Frankel Interactive

Brands Should Follow these 9 Tips to Harness Facebook Live

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-16

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a new feature called Live. It allows Facebook users to connect to their followers in real-time via video. Click here to know more about this feature.

Live is a powerful marketing tool. Candace Payne’s Chewbacca Mask video, created on May 20th, has garnered 160 million+ views, nearly 3 million reactions and 3.3 million shares. The user currently has 83K Facebook followers. If she can trigger such enormous engagement, imagine what top and mid-level brands can accomplish with Live.

Brand promotion now boils down to user-engagement. Using Live, enterprises can engage with their fans in real-time and make the engagement meaningful and purpose-driven.

Here are some useful tips they can follow to harness Live:

Use a face

Live gives you an excellent opportunity to personify your brand. Personification builds brand identity. Use an employee or an executive or an ambassador who will interact with viewers. Choose someone who’s worthy because your brand’s reputation will depend on him.

High-quality camera

Live is available only on Smartphone. It won’t open on low-bandwidth m.facebook.com. If you don’t have the Facebook app installed on your Android or iOS device, you can’t use Live. Because the Smartphone camera is your default recording instrument, make sure you are using a high-end Smartphone with great camera specs.

If the broadcast is hazy because of being shot from a low-resolution camera, it’d result in an off-putting user-experience. So the camera quality is a high-priority.

The duration

The duration of the broadcast is crucial. Candace Payne’s recording was 4 minutes long, however Live broadcasts can last up to 8 hours. Depending on the event or topic if the Live broadcast, anything over an hour is going to lose its effectiveness. Even then, an hour of video content had better be really engaging or you’ll be wasting your time, as your audience will move on very quickly. Keep it as short and as meaningful as you can.

The setup

A broadcast should not simply be a broadcast. A brand can add informative and entertaining elements to its Live broadcast, so that fans find it appealing. To add such elements, brands need to create a setup first.

They can hire seasoned advertising professionals who make ad films. If that puts too much pressure on their budget, then they can at least have brainstorming sessions with creative team members and come up with ideas.

A perfect setup requires an appropriate background and a compelling script.

Tinker with perspective

There’s no point recording from a static perspective. Most record their broadcast from the front. If the broadcast is a long-duration one, then try to tinker with the perspective. Record not only from the front but also from the back and from sideways. This will not only make the broadcast interesting, but also give the viewers a 360° view of the background surroundings.

Is the mic okay?

If it’s not, the quality of the broadcast would suffer. Background noise negatively impact your broadcast. Once again, the Tablet or Smartphone being used to record the broadcast must be a higher quality devive, because low-end devices have below quality microphones.

Live broadcasters may want to consider using an external mic to help compensate for a devices lack of microphone quality. If the audience can’t easily hear the broadcast… it’s over before it started.

Edit for improvement

Studies show that when users view branded posts, they become extra alert. Even the smallest mistakes fail to escape their eyes. That’s why brands are strongly advised by digital media professionals to carefully edit their pre-recorded content prior to uploading to Live.

Bearing this in mind, the ultimate recommendation is that if there isn’t a true necessity to be “live” in real-time, it is best to take the time to edit where you need to, including audio issues, and upload after the fact.

The purpose of editing is to improve the overall video quality. So take care of all the following:

? Suitable category: When someone uploads a Live video, a drop-down menu appears, asking them to pick a category. The category must represent the brand as well as the nature of the videocast content.

? CTA elements: CTA icons at the end of Live broadcast are highly likely to be clicked, especially if the broadcast is concise and interesting. So, don’t forget to add them.

? Suitable thumbnail: They are provided with 10 image options by Facebook, from which they can select one. Or, they can choose their own thumbnail image.

The above-mentioned edit hacks can improve the video quality and experience, generating better engagement.

Pages and profiles

Live videos can be uploaded from individual accounts, as well as from Facebook pages. A brand should use both. Individuals endorsing a brand can increase the campaign’s organic reach, provided the individual in question is an influencer (someone like Candice Payne) and the endorsement isn’t overt.

Pages have some advantages. One of them is the control and customization settings, which are available only to pages, not to individual profiles.

Subscribe to Live

To expand its reach, a brand needs to entice people to discover and watch its Live videos. An easy way to do so is to encourage them to tap on the “Live Subscribe” button that shows up on the top of a Live broadcast.

Just like with YouTube videos, the talent featured on the Live Broadcast can remind viewers to tap on the “Live Subscribe” option.

Another way to get more viewers is to increase interaction with the audience by sending notifications about upcoming broadcasts..

Conclusion

None of the tips shared here is difficult to implement. No expensive tools are required. Brands can easily follow these tips to increase Live viewership and get more trusted followers on Facebook, who may become their customers in the future.

Image Courtesy: twitter.com

5 Simple Yet Effective Tips to Use Twitter for Customer Service Purpose

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-12

Twitter has a 200 million active monthly user-base; it has great potential for brands to bring promotional activities closer to the customer service experience.

Nonetheless, it hasn’t taken off as one might expect, however we do see epic brand fails on Twitter.

