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10 Reasons to Hire a Professional Photographer for Your Social Media

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By Mackenzie Z. Kennedy 

If you want more dates, a better career, or a shot at being an influencer, you should hire a professional photographer to boost your social media status.

As a former model, I can tell you that looks matter—even though they really shouldn’t. Denying that people judge everything on appearances is just downright foolish.

When we see attractive people and things, we gravitate towards them naturally. It’s a trait that is built into our very DNA. Even babies are proven to prefer good-looking people over those who aren’t quite as physically attractive.

Now that social media is king, it’s becoming even more real to the world around us that looks matter for everything. The power that a good social media presence can give you is insane.

Entire careers have been built on a well-constructed social media brand. People found love on Instagram. We discover new people, products, and services based on how they look when we’re flipping our way through Facebook and Snapchat.

That’s why I’m a firm believer that you should hire a professional photographer to handle your social media shots. It sounds insane for someone who’s not a model, but hear me out.

Even if you’re not in entertainment, I have some great reasons why it’s so important to get some pro shots in your social media profile.

If you want to be an influencer, your photos will be everything.

 

Though I am a writer, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that people are visual creatures. These days, words alone are not enough to make a writer famous.

You need to be able to be an influencer. You need to captivate your audience, get them to relate to you, and also get them to relate to the topics you write about.

People are visual creatures, and we all know that adage that pictures are worth a thousand words. If you want to gain followers and become an influencer, you need to hire a professional photographer to take those shots—or become handy with a DSLR yourself!

I mean, look at this photo by Simone Bramante, a professional photographer. He tells a story about Barilla pasta and captivates his audience in a way that words would fail to match up with.

It will help your networking.

Having a degree isn’t enough to get you a job in a prestigious place these days. People want to see that you eat, sleep, and breathe your brand. They want to see what you are capable of—and what you want to show the world.

When you have a social media account that looks professional and also gives people a good idea of your brand, companies that want to hire you will start to reach out. This is why professional photographers need to embrace a changing world if they haven’t already, too. Social media is the best advertising both you and a photographer can have, if you each put equal effort into it.

Getting professional shots can also help you figure out your look.

When I was a model, I was forever thankful to photographers who were willing to do TFP. TFP stands for “Time for Portfolio,” and it’s when a model works for free in exchange for shots and practice time.

Spending a little time in front of the camera is a great way to figure out which outfits really flatter you and which look bad. It’s also a good way to learn how to take a better photo.

The model in this photo did TFP and posted the shots to her Instagram. I can assure you that she learned more about her best poses and wardrobe from her shoot.

Most of us are not pro models, which means that you will need to hire a professional photographer to do this. Thankfully, there are some affordable ones out there—and art schools love casual models.

A good photo or two can help you look more put-together, even when you’re not.

No matter who you are, you need to make it look like you have your shit together on social media. No one wants to associate with someone who looks like their lives are a mess, especially if they wear that look online. It’s cringe-inducing.

We all do what we can to try to cover up flaws. There’s only so much those Instagram filters can do, and in many cases, they come off as trying too hard. A good photographer will give you shots that will help you look great, effortlessly.

Professionals know how to work lighting, angles, and composure into a better shot. That’s why professional shots look better than a typical selfie.

Let’s face it, it’ll help your dating life.

There’s a reason why so many people joke about others “sliding into the DMs” on sites like Instagram and Facebook. People legitimately get dates this way, and some even find love through social media.

When you’re looking for a date on social media, the first thing you’re going to notice are the photos. Good shots that are taken with quality hair and makeup will get you more dates than casual shots.

Back when I worked as a pickup coach, I told guys they should hire a professional photographer and work on their looks for their social media accounts. People are shallow these days, and sadly, it will affect your love life.

The people who are most successful on social media are the ones who cultivate a brand that makes them look physically attractive, professional, and yet also adventurous. It makes sense; it shows they have a lot to offer.

It can help you sell things on your store.

I can’t express how important having a social media campaign is for business owners. A good social media marketing campaign can make or break your ability to turn a profit on a regular basis.

A lot of brands got their break on Instagram’s ads, but they wouldn’t have gotten so far without good shots. Dolls Kill, for example, is known for their amazing shoots, and owes a lot of their success to their active social media marketing.

Going to shoots is a confidence booster.

When I first got into modeling, I did it because I felt insecure. I needed to gain confidence, and I felt that being a model would help me see my beauty inside. To a point, it worked. I felt better and people treated me better.

Taking the time to hire a professional photographer and working on a photoshoot is an amazing experience. It’s something that will put you in touch with a side of yourself you didn’t know you had.

It will make you feel like a star, and you’ll be shocked at how much better you feel.

Professional photography can help you express your creativity.

If you’re creative like me, you probably use social media as an outlet for your imagination. Many creatives have images and art they want to make, but don’t have the skill to fully make those concepts come to life. This is doubly true with visual arts like photography.

A pro will have the equipment, knowledge, and skill to make your ideal images come to life. Those who want to flaunt their creative side would be wise to hire a professional photographer—or at least, pair up with them for a series.

For example, a shot like this wouldn’t be possible with yourself, the best professional online photography courses to up your game, and a selfie stick.

You don’t have to look too far to find a photographer that’s affordable.

Most people who want to hire a photographer think of wedding photography prices and wince. It’s true; most wedding photographers are pretty expensive.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t afford a pro—or someone damn close to it. Student photographers are often less expensive, and at times, will be willing to work for free in exchange for practice sessions.

