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5 keys to successful branding

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By Laura Meoli.

Whether you’re clueless about media production, or the next Martin Scorsese, there are endless ways to get your name out there. Modern businesses realize that success means changing with the times, and adapting your brand to current technology. I’m not talking about changing your business plan. Staying current is all about utilizing the FREE resources out there to bring your brand to where your customers live. Local businesses are going to still get people walking in the door, but not every entrepreneur needs to have a store-front to make money.

Your customers are likely glued to their phones- so meet them where they are… on social media. A successful brand has a presence on EVERY social media platform, AND on their own website. For example, Pepsi just happens to be a household name because of it’s long history and expensive advertising campaigns that makes it’s logo, font style and colors instantly recognized. Here are five keys to successful branding, for entrepreneurs and start-ups

Don’t get overwhelmed by social media. Choose Wisely.

For businesses without the history or resources that Pepsi has, you will need to make sure that you have a presence on the social media outlets that your potential customers are using. Not all of them will serve you, so don’t waste your time. I would not recommend using EVERY social media platform, but to choose 2 or 3 that are specific to your potential customer. For example, if you are a crafts artist, I would suggest using Pinterest, because that is where people typically look for arts and crafts. Then, I would think about what is that platform lacking in terms of what you have to deliver. For the crafts artist, you may enjoy teaching certain techniques. Pinterest might be good for that, but bigger more complicated projects need video tutorials- so I would suggest using Facebook and YouTube as well. Facebook will be a place where you can share both videos and photos, and because it is so versatile, I always suggest to my clients to start with Facebook. The most important thing when choosing your social media platforms, is to choose based on how comfortable you are using the platform. You can learn to use ANY platform satisfactorily, but if you are passionate about photos for example, I would suggest using Instagram because that joy will shine through in your posts, and you will engage a more authentic audience.

Automate your content for FREE.

When it comes to social media content, Quality is more important than Quantity. In fact, if you are constantly posting mediocre content without much thought, your followers will likely not see value and will unfollow you because it looks like spam. You don’t have to be a slave to social media. Tools like Hootsuite can allow you the opportunity to schedule all of your content ahead of time, for FREE.

Remember that a potential customer visiting your facebook page today, for example, will likely only see the last few posts you’ve shared. Re-sharing content is OKAY. Bonus points if you re-share content as it relates to something currently relevant in the news. For example, in October, I would suggest using content related to Halloween, and using the hashtag.

Consistency is not only key, it’s the lock, the door, and the digital store-front for your brand.

The number one way to be recognizable is to be consistent. Don’t confuse your potential customer by having different names, logos, banners and branding in all the places you live online. That would be like Pepsi changing their name and expecting the same loyal customers to still buy their products. Make sure your visuals are the same on each social media platform, and even matching your website. This includes your logo, banner (AKA header image, or cover photo), and your branding color(s) and font(s). I suggest having no more than 3 branding colors, and no more than 2 fonts (1 for a headline and the other for your body text). The logo and banner should incorporate these fonts and colors. Websites don’t always have a large availability of font styles, so when it comes to writing blogs, it’s okay to have a basic font for your body text. It’s the logos, banners and images that should ALWAYS stay consistent. The tricky part here is that each social media platform has a different set of specifications and requirements for your banner and logo elements. For example, Youtube’s banner is much more wide and shorter in height than Facebook’s banner. Start by creating your website banner, then download specs for your social media platform banners, and customize your design slightly to fit the specs. Unfortunately, each platform has different specs, so you will likely have to make a few different versions. You want to make sure if you have a photo of yourself in the banner, for example, that your head is not cut off, and that text is fully visible on desktop AND mobile devices. Also, look out for redundancy. Your website banner does not need your web address on it, because people are already there- but your social media pages do! Don’t try to cram a bunch of keywords into your banner image and logo. Keep it clean and stick with your branding colors and font.

For an example, check out my website, facebook, twitter and youtube channels to see how you can customize your banner to fit various platforms.

Bonus Tip: Search engines (such as Google or Yahoo) do not recognize the text content in your photos. So if you have important keywords or copy to share, make sure it is written as text on your websites, and not just in your banner or logo image. Don’t jam pack your banner or logo with keywords, because it doesn’t get read by search engines anyway.

Logos are important. Be original.

There are sites out there like Fiverr.com that claim to create custom logos for $5. I’ve done that about three times and found that these “experts” are just taking stock images with little care, and giving you a very basic result. It isn’t customized, it won’t be what you’re looking for, and it rarely ever helps you build brand recognition. Here’s why… For example, most film production companies will ask for a film clapper, a film reel or a camera as the imagery in their logo. If you use a stock image site like Canva to create your logo, you will have a limited amount of film-related images to choose from. Every film production company is going to look on Canva and use these images for their logos, so by the time you show up wanting to create something unique- it’s too late. That image will already be taken and likely is being used by your direct competition. Think about it- If you have the same logo as your competition, with just your name switched out- how will you stand out? What makes your potential customer want to buy from you rather than the other five companies with the same exact logo?

Search engines aren’t doing you any favors when it comes to putting your content high-up in search results (unless you pay them to do so). And people don’t spend much time searching before deciding who looks legit, and who doesn’t. Your logo and banner is your first impression. Don’t give potential customers a reason to go with the competition. I always recommend hiring a professional to create your high-end LOGO, so you have a custom, personal design. Click here to get a custom, high-quality logo and banner for your website.

Know when to DIY (do it yourself), and when not to.

When it comes to branding, it IS possible to do it yourself. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that people who are super-active on social media don’t have help. Lots of entrepreneurs have interns, and even hire virtual assistants who help with various aspects of their business.

There are a million things to do as an entrepreneur, we can’t always do it all ourselves. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and use the tools out there to enhance and empower your social media sharing. Outsource the parts of your business that you do not enjoy doing. BUT be clear on how it’s done in the first place so when you do hire someone, you are knowledgeable about potential errors or mistakes that can occur.

I believe that we can learn almost anything. There are just some things that are better left to professionals. For example, I teach video production and podcasting to various people at all skill levels. Some people really enjoy doing their own videos, and depending on their goals, video might be the perfect way to engage their audience. But remember, people don’t spend much time looking in the search results before deciding who looks legit, and who doesn’t. If your logo and banner is your first impression, your videos are the second impression. Don’t give potential customers a reason to go with the competition. You can certainly have videos that you’ve produced yourself on your website, YouTube channel or social media. Your videos don’t need to cost a lot of money to produce- as long as the content is there and consistent with your brand. I suggest having at least 1 professionally produced video that introduces and explains your brand. This video should be strategically placed as the main video on your YouTube channel, featured and starred on Facebook and other social media sites, and shared OFTEN. This will help build that impression of your brand as high-quality, and it will bring your potential customer to your website. From there, you can go nuts creating as much content as you want with your iPhone, because you’ve already hooked them.

Not investing in high-quality video and images is like going to a networking event wearing your pajamas. Since you don’t have a store-front, your online content needs to represent you. What you write is important, but with such short attention spans today, images and videos are your first impression. Make it a good one! LoudaVision Productions can create a custom, high-quality video for your website AND teach you how to increase your own production value for future self-made content.

