Building a social media following is difficult – it requires patience, consistency and a commitment to learning what your audience wants and needs from your brand on social platforms.
But all of that can be undone in an instant if you share the wrong things. Send out a misguided update and you can quickly turn people off, reversing your work to establish a connection. Yet, it still happens, brands still tweet out updates that are tone-deaf, or they simply fail to adhere to basic social media best practices.
Want to know the mistakes that could be ruining your social media marketing strategy?
The team from Inklyo share their social media fails to avoid in this infographic.
Influencer marketing is a relationship built between a brand and an influencer, where the influencer promotes that brand throughout social media outlets. Influencer marketing allows businesses to advertise directly to their target audience through an influencer that consumers follow and already trust. Influencer marketing has become a very popular social media strategy in the past
Influencer marketing is a relationship built between a brand and an influencer, where the influencer promotes that brand throughout social media outlets.
Influencer marketing allows businesses to advertise directly to their target audience through an influencer that consumers follow and already trust.
Influencer marketing has become a very popular social media strategy in the past few years. With the rise and advancement of technology, it’s important for businesses to learn and master this tactic to drive traffic and increase sales.
Here are the four steps an entrepreneur can take to successfully execute the influencer marketing strategy.
Define main goals and target audience
The first step to achieve success with any tactic in marketing is to define and set goals throughout the campaign. This preliminary step makes it easier to measure success and generate returns on any investments made.
Identify and make your product appeal to your target audience. Take time to research your target audience and identify what your ideal influencer would look like. Then, you will be able to target your product towards that specific audience.
“For a small business there’s one simple goal for influencer marketing: sales,” said Dhar Mann, an experienced entrepreneur and founder and CEO of LiveGlam, a cosmetics company that he took from $600 in starting capital to 8-figures in annual revenue in less than two years.
According to Mann, it is important to consider your company’s current stage when choosing where to focus your time and effort. In the beginning stage of your business, always place the focus on sales. After some cash is put away, you can focus on building up the brand.
Develop performance-based affiliate program that pays commission for sales
A business starting with a small budget can get the most return on their investments working with influencers by creating a performance-based affiliate program. Using this approach can help a business generate sales without spending any money.
“My company, LiveGlam, a beauty subscription box, will generate $20 million in sales in our third year of business and we will spend a whopping $0 on advertising. All of our sales come through commission-based influencers that love our products and make a great living selling them,” Mann added.
However, you must create personal relationships with key influencers in order for the performance-based affiliate program to be put into effect.
Create personal relationships with key influencers
Building trust and a personal relationship with an influencer is key to holding a mutually-beneficial relationship. People feel more of a connection with a person than they do to a brand.
“My advice is to take time to build personal relationships and don’t blow your whole marketing budget on a few pay-to-post activations.
“First, make sure the influencer loves your product and consistently uses it so their audiences know the love is real. Once that history is developed and the influencer’s audience is warmed up to your brand, then paid activations can start to work,” Mann said.
It’s also important to focus on developing a really good relationship with a smaller number of influencers then it is to depend on thousands of micro-influencers to drive sales.
“We constantly send them thoughtful gifts, fly them to our studio in Los Angeles, interact with them on all their social channels, take them on trips and do whatever it takes to build personal relationships.
“We pay attention to the small details and it’s paid off in a big way,” Dhar Mann added.
Also, creating a strong relationship can lead to many different, exciting opportunities to promote your product including giveaways, exclusive product bundles, and collaborations. These opportunities will also help expand your company’s social media followings.
Use the right platform
Using the right platform for influencer marketing makes a huge impact, depending on your brand. It’s also more efficient to become an expert one platform at a time.
“I suggest start with one platform, master that, and naturally it will start spilling over onto others especially since most Influencers are multi-platform. If they love your product and your brand, they’ll start talking about you everywhere,” Mann advises.
Facebook Live is a great platform to use for the start of your influencer marketing strategy.
According to a study held by Statista, Facebook is the most widely used social network.
“Not only do influencers on Facebook Live have the deepest engagement with their audiences, they’re also not being flooded with offers by big brands because live content is so new. So, you can get a lot of bang for your buck.
“Established YouTubers and Instagrammers have so many deals coming at them that you’ll have a tough time getting on their radar and will have to pay an expensive price to get in the door,” added Mann.
Review and Repeat
Keep your social media influencer relationships strong and continually monitor the success of your business. Reviewing your influencer strategy helps you to adjust any problems and replicate success. It also helps you find out what works best for your business.
“When LiveGlam first started we looked at everything like this: if we spend $X then we expect a $Y return. And we defined a successful activation as one that generated a positive return on our investment.
“As our business grew we started to look at the brand lift potential from an influencer activation. How many followers did we gain? How many impressions did we generate? How many people now know about our brand that had never heard of us, including other influencers?” said Mann.
Monitor your sales, leads, traffic, followers and engagement consistently. Make changes according to your business growth and keep your influencers happy for future demands. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve your brand’s awareness. Using these strategies can help take your business to the next level.
Christina Nicholson, (Media Maven) is a former TV reporter and anchor who has worked in markets from New York City to Miami. She is still telling stories, but instead of doing it for a newscast, she’s doing it to help businesses grow. With her business, Media Maven, her podcast, Become a Media Maven, and in her TEDx talk, she helps entrepreneurs reach thousands, even millions, of their ideal customers or clients in minutes instead of months through the power of media without spending big bucks on advertising.
You can still see her in front of the camera as a host on Lifetime TV, in national commercials, and read her work online in Huff Post, Inc. Magazine, and Fast Company. Christina also has a local lifestyle and family blog, Christina All Day. She lives in South Florida with her husband and two young children.
On April Fools’ day no one is safe from brand PR stunts. Where Microsoft has just initiated a blanket ban on 1 April humour, other companies have decided to uphold the tradition of capitalising on the event with some fake news of their own.
In a memo to staff last week, Microsoft noted how April Fools’ pranks had a “limited positive impact”, pointing out that ill-judged jokes can even result in “unwanted news cycles”. But while big tech might be cynical about filling journalists’ inboxes with fake news for a day, consumers aren’t as uptight.
