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5 LinkedIn Mistakes to Avoid When Job Hunting

February 3, 2022 No Comments

Are you getting a lot of employers visiting your LinkedIn profile, but you don’t hear from them? Avoid these LinkedIn mistakes when looking for a job.

LinkedIn is one of the largest career-focused sites on the internet. It provides a platform for job seekers to showcase their skills and get within arm’s length of recruiters in their industry.

The platform can serve as the first line of scrutiny for employers of labor to assess an individual’s suitability for a role. What recruiters see or fail to see on your LinkedIn profile can tip the odds against you if your profile isn’t in order.

Nobody wants to be in such a situation. Below are five common LinkedIn mistakes to avoid when job hunting.

1. Avoid Boring and Cliché Headlines

Your LinkedIn headline is the first thing that gets noticed once someone visits your profile. It is also what comes up on Google and LinkedIn on-site searches. It’s like an article headline; it decides whether or not someone clicks through to read your profile.

Unfortunately, some people let LinkedIn fill up their headlines with their job titles. This is not the way to go. Your headline is a unique opportunity to sell yourself, and a job title might not do that well enough.

Instead, you have to be as descriptive in as few words as possible. Avoid clichés and boring stuff millions of other accounts are probably using.

When optimizing your LinkedIn profile, your headline should ideally:

Describe your primary skills.
Entice visitors to want to connect with you.
Portray you as a valuable member of society.
Serve as a call to action.

There’s a huge difference between a LinkedIn headline that reads “Translator at ABCD company” and another that says “Translator with Marketing expertise for Korean Market.” The first is a job title, while the second is a brilliant pitch.

Image Gallery (3 Images)

To make a headline that sells:

Use clear and compelling language.
Use a combination of keywords that visitors would likely be looking for, e.g., “translator” and “Korean.”
Be precise. No one simply wants a translator; they’ll need a translator for a specific language, e.g., a Korean translator.
Offer unique value. There are probably thousands of Korean translators, but fewer with marketing skills.
Be action-oriented. Use words that show you’ve put your skills to use, e.g., “translated” 30,000 pages for the UN, “created” a translation blueprint for a Fortune 500 company, etc.

2. Avoid Getting Too Personal

It can be a bit tricky to draw a clear-cut line between your personal and professional life on social media. Even when you try to do so, the lines can be blurry. As a result, it’s hard to say with certainty what qualifies as personal content and what meets the threshold of professional content.

Always remember, before anything else, LinkedIn is a professional network. So try as much as possible to stick to professional and career-centric content. It’s easy to be roped into sharing a bit of our personal journey masqueraded as a relevant career conversation.

Sure, some recruiters might like to read a bit about how your personal journey influenced your career path. However, writing about how you took a break from work to look after your ailing grandparents starts to cross the line. Irrespective of how you want to package it, if your post highlights more about your personal struggles and less about your career, it probably shouldn’t be on LinkedIn.

However, there are a few exceptions. Recruiters might appreciate reading content about your non-work interests if it can provide them with relevant insights into your persona. For example, talking about your participation in local marathons might help your case if you’re being vetted for a job role that requires fitness. Similarly, sharing content about volunteering to lead a local charity might help exaggerate your leadership skills.

Personal content you share should ideally add a professional value that’s immediately clear to a recruiter. If you have any doubts about whether a post item meets the requirements of professional content, don’t post it.

3. Avoid Indiscriminate Connections

Having a lot of connections can help grow your LinkedIn profile and professional reputation. However, that will only happen if your connections are relevant and valuable. If you’re sending out invites solely for the numbers, you’re doing it wrong. Indiscriminately connecting with strangers on LinkedIn can hurt you in many ways.

Your LinkedIn timeline mirrors the kind of connections you have. When a recruiter lands on your profile, they’ll likely take a look at the kind of posts you interact with. This is what gives them a sense of your interests and what matters to you. If you’re connected to too many people that aren’t relevant to your industry, you’ll most likely be interacting with content that doesn’t add both face and intrinsic value to your timeline.

Also, limiting your connection to the most valuable, like-minded people within your industry can significantly increase your chances of being seen by recruiters. How?

When potential employers search for talents to hire, people within their network are prioritized on the search result pages. This includes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections in that order. This means, if you are within the network of professionals who are connected to recruiters, there’s a good chance that you’ll come up in searches whenever those recruiters search for talents.

If in doubt about the kind of people you should connect with, here’s a checklist to guide you.

Professionals you already know. Maybe, people you’ve worked with or are currently working with.
Professionals you would love to learn from. These include thought leaders or established talents within your industry.
People with a lot of key LinkedIn connections within your industry.
Prospects or people with potential within your industry.
Close friends or relatives with a professional value.

4. Avoid Showboating

LinkedIn is one of the best professional platforms for promoting your skills. It is the perfect place to sell yourself and lay the foundations for important career moves.

Unfortunately, a lot of users tend to tilt more towards showboating rather than showcasing their abilities. Sure, it’s sometimes tricky to differentiate between the two. However, how a potential employer sees your attempt at self-promotion hinges on a few key presentation details.

Stay modest and treat every post like an interview when promoting yourself on LinkedIn. This means:

Your choice of words is very important. Avoid words that overly focus on positive labels or qualifiers that overemphasize your status or achievements.
Acknowledge team members in team achievements; a link to their profiles in your post is a good idea.
Focus on the hard work involved. “I didn’t break a sweat to do that. It was very easy,” might sound arrogant. “My team worked hard to see that through” sounds more appealing.
Don’t belittle other people to emphasize your achievements. “Nobody in company XYZ is as good as I am at documentation” won’t elevate you; instead, your post will be seen as mean and dismissive. Avoid comparison in your LinkedIn write-ups.
When talking about your achievements, try to keep them within a relevant context. Always subtly present the audience with a reason for bringing up your achievement.
Always focus on what your audience can take away from your skills and achievement. It could be industry insights, best practices, or valuable tips. This will demonstrate your subject matter expertise and your willingness to share knowledge rather than just showing off.
When showcasing a successful project, try to back it up with evidence. Back up any claim you make with appropriate statistics and proof.

If a recruiter sense that you’re showing off, even with a legitimate achievement, you could be inadvertently demarketing yourself. Nonetheless, don’t let the fear of appearing as a braggart make you undervalue yourself. Instead, own your successes and be as professional as possible.

5. Avoid Highlighting Your Experience Wrongly

How you highlight your experience on LinkedIn can either diminish or emphasize your career progress. Don’t undersell yourself; pay attention to how you highlight your work experience. Here are key points to consider:

Your work experience isn’t limited to 9-5 jobs. Your experience at volunteer jobs, freelance gigs, and one-off contracts can add enormous value to your profile.
If you’ve held multiple positions at the same company, it’s good practice to list them all, especially if it highlights your career progression.
Always give an overview of what your job entails when listing your work experience. However, avoid words like “I was responsible for,” “my job included,” or other variations that seem like a boring list of responsibilities. Instead, use power words like grew, managed, led, piloted, or reduced. These action-oriented words better emphasize the actions you took and the value you created at your previous jobs.

Make LinkedIn Work for You

Making LinkedIn work for you boils down to a few salient details. Get it right, and LinkedIn could be a launching pad for your career success.

Do things the wrong way, and you could be hurting your career progress.

