For social media managers, this makes your workload a little bit smaller.
By MediaStreet staff writers.
The world of social video is about to get even wider, thanks to MyQuikVid.
The video uploading and sharing app lets users push interesting, funny, newsworthy or inspiring content directly to all their social media accounts at once. Developed by startup Wynntech Apps, MyQuikVid is available here.
“MyQuikVid is a simple way for anyone to capture, edit, produce and share beautiful videos with their family, friends or the entire world — no matter what social media platform they each use,” says Darrin Wynn, founder of Wynntech Apps. “The app connects to the most popular social media and video platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, eliminating the hassle of opening each one independently and navigating through their uploading and sharing screens. MyQuikVid also provides all the editing and production tools one would expect from a video sharing app. Our plan is to continue making the app better and better as we receive feedback from early adopters of MyQuikVid.”
Social video has been on an exponential growth curve in recent years, thanks to faster broadband and more sophisticated devices that capture HD video with ease. According to Brandwatch, Facebook’s 500 million users collectively accounted for 8 billion daily video views in 2016. Upstart Snapchat, meanwhile, boasted 6 billion video views each day across its entire user community. The average U.S. adult spent over an hour each day watching videos on their devices last year. Finally, 78% of people watched online videos every week, and more than half watched every day. All signs point to those numbers going even higher in 2017.
MyQuikVid lets users record a new video directly from the app or choose an existing video from the phone’s gallery. Next, users have the option to trim the video, add a watermark or add text. After giving their edited video a title and brief description, users can share their finished production to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram with just a single tap. MyQuikVid’s YouTube channel features a brief demonstration of these core features.
Special editing effects like slow motion are currently in the works. In addition, an iOS version of MyQuikVid will launch soon, in collaboration with Sileria Android Development Company.
Rather than bundle social video into sponsorship deals, Premier League clubs want to carve out its commercial value to convince sponsors to pay more for that engagement.
The modern-day newsfeed is as stuffed with posts from wannabe stars and celebrity spats as it is with videos from training grounds and changing rooms. Yet many of those creating this content aren’t sure of its commercial worth as it becomes increasingly hard to ignore how much more exposure football teams can get on social media compared to TV.
But because it’s tricky to track the value a brand gets on social, it’s arguably been massively undervalued. No commercial chief can point to half a million Facebook views and say ‘that’s just helped secure my new partnership deal’ when measurement is so blunt. On the other hand, many would ask ‘what’s the cost of not doing it?’
Hundreds of millions in the case of Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, whose social media accounts generated an eye-bulging $500m in value for Nike last year according to sponsorship analytics company Hookit.
While Ronaldo isn’t a club, he is a media owner like the Real Madrid team he plays for and, just like his employers, the Portuguese forward knows that content and platforms he owns are in high demand. The world’s most prolific athlete on social media had one post last year that was worth $5.8m after it racked up 1.7m ‘likes’ and nearly 13,000 comments due its timing with Portugal’s Euro 2016 victory.
Ronaldo’s post was worth $5.8m after racking up 1.7m ‘likes’
Valuations like these are frequent as they are rooted in the old media equivalency rules of sponsorship. Hookit’s methodology uses average number of impressions per interaction to come up with a monetary value when really sponsors want a clearer way to compare social media posts with TV inventory. What the likes of Hookit do prove, however, is just how much teams could be missing in the media valuations they currently conduct – especially as brands demand sharper measurement from all parts of the marketing mix.
“Some clubs are not doing it [measuring social video] right and those who aren’t need to change the way they are approaching brands,” says Jean-Pierre Diernaz, vice-president of marketing at Nissan Europe. The car maker, which sponsors Manchester City and the Uefa Champions League among others, sees a potential in a fast spinning sports industry and yet is perturbed by what it deems is an unwillingness to fix what has become a largely inefficient market.
The social video sports revolution
Pound-busting TV deals pushed the 20 top-flight English teams to post record revenues of £3.6bn between 2015 and 2016 and yet they still struggled to make a profit. Collectively, Premier League clubs made a pre-tax loss of £110m, according to Deloitte, stressing the need for additional revenue streams at a time when many commercial bosses are yet to properly monetise their online fanbases.