In the UK at least, research indicates 86% of people think humour is one of the best ways a company can connect with them. 68% even say they think April Fools’ campaigns were funny.
Though some admittedly miss the funny bone, this year’s lot of brand executions is a mixed bag of inspired ideas, millennial product parodies and a few clumsy rebrands.
Among the efforts is a ‘height verification tool’ from Tinder which has already proven to be divisive despite its aim of bringing “truthfulness back into the world of online dating”. British retailer Boden, meanwhile, has riffed off the current Brexit chaos with a tongue-in-cheek Breton top ban.
Scroll down to see the rest of this year’s tongue-in-cheek stunts, campaigns and product launches from around the world, from Singapore to Scotland.
Tinder: Height verification badge
Recognising that height is a valuable currency in the world of online dating, Tinder has trolled users by announcing plans to introduce a ‘height verification badge’. “Simply input your true, accurate height with a screenshot of you standing next to any commercial building. We’ll do some state-of-the-art verifying and you’ll receive your badge directly on your profile,” it teases.
Durex: Fish skin and mala hot pot flavoured condoms
Durex is inviting couples to unleash the heat with a special new flavour:”Spice things up and experience the taste of the fish skin condom with mala hot pot flavour. Packed with handpicked ingredients for your tasteful experience. Let ’em pleasure your mouth…” it insists on its Facebook page.
Jameson: A glittering deterrent
Jameson has launched a clever (and sparkly) way to deter would-be whisky thieves from stealing a dram of the good stuff. Jameson Catchmates comes complete with ‘glittershot’ technology. One twist of the cap sees any sip-stealing roommate or relative met with a wave of green glitter, turning their sticky fingers into shimmering ones.
Boden: Brexit Breton top ban
Breton shirts are the latest casualty of EU upheavals according to Boden. The retailer claims consent has been withdrawn for it to continue producing the French-inspired sartorial staple in the UK, and that anyone owning a Breton top will now need to apply for a special EU shirt license to wear one or face a €1000 fine. As such, it’s offering a thoughtful solution to customers: a Breton stripe removal service. The complimentary postal service erases illegal stripes by screen-printing, a technique the company calls ‘the Bret-off’. Boden’s founder has been giving interviews to the media this morning.
Travellodge: Bedshare service
In its bid to compete with sharing economy rivals, Travel lodge is taking sharing to the next level with a fresh ‘bedshare’ service that makes travelling a little less lonely and cheaper. Guests will get a 50% discount if they are willing to share half their room with another guest, and the company will clearly mark everything down the middle to make sure each person gets their fair share.
SodaStream: A wind-powered innovation
American astronaut Scott Kelly, best known for having spent the most time in space on a single mission, is the face of SodaStream’s newest innovation; SodaStream.ME, which turns people’s excess CO2 into sparkling water on the go. One small burp for man, one sparkling leap for mankind.
Discussing the campaign with The Drum, Scott Kelly said: “I have a SodaStream and really like the product. As a lover of our planet, I appreciate partnering up with a brand whose environmental values fall in line with my own personal beliefs.”
He clarified that: “You can’t burp in space. On earth – or in a gravity field – the gas in your stomach is lighter than air, so it rises opposite to the force of gravity. In space – in microgravity – there is no weight and hence the gas isn’t “lighter” than air, so it doesn’t rise. It stays mixed in with the food in your body, so it’s eventually expelled another way.”
Maryland: Avocado cookies
Forget smashed avo’ on toast, Maryland has taken the millennials’ favourite food craze one step further with the launch of its brand-new Avocado Cookie. Promising an “Instagrammable snack” like no other, the snack maker claims to have used “refined avocado powder” in lieu of flower, creating a super-food alternative to original cookies.
Hello Fresh: A bold unicorn box
What do brands think millennials love more than avocados? Luridly-coloured foods and Unicorn-themed products apparently. That’s why Hello Fresh is adding the ‘The Unicorn Box’ to its meal subscription box options. The first-of-its-kind experience contains three colourful recipe kits that will let diners eat “like a mythical creature with a box full of farm-fresh rainbows, smiles, and joy right at your doorstep”.
Honda: The polite horn
Sometimes drivers need to get the attention of others. But do they have to be so rude about it? In its mission to make roads everywhere more civilised, Honda Canada has launched a solution: the polite horn.
Origin: Sun power
Solar panel business Origin has announced it’s literally going the extra mile for customers and heading to the sun to power the entire planet, in a world first mission to capture solar power in its purest form. It says the traditional method of waiting for sunlight means we lose around 98% of its power before it hits earth. So, in order to capture the energy in its purest form, Origin has engaged some of the world’s greatest engineers to head into space to carve off a bowling ball size of the sun – which alone will be enough to power the world for the next 60,000 years.
Caring Skin: Astronaut facial
Space is a recurrent theme this year, with Singapore facial spa caring skin revealing it will be sending customers into outer space to clear blemishes and treat sensitive and inflamed skin. The 150-minute suborbital ‘pop-up’ treatment, dubbed ‘The Astronaut Facial’, is endorsed by influencers Camira Asrori and Cassandra Tan.
Google: Snakes on a map
Google prefers to celebrate April Fools’ day instead of tricking people. Last year, you might’ve seen Waldo peeking out of your Google Maps to invite you to find him on a scavenger hunt: This year, it’s revived another nostalgic game that takes people back to a much simpler, pre-Fortnite time: Snake. Confusingly, the ‘snake’ is now a train. Regardless, the twist on the 90s Nokia classic lets players ‘travel’ to different locations across the world—including Cairo, London, San Francisco, São Paulo, Sydney and Tokyo – straight from Google Maps.
Jägermeister: Introducing the Jägerbong
Just ahead of the 4/20 celebrations, Jägermeister has announced that it’s joining the cannabis market with the launch of the Jägerbong. Coming in at a clever $42, customer can light up the party with a kit which includes a 1L bottle of the aperitif they can recycle and turn into a bong, a bong carb, a hacky sack, eye drops, a lighter and grinder.