Only 30% of brands used Twitter for customer service back in 2014. The percentage hasn’t increased much since then.
Among the brands that use Twitter, less than 10% address more than 70% of customer queries.

Today’s customers, especially those who stay active on social media, are millennials. If they get pissed off, the present and future sales prospect will be hurt.

Here are some tips for brands that are looking toward the use of Twitter for customer service:

Dedicated customer support handle

Brand after brand make the same mistakes - they handle customer queries from their original Twitter handle. This approach is problematic for two reasons:

Original Twitter handle is often an engagement doorway. Customers may hesitate to report their complaints there.
A dedicated customer service handle can give brands a granular view of customer complaint rate and customer satisfaction rate.

Some brands have adopted this approach. Comcast is one of those brands. They have two Twitter handles. One is @comcast, which they use for brand promotion and the other is @comcast cares, used for customer service.

When a brand divides its marketing efforts into individual segments, it creates a workforce with varied skill sets. There’s a secondary advantage of having two separate customer handles on Twitter. Since two people handle two different networks, the work gets done in less time, and customers experience a very short turnaround time between their complaints/queries and replies.

Repeat clauses and ToI

One way to improve the communication strategy is to minimize miscommunication in the sales cycle. Customers being misinformed or confused when they are purchasing will lead to unsatisfied and disappointed clients.

It’s wise to keep reminding customers about the purchasing clauses and the terms and conditions. Brands don’t do that often enough, chiefly because there aren’t many platforms where they can connect to customers and prospects, with the intention of educating them about company guidelines.

Twitter is one such platform. A dedicated customer support handle can inform people about policy guidelines. Whenever there’s a change in them, brands can update their handles. This way, they can overhaul existing regulations and streamline relevant information to customers, without having to worry about possible miscommunication.

Better interaction

Customers want to connect to brands on many levels, and in different ways. Separate Twitter handles add depth to the interaction and make it more meaningful. If dividing the social media team is not possible due to budgetary restrictions, then companies can at least divide a team member’s time.

A healthy interaction has two sides to it - it engages with consumers through comments, tweets and retweets, and it aggressively handles customer’s concerns and queries. When one person or one team handles both, things get jumbled up, resulting in a non user-friendly customer service experience.

Humanize responses

Recent surveys are pointing out the buyer’s proclivity for personalized interactions. Online retail is as much about product experience as it is about product quality. Customer service reps fail to trigger personalized interaction because they give scripted replies to customers when interacting with them.

This is a clear, no no.. Brands must humanize customer responses. Customers and non customers alike love personalized treatment. It even affects their buying decisions. See the interaction between a brand and a customer below:

Notice the tone in Southwest Airlines’ tweet. It’s overtly personalized. The prospect customer, John, seemed to appreciate it.

Live chat responses collected from around the world show there’s a correlation between the average chat duration and response time, and customer satisfaction level.

Take a look at the chart below:

Source

Twitter doesn’t allow live chat. But brands and customers/prospect can still connect to each other through a series of tweets. If the responses are personalized, then customers feel taken to the brand. That’d increase the duration of the communication, boost the consumer satisfaction and the increase sales prospect’s viability.

Use Keyword Monitoring tools

There are several tools to help customer service representatives on Twitter. My favorites are Hootsuite, Tweet reach, Warble, Twitter Counter, etc.

The good thing about these tools is they let enterprises observe isolated segments related to branding and customer experience. Here are some of those segments that every marketer should keep track of:

People relevant to the company
Topics and hashtags relevant to the brand
Real-time tracking of search terms
Tracking Twitter engagement metrics

The insights retrieved from these tools can be immensely helpful to the customer service teams as they can identify people who are likely to respond positively, anticipate the concerns that customers may come up with and even track the search terms customers are using.

Informed replies are better than non-informed replies. The tools mentioned above empower customer service reps by making them more informed about customer behavior and search and feedback pattern.

Conclusion

So we can conclude that Twitter is a great platform where brands can run promotions and customer service on parallel planes. They need to give themselves proper time and frame innovative strategies, so that they can harness this unique aspect of Twitter and reap the benefits.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

How Brands can Leverage Snapchat for Promotion

Adam Frankel — 2016-05-30

Mobile apps function provide leverage for brands that are eager to find new ways to promote themselves. In the world of mobile apps, traffic distribution is unbalanced.

Rand Fishkin informed us from his Whiteboard Friday that the top 25 to 50 apps get almost 80% of the mobile traffic and the rest 20% traffic is distributed among other apps. Brands are out of options when it comes to choosing an app for promotion.

Among the limited apps available to use for offering users a captivating brand experience, one is Snapchat. The app was introduced in 2011 and by the second quarter of 2014, Snapchat users were exchanging 700 million daily messages.

Benefits of using Snapchat

For brands, two the utmost benefits of Snapchat are:

Personalization: Brands have been exhausting all available marketing resources to bring a personalized feel in their interaction with their audiences. Snapchat guarantees personalization. The snaps last for only few seconds but as held by Jessica Maslin of DayDreamCinema, offer audiences “a glimpse into the lifestyle of your company.” It’s just like receiving a message from a bud.

