“TikTok is clearly the winner of this chapter,” says social media marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk. “You have a lot of families at home together and because TikTok won 13-22 (age group) those characters are spending more time with their parents and everyone’s looking for something to do. You’re also definitely seeing an explosion at the 30-40 (age group) also. The biggest winners to me in social are TikTok and Pinterest. The biggest loser potentially is Snapchat but I think they’re stable.”
TikTok Business Strategy
Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia discusses how the pandemic has impacted social media usage and marketing in an interview on Bloomberg:
I think in stressful times big things usually just expose things instead of changes them. TikTok is clearly the winner of this chapter. You have a lot of families at home together and because TikTok won 13-22 (age group). Those characters are spending more time with their parents and everyone’s looking for something to do. You’re also definitely seeing an explosion at the 30-40 (age group) also. I think Instagram in a lot of ways is such the juggernaut but is definitely starting to get chipped away at.
One thing we’ve learned about social networks is they’re more like actual TV networks and actual TV shows. They have a lifespan. TikTok is starting to lose a little bit of its cool factor but it’s still at scale and growing. Pinterest is having huge growth. I think Pinterest is a winner. People are cooking at home. Visual search — I think Pinterest is a winner.
I still look for Snapchat to do something to change their fortunes. I always felt when Instagram came out with stories and gave them a real kind of punch in the gut that they needed to innovate to get back there. I’m a little disappointed I guess just cuz I’m rooting for as much diversity as possible in social. The biggest winners to me in social are Pinterest and TikTok. The biggest loser potentially is Snapchat but I think they’re stable.
The amount of time on YouTube gaming, on Twitch, on Mixer, the consumption numbers are through the roof. If you have a 15-year-old or under in your world, you’re very aware that Bugha or Ninja or many others are more famous athletes to those individuals than any baseball player on earth. So I think that eSports if we stayed in our home forever, is the sport that wins.
“You know you need more traffic to your blog posts but you don’t have the money to spend to get those eyeballs,” says online marketing strategist Neil Patel. “What should you do? Today I’m going to teach you five ways to promote your content when you don’t have any money. Have you tried all the basic stuff that most of these marketers, including me, are talking about, and find that you’re not getting any results?”
Neil Patel, online marketing strategist and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses how to promote your content when you don’t have money in his latest YouTube video:
If you go on Quora, and you start answering all these questions, and you even link out to your blog whenever it’s relevant, you’ll find that you’re going to start getting more and more traffic. Why is this? Well, these Quora posts rank for everything in Google. It’s one of the simplest and easiest ways to get more traffic to your site.
Quora posts rank for everything in Google, Says Neil Patel
Tip 2 – Go Live On Social Media
The second tip I have for you is to go live on social media. Even if you don’t have the biggest social following, live videos are super engaging and all these socialites show it to almost all of your subscribers because they want to compete with all the television networks. If you look at people like Tai Lopez, some people may hate on him, but he’s a really smart marketer. When he goes live, he can generate hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars in sales, just from his live videos. It’s a smart tactic. Not only is he getting people to go wherever he wants but he’s also generating real revenue from it because a live audience is very captive.
Tip 3 – Do Video Teasers
The third tip I have for you is video teasers. If you just bust out your phone and you do a video teaser, talking about what you’re going to release, or this content, or what is new, and why they should check it out, or why they should be patient and wait for the next week, they’re more likely to come the next week and actually read that blog post. You know, Apple, whenever they launch new products, they do this whole event. They create all this mystery. They’re doing videos and conferences, breaking down what they’re going to release in the future. These teasers are a great way to build up the pent up demand for the product right when they launch it, and you can do the same with your content. You just have to create videos that tease people to let them know what’s coming out in the future.
Tip 4 – Answer Questions On Social Media
The fourth tip I have for you is to answer questions on social media. Whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, people are tweeting, asking questions. Whether it’s groups, it doesn’t matter where it is. If you go there and you respond and help people out, they’re more likely to follow you. Not just on the social web, but they’re also going to follow you on your website. And the beautiful part about this, especially when you do it on sites that are your competitors, you’re going to get more link clicks because when you leave a comment, you can typically link back to your site. When you do this on the social web, you’ll find that you’re getting more followers and that way when you release more content, you’ll get more views. But it’s a very effective strategy, especially when you do it to competitors because they have your ideal audience.