Aaron & Partners: Animals need lawyers too
UK law firm Aaron & Partners has launched an employment law service for pet influencers. Dogs, cats, fish and tortoises are just some of the species the firm hopes to work with. Standard employment contracts will be drawn up to suit the needs of each animal, including key clauses such as fixed nap times, allocated time for belly tickles or petting, and remuneration in snuggles and favourite treats.
BMW: Lunar paint
BMW has unveiled an innovative new feature that helps to “push the limits of electric driving”. From 1 April, BMW drivers will be able to add Lunar Paint as an optional extra to their i series vehicle. The product uses “revolutionary photovoltaic technology to harness the power of the moon and passively recharge your battery in the hours of darkness.” It’s what Neil Armstrong would have wanted.
Deliveroo: Crustless wonder
Delivery giant Deliveroo has revealed its plan to remove all crust options from the app, due to overwhelming anti-crust feedback from customers placing pizza orders across all of its 14 markets.
Like Tikes: Big Tikes
Kids toy maker Little Tikes will now be known as Big Tikes. The announcement reflects the brand’s “new found maturity” and is a nod to its fresh and grown-up approach. The new logo will appear across all brand channels and on social media.
KitKat: Tea time
After four years of intense research, Nestlé has crafted the optimal blend of tea leaves for the perfect brew to accompany its famous KitKat break. This tea has been developed in the brand’s very own Teaology labs and comes in tea bags inspired by the signature KitKat range: two-finger, four-finger and KitKat Chunky to fit every break occasion.
Amazon: Audible for fish
Amazon is giving Aussies the chance to get their fish hooked on literature with Audible for Fish – a three-second audiobook designed to keep underwater friends company while their owners aren’t around. It says research has shown that marine life is stimulated by short bursts of audio, sounds a little fishy to us.
London Dungeon & HSBC: Rugby torture chamber
Organisers of the HSBC London Sevens rugby tournament have announced a collaboration with macabre tourist attraction London Dungeon. The London Dungeon has installed a replica of its infamous torture chamber within a dungeon-style sin bin at Twickenham Stadium, where players will be sent on receipt of a yellow card throughout the duration of the nail-biting two-day event.
Zava: The Meata-blocker
Following a record-breaking Veganuary, it’s the dietary trend on everyone’s lips, and from today Brits can simply pop a pill to help them lead a plant-based lifestyle. Online doctor Zava’s Meata-blockers have meat-suppressing properties, diverting blood flow so that hormones involved in creating meat cravings can’t circulate around the body as efficiently. The pills also cause a decreased sense of smell and therefore less temptation when a tasty bacon sandwich is nearby.
Foodpanda: Jetski deliveries
A new mode of food delivery via jet blades has been revealed by Foodpanda Singapore. The innovation will “shave delivery times by half”, reducing it to 15 minutes or less. Not to disappoint Singaporeans, Foodpanda will be rewarding one lucky customer with a personal jet blade session (valued at S$198) with Ola Beach Club on Sentosa, with those who include ‘fpjetblad’ into the voucher code box until 5 April in with a chance of winning.
Wilkinson Sword: Casting Ken
Wilkinson Sword has appointed Ken Carson as the face of its Hydro 5 Sense product range.
Otherwise known as Ken Doll, clean-shaven Ken now can grow a beard… in seconds.
Le Chameau: Muddy boots
Building from the insight that people want an authentic outdoor experience, Le Chameau has launched an exclusive Pre Muddé service.
Pre Muddé offers boot lovers the desirable, well-worn country look, without even stepping outside. The boots arrive in soil curated by the brand’s expert pedologists (soil specialists).
Shutterstock: AI-serviced library
Shutterstock has announced plans to build the world’s largest brick-and-mortar library. The library is to house over 250 million volumes of imagery, a full-floor of 14 million reels of film and a listening bay where visitors can enjoy over 20,000 music tracks.
AI-powered robots call Cyanotypes are to replace traditional librarians, to ensure the building is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Construction of the building is to commence in 2020 and will be designed by the world-renowned Belgian architect, Alexandria VonPixel.
Sainsbury’s: Pink avocados
Sainsbury’s is to stock a limited edition run of ripe and ready pink avocados – a naturally grown hybrid of different avocado varieties.
The supermarket has worked closely with a supplier in Peru to grow the exclusive Rosa-vo, which will go on sale as an initial trial to gauge popularity among UK customers and Instagram hungry millennials.
Nakd: Takeaway flavours
Nakd has expanded its range of bars with a series of savoury snacks inspired by Indian Takeaways.
The Indian ‘Flakeaway’ comes in four flavours: Vindalover, Poppadom Paradise, Korm-azeballs and Pilau Nice.
Cineworld: 4DX movies
Cineworld has done the impossible and brought snowfall in London, in Spring.
To celebrate the countdown to the arrival of its 4DX screens, visitors exiting North Greenwich station were met with an unexpected snowfall.
Snow is one of the effects 4DX can stimulate in the screening room, as well as wind, lightning, bubbles, water and scent work.
Hotels.com: Pet passports
With Brexit still up in the air, 75% of pet owners do know that their EU pet passports are in jeopardy.
To ensure pets don’t miss out on the beauty of the continent, Hotels.com has launched its first European Pup fakeation. It is a themed pet stay where dogs can enjoy European destinations without leaving the UK.
Royal Caribbean: Air space
Who says cruises can only be enjoyed on water? Not the Royal Caribbean, who has launched its first ‘cloud-class’ plane called ‘Master of the Skies.
Set to take off in 2020, the plane offers guests the chance to enjoy all the hallmarks of its cruises at 35,00 feet in the air.
When the seatbelt sign turns off, the plane turns into a dedicated entertainment zone that hosts an air-hockey table, a library of video games, as well as a whirlpool and dining area.
Subway: Listening in
As paranoia mounts around smartphone listening and ad targeting, Subway is the first brand to openly admit it makes use of covert research techniques.
In dramatic new footage released today, a Subway Sandwich Artist has been caught on camera, capturing overheard conversations in an unknown part of Great Britain. He can be seen hiding in bushes, behind a newspaper and dressed in state of the art military-standard disguises.
Benson for Beds: A royal visit
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shocked shoppers at a central London store after they were spotted testing out mattresses.