By Maxwell Timothy

Sourced from MUO

In News

Mistakes You’re Making in Social Media Marketing

January 31, 2022 No Comments

By Deanna Ritchie

The world is filled with billions of users on social media across the globe, and that number is growing each day; and we can watch as the issues to increase.

Social media users have resulted in social media platforms becoming among the most popular virtual places.

Traditional marketing methods, such as commercials on TV, are usually only one-way communications, delivering a brand to the consumer. But social media marketing encourages engagement. It facilitates multi-directional communication, which:

Businesses can interact with their customers
Customers can interact with the brand’s image by providing feedback.
Customers can connect with fellow customers via posting posts.

As a brand’s owner and marketer, you can connect with a variety of potential customers in a matter of seconds with the use of pay-per-click.

There’s plenty to benefit from using social media for marketing. However, if your efforts haven’t yielded any results, you may be making some of the typical marketing mistakes that people make. Becoming aware of these marketing mistakes can help make the right choices and avoid the following mistakes.

1. You’re Operating Blindly

One of the most costly mistakes you can make with your advertising on social networks is to shoot blindly and expect to see results. Instead, you must be sure to treat it with the same seriousness that you would for any other campaign in marketing.

Make a strategy — a clearly defined social media marketing strategy. It’s an essential ingredient in an effective social media presence.

An effective social media advertising plan will guarantee that you’re posting content that will help you achieve your business goals. This will stop you from investing your time and energy in a campaign that is bound to fail.

You have scheduled and planned your posts in time. Regularly posting helps you build and maintain your online presence that is organic.

How can you develop an effective strategy?

A simple plan is not enough. You require a master plan that covers:

What are you hoping to benefit from your social networks? New leads? Increased brand recognition? If you aren’t sure what you’re after, it’s impossible to achieve it.
Who do you want to target?
Your action plan. What type of posts will you create? What strategies will you use to promote your content to reach your desired viewers? Do you require more videos?
The team is responsible for the management of your accounts.
The time and the money you’ll invest in social media advertising.

Your most crucial performance indicators.

Find out what you want from social media — and learn how you can achieve it. Then you will be on the right track towards achieving your total capacity on social media.

2. You’re Aiming at the Wrong People

There is a plan in the right place. However, if you’re trying to reach the wrong people or not targeting the right audience, you’ll have an issue of wasting time and funds. There will be a lot of followers with little contribution to your objectives–an audience that isn’t the ideal client.

In general, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world.

But, it doesn’t suggest that you should solely focus your marketing efforts exclusively on Facebook.

Social Media Platforms

First, define your target audience. The target audience is the group of people who are most likely to be interested in your service or product. You can determine who these individuals are based on income, age or education level, location, or even behaviour.

If you’re active across multiple social media platforms, be sure to focus on the popular platforms for your targeted audience.

For example, data shows that Instagram is most popular with those aged between 18 and 29.

Pinterest is the most popular social media platform among women. While Snapchat, as well as Twitter, are popular with those aged between 18 and 29.

LinkedIn might be more suitable for you if you’re working in the B2B sector.

People tend to overlook irrelevant content. Therefore, it is best to be careful not to make assumptions about the audience you intend to reach.

Examine them and modify your content to meet the needs and expectations of your audience. Your content should be valuable to your readers and incentivize them to interact with it.

Your tone must also be appropriate for the social network platform you are using. The type of content that your viewers are looking for varies across platforms.

Facebook users, for example, will expect a casual, fun, playful, and fun tone — it is an excellent place to connect and advertise. However, LinkedIn works best with a moderately formal tone, and Instagram is predominantly focused on aesthetics and is a great place to show your diversity.

Increase the reach of your potential audience with features such as captions and subtitles.
You can watch your videos even in loud spaces, like office spaces or in noisy areas.
Understand dialogues where participants speak rapidly.
Be alert, and help you transmit your message.
Access your content even if you have hearing difficulties.

3. SEO Best Practices are Neglected in Your Social Media Marketing

The biggest mistake companies make is not recognizing the importance of SEO to make their social media campaigns effective.

Similar to how you’re focused on SEO when writing content for your blog, such as landing pages and other web content. It would help if you did the same thing with social media.

Engaging in SEO will aid in ensuring your profile, product, or service is ranked higher in results from searches. This increases the organic search engine traffic that comes to your website and boosts your following.

The number of shares, likes, and comments your posts receive online determines your posts’ social media rankings and reach. So, especially to begin with — you will want to post regularly and share quality and exciting content. To stay competitive, plan to always show up with info, and put out quality content. Also, set your social media up to make it easy for your readers to share your content with friends and contacts by including attractive CTAs.

Use keywords. Find the most compelling phrases and words when researching keywords for your blog posts. Then, use them in the social posts you make.

Visual content is among the most powerful SEO strategies you can employ. Use relevant and high-quality images, video, additional images of products or services, and GIFs. Use all content that loads fast — and make sure your site loads fast.

The decision to include subtitles on videos and captions on images or GIFs is also to your advantage. Google, as well as other engines, can’t view the video. However, the search engines can read the text to index and search for the content, making your content more visible.

Implement SEO strategies, and you’ll notice an increase in impact.

4. Over-the-top brand promotions with no actual content

For most people, social media is an opportunity to connect and discuss opinions, keep informed on the latest happenings, and be motivated.

So, if you’re using it only to increase brand awareness and create auto-generated backlinks to your website, you’re not doing it right.

Why are you looking to create content that sparks people’s curiosity and conversation? First, have your goal very clear in your mind.

Feature Image Credit: George Becker; Pexels

By Deanna Ritchie

Managing Editor at ReadWrite

Deanna is the Managing Editor at ReadWrite. Previously she worked as the Editor in Chief for Start-up Grind and has over 20+ years of experience in content management and content development.

Sourced from readwrite

In News

Social Media Shopping Is Expected To Reach $1.2 Trillion USD by 2025, According to Report

January 20, 2022 No Comments

By Brycen Saunders

Accounting for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

With the ever-growing digitization of retail, social media shopping is expected to reach $1.2 trillion USD by 2025, according to a new report from Irish consulting firm Accenture. The figure will account for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

According to the report, the global social commerce industry sits at $492 million USD in value and is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%. The increasing figures are due to Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, who will account for 62 percent of global social commerce spending by 2025.

“The pandemic showed how much people use social platforms as the entry point for everything they do online — news, entertainment and communication,” said Robin Murdoch, global Software & Platforms industry lead at Accenture in a release. “The steady rise in time spent on social media reflects how essential these platforms are in our daily life. They’re reshaping how people buy and sell, which provides platforms and brands with new opportunities for user experiences and revenue streams.”

Digital shopping refers to product discovery and the check-out process occurring all within a social media application. Accenture’s report surveyed just over 10,000 individuals, with 64% of respondents indicating that they made a social commerce purchase within the past year. Although this represents a great opportunity for big companies, it represents substantial growth opportunities for small business owners as well. To illustrate, 59% of the respondents indicated they are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses via social commerce. Additionally, 63% said that they are more likely to purchase from the same business in the future.

Check out the full report from Accenture for a comprehensive breakdown of social media spending growth.

By Brycen Saunders

Sourced from Hypebeast

In News

Branding’s Perfect 10 – The PR Afterthought

January 17, 2022 No Comments

By Glenn Matchett

When considering the future of branding and brands, it is important to properly understand that Communications is now a fractured, complex, and diverse discipline. The challenge for a PR and brand team – and, indeed, for an entire business – is to get everyone working as one. The overarching task is to impart and nurture genuine empathy and understanding for what a brand stands for, along with the overall business goals. The next step is to plan on how that gets communicated effectively to the outside world.