“Every club has a certain number of fans but what is important is those who are actively engaging with the club,” continues Diernaz. ”The clubs need to be actively showing on the platforms that here is the value. If you look at the top 20 YouTubers in the world they are getting a lot of business with what they are doing so why would you not be operating the same as a football club. It’s clearly a strategy that would accelerate this for clubs.”
Several Premier League clubs are wise to the opportunity, resolving to give brands what they want in the hope of extracting more money from sponsorships. When City Football Group’s (CFG) commercial boss Tom Glick says he can see a time when social video could help his team renegotiate deals, he’s actually talking about a point when he and his team understand the market value of every post and the revenues they generate.
Numbers like that could come in handy if City were to try to convince Nike to top the £60m a season, 15-year deal with Chelsea when it comes to renegotiations. A club like Manchester City could potentially command tens of millions in media value on TV coverage alone. Add social into a mix and that could significantly inflate the media value of said sponsorship deal. Placements that were once thought useless on TV such as those at the club’s training ground could be worth more to a sponsor looking to reach the growing number of younger fans who aren’t only concerned with what their club does on match days.
Training ground placements could prove valuable to City, with fans concerned with the club beyond match day
“Often what’s holding social video back is it is generally wrapped into a larger sponsorship deal which can undervalue what that media represents because its not pulled out or compared with other formats – like display advertising – that might be getting sold… to me social video is more valuable than a display ad on a club’s website and yet in many cases these things are not necessarily being valued in the same way,” suggests Gareth Capon, the chief executive at social video production business Grabyo.
“If you’re a training ground sponsor then you don’t get much TV presence on game day, it’s more the main kit and headline sponsors,” he continues. “But now with social video you suddenly have all these assets where fans who want to know what’s happening with their club each day get to see your brand and those posts are shared all around the world. That’s a real change and the value for that media is not well understood… but once it starts to get compared with traditional TV advertising or and other forms of advertising, or at least it’s valued as a component of an overall sponsors package, then I think its value will rocket.”
Being able to quantify the value of social media
Southampton, like City, have made strides in recent years to move away from being so reliant on broadcast, focusing on depth of engagement rather than mass exposure. WPP-owned sports marketing agency Two Circles is helping it make the transition, which is very much a work in progress. “It’s about how best to value the video so we’re not only doing it in a traditional sense,” says James Kennedy, Southampton FC’s head of marketing. “We’re going down much more of an impression-based route as oppose to a sales route.”
This means partnerships aren’t typically signed off with an agreed number of tweets and database blasts to feign brand activation. Rather, Southampton are focused less on selling price and impressions and much more on delivering engagement and value.
“The ‘impression-based route’ is about understanding a brand’s target audience and helping them reach this group (in a targeted, cost efficient way) across the club’s entire digital network – web, email and social,” adds Kennedy. “So while achieving mass brand exposure and positive affinity is one objective, Saints can help brands develop campaigns to achieve specific objectives because they can segment their entire digital fanbase.”
Methods like this are heavily reliant on equivalent media value measurement. In the case of Southampton, the club argues that it doesn’t apply an “equivalent” media value in the traditional sense. However, because they – along with Two Circles – eschew inflated media values, they have a more consistent benchmark for a marketer to compare the impact of a campaign with buying the media space elsewhere.
Southampton FC’s marketers have become smarter as to how they use their owned media to generate commercial value
Simply put, what Southampton et al are using involves reach and frequency measures of signage to determine the value of sponsors exposure. These are calculated in differing ways and to varying degrees of sophistication but every measure – or impression – is ascribed an equivalent media value that a marketer can compare with paid for advertising. Hence, the underlying assumption for any brand tracking social video this way is it keeps their sponsorship rooted in the value of logo exposure as well as brand equity.
“The way content is valued is media equivalency so if Chevrolet wanted to buy ad space from TV for millions of people then how much would that cost versus being on the front of the Manchester United jersey… it’s exactly the same premise for how we [Nielsen Sports] value digital and social content,” says Max Barnett, global head of digital at Nielsen Sports. The measurement firm is readying a product it claims brings social media and traditional media valuation together for the first time, meaning for every minute of brand exposure data collected, an average of 5,000 data points are input to algorithms to calculate qualitative and valuation based outputs. While similar tools exist, Barnett hopes Nielsen’s own alternative becomes a unified measurement of sponsorship across all media channels.