This beautiful photo was taken by a student photographer. Need I say any more?

It will help others see you in a new light.

You want to know the biggest reason why you should hire a professional photographer to take photos of you once in a while? People notice the impacts of photography and social media. Professional shots show people that you mean business. It shows people that you are working towards something—and that you demand a certain level of respect.

By Mackenzie Z. Kennedy 

Sourced from PHOTOGRAPHY

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3 Tools to Make Your Editorial Calendar More Effective

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By Ann Smarty

A few short years ago, simply writing useful articles regularly was enough to keep your audience engaged and see your SEO rankings steadily grow.

Now, consumers are more demanding and the Google algorithm is more advanced. To accommodate both, you need to be always testing new tools and tactics.

With content marketing becoming more complicated and integrated, your editorial calendar should grow up too. It’s no longer enough to document your planned content assets. Today’s editorial calendar should involve team collaboration aspects and advanced analytics steps to make higher-level content management possible.

Your editorial calendar should involve collaboration, analytics #tools, and more, says @seosmarty. Click To TweetThis roundup features three innovative tools to create a new content marketing routine to better adapt to an ever-changing digital marketing world.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Editorial Calendar Tools and Templates

1. Use ContentCal to diversify content you market

Creating and marketing diverse content is a necessity. You always must surprise your audience, as well as find new ways to engage your readers. Some out-of-the-box content types include:

With all those multiple and diverse content assets being created and so many (remote) teams being involved, how can you ensure that each of them is marketed effectively?

ContentCal (free and paid versions) is a good way to keep your team involved as well as to ensure that your weekly and monthly calendars are diverse and balanced:

.@ContentCal_io can help ensure that your weekly & monthly editorial calendars are diverse and balanced, says @seosmarty Click To Tweet

  • Your team can add updates to your calendar using the “Pinboard,” then you (or your social media manager) can drag and drop updates throughout the calendar ensuring both content diversity and balance. It’s helpful because the Pinboard can be the central point for each team member to craft updates for each content asset they are responsible for (press releases, interviews, videos, articles, etc.).
  • The calendar uses color coding to help you quickly see how your content types and assets are spread out throughout a week or a month.

Once updates go live, you see your content tags in the reports and can filter your reports by the content type, making it easier to distinguish the most successful content formats based on social media engagement:

Overall, ContentCal provides a clutter-free dashboard encouraging you to build both diverse and balanced editorial calendars.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Brands Share Their Content Marketing Process

2. Use Rankedy to track all your content changes and updates (and their impact)

Content marketing involves so many tasks and steps (e.g., planning, outreach, writing, link acquisition outreach, social media promotion), that it can be hard to identify the steps that really impact your ROI. Not many solutions can collect, aggregate, and analyze all your data in a way that allows you to understand which of your micro-tactics work.

The only solution I have found is Rankedy’s Journal feature, which records all the little things happening to your site and content and shows Google ranking movements after each change.

Rankedy lets you see how Google rankings change when you make changes to your site & content. @seosmarty #tools Click To TweetTo use Rankedy Journal for content analysis:

  • Record all your changes and updates to your site and content you are implementing
  • Watch the Google position movement for your keyword

Rankedy also uses color coding to help you easily distinguish between content formats you created and change types you implemented.

This feature makes it easy to find micro-tactics that work for your content and capitalize on those.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 50 of the Best Social Media Tools Selected by Top Marketers

3. Use Alter to personalize in-content CTAs and learn from engagement metrics

Content marketing offers great lead-generation opportunities. Many customers who discover your brand through your content are not ready to buy but may be willing to opt in to download your brochure or white paper.

How can you catch or keep their attention? Advanced (content) personalization is the answer. In fact, Segment found that half of consumers expect a personalized experience when interacting with brands. Personalizing your content means meeting your customers’ expectations.

50% of consumers expect a personalized experience when interacting w/ brands via @segment. Click To TweetYet, a report by Pure360 revealed that most brands still fall behind in marketing personalization, so now is a good time to boost your digital marketing performance with personalization.

Alter (paid version) is a new solution for small businesses allowing you to easily create and integrate personalized user experience sitewide (including your home page, landing pages, content pages and more).

.@AlterSoftware lets you easily integrate personalized user experiences sitewide, says @seosmarty. #tools Click To TweetIt’s a good idea to use Alter in two ways:

  • To personalize your best performing content pages (to test, collect data, and boost their performance)
  • To use the collected data to better plan your content (Alter tracks which personalization tactic drives more engagement)

To use Alter, simply create a trial account, add its tracking code to the site, and use the visual editor to personalize your pages. Alter has an incredible number of parameters to define your audience for personalization. Examples include traffic sources, users’ interaction with the site (e.g., how many pages they viewed), users’ interaction with a specific link or call to action, their devices, etc. You can combine any of these parameters to create even more tailored experiences.

The reports are enlightening, giving you a glimpse into what helps and what hurts content performance:

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 12 Expert Ideas to Improve Your Content Marketing for Better Leads

Bonus: Use Serpstat to include these tools in your content planning routine

ContentCal, Rankedly, and Alter are new tools in the industry and provide a fresh look into how you can manage and analyze content. Adding these micro-management tasks to your regular to-do list is the best way to ensure that the tools will help you rethink and reestablish your content marketing routine to the maximum capacity.

If your team is smaller, you can manage this system with a reusable planner in Google Spreadsheets or simpler to-do list management tools.

For larger team management, you may need a more advanced collaborative solution. I use Serpstat (paid versions) checklists. You can create and reuse a template for each upcoming content asset and the team can check off their tasks until everything is done.