By Laura Meoli,

Laura Meoli is a Digital Media Producer, Filmmaker and host of the LoudaVision Podcast for creative people.

Website www.LauraMeoli.com

Connect on LinkedIn

Twitter @LoudaVision

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Sourced from HUFFPOST

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Facebook follows Google to enable advertisers to evaluate their campaigns with new cross-platform ad tool

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By Taruka Srivastav.

Facebook has introduced Facebook Cross-Platform Brand Lift in the US and UK which along with Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift will help advertisers optimize their Facebook and TV campaigns using actionable results according to a blog post.

The platform will see Facebook will match rival Google which launched Brand Lift for TV some years back in order to help marketers understand how YouTube campaigns can impact metrics such as awareness.

Facebook’s advertising partners who are expanding from digital advertising into cross-media campaigns will be able to leverage Facebook Cross-Platform Brand Lift solution.

Margo Arton, senior director of Ad Effectiveness at BuzzFeed said: “Now that Buzzfeed has begun to diversify our media strategies to include both Television and Digital, having the option to leverage solutions such as Facebook’s Cross-Platform Brand Lift and Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift presents a great opportunity.”

“We look forward to using cross-platform brand lift measurement to both receive valuable insights about our multi-media campaign performance in a single reporting surface, and also to optimize campaign elements such as spend and creative across both platforms.”

Facebook cited an example of household brand Shark’s campaign which was deemed a success as measured by Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift.

Ajay Kapoor, VP, Digital Transformation & Strategy, SharkNinja said: “We proved that Facebook video ads are a natural complement to TV campaigns. We experienced better brand results among people who saw ads on both versus just TV or Facebook alone. We saw the ‘better together’ impact first-hand. Facebook and TV are powerful individually, but deliver a stronger message to our audience when used in tandem.”

Facebook recently introduced more ways to help marketers re-engage offline audiences.

By Taruka Srivastav

Sourced from THEDRUM

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How Social Media Went From a Distraction to Businesses’ Biggest Opportunity

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By Addison Nugent.

Back in the early aughts, when social media was a domain relegated to angsty teens, the adult workforce would have laughed at the idea of an employer demanding they take certification classes in managing their Friendster, LiveJournal or Myspace accounts.

But that is exactly what SocialB, a U.K.-based digital marketing firm, offers its clients for today’s social media platforms. With courses like “Social Media Masterclass” and “Social Selling Training,” Socialb attracts pre-eminent clients, among them the United Nations, the BBC and Virgin Management. So why are some of the world’s most powerful organizations seeking social media advice?

Historically, companies blocked social media websites that they felt were irrelevant … and a distraction from productivity.

Tessa Horehled, managing director, Move Shake Make

Turns out, there are lots of reasons: 1.3 trillion to be exact. As in $1.3 trillion. That’s the amount McKinsey Global Institute says companies the world over stand to gain annually from effective use of social media. But to get a piece of it, they need to overcome what is known as the social media skills gap — that is, the divide between new digital demands and a dire lack of employee training.

According to a study by the Technical University of Munich published in June, just 5 percent of businesses surveyed strongly agreed that their organizations have enough personnel to handle the digital transformation. That reflects research Capgemini published in 2013, which remains the most in-depth study on the topic: It found that just 7 percent of employees surveyed believe they have strong social media skills.

A growing number of training consultants wants to radically increase that number and help companies bridge the gap. “We are not taught at school or college how to use social media, and even with the launch of digital qualifications at university, I don’t believe they educate people on the personal brand aspect or how to really use social media for businesses,” says SocialB CEO Lynsey Sweales. “The decision-makers in business who are trying to recruit a digital or social media person aren’t always sure what skilled questions to ask or the answers that validate that expertise. This either means they don’t recruit at all or they recruit the wrong person and don’t see the results they are expecting.”

Why is the workforce so unprepared when 34 percent of those workers are millennials who grew up with the internet? The answer could be that the universe of social media keeps expanding. Facebook was once a platform exclusively for college students; now it’s used by more than a quarter of the world’s population, according to Internet World Stats. When Instagram launched in 2010, it was just another photo-sharing app; today, companies see Instagram stars as “influencers” and treat them as powerful marketing tools. Other firms are turning to Snapchat, which began life in 2011 strictly as a teen app, to reach the youngest customers. With this ever-shifting digital landscape, it’s not surprising that employees struggle to keep up.

But they really must if their company is in the online game — and these days that means most companies. According to a 2014 eMarketer report, 88 percent of U.S. companies use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms to promote their products and services. It’s a highly effective marketing tool: 78 percent of consumers report that it influences their purchases, according to a 2015 Forbes survey.

When it comes to ramping up those social media chops and reversing that trend, employees are not getting much in-house help. Of the companies surveyed by Capgemini, fewer than half were investing in the development of their employees’ digital skills, and none of them planned to invest more than 20 percent of their training budget on social media/digital education. “Historically, companies blocked social media websites that they felt were irrelevant to an employee’s function and a distraction from productivity,” says Tessa Horehled, a global digital marketing strategist and managing director of digital marketing firm Move Shake Make. “As social media has become a more prominent business tool, not only for the marketing team, these previous restrictions are gradually falling away.”

Fortunately, some companies are starting to step up their game. Although management once assigned social media duties to a specific person or a team, most innovative outfits these days recognize that it has become the responsibility of all employees. According to a 2015 study published by Altimeter, 47 percent of companies surveyed reported that they provide social business training for staff, a steady 2 percent increase from 2013. Alternatively, employees can independently seek out social media training and certification from sites that offer online courses like SocialB, Hootsuite Academy, Splash Media U, Expert Rating, Mediabistro and Market Motive.

When it comes to training, Fragkiskos Filippaios wants to go further upstream. Filippaios, associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Kent and co-author of the paper “Social Career Management: Social Media and Employability Skills Gap,” thinks higher education could take a more prominent role in improving social media education. “Universities and colleges fail to appreciate the need to include the use of online social networks in the curriculum,” he says. “[There is an] urgent need to … equip graduates and future professionals with those tools.”

The idea of social media penetrating all levels of society, including the workspace, has recently become the subject of dystopian narratives like the 2017 film The Circle and multiple episodes of the hit TV series Black Mirror. It seems as though offices that function like social media platforms may indeed be the future. But rather than the oppressive hierarchies dreamed up by sci-fi writers, workplaces where every employee is equally capable of contributing to the centrally important task of social media management may in fact create a more egalitarian “economy of trust.

By Addison Nugent.

Sourced from www.ozy.com

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How to Establish the Best Social Media KPIs for Your Content Marketing Goals

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By Cameron Conaway

For many content marketers, social media strategy never gets beyond the spray-and-pray process of sharing a new piece of content with the widest audience possible, and then measuring if anybody engaged with it. It’s based on an idea that if you just keep creating new content and pushing it out, results will come.

But, as Jonathan Crossfield puts it, “In social media, the audience pulls the strings.”