“We’re seeing more clients’ commercial teams target 15% to 20% share of media value through digital and social” he continues. “If you have declining TV audiences then that’s a really important gap to fill. The audiences are more than likely not leaving, but consuming the content in a different way. Likewise, you could see brands selecting properties with a more significant social footprint to align to their wider marketing channel objective. Could we also see brands go after digital and social assets in the not too distant future? That depends on how rights holders want to package and promote.”
Is it time for football clubs to think like media owners
Some Premier League bosses hope to do this using social metrics such as earned impressions, shares and followers. The Drum understands a number of commercial bosses have at least considered the possibility of adopting a cost per engagement as a new standard in ROI measurement. While these talks are yet to materialise into anything beyond speculation, that they are even happening is vindication enough of social video’s potential value.
Putting a price on social video has been a thorny subject for some time and it was a challenge we have been seeking to shine more light on with our research report series,” says Michael Litman, founder and chief executive at Burst Insights. For example, the social analytics firm found that of the top 20 best performing videos across each social video platform from last season only Manchester United and Chelsea saw exposure value within the set reach over 31m. Arsenal ranked third, Liverpool FC fourth, Manchester City were in fifth place and Tottenham Hotspur rounded out the top six.
“This shows that for example Arsenal are overachieving on social video performance versus actual player performance on the pitch,” adds Litman. “Spurs fans on the flip-side I think will prefer to be nearer the top of the table in real life. I think we will see in time real world performance, correlating more closely with digital performance as the clubs become more akin to global media broadcasters in their own rights.”
Sports sponsorship has become a new game stuck with old rules. No longer is it enough for rights holders to give sponsors the most media for their money. Instead, sponsors want to know how the rights they’re buying add value to their brands, a shift that’s forcing the likes of Manchester City and Southampton FC to behave more like media owners.
The global success of the top six [Premier League] clubs generates a constant demand for sponsorship assets,” says Tom McDonnell, chief executive at digital fan interaction specialists Monterosa. “Brands are looking for end-to-end solutions that entertain and engage. It’s not enough to count a ‘view’, which could be fleeting, but to also consider interaction and active conversation. If a club provides better assets via social video with proven engagement and interaction, it differentiates the club’s offering and that hits the bottom line.”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most important feature that enables improved website visibility and recognition online. Without it, you might as well stand on the street and yell at people to check out your website. However, SEO is a strategy that needs to be implemented the right way in order for it to provide the best results.
There is no doubt that you will find tips and guides online that will “teach” you how to take an advantage of SEO fast and easy. However, you shouldn’t believe everything you find on the Internet. In fact, there are ways to take an advantage of SEO, but Google loves nothing more than to punish those who try to cheat their way to the top of the rankings. Here is some SEO advice you should most definitely ignore.
More Keywords Means Higher Rankings
No, it doesn’t. As the matter of fact, trying to flood content with keywords will do quite the opposite of ranking it high. It will get banned from search engine altogether. Google has this algorithm that has cute and fuzzy update names like Panda, Penguin or Pigeon but don’t let these names fool you, they are nasty critters when it comes to punishing bad SEO techniques. Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by
Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by readers but will also be marked as spam by Google’s spiders. They can punish a website with low rankings or remove everything from search engine depending on the level of violation.
Social Media Is Irrelevant
Who needs social media when you can have content and keywords, right? Wrong! Social media is a powerful asset when it comes to promoting a website or content and improving SEO rating. However, many people use it the wrong way by repeatedly posting backlinks to their blogs or posts. This approach is considered as spam and you will get removed from a social network if you keep it up. Nevertheless, social media marketing campaigns can vastly improve visibility and SEO rankings, however only if done properly and efficiently.
You Don’t Need Fast Internet for a Blog
Wrong again! Having a blog is an effective way to promote content, attract an audience and improve visibility and SEO. By posting organic, fresh and interesting content relevant to some product, service or website on your blog, will help improve rankings in the long run. However, slow internet means a slow loading page, and if people hate anything these days, its sluggish web pages.
Furthermore, the success of your blog highly depends on viewers – if they get bored they will leave, and if they leave you to get no traffic, it’s that simple. So ask yourself this: “Should I test people’s patience, or should I look for fastest internet providers near me and increase my bandwidth speed?” The choice is easy -you should invest a little bit extra and give your audience a fast blog to enjoy.