With their ‘newly born’ baby in tow, the couple were seen browsing the Benson for Babies cot mattress section.
Spam: A vegan treat
Spam has jumped on the plant-based wagon, by launching a new variation of its iconic tinned food.
With a quarter of 25-34-year-olds identifying as vegetarian or vegan, Spam is re-positioning itself towards those decreasing their meat consumption, with ‘Vegan Spam.’
Duolingo: A passive aggressive owl
Learning a language takes a lot of work, perseverance and motivation. With this in mind, Duolingo has launched ‘Duolingo Push.’
Duolingo’s Duo is an online passive aggressive owl that sends you reminders when you need to practice your language skills, but this year, Duo will remind people to practice their language skills – in person.
Duo will turn up at your work, when you are on a date when you are at the gym to make sure you practice your French, Spanish, Korean, Klingon, High Valyrian or Chinese.
Muuna: Cheesy cannabis
Muuna has introduced a new flavour to its cottage cheese range. Muuna cannabis cottage cheese is a limited-edition variety, using milk from grass-fed cows.
Muuna’s limited edition Cannabis variety features cottage cheese as a base with a sprinkle of food-grade cannabis on the bottom.
Designed to create an element of carefree relaxation, while delivering an earthy taste, its latest offering will leave customers relaxed while keeping the munchies at bay.
Isobel: Brexit stamps
As the UK still looks set to exit the EU, a series of six stamps commissioned has been leaked ahead of their official release.
Created by isobel, the six first and second class stamps capture six Brexit ‘icons’ who are presented as famous historical figures complete with a relevant line of copy.
Theresa May is presented as the lady with the lamp – the UK’s first woman of nursing Florence Nightingale, while Boris Johnson has adopted a rotund Churchillian guise.
John Berkow, leader of the house is seen donned a suit of armour as Henry V with the line “Once more unto the lobbies!”
Virgin Atlantic: A sing-a-long
Virgin Atlantic is going back to their musical roots and trialling sing-alongs on key routes.
As part of an extension to the airline’s ‘depart the everyday’ campaign, passengers will be encouraged to join the crew for in-flight karaoke from shortly after take-off.
Highlights of the schedule include a Saturday Night Cabin Fever disco on weekend flights, mile-high hip-hop during flights to LA and non-stop Sinatra on flights to New York. Start spreading the news…
LinkedIn has added lookalike audiences to its ad offerings after beta testing the tool over the last year.
Lookalike audiences are nothing new, as Facebook has shown. LinkedIn’s director of product, Abhishek Shrivastava, said it “took us some time” to build the tool.
Marketers could already go to a platform like Facebook to discover new audiences using existing customer data. LinkedIn is now offering that for B2B marketers by making it easier to find company names or job titles.
Audience templates, another new offering, streamline the process of finding audiences. According to Shrivastava, it’s a one-step process that separates audiences job titles and functions into 20-plus templates.
LinkedIn has over 610m users and, according to Shrivastava, it has seen over 30% growth in the number of sessions per user over the last year.
“Because of all this activity happening on the platform by our members on an increasing basis…it allowed us to tap into a lot of the signals that have allowed us to create the lookalike product, which requires a lot of signals to do the modeling of who are users,” said Shrivastava.
LinkedIn also announced it will integrate Bing data for the first time into its ad products. Marketers can now leverage Bing data with LinkedIn’s interest-based targeting tool it launched in January.
“If someone searched for an article on digital marketing trends, that would map them to a category of being interested in marketing,” explained Shrivastava. “That list of categories is what we are exposing within our campaign manager on LinkedIn, to allow our customers to create campaigns to reach people who are interested in that particular topic.”
Shrivastava said connecting Bing and LinkedIn data “gives marketers the best of both worlds”.
Do you think online referral campaigns have any role in digital brand marketing? Yes, Of Course. According to the marketers, referral campaigns serve high in enlarging number of buyers and various marketing strategies can also done digitally(through Online) in order to promote brand as well as product. Conducting Online campaign is not a difficult task, just click to Webmarketing123.com refer the guidelines to get a basic idea of how to do digital brand marketing for online campaign referrals. Online Campaigns are carried out to create a center of attention on viewers mind about the existence of products, its brand image, how it is digitally promoted etc. To achieve this, most of the marketer selects referral programs as an important tool. Why is it so?
Because they believe in Buyers words and they know the power of it. The Words/feedbacks from the new buyer/ loyal buyers play a vital role in expanding the business. Once, the customers get satisfied with the particular product then they will act as brand ambassador in selling the products to the others. They will share information related to prices, after sales services, online payments etc, to others and Convert them to first time user then to repeat buyer then to prospect and finally to loyal customers. Try hard to get Good WOM (Word of Mouth) feedbacks in Online.
Importance of Digital Brand Marketing
Digital Brand Marketing is the marketing strategy of searching, investigating, encouraging, advertising, selling, and distributing a company’s brand. It encloses set of creating responsiveness on the subject of the brand, advertising, exposure, endorsement, pricing. As far as now, the people and Internet, both are in each other’s pocket. So, it is not a difficult task to advertise everything. The populaces have a fondness of goods or messages which ought to be pleasing to eyes and mind.
Referral Campaigns
Referral Marketing is one of the best marketing strategies to promote the products and increases the level of purchase among the customers. Almost, every sale will result in profit making, because it is done with buyers word of mouth. Referral Marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies which help in saving time, cost, energy of the marketer. At present, online referrals and services are considered to be the most useful and effective marketing strategies where the new start ups as well as well established business people can make use of it.
Framework for Online campaign Referrals
Based on the ideas of https://www.webmarketing123.com, there are few frameworks for digital brand marketing to be carried out for online campaign referrals (Word of Mouth). The word of mouth is always requiring less investment of money. It is one of the low-cost methods to market your product and helps to bring large number of customers. It is done effectively through Online Referral programs, campaigns etc. The objectives for accomplishing the campaigns repeatedly develop the brand image and draw many buyers.