In Communications, working in silos doesn’t cut it anymore. It requires complex, interwoven, and often co-dependent messaging played across advertising, branding, packaging, PR, digital, customer service, and more. Symbiotic, interlocked, and constantly evolving, there is no solitary lens for PR. Instead, there is a brand kaleidoscope that acts as an ever-changing window into how a brand is perceived through the entirety of its communications.

Social media perfectly illustrates how interlocked communications channels can be for brands. A misplaced tweet or a tone-deaf post can quickly catch fire as a PR disaster that can lose customers or have a negative commercial impact on a business. When Dulux became the sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club this year, one of the first things the paint brand’s social media manager did was engage in some Twitter banter about the club’s lack of trophies. This quite quickly whipped up into a PR storm about how a new commercial partner was making a major faux pax by denigrating its new partner. There were questions asked about the suitability of the partnership and it has resulted in the commercial relationship getting off to an unsteady start.

With an improved lens on PR, the brand would have anticipated the potential problem here. In a future, more perfect world, PR fails can be mitigated by ensuring those who are in charge of social media are adequately briefed and aware of the power of social as a communications channel.

In a future world, this sort of mistakes would be stopped at the source because companies would understand how interlocked all their messaging is with the perception of their brand. A misjudged post on social media has the potential to be just as damaging as Gerald Ratner’s quip in 1991, that the jewellery he sold was “total crap”. His tongue-in-cheek remark in front of the Institute of Directors promptly wiped £500 million from the jeweller’s valuation and nearly took the company to the wall. Reflecting on the incident in 2021, Ratner tweeted, “It is 30 years today when I made ‘that’ speech. It seems like yesterday. I wish it was tomorrow. I would cancel it.” A PR blunder can have a lasting impact. Lessons for the future are often gleaned from what has happened in the past.

In a perfect future vision, PR would always have a board-level seat at any business – helping inform and shape decisions as they are made. PR is not an afterthought. PR is not the red phone to ring in a panic when the shit is about to hit the fan further down the line. Nor is it a cherry to stick on top of a cake with a positive business announcement or new launch. It is not enough to position PR and marketing at the end of a business process. That does not work anymore and brands who do it will often come unstuck or fail to properly connect with their customers.

Another great example from the world of football this year is the abortive launch of ‘The Super League’. As the breakaway scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the organizers only decided to appoint an agency to look after PR on the day of the announcement. What they fundamentally misunderstood is that PR cannot be an afterthought. It’s not about managing a few negative headlines with the belief that today’s newspapers will be tomorrow’s chip papers. PR is vital to monitor the pulse of a brand or an idea. It is about fully understanding and communicating effectively with your customers.

PR is a pre-emptive tool that is as much about anticipation as it is about activation. Like the tip of an iceberg, with PR there is much more to it beneath the surface than you end up seeing in public. As soon as the tsunami of negative responses hit, The Super League brand was dead in the water. If the clubs had effectively engaged PR earlier in their process they would have realized the whole shebang was a bad idea a lot sooner. This whole episode serves as a lesson on why engaging with PR early is a necessity for any brand.

In recent years, technology has seen brands become more and more efficient in how they target their audience. Data-driven intelligence hoovered up from our online activities means that advertisers often seem to know us better than we know ourselves. In the early days of this tracking technology, this was hailed as new nirvana. We’d be served better because we’d get shown what we want rather than things that weren’t relevant and of interest to us. We were heading to a perfect world of branding and advertising. With minimum wastage for advertisers, you would only see the products you’re interested in.

More recently, however, that dream has turned somewhat sour. The dystopian vision in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, of being relentlessly targeted with ads, looms larger like a tangible reality. Documentaries like Coded Bias, The Great Hack, and The Social Dilemma each portray a dark and damaging heart at the center of this technology, purely focused on milking and manipulating consumers for all that they are worth.

From a PR point of view, consumers are waking up to how their data is being used and brands need to be mindful of this. Customers don’t like it and the resulting bad PR for their brands may be commercially damaging. From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications. Privacy controls will be placed back into the hands of the customer and, as a result, the PR wildfire that is burning about privacy and data may start to recede. We’ve already seen this come to light with Apple’s new privacy feature, intended to put the brakes on the sharing of customer data across multiple sites. By preventing the targeting that is the bread and butter of many brands online, its introduction may be a catalyst for a dramatic change in the entire online advertising industry.

From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications.

Brands need to continue to adapt and change in step with the world in which we live. Many cultural commentators believed that, after COVID-19, the consumer’s relationship with brands might change dramatically. Our values would shift away from a disposable, frivolous culture and brands would need to follow. The jury is still out on whether this will, in fact, come to pass. If the queues at the UK’s high-street stores, when the lockdown was lifted in April, is any barometer of a new consumer consciousness, it may not, in fact, be the case at all. The hunger to spend on a wide range of goods still appeared to be firmly intact.

It is fair to say though that brands continue to become more socially aware. As part of a brand strategy, CSR is often now firmly embedded into many companies. However, CSR is only really effective when it is integrated properly and not just used as a PR badge to appease a target market or drive sales.

In the future, unpicking the relationship between CSR and PR will be a great step forward for brands. If you consider a brand like Dove, which has ‘body positivity’ at the heart of its brand purpose, you can see how powerful this can be – not just part of a marketing strategy but an entire business philosophy. It’s not just a PR badge adopted in order to shift their products.

In summary, I feel that it is worth addressing the elephant in the room.

“What is the perfect future version of branding and brands?”

Well, there isn’t one, of course. We live in an imperfect world and nothing ever stays still. When Brandingmag launched, 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Fast forward 10 years from today and I expect, fuelled by technology, that change will be even greater. PR, as a profession, continues to evolve and it is now part of a larger, more integrated, communications ecosystem. The days of fluffy ‘Ab Fab’ PR – with boozy lunches and ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ dynamics of doing your job – are long gone. The future vision for perfect PR and brands is to refine and adapt to the broader, interlinked way in which communications operates. It’s also imperative for PR to be positioned at the heart of every business operation. Perfect? No, it will never be perfect, but that’s what keeps the craft of communications such an engaging challenge.

By Glenn Matchett

Sourced from Brandingmag

In News

Live commerce is here and brands are upgrading. Is this retail’s next big leap?

December 24, 2021 No Comments

By Jhinuk Sen

We’ve seen retail undergo a series of changes and upgrades over the past two years. Before COVID-19 got us to stay in and shut down malls and markets, 85 per cent of all shopping used to happen offline. Forced into quarantine, retailers and brands did the best they could to adapt to a new world order where they had to transition to online for sales or perish.

Digitalisation became the new mantra. Consumers too, quite naturally, weren’t immune to this renewed digital push.

Many took to online shopping naturally. The younger generation had been buying things online for a while now, the elders followed suit gradually, but definitely. But many things were missing when it came to online shopping.

First and foremost, the experience. Pre-pandemic, going out to buy an outfit meant an evening out with friends or family – it was a social outing in most cases. It was all about consulting each other, speaking to the salespeople, trying to find the best deal, and visiting multiple shops until you found just what you were looking for.