As content marketers, we must take a step back. Just as we put time into creating a content marketing strategy, so too do we need to create a social media strategy specifically tailored to our content goals. And this begins with establishing the right social media KPIs (key performance indicators) for those content goals.

After all, if our social media strategy is built around intuition rather than KPIs, it’s unlikely to serve our content well.

Social media strategist Jeremy Goldman knows a thing or two about this. He’s the author of Going Social and Getting to Like, and he’s the founder of Firebrand Group, a brand management consulting firm that counts L’Oréal and Unilever among its many clients.

CCO: Going Social was published four years ago, and yet still contains lessons for today’s social media strategists. What are the most significant changes since then?

Goldman: When Going Social was about to come out, I was freaking out for the reason you just stated … social media moves so fast. How do you write a book like that without it immediately becoming outdated? I realized I had to avoid writing about the mechanics of how you respond to comments on Facebook or how you participate in a Twitter chat since those could easily change at any moment. Instead, I focused on how social media is based on the principles of communication that have predated social media by a few millennia.

As for the most significant changes? That’s easy. Social media is pay for play, and good luck running any meaningful strategy purely around organic reach. When I wrote Going Social, mid-sized businesses could actually find ways to get creative and win at social media without a paid media budget. Oh, how times have changed.

CCO: In the context of content marketing, how do you wade through the seemingly infinite social media metrics to get to the social media KPIs?

Goldman: First, it’s completely normal to get metrics and KPIs mixed up to some extent. In fact, I’ve seen people at even senior levels flub this. Metrics are simply measurements quantified. KPIs are metrics that you’ve determined are mission critical to your business.

You touch on something very important here: These days we can measure more than ever before. However, that isn’t necessarily a good thing in that it causes some organizations to lose focus. Just because we have more metrics doesn’t mean we need more KPIs.

The more KPIs your organization has defined, the less focused it likely is. I had one company boasting that it was determined to go from four KPIs to 16 KPIs in the next fiscal year. Is that always a good thing or does that dilute the value of a KPI?

CCO: Speak to the newly minted content marketing manager. What are the first steps they need to take to figure out the best social media KPIs for their content marketing goals?

Goldman: That’s going to depend on the organization and the scope of the particular role, so the first thing is to figure out how to be of greatest value to the organization in general. If the best thing is to get eyeballs on the company’s latest white paper, the best KPIs may be visits to the lead-gen form connected to the white paper, and the total number of white paper downloads – simple as that.

CCO: What are typically the most important social media KPIs for content marketing, and how do you create a sustainable, team-oriented process for driving toward them?

Goldman: Again, it’s going to depend on the organization, but I think sales leads is probably the number one KPI for content marketing. If you’re not making any sales, it’s hard to keep the lights on, and it’s hard to write good content without any lights. Tied to that, customers coming from those leads are a powerful KPI, not to mention traffic on specific pieces of content.

I like that you ask how to have a team-oriented process because that’s something not enough people touch on. It’s important to have the entire team pushing in the right direction. Every team member must understand not just team KPIs but what role each member of the group needs to play to reach them. You can’t all be rowing in different directions. I see that happen all too often.

CCO: You’ve helped both scrappy start-ups and massive transnational companies establish their social media KPIs. What themes run through each, and what can content marketers, regardless of the size of their company, learn from them?

Goldman: Small companies and large enterprises have far more in common than you’d think. The biggest parallel is a desire to run before figuring out what path they should be taking. We live in a society that rather harshly judges anyone who takes a second to breathe. If you’re not doing, you must be a slacker, right? But the reality is that setting KPIs and then revisiting those KPIs on a regular basis are beyond critical, and both start-ups and monolithic enterprises don’t do it often enough.

CCO: Can you offer some tips on establishing the best social media KPIs for your content marketing goals?

Goldman: Understand your brand. Your organization presumably has a mission statement – a reason for being. It may sound like a lofty place to start, but you can’t succeed without an understanding of the firm and where it’s looking to go.

Determine your own role. Make sure you know what your role is in the company. You would be surprised at how many content marketing managers are spending their time in slightly different areas than their managers would like.

Survey your metrics. Look at all the metrics your organization is tracking. Don’t assume everything is important. Likewise, don’t assume a seemingly valueless metric can’t be immensely helpful.

Determine your KPIs. Break down your list of metrics and pick a few you’re determined to work night and day to measure your success by. Make sure you’re not picking too many – no more than six and, in some cases, fewer will do.

Refine on an ongoing basis. There’s a chance you may have picked the wrong KPIs, your role may have changed, or your organization is heading in a new direction. No matter which one occurs, reviewing your KPIs on a regular basis lets you course correct and select new ones.

By Cameron Conaway

Cameron Conaway was awarded the 2015 Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Fellowship. He curates Content Land, a weekly resource for journalists and content marketers who want to work smarter by learning how both fields intersect. Follow him on Twitter @CameronConaway.

Other posts by Cameron Conaway

Sourced from Content Marketing Institute

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Social Media May Be Killing Your Relationship. Here’s Why

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Sourced from Greatist.

“She took your pictures off her ‘gram. Y’all must have broke up.” Everyone with a social media account understands that verse of Yo Gotti’s song “Down in the DM.” We’ve all felt the pressure to prove a relationship is going well through an outpouring of highly visible romantic messages, but how much of what we portray online is reflective of reality? And does our public performance of love hurt our real relationships

In July my husband and I celebrated three years of marriage. Getting married at the tender age of 22 came with its own set of challenges; we’ve been discovering ourselves in the process of discovering each other. Over the last three years, we’ve had our share of ups and downs, but the best lessons have come from the downs. One of the most surprising pertains to how our relationship is portrayed online.

I’m fairly active on social media and used to post frequently about my daily experiences and my relationship. My husband, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Sure, he has a Facebook profile, but he definitely has low levels of engagement. I knew his relationship with social media meant he was unlikely to post about me, but that didn’t stop it from irritating me when he didn’t.

I made the mistake many do; I equated my insufficient presence on his page to insufficient love for me. Surely, if he loved me, he would shout it from the rooftops of the interwebs. So we did what most couples do when they have different views: We argued.

I’m not alone. Research gathered by the Pew Research Center suggests at least 24 percent of individuals think technology has either a negative or less-than-positive impact on their relationships. So… what about those people who incessantly post about how gorgeous and perfect their lives are? How real can those “perfect” Facebook couples really be?

We’ve all seen photos and statuses of friends and acquaintances who gush over their partners, the latest trips, the latest gifts. But what’s the reality here? More than once, I’ve talked to a distraught friend after they had a relationship-threatening fight, just to see them—moments later—post an “I love you more than the world” status and a photo of their partner on Instagram. And I doubt I’m the only one who’s experienced something similar.

I’ve envied the relationships I’ve seen online—you know, the really sentimental ones, where partners write long, heartfelt statuses about each other. But in reality, the couples who write those gushingly romantic posts might be, at best, trying to make up after a bad fight or construct a reality that portrays their desired relationship, rather than their real one. At worst, they might be victims of territorial controlling partners.

