
  • How often will you post content?
  • What is the target group for each content type?
  • Who will create the content?
  • How will you promote the content?

Your announcement calendar will include the dates and times when you intend to post on Facebook, Instagram, Tweeter, etc. Create a calendar and schedule announcements, so you don’t have to do it every day.

5. Test and analyze your marketing plan

img source: courses.aiu.edu

To find out what adjustments you need to make in your marketing strategy better, you must constantly test it. Use every opportunity to test the actions you take on social networks. Analyze both successful and unsuccessful campaigns. That way, you can tailor your marketing strategy to your goals. Research is also a great way to measure success. Ask your followers for their opinion on your work. This kind of direct approach can sometimes be extremely effective.

Feature Image Credit: villagebriefing.com

By Mitrovman Mitrovski

Sourced from Chart Attack

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Four arguments why B2B marketers should spend more on brand building

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By James Wood

B2B marketers can be very focused on the short term, and who can blame them? Sales are putting on the pressure for a constant stream of leads and business leaders have quarterly targets to hit to keep the shareholders at bay.

It’s this short term thinking that means the majority of activity produced by B2B marketing teams is below the line, bottom of the funnel, sales ‘activation’ activity (call it the boring stuff) and not the bigger, fame and brand building advertising activity that the majority of B2C brands seem focus on (the glamorous stuff).

Now, couple this with the fact that the average tenure of a CMO is now just 43 months (and that new incumbent wants to shake things up and make their mark on the business), and it’ll come as no surprise that only 4% of B2B marketing teams measure impact beyond six months.

But a new report from the B2B Institute and LinkedIn, packed with research from Advertising Effectiveness stalwarts Les Binet and Peter Field, says this short-sightedness is damaging the growth potential of B2B brands.

According to ‘The 5 principles of growth in B2B Marketing’, in order to grow, B2B marketers need to start shifting efforts (and budgets) towards a 50/50 split between short term activation activity and long term brand building (the stuff that makes you famous).

However, it’s pretty clear we are starting on the back foot. B2B marketers are incredibly sceptical about the value of brand building and many have a misconstrued view of the effect brand building has on the business.

Just 30% of B2B marketers, for example, believe advertising has an effect on pricing power and only 50% believe reach is a strong predictor of success. It’s pretty clear businesses need to start thinking differently about longer term brand building. But as with any shift, there has to be a strong reason to do so.

So, we have distilled the findings from the report into four arguments you can take to your board/sceptical CMO to convince them to put more budget into longer term brand building, B2B advertising and fame defining campaigns and activities.

Argument one: “Look! You can’t argue with the facts – brand building will build our market share and our bottom line.”

Let’s start with a fundamental rule. The share of voice rule. A rule that has been known and stayed consistent for the last 50 years. The rule goes thus: brands that set their share of voice (share of all category advertising expenditure) above their share of market, will tend to grow.

This has been well known in B2C, but Binet and Field have shown the trend is true in B2B – a 10% extra share of voice, for example, will lead to a rise in market share of 0.7% per year.

Put simply: shout louder than the competition in a way that gets you noticed and you will expand. That alone is worth the investment.

Argument two: “We can kill two birds with one stone with this! Not only will brand building attract new customers, but it’s a great way to reassure our current customers they have made the right choice and feel proud about being our partner.”

Put simply, brands grow in two ways, either by gaining more customers, or by selling more to current customers. In B2B, the focus is often put on the latter thanks to new customer acquisition costs being high. But this piece of research shows us that actually the best way to achieve real growth is to acquire new customers, meaning more has to be put into activity to attract them.

But shifting budgets to attract new customers doesn’t have to come at the cost of current customers – putting money into brand campaigns also helps reassure existing customers they have made the right choice (and means they can show off to their mates in the pub about working with a cool, well known brand.)

Argument three: “Don’t trust me, trust Danny Khaneman! We need to be the brand that is the easiest to choose when a potential customer is shopping around.”

While everyone seems to think B2B buyers are purely rational beings, the truth is just like anyone else, many of the decisions they make are not made on purely rational thoughts or processes but on brands, products and services that are the most ‘mentally available’. As the economist Daniel Kahneman says, “the brain is largely a machine for jumping to conclusions”.

This is due to the Availability Heuristic – a rule that says given the choice between several options, people prefer the one that comes to mind most easily. It’s the reason that when you are shopping you are most likely to pick up Fairy washing up liquid and Kelloggs cornflakes, rather than unknown brands.

Maximising mental availability, or being the easiest brand to choose to buy, is just as important in B2B as in B2C and the best way to do this is to build fame through brand building campaigns.

Argument four: “A suit isn’t a shield for emotions! After all, Business people are people too, they just happen to be at work. So we need to use the power of emotion to ensure people engage with our brand. And guess what? The best way to do that is long term advertising campaigns.”

As a marketer, one of your key aims should be to make people feel positively towards your brand, even if they can’t say why. That comes from creating emotions and feelings around your brand and positioning yourself in a way that becomes more firmly embedded in a buyer’s memory than functional product messages.

This will translate into real business results, thanks to the fact that if we like a brand (or feel a positive emotion towards it) we are more likely to hold positive beliefs about its benefits. And it shows in the results – emotion based, fame building campaigns outperform rational ones by a margin of 10x. Even the tightest CFO can’t say no to that.