Tip 5 – Do Direct Outreach
And last but not least, direct outreach. When you link out to people, let them know that you linked out to them. Just email asking to share your content. You know how many emails I get of people saying, hey Neil, I linked out to you. I love your content. If you like the post, feel free and share it. I don’t share all the time but I do it some of the time. It works, it even works with me. That’s just showing you that outreach, if you take the time, you can get extra shares. Sure, not 100% of the people are going to share your content or link back out to you, but if you do it in quantity, you will get extra traffic from it.
How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel
Facebook will once again try to channel some of Google’s search success with its new and improved Search Ad feature. However, the ads will only be seen by users in North America.
The new Search Ads will work the same way as conventional search engines. The user will type what they are looking for in the search bar and the platform will show the results. And similar to Google, the promoted results will be at the top of the list.
Facebook’s product manager, Zoheb Hajiyani revealed that this new feature is just a trial run, and only a select number of eCommerce, retail, and automotive companies in Canada and the US have access to it. He also explained that they are only conducting “a small test to place ads in Facebook search results.” The company will then assess the value of these ads before deciding whether it will be beneficial to expand it.
The new Search ads will be composed of a headline, an image, copy, and a link to external websites. While the format is more complicated than Google’s text ads, Hajiyani admitted that they’re still improving the feature’s design.
Facebook also hasn’t commented on whether the search triggers are based on phrases or branded or non-branded keywords. But the company will reportedly tag the ads with a “Sponsored” label. It will also provide users with the same controls and transparency settings that will determine what ads they will see.
Users won’t be able to opt out of these ads though. While they can “hide” ads they don’t want to see, much like how it’s done with News Feed advertisements, it won’t stop different ads from appearing on their wall later.
This is not Facebook’s first foray into monetizing the search feature. It previously launched a “sponsored results” feature in 2012 but shut down the project the following year when it was discovered that many advertisers were taking advantage of loopholes in the system.
If account holders take a shine to the new Search Ads, it could lead to a new and significant revenue stream for the company. It will also pit Facebook directly against Google’s paid-search ads.
At the moment, Facebook needs something to energize its growth. Most of the company’s profit comes from ads. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild saw its profits peak at 59 percent in the third quarter of 2016 and 49 percent in 2017. However, this year’s revenue only grew by 33 percent.
Pinterest recently announced that its giving third-party influencers access to its API. While influencer marketing is not new to the social media platform, opening its content marketing API provides brands, influencers, and marketers a chance to work more closely.
The move is part of Pinterest’s expanding Marketing Partners program. The company is adding a total of eight marketing platforms – AspirelQ, HYPR, Influence.co, IZEA, Klear, Mavrck, Obvious.ly, and Open Influence.
The companyexplained in a blog post that they’re “opening our content marketing API to third-party influencer marketing platforms to help brands and influencers collaborate more effectively and create exciting new things on Pinterest.”
David Temple, the head of Pinterest’s content and creator products, said that creators are vital to the company so they’re excited to be able to supply them with more tools and resources for them to utilize as they develop strong relationships with various businesses.
Aside fromconnecting brands to influencers, the API will provide Pinterest’s partners with key performance metrics regarding influencer campaigns. It will also give insights into click-throughs, impressions, monthly views, and saves. More importantly, it will give companies a better chance at understanding how content developers can boost engagement and drive traffic to the app. This will go a long way in helping companies design their marketing campaigns so that they will deliver a healthy return on investment.
The lack of data has been a large stumbling block in working with influencers. While companies can get a baseline, it’s labor-intensive and time-consuming. By giving access to its API, Pinterest has given companies much-needed information. It’s also a strategic move on the company’s part as itopens them up to higher ad spending from marketers.
Eric Lam, AspirelQ CEO, revealed that it has also gotten very challenging for brands to attract consumer attention, making it imperative for brands “to connect with consumers using the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.” Partnering with Pinterest gives brands another channel and more opportunities to engage clients in a personalized and meaningful manner.
Opportunities is the perfect word to use here. Pinterest is in a class all by itself; its Pins can drive customer engagement for more than 120 days. That’s in direct contrast to posts that can only be seen on certain platforms for a single day.