In-team collaboration makes content asset planning easier because:

  • A new checklist – based on the same template – is set up for each project (e.g., an article, an infographic, an influencer interview).
  • You can break each checklist into sections to cover all the steps before, during, and after the publication process (e.g., keyword research, writing, designing graphics, proofreading, social media marketing, and outreach). Once everything gets checked off, the project is considered complete.

You can read more about Serpstat checklists here.

Are there innovative content marketing tools you’ve discovered lately? Which ones get you most excited? Please share them in the comments.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Feature Image Credit: Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

By Ann Smarty

Sourced from Content Marketing Institute

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5 Statistics to Guide Your Marketing Resource Decisions in 2019

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Resource decisions are some of the most important and difficult decisions that a marketing leader must make. Do I have the right people doing the right things? Should I use in-house resources, external resources, a combination of the two, or just punt that great idea into another quarter and hope that the decision magically takes care of itself?

Planning and deploying a marketing strategy will benefit from an objective point of view and skills that may not be available in-house.

But how will you choose the right resources to optimize results? A new Ascend2 research study, Marketing Resource Effectiveness Survey Summary Report, provides valuable insight to help companies make critical resource decisions in 2019.

Here are a few noteworthy findings from the research study:

Finding #1: Collaborate on Planning and Deployment

About three-quarters of marketing professionals consider a collaboration between outsourced and in-house resources a valuable combination of objective and subjective insights for both planning and deploying a marketing strategy.

There is great value in having a fresh perspective as you create your marketing plan. To get the most value from the ideas and input from external resources, make sure to have an open mind when you receive their contribution. It is also important to get data and input from your audience on what they want and how they want it. But make sure you do more than ask; it is critical that you listen.

Finding #2: Begin by Determining Your Objectives

To determine the appropriate resources you need, you should first determine your primary objectives. Increasing the number of leads, sales prospects and customers acquired, and improving brand awareness, are all primary objectives for a marketing strategy according to a majority of marketing professionals.

 

Finding #3: Most Effective Tactics Used

With so many marketing tactics that you can do, an important step is to determine what you should do based on what works. Social media marketing, content marketing, and SEO are effective tactics for 53%, 48% and 47% of marketing professionals respectively. While email has been integrated into virtually every form of digital marketing, it no longer tops the chart as a stand-alone tactic.

 

When deciding on the resources that you need, consider how your resources understand the individual tactics that they will work on as well as how all the pieces fit together. You want your resources to be flexible and strategic.

Finding #4: Seek Outside Resources to Lead Your Most Difficult Tactics

While the previous chart shows only 25% of marketing professionals consider data and artificial intelligence-driven marketing to be a most effective tactic, 49% consider it a difficult tactic to deploy. This may be a case of difficulty impacting effective use. You may need to seek outside resources to lead your most difficult tactics, as compared to not doing those tactics.

Finding #5: How Effectiveness is Changing

As marketers become more proficient in all forms of digital marketing practices and technologies, the effectiveness of the tactics used is increasing. A total of 94% of marketing professionals believe that the effectiveness of tactics is improving to some extent. A key reason that effectiveness is improving is the improved skills of marketing professionals, continuing education (online courses, certification courses, webinars, reading online resources, etc.), and advancements in technology.

 

When faced with a difficult decision, I always look for research that can help guide my decision. Research can also be used to sell my plan to the management team, and make an adjustment to my current strategy.

Get more research insights by downloading the entire study, Marketing Resource Effectiveness Survey Summary Report.

By 

Sourced from Convince & Convert

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How This Process Will Totally Transform Your Brainstorming Sessions

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By Farmers Insurance

Fast-paced, iterative design thinking could help you discover your company’s next “big thing.”

To grab attention in a crowded marketplace, companies large and small need to deliver fresh products and services on a regular basis. But in today’s fast-paced, competitive business climate, it can be challenging to consistently generate new, high-quality ideas and avoid recycling concepts and offerings. No matter how brilliant any business leader may be, there are only so many times he or she can go back to the same well for the next game-changing idea. So the question keeping that leader up at night becomes, “How do I foster consistent, critical and creative thinking throughout my enterprise?”

My job at Farmers Insurance revolves around helping to provide answers to that question. To generate new, worthwhile ideas, I’ve found that brainstorming while embarking upon the design thinking process can be a highly effective way out of that rut. By combining the tenets of design thinking with a focus on user empathy–doing one’s best to truly understand the end user’s experiences and feelings–the new ideas can really start flowing.

To better structure and optimize those ideation sessions, use this dos and don’ts list as a guide:

Don’t start with boundaries.

To combat fears of saying “the wrong thing” and put participants at ease, kick off the entire process with a wide-open acceptance of any and all ideas. State explicitly that crazy options are not only welcome, they are encouraged. While one wacky concept may not be viable on its own, the conversation could spark another colleague’s creative juices and lead to the next innovative product or process.

Don’t bring any assumptions to the table.

It’s tempting to assume what could come out of a specific brainstorming exercise. A leader that has been so close to the challenge at hand for so long can think they’ve heard all the outcomes, objections, and questions before. The beauty of the design thinking process, however, lies in the unanticipated connections your team can create when they’re given permission to come up with unfiltered ideas.

But do clarify your goals.

If every participant starts spouting off ideas at will, the louder participants may drown out quieter team members. To add focus and encourage all to participate, open with a clear challenge or statement of purpose. The facilitator can still remain open to outside the box ideas while focusing the team’s thinking on the specific problem at hand to be solved.