Online shopping took all of it away by bombarding customers with a million discounts and offers, and consulting another person for the best suggestion got replaced with sending each other links. And while that’s exactly how things still stand, social commerce and live commerce has brought some action into a space that is cluttered and on the verge of becoming very boring.

Ask Paloumi Das. The 25-year-old, who works as head of content at the fabric retail outlet Cottons and Satins, is no stranger to online shopping and social commerce. Das has been shopping online for years now and the brand she works for has been juggling between ramping up their portfolio on Instagram – where they have about 65k followers – and directing interested users to their website or their brick-and-mortar stores in Delhi and Mumbai if and when feasible.

“I’ve been shopping online long enough to not be hassled when malls were shut down due to the pandemic. One barely needs to go out to buy anything nowadays and while that is very convenient, it is also quite boring,” Das said. She argues that social media has made it easy for consumers to buy something with a click of a button.

While it certainly is easy, but it has killed off the excitement of shopping. And at this point, consumers like Das feel frustrated being confined to this linear mode of shopping, where all it entails is sharing product links to friends so that they can decide what one can buy, and if not that, then after a bout of endless scrolling, chance upon something to buy it using a click of a button.

And this increasing frustration is slowly percolating into the brands as well. They too seem to be asking the same ubiquitous question: how do we liven things up?

The solution lies in the question itself. When social commerce has become mainstream, the next best bet is to go live.

What does ‘going live’ in shopping mean?

Live commerce, simply explained, is a real-time event where customers get a chance to bag some great deals and they also get to engage with other customers, and influencers, ask questions, etc., before they buy the product.

Live commerce is already a huge trend in China and globally people are starting to pay attention, as are the brands. Cartier hosted its first jewellery show on Taobao Live where they unveiled more than 400 timepieces and jewellery items. Kim Kardashian sold more than 15,000 bottles of her perfume in minutes, live.

Closer home, Myntra has taken its first step into the world of live commerce with M-Live. The company said during its announcement that this move is “likely to engage 50 per cent of its monthly active users” over the next few years, while currently, it engages about 20 per cent of them. The company aims to push out about 1,000 hours of video content per month.

M-Live is a real-time, interactive experience that can be found on the shopping app and is currently live. “M-Live is also the nearest to an expert-assisted offline shopping experience that is fully experienced online.

The core benefit is the users’ ability to get interactive descriptions of products independently curated by experts they can trust and identify with while getting instant advice on various aspects like styling, fitment, product quality, and material,” the company explained.

“With several concurrent users joining the live sessions, it also gives users the opportunity to shop as a community and benefit from the community’s knowledge, observations, questions, and comments, enabling a more confident shopping decision that is backed by social validation,” it added.

This community feeling is one of the core benefits of live commerce and the only one that effectively can recreate the social experience of being able to shop with friends and family.

Live commerce has other perks too. For example, it is the best way to publicise and optimise product launches, thematic sales (like Diwali or Black Friday sales) with the aid of celebrity interactions, product demos, and influencer videos. And another very significant feature that live commerce can optimise is impulse purchases.

To make the best of impulse purchases, all that apps, websites, and brands need to do is to embed a clickable layer that presents users with a shortcut to making the purchase fast and smoothly. The good news here – for brands looking to get on board with this – is that there are apps that can help you.

“Indians spend on average over five hours a day online with a large part of that time is dedicated to two activities: consuming content and shopping,” said Firework’s President of Global Business Jason Holland to Business Today. Holland’s company, Firework helps bring these two concepts together to help brands create live commerce experiences on their platforms.

“Global e-commerce growth accelerated dramatically as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. This, combined with recent forecasts that 82 per cent of global Internet traffic will be video by 2022, make the growth of live commerce in India seem practically inevitable. As a blend of two of Indian consumers’ favourite online activities – content consumption and e-commerce – livestream shopping is arguably the most important factor in the evolution of shopping, both in India and around the world,” Holland said.

Conceptually, all this sounds fair, but would it work in India as well as it did in China? Holland thinks it will.

“India has all the right ingredients to become one of the top three global leaders in livestream shopping, and it’s only a matter of time before it does,” he said. And Holland has data to back his belief.

He points out that according to Comscore’s data, online retail sales increased by 43 per cent over the first several months of the pandemic, from January to October of 2020. “And even now, long after the lockdowns ended, online retail sales still clock significantly higher. This suggests that COVID-19 has not only driven digital adoption in developing nations but has also accelerated digital maturity and established habits,” Holland pointed out.

“The responsibility now rests on brands to embrace live commerce and seize the massive opportunity to be among the first movers in these emerging markets,” he added. And Holland isn’t the only one to think this way.

Achint Setia – VP & Business Head – Social Commerce at Myntra – argues that livestream shopping is that perfect confluence of aspiration, on one hand, and innovation, on the other.

“We are always on the quest to build innovative fashion-tech shopping experiences for our customers that can strengthen our relationships with them by garnering higher trust, creating inspirational and immersive experiences while deeply engaging them.

Livestream shopping is the perfect fit for fashion and beauty shoppers as it blends both aspirational and informative content with commerce, it democratizes fashion, and is a convergence of many current trends, such as influencer-led shopping and social commerce,” he said.

So, what’s the best way forward for brands looking to step into the live commerce space?

“I think it is important for brands to embrace the change first. Brands need to understand that establishing a social media presence isn’t the best path to digital transformation. Additionally, with a significant share of shopping happening online, brands need to remember that competition is only a click away – which is a significant departure from brick-and-mortar retail. That heightened competition makes it incredibly important to offer a differentiated shopping experience – one that embodies the brand identity faithfully, while also delivering on the promise of entertainment,” Holland explained.

The most important factor for brands to succeed in this space is data.

With social media platforms that have incorporated more sophisticated e-commerce elements, businesses end up forfeiting all access to their first-party data, which is an invaluable resource for any brand.

If data is unavailable, that combined with very low engagement and conversion rates can lead to hugely inefficient marketing spends. Brands need to thus pick the right apps that give them access to all the numbers like Firework does so that they can understand their audience.

Live streaming and the influencer

The job of getting all this right lies with the brand – obviously. But there’s a massive lot that content creators and influencers can make off this as well, and short video apps are paying attention.

This year two short video apps, Moj and Bolo Live, ventured into live streaming, while Glance’s Roposo too took a step ahead and moved from live streaming and into live commerce.

“The next decade belongs to creator economy globally and live streaming influencers from India shall dominate the same. Just India is expected to see over a $300 million market for creator economy by 2023 end,” said Tanmai Paul, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder, Bolo Live.

Paul said that pivoting into live streaming from short videos has helped democratise monetisation opportunities for content creators by giving them opportunities beyond brand partnerships.

“Fan-to-creator microtransactions on Bolo Live has led to over 4x increase in creator earnings in just last six months. Already more than 18 live streamers are earning over Rs 1 lakh per month from our platform,” Paul added.

Influencers and content creators will play a significant role in live commerce and its proliferation in the retail space, at least for starters. Live commerce is an ecosystem that can benefit the brand, the content creator/influencer, and the customer, it is only a matter of time till everyone cashes in.