Multimedia elements: Even though text messages are allowed, users prefer sending each other videos and images. Multimedia content is the game changer in today’s digital marketing landscape. A brand can win the audiences by connecting to them on Snapchat and sending high-quality videos because it has the resources to create such videos, which ordinary users lack.

Snaps are automatically destroyed after these are viewed by receivers. That reduces the load from Snapchat’s server and makes the communication fast. Another benefit.

Here are the Snapchat best practices for brands to follow:

Create engagement

Even though Snapchat is for lighthearted entertainment, it can be used by companies to promote brand awareness, share their visions and of course, entertain people. The automobile giant Audi partnered with Onion Labs during the Superbowl 2014 and created private snaps for its followers. The snaps, even though low-tech, drove a remarkable engagement and Audi’s followers shared many of those snaps on their Twitter feeds. From this campaign, Audi gained 5500 new Snapchat followers.

Product promotion

Brands can use Snapchat to raise product awareness or inform their followers about new entries in their product line. A cosmetics company called NARS has done something similar to this. In 2013, the company used Snapchat to release a preview of its Guy Bourdin color cosmetics collection.

Access to the content was made conditional, as-in, only those who’d add the user called NARSissist on Snapchat were allowed to see the preview. Two other channels that NARS used for promotion were Twitter and Instagram and the NARSissist account was on both channels.

The strategy was lauded by social media experts for not only being innovative but also for being cross-platform. Other brands can come up with their own customized strategies to promote their products on Snapchat; the platform allows them to be as creative as they wish to be.

Live event broadcast

Maybe broadcast or streaming is not a suitable word, but I am using it here so you get the sense. Snapchat is a mix between Vine and Whatsapp. You can capture something in real-time, be it a sport event, music performance or an international trade summit, and message the snap to others.

The message receiver see the live footage but, you need to send them a series of short clips instead of a long-duration video. A brand can host an event and show it to its followers through a string of snaps. One would have to follow the brand on Snapchat to access the content, because it would be private and exclusive.

Visual storytelling

We need to keep in mind that due to the growing importance of visual content, storytelling is now visual storytelling. Snapchat lets brands harness its power. On Snapchat, users can add stories by collecting and arranging photos and videos and broadcast those stories to their followers.

Albeit this feature is not exclusively for brands, its benefits are. By adding several images, a brand can create a story about itself. Its followers can view the story multiple times in 24 hours. After 24 hours, the story will disappear.

What this means is a brand can engage with its followers on Snapchat and treat them with delightful stories every day. It can even set up a creative team solely for this purpose. The brand can also keep a tab of people who view its stories.

Strategic partnership with influencers

Finally, a brand can expand its follower-base on Snapchat by entering into strategic partnership with influencers. The influencers are individuals who have scores of followers either on Snapchat or outside it.

NBA has done this, so has Red Bull. Here’s how they planned and executed this innovative strategy of theirs:

NBA case study: When Kevin Durant was given the Most Valuable Player award, the NBA created a story using three photos. Fans felt excited by the story and visited the NBATV.com to view Durant being handed the award real-time.

Red Bull: The influencer was Mark McMorris, an X Games champion and a snowboarder from Canada. McMorris’s journey into the Big Bear Mountains was captured and Red Bull used the content to entertain its followers on Snapchat.

What’s interesting to note here is the said brands didn’t hire celebrities. They teamed up with influencers, who are people with a fan-following but not celebrities. Because this strategy is not exorbitant in terms of pricing, mid-size brands can follow it too.

Conclusion

Snapchat is a unique social network. Ordinary users love it as they stay connected to their friends and don’t miss anything happening around them. And brands, as we have discussed here in this article, also have enough reasons to love Snapchat.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

Facebook Chatbots: Some Thoughts on Mobile Users and Brand Benefit

Adam Frankel — 2016-05-24

Facebook hosted its 2016 annual conference for developers recently. Among the new features that were showcased, one was Chatbots, available via Facebook’s Messenger Platform.

Dubbed as one of Facebook’s early initiatives to blend social media and artificial intelligence, Chatbots can change the way we interact with apps.

Here’s a screenshot showing why it’s hard to differentiate a Chatbot from a fellow human being:

The bot in this example is called Hi Poncho and it supplies weather data. The way the bot interacted is the way a human interacts with another human. You can see the entire chat session in the image above.

Virtual assistants or more?

Facebook doesn’t want Chatbots to end up as a proxy for virtual assistants. Chatbots have the potential to outsmart personal digital assistants like Siri. Even though Siri and the like are touted as rudimentary versions of AI, they are far from being so. If they were, then Apple would have been procuring artificial intelligence outfits from around the world.

The activities that Chatbots can perform include but are not limited to giving weather updates, purchasing merchandise from online stores with the click of just one button and booking airplane tickets. Once again, when receiving the resulting information from Facebook Messenger, you’ll feel like you are talking to another human.

What about brand benefit?