B2B marketers need to need to take off those short term blinkers and start thinking about how we build brands that grow, become famous and build the business over the long term. While the short term activation activity is still key, we need to start readdressing the balance and we hope this starts today.

A big thanks to The B2B Institute, LinkedIn, as well as Les Binet and Peter Field, for their excellent research on which this whole article is based. You can download the full research report here.

Feature Image Credit: Building B2B brands

By James Wood

James Wood, head of Earnest Labs, the innovation arm of Earnest

Sourced from The Drum

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It’s shockingly difficult to escape the web’s most pervasive dark patterns

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By Hana Habib and Lorrie Cranor

Two Carnegie Mellon researchers write that opting out of online tracking remains incredibly confusing.

You’ve probably encountered a pair of shoes that won’t stop following you around the internet, appearing in advertisements on different sites for weeks.

Today, the vast majority of advertising is targeted—that is, you see an ad because an advertiser thinks that you, specifically, might be interested in what they have to offer. You may have visited a store page for a pair of shoes, or maybe there’s something in your internet browsing history that places you in their target demographic.

While many websites offer a way to opt out of targeted advertisements or unwanted emails, we discovered in our recent research that exercising privacy choices isn’t always easy. But that helped us formulate some simple solutions that could make things easier for users around the web.

Anything but standardized

Our team of research collaborators examined the privacy choices available on 150 English language websites. On each site, we searched for three common types of privacy choices: requests to be removed from—that is, opt out of—email marketing, opt-outs for targeted advertising, and data deletion choices. For each privacy choice, we noted where on the website it was located and the steps required to exercise the choice.

The good news is that most websites do offer relevant opt-outs or data deletion options. Eighty-nine percent of sites with email marketing or targeted advertising offered opt-outs for those practices, and 74% had a way for users to request their data be deleted.

More good news: Nearly all websites had a privacy policy link on their homepage, and many of these policies included privacy choices.

The bad news is that the privacy policies we surveyed were long—on average 3,951 words. They were difficult to read, with only one-third including a table of contents. These policies were written well above the eighth-grade reading level considered appropriate for the general public. Worse, the sections containing privacy choices were even harder to read and understand than the rest of the policy, requiring university-level reading ability.

Key terms aren’t standardized across privacy policies on different sites. When we examined privacy policy section headings, we looked for phrases that appeared in multiple policies, such as “your choices” and “opt out.” Unfortunately, we did not find much consistency.

That makes it difficult for users to scan or search for key words or phrases that might help them understand their options. Users would benefit from standardized language across all websites that describes their privacy choices.

Even when a user manages to find a site’s privacy choices, it may not be clear how to use them.

We learned that some opt-out links, instead of leading to an opt-out tool, went to the homepage of an advertising industry association that hosts an opt-out tool, but elsewhere on the site. Other links were broken. Some policies contained multiple links to various advertising opt-outs, but the sites didn’t explain the differences between the links or whether a user would need to visit one or all of them.

One particular website we encountered, Salesforce, linked to six different advertising opt-out tools. In our view, users should not have to parse a website’s complicated third-party relationships; the websites themselves should make it easy for users to opt out of targeted advertising, no matter who is serving it.

Uncertain effects

Once someone does manage to opt out, it’s not always clear what will happen.

Most websites we visited did not tell users exactly what they could opt out of. Some websites let users request not to be tracked for advertising, while others allow users to opt out of targeted advertising but not the tracking. In this case, a hypothetical shoe ad wouldn’t appear on the site, but the company advertising the shoes may learn that you visited the site.

Only about half of the websites that offered opt-outs for targeted advertising explained whether opting out of seeing targeted ads also meant that users would not be tracked. Users might believe they are protecting themselves from tracking when in fact they are not.

Even when the choices are clear, the pages are not always easy to use.

For example, to opt out of all of Amazon’s email communications, we had to scroll past a list of 79 options before seeing the option to “opt out of all marketing.”

At the New York Times, deleting the data they’d gathered on us required completing 38 different actions, including finding and reading the privacy policy, following a link to the data deletion request form, selecting a request type, selecting up to 22 checkboxes, filling in eight form fields, selecting four additional confirmation boxes, and completing an “I am not a robot” test.

Even if these design decisions are unintentional, companies are effectively deterring their users from exercising privacy choices.

Consistency is key

When it comes to digital privacy, we think consistency is key.

Websites need to provide choices that are easy to find, understand, and use. They should simplify things by offering one-click opt-out options that consolidate multiple links and dozens of options.

It should go without saying that the opt-out links need to actually work.

If websites offer users the ability to make fine-grained choices, it would be helpful to put them all in one place and adopt consistent terminology.

Furthermore, websites need to clarify what opt-out options do.

And perhaps most important, regulators should hold companies accountable not only for offering choices, but for choices that are specific and that consumers can actually use.

Feature Image Credit: [Photo: Deagreez/iStock; AzFree/IStock] 

By Hana Habib and Lorrie Cranor

Hana Habib is a graduate research assistant at Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Software Research. Lorrie Cranor is a professor of computer science and of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. This article is republished from The Conversation.

Sourced from Fast Company

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