By Jhinuk Sen

Sourced from BusinessToday.In

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Avoid These 4 Social Listening Pitfalls at All Costs

December 20, 2021 No Comments

By Scott Clark

Social listening enables brands to understand what their customers truly think about the brand’s products and services. By “listening” for mentions of the brand’s name, products, and services on social media, brands can remove pain points in the customer journey, resolve customer complaints, learn what customers like and what they don’t, and even learn what customers think about the brand’s competitors. That said, there are several things that brands should avoid doing when using social listening. This article will discuss the pitfalls of social listening and how to avoid them.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is a marketing practice in which brands “listen” for keywords, typically the brand name, the brand’s products and services, and its competitor’s brand names, products and services, on social media outlets. By actively listening for those terms, brands are able to rapidly respond to customer complaints, determine where the pain points are in the customer journey, understand what they are doing right, and where they are going wrong. Additionally, brands can learn the things that customers like or dislike about the brand’s competitor’s products and services.

Research by SmartInsights revealed that as of October 2021, 57.6% of the world’s population (4.55 billion people) use social media. The leading social media outlets are, in order, Facebook (2.8 billion users), YouTube (2.2 billion users), WhatsApp (2 billion users), Instagram (1.3 billion users), and farther down the list, TikTok (732 million users), Pinterest (478 million users), and Twitter (397 million users).

A report from GlobalWebIndex showed that up to 50% of social media users use social networks to do research on products and services. Additionally, a report from Statista indicated that 33% of those polled from the United States said that they have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service. Given these statistics, brands have a huge opportunity to learn more about their customers through social listening.

Don’t Fail to Listen to How People Feel

Dean Browell, PhD, Professor of Digital Ethnography and Social Listening at the VCU School of Business, shared his thoughts on the true benefit of social listening: gaining a much clearer picture of the personalities, behaviours, and feelings of customers. “Social listening provides deep behavioural insights into the decision making of the online public while also providing the landscape through which peers find when they are information gathering,” explained professor Browell. “It helps to illustrate the personalities and behaviours of audiences and can be used to follow trends and patterns in both the audiences and their feelings toward brands, services, products, facilities, and more. Social listening seeks to provide the voice of the consumer and understand the volume and timber of that voice and how it influences others.”

Brands often get caught up on metrics, rather than paying attention to the feelings that their customers are expressing on social media. These customers are representative of all the other customers that feel the same way but haven’t taken the time to post on social media. “Listen to them — they’re telling you what products they want, how they want to be treated, and who they trust. And if you think those are just the loudest voices, then understand the power of those loud voices for all the lurkers looking for answers. Social listening can help you understand the customer experience and their perception of it — and how it influences others. That’s very different than simply how they navigate your website or find products in store (although they might talk about that too),” said professor Browell.

Don’t Focus on the Brand’s Official Social Channels

When brands focus on social media, they often turn to their own official channels, focusing on what customers post there, or how they respond to what the brand has posted. Often, however, the most revealing aspects of social listening will show up on customer’s own profile pages, or within other groups or communities.

“It’s understandable that brands would be focused on the channels they own first, but there’s a real issue with thinking that by mostly paying attention to who shows up at your official channels represents how people actually feel about you,” said professor Browell. “Yes, there’s things to be revealed in those interactions, but the context of those interactions is incredibly important — and showing how people speak to peers when you’re not around is crucial to understanding why some segment shows up at all on your digital doorstep. It’s too small of a focus group.”

According to Davitha Ghiassi, executive vice president of Social and Integration at Red Havas, a merged media public relations and communication agency, going beyond the comments that come to brands is vital to gain a fuller understanding of their customers. “Whilst much of your customer feedback may come to you directly via branded channels — research shows that 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles,” said Ghiassi. “Therefore, looking beyond the comments that come to you is crucial in order to see the complete picture; and social listening enables you to do just that by tracking conversations including relevant keywords, brand mentions and even visual mentions of your brand (i.e. logo, product through visual intelligence tools like Talkwalker).”

Don’t Just Listen, Participate

The 2020 Sprout Social Index report revealed that 79% of customers expect a response within the first 24 hours after they have reached out to a brand through social media, and 40% expect brands to respond within an hour. Although social listening is about just that — listening — it also provides opportunities for brands to interact and respond to customers.

When customers create a post extolling the virtues of a brand’s products, that brand should step in and reply, thanking them for their feedback. When customers leave negative comments about a product or service, it’s the perfect time for the brand to resolve a problem and gain a loyal customer. Social listening is not just about listening to what customers are saying — it’s about participating, and having conversations with customers, showing them that the brand cares about them, and is grateful to be able to learn how they feel about the brand.

Brands must avoid being confrontational or defensive when they reply to what may appear to be negative comments left by customers on social media. They should leave a well thought out reply explaining that they are sorry that the customer had an issue, along with a way for the customer to contact them directly to resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved, they should offer to immediately reimburse the customer for the entirety of what they paid. Once the offer has been resolved, there is always the opportunity to provide the customer with a special discount, buy one get one free, or something extra that shows that the brand cares about the customer’s feelings.

“Social listening not only offers a powerful means of identifying and directly addressing comments, questions or concerns surrounding your brand or product — it also allows you to look to them for insights that can help improve the overall customer service strategy,” explained Ghiassi. “For example, by creating pro-active content that can live across channels and addresses frequently asked questions sourced via social.”

Don’t Fail to Set Goals for Social Listening Initiatives

Many brands begin social listening initiatives without setting any specific goals or KPIs. Not only do specific goals require different practices, but without goals or KPIs it becomes impossible to gauge the effectiveness of social listening initiatives.

Depending on the goals that have been set for social listening initiatives, brands can gain a much deeper understanding of their customers’ needs and desires, how they feel about the brand in general, or how they feel about specific products and services, than they can through other channels. “Goals of social listening can be incredibly varied,” said professor Browell. “Social listening could help inform a brand of their actual brand health, it could provide insight into how their target audiences (B2C or B2B) make decisions and therefore inform decision paths, it can help validate and enhance personas, it can help with recruitment and retention, it can illuminate crucial geographic differences, it can enrich other research including making big data more valuable with rich insights, it can help in product development and adoption…honestly, the applications are as endless as a market research tool, the only difference is social listening also informs you on what the public will find when they look for peer input — something that a survey or focus group can’t fundamentally confirm.”

Final Thoughts

Social listening can be a very effective tool that enables brands to get to know their customers on a more personal, emotional level — when it is done correctly. Brands must set goals for their social listening initiatives in order to reap the most benefits, listen to how their customers feel, and learn to empathize with what they are hearing. They must not make the mistake of only listening to what is posted on the brand’s own official social media channels, and they must participate, rather than just listen, responding to customers when appropriate. Finally, brands must take action based on the insights that social listening has revealed, and ultimately, improve the customer journey.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe

By Scott Clark

Sourced from CMS Wire

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Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Small Business

December 20, 2021 No Comments

By Elvira Barucija

In today’s times, inexpensive online marketing for small businesses has become the best way to market your services and products. The traditional way of marketing is still important; however, online marketing ideas for small businesses supersedes most of the traditional forms of marketing and advertising. Except for TV and radio advertising, other forms of traditional advertising are not as noticeable to the average consumer.

Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Yet even with the different types of online marketing, it’s still important to use it wisely. One reason is because it’s important to reach your appropriate audience. This can be done, for instance, when advertising is sent to consumers who have searched for similar products and services like yours. There are inexpensive marketing ideas for small business, like social media, email marketing, and popups. They normally display advertisements when consumers have searched for similar products/services online. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time and money advertising to consumers who are not interested in your product or services.