They are
Identify the target and try to aim on it with proper referral campaigns. Automatically helps in increasing sales, profit, goodwill
Use simple language to describe about your product and brand. It should be appealing and convenience to the buyers. Encourage the existence buyers to give positive word of mouth to the others. This will be done very easily by providing discounts, gift coupons, credit points, if they give referrals to others. Frame attractive SEOs where the customers get attracted towards it at the first look. Make use of Google Analytics to have track on success rate. Make the product available for full time in all social media. In everywhere the viewer has to see the product/brand details say in messages, blogs, email etc. Just have hope on Social Media. Make Staffs as lawyers for your brand. Instruct staff members to have a friendly communication with their known members about the brands.
Through Online referral campaigns, proficient web portals, the entrepreneurs can publicize their brands to the customers in an effective way. The Digital Brand Marketing is emerging at a higher level due to emergence of Internet. It applies so many electronic means and platforms to market a company’s business. Every folks use online for diverse reasons say for starting and promoting the business.
Social media marketing is a baffling area. It looks like anyone can do it: Post something (anything!) on social media, look for new content, talk with people, keep filling the Instagram page of your company with your most photogenic team. It sounds like a task for today’s social media age kids.
If you want your ROI to grow, though, that’s not the way to go.
It may look simple, but without economic resources, talented people and the right tools for the job, it is almost impossible to make social media marketing effective. This article will focus on marketing tools for social media. These SMM tools actually stand out because they are user-friendly and continue to improve in response to social media changes and trends.
According to the most important SMM tasks requiring automation, we’ve divided them into three groups: Social media management, social media monitoring, and social media advertising.
These social media social media management tools help you manage the workflow required by social media. So they really make it easier, more organized, less stressful and thus more efficient. Some of our favorites are here.
IFTTT is the freeway to get all your apps and devices talking to each other. Not everything on the internet plays nice, so we’re on a mission to build a more connected world.
IFTTT is a website as well as a mobile app. The free service was launched in 2010 with the motto: “Put the Internet to work for you”. However, in recent years it has changed a lot. You can currently connect all your “services” with IFTTT to complete tasks automatically.
There are numerous ways you can connect all your services – and the resulting combinations are called “Applets”.
Applets essentially automate your daily workflow, whether smart home devices or apps and websites are managed. For example, if you own the intelligent lighting system, Philips Hue, you can use IFTTT to automatically turn on a light each time you are tagged on a Facebook photo.
Buffer makes it easy for businesses and marketing teams to schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts in one place.
BufferApp lets users manage a range of social media accounts, lining up updates to be shared in the future across a range of social networks.
Every time you find a post you want to share, a tweet you want to retweet, or whenever you write some content that you want to share out over time, you can add it to your Buffer. This places it in a queue and the posts are sent out in order, at times you have pre-selected.
This means that you don’t need to choose a date and time for every single post you want to schedule. You just add it to your queue, and Buffer does the work for you.
Buffer has a smooth, clean interface that is really enhanced by installing its browser extensions – a lot of its best functionality comes from these add-ons.
Quuu is the number one source for content and the only place where each and every piece has been hand-reviewed in house.
Quuu’s main goal is to increase your follow-up and commitment to social media by helping you post hand-curated content in your niche. Quuu sends relevant, high-quality content from its niche to its users every day, which they can easily program and post on their social media profiles via Quuu scheduler or any other tool such as Buffer or HubSpot.
These suggestions include a link to the content (article, blog post, video, podcast episode…) and a text containing relevant hashtags and social handles (making it easier to tag the author or source).
MeetEdgar is another programming tool that stands out for one reason: You can recycle old posts. This is more important than it seems: Content is forgotten and left behind even good and popular content. It is low-hanging fruit and too often a missed opportunity to recycle this old content so that it can get views again.
With MeetEdgar, you organize posts by category, schedule content by category, and then, every time the tool has gone through your scheduled posts, it will automatically post old content from each category so it can get attention again.
Price: $49/mo
Social Media Monitoring Tools
Social media marketing is divided into two processes. One is about the content you and your brand have. You create content, aggregate and share content with your audience and promotional content. The SMM tools discussed above to automate and optimize this part of social media marketing.
The audience is the second aspect of social media marketing. It’s your brand’s online mentions, reviews, questions, compliments, and complaints.
Although posting may be more important to raise brand awareness, it is also important to keep an eye on what people say about you and to respond appropriately. It’s almost impossible to manually find all brand mentions on social media, as people don’t always tag the brand even on social media platforms.
That’s why there are social media monitoring tools: To ensure comprehensive communication with an online audience. Here are some of the highlights:
Are you looking to bring your social media presence under one roof and get usable, real-time insights? Awario lets you join in conversations about your business after crawling the web and finding the people having those conversations.
When the web and social media are saying something about you, the Awario monitoring tool is able to pick up mentions instantly using non-stop monitoring in any language. This lets you respond quickly to what is being said, good or bad. You can then amplify the positive and clarify any negative comments or untruths regarding your brand before they get out of control.
Having a website and social media are now almost requirements for small businesses in today’s digital ecosystem. And once you create your channels, managing the different platforms and interacting with users takes a lot of effort. Being able to do it in one place, makes the task that much easier.
Mention offers real-time social media monitoring, and you can set up alerts for your brand, your competitors, and your industry. With this tool, you can view and respond to each like, tag, or mention (ah, see what they did there?) right in the app. You can also sort mentions by importance or significance, and even set up filters, including by source or by language.
If your budget is much wider, Brandwatch can be your tool. The analytical data of Brandwatch is highly visual: If you are an agency, it is perfect to illustrate the significance of social media marketing for customers.
Talkwalker is another tool at the company level that is without a doubt one of the most powerful on the market. It offers a wide range of filters, subfilters and coverage platforms. It covers not only social media, news sites, blogs, and forums, but also broadcasting, television and printing. The available data is nearly endless.
When you first created your Facebook profile, assigned your Myspace top 8, sent your first tweet, or uploaded your Instagram square, you probably had a sense that social media would change the way you spent your time, communicated with others, and received breaking news stories.
But as you signed up for your very first accounts or connected with friends online for the first time, you may not have predicted that a shift in the way we communicate online would also change the way we form opinions about where to shop, what to buy, and whose recommendations to trust.