Do encourage user empathy–and bring it to life.

Take time to humanize the challenge by putting the team in the end user’s shoes. Do some empathy mapping by creating personas for those end users. Post the descriptors of what those personas are “Thinking,” “Seeing,” “Feeling,” and “Doing” in a highly visible area for all participants to reference throughout the session.

Do use a “write first, talk later” process.

Give each participant 10 to 12 minutes to write as many ideas or potential solutions that solve for the challenge statement. At this stage, aim for quantity over quality and limit any conversations that might prematurely define solutions. When time’s up, have each person narrow down their thoughts to two or three of their favorite ideas and share them with the larger group. From there, the full team can provide feedback and select concepts for further development. The entire process should take no more than 30 to 45 minutes.

Do test, refine, and test again.

Once you’ve created detailed, concrete options, start getting feedback by testing the solutions with users who could be impacted by the changes. Keep in mind that revisions are likely, and establishing a consumer feedback loop will be beneficial to the end product.

Creative solutions don’t usually arrive in a single blinding flash of insight, but rather in a series of small steps. One idea spurs a new, related thought, which sparks another idea, and so on. Remember, great ideas can come from anywhere. Fast-paced, diverse and iterative design thinking sessions can help you maximize the likelihood that your organization continues to evolve at the speed of today’s changing marketplace.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Farmers Insurance

By Shayla Callis, Design and Innovation Leader at Farmers Insurance

Sourced from Inc.

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Tips to help small business owners choose a marketing method

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By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG

NEW YORK (AP) — The growth of the internet and social media has changed the way small businesses market themselves — the variety of online marketing channels allows businesses, whether they serve consumers or other companies, to focus on a broad or narrow population.

But many owners find that low-tech marketing methods can work for them. For example, a new retailer or restaurant might send discount coupons through the mail to homes in their area. Some owners who consult or provide services like accounting may find that networking and word-of-mouth are their best bets for finding clients. Often, it can take trial and error to find the right approach.

Before owners pick a marketing channel or channels, they need to answer some key questions for themselves, says Ramon Ray, a small business consultant who often speaks publicly about marketing. Who is your target market? Are you clear about how your service or product will help them?

Here are some tips from small business owners about selecting a marketing method:

— Owners should consider which marketing method is the best way to get information to prospective customers to help build a relationship, Ray says. For example, an accountant could offer in social media posts to send tax tips in return for a potential customer’s email.

“I’m not trying to sell to the customer first,” Ray says. “I want to get their attention.”

— Social media can be ideal for start-ups. Carolyn Bothwell, whose marketing consulting business is just about a year old, social media has been low-cost and effective. “Over 80 percent of my inquiries come in directly from Instagram,” she says. Many of her clients are also young companies and social media channels including LinkedIn and Facebook have worked for them.

— Different social media channels will yield different results. Germain Chastel, CEO of technology consultant NewtonX, says Twitter helps the company be more visible — it shows up at the top of Google searches. LinkedIn is the social media channel most of the company’s clients use, so it’s a natural to try to reach them there.

“You just need to be on the channels that can lend real value,” Chastel says.

— Face-to-face contacts can be just as valuable as online marketing. Robyn Lanci, owner of Owl PR, a marketing firm, has “found the best methods for marketing my business are networking groups and pure, organic conversation.”

By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG

Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter.com/JoyceMRosenberg . Her work can be found here: https://apnews.com

Sourced from AP News

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4 Social Media Marketing Bad Habits (and How to Break Them)

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Social media is the one thing that almost everyone has access to, yet few fully understand, and this is especially true when it comes to business.

Many people – even some with years of marketing experience – believe that posting pretty pictures on Instagram is “doing social media,” when posting images is really only the tip of the iceberg. The activity that lies beneath the surface is much more complex, and important for successful social media marketing.

There are a heap of posts out there which outline tips on things you should start doing in order to maximize your social media marketing success, but in this piece, I want to look at some things that you should stop doing, immediately, to get your process on the right track.

Here are four social media marketing bad habits, and how to break them in 2019.

1. Focusing Only on Vanity Metrics

Guess what? Followers and on-platform engagement alone will not help grow your business.

This is a fact – thousands upon thousands of studies and articles can prove it. Sure, there’s a correlation between the amount of time consumers spend with a brand online and their likelihood of going on to make a purchase from said brand, while there’s also something to be said for positive consumer sentiment. But brands and marketers who are content to simply track the number of followers they gain on Instagram, and/or the amount of likes they get on a Facebook video, are making a huge mistake.

You absolutely have to base your social media marketing success off of more than just vanity metrics.

While community growth and engagement are pieces of the puzzle, you would be much better served by including metrics such as impressions, website visits, time on site, conversions, and bounce rate. By layering in these true digital marketing metrics, you can start to see how social media activity helps you meet your business goals.

Now, it is important to note that sometimes the main objective of your social media marketing efforts truly might be brand awareness – which is fine. In this case, you’re going to want to push for as many Impressions and targeted brand engagements as possible.

The big thing to avoid here is judging your social media marketing activities by follower growth or engagements alone.

2. Lack of Storytelling

One of the most underused strengths of social media marketing is storytelling.

Let me clarify by saying that storytelling in marketing isn’t this majestic fable that your brand is stringing together. Storytelling is how your brand provides snackable, contextually full snippets about why your brand exists, and how you do what you do. These stories should be concise and easy to understand for uber-distracted social media users.