You Can Use the Same Keyword More Than Once
No, you can’t! Using the same keyword more than once, especially on the same website, will actually hurt rankings and not improve them. As mentioned, Google updates their algorithm regularly and using a keyword repeatedly will be punished by lowering the website rank on their search engine. However, not all hope is lost, as you can still post good content and use long tail keywords instead of repeating the same one over and over.
There Is No Need for Fresh Content
That is a terrible advice. Of course, there is a need for fresh content! Having consistency and posting new and fresh content regularly not only improves rankings, but it’s on Google’s preferred list of approaches as well. Furthermore, don’t try to fool Google by changing the dates on old posts to make them appear fresh because those fluffy pandas and penguins are going to slap you silly with punishments.
Always make sure you have something new to post about and if you really need to recycle old content then add something fresh to it and make a comparison. For instance, “Bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015” and make it “The difference between bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015 and 2017”. Give your old content new life, not a new post date.
Key Takeaway
As you are well aware by now, the Internet is full of bad advice. However, there is also good advice, so don’t hesitate to seek it out. If you are going to fully utilize the potential of SEO, then make sure you do it properly.
Author Nate Vickery
Nate Vickery is a business consultant and blogger. He is mostly interested in latest technology trends applicable to marketing and management. Nate is editor-in-chief at Bizzmarkblog.com.
Instagram continues its surge in generating advertiser interest while Facebook remains the dominant social platform. This is according to a first quarter survey of advertising agencies conducted by Strata.
The survey also found a continued multi-quarter decline in YouTube’s lead over Instagram, bringing the two within one point of each other in advertiser interest. 54% of agencies report plans to use YouTube against 53% for Instagram. Facebook remains entrenched in first place as 95% of agencies are interested in the platform. Twitter, which historically held third place in agency interest until the second quarter of 2016, continues its slide with interest from 37% of agencies, finding itself just 10% above fifth-placed LinkedIn.
The interest in these social platforms is reflected in agency spending, as well. 93% percent of agencies are currently spending money on Facebook, with 53% planning to spend on YouTube, and 49% planning on Instagram. The current spend lagging behind agency interest could indicate increased spend in the coming quarters.
More than half of agencies now plan to spend more than 5% of their overall advertising budgets on social media, with 22% allocating between 11-25% of their budgets on social, compared to 18% in 4Q16. The increase in budget for paid social coincides with the proliferation of live streaming tools, such as Facebook Live and Snapchat Live as 42% of agencies report that clients were interested in these innovations for their campaigns.
“Though Facebook has remained the dominant player in the social media space, the gradual shifts in focus to other platforms has been interesting to watch. There’s always been a premium on live, so it’s not surprising that agencies have an interest in exploring Facebook Live, Snapchat’s Spectacles, and Instagram’s Stories,” said Judd Rubin, senior vice president at Strata.
When agencies were asked which form of media they prioritised the most, 24% reported that digital video was their primary focus. Although that leaves digital video in second, behind local TV and cable at 36%, the interest in digital video has seen a 351% increase over the past year.
The rise in interest in digital video may be surprising in light of the fact that agencies appear split on the effectiveness of digital video. Twenty-five percent feel that it can be as effective as traditional TV, but 33% feel it isn’t, and 42% are unsure. When asked more broadly about perceived ROI from digital video, over 50% felt fairly confident that they were getting good value for their money. Forty-one percent noted they were unsure, and only 9% of agencies felt they were not getting a strong ROI.
“Today’s modern school is in a constant state of flux,” says Mark Christensen. A former teacher and administrator, and school board member, he now works in the Ed Tech field. “I have really come to appreciate how technology can be used to improve student engagement, promoting a school or college’s unique mission, and making it is easier to connect with alumni. We live in a modern world that revolves around technology and it must, therefore, be implemented properly.”
According to Mark, there are seven key reasons as to why it is hugely important that people properly manage their online footprint. “By understanding these seven reasons, and implementing them within the communication strategies of your educational establishment, you will be able to develop an excellent online presence.”
1. Take Charge of Perception
Technology is one of the best public relations tools at your disposal. If managed properly, then you control the message and how people perceive you and your school. You must be proactive in this; regularly sending out new positive messages.
2. Take Control of Your Brand
You must make sure that your tone is consistent in how it looks, feels, and sounds. Start by looking at your social media profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter, and make sure they look the same. This is your only opportunity to make that all-important first impression. It will take a visitor just a single second to see whether or not they want to follow you. There are some key things to consider in this, including ensuring that:
The way your profile looks is consistent with your brand’s vision and mission.