Brands and content developers can find more information about Pinterest’s marketing API on the site’s Marketing Partners site or by emailing pmp-partnerships@pinterest.com
For some time now, social media has been a popular way for marketers and brands to get more exposure and grow their customer base. Among the many social media platforms on the web, Facebook ranks as the most popular with nearly 70 million active business accounts.
If you’ve been considering using Facebook as a marketing tool for your business, you’re probably unsure of whether to use the platform’s Page or Group feature. And given the overwhelming amount of information available online regarding the matter, researching it may only confuse you more.
Let’s break down the two options in simple terms to make it easier for you to decide:
Facebook Page or Facebook Group: Understanding the Difference
A Facebook Page can be described as the personal profile of an organization, a public figure, or a business. Since it represents an entity, it has the visual and style elements associated with the business or website it’s promoting. The Page also acts as a communication channel with a brand’s fans or followers. Users who connect to a Page instantly get access to all the brand’s news and content.
Meanwhile, a Facebook Group functions as a forum. It’s primarily used as a communication channel for people with the same interests. Members freely exchange information and knowledge with each other. Interactions are more honest and opinions are willingly expressed since the Group is considered a safe environment. One or more moderators can manage discussions within this space.
There are several key differences between Pages and Groups, like ads, member interactions, and privacy settings. Any posts or updates made on a Page are visible to the public. Anyone who likes or becomes a fan automatically receives updates or notifications. Groups, on the other hand, are typically private. Membership can be by invitation only or has to be approved by a moderator. Ads are not allowed in Groups, although you can promote your product. Conversely, Pages can carry ads and promos, although there are limits.
Pros and Cons of Pages and Groups
Facebook Pages and Groupsboth have their pros and cons. For instance, Facebook Pages can be set up easily. Updating them is also a breeze. Page creator tools can also be used for easy customization. You can also personalize the URL to make it easier for followers to remember. Pages are also a great way to openly engage with an online audience and advertise products.
Groups, however, are more about communication and members can use emails, wall posts, and direct messaging. Interactions here tend to be more personal, making it easier to market directly to your audience. You can’t advertise directly but your network can spread the word about your brand, thus you get some free advertising.
It comes as no surprise that Pages and Groups also have drawbacks. For example, it’s a well-known fact that growing Pages organically is difficult now. Facebook’s algorithm essentially leaves brands with little alternative but to invest in banner ads and boosts if they want to grow their Page quickly. Aside from that, moderators have to monitor all posts carefully since everyone can read it. Conversations between the Page owner and customers are also hard to manage.
Facebook Groups can also be challenging, especially for marketers. For one, the platform does not offer Insights to groups so it’s more difficult to keep track of everything that’s happening between members. It’s also hard to customize Groups since they don’t have access to some of the design and SEO elements available to Pages.
Which One Should You Choose?
So which one is right for your business—a Page or a Group? That will actually depend on your goal.
Pages are suitable for brands or companies who are out to promote their product or message. For instance, a brand’s Page is where they can talk about the benefits of their product and offer the latest deals. Meanwhile, Groups are better suited for in-depth discussions and for expanding networks. A budding businessman can join a Group for entrepreneurs to learn how to get started.
Think of a Facebook Page as the front porch of a house and the Group as the living room. The porch is where you meet and greet people quickly. A Page acts the same way. People who visit your Page stop for a while to get the latest news and updates. There is nothing personal shared.
Using the same analogy, the living room is where you let in the people you know and interact with them on a more personal level. It’s the same with a Facebook Group. People talk about their ideas, experiences, and passions. Interactions in this channel tend to run deeper and more passionately. There’s no active promotion allowed but members can build networks. Think of it as support groups for anything and everything, from mental health issues to SEO specialists.
Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups are two powerful marketing channels. The former is similar to personal profiles while the latter is essentially a forum. Both can provide you with the chance to engage your audience and promote your brand.
Pinterest recently announced that it will be giving third-party influencers access to its API. The move gives brands, influencers, and marketers a chance to collaborate more closely.
The company also said it would be adding a total of eight marketing platforms as part of its expanding Marketing Partners program. These include AspirelQ, HYPR, Influence.co, IZEA, Klear, Mavrck, Obvious.ly, and Open Influence.