Sometimes brands try to string out storytelling across a few different blog posts or content pieces, without realizing that distracted social media users are more likely to get confused by the lack of ongoing context than to follow a single story from start to finish. To avoid any confusion, I typically recommend a series of independent stories which can stand alone and be easily digested.

After all, how realistic is it that users will remember post #1 of a five-post series about your product or service?

It’s a fragmented experience – imagine scrolling through your own social media feed and seeing a content piece that’s in the middle of an ongoing story, one which you’ve missed the beginning of (and will likely miss the end). Pretty confusing right?

Consider creating smaller stories that build your brand up, individually, and over time. This way, if users get interested by one content piece, they can dive deeper into those stories across your social accounts and/or blog.

3. Your Analytics are Weak

There are so many data points being spun off by social media activity that it’s unacceptable not to have your analytics organized in a way to capitalize on such insights.

Too many brands simply post daily and hope for the best, as opposed to reviewing detailed reports to learn about what worked, what didn’t, and what opportunities might be on the horizon. To avoid having weak, or useless, analytics, you’re going to want to organize your data so that it helps you derive context from the numbers.

For example, are your impressions lower than the previous month, but your overall engagements are up? This suggests that your content was favored less by social platform algorithms, but people really liked it.

Did your website visits from Facebook spike, but no conversions came through? This suggests that the experience on your landing page might not be optimal or there was an inconsistent experience along the way.

By improving the data collected, you can optimize your social media marketing efforts to ensure that you aren’t wasting time, money, or resources.

Here are the data points I recommend you analyze:

  • Social community
  • Social media impressions
  • Social media engagements
  • Social media website visits
  • Time on site from social media
  • Pages per visit from social media
  • Bounce rate from social media
  • Conversions from social media

You can use a tool like Sprout Social to easily collect social media analytics. I also highly recommend using Google Analytics to review how traffic from social media sites is behaving on your website. This will enable you to standardize activity, and find trends across marketing channels.

4. Social Media is Siloed

A big mistake that a lot of brands make is thinking that social media marketing alone should be responsible for business success.

All too often I’m asked to launch a social media strategy without a high-quality website, an email marketing strategy, or even a solid search engine marketing approach. When social media marketing is the only player out on the field, your team will lose.

When you think about user behavior and your own activity when making a purchase online, it becomes apparent that consumers interact with multiple stimuli before making a final buying decision. By only relying on social media marketing to make sales, you’re leaning on a channel that really focuses on upper funnel awareness activity to carry a consumer all the way through to final buying decision. Don’t get me wrong, it can happen, however it’s not likely to happen as frequently as you might hope.

Another point here is that many brands fail to use social media marketing to support an overarching initiative. For example, if your company has a really awesome piece of downloadable content, you should create blog posts which support it (be sure they are optimized for search engine visibility), deploy email marketing campaigns to generate traffic to the content, publish paid and/or organic social media content supporting the effort, and retarget all traffic that’s visited the content landing page but didn’t convert.

An integrated approach like this will go much further for your brand than placing social media marketing in a silo and hoping for the best.

5. Neglecting Advertising

I am a huge fan of social media advertising. Comparatively, you’d be hard pressed to find a more cost-effective method for targeting consumers online.

With interest data, behavioral data, CRM data, and lookalike modeling, social media advertising can target almost any group of consumers in one way or another. But unfortunately, many brands have been slow to embrace social media advertising. I personally believe there are two main reasons why:

  1. The altruistic intention of social media marketing to bring brands and consumers eye-to-eye digitally doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just unrealistic. There are so many distractions and competitors online that it’s not rational to think that a brand can cut through all the noise via organic engagement alone. Almost all social platforms limit the reach of content in some way, so brands are already starting at a loss.
  2. Most brands don’t understand how attribution impacts the ROI of social media advertising. As noted earlier,  social media marketing tends to be very effective when it comes to building awareness. Social media can help stimulate direct sales, but most consumers bounce around between devices and marketing channels when shopping, so tracking breaks and social media activity doesn’t get the trackable credit it deserves for generating sales. There are ways to fix this, however, when brands are ignorant to the situation, they simply look at conversions and get disappointed that social media hasn’t generated more.

The big missed opportunity here is omitting social media advertising from your social media marketing strategy. No matter your business goals, there’s a social media platform and an ad unit that can help you achieve them.

Once you quit these four bad habits, you’ll undoubtedly begin to see improvements in your metrics, and be well on your way to achieving greater social media marketing success.

By 

Follow Nathan Mendenhall on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

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Steve Jobs Said 1 Powerful Habit Separates Successful People From Everyone Else (and Will Drastically Change Your Life)

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By Marcel Schwantes

It’s as applicable today as it was when Jobs said it nearly 25 years ago.

In a 1995 interview with Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation, as part of an oral history project, interviewer Daniel Morrow asked Steve Jobs this question: What are the factors for success for young people today? If you’re playing the role of elder statesman, what pitfalls should they avoid?

Jobs’s response?

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Pure perseverance

Ever met someone with such steady and unwavering commitment in pursuing a cause or course of action, you found that person’s tenacity utterly inspiring? Perhaps that’s you. If so, you and Steve Jobs have something in common.

In spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement from battling cancer, Jobs understood that perseverance comes in a package deal with purpose and a calling; it’s what keeps people going to the end. For Jobs early on, it consumed most of his day. He stated:

If you’ve got a family and you’re in the early days of a company, I can’t imagine how one could do it. I’m sure it’s been done, but it’s rough. It’s pretty much an 18-hour-day job, seven days a week for a while. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up.