You have a clear and concise bio that makes it clear who you are.
You have a good ratio of followers to following, so that you can increase your overall credibility. By following others, you show that you care.
3. Build a Community Through Interaction
You can speak with businesses, alumni, students, and parents in real time. They will contact you using their smart devices, which means they expect real-time information as well. At the same time, other people can see the conversation and how it is responded to. This means that you can really be active in what people see. You can launch and promote campaigns and events, making sure that everybody knows what is going on. If you connect with people, they are more likely to invest in you as well.
4. Be Relevant and Timely
For instance, let’s say that a VIP is visiting your school campus, that a graduation ceremony is about to take place, that your college team won a big sports event, or that you have recruited a new important faculty member. You must report this straight away, because it will become old news more quickly than you can imagine. Your audience wants to know what is happening right now, not what has happened weeks ago. You must engage your community through relevant content, speaking to them as real human beings. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, or to post tweets with humour and honesty. Most importantly, make sure your content is valuable and awesome, bringing something of value to your audience.
5. Make Sure Important Information Is Shared
You have to make sure that if something is happening, people get to know about it in plenty of time. Try to get insight from your audience on upcoming activities, asking them to comment or post, or otherwise engage in what you are doing. By reading what they mention on your social media pages, you can gain a real insight into what they want.
6. Remember that You Are Being Watched
If you want to own something, you have to say it first. Hence, remember that there are people you want to reach who haven’t quite found you yet. Promote your school and its community, spirit, and mission whenever you can. Make sure that your content is valuable and unique, as well as being fresh at all times. People who may accidentally come across you, or who are researching you without you knowing it, will appreciate this.
7. Make Sure Your Content Is Properly Managed and Organised
You need to make sure that it is easy for your readers to navigate through your news stories, pictures, and other posts. Have a good content library present where people can find what they want through an easy search function. This is the only element that you should reuse, but make sure it is repurposed as well.
Young adults who use social media feel more lonely, say psychologists.
The more time young adults spend on Facebook , Twitter , and Pinterest, the more likely they are to feel cut off from the rest of society, a study has found.
More than two hours of social media use a day doubled the chances of a person experiencing social isolation .
Higher numbers of visits to social media sites have a negative effect as well as the amount of time spent online, the US research shows.
Study participants who visited various sites 58 or more times per week were three times more at risk of isolation than those visiting less than nine times per week.
But scientists involved in the study, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, said they couldn’t be sure whether people were already lonely and drawn to social media or if the online platforms were making them isolated.
But they did conclude that social media did not make people feel more connected.
Co-author Elizabeth Miller, professor of paediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, said: “It’s possible that young adults who initially felt socially isolated turned to social media. Or it could be that their increased use of social media somehow led to feeling isolated from the real world.
Certain aspects of social media may encourage feelings of exclusion
“It also could be a combination of both. But even if the social isolation came first, it did not seem to be alleviated by spending time online, even in purportedly social situations.”
Lead scientist Professor Brian Primack, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said it was an important study because mental health problems and social isolation are at ‘epidemic levels’ among young adults.
“While it may seem that social media presents opportunities to fill that social void, I think this study suggests that it may not be the solution people were hoping for,” he said.
The link with isolation was found even after taking account of social and demographic factors that might have influenced the results.
The scientists have several theories to explain the findings including the idea that the more time a person spends online, the less time is left for real-world interactions.
The team questioned 1,787 adults aged 19 to 32 about their use of the 11 most popular social media platforms (Photo: Getty)
In addition, they believe that certain aspects of social media may encourage feelings of exclusion, such as seeing photos of friends enjoying an event to which you have not been invited.
Also, exposure to idealised representations of other people’s lives may elicit feelings of envy and promote the belief that your life is disappointing and dull in comparison, the researchers believe.
The team questioned 1,787 adults aged 19 to 32 about their use of the 11 most popular social media platforms at the time the research was conducted in 2014: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pintrest, Vine and LinkedIn.
Each person was assessed for self-perceived social isolation using a standard technique called the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (Promis) that provides scores for a wide range of measurements.
A decade ago, the role of a social media manager might not have even existed. Today, however, almost every company is involved in social media one way or another.
A quick look at Google Trends shows the rise in interest in the term “social media manager” over the years, and it seems that people have never been as interested in the term as they are today.