The new development was announced on its blog post last Tuesday.
Starting today, we’re opening our content marketing API to third-party influencer marketing platforms to help brands and influencers collaborate more effectively and create exciting new things on Pinterest.”
David Temple, the head of Pinterest’s content and creator products, said that creators are vital to the company so they’re excited to be able to supply them with more tools and resources as they develop strong relationships with various businesses.
While influencer marketing on Pinterest isn’t new, opening up its API to third parties will give brands access to key metrics: https://t.co/rv35eDqEdc
Aside fromconnecting brands to influencers, the API will provide Pinterest’s partners with key performance metrics regarding influencer campaigns. It will also give insights into click-throughs, impressions, monthly views, and saves. More importantly, it will give companies a better chance at understanding how content developers can boost engagement and drive traffic to the app. This will go a long way in helping companies design their marketing campaigns for improved return on investment.
The lack of data has been a large stumbling block in working with influencers. While companies can get a baseline, it’s labor-intensive and time-consuming. By giving access to its API, Pinterest has given companies much-needed information. It’s also a strategic move on the company’s part as itopens them up to higher ad spending from marketers.
Eric Lam, AspirelQ CEO, revealed that it has also gotten very challenging for brands to attract consumer attention, making it imperative for them “to connect with consumers using the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.” Partnering with Pinterest gives brands another channel and more opportunities to engage clients in a personalized and meaningful manner.
Brands and content developers can find more information about Pinterest’s marketing API on the site’s Marketing Partners site or by emailing pmp-partnerships@pinterest.com
Most people think Quora is a simple Question and Answer forum. However, the website is so much more than that. While it’s true that people can ask about anything under the sun, a lot of the answers are enlightening and useful. What’s more, if used correctly, Quora can be a veritable goldmine of website traffic.
Quora: Not Your Average Q&A Site
Quora is not your typical Q&A platform. Aside from asking questions or providing answers, users can also vote which answers are helpful.
[Image via SEOClerk]
Quora also boasts an insanely popular and large community. The site receives more than 100 million visitors a month. According to Alexa, it’s the 50th most popular site in the US and ranks in the top 100 globally. But what sets Quora apart is the kind of people who use the site. Most of its users are from India and the United States. While the age range is varied, the most active Quora users are in the 18-34 demographic and have a post-graduate education.
Why Use Quora
Quora is a great platform for marketers and business owners like you. For one, you can use the site to build your personal brand. However, there are other reasons why you should take advantage of this platform.
It’s a Surprising Source of Long-Term Website Traffic
One of the benefits of using Quora is howyou can drive traffic to your website through the answers you post. More importantly, posts that were written months or years ago can still generate traffic. After all, people are always looking for information. Plus, if they like your answer and “upvotes” it, your post will appear in that user’s feed for all their friends and followers to see, resulting in more traffic to your site and sign-ups to your email list.
You Can Show Your Expertise
The more relevant and well-received your posts are on Quora, the more people will see you as an authority on the subject. The site ranks writers based on the number of views their answers receive. You can also be awarded topic badges that members can see. Appearing on the best writers list and earning badges will have people respecting your expertise. Once you’re considered an authority on the topic, more people would be interested in what you have to say, whether it’s on the site or on your blog.
Big Publications Might Notice You
A lot of major publications are turning to Quora for content and are publishing choice answers on their websites. Some of the platform’s top writers have already been quoted or featured in sites like Business Insider, Forbes, and The Huffington Post.
You want your profile description to establish credibility and trust since this is the first thing users will see. Make sure they’ll like what they read. Be sincere, friendly and polite. Proofread your profile before posting it. It’s hard to trust someone’s professionalism if they make mistakes with their spelling and grammar.
Look for relevant questions and answer them.
Select questions that are relevant to your niche and will provide you with the right exposure. Once you have picked a question to answer, check how popular or high it is on the feed and how many followers it has. More followers mean a larger audience will read your post.
Think of your posts as content, so make sure they are useful, relevant, and unique. Don’t get too technical, unless the subject calls for it. Make sure you attribute your quotes correct and try to include images.
Don’t go overboard with blog promotion.