And although the rise of influencer marketing happened virtually overnight, it feels natural, like we’ve never known a world without it. To go a step further, you may not even realize you’ve been a target of influencer marketing, and that may very well be the most successful part of this type of marketing.
In this article, we’ll explore what influencer marketing is, how effective it can be, and what you can do to reap the benefits for your own brand.
What is influencer marketing?
Rather than focusing on the marketing channel, such as email, social media, paid search, or print advertising, or the target audience, influencer marketing focuses on the people who could potentially influence their following to become new customers of a particular product or brand.
So while, yes, it’s Kim Kardashian posting a SnapChat about her favorite athletic wear line or Kylie Jenner talking about her new lip kits on Instagram, influencer marketing goes beyond just those who are keeping up with the Kardashians. Influencer marketing has consistently grown in almost every industry and across all marketing channels, and, truth be told, we’re pretty positive it’s here to stay.
DIFF charitable eyewear is a company known for using Instagram influencers to its benefit. From recent stars from The Bachelor to pageant contestants and fashion bloggers, DIFF’s social media presence is largely filled with photos curated from the feeds of influencers-turned-customers who review their product in exchange for some type of reward. Many times, the benefit can be free products, VIP privileges, or monetary payment.
DIFF’s social media feed reflects their influencer strategy, featuring real people wearing their product.
How to identify an influencer
So, isn’t “influencer” just another name for a celebrity? Yes and no. Because our online lives have opened us up to connecting with more people who share our interests than ever before, we can also follow along with others’ lives in a new way.
Gone are the days of limiting the term “celebrity” to only popular musicians, actors, or writers. Now, as smaller niche audiences gather across all media channels and turn to people they idolize in their own field or industry, the term influencer has broadened.
A survey from Nielsen showed only 33% of consumers trust advertisements, while 90% put their faith in peer recommendations, which is why influencer marketing is definitely something worth paying attention to.
Number of followers
There is no definitive scale to determine an influencer’s status, but their number of followers is the first place to look. Think about it: Never before have we had such accurate numbers for one’s followers or reach. Before social media, we could measure a person’s influence by box office numbers or albums sold, but none of those statistics would come close to the precise measurement we now have in a social media following.
And because social media appears to be a way to gain inside access to the behind-the-scenes of stars’ work and personal lives, it instantly feels more authentic than other mediums. We can see beyond the stage or screen.
This image from Sprout Social shows the types of people you may consider to be an influencer:
Finding an influencer in your industry
Influencers of all levels can be found in almost any industry. Let’s say you run a business that focuses on email marketing (Can you imagine?!). When brainstorming, you may come up with the following ideas for who you could consider influencers:
Entrepreneurs who send lots of emails to their customers
Podcast hosts who talk about marketing
Famous bloggers who send their content via newsletter
Experts in other areas of marketing, such as social media
There’s no magic formula for finding an influencer for your niche, but you want to find someone whose followers listen to them and take their opinions seriously.
Micro and macro influencers
As the number of influencers continued to increase, we needed a way to measure one’s influence, especially when compared to others. While we all know the potential for this to change at any moment, the categories micro and macro influencers have been created as an unofficial way to differentiate various people with moderate to large followings.
Social Media Today identifies micro influencers as those with less than 10,000 followers and macro followers as those with more than that.
While there’s still plenty of gray area when it comes to differentiating between major and minor influencers, the emergence of these terms shows that the number of influencers will continue to expand and you can expect the effectiveness of influencer marketing to grow with it.
As content creators get better and better, consumers will have more choices for who to follow and how to spend time online. It only makes sense that more niches will be created and therefore, brands and consumers alike will have more influencers to look to.
Why influencer marketing works
Since everyone’s following grows over time, some people believe that influencer marketing may be on the decline. But influencer marketing is more than just the people doing it—the authentic connections followers make with influencers is something that, in one capacity or another, will continue to increase.
A trusted friend
Have you ever texted a friend for a recommendation for the next book you should read or asked where she got the jacket she’s wearing? Our personal connections can be our biggest motivators, and we’re much more likely to choose one brand over another if a friend or family member has given us input on a decision.
At its core, influencer marketing is the same thing. With or without a real-life personal connection, we’ve specifically chosen who to follow on social media and have grown accustomed to seeing glimpses into their personal life. We trust them, which is why we’re much more likely to buy something from their already-vetted recommendation versus a paid ad for a product we’ve never seen before.
Here’s an Instagram post by former Bachelor contestant JoJo Fletcher on her favorite hair tools. She currently has 2.2 million followers, making her a macro influencer.
Authenticity: The secret sauce
So, why exactly is influencer marketing so effective?
Because it feels more natural and trustworthy that traditional advertising.
As email marketers, we couldn’t stress the importance of personalization enough, and we’re always trying to write messages for people, not inboxes. But influencer marketing has also raised the bar on authenticity and custom messaging.
No longer will we blindly order something we receive a printed ad for in the mail. We’ll probably look up its Amazon reviews, ask friends how they feel about the product, or look to other online experts we trust.
A study by Mediakix revealed that the influencer market is currently worth over 1 billion dollars, and this number is projected to soon double. But does this mean these type of promotions will remain the same? Yes and no. We predict that authenticity and trustworthiness, two tactics that have far outlasted the rise of influencers, will remain the best way to approach marketing, but as always, the mediums, channels, and people involved will continue to evolve.
More and more influencers are making their full income from their blog and social media, so as their experience rises, the more likely they are to have working partnerships with brands. However, this is an area where you should work hard to preserve authenticity, rather than become just another sponsor of their website or podcast. Keep it real!
One of the longest-running examples of influencer marketing is Michael Jordan for Nike. Here’s influencer marketing at work in an email marketing campaign for Air Jordans, named after the basketball player himself:
Is influencer marketing a good choice for my brand?
As a whole, the influencer marketing concept is worth trying for most brands, but how you do it is completely up to you. Unlike most paid advertising strategies, the formulas to success are not clear-cut, and the input and output can vary greatly for each brand.
For example, you’re not always working with a set amount of money: Now, influence and product have become their own forms of currency. Create a strategy that casts a wide net of potential influencers and hones in on the people who you’d most like to represent your brand to new customers. Be sure that the influencers you work with share the same values as your brand. Of course, people are more unreliable than paid ads you write yourself, but that’s the risk you take in the name of unfiltered authenticity.