There’s some data that suggests frequent social media use has a negative correlation with levels of relationship satisfaction, and recent research has shown that individuals with multiple social media profiles often suffer from increased risk of depression. This is particularly common among millennials.

Surely if he loved me, he would shout it from the rooftops of the interwebs.

There are any number of reasons people fall into social media overshare, ranging from simply enjoying the dopamine releases that come with an influx of notifications to covering up uncertainty within a relationship.

And romantic relationships aren’t the only ones affected by this behavior. If you’ve ever wondered if your friends are jealous about what you post on your page, the answer is “probably.” Nearly half of social media users reported feelings of jealousy when their content didn’t get as much positive attention as their friends’. In order to keep up with the Joneses, many people feel pressure to uphold an unrealistic persona to garner more likes.

Remember, there’s significant work that goes on behind the scenes when you take the perfect couples’ picture for social. These images don’t just happen: You have to consider lighting and angles, arrange the backdrop, take several iterations, engage with all the feedback… so when, in this process, are you really spending time with your partner

Some experts believe the pressure to post the “right” relationship photo makes it difficult to be present for our partners and live in the moment. A study published in 2016 revealed that the more selfies posted on platforms like Instagram, the higher the likelihood of relationship conflicts and jealousy, particularly when those images get significant attention. Other issues can arise when everyone but your partner likes your pictures (at least that was the case for me).

The truth is a good amount of tech-related conflicts happen in relationships: 42 percent report being distracted by their phones, 18 percent argue about the amount of time spent online, and 8 percent have conflicts due to what a partner does online.

The way someone chooses to portray their relationship on social media is a personal decision, and many happy, fully functional relationships are broadcasted on social. And for good reason: A cute post can be a wonderful way to make your spouse feel appreciated, if that’s their “love language.” However, there are also many people like myself, who have become so consumed with the stressors of their online footprint that it causes issues

Do what works best for you but be vigilant and wary of the issues you and your partner face that are social media related. In my case, when I stopped obsessing over the fact that my husband wasn’t posting about us (and started mentioning my husband as little as possible), it removed a ton of pressure from our relationship. As the old adage goes, the grass isn’t always greener.

A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez is a diversity content specialist who produces materials relating to mental and physical health, sociology, and parenting. Her work can be seen on several national platforms. Check her out on Facebook and Twitter.

Sourced from Greatist

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Creating Your 2018 Marketing Budget [Guide]

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Where to Focus Your Annual Marketing Spend

It’s never too early to start working on your company’s marketing plan for the upcoming year – just ask the accounting department. For B2B and B2C marketers alike, there are many conversations to be had about the impact your budget will have on your marketing capabilities and strategy.

Use this guide to assess your company’s current marketing practices and discover the marketing methods you may want to introduce in next year’s plan. After all, your 2018 budget is likely an untapped resource for your marketing team and might allow for optimization, integration and innovation. Did we overdo it on the buzzwords? In any case, use this guide to get a jump start on your 2018 marketing budget and determine what tactics you should incorporate to make the year a successful one.

Step 1: Analyze and Benchmark Past Marketing Successes

Marketing is a balancing act and when you’re trying to increase qualified leads, it should never be a guessing game. To develop a truly successful marketing plan, you first have to look back at marketing plans from years past.

Use data from Google Analytics, your email marketing service and your marketing automation system to understand what sources are driving the most leads. Once you have tangible numbers, you can identify which sources contribute the highest percentage of total revenue via leads and conversions.

After you’ve collected year-over-year analytics data from each marketing channel and their corresponding sales metrics, you should ask yourself two simple but important questions:

  • What’s working?
  • What’s not working?

Unfortunately, each marketing tactic cannot be evaluated in the same way. While print ads offer circulation data, you can’t determine the exact number of readers who flipped through a publication’s pages. On the other hand, display advertising can provide definitive findings as to the size of the audience, the amount of impressions and click data.

Do your best to prioritize marketing tactics based on an unbiased review of their performance each year. When analyzing performance, try to maintain a holistic view of your business. What outside factors are influencing business development besides marketing? The loss of a key employee or the emergence of a new local competitor could be to blame.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI) can be tough to navigate, but with persistent research, you can optimize the channels that are working in your favor and pull back marketing spend on the tactics that aren’t.

Step 2: Determine 2018 Marketing Goals

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the success of your past and current tactical marketing plans, it’s time to determine your 2018 marketing goals. After all, you can’t take a road trip if you don’t know where you’re headed.

Your marketing goals should be strategic objectives that are quantifiable and specific.

Define your goals on multiple levels; start from the top by determining your short and long-term business objectives. With this information, you can understand the amount of revenue you will need to achieve those goals and therefore the number of new leads you will need to generate. This is where the fun starts. Armed with these numbers and your data from step one, you can begin to break down these goals even further, setting success measurements for each marketing channel and tactic.

For tactical goals, be specific in terms of budget and results. How much are you willing to spend on this tactic? How many clicks or new leads do you expect this tactic to generate? Here’s an example:

  • Channel: Digital marketing
  • Platform: Google AdWords
  • Tactic: PPC campaign
  • Spend: $3,000/month
  • Goal: 500 clicks, 30 conversions

It’s important to establish objectives, but there should be some element of flexibility. Many factors that will impact progress toward your goals are constantly in flux, such as the cost associated with certain keywords  and ad groups on Google AdWords.

Keep in mind that circumstances may change throughout the year and budgets may have to be adjusted. If your current structure does not allow for budgetary changes, your goals and expectations should be altered accordingly.

Step 3: Consider Marketing Channel Options

There are multiple marketing channels to choose from when creating your 2018 plan, but most marketers will recommend an integrated approach. If your budget is tight, it may be in your best interest to focus investments on one or two channels. Here are a few channels that every modern marketer should consider:

  • Digital Marketing
    • Website development: Investing in development can go a long way. Whether you’re starting from scratch to create a new website or you’re improving an existing one, users can always appreciate a site that has top-notch UX and updated features.
    • Display advertising & pay-per-click (PPC): Advertising via search engines and partner websites is becoming increasingly commonplace as technology advances. Display advertising is an economical online advertising method, offering the opportunity to display graphic banner ads on website categories of your choosing. PPC, while more costly, is extremely customizable; advertisers can specify bids, ad copy, display time of day, location targeting and more.
    • Email marketing: A standard among most companies in 2017, there are still realms to explore in the world of email marketing. Experiment with email workflows to capture leads and incorporate responsive elements to heighten engagement metrics.
    • Social media advertising: For marketers who have established a strong social media presence for their company, social media advertising is an excellent tactic to incorporate. LinkedIn is the most beneficial for B2B marketers (especially its new InMail advertising option), while Facebook suits B2C marketers.
    • Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimizing your website for search engines is becoming increasingly important. How many times do you Google per day?
  • PR & Social Media

Public relations and social media marketing are standard for most B2B and B2C businesses. To take your editorial calendar to the next level, put down the press release and consider adding a new method to the mix.

Content marketing is a tactic that has grown in popularity in the past few years; this avenue allows companies to produce in-depth industry content that draws in a new, more targeted audience.