Quora likes writers who provide value. This means that useful posts are the right way to go. You can include a link to your blog post if you want but it has to feel natural. Answering a question with just a link to your blog is a sure-fire way of getting yourself banned from the site.
Engage the Quora community.
Your content becomes more visible the more you ask questions or post an answer. A consistent presence on Quora will make members curious about you, maybe enough that they would check out your blog or site.
Quora is a great place to hang out, learn new things, and even meet new people. More importantly, the platform can be another source of traffic to your site. However, simple answers won’t cut it here. You have to put effort into your replies, build your reputation and engage other users. But the results will definitely be worth it.
Over the years, a growing number of companies have been turning to social media as their preferred marketing channel, veering away from more traditional options like print, radio, and TV.
As such, interacting with customers, particularly with “brand evangelists,” on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter has become a necessary marketing tactic for many businesses.
That’s because brand evangelists are the type of customers who are willing to do the legwork in spreading the good news about your product or service. They are the ones who praise, preach, and get involved in promoting your brand, whether online or off.
Though brand evangelism may be new or unfamiliar to some, it’s actually one of the oldest forms of marketing. It’s simply word-of-mouth.
However, 64 percent of marketing executives say word-of-mouth is the most effective marketing and 92 percent of people trust recommendations from friends and family (and even people they don’t know) over brands. Studies also indicate that 74 percent of consumers rely on social media to make purchase decisions.
Finding brand evangelists
Brand evangelists are identified by their voice and passion. They champion a brand by talking about its merits on their own social platforms, whether through a blog post, video, or image. Social media gives them the freedom to spark conversations online that can inspire others to follow suit. They are the walking, talking, free marketing that might be just what you business needs to get to the next level.
Unlike celebrity endorsers or paid ads, brand evangelists are loyal and swear by a company’s qualities based on their first-hand, satisfactory experience. What they say out loud is personal and authentic, making for more persuasive content.
However, finding the right brand evangelists is easier said than done, especially for companies that have thousands—or even millions—of fans and followers. Some companies take on the challenge of sifting through their social media accounts to scout for people who will best represent their brand. Others develop interactive content or support forums that jumpstart discussions among target audience while reaching out to potential customers.
Brands should also be mindful of the fact that satisfied buyers are more likely to promote a great product or service. Companies that go above and beyond in providing exceptional customer experience and address complaints efficiently tend to be top-of-mind. Having a good rewards program is also another way to create brand evangelists out of your loyal customers.
But sometimes the best brand evangelists are nearer than you think. Contented, happy employees can be successful advocates for your brand as well. Since they regularly deal with customers and can influence their buying decisions.
Cultivating brand evangelists
Transforming customers into brand evangelists doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time and effort. It begins by listening to feedback and keeping an open mind about it. Doing so lets you improve upon the good aspects of your business and remedy whatever doesn’t work.
While negative feedback can be disheartening, it’s an opportunity to solve a problem and convert the naysayers. Being able to adequately solve a customers problem may invoke a sense of loyalty to your brand and convert them into new evangelists. By showing that your brand listens and believes in two-way communication, your evangelists are likely to be more vocal with their support in nearly every platform.
Encourage your advocates to talk about your brand and products, but in the process, consider putting them in the spotlight as well. By featuring their posts on the social media platform, you involve them in contributing relevant, share-worthy content for your brand. Take the case of Apple as it showcases curated images and videos taken from iPhones with the hashtag #ShotoniPhone. User-generated content, in fact, can have a significantimpact on buying decisions, as compared to professionally made advertisements.
Because brand evangelism is organic and mostly done for free, it’s more cost-effective than traditional forms of marketing. When done right, its returns and potential to grow your business are high.
Keep in mind that scouting for ideal brand evangelists doesn’t begin with hyping up your goods. Start by creating the best product and offering an excellent customer experience to keep your buyers highly satisfied. Sustain momentum by developing great content that’s relatable and can easily be to shared by your brand evangelists. Over time, your company can gain a strong, loyal following without spending too much.
Successful internet entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk recently spoke about how so many people continue to underestimate the amazing power of the internet to change their lives. Don’t miss the part about Facebook and Instagram about half way down below. Hint… this is the part that can literally change your life and your business.
Here are the highlights:
I think that everybody in here is underestimating how special this era is.