While we’ve learned to value more our personal and family priorities and our health and well-being since 1995, carving out your path to success still demands hard work and long hours.

But, as Jobs alluded, you can’t do it without passion. It is the engine that puts perseverance into overdrive to think up big ideas, solve big problems, and make the world a better place. Yes, passion is half the battle.

Perseverance is not a lone ranger

Jobs also knew he had to learn to leverage the power of perseverance in others to pursue the lofty, earlier Apple mission under his reign, which stated: “To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”

I’ve read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, “I worked really, really hard in my 20s.” And I know what he means because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can’t do it forever, and you don’t want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.

During his last years on earth, Jobs understood his place in the information age when he famously quipped:

It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

It’s a great lesson still applicable for leaders today, whether you’re in a tech firm, a bank, or a hospital. That is, to intentionally get out of the way, to let your knowledge workers persevere and take care of their business in a non-micromanaged setting.

The fruits of a team persevering together to the end are as sweet as a peach in the middle of summer. When Jobs presented the Macintosh at the Apple shareholders’ meeting in 1984, he recalls everyone in the auditorium giving it a five-minute ovation. He later shared in an interview with Playboy magazine:

What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe we’d actually finished it. Everyone started crying.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Marcel Schwantes

Principal and founder, Leadership From the Core@MarcelSchwantes

Sourced from Inc.

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Is Brand Activism Good for Everyone?

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By Su Duff

Already this year we’ve witnessed love and dislike around social responsibility advertising from Gillette, a new all inclusive venture into happiness with Coke, and a very timely move launching Guinness Clear.   Kotler and Sarkar have recently published a book welcoming Brand Activism and Philip Kotler proposes that “Brand Activism is the leader’s way forward – for your customers, you employees, society, and the planet itself“.

So, Yo Propagandhi !   if you didn’t make it along to #AAIToolkit this week you’ll have missed Trista Vincent and Paudge Donaghy from Hammer & Tongs taking a look at the current trend and broader implications of brands becoming involved in corporate activism. You can find them on Twitter and LinkedIn to find out if they might share the key take out points around keeping a brand safe while an activist.  Or, if you’re an AAI Member company you can download the slides and speaker notes from the members centre on our website. (Email me if you can’t remember your login.)

Trista and Paudge also have created a large list of video content for you to review.  This provides an excellent library of examples of do and don’t reference points as follows:

Verizon 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yND9hDpPwYA

Dodge Ram 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo5LsKZRwYY

Dove Choose Beautiful 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DdM-4siaQw

Pepsi Kendal Jenner 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5Yq1DLSmQ

Johnny Walker 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlrtPtxIB5k

MoMondo The DNA Journey 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyaEQEmt5ls

Heineken Open Your World 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKggA9k8DKw&t=4s

Lush SpyCopys 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E19S8FVbA4E

AeroMexico DNA Discounts 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sCeMTB5P6U&app=desktop

Dublin Bus Proud Dads 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Ca5QG42dg

Lloyds Bank #GetTheInsideOut 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAHt59KGVes

A Coke is a Coke 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hcrz4Jq9WE

Gillette The Best a Man can Get 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0

HSBC Brexit 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3uwPHUV9w

See also:
Patagonia, Starbucks, Stella Artois, Chick-fil-A, Expedia, Oreo, AirBnB, Yoplait, Ben & Jerry’s

And finally, a summary of #AAIToolkit views from the Hammer and Tongs poll can be found here  

By Su Duff

Sourced from The Association of Advertisers in Ireland

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6 tactics for PPC marketers to save time, reduce stress and improve performance

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Here’s a checklist to make sure you’re as organized as possible to start this year off on the right foot.

As PPC marketers, everything we do revolves around structure and organization. Sure, there’s a huge amount of unstructured work as the result of performance trends and our analyses but, at the heart of our accounts, structure undeniably plays a huge role.

However, over time, that structure – both in terms of account structure and the structure of optimizations – can become cluttered with account growth over time and with changes in strategy. Plus, with paid search efforts being nearly real-time, when a marketer becomes busy (read: holiday season), it’s not difficult to start to begin to start living in the paid-search-moment as opposed to a more structured routine – but that’s not for the best.

As we kick off 2019, it’s a great time to revisit processes, workflows and structure to identify ways to become more organized, which allows for greater efficiency, less stress, and better performance. Organization is a win – win – win situation.

There are a ton of ways to approach this as organization flows through the veins of what we do so let’s talk through the various ways that we can apply these improvements to our work. Check through this list and make sure you’re as organized as possible to start this year off on the right foot.

Increasing time efficiency through organization

I’ve never met a PPC pro that wasn’t seeking out ways to increase time efficiency. There’s always plenty of work to do and the goal is to accomplish as much of it as possible while still leaving some time on the table for those inevitable things that sneak up on us.

Let’s be real; it’s not uncommon that unexpected tasks and projects pop up – either from a client’s last-minute decision to run a promo and their need for ads, due to performance shifts, or the need to quickly launch something new. The hope is always that we’ll be in the loop well in advance, but the reality is that we aren’t always. Becoming more efficient means that these situations are less stressful as they arise because it becomes easier to accommodate them without interfering with routine optimizations.

There are a few different ways to go about increasing efficiency and the most successful people will tackle them all.