What does it take to be a great social media manager? What are the skills to master and traits to have? How can you work on those areas?
In this post, we’ll try our best to answer all those questions. We’ll share 10 skills and traits that are crucial to being a great social media manager and relevant resources to help you improve in those areas.
Skills vs. traits
Throughout this post, we’ll discuss the various skills and traits we feel are most important for social media managers. But before we dive in, I quickly wanted to share some of my learnings about the difference between skills and traits.
Here’s a great explanation of skills vs traits from Red Letter Resumes:
Image credit: The Huffington Post
When it comes to finding your ideal social media manager, I feel you may be looking for the right mix of tangible skills (things like copywriting and analytics) and traits (such as curiosity).
7 skills top social media managers share
1. Copywriting
Copywriting is a fundamental skill for social media marketing (and probably all areas of marketing). Writing good copy is required in many areas of a social media manager’s role, from filling up your social media profile description to crafting tweets and Facebook posts.
To drive engagement and clicks, you have to fit a captivating story into your social media post and without great copywriting skills that can be difficult.
To enhance your copywriting skills, I’d highly recommend studying a few copywriting formulas to help you craft inspiring copy. Finding a copywriting formula (or two) that works for you can be a great productivity boost and also improve the quality of the social media content you publish.
One of our favorite copywriting techniques here at Buffer is the ‘Before – After – Bridge’ – you may recognize it from a few of our blog posts and social posts. Here’s how it works:
Before – After – Bridge
Before – Here’s your world …
After – Imagine what it’d be like, having Problem A solved …
Research has found that social media posts with images receive moreengagement and 43 percent of consumers want to see more videos content in the future.
Social media evolved a great deal over recent years, and we have moved away from mostly plain text based updates towards visual content such as images and videos. Designing and creating visual content is becoming an essential skill for social media managers.
3. Public speaking (confidence in front of an audience)
With features and apps like Facebook Live, Instagram Live and Periscope, live videos are becoming more and more important on social platforms. And marketers have noted this change, with 42 percent of marketers saying they want to create more live videos.
Why are marketers excited about live video? I believe the answer is two-fold: reach and engagement. Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in the News Feed when those videos are live than after they are no longer live. From an engagement perspective, live content also provides opportunity for high-engagement and 1:1 interactions with audiences.
To tap into the live video trend, social media managers have to be confident enough to go live on social media to connect with their audience. Having public speaking skills will help you to present your ideas, interview guests, answer impromptu questions and chat with your followers in real-time.
If you want to see our awesome social media manager, Brian Peters, in action, you can find his live videos here. And below is a short clip of Brian discussing viral content:
As the face of your company on social media and the person who is likely to be responding to at least some of the messages your brand receives on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, it’s important for social media managers to have conversational skills and empathy to help you customers on social media.
Community engagement is quite similar in many ways. A great social media community manager is able to ask the right questions to facilitate engagement and answer questions about the product, company or industry.
With data and analytics, you know what type of social media posts do well. Behavioral psychology tells you the why – for example, why are people attracted to certain posts? Why do people share certain posts?
Knowing the what allows you to spot trends and try to repeat past successes; knowing the why enables you to understand the underlying causes for those trends in order to try and create future successes.
For example, your data might tell you that your tweets with images are doing better than tweets with only text. Based on just that information, you might create more tweets with images. However, it could be that your followers prefer visual content. Without knowing the psychology behind trends, you might miss out on opportunities to create other types of visual content such as videos and GIFs.
You certainly don’t need a degree or high level of expertise in psychology to be a social media manager, but a keenness to learn and understand psychology at some level is an important skill.
The term, ‘Analytics,’ is used quite broadly here, referring to both social media metrics (e.g. likes, comments, shares etc.) and business metrics (e.g. traffic, leads, conversions, revenue etc.). A great social media manager is able to understand both types of metrics and tie them together to give an overall view of the company’s social media performance against business goals.
A social media manager should be the guiding light in your business when it comes to measuring your performance across various social channels. As such, learning the ins and outs of social media metrics and judging which ones are meaningful for your business is essential for a social media manager.
For example, if your goal is to drive traffic from social media channels to your website and drive sales, being able to attribute traffic and conversions back to channels and even certain posts will help your team to understand what content is helping you to achieve your goals.