Whether you’re a young kid and never knew a non-internet world, whether you’re my age, 42, or above and you understood it because we grew up without it, even the people that can appreciate it because we grew up without it, I don’t think are really understanding that this internet thing is no question the biggest change in the human race, ever. It just is.
All the things we’re thinking about, whether it’s political or social or financial things, they’ve just started. Everything that’s changing has just started.
In my adulthood, not even in my childhood, Best Buy rose and was eliminated because of this environment. I’ll be honest with you, I mean, it’s tough to say but I actually think Target is remarkably vulnerable in an Amazon/Walmart battle world. I actually predict, pretty aggressively, that Target will be bought by either Amazon or Facebook or Apple or Google because I think the internet companies have to buy retail to compete with Amazon.
There’s a real, real disconnect between the reality of what’s happening, all the opportunity.
What I think is happening is this extremism. Much like our social issues where we’re starting to really go in opposite directions. There’s this extremism, yes, there are hundreds of 11-year-olds making a million fucking dollars a year, making slime, selling it on Instagram, yet 99% of people that raise $2 million in capital for their start-up to make the Uber a fucking pizza delivery are going to fail.
I think the thing that’s grounding me is in this ridiculous change in our society, things like 15 years ago, if you dated on the internet and dated somebody you met on the internet, you were weird and a loser and it was taboo, and now every single person dates through the internet and swipes left and right 24/7, or slides into the DM.
Do you know how crazy Uber is as an early investor? Uber’s insane. Uber, or Lyft, or whatever you want, literally, if I stood up here and said guys, in 15 years you’re going to wan your 13-year-old daughter to go into a stranger’s car, because you’re going to think that’s safer than her driving with her friend. Parents actually, and probably correctly, think it’s safer for their 16-year-old daughter to go into strange 40-year-old men cars multiple times a day. I mean it.
But I would have never been able to sell you on that if this was 10 years ago and I’m like, let’s do start-up ideas and I pitched you on that, you would have laughed me out of the room. I know because I laughed the founders of Uber out of the room when they were like, what if everybody could get a limo on their iPhone? I was like, yeah, 1% of rich people. I never saw it playing out the way it did.
I think it’s a very interesting time.
What’s interesting to me about it is as the world’s changing, as people watching video games, more people watch people play video games than watch people play baseball. That’s just real. ABC, NBC, and CBS are finished. They’re done.
Remember when four years ago you had one show on Netflix that you liked but then you watched cable? Now you have Netflix and there’s one show on cable or regular TV. Do you understand when all the sports go to Netflix and Amazon? Amazon has bought the rights to English Premier Football, you know, proper football, soccer shit.
Tennis, Amazon’s going to be bidding for the NFL. Hulu’s going to have hockey. Google and Apple are going to have basketball. You’re never going to turn on two, four, five, or seven. Ever.
In this world, think about nothing we believe in or use, YouTube, the iPhone, Netflix, Facebook, none of that existed 15 years ago. Nothing that our entire society is running on. Everything we run on, guys, almost everybody her remembers the world pre-smartphone. You couldn’t, it’s just five minutes ago that you were like the internet on your phone! We struggle with things.
Parents all the time, when SnapChat blew up three or four years ago, parents were like, Gary, but I don’t want my kid on SnapChat. I’m like, you do know your son has Safari and can type in JizzHut.com, right? You’re worried about the one floozy 13-year-old in the fucking state and the dude’s got porn at his fucking fingertips.
That’s what I think a lot about.
Nobody here has actually quantified what’s really happened here.
For example, there’s a term in start-up land or in the business world called the last mile. It’s this big debate of how we’re all going to get everything delivered to us within an hour. Is it going to be Amazon, is it going to be Uber, is it going to be Postmates?
What I don’t think people understand is 7-11 is actually out of business in the next 15 years because of the last mile. You need deodorant or a fucking 20 ounce Mountain Dew you’re going to press a button and it’s going to be in your fucking house or office in a second.
What I think I’ve done really well in my career by launching a wine business on the internet in 1996 when people told me the internet itself was a fad. Or buying Google Adwords when nobody even knew what a search engine really was. Or when I started a wine show on YouTube in the first six months it existed. Or went all in on social media when everybody shit on social media, I was there.