Brands see the potential of every digital invention and decide whether it’s useful for them. They are optimistic about Chatbots for the reasons below:

Limitied phone calls: With Chatbots, we might be heading to a future where telephone communication between customers and businesses become less frequent.. If this day ever comes, brands will be able to reduce spending on hiring and training customer service reps and lower their operating expenses.
Customer feedback: A brand’s sweet spot is customer care. As they are moving deeper and deeper into the marketing rabbit hole, they are realizing the importance of customer feedback and investing in customer care. Chatbots can handle customers.
Bonding with customers: Emotional intelligence matters in business. We’ve discussed how empathy marketing is gaining traction among brands. With Chatbots, Facebook may tickle customer’s emotional intelligence and create a bond with them.

Sure, Chatbots can serve brands, but there are a few challenges as well.

The challenges

At the F8 developer’s conference, Marc Zuckerberg described Chatbots by saying “We think that you should just be able to message a business in the same way you message a friend.” He then added “You should get a quick response. And it shouldn’t take your full attention like a phone call would. And you shouldn’t have to install a new app.”

A business can be chatty with a customer, but not overly chatty. When a human represents a business, he knows where to draw a line between being chatty and being overly chatty, but automated systems may not be able to figure that out.

Developers can make it more advanced, but it will always be hard (If not impossible) for it to fathom the nuances in human interaction as developers don’t fully understand the nuances themselves.

Besides, Chatbots have been reported to complicate online buying. The 1-800-Flowers bot, for example, can be accessed by first opening the Messenger, then pulling down from the top and tapping on the search box, then typing the name of the bot, then tapping on the icon, then communicating with it and giving it all the details, and finally, paying via the credit card. A simple phone is less complicated and can save time.

The fatigued users

Conspiracy theorists are sharing their views. Some of them are of the opinion that Facebook is anxious about its users suffering from excessive boredom and wanted to invent something to prevent it.

Facebook’s popularity rose because third-party sites integrated their platforms with the “Like” button. But over the last few years, there hasn’t been any revolutionary invention such as the “Like” button. Users are reporting Facebook as a social network has been becoming stale. Chatbots may be Facebook’s trump card to regain the lost interest.

Add to that the app fatigue, which Ben Schipper of TechCrunch explained in this article. The result of this fatigue is users becoming apathetic to mobile apps. The analysis rings true because Smartphones have indeed functioned as gateways, letting brands to bombard our senses with apps.

How this apathy can trouble brands? Rand Fishkin reported from his Whiteboard Friday that 25-50 apps get the majority of the online traffic and users are prone to directly click on app icon instead of searching for apps. Chatbots, Facebook hope, may change this scenario.

Facebook’s mobile forte

Zuckerberg knows the handheld segment will play a highly critical role in the consolidation of Facebook 2.0. Chatbots could be a sufficing device to pave the way for Facebook’s improvement trail.

Already, the Facebook Messenger has over 900 million users and all of them access it from smart devices. More could join the board after Chatbots and that’s because Facebook has a lofty proposition for them; they can create their own bots and upload it on Facebook Messenger. That and the anthropomorphic appearance of the Chatbots are Facebook’s leg up to reinstall its magic in its users.

Conclusion

Chatbots come with opportunities and challenges. Some undermine the opportunities and some undermine the challenges. Both, however, agree that it’s something unique. Maybe that’s what Facebook had in mind.

As discussed, Chatbots can serve brands well but because the feature is half-baked at the moment, we’ll have wait till it becomes fully equipped. Hopefully, Facebook will notch its AI quotient up in the future.

Image Courtesy: techcrunch.com

Platform Dependent and Independent Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

Adam Frankel — 2016-04-28

For all businesses that have a digital presence, social media marketing is a must. But mistakes lower the chances of being successful with it.

No matter how powerful your marketing techniques are and what online tools you are using, nothing can bring you desired results unless you stop committing mistakes.

Quantity or Quality?

Marketers often find themselves in a dilemma regarding whether they should prioritize quantity or quality. A quantity-driven social marketing approach advocates using all social channels. The qualitative approach is doing extensive marketing around one or two channels.

It’d be a mistake to follow either of the two approaches. The right thing to do would be to follow a new approach combining the two. Both approaches are in the extreme and marketers should follow strategies that fall in the middle.

They first need to make a list of all the channels that they are going to use. Next, they need to have brainstorming sessions to produce unique marketing ideas and connect those ideas to the platforms.

Strategies and platforms

Applying customized strategies for each social channel is resource-intensive. But if you can implement it, then it will yield excellent returns.

Here’s a detailed analysis of the mistakes in respect of the channels:

Mistakes on Facebook

The common mistakes that marketers commit on Facebook are

#Not posting consistently: Fans expect brands to post regularly. If a brand doesn’t post anything for a while, fans will lose connection, which could be disastrous for a campaign. That’s why, you should keep posting on Facebook from your brand page.

#Not using visual content: It’s been found that visual content triggers outstanding engagement. Besides, users on Facebook are hungry for such content. All brands are advised to post images, banners and videos regularly.

#Apt volume: Some users prefer short updates, while some prefer longer ones. It's better to first get an idea of what your fans like. If they like short updates, don't post lengthy ones.

Mistakes on Twitter

#Hashtag optimization: Some marketers make excessive use of hashtag and some marketers underuse them. Both over-optimization and under-optimization are bad for a campaign.