Knowing how to read and interpret data is now an important skill for social media managers.
3 personality traits great social media managers exhibit
8. Curiosity
A curious social media manager would immerse herself in the social media world, staying up-to-date with the latest development and experimenting with new social media marketing strategies.
Adaptability complements curiosity. When you discover something new or spot a trend, being able to quickly adapt to it can keep you ahead of the curve.
For example, the most engaging type of social media content has shifted from texts to images to videos. In a Fast Company article, Mark Zuckerberg was reported to have said:
A great social media manager is able to keep up with such changes and pick up the necessary skills (e.g. graphic design, video making etc.). (Imagine when virtual reality becomes the most popular type of content!)
Being able to generate likes and shares is great; knowing how social media fits in with the entire business strategy is even better! A business-savvy social media manager sees the bigger picture and understands the role of social media in the company.
They understand which metrics are most relevant and crucial to the business and how social media can help to push them higher. For example, a B2B social media manager might focus on generating leads for her sales team while a B2C social media manager might focus on increasing customer purchases directly. This way, her impact goes beyond just social media but to the entire company.
Born out of technology designed to help price a musician or band’s live performance, based on their social media presence, SocialWall aims to be a smarter way for brands to display social media mentions at events or in venues.
Like so many social media management products, the promise is less noise and more signal.
The scenario is a familiar one: an emcee gets up on stage and announces the hashtag for the event. Something like #ohear2017, before commanding that the audience, either in person or via the live stream, gets tweeting. Or Instagramming. Or Thefacebooking. Or whatever it is the cool kids are using these days.
The problem is, of course, that without employing a team of social media managers to edit what goes on display, a brand risks losing control of the conversation. And that must never be allowed to happen. Ever.
Supporting Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even Slack, SocialWall’s algorithm claims to be able to bubble up the best or most brand appropriate content, by taking into account things like who posted the content, how influential they are, how much engagement the post is already getting (likes, retweets, comments etc.), sentiment, and even image quality if an image is included.
It’s this scoring technology, which gives each social media mention, author and image a score of 1-10, that the founder of My Band Market, the French startup behind SocialWall, reckons sets its social wall solution apart from other products on the market.
“Companies today struggle in engaging their target audience. Whilst they understand that employing their user generated content is one of the most effective forms of advertising, they don’t have the tools to amplify their online visibility in complete security,” says My Band Market founder and CEO Quentin Lechemia.
“SocialWall.me offers a complete package to companies looking to interact with their community. Our customizable templates – available for any screen – boost engagement by encouraging viewers to become online brand ambassadors. Our AI and scoring algorithms, moderation interface and analytics reports are the backbones of a product that lends our customers ultimate online power”.
“Ultimate online power” is probably overstating it a bit. Okay, overstating it a lot. But, along with a smart algorithm to help ensure the best content goes on display, SocialWall lets you manually filter out posts based on keyword, language, and user.
As you’d expect, analytics are included, too, and there’s a neat feature that lets you effectively embed a ‘social wall’ on your brand’s website, in addition to having it populate a screen on display in-venue.
“We offer [companies the] ability to boost reach, control the messages around their brand and most importantly, measure return on investment,” adds Lechemia. “SocialWall.me’s expertise resides in AI, Big Data, Deep Learning and interactive design. We are the first intelligent social media wall that knows what content to publish when”.
Social media platforms and tools change quickly. Here is a list of new social media tools to try in 2017.
There are tools to generate and curate content, launch and measure campaigns, and connect with experts and customers. Most of the tools are free or have free plans.
If you are interested in developing your brand on Snapchat, consider Snaplytics. The mission of Snaplytics is to shed light on what marketing efforts are working on Snapchat. The platform has features for brand analytics, publishing and managing stories on Snapchat, and competitor analysis. Compare multiple accounts on Snapchat, schedule stories ahead of time, and get actionable metrics and insights. Price: Free for 1 Snapchat account. Premium plans start at $29 per month.
Create social graphics, web stories, and animated videos with features from Adobe Spark. With Spark Post, pick a photo, add text, and apply design filters to easily create compelling visual content. With Spark Page, turn words and images into magazine-style web stories. With Spark Video, simply record your voice, add photos or icons, select soundtracks and motion to create in minutes. Price: Free.