I remember what everybody thought about Twitter and how stupid it was. Or that Facebook was a college thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We put the past on a pedestal. We demonize the current and the future.
In all these changes, in all of this stuff that is going on, the thing that is most fascinating to me and the thing that I want to talk to you about is that this, doing the right thing and gratitude and honor and all this propaganda that I push, is actually more valuable than ever because let me tell you what the internet’s going to do.
I’ve been saying this for a long time and I feel like people are finally starting to believe me. I had this woman yelling at me over dinner about how this internet thing is scary and it sucks and this and that. And she’s an incredible activist for all women’s rights and all these other things. I’m like, you do understand that your media that you’re putting on a pedestal, the New York Times and NBC, is the reason all this bad stuff was able to happen?
When five or six old white guys control the media, a lot of stuff doesn’t hit daylight. When we control the media it gets a lot harder. Let me give you a news alert. Russia didn’t make you do anything. It didn’t, it didn’t. Meaning, if you’re a good person, a bad person, voted Democrat or Republican, you do you.
I have zero interest in debating politics with anybody these days because everyone’s on tilt. I just want everybody to know, the Russians didn’t hack your fucking brain. You didn’t go in saying I’m going to vote for Hillary, and vote for Donald, or the other way around. That’s not what happened. What happened is, you believe in what you want to believe.
Technology’s exposing us, it’s not changing us. What’s happening, where does this all go? What I want you to do more than anything is understand the following.
It has never been a better time in the human race ever to actually just go all in on you.
We are in a remarkable time. For all the things you may be worried about, left, right, up, down, there has never been a better time to be alive in the human race than right now.
Medicine, life expectancy, poverty, every issue we have, better. The best people to talk about what’s going on in America are 90-year-olds. They shit on everybody. They’re like, she thinks it’s bad? Ah, fuck!
This like 92-year-old woman stopped me in the street, she’s like, keep doing what you’re doing, I’m like, I mean, she looked like 190. I was like, thank you. I got to talk to her for a second and she’s like, by the way, these women, and she’s wrong but it was still funny, these women, fuck, if I didn’t have somebody grab my ass everyday in the office, I was pissed!
I was like, I get it. I was like, don’t say that in public. She’s like, fuck public! I was like, man, 92 is some gangster shit. I’m obsessed with practicality. People think I’m a destructor, I’m practical.
Facebook and Instagram ads are grossly under-priced.
If you go how tonight and Google how to run Instagram story ads, and learn how to do that, and then make a video or picture and run Instagram story ads for whatever you’re trying to do in life, become the mayor here, sell some peanuts, kombucha, get people to sign up for your fucking track team, I don’t care what, An Instagram story ad will work better than anything else you can do if you care about people 15-45. If you care about people 30-75, Facebook works better than anything.
If you sit here tonight and you are not completely fucking pumped completely pumped about your life, it’s up to you to change that.
I can’t implore this audience enough to realize that Facebook and Instagram right now is so remarkably under-priced in its ability to change the outcome of your business, your dreams, your mission. If I could do anything today, it would be to encourage people to go home and Google how to run Facebook ads, how to run Instagram ads, because that will absolutely change your game.
I think about this all the time. The ROI. The ROI of a basketball for LeBron it’s a billion dollars, for me it’s zero. Just because you didn’t have a successful ad campaign on Facebook or Instagram doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, it means you suck.
If you don’t run a successful ad campaign right now on Facebook and Instagram in the way that it’s so under-priced, you actually really suck. Now, here’s the good news. A lot of people run ads that are self-serving. The reason so many things aren’t working for people is that it’s good for you, not for the other person. Nobody wants your $897 bullshit e-book. That’s why your fucking Facebook ad didn’t work. That’s the problem, not Facebook.
I really, really, really want to implore people to understand that I sit here with a lot of business regret because when my dad’s business grew from $3 to $60 million, it should have been from $3 to $250 million. But I didn’t run enough Google ads.
I hit hard on Google when it first popped but I didn’t spend enough because I was a kid and I didn’t realize how special that moment was. That moment went away. Buying the word cabernet and Merlot and pinot grigio and Bordeaux and Napa Valley and wine and wines and wine gifts and this and that, they were five and 10 cents a click. I bought them all and nobody knew what the fuck was happening.