Wrap up
As you can see, influencer marketing isn’t just for large brands who have connections with big-name celebrities. Even if you’re an entrepreneur for a small business or feel like your industry doesn’t have famous thought leaders, it’s definitely worth the extra research and effort to explore.
And regardless of your partnership status with influencers, trustworthiness and authenticity should be the focus of your marketing strategy, regardless of brand, industry, or platform.
If you’re a brand looking to share customer testimonials or influencer content with your audience via email, reach out to us for a demo today.
There was a time when business owners relied solely on referral marketing.
The “Word of Mouth” strategy was perfect for businesses operating in small communities where every customer could spread the word and attract other customers from the same town or city.
Things changed during the 20th century when radio and television gave people access to more information. However, it was the Internet that triggered one of the most important and most drastic shifts in marketing, business, and lifestyle. It changed the way we communicate and, of course, the way we market and advertise our products and businesses.
Now, there are no limits in marketing and advertising. The Internet makes it easier for everyone. Choose the right platform and the right way to communicate with your audience and success is right around the next corner. Let’s talk about the latest trends in social media advertising and one of the best platforms to deliver your message:
Aim for success and go visual!
Facebook and YouTube, both leading multimedia channels and social communities, are mostly visual.
This is, in many ways, the main reason why they’re so successful.
[clickToTweet tweet=”People react better to images and videos than texts and slogans.” quote=”People react better to images and videos than texts and slogans.”]
People want to see, hear and learn more, but their time is limited. The problem is classic social media platforms are time-consuming.
You need to deliver your message fast and concise to be able to attract fans or customers. And not all the social media platforms promote this kind of communication.
Is there a platform that is visual and popular, easy to access and able to deliver instant messages? Yes, there is, and we’re referring to Instagram.
Why advertise on Instagram?
With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is a leading social media platform. Not convinced by this number? Well, just a little while ago, Instagram announced its 700 million users milestone. A growth of almost 30+% in a little time tells us more about this platform’s popularity and future potential than anything else.
In simple words, it has become a huge and diverse online community with unlimited marketing potential.
Of course, Facebook has more active users than Instagram. However, shear numbers may not be the first thing to consider when advertising a small business. If you want to successfully promote your small business, you should look first at the relevant data. The statistics are more than just simple numbers calculated in order to attract more users.
According to Forrester, Instagram is the king of social media with a 4.21% engagement rate.
This is a huge number, considering that Facebook and Twitter combined barely reach a 0.10 engagement rate. “Instagram delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter” Forrester ads.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Instagram is the king of social media with 4,21% engagement rate.” quote=”Instagram is the king of social media with 4,21% engagement rate.”]
What are the benefits of Instagram advertising?
Here are the real benefits of advertising on Instagram.
There are more than 700 million users on Instagram and the community is still growing.
Instagram and Facebook are connected. So it’s easier to target your audience based on Facebook data. All budgeting and scheduling tasks, the setup and creation of ads are done through Facebook. So you don’t need to start from scratch and learn about Instagram, once you’ve already used its sister platform for marketing and ads.
Instagram ads are non-intrusive and less likely to annoy your targeted audience.
The engagement rate on Instagram is higher than the engagement rate on any other social media platform.
You can easily integrate Shopify and sell your products instantly.
Instagram measures the success of your campaign based on awareness, reach and recall instead of follower counts, likes or comments.
Most people use their smartphones to read their news, socialize on Facebook or post their own stories and update social media timelines. Most smartphones feature high-end cameras that can shoot photographs to be immediately posted on Instagram. Everybody can be an amateur photographer. Instagram is the best channel for this type of media and it’s why most mobile users have Instagram accounts.
In terms of ROI and cost, Instagram returns the best results. It’s effective and less time-consuming than other online marketing channels.
How to promote your small business on Instagram
There are several options when launching an Instagram campaign. But you need to know from the start exactly what you want and what your target is.
Learn as much as possible about Instagram and Instagram advertising by reading everything you can find online about this topic.
You’ll have to choose which type of your campaign will be the best for your business.
Basically, there are 2 advertising methods on Instagram, the free one and of course, the paid ads feature.
1. Free marketing
I am sure most people reading this article have already tested and used Instagram. If you already have a personal account you’ll need to set up a new account for your small business.
If you’re selling products, you can integrate Instagram, Facebook and Shopify and instantly sell to your followers. Posting relevant images and videos and build your brand online, and attract more customers and followers.
Be aware that these images should be targeted, attractive and at the same time, of high quality. If you are not a skilled photographer, hire one that can deliver the best images to be successful.
2. Paid marketing
The most profitable method to advertise on Instagram is, of course, the paid one. If you’ve previously advertised your business on Facebook, then you already know how to advertise on Instagram.
Here are the types of ads you can post on Instagram and of course, how can you benefit from them.
Select an editor, such as “Ads Manager”, “Power Editor” or “Facebook API”, choose your objective, choose your audience and your budget.
There are 3 main types of Instagram ads to choose from when starting an online campaign:
1. Instagram Photo Ads
You can tell a story or promote your products online through visually engaging images. Market your small business or brand to a broad audience or target just local customers from your geographic area or hometown.
2. Instagram Video Ads
Create video ads up to 60 seconds long and deliver them to your target audience. Time is very limited these days and I would recommend shorter videos. They’ll get maximum attention and the expected response from your potential and existing customers.
While photo ads are your best choice when dealing with Instagram, videos can be effective if they’re short and have the potential to go viral.
3. Instagram Carousel Ads
These types of ads make Instagram users swipe to see additional images and call to action on your official website to learn more about your products or services. In many ways, a Carousel Ads campaign is similar to a content marketing campaign because it delivers valuable information to users.
The main goal is to get your potential customers to visit your website once you’ve managed to draw their attention.
4. Instagram Stories Ads
Instagram Stories ads are the “new kid in town”. With over 250 million daily users it’s a great way to grow your brand awareness. Just like how Smartketer has done in this case study.
I will finish with a Slide presentation from Socialbakers on why Instagram is important for every small business owner in 2017.