Content marketing is especially useful in the B2B space because industry content may not be as readily available to interested consumers. This content not only serves as quality editorial copy on-site, but it also has the potential to be leveraged for lead nurturing and demand generation purposes.

  • Traditional Marketing Channels

Traditional marketing methods have been a staple in the industry for decades and most are still in use. Direct mail, event marketing, television spots and print advertising are just a few tactics that are still a core focus for many marketers.

But be wary of opting for traditional methods unless you can prove that the tactics will result in strong leads. If not, they may not be worth the significant investment.

Step 4: Prioritize Your Needs

This is the hard part. Marketing on every platform is be the ideal circumstance, but for small to medium sized business (SMBs), this may not be realistic.

To prioritize your marketing needs, start with the most costly endeavors. Choose the tactic that is the most effective at driving leads and go from there.

Once you’ve incorporated the tactics that require the most spend, you can balance the rest of your budget with more cost-effective tactics.

Most B2B and B2C marketers find that working with an agency is helpful in determining the best marketing mix. For most of our clients, the marketing channel priorities that garner the most online success include:

  • PPC campaigns
  • Content marketing
  • SEO

Ultimately, there’s no magic formula. Your marketing budget should be a mix of different methods, based on the resources you’re working with and the audience you’re trying to reach.

This guide should serve as a starting point for your 2018 marketing planning and help you bring increased exposure for your business in the new year.

Sourced from Marketing Insider Group

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Practical automation guide and tools for busy bloggers

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By Tomas Laurinavicius.

Bill Gates is famous for saying, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

However shocking that sounds, putting more work and hours into something doesn’t always yield better results. And today’s fast-paced online world can be especially tough on businesses that don’t manage to keep up.

As a busy blogger, you’re probably juggling a multitude of different tasks, many of which are repetitive and frankly, quite boring. For your blog to take off and scale into something greater than a company of one employee, you must use your time efficiently and learn to automate and delegate.

Read on to learn about the practical tools of automation and how to use them to grow your business.

Importance of automation

On average 49 percent of companies are currently using marketing automation and the adoption is growing rapidly, as there are 11 times more B2B organizations using marketing automation now than in 2011.

Why is everyone jumping on this new trend? According to various research findings, marketers who’ve adopted marketing automation count multiple benefits:

  • They see an average increase of sales revenues by 34 percent (Pardot, 2015)
  • 64 percent of marketers say they saw the benefits of using marketing automation within the first six months of its implementation. (Regalix, 2015)
  • 74 percent of respondents say the technology’s ability to save them time is its largest benefit. This is followed in close second by increased customer engagement (68 percent), with more timely communications and increased opportunities tied in third place (58 percent). (Adestra, 2015)

Besides helping to improve customer experience, email marketing and, lead management as well as helping to reduce human error in marketing campaigns, the biggest and most important benefit of automation for busy bloggers is that it can save hours and hours of time, which could be spent creating new content and growing the business.

Curating content

Creating excellent content for your blog is only half the story. You might be a skilled writer and an expert in your field, but churning out high-quality content every day is hardly possible if you’re a one-man show. And yet, it doesn’t mean you should let your social media presence suffer.

What you need to keep your communication flowing is a rich selection of well-written content that your target audience would find interesting and valuable. By sharing blog posts, videos or infographics created by other bloggers or businesses you will continue to create value for your followers and boost your credibility. Content curation can be an opportunity for bloggers to build their following and figure out the interests and motivations of their audience.

Credit: Pocket

Explore the most popular content curation tools, such as Pocket, Scoop.it, Feedly, and Storify that will help you to discover, save, and distribute the best content from around the web.

Scheduling social media updates

The best way to manage the time you spend on social media is by blocking off a few hours in your calendar for content scheduling and getting it all done in one go. Buffer and Hootsuite are the leading content scheduling tools available online that can take the pain out of this boring task. Instead of copy-pasting the same message across different platforms, fiddling with different settings and re-uploading visuals, get all your social media content planned out and scheduled by using a dedicated automation tool.

Credit: Buffer

To get the most of social media automation, be sure to craft your own social media content plan. A robust social media content calendar will not only help you stick to a consistent schedule, but will also make the planning of time-sensitive content easier and help you enforce a healthy sharing ratio. One of the most popular ways for figuring out the ideal ratio for the content you’ll share on different channels is to use the 411 rule. This rule refers to a practice of sharing four user-centric educational or entertaining posts for every one “slightly promotional” and one “hard sale” post.

Credit: Buffer

When it comes to choosing the optimal time to post on social media, you’ll need to do a bit of heavy-lifting yourself and analyze your audience’s behavior and preferences. When are your followers online? When do you see the level of engagement spike throughout the day? Look into the built-in analytics on Twitter or Facebook to determine the best times to push your messages out. Alternatively, you can rely on the clever algorithms that Buffer and Hootsuite both use to automatically schedule your post to go out when they’re most likely to be noticed. CoSchedule have rounded up a number of studies to figure out the perfect times to post and found that:

  • The best times to post on Facebook are Saturday and Sunday at 12–1 p.m.
  • The best time to tweet is noon and 5–7 p.m. on Wednesdays.
  • The best time to post on LinkedIn is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 7–8:30 a.m., noon, and 5–6 p.m.

Automation plugins for your blog

Although not a WordPress plugin, IFTTT is one of the most versatile automation tools on the market. It can send you a daily email with the GIFs that are trending on Giphy or notify you when a new subscriber is added to your MailChimp list. The possibilities are wide-ranging and exciting.

To maximize the ROI of your email marketing, ensure your workflow is set up properly. Use a WordPress form builder to have a smart-looking subscription form that integrates with your email provider on your site. Then set up an automated workflow on your email platform to trigger a welcome campaign once a new email is added to your mailing list. If you want to quickly capture new leads on your blog and add them to the right mailing list, CaptainForm, a user-friendly WordPress form builder that integrates with MailChimp and GetResponse, is a good place to start.

Credit: CaptainForm

Another cool WordPress plugin that can take some work off your hands is Revive Old Post, which promises to help you keep the old posts alive and drive more traffic by reposting them on social media. To keep your content calendar neatly organized, you can also explore the CoSchedule plugin, which will help you take control of your blogging calendar.

Hiring and training a VA (virtual assistant)

Many bloggers will attest to the idea that hiring a VA right from the start is the best thing you can do for your business. The most common objection here is that it seems counterintuitive to pay someone before you start making money yourself, but it is the only way for you to focus on the most important, revenue-producing tasks and leave the rest in someone else’s capable hands.

So where do you find a talented VA that will help you bring order to chaos? Many entrepreneurs scour freelancer marketplaces like Upwork and PeoplePerHour or leverage their personal and professional networks on social media (Facebook and LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags).

When hiring a VA, make sure you know exactly what type of tasks you’ll be outsourcing so that you can look out for the right set of skills. Do they need a good written English? Does it matter what time zone they live in? Do they need any specific knowledge? If you’re struggling to wrap your head around this, use Foundr’s Hiring a VA checklist to cover your bases.