Secondly, with all the competitors online, it’s important that your website, content marketing, blog, etc, display words that will promote better search engine optimization. If not, your business can run the risk of having lesser visitors due to your business being displayed several pages down on the Google search.

Marketing on a Budget

When working out your marketing budget, you should keep different things in mind. First of all, maintaining great SEO and SMO is always extremely important. In doing this, you will have a much higher probability of visitors to your website, which means having a higher probability to have more customers.

Another thing to keep in mind is to use mobile marketing and email marketing to consumers who have shown similar interests in your products/services. Mailing lists are normally a great way for finding these consumers.

Also, utilizing analytics for social media, the website, and Google will help you get appropriate feedback, and adjust accordingly. And finally, banner advertising could also be a great way to hire someone else to strategically advertise across different social media outlets, while you’ll have more time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Digital Marketing at Your Fingertips

Marketing Tips Online

There is no doubt that online marketing is crucial when it comes to the success of your business no matter the industry. Online marketing is the best practice if you want to reach and connect to a larger crowd.

Here are some tips for marketing online that will help you reach your customers.

Offer Valuable Content

As consumers, we are aware of how much we are bombarded with content that we don’t even need. However, if the content is valuable, informative, and entertaining we will keep reading. Valuable and interesting content that relates to your industry will encourage subscriptions, comments, and sharing on social media which will all contribute to your ROI.

Keep in mind that your valuable content should be related to your product, and it should be original.

Do you have Your Social Media Accounts set up?

All businesses have moved to the digital world, and you must be there too. You need to have your online presence there and your social media up and running. There are so many social media platforms that you can utilize, but you need to focus on platforms where your targeting audience is spending most of their time.

Focus your Energy on 20% that will Bring you the Results

There are so many things you can do online, and you will get lost trying to do everything. In the beginning, you must focus your energy on 20% of things that work instead of trying to do everything. Let’s say you have a yoga studio. You should have your website, do SEO optimization, have your Facebook, Instagram account, Twitter account, and YouTube account. Maybe you should focus at the beginning on YouTube and build from there. Or if you have an ice-cream shop, maybe the best way to present yourself to the world would be through nice pics on Instagram.

Social Media for Business

If your small business doesn’t have its own social media accounts, then you might be missing out a lot. You are losing insight into your brand, engagement from the customers and more information on your competitors. On top of this social media can be cost-effective in reaching customers in more personalized ways.

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is probably still the most popular with an audience of over 2.7 billion users. Every business should have a Facebook page. You can use Facebook to share photos, important updates and you have access to powerful advertising tools and analytics of your customer base.

Instagram Marketing

On the other side, Instagram is gaining a lot of customers with the current number being 1 billion active users. There is no shortage of business tools on Instagram that can help you promote your services. Instagram is a visual platform so it’s the best platform for those who have strong visual content.

On Instagram, you can use the services of influencers who are ready to promote your products. Here, we are not talking about Kardashians but influencers who are in the same niche as your business. For example, there are so many moms on Instagram with 50 000 or more followers that would be ready to promote your baby products for a fee. The fee can be arranged on the percentage of sales they make. Here, you only need to be mindful to work with influencers who have less than 100 000 followers since those who have hundreds of thousands of followers will probably not work for a fee but for the payment in advance (which doesn’t guarantee any results).

Twitter Marketing

Twitter is the third most popular platform and it’s great for sharing short updates, videos, and blog posts. Twitter is super easy for interaction with your followers by simply mentioning users in your posts, liking and retweeting tweets. However, if your brand is visual you might want to skip this network at least at the beginning.

Online marketing can be overwhelming when you are starting and it’s important to know where your energy should go first meaning what will bring you the results that you want to see.

By Elvira Barucija

Elvira has a Master Degree in Psychology. She is passionate about writing, is always on trend, and thoroughly researches her topics to offer readers high quality content. She also enjoys working with children and practicing yoga.

Sourced from GILDSHIRE Magazine

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The Secret to Becoming a Great Social Media Manager? Marketing Essentials

December 15, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from edX

Social media management isn’t just about great photos and videos or learning today’s hottest platform; it’s about translating marketing fundamentals and core skills across all platforms, to inform a data-driven approach that fits into a broader marketing strategy.

So what does that look like in practice? We asked resident edX social media expert Livia Halltari for her insights.

What Makes a Good Social Media Manager?

Whatever your age and level of personal experience, transitioning into a social media career will take some learning. Running your own social media account is very different from managing one for an employer or client. A successful social media manager stays on top of trends, platforms, and social media management tools to schedule posts, monitor analytics, and more.

In other words, you must embrace lifelong learning, whether you plan to stay in social media long-term or hope to advance to other marketing roles in the future, and whether your aspirations are full-time or freelance. Working in social media provides great insight into a wide range of marketing roles and makes an ideal launch pad into the industry.

“Social is one of the most generalist marketing roles you can get,” said Halltari. “You really gain exposure into how email does their work, how content marketing does their work, and how PR, design, and copywriters do their work because you’re working with all these different teams so closely. And you gain experience advocating for yourself, reporting, and the analytical part of marketing, as well as the creative, interactive, brand-focused part. It’s the kind of role where you gain a really foundational knowledge of marketing.”

“It’s the kind of role where you gain a really foundational knowledge of marketing.”

Forbes, she added, is calling today’s social media managers “the next generation of CMOs,” and with this holistic background, they are certainly on track to be.

Building A Social Media Skillset on Marketing Foundations

There are many different marketing skills and backgrounds that can usefully inform a social media career, and many of them have their basis in general marketing. Here, we picked just a few of the most important to unpack.

Brand marketing: To build lasting connections with customers, companies must establish a strong brand perception, and few avenues facilitate this as well as social media. Storytelling and visuals are the mechanics by which this perception and relationship are built, so these are key areas to upskill when breaking into the field.
Analytics: The data is out there. You, as a social media manager, must know where to retrieve it and what to do with it. You must be able to draw conclusions from metrics like followers, page views, clicks, likes, shares, comments, and impressions and form a plan of action in response.
Reporting: This skill isn’t just about collecting and sharing data with leadership; it’s about curating data. Halltari says you can set yourself up for success by working with leadership early on to determine goals and the metrics by which you’ll measure success. Only then can you create useful goals, forecasts, and benchmarks.
Communication: Not only are you the public voice of the organization—you also need to effectively work with internal stakeholders to develop and adapt strategies, as well as collaborate across the marketing department and beyond.
Writing: Nothing can take the place of good storytelling and content. Your copywriting should be concise, evocative, and tailored for the appropriate audience or platform. A background in creative writing, English, or literature can be invaluable.
Project management: Organizational and time management skills are key. You need to be able to plan ahead and post content consistently, juggle simultaneous projects, align calendars, and communicate, collaborate, and delegate to members of the marketing team.
Design: While it’s not necessary to be a master of graphic design, it helps to know the basics. Social is ultimately a visual channel, and a heavily saturated one—it takes unique images to stand out against the competition. Especially in smaller companies where social media marketers often wear many hats, an understanding of design practices and tools is a valuable skill to have.
Strategy: How does your social media strategy fit into the bigger picture? Understanding context, target audience, and analytics can help shape social media into a powerful piece of a company’s overall business strategy.
Customer Service: A background in sales or customer service can be valuable, as these roles overlap with some key components of marketing such as conversion, awareness, and customer acquisition. If you’ve worked in retail, then you understand the importance of addressing customer complaints promptly, and social media is no different: You must be prepared to pivot at any time to respond to customers or developing trends.