#Automated tweeting: As social media is becoming tool-oriented, you may have to pre-schedule tweets. Make sure the tweets are relevant, especially if they are replies to customer queries.

#Tweeting too often: You should tweet the same link twice in a day keeping a six-hours gap between them. And the second tweet should have different texts.

Instagram mistakes

#Irrelevant images: In 2015, daily number of images shared on Instagram was 80 million. Photos shared by you may get lost in the crowd unless those photos are relevant.

#Image quality: The images you are sharing will introduce your brand to Instagram users. So make sure you are sharing high-quality images. The lighting, size and resolution of the images must be flawless.

#Product photography: Product photos must be taken by professionals. Such photos have a higher quality look to them, which stock images or the ones clicked by amautures lack.

#The timing: Try posting at the right time. How would you know what’s the right time? See the image below:

Source

The benefit of posting on the right time is the majority of users will see your post and maybe engage with you.

LinkedIn mistakes

LinkedIn yields better results for B2Bs than B2Cs, but it doesn’t disappoint B2Cs if a marketer can avoid the following mistakes:

#Not growing the network: The success in LinkedIn marketing depends on growing the network. The more people you can connect to, the better is your prospect.

#Brand profile: Unlike other networks, individual profiles carry more weight on LinkedIn than brand profiles. Brand pages should be there, but personal profiles should be given more importance.

#LinkedIn groups: Joining a LinkedIn group and being active there don’t increase the odds of selling something, which is why the idea is often dumped. But groups help in networking and authority building.

#Brand page image: Don’t neglect the brand page. Optimize it so that it looks stunning. Add a custom banner image for better look and feel.

Mistakes on Pinterest

Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is used primarily for sharing images. The differences are Pinterest is extensively used by brands and it is undergoing insurmountable growth.

Here are the mistakes to avoid:

#Not repinning: Don’t forget to repin the pins from other users. Almost 80% pins are repins. Unless you repin the images pinned by others, they won’t repin your images.

#Stock images: Never share stock photos. Always share original ones. This will give you credibility and make users interested in your product line.

#Being gender agnostic: More than 80% Pinterest users are female, which indicates brands that sell women’s products have more chances of success on Pinterest.

#No image description: While visual content does send the message across, there’s no harm if it’s accompanied by few lines of texts. Add description to the images that you are pinning and make sure the descriptions are brief.

Platform independent mistakes

All the mistakes discussed here so far are platform-dependent. Here are some mistakes that are platform-neutral:

#No link in bio: The bio section should have your homepage link or deep links. While link insertion in the bio is important, make sure the links are naturally inserted.

#URL shortener: A study done by Buddy Media in 2011 showed Facebook posts with complete web URLs get 3 times more likes than posts with shortened URLs. The study is still relevant because shortened URLs often don’t look like URLs. Use shortened URLs only on Twitter.

#Don’t push: Don’t push anyone to buy anything. Social networks are not marketplaces. The idea is to build a network there and then cash out on it. But pushing users to buy something on social platforms is a huge mistake.

The reason you see many brands complaining that their social media strategy is a failure is they are making some or all of the mistakes stated here.

For success, steer clear your campaign from these mistakes.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

Some Useful Tips to Increase the Efficiency of Your Social Media Campaign

Adam Frankel — 2016-02-12

It might appear surprising that most social media strategies fail despite being crafted by experts. But on a second thought it doesn’t look surprising because success in social media optimization/marketing depends on connecting the dots, which most entrepreneurs fail to perform.

A strategy is nothing if not implemented in the correct way. The implementation part is really hard, and the marketer needs to realize that. Understanding social media platforms, getting familiar with the tools, tracking consumer behaviors are all important. But the defining characteristic of a comprehensive strategy is it ties all these together.

If a marketer identifies the reasons behind the failure of a particular strategy, then he becomes better equipped at the time of crafting a new strategy. In this article, we’ll discuss why most social media strategies fail.

Misunderstanding of social media

Many marketers have a misunderstanding of social media. Such misconceptions need to be shrugged off. Noted social media strategists said social media is an effective tool for marketing but if not used in the right manner, then it won’t work. The very first priority of a marketer is to identify his target market and focus on it. If the marketer fails to identify the target market, then the result will be devastating for his campaign. He’d end up shelling out money, but won’t see any positive result.

Lack of engaging content

What does the phrase “engaging content” really mean? Content that only triggers engagement doesn’t qualify as engaging content, engaging content is something that assures conversion through engagement. There’s hardly any point uploading a beautiful image on a social site if the image lacks information and doesn’t invoke the users to click on the call-to-action button. It’s nothing but a misconception that adding images and videos automatically make the content engaging. Even text content can be engaging if it can balance information and engagement.

Make them listen without shouting

As a marketer, you need to make users listen to you. The mistake committed by most marketers is they shout and users end up pissed with the earsplitting sound of the shout. Marketers should never push a product or a service; instead they should take time understanding the psyche of an ordinary user and design the product or service accordingly. Then, the marketer doesn’t need to disturb the user, rather, the user will become interested to the product. Seasoned marketers know the subtle ways of promotion, which successfully convey a message to users without disturbing them.