  1. Determine what you need to do manually versus what you can automate. Our world is becoming increasingly automate-able and while that may seem scary to some, it’s an opportunity. The things that can be automated are the decisions that are purely based upon logic. There are still so many other things, though, that require strategy and creativity. Preserve your time for the latter by automating the things that you can.
  2. Create repeatable processes. Instead of re-inventing the wheel over and over, look for ways to find efficiencies in the tasks that you do over and over – especially if they can’t be automated. I’m a big fan of creating tools in Excel to make routine reviews and optimizations quicker and easier. Creating dashboards for repeatable analyses can be a big help, too. The more familiar and distilled that a process becomes, the quicker it is.
  3. Revisit the 80/20 rule. There’s a pretty good chance that the majority of your impact is achieved by a small portion of the tasks that you’re executing. Taking the time to monitor the impacts of your efforts and systematically clearing your schedule of the activities that don’t make an impact is a great way to shed some dead weight from your schedule.
  4. Review your week in advance. Either at the beginning of the week or the end of the week for the following week, outline your big priorities, look at your meeting schedule and deliverables and get a feel for how to best allocate your time to make it all happen without putting yourself in a bind.
  5. Figure out how you operate best and prioritize accordingly. I like to tackle a few quick and easy tasks just to cross things off the list to start my day, while there are others that prefer to start with the biggest project on their list to get it out of the way. I focus best on bigger projects later in the day. That’s just me, but everybody has their preferred rhythm. Figure out what yours is and learn how to organize your tasks so that you can be most effective without spinning your wheels.
  6. If possible, find ways to delegate. This isn’t possible for everyone but if you work on a team with a tiered structure, finding ways to delegate tasks is a great way to free up time while also getting other eyes on the account. Win-win!
  7. Know when to say yes and when (and how) to say no. This may be the most difficult of tactic in this list. Saying no is always tough, but it’s critical. As mentioned above, you will find which tasks are impactful and which aren’t. Selectively saying no to those that aren’t impactful is key to keeping your time available for impactful tasks.

Be more deliberate with your time

Now that you’ve taken steps to be more efficient with your time, it frees up your availability, but the key is not to accidentally squander it. It’s so easy to nickel and dime your own time. Here are a few ways that you can take control of your time to ensure that you’re reaping the benefits of your heightened organization and to increase your overall effectiveness as a marketer.

    1. Dedicate time for projects and tasks. If you have high priority tasks or projects that require more focus or time than others, block the time on your calendar. It’s okay to be protective of your time; in fact, it is wise. At the end of the day, you’re accountable for achieving the tasks that you’ve committed to and that becomes much easier if you take a proactive approach to dedicate time.
    2. Dedicate time for learning. In this everchanging digital world, things are evolving all the time. It’s easy to fall behind if you keep your head down. Blocking out time on your calendar to dedicate toward reading blogs, watching webinar recordings, or even participating in forums and chats can be valuable. This is one of the easiest things to start to shirk when time is limited, but it’s incredibly important to be diligent and you’ll be better for it.
    3. (Occasionally) shut down your inbox. Sure, it’s not realistic to keep your inbox shut down for long periods at a time but if you find yourself easily distracted by email notifications, it can be helpful to shut down your email for 30-60 minutes while you work through projects requiring a lot of concentration. I can almost promise no one will notice if you don’t return an email within 60 minutes.
    4. Schedule your meetings in a way that improves your productivity. Different people have different preferences for their meeting schedule. Some like them back-to-back and some don’t. For example, I hate having only a 30-minute free window on my calendar because it’s hard for me to get into focus within 30 minutes before then coming back up for another meeting. The only thing worse than having a 30-minute window is having a day that is littered with 30-minute meetings and only 30 minutes between each. For that reason, I much prefer to schedule my meetings back to back so that I have 2-3 hours of meetings and then a big block of time to focus. That way, no matter what projects or tasks that I’m working through, I know that I have a block of time that will accommodate it. Different strokes for different folks; if you hate having meetings back to back because you like to structure meeting prep differently, that’s what works for you. Proactively schedule meetings in a way that will help you to be as effective as possible.
    5. Hold more productive meetings. Ineffective meetings lead to follow-up meetings. Don’t be that person. Make an agenda for your meetings in advance; determine exactly what you need to convey and what you need to get from the meeting. Even if you aren’t the one hosting the meeting, knowing what you need to gain from it ensures that you have your directives at the end. Taking notes and confirming takeaways is also a good practice to ensure that everyone can divide and conquer.

Put it in writing to de-stress and stay on track

Mental taxation is a real thing, the more things that you force yourself to retain purely on memory, the quicker that you’ll burn through your sanity. It’s science (it’s not really science).

Sometimes just the act of writing everything down that you’ve been mentally tracking can be a huge stress relief, for a few reasons: typically, the list looks much shorter on paper than it seems and because it relieves you of having to try to remember it all. A to-do list is a great first step for stress-relief and organization, but I would suggest taking it even a few steps further for optimal organization and time management.