If you are just breaking into the field, start by learning the fundamentals of digital marketing, especially if you are using social media as a launchpad for greater marketing career aspirations. An entry-level job in social media can be even more powerful than a classroom for honing skills and picking up new ones, so it’s a great way to learn about a variety of marketing roles and decide which one is right for you.

How to Become a Social Media Marketing Manager: 5 Steps

Some useful backgrounds for social media specialists include business, marketing, advertising, public relations, communications, psychology, writing, public speaking, and photo or video skills. But you may be surprised that social media mavens can also come from backgrounds as diverse as political science, fashion design, or retail. In this field, you can start from anywhere, with little to no experience. Here’s how:

1. Close skill gaps

Developing a few key marketing skills will serve you well, and you don’t have to get a college degree to learn them. According to Halltari, hiring managers are more interested in examples of project management, organization, good communication, strong copywriting, adaptability, eagerness to learn, and the ability to work independently as well as with a larger marketing team. A bachelor’s degree is just icing on the cake.

2. Learn Social Media Platforms and Marketing Analytics

Get to know the strengths and weaknesses of major social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Study how your competitors are using these social networks. Familiarize yourself with tools for scheduling and publishing content, social media listening, analytics, and more. But remember that basic familiarity is just the first step. You must continue to build your skill set.

“Employers don’t want to know if you use those platforms to develop and manage your personal social media accounts,” said Ewelina Lacka, lecturer in digital marketing and analytics at the University of Edinburgh Business School and instructor for the Digital Marketing Fundamentals Professional Certificate program on edX. “They want to know if you understand how to use social media to achieve marketing goals.”

Online courses can help you learn about tools like Google Adwords, WordPress, and Facebook Ads, as well as teaching evergreen skills like graphic design and SEO, which remain relevant even when the platform of the day inevitably changes.

Pro Tip:

“I am a big believer in the fundamentals of marketing. A real grasp of what is a positioning, and the related branding strategy, along with the 4 Ps [product, price, place, and promotion] is vital. An appreciation for what motivates or is important to a given target market is critical. Being able to put yourself in the shoes of the customer is a great skill. Writing and general communication skills are extremely important. Finally, any experience that puts you in front of customers is valuable, so seeing transactions of any kind is important because ultimately everything is marketed… or at least, it should be!”

Jeffrey Frohwein, instructor for the Marketing Foundations course from DoaneX

3. Gain Relevant Work Experience

The best way to master social media management is to do it. An internship is one avenue. Another option is to connect with small businesses or non-profits that need someone to manage their social media presence. Don’t be afraid to do free work while you’re learning, but also be sure to draw a line after which you will stop working for free and start charging clients as a freelancer or start looking for that salaried role.

If you’re pivoting to a new career and can’t currently accept unpaid work, then online certifications are another good option for upskilling. Or, simply create a social media account of your own and start building your online presence! After a few months, you should be able to demonstrate your ability to post consistently and grow your following.

4. Develop a Portfolio

Your portfolio is your key to social media success, whether you are working in-house or on a freelance basis. A portfolio demonstrates your work and its impact. Remember that experience does not have to be professional: Passion projects and side hustles can be a fun way to learn your way around platforms and discover the best strategies for each. Consider building a website to showcase your most successful social media posts.

5. Market Yourself to Potential Clients

Whether your goal is to land a salaried position working in social media or to go into business for yourself as a freelancer, you are a brand, and your ability to market yourself as such will show employers or clients that you can also successfully market their products or services.

Be aware, however, that social media is a highly competitive field. Instead of applying to jobs online, try attending conferences and small business events. Introduce yourself in person. Give people your card. Let them meet your brand face-to-face.

Pro Tip:

“The most important thing is the enthusiasm and willingness to learn and contribute. Let’s face it, someone with all the certifications in the world is going to be a net loss if they have a poor attitude and are not willing to work with others and really see their role as a problem solver. Technical skills are teachable, attitude is another matter,” said Frohwein, instructor for the Marketing Foundations course from DoaneX.

Start Learning Foundational Marketing Skills

Social media is constantly changing. Platforms and trends come and go. Algorithms evolve. Current events spark new conversations. Staying up to date on new channels is important, but it’s even more important to lay a good foundation. There are plenty of reputable resources online to help you upskill in marketing. Explore edX marketing courses to get started.

Sourced from edX

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7 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You’re Making

November 29, 2021 No Comments

By Hammad Akbar

There are billions of active social media users worldwide, and the number continues to grow by the day. A growth that has led to social media platforms becoming one of the most influential virtual spaces.

Traditional methods of marketing like TV commercials tend to be a one-way communication—brand to the customer. But social media marketing encourages engagement. It creates multi-way communication in that:

Businesses can communicate with customers
Customers can engage with the brand by offering feedback.
Customers can communicate with other customers by sharing posts.

As a brand owner or marketer, you get to reach a multitude of potential buyers in seconds, especially when using paid social media.

There is plenty you can gain from social media marketing. But if your efforts are not bearing any fruits, you could be guilty of some common errors most people make. Being aware of these social media marketing mistakes can help you correct and avoid them.

1. You Are Working Blindly

One of the biggest mistakes you could make in your social media marketing is shooting in the dark and expecting results. Instead, you need to take it with the seriousness you would take any other marketing campaign.

Create a plan—a clear social media marketing strategy. It’s the first ingredient of a successful social media account.

A social media marketing strategy will ensure that:

You are posting content that is relevant to your goals. It will prevent you from wasting your efforts and resources on a social media campaign that’s sure to fall flat.
You are scheduling and arranging posts early enough. Posting consistently helps you grow and maintain a strong organic online presence.

So, how do you create an effective strategy?

A simple guide is not going to cut it. You need a master plan that addresses:

What you want to gain from social media. A new source of leads? Brand awareness? If you don’t know what you want, you can’t get it.
Who you are targeting.
Your plan of action. What kind of posts will you make? How will you market the posts to reach your intended audience? Do you need to add more video content?
The team that will be responsible for maintaining your accounts.
The time and funds you will allocate to social media marketing.
Your key performance indicators.

Know what you want from social media and how you will get it. And you will be on the path to achieving your full social media potential.

2. You Are Targeting the Wrong People

You could have a super-plan in place. But if you are targeting the wrong audience, then again, you will have a case of wasted efforts and resources. You’ll end up with tons of followers who have little to contribute to your goals⁠—an audience that doesn’t represent your ideal customers.

Overall, Facebook is the most used social network worldwide.

However, this does not mean you should focus your marketing efforts on Facebook.

First, define your target audience. This is the market segment that is most likely to have an interest in your product or service. You can base it on age, income level, education, location, or behaviour.

If you are active on multiple social media channels, pay special attention to the platform popular among your target audience.

For instance, data shows that Instagram is most popular among 18 to 29-year-olds.

Pinterest is most popular among women, while Snapchat and Twitter are most popular among 18 to 29-year-olds.

And if you are in the B2B space, LinkedIn might work better for you.

People are quick to ignore irrelevant content. For this reason, try not to make assumptions about your target audience.

Study them, then customize your content to fit their needs and expectations. Your content should bring value to your audience and give them a reason to engage with it.

Your tone should also fit the social media platform you are using. The kind of content your target audience expects differs among platforms.