Evaluating a strategy

To measure the success of a social media campaign, a marketer first needs to define what success stands for in this context, and how to measure it. The success of a branding strategy cannot be quantified, and so it cannot be measured in the conventional way. To measure a social media strategy’s success, the marketer needs to repeat applying it. Oftentimes, it becomes difficult to spot the actual cause that is fetching success, more so because additional factors often accompany it. The strategy being repeatedly applied helps a marketer gain insight on the strategy's usefulness.

Being one of the crowd

You need to do something different in order to entice your users. There are hundreds of social media marketing agencies, and they all promise the same things, better visibility, and better engagement. But how many of them live up to what they promise? A few, too few to be correct.

To gain success, you need to stand different from the crowd. Being one of the crowds implies you have something entirely run-of-the-mill on your offering. Why would a brand hire you when it knows you are going to offer him a solution that thousand others can offer too? So take time and strategize how you are going to stand different.

Lack of consistency

A campaign needs to be consistent in order to be useful. If a social media fan-page posts an update today and then after a week, then clearly it lacks consistency. Such a campaign can never be successful. Being a social media marketer, you need to be consistent, otherwise your campaign will fall flat.

The tips above can help you craft a social marketing strategy that is effective and useful. Just be consistent and see your campaign is bringing you desired result.

Image Courtesy: marketingland.com

How can You Make Your Facebook Strategy Count?

Adam Frankel — 2016-01-28

Do you feel challenged by Facebook marketing?

If yes, be assured, you are not alone.

Amidst crowded news feed, the algorithm updates in Facebook often makes it tough for the brands to get noticed. Do not despair. There are several strategies that work well on Facebook.

Perfect Facebook Post Anatomy

Here are the ingredients that make up a perfect Facebook post:

A link
Brief posts
Odd publishing times
Regular in following other posts
Newsworthy and timely

It’s now time to check out the techniques to add to the Facebook marketing toolbox.

Post Videos

This is one of the most popular Facebook strategies. According to Mari Smith, one of the most successful Facebook marketers, “Facebook is absolutely taking traffic from YouTube right now with video. What happens with autoplay, it’s all psychology. They come in through your newsfeed, start to see a tiny bit of movement, boom, it draws them in. They’ll stop and play your video. Make it short, quick and easy, with a call to action.”

The prowess of videos is quite evident now. Socialbakers, a social media analytics company, by looking at over 670,000 posts by several brand pages found that the video posts enjoyed an organic reach of 8.71%, which is higher than the text-only statuses, link posts, and photo posts that stand at 5.77%, 5.29%, and 3.73%, respectively. You can use different ways to post videos on Facebook.

1.Post Natively

Posting directly offers better result as compared to linking to videos from websites like Vimeo or YouTube.

2.Featured Video

Facebook allows picking a featured video that enjoys a prominent place on the page.

3.Create Video Playlist

Related pieces of content are possible to group together in the video playlist.

Share Quote Photos

Creating as well as sharing quote photos is going strong now. According to Mike Gingerich, a Social Media Examiner writer, people love the inspiration quotes that motivate them or elicit emotion; this, in turn, leads to interaction and shares. Facebook shares play a dominant role in the social proof and results in several new friends finding and often liking your page. This is one of the best opportunities to begin the relationship building procedure.

Employ the CTA Button

Facebook introduced its call to action button to bring the most significant objectives of the business to the forefront. For the visitors who are landing on your page for the very first time, make sure to get the maximum benefit by utilizing an appropriate call to action. The admins can select from the following:

Book Now
Use App
Shop Now
Play Game
Watch Video
Sign Up
Contact Us

Try the Dark Posts

Dark posts on Facebook refer to publishing things that do not appear on the timeline. On the contrary, these posts are targeted to a selected group of audience. You can create variations of the same post, sending them out to see the type that performs best. You need not flood the timeline with these variations.

Post Problems

This works well on various levels. People love to answer queries helping to solve problems. Moreover, if you ask a question that helps to solve the readers’ problems as well, they will be really grateful for the help. Here are some ideas for you:

What to do if…
Can you help one of our readers to solve a problem?
I need to take a decision and am looking forward to your feedback…

Run Polls

This is great not only to generate discussion, but to gain valued insights as well. Check out on the Facebook poll app. You can try out these ideas:

What is the biggest challenge for you?
What products do you want us to offer?

If the poll-collected data have the capacity to interest the audience, share the result. Several businesses offer the results in a downloadable report, of course, in return of an email address.

Share Pictures of Employees or Office

Sharing a picture of the workspace or employees makes your business easier to relate to. The very knowledge that there are real individuals behind a given brand goes a long way in building trust and relationship.

Check out on the Page Insights regularly to find the things that are working and the things that are not. This will also help you to keep the posts engaging as well as relevant.