Credit: Trello

If your VA lives on the other side of the world, you can use tools like Screenmailer to explain projects and tasks in a quick and reliable way. Trello is also an excellent tool to keep track of the progress and make sure you’re all on the same page.

Avoiding common mistakes

Don’t be afraid of making a few mistakes here and there – they’re not going to kill your business. But there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to marketing automation:

1) Set goals for each automated effort

You will need a way to measure the success of your marketing automation, so make sure you set goals for each automated effort, such as social media, email workflows, and so on. This will help you to track the performance of automated campaigns and ensure they’re optimized for the best results.

2) Optimize your email automation

Automating your email marketing will be an exhilarating experience. However, it’s key to remember that adding your leads to onboarding or welcome automation workflows only works if the lists are segmented and you personalize the content that you send. Don’t make the mistake of blasting generic emails to the entire mailing list because it will turn people away.

3) Don’t get lazy

Marketing automation will save you tons of time, but don’t make the mistake of letting things take their own course. Take time every week to re-test and review your automated messages to make sure they’re still relevant. If your engagement rates start to drop, it’s time to refresh the content and do some A/B testing.

Conclusion

Once you turn your blog into a source of income, your efforts must be focused on growing the business. So you can’t spend your days plowing through a to-do list that has no direct (or very little) impact on your revenue. Automating the most time-consuming tasks will free up a lot of time and allow you to scale your business without much investment. And if you decide to hire a VA, there is only one thing to remember – never outsource core tasks and you’ll be just fine!

By Tomas Laurinavicius

Sourced from TNW

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Why I Think Social Media Is For Branding and Engagement, Not Traffic or Revenue

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By Alfred Lua

Social media is changing.

It used to be a one-to-many channel. Businesses would publish links, photos, and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, hoping to reach as many people as they can and drive a high number of leads and sales.

When marketers first started using social media as a marketing channel, there was less content, less noise, and people were willing to click on almost everything they saw on their news feed.

Then, we hit content shock.

There is now more content on social platforms than people can consume. If a post doesn’t look interesting or useful, people just scroll past it. As Rank Fishkin observed, “Twitter, Facebook, et al. have become more challenging sources from which to drive traffic. Clicks are just harder to come by.”

Social media is no longer a megaphone.

It is now becoming a one-to-few — and often one-to-one — channel. Businesses and organizations that are succeeding on social media now are the ones providing personalized social experiences to their fans such as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, NASA, and Airbnb.

Social media is becoming a conversation. Here’s why…

Social media is incredible for some things but not all things

Social media is often seen as a solution to every marketing problem. And, of course, it’s great for certain aspects of marketing including brand awareness. But the truth is, social media probably isn’t going to help you achieve every business or marketing goal you have.

For example, I believe social media is no longer a great traffic driver for most businesses. The strategy of batching and blasting marketing messages across various platforms might have been an effective way to drive clicks in the past, but not anymore. And, in mind at least, that’s not a bad thing because:

Social media is becoming an engagement channel. 

And with this shift comes new opportunities, such as incredible customer service and one-on-one conversations, which major social media platforms are embracing more and more with platforms and features like Messenger, Instagram Direct, and Twitter Direct Messages.

Engagement is also about the content you create and share across social platforms. Is it entertaining, useful, or unique? Does it encourage your audience to respond? Or is it just there to drive clicks back to your website?

The future of social media (and some might argue the past and the present of social media) is about deepening your relationships with your fans by engaging them and not simply pushing out marketing messages.

Let’s look at why this shift might be true…

4 reasons why engagement is the future of social media

1. Low organic reach and referral traffic

In recent years, organic reach on social media has fallen so low that social media is becoming a less viable channel for traffic.

Businesses are reaching fewer people on social media and getting less traffic from social media through organic means. Even publishers, businesses that heavily rely on social media for referral traffic, are getting less social referral traffic. Many major publishers have been seeing a fall in Facebook referral traffic — some as much as 50 percent.

As the amount of content on social media increases far beyond what we can consume, each social media post becomes less and less likely to be seen.

Here’s a simplified calculation: if 10 million posts are published per day by users and brands and all social media users collectively consume only one million posts per day, each post has a 10 percent chance of being seen. If the number of posts published per day increases to 100 million and all social media users still consume only one million posts per day, each post now has only a one percent chance of being seen.

The reality is that as more content is published on social media, organic reach will naturally fall.

A study by Social@Ogilvy found that Facebook organic reach has fallen to just six percent in 2014.

Declining organic reach on Facebook

The number likely has fallen even further after Facebook made a change to its algorithm to prioritize posts from family and friends over those from Pages.

Social media is losing its potential as a traffic channel as more and more content are posted on social media. As Michael Stelzner, CEO and Founder of Social Media Examiner, said, “Traffic has been going down, down, down and down. For years! That’s the challenge – you’re not getting the reach or visibility and we have to be OK with that reality.”

We have to adapt accordingly.

2. The rise of social messaging (and chatbots)

While social media has been the dominant platform over the last five to 10 years, social messaging apps (messaging apps built around social media platforms) are growing much faster than social media platforms. There are now more people using the top four messaging apps than people using the top four social media apps, as reported by Business Insider.

The top four messaging apps are now bigger than the top four social networks

Activate, a strategy consulting firm, predicted that 1.1 billion more people will use messaging apps by 2018, resulting in 1.5 times more people using messaging apps than people using social media apps.

The rise of social messaging signifies a change in people’s social media behavior and preferences — towards more personal, one-to-one communications. When people view social media, they are no longer just thinking about the posts on their news feed. They are also thinking about reaching your business for customer support through Twitter, receiving timely information or ordering products through your Messenger chatbot.

A company that is at the forefront of this change is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Apart from posting interesting content on their one-to-many channels, they have invested a lot in one-to-one channels.

By engaging their social media fans on both one-to-many and one-to-one channels, they were able to gain tremendous business value. For instance, their social media efforts helped to increase their Net Promoter Score from 35 in 2015 to an all-time high of 43 in 2016.

Businesses that only push out marketing content on social media will miss out the opportunity to serve customers in meaningful ways and might be left obsolete on social media.

3. People use social media to reach brands

Social media is the first place most people turn to for customer support, as Sprout Social has found. And more and more people are using social media to get help from brands. The average number of social messages that needed a response from brands had increased by 18% from 2015 to 2016.

Social media is the top customer service channel

People are not only using private social media channels such as Messenger or Twitter Direct Messages to reach businesses for help. Take a look at Airbnb’s Facebook Page and you’ll notice that its users are also commenting on its posts to get help. (And Airbnb does a great job responding and helping them.)

There’re benefits to helping customers on social media. Sprout Social also found that being responsive on social media prompts customers to purchase while ignoring customers causes less brand loyalty.

At the same time, it’s becoming easier to help your customers on social media. To meet this trend, social media platforms are developing more customer service tools to help businesses respond to their customers.

Businesses have to change their approach towards social media and go beyond just publishing content. You’ll have to be there and help your customers when they ask for help.

4. Algorithms prioritize engagement

Besides engaging customers through customer service and one-on-one conversations, engagement is also about the quality of your content. Is it engaging enough to elicit positive responses from your fans?