Facebook users, for instance, expect an informal, playful, and engaging tone. On the other hand, LinkedIn works best with a reasonably formal tone, and Instagram is mostly about aesthetics.

Maximize your reach of the target audience by using features like subtitles and captions. They make it easier for your audience to:

Watch your videos in sound-sensitive environments, such as offices or noisy places.
Comprehend dialogue where the participants are speaking fast.
Stay attentive, helping you pass your message across.
Access your content despite having hearing problems.

3. SEO Best Practices Are Not Part of Your Social Media Marketing

A mistake most brands make is ignoring the power of SEO in making their social media campaigns successful.

Just like you’re keen on SEO when creating blog posts, landing pages, and other content for your website, you should do the same with social media.

Practicing SEO can help your profile rank higher in search results. This drives organic traffic to your profile and grows your followers.

The amount of likes, shares, and comments your posts receive affects your social media ranking and reach. So, to start with, you need to post frequently and post high-quality and engaging content. Then make it easy for your followers to share your posts by including compelling CTAs.

Make use of keywords. Find the best performing phrases and words once you do your keyword research for your articles and blog posts. Then, use them in your social media posts.

Visual content is one of the strongest SEO techniques you can use. Use relevant and quality images, videos, and GIFs that load fast.

Taking the step to add subtitles to video and captions to images and GIFs also works in your favor. Google and other search engines cannot watch a video. But the search bots can crawl the text on it and index the video, making your posts more discoverable.

Put SEO tactics into practice, and you’re sure to experience an increase in your reach.

4. Excessive Brand Promotions With No Real Content

For most people, social media is a place to network and communicate, share opinions, get updated about current events, and get inspired.

So if you are using it only to promote your brand and post automatic backlinks to your website, you’re getting it wrong.

You want to create content that arouses the audience’s interest and triggers conversations.

Join conversations on hot topics, but steer away from anything divisive, such as politics. Instead, observe what is happening in your niche and what your audience is already discussing. Then create content that responds to these issues.

Aim at making most of your content valuable and interesting to your audience. And the rest can involve promoting your products or services, but with a lot of engagement and social interaction.

As you post non-promotional content, ensure that the quality is consistent. Unfortunately, most brands make the mistake of assuming any post is better than no post at all. But unlike a personal social media account, a brand’s account is subject to ruthless scrutiny.

One offensive post could make your consumers and potential leads unfollow you. Or, if you are too official, they could see you as boring and begin ignoring your posts.

Stick to posts that reflect your brand and connect with your target audience. Be sociable. And when you do promote your brand, do it subtly.

5. You Are Not Using Hashtags

The famous #hashtag. Almost everyone knows what it is. But few know how to use it properly, when, or even why.

A hashtag begins with the “#” symbol followed by a keyword, with no spaces or punctuations. They provide a way to label your content and associate a post with a particular topic.

Every time a user wants to filter relevant conversations on a particular topic or carry out a hashtag search, they can find your content on the topic. Thus, it helps your target audience find you.

Here are a few pointers for using hashtags:

Get specific with your hashtags. Generic hashtags like #sports will not get you the increased impressions or reach you seek. But #sportsshoes is a better choice.
Use hashtags to talk about trending topics and get your brand in front of thousands of people.
Be careful what you hashtag. So naturally, you want to stay away from sensitive topics that could make people question your brand’s values.
Keep your hashtags short and easy to remember.
Don’t overuse hashtags.
If you plan on starting a new hashtag, ensure that it’s unique and catchy. Something that people will remember when referencing your brand.

Hashtags are a powerful method to gain exposure on social media. They can strengthen your social media presence and help you market your brand more effectively.

6. Your Profile Is Faceless With No Human Interaction

Social media is all about connecting with other people. But a mistake most brands make is relying too much on automation.

Excessive automation could make you lose your human touch.

It’s essential to be present. Participate in the conversation in the comment section. It will improve the value of your social presence and help you build valuable relationships with your audience.

The kind of responses you make also matter. A brand account that is too corporate has no place on social media. When you use stock responses, your audience will know. And they will stop engaging with your posts.

Add a human touch to every post and comment you respond to. For example, when responding to a question from your audience, personally address the individual instead of using pre-crafted marketing and corporate messages. Be authentic, delightful, and inspiring.

You’re going to face some negative responses, that’s for sure, but you need to maintain your cool. Respond to any concerns the person in question may have in a friendly and polite way. This will prevent the conversation from turning negative, which can be damaging to your reputation.

Take every positive and negative comment as a chance to talk directly with a potential customer.

Avoid limiting your social interactions to the marketing department. Instead, involve other departments, such as billing and production. This will ensure prompt and comprehensive responses to your followers’ questions.

When you take the time to respond to comments, and not in a robotic way, it establishes strong connections with your followers, and they’ll like you more.

It’s also best to make personalized and meaningful interactions with the content of other people. This can range from influential professionals in your niche to experts who share the same views as your brand. It will increase the exposure of your content and give you wider access to your target audience.

7. You Neither Track Performance nor Have a Clear Call to Action

You can have entertaining, meaningful, and SEO-friendly content. But if you are not going to tell your audience what to do next, your efforts are going to waste.

Your audience needs the motivation to take the next step to become a customer.

Include a call to action in your posts. It could be an invitation to:

Visit your website.
Like, share, or comment on the post with their thoughts.
Sign up.
Shoot you an email.

Once you have CTAs in place, measure the success of your marketing efforts using social media analytics. You can use the metrics provided by the social media platform or use analytics software.

Tracking analytics can give you an extensive view of your social media performance. In addition, they provide actionable insights that you can use to improve your social media marketing tactics and woo the right customers.

Here are some essential analytics to track:

Analytics	What it entails
Awareness	How big are your current and potential audience? What are the demographics?
Engagement	How does your audience react to your posts? Is there any fluctuation in engagement, and what kind of posts cause the fluctuations?
Conversion	How many of your followers heed your call to action. Is the traffic that comes from social media to your website likely or not to convert?
Consumer	How does your audience feel about your brand?
Influence	Who is driving conversations about your brand? Do they get others to participate in these specific conversations?
Share of voice	What’s the volume of the conversation about your brand, and how does it compare to competitors?

Tracking analytics shows you the impact of your past actions. And you can use these insights to improve your social media marketing strategy continually.

Ready to Step up Your Social Media Marketing?

Have you been making any or all these social media marketing mistakes? Then, it’s time to remedy the situation.

Start by writing down your social media marketing strategy and target audience.
Next, create a social media calendar. Make a plan on how you will create meaningful, SEO-friendly, and share-worthy content that utilizes hashtags and CTAs. You don’t have to worry about your visuals. Instead, use Keevi, a powerful online content editor. Keevi will make your images, videos, and GIFs SEO-friendly, accessible, and high-quality.
Finally, measure the results of your social media marketing efforts, and make improvements where needed.

Take these steps, and you are sure to have your brand presence felt on social networks.

Feature Image Credit: Olenka Serfienko; Pexels

By Hammad Akbar

Hammad Akbar is the Founder & CEO at Keevi, a video content repurposing tool. He has extensive experience in the world of Digital Marketing, SaaS Application development, and building technology companies. In his short career, he managed to bootstrap two technology companies with minimum funds to multimillion-dollar revenues. When he’s not working, he likes to travel to new countries and learn about their local cultures.

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