Image Courtesy: relaymagazine.org

Things to Remember While Integrating Social Media Buttons on Your Website

Adam Frankel — 2016-01-23

If you own a business, it is essential to create an online presence for it. There’s enough reason for that. Majority of the leads that your business is likely to get are expected to come online. And that’s not without any reason. There are over 3 billion internet users across the world. So, the internet is definitely the largest marketplace for your products and services. And you should go all out for online marketing.

So, to embrace online marketing, you need to have a website. But that’s just the basic requirement and only having it isn’t enough. You will need to complement the website with a well-planned marketing strategy. And to have maximum results, you have to include social media marketing in the plan too.

Create a Strong Social Media Presence

Having a presence on social media is almost imperative for online marketing these days. And it needs to be strong enough. Of course, you can’t create a presence on every social media platform. Do your research and find out, which one are going to be the most effective ones for your business. And check out the ones that are frequented by your target audience.

Integrate Social Media with the Website

So, have you created a proper presence on different social media platforms? Then it’s time you integrate that with your website as well. Ensure that the links of your social media platforms are there on your website too.

But how is this going to help?

Of course, this is likely to come in handy for your business in more ways than one. You can expect this step to play a major role in:

driving conversation with the customers
encouraging interaction
helping you understand your target audience better

So, you will be able to understand the requirements of your target audience and plan your offerings accordingly to ensure that they like those.

But to integrate your website and the social media platforms, you can’t do without certain things. They are the social sharing buttons on the website.

So, you are planning to add a few social sharing buttons to your website.

You need to keep a few things in mind to maximize their impact.

Here’s a quick look at some of those things.

Find Out the Perfect Spot to Place the Buttons

This surely is one of the most important things that you need to do while adding a social media button on your website.

Know the sweet spot for your web page. It is essential to understand, which parts of the page are clicked most by the visitors. Usually they are the:

bottom of the web page
right and left sides of the content
top right hand corner of the web page

If you place the social media buttons at these places, they are going to fetch you high number of shares and likes. Moreover, they will also drive lots of conversation on the social media platforms for your business. However, you need to keep the buttons above the fold of the page, as it drives interaction.

Add Buttons of Only a Selected Few

There are hundreds of social media platforms on the internet these days.

Are you planning to create your presence on all of them? Do you want to add the social media buttons of all those platforms on your website?

Then it is surely going to be one of the gravest mistakes you are committing.

Just select some of the social media platforms to establish a robust presence. These should be the ones liked by your potential customers. And once you have done that, add the social media buttons of only those platforms while you are designing the website for your business. It is likely to become an excellent marketing ploy.

Decide Between Widget and Button

When you are planning to integrate your online presence on social media and the website, you will have two options. You can add to the web page either a social media button or a widget.

So, which one should you go for?

Here's what you should check out before deciding.

The social media button sends the user to the social media platforms.

The user can follow the social media page from the website with the help of a widget, without being transferred there.

If you are planning to get social media buttons to your website, it is always a good idea to customize them. It helps to attract the attention of the users with ease. You can also make use of your website’s social feed. Together, all these will help you increase business interaction and thus, will have a positive impact on the revenues.

Image Courtesy: smallbiztrends.com

What Social Media Strategies Can Help You Grow Your Business?

Adam Frankel — 2016-01-15

The landscape of social media has changed over the years. If you are beginning to leverage it today, you are late. Nevertheless, it’s better not to worry and delve into the task. You can still make a lot on the social web. You just need to be a little more creative and leverage strategies that others are not making use of. Of course, you can go for the trodden path as well.

Let’s check out on some social media strategies that you can begin using today.

Host Events

You can easily build a loyal community through online events that put the focus on your fans. Host live webinars. Monetize effort and time by making great offers. Most business houses, both large as well as small, prefer using this strategy. Regardless of whether your fans make a purchase from you, you will locate a significant percentage becoming evangelists for your brand. They will love to spread the word in their community.

Use Images for Amplifying Facebook Updates

It’s time to face the truth now. In case you are posting on Facebook but do not see engagement in the guise of shares, likes or comments, you are simply wasting your time. You need fan engagement if you want yourself to be seen in the news feed continually. Making use of images is one of the best ways to achieve this. Simply search for blank images and add text to them; it can be in the form of a question for your followers. You can check out on this example.

Focus on Platforms your Customers Are In

Social media overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges faced by the business houses of today. They think that they need to make themselves present in all the social platforms. This spreads them thin leading to wasted time and effort. The solution is quite simple here. Be where the customers are if social media makes sense for your business.

Find out the place the customers hang out online.
Choose a platform that you enjoy and fits your business objectives.
Now focus on these platforms.

There are various strategies to find where your customers prefer to hang out.

Ask them
Use the search button in each channel to find communities talking about your business. You can also use Google Alerts.

Set up alerts for your name, industry, business, and the topics of interest. This will give an insight into the conversations that are relevant to business. You can also join those, if appropriate.

Choose Images Wisely

It’s often said that images are worth a thousand words. Since the explosive growth of Pinterest, more emphasis is now being put on the images. They help to convey messages in a clear way. When used in posts, it helps in comprehending and the readers can remember it better as well. Moreover, the images are also possible to share across various networks like Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest, thereby helping with content promotion. The images are open to interpretation.