To be seen and heard on social media (organically), you need to create content that engages your fans. The number of engagement on your social media posts influences the number of people who would see them.

If many people engage with your post, social media algorithms will take it as a sign that your post is interesting and will more likely show that post to more people. If there are few interactions (or many negative interactions such as “Hide post” on Facebook) on your post, social media algorithms will assume it is uninteresting, irrelevant, or not useful and not show it to as many people. So the more positive interactions on your posts, the more people you will reach on social media.

If your ultimate goal is traffic, leads, or conversions, then the more of such results you can potentially get. Socialbakers studied 30,000 Facebook posts by over 2,700 businesses and found that the more interactions a Page has, the higher the traffic to its website.

Interactions correlate with site visits

What’s the value of engagement?

I believe businesses will no longer join social media because they see it as a strong referral source or direct revenue channel. The primary reason to be on social media will be to build your brand through engagement.

Many businesses are already doing this — strengthening their brand through social media. Some (like KLM, Starbucks, and Nike ) help their customers quickly resolve issues through social media.

Others share content that their fans like and grow their brand through amplification from existing followers, influencers, and social ads. If you look at the social media profiles of brands like Denny’s, Oreo, and GoPro, you’ll notice how they use their content to reinforce their brand image rather than link their fans to their website or directly sell their products.

GoPro building its brand on Facebook

Social is a way for us to build confidence in the brand by showcasing our personality. Engage with them, inspire them and answer their questions quickly.

Hannah Pilpel, social project manager at MADE.COM

But why brand-building with social media is so important?

A customer’s journey with most businesses is not linear

Most customers rarely go from your Facebook Page to your website to your checkout page. It might look more like this:

➡️ Someone hears about your product through a friend.
➡️ On the same day, the customer sees your Facebook post, enjoys the content, and comments on it.
➡️ The following week, the customer searches on Google for a product that you sell and your website appears on the first page.
➡️ She recognizes your brand and tweeted you a question about your product.
➡️ You promptly replied her, and she decided to order the product from your website.

(Even this is a very simplified version of an actual customer journey.)

A study by Sprout Social found that 85 percent of people have to see something on social media more than once before they would purchase it. But they will also unfollow you if you post too many promotional messages.

Why people unfollow brands

By engaging your customers through timely customer support, one-on-one conversations, and interesting or helpful content, you can strengthen your brand image. Then, when these customers are deciding if they should purchase or continue to purchase from you, this brand equity can help win them over.

And it’s proven by research.

Social media interactions increase customer loyalty

A group of U.S. researchers studied consumers’ interactions with their favorite brands and their relationship with the brands. They found that consumers who engage with their favorite brands on social media have stronger relationships with those brands than consumers who don’t engage with their favorite brands.

Consumers who engage with their favorite brands on social media are more likely:

  • to have a better evaluation of the brands,
  • stay loyal to the brands, and
  • recommend the brands to others.

When they trust your brand, they’re more likely to give you their email address, sign up for a webinar, or purchase your product when you ask. That’s the reason why MailChimp does so much brand marketing. Their brand marketing creates a bias for MailChimp so that when someone is choosing an email marketing platform, she will think of MailChimp first.

Branding sounds good but…

What about measurable ROI like leads and sales?

Yes, they are important, too.

Marketers and businesses will always want to justify the time, energy, and resources they spend on social media. 78 percent of social media marketers discuss social media ROI with their boss, and 42 percent have such discussions frequently, according to Simply Measured.

Social ROI discussions

If social media ROI is important to you and your business, you can still keep an eye on results that are more directly measurable as you focus on brand-building on social media through engagement.

There are several ways you can measure these results such as through Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, or Facebook Ads Manager if you are using Facebook ads. Also, as social media platforms develop more shopping features such as Pinterest’s Buyable Pins and Instagram shopping, there’ll likely be more robust analytics to show the monetary value of social media.

Here’re a few examples of how businesses are measuring their social media ROI, according to Econsultancy:

It’s important to remember that when you use social media as an engagement and brand-building channel, you might not generate many leads or sales directly from social media. But you would indirectly.

For instance, someone might discover you on social media and, a week later, find you on Google and purchase from you. We will usually credit Google for the purchase when your social media activities actually helped to influence the purchasing decision. Using tools like Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnels or premium social media analytics tools, you can evaluate how your social media activities indirectly helped with lead generation and sales.

Social media assisted conversions

Over to you

People’s behaviors on and expectations of social media are (or have been) changing. Social media platform themselves are also adapting to meet this change.

If you want to succeed on social media, I think your primary goal on social media should be brand-building. You have to focus on the “social” of “social media” and engage your fans.

What do you think?

—

We have built Buffer Reply to help businesses serve and engage with their fans more effectively on social media. If you want to build your brand and give your followers a better experience on social media, we’d love for you to give Buffer Reply a try.

Image credit: Pixabay, (feature image), Econsultancy (quote)

By Alfred Lua

Sourced from Buffer Social

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Six things you need to stop doing right now with your mobile strategy

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By Michael Hewitt.

he mobile search landscape has changed immensely in recent years, transforming how consumers engage with brands and discover new products. But the change of pace has left some brands struggling to keep up, wondering just how hard mobile is working for them, and whether their brand proposition is really translating to the small screen.

It has led to many making what are, in 2017, some fundamental mistakes with mobile strategy. Here are six of the biggest:

The ‘m-dot’ site

When the ‘mobilegeddon’ update first reared its head in 2015, it unsurprisingly caused panic in the digital ecommerce sector. This was an update that threatened to dramatically harm the web visibility of those brands that weren’t delivering a mobile-friendly experience, and it was an update that would kick-in not very long after it was first announced – certainly not long enough to align all of the necessary stakeholders and plan, build, test and launch a completely new site.

Many brands responded by launching what became known as m-dot websites – essentially copies of a desktop website that were tweaked for mobile and appear on an m.website.com or mobile.website.com sub-domain. It was a quick-fix solution, allowing brands to meet the criteria that would see them becoming a ‘mobilegeddon’ victim, but avoided the need to go through a lengthy web redesign and build.

But now Google is warning brands that it wants to see the end of the m-dot, claiming that the mobile-first index may not index m-dot sites effectively. Throw in the increased risk of broken redirects and duplicate content that come with an m-dot, and the time really has come for you call in the designers and go responsive.

Being deaf to voice search

In June 2017, a Think with Google survey found that 57% of people would use voice search more if it recognised more complex commands, and 58% of respondents said they would like more detailed results when using search.

Think about how you can make your existing keyword strategy more conversational, to reflect the way in which your audiences are going to interact verbally with their mobile or smart devices – particularly if your site features a lot of ‘how to’ content on its site. A desktop search for ‘flights to London’ could very easily become ‘when is the next flight to London?’ or ‘what is the cheapest way to get to London tomorrow morning’. Could your current content answer that query?

Not thinking about your long-term app strategy

A survey by Localytics found that 60% of people who download an application become inactive within 30 days, whilst data from Quattra shows that the daily active user rate drops 77% the first three days after an app is installed on a device.