Robert Katai is an expert on Instagram. Robert is a Visual Marketer, Blogger and Brand Evangelist Bannersnack. Passionate about visual marketing, Instagram, content marketing and always up to date with the latest trends.
For the past 18 months, the official line coming out of Facebook HQ has been that video content is the future of marketing on Facebook. In response, brands both big and small have allocated significant resources to creating not just short-form videos, but also extensive long-form video content. In some cases, they have even launched weekly shows on Facebook, all in an effort to build reach and engagement. But now it looks like that strategic approach might need a serious re-think.
Case study: Social Media Examiner
For example, Social Media Examiner recently pulled three of its weekly shows from Facebook in October 2018. They have decided to scrap two of those shows entirely, and move the third show exclusively to YouTube. According to Social Media Examiner, the Facebook shows simply weren’t pulling in enough viewers, and those viewers they did get were hanging around for less than a minute. In contrast, viewers on YouTube were sticking around for over 4 minutes.
So why is this happening? One factor has to do with user behavior and the way that people think about different social media platforms. In explaining why it was leaving Facebook, for example, Social Media Examiner pointed out that “Facebook is a highway” and the way people prefer to use Facebook is by scrolling through post after post. If you’re traveling on a highway, are you really going to pull over and watch a 1-hour show? No way. In contrast, YouTube is much more similar to a TV-style experience, where people are sitting down to consume longer-form content.
Implications for digital marketers and brands
This, of course, has major implications for brands and digital media marketers. The old days of telling clients to create a lot of long-form video content for Facebook may be coming to an end. As much as Facebook would like to become a form of online TV, with people tuning into 30-minute and 1-hour shows at specific times of the day, people don’t seem to be buying into the idea.
And, yet, there is one major factor that keeps marketers coming back for more – and that’s the sheer size of the Facebook platform. In short, you can’t ignore any social platform with more than 2 billion users. Other video platforms, not even YouTube, can compare with Facebook. As Social Media Examiner pointed out, their total number of followers on Facebook is 500,000 while their total number of followers on YouTube is just 20,000.
Considering Facebook alternatives
Ultimately, marketing has always been about “fishing where the fish are.” So it’s hard to see marketers abandoning Facebook completely. Other video platforms like Twitch and TikTok are still very new and very unexplored. So the key might be finding the highest ROI ways to use video on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Video isn’t going away, but it’s clear that long-form video content is not the panacea it was once thought to be. Instead, short video clips under 2 minutes (and, preferably, under 1 minute) appear to be the best solution for business owners, brands and digital marketers
Founder and CEO of Social Media Headquarters (HQ), I manage an online community of marketers, students, entrepreneurs and digital enthusiasts. My company’s focus is to deliver the latest news, best practices and emerging trends in social media and related topics. Learn more on our website: www.socialmediahq.com.
Marketing automation can free you up to focus on big-picture business strategy.
If you care about growing your business and making it run more efficiently, marketing automation should be your next point of focus. Marketing automation uses different software to streamline and organize tasks so that they get completed in a productive, timely manner. It does the legwork for you so that you can focus on more important things.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if your business is ready for automation. Consider the following:
You have a steady flow of customer acquisition.
You want to improve lead generation.
Your emails are increasing to the point where you feel burdened.
You want your customers to have a more personalized experience with your brand.
You’re spending a lot of time doing little things instead of big things.
If any of the above resonates with you, it may be time to utilize marketing automation to make the most of your resources. Here are just a few of the reasons why marketing automation matters for your business.
It saves time.
Think about your routine for time-consuming tasks like checking and responding to emails, updating social media, scheduling meetings, etc. These are the little things that come with running a company that you’d be better off leaving to someone — or something — else. In this case, that’s automation software.
If you’re a leader in your business, it’s not surprising that your inbox is flooded with emails. According to a survey by Carleton University, workers spend around one-third of their work day sorting through emails. Imagine all the things you could accomplish with that kind of time.
You could use that energy to build a stronger growth strategy, create new products, revamp your content marketing and so much more. With wasted time comes wasted money. This is one of the greatest benefits of marketing automation: You work smarter, not harder.
It nurtures new leads.
It’s always more difficult acquiring new customers than it is to retain existing ones. That’s why it’s important to focus a lot of your automation strategy on lead generation.
If you want to grow your business, this is your first of many steps. You need to put energy into consumers at the top of the funnel if you want your business to grow at a steady pace. To do this, create a personalized, trustworthy, navigable experience for your visitors. Get in touch with consumers the second they hit your website, hand over their email address or contact you. Being immediately responsive and communicative with customers shows them you care about their needs and their buyer’s journey.
According toHarvard Business Review, your potential customers are seven times more likely to purchase from you if you respond within an hour of them taking some sort of action. Twenty-four percent of companies take more than 24 hours to respond to customers, while 23 percent don’t bother responding at all. That’s a lot of potential revenue and interested consumers going to waste.
By setting up an automated system that gets in touch with consumers during their buyer’s journey, you’re setting yourself up for success and sales. If someone signs up for your freebie and really likes the content, then gets a warm welcome email from you, it shows them you take that extra step to keep in touch.
It improves customer retention.
Once you’ve got enough leads on your plate, focus on keeping those customers happy and coming back for more. According to research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by five percent can increase profits by more than 20 percent. Keeping the right customers is essential for business expansion and higher return on investment.
Automate processes to reengage consumers. This could be sending emails offering them exclusive discounts or promo codes, entering them in a giveaway, telling them about a seasonal deal you have going on, etc. Segment your email list so that you know which stage of the funnel each customer is at. This leads to better execution of your automation process and is the perfect way to reconnect with consumers.
What’s next?
There are endless things in your business you can automate for improved efficiency. You save time, money and resources when you leave menial, repetitive tasks up to technology to focus on bigger, better things to grow your company. Decide which stage of the funnel your consumers are at and work your automation strategy around that. Soon enough, you’ll start to see your business expand with tons of happy customers behind it who trust your brand and stay loyal in the future.
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images
Chris Christoff is the co-founder of MonsterInsights, the leading WordPress plugin for Google Analytics.