Before deciding on an image for social media or blog post, ask yourself: will this image communicate my message properly?

Remember that most people scan content as they come across and rarely take the time to go through the comments or descriptions associated with the image unless it grabs their attention. A nudge in the guise of a text overlay plays a significant role in bringing attention to your posts and pins. Only a few words can make the difference between content being overlooked and attracting the targeted audience.

Communicate with the LinkedIn Connections

Sending an email to the connections every month generates sales and leads. We usually connect with people, but do not communicate with them enough. While sending emails, make sure not to make it promotional. Provide something of value that is relevant to your business.

Make Real Life Connections

Connect with your fans and followers in real life. You can take out some time to reach through Skype or give a call to individuals active in your niche. Thus, your social media connections will prove richer as well as significantly more meaningful. If you just look at the people who retweet, comment on, or share the posts, you will find that it’s generally the people whom you have met in real life. You will find that it’s easier to communicate online if you have had a conversation offline.

Make Following or Follower Management a Routine

A Facebook page can’t follow the fans, but it can be done with other platforms, such as:

Google+
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest

These platforms offer opportunities to the users to search for social media users based on the biography and the content they post.

There are tools like SocialBro and Tweepi that help to find as well as follow the users on Twitter. There are several other platforms that need you to do more searching and perusing of profiles to follow.

That’s why you need to make following a part of the social media routine. Invest a few minutes every day or 15 minutes a week to find new users to follow while maintaining a comfortable follower/following ratio. This will help you to not just be noticed in various communities, but to build a larger and a more targeted base of followers as well.

If you use social media properly, it can contribute to the success and growth of your business. However, remember that it’s simply a tool and you need to remain committed for it to work. Remember, “When it comes to the Internet in general, it matters less which online community or tool you use, and more on your commitment”.

Image Courtesy: www.business2community.com

Why Businesses Must Have a Twitter Account?

Adam Frankel — 2015-11-18

The 140 character social network is a significant asset to business.

You may feel intimidated by Twitter or don’t believe in its value for your company. Your ROI may be tough to track and you prefer Pinterest. This does not mean you can ignore coming with a Twitter account altogether.

If you are operating a business, here are the reasons you should use Twitter and incorporate it in your marketing and social media strategy.

Allows to Connect with the Customers

This is one of the prime reasons you need to begin using Twitter for business. You can connect with the customers easily as they use Twitter themselves. If you have unsatisfied customers, you will hear them on Twitter. You can provide them with instant solutions that will calm down your customers. The satisfied customers are also there on Twitter. They will write positive reviews about your brand. This will become a testimonial, bringing in more positive awareness about your brand.

Fastest Way to Spread News

Twitter allows to spread news very fast. It spreads thoughts that have a global impact. If you are an individual being part of a major event in real time, you can express what is happening quicker than any news outlet.

You don’t require many followers. You need just one person to check out on it and pass it on.

Makes Branding Easier

There is little need to be a big brand to brand self on Twitter. Even if you are a small business, you can brand yourself on Twitter. If you are not a well-known company, use your personal account. Nobody likes to speak to a logo. Everyone prefers connecting to a person rather than a bot.

Works for Special Offers and Viral Promotions

Imagine you are about to launch a new service or have seasonal discounts to promote. Twitter is the best platform to use when launching viral campaigns come under concern.

You can do this by spicing up tweets with images.

Tweets with visuals enjoy 150% more retweets, 89% more favorites, and 18% more clicks. Turn the promo codes, call to actions and announcements into appealing and inspiring graphics. You can also use that on other social media networks like Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram. Remember to tweet at right times when most of your audience is online.

As pointed out by Dan Zarella, the following types of tweets are retweeted most.

Tweets with links
Tweets with news or trendy content
Tweets that are 100 to 115 characters long

You can use words like ‘how to’, ‘free’, ‘social’ and ‘great’ to get higher engagement rates.

Comes with Twitter Analytics

Twitter comes with extensive analytics and metrics for performance of tweets via Ads dashboard. This allows to see the performance of tweets.

To be effective in Twitter, you need to be aware of the things the followers are interested in. Twitter Analytics provides a detailed list of interests as well as Twitter accounts that you need to follow as well as interact with. As soon as you understand the audience, you can plan the tweets accordingly.

Brings Down Employee Acquisition Charges

You can use your page for hiring efforts. Twitter allows social discovery of new talents as you monitor and listen for brand mention and subject matter keywords from people looking for jobs. This will help to reduce costs substantially.

There are a few potential issues that businesses must recognize.

Privacy is an Issue

Set the boundary early about the things that you want people to know and things you don’t want them to know. It is alright to speak about business turnover but if you brag about staff pay publicly, you may be left with a group of paranoid employees.

Potential for Litigation

You may break the law by posting something that appears harmless, face fines for false advertising or be sued if you defame your competitor. The key here is trying to keep things truthful and clean.

You can avoid trouble by developing a policy for your company that outlines the things employees can post on the Twitter page and the things that cannot be discussed. Use Twitter the right way to help your business. If used properly, it can provide your business with a channel to engage and inform the current and potential customers. Every opportunity to do that is worth exploring.