Yala is a free chatbot that tells you the best time to post to multiple social networks. Increase your engagement on the items you’re sharing. Yala is currently for Slack, but request to be notified when it’s available for SMS, Facebook Messenger, and others. Price: Free.
PostReach is a content analytics tool for content marketers and bloggers. Measure the performance of your content from the moment it’s published. See key traffic stats and sources for every post. PostReach will continually monitor your content and show you how many shares you’re getting on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. PostReach tells you who has shared your content (and your competitor’s) on Twitter and makes it easy to reach out to them. Price: Plans start at $10 per month.
Quuu is a source for hand-curated content suggestions for social media. Select from over 300 interest categories to receive suggestions that matter to you and your audience. Choose how many suggestions you’d like to send to your social profiles via your Buffer or HubSpot account. Let Quuu handle everything, or you can manually approve suggestions. Price: Free up to 5 interest categories. Pro plans start at $10 per month.
Falcon.io is a social media and customer-experience-management platform. Sync your social and online and offline content-marketing activities in one calendar. Create your own campaign pages. Discover, attract, and engage customers, and connect social data to what you already know across departments and channels. Price: Contact on pricing.
Intellifluence is a platform to find the best influencers to represent your brand. Communicate directly with influencers, and manage interactions in one spot. Price: Plans start at $19 per month.
Zest is a Chrome tab feed of content suggested by marketers, all manually moderated. Zest is used by companies such as Buffer, SEMrush, and Ahrefs. Personalize your feed and content. Choose the marketing tags that are relevant for you, and customize Zest’s theme and layout to fit your preferences. Price: Free.
Refind is a tool for social search and content curation. Follow people and interests to discover links that matter to you. Or search the web as you always do and Refind highlights links you or your friends saved when you search on Google. Use Refind to generate a newsletter and email a digest of your favorite links to your fans. Price: Free.
Rocketium is a tool to easily and quickly create compelling videos with added text. Simply upload images and type text, then add motion. Save time using custom themes to clone content. Use different themes and video formats for different channels. Publish directly to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Price: Free plan offers watermark videos. Paid plans start at $40 per month.
Mailshake is a tool to promote content, build relationships, and generate leads through cold emails. Answer a few questions to generate a personalized email for your campaign. Once your campaign is ready, drop in new contacts and your message sequence will begin sending. Tweak your messages for the next round of contacts as you learn what works best. Price: $9 per month.
Crate is a platform that helps you find and share great content online. Set up an account and add user names, keywords, and domains into a Crate collection. Then collect a feed of articles, infographics, blog posts, and more. Share this content immediately, schedule it to be shared at a later time or use Buffer integration to add the content to your Buffer queue. Price: Free.
For social media managers, Ghost Browser can be a handy productivity tool as well as a browser. Log into one website with many accounts simultaneously. Save a group of sessions to a project. Ghost Browser allows you to install any Chrome extension directly from the Chrome store, so you don’t have to give up on your favorite productivity tools. Price: Free. Pro version is $15 per month.
Back in October, I wrote a piece on Medium that covered the numbers behind some of today’s top social media networks.
From usage numbers to engagement statistics, it was incredible to see just how impactful networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become. For example, not only is Facebook home to 1.23 billion daily active users on average, but those users come from all over the world — with 85.2% residing outside of the U.S. and Canada. That’s a crazy level of connectivity.
As I put together the post, it became obvious just how fast these networks were growing — and I thought a lot about how hard is it to keep up with all of these changes, especially for marketers. To make things a little easier to wrap your head around, I put together a simplified list of some standout statistics for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instragram, and Pinterest. Check them out below if you’re looking for some guidance for your social media strategy this year.
34 Stats to Help You Plan Your Social Media Strategy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & More
Tweet that doesn’t include a # or @ mention will generate 23% more clicks. When the tweet is focused on driving an app install, for going a # or @ mention increases clicks by 11%. But according to Quicksprout, tweets with hashtags get 2X more engagement — clicks, retweets, favorites, and replies.
LinkedIn
B2B buyers are turning to LinkedIn for content that will help them move forward in the buyer’s journey — and 57% are doing so on a mobile device.
Images with a single dominant color generate 17% more Likes than images with multiple dominant colors. Images with a high amount of negative space generate 29% more Likes than those with minimal negative space. Images featuring blue as the dominant color generate 24% more Likes than images that are predominantly red.
Photos showing faces get 38% more Likes than photos not showing faces.