Mobile apps are not, in themselves, a flawed marketing channel but if you are going to invest in developing and maintaining one, think carefully about how you are going to avoid the graveyard of unused apps that lies on practically every smartphone in existence.

Is your app simply an extension of your mobile site? If so, then think about why you actually need one. What does your app offer that your users can’t get or would find more difficult to get elsewhere?

Think about how you would use your app to re-engage and reconnect with your audiences throughout the customer journey, using your data to provide personalised messages and push notifications that will resonate with them. Just remember not to over-use tactics like push notifications as they can get irritating (particularly if you are just pushing offers and sales messages).

Bombarding users with ads

Speaking of things that are irritating, ads on mobile. Obtrusive adverts are annoying on any platform, but on the small screen of mobile, they are even more of a user experience faux-pas.

If you are advertising to consumers on mobile, make sure that it isn’t your brand that is frustrating what should be a seamless and enjoyable user experience with an intrusive and impossible to dismiss pop-up or interstitial. Not only does it frustrate users and harm the brand, it can also harm your organic search visibility.

Ignoring your audiences’ neighbourhood

So-called ‘near me’ searches are growing at a rate of 130% per year, and 88% of these searches are made using a mobile device, claims Google.

This trend is being driven by the way in which the customer journey is becoming much more integrated between desktop, mobile and offline. Consumers are turning to their devices for ‘quick reference’ queries – local shops and restaurants for example – and then making purchasing decisions across any number of channels based on that information.

It means that brands, particularly those with an offline presence, need to really think about how they are optimising their online presence for ‘near me’ searches, and thinking about the content that they serve to these audiences that works on a localised level, and could drive an in-store visit.

Consider the importance of implicit search variables, such as location, time, device, transport and previous search history, and ensure that you have content that can serve as many combinations of those searches as possible.

Failing to close the loop

Cross-device tracking remains one of the biggest challenges for marketers, as multiple devices and multiple communications channels converge to create a much more complicated customer journey.

Google is working hard to close this loop as much as possible, with Google Attribution rolling out to provide much better integration between AdWords and Analytics, and it is continuing to use user data and search history to ‘join up the dots’ as much as possible.

Different organisations will have different approaches and different models to understand how different devices and channels contribute to the overall buying journey, and the model that you adopt will ultimately depend on your brand objectives for your mobile strategy. However, if you are using a last click model of attribution, then it is highly likely that you are either under or over-estimating the value of mobile, depending on the nature of the brand and the product.

By Michael Hewitt

Michael Hewitt is a content marketing manager at Stickyeyes, and is behind the agency’s guide to mastering your mobile strategy.

Sourced from THEDRUM

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An Early Warning Sign to Change Your Social Media Strategy

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By Ryan Holmes.

Treating social media as just another marketing channel? Tread lightly. A user revolt is brewing.

Fake. It’s a word that gets mentioned a lot these days when we talk about social media. Fake news. Fake followers. Real people sharing fake, filtered versions of their lives.

It’s enough to make you stop and wonder: Is there something inherently wrong with social media? Is it bad for us? It it … evil?

This isn’t a new question. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. My life and career are wrapped up in social media. I know it’s sometimes tempting to dismiss social networks as time sucks … or even threats to civilization. But this is too simplistic. The truth, I think, is much closer to an old adage:

The day after fire was invented, someone invented arson.

Social media, just like fire, is a technology. It’s neither good nor evil. You can use it to bring warmth and light into your life. Or you can use it to burn, harm, and destroy.

For some people, social media is a valuable tool that brings together family and friends, raises awareness for social causes and gives us something to scroll through when we’re bored. For others, it becomes a tool for exploitation, an unhealthy addiction, even a vehicle to spread hate and violence.

Ultimately, the impact is in our hands. Social media, as the name suggests, is just the medium–not the message.

The social paradox

Having said that, it’s not hard to understand the haters. In some respects, social media has done a 180. In the beginning, it was about living out loud–an antidote to slick corporate messages and imagery pushed out over TV and in magazines. Facebook was revolutionary precisely because it was real–immediate and unfiltered. On Twitter, people really did share photos of their breakfast.

But that’s changed. The gold standard in social media these days is something that’s “Instagram-worthy.” Instead of a raw look at real life, we get an impossibly beautiful and polished version of life–cropped, filtered … largely fictitious. Even when it’s our own face. The popular Facetune app, for example, makes it possible for anyone to airbrush their features to model-worthy perfection. (And, more often than not, these perfect people on Instagram are actually trying to sell us something.)

That same craving for fakeness and excess partly explains the prevalence of fake news and clickbait. As our news feeds get increasingly crowded, it’s hard to resist gravitating to splashy, tabloid headlines, even when we sense something just doesn’t add up. Fakeness is a lot like trans fat in that way–tempting but just empty calories; irresistible but ultimately damaging.

A real-ness revolt

But it’s critical to remember social media isn’t just that. And it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it’s not hard to see a countermovement afoot–a push to reclaim social media’s roots. Snapchat started it. Disappearing pics gave people license to be real again. Silly lenses helped us let our hair down. Instead of worrying about projecting a personal brand, we actually started communicating.

Thankfully, other networks have begun to get the message, too. Facebook Live videos are proving so popular because you only get one take–no re-dos. Instagram Stories already has 250 million users in large part because it’s a lot more interesting to watch an unedited video of someone than to look at a picture that’s been Photoshopped to death.

Intimacy and authenticity are regaining a foothold. Especially among younger users, fake is out. Teens have taken to starting “finsta” accounts–friends-only Instagram profiles–so they can share a “less edited, less filtered version of their lives.” The newfound popularity of the Minutiae app–which alerts users at a random time and challenges them to share a “mundane” picture of their actual surroundings–is another testament to this real-ness revolt.

Social media lessons for businesses

So, where does this leave all the companies today who rely on social media to connect with customers? To me, it’s an early warning. Social media has grown into an invaluable business tool. (In fact, my company is built on that fact.) But treating social media as business as usual is a recipe for failure.

More than other channels, social media marketing requires creativity, reinvention and breaking rules. Because there are no gatekeepers, people are constantly pushing the limits and demanding more real-ness and more honesty. Businesses that have grown used to treating social media as just another mass marketing channel may have a rough road ahead.

The key, instead, is to find ways to reclaim social media’s personal and human roots. Granted, doing this at scale isn’t easy. But the more that businesses are able to share candid updates and connect with people on an individual level, the greater the impact that their messages will have. Getting actual employees on board–and even executives–can go a long way to breathing life back into dry corporate social media channels. Tracking “meaningful relationship moments“–not vanity metrics like Likes or RTs–is also a step in the right direction.

The alternative isn’t pretty. A rebellion is brewing. Social media may be more prevalent than ever, but news streams today are as likely to be greeted with skepticism as with enthusiasm. Honesty, transparency and authenticity are re-emerging as the new standard. Anything less is playing with fire.

Image Credit: Getty Images

By Ryan Holmes

Founder and CEO, Hootsuite

Sourced from Inc.

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