  • Set up goals and benchmarks. It’s much easier to improve performance if you know what you’re working toward and how you’re tracking to that goal. Setting up goals and benchmarks helps to hold you accountable.
  • Set up a master performance overview document. This could manifest in many different ways. I have one document that I use to track all of my clients’ performance. I rate each client with green, yellow and red highlighter based upon where they are against their goals and/or where they stand in the midst of current ongoing initiatives (launches, strategy changes, reporting, new landing pages, etc.) and whether there are any obstacles. I update the sheet a few times throughout the week and it serves as my one-stop-shop for client health at a glance. You can be as high-level or granular as you like, but the point is to have one point of reference for the status of all of the initiatives that you are working on.
  • Build a calendar out for all of your routine activities and upcoming projects. With PPC, everything has to be a bit flexible. This calendar serves to ensure that all of the optimizations are accounted for and spaced out across the month to ensure that you aren’t making too many changes at once without being able to monitor the impact of those changes. It also allows you to map out any big launches or initiatives alongside both your optimization calendar and your broader calendar of activities. Now, am I suggesting that the calendar should be written in stone? No, of course not. With PPC, optimizations are flexible based upon what the account needs at any given time based upon results, but there are routine tasks that should be executed routinely so those can be scheduled and everything else can be tentatively planned with the option to shift as needed.
  • Leverage a project management system. There are a ton of pros of implementing a project management system. One of the many is that it allows you to combine your calendar with your to-do list, so instead of having just one list of items to check off, you can easily prioritize what needs to be done today versus later in the week. You can add upcoming deadlines as they arise. You can take the calendar you created and apply it across your paid search project(s). Possibly even better, you can maintain all of your notes in one place. If you’re working off of a recurring task, you can carry over your notes from each prior completion. It also makes it easy to bring in additional team members, since they now have access to all of the historical information. There are quite a few free project management systems – so whether you’re implementing it for a team or just yourself, price doesn’t have to be an issue.

Revisit account and campaign structure

Okay, I realize that this topic is a big ask. Don’t take the fact that I’ve nestled it into a larger post as a casual recommendation. This is one of the tips that will take a little bit longer to work through because there’s quite a bit to unpack here. There are a lot of different ways that you could review your campaign and account structure. I start here:

    1. Review ad group structure to ensure that all ad groups are still structured into small, tightly themed groups. As an account grows over time, it’s easy for ad groups to become a bit hairy and where they may have once been tightly themed they could now be more loosely defined. Tightening these up can have a big impact on ad relevance.
    2. Review query mapping to ensure that queries are mapping to the appropriate search terms and add negatives as needed to channel queries to the most appropriate keywords as needed. More on the importance of query mapping and how to review it, here.
    3. Review targeting layers, cross-campaign efforts and multi-channel funnels to ensure that the full eco-system plays well together and to ensure that all roads point to conversion.
    4. Review performance outliers to determine if any restructures are so that could benefit performance. For instance, sometimes restructuring to separate geography has its merits if the geography is performing much better than others and warrants more budget, or if it’s generating conversions but could be more efficient given other constraints around settings or targeting. That’s just one example of many where restructuring can be warranted based upon performance.

Organize your testing plans

This ties nicely to the last point. Putting things in writing is a huge help in organizing tasks but, I suggest taking it one step further. When it comes to testing, the brainstorming can take as much time as setting up the tests themselves. Save yourself time in the long run by taking the guesswork out of what you’re planning to test next. Develop testing calendars that will guide your subsequent tests. I like to build out plans that are a bit like what you might think of like a tournament bracket, except backward. Each test has an if/then scenario so the winning variant becomes the control and, the test will spinoff of that variant with an additional, new variation. This applies to any form of tests that you plan to perform, including but not limited to ads, landing pages, and campaign experiments.

Organize your nomenclature

For the love of paid search, get organized with your nomenclature if you haven’t already. This means campaign names, ad group names, audience names and so on. Heck, even having a naming convention for your image ad (and social ad) creative can be useful. There are a variety of reasons why nomenclature is valuable; just to name a few:

  • Ease of filtering for reporting and application of edits, rules, scripts and so on.
  • Ease of comprehension – whether it be transitioning an account to another person at your agency, vacation coverage by another PPCer, or even a client’s understanding of performance; nomenclature inconsistencies can create a lot of unnecessary confusion.
  • For better or for worse, sloppy names seem… well, sloppy. That’s not a good look.

Furthermore, it’s incredibly important to organize your tagging if you’re running on any platforms without auto-tagging (or if you aren’t employing auto-tagging on your campaigns). Reporting is a real nightmare without consistent tracking, so make that clean up a priority.

This is so easy that you can often map it out in an hour or less. Block some time on your calendar and get it done.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Sourced from Marketing Land

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Venture-Capital Money Is Flowing Like It’s 1999

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By Jon Swartz

Venture capitalists poured a record $138 billion into U.S. startups last year, the most since 2000.

“AI, big data, cloud, autonomous vehicles, health care, blockchain, security–the list is as long as I’ve ever seen of investible themes, and we see a high degree of activity in anticipation of the IPO unicorn class of 2019,” Jeff Grabow, U.S. Venture Capital Leader of Ernst & Young, tells Barron’s in a phone interview.

Information technology raised nearly 20% of all capital in the fourth quarter, behind categories for consumer goods (nearly 30%) and business-financial services (almost 25%), according to Crunchbase.

That’s the good news.

And yet, the huge cash infusion–$47.1 billion in the fourth quarter, a 43% hike from the previous quarter–shares some echoes with the VC climate in 2000, shortly before the infamous dot-com crash. Investors, Grabow and others say, are jittery and making their bets on a strong IPO class that could include Uber, Lyft, Slack, and others before a possible recession or more bad economic news from China.

“We’re in a cash bubble, with money looking to be placed to find yield,” Grabow says, noting that corporations and private-equity investors accounted for 40% of the dollars raised in the fourth quarter. “This hot market pace won’t sustain. It is healthy to pull back on investments.”

Feature Image Credit: Photograph by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

By Jon Swartz

Sourced from Barron’s

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