There were millions of people on Google and I got bigger than Haskell’s and Sam’s and Sherry Lehman’s and Wine Club and everybody was confused why. That’s what’s happening right now on Facebook and Instagram.
I’m telling you the fucking truth, I’m giving it to you, and 98% of you will not do anything about it.
We have to understand what’s going on. Why is Toys R Us going out of business? Why are all these things happening? It’s happening because the internet is eating up our society.
Why do we have such big opportunities?
Because everybody here can start a competitor to Coca Cola, which used to take $50 million because you had to buy into Albertson’s and to Safeway and Target and you had to make it and you had to fucking market it on television and now it costs $200,000.
You make something, you slap it on Amazon, 3PL, you run some Instagram influencer ads, and you’re in the game. It’s crazy.
What’s crazy about the internet, unlike what we grew up with whereas if you wanted to open up your store, your dream store, you had to be there so by the time you got home at seven, you couldn’t do that. The fact that you can do this from 7PM to two in the morning until it means something, enough to give you the courage to jump off the other thing, this is just practical.
The dream of being happy and living your life has actually become practical.
You’re sitting on the information but because it wasn’t like that for last 300 years, you can’t wrap your head around it. And because it seems so crazy, the idea of doing it and nothing happens for six months, makes you feel like it wasn’t meant to be and you get out. Because you were built and groomed within a school environment.
The only reason I’m successful is because I got Ds and Fs and I didn’t listen. I mean it. It’s how I see things differently. You need somebody else to have already done it. You need to see the path. I don’t like paths. I need blank slates. This is a blank slate.
I can’t wrap my head around it. That so many people here can build a $50,000 to $500,000 a year business on Amazon just by going on websites in China, buying something, and then relisting it on Amazon. That, my parents and I had dinner in New York and we had this nice dinner and we were coming out and our waitress ran out and grabbed me and said, thank you so much. She said, my fiance was out of a job for 19 months, depressed, doing drugs, saw one of your Instagram videos and a year later on Amazon is making $1.3 million a year. To me, this is fucking nuts.
So I am super excited about the time that we’re living in. I love what’s going on, I love that the big companies are losing, I love that the establishment is in trouble. I love it because I think it’s going to be better. I think we’re all going to be happier. I really do.
When Best Buy goes out of business, I don’t see that as a negativity.
I see that as an opportunity. I love that people are like, oh, Best Buy shouldn’t go out of business. Best Buy put people out of business. Everyone’s like, this is unfair, Walmart, like Target, Target put people out of business.
How are you confused by this? All of a sudden this was the moment to stop capitalism? Because Target’s here? Target put people out of business. Ironically, if you really play out my thesis, the people that are going to put Target out of business are back to the small people.
That is the most interesting shit to me of all time.
This internet thing is big. It’s real big. It’ll be bigger than we all thought. To me, the fact that you’re not doing Facebook or Instagram or YouTube out of a social point of view, to the detriment of your business and happiness and opportunity, is nuts. Because you’re mad that people aren’t talking to each other in real life, you’re leaving opportunity on the table for yourself is not a good idea.
The Internet and social media have made it easy for brands to get their message out to millions of people. In fact, the average American is reportedly exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements every single day. But this accessibility has also led to “Banner Blindness,” a psychological effect wherein people become blind or indifferent to the ads they see.
Banner blindness is essentially the consumer’s defense mechanism in the face of an abundance of information. This means that at some point, your ads will no longer be effective as your audience starts to suffer from ad fatigue.
Understanding Ad Fatigue
Ad fatigue occurs when your target market becomes so used to your advertisements that they become bored and stop paying attention to them.
One platform where ad fatigue can be felt is Facebook, where account holders frequently see advertisements fighting for space amidst the numerous statuses and photos on their News Feeds. Marketers understand the impact ad fatigue can have on a company’s investment. When the Frequency rate of a Facebook ad goes up, its click-through-rate (CTR) tends to go down. Conversely, the cost-per-click for the company will increase.
Luckily, the platform’s robust rotation display and audience-targeting network mean there are strategies that can be utilized toprevent ad fatigue from setting in.
5 Ways to Prevent Facebook Ad Fatigue
1. Change Your Headline and Use Power Words
Mix up the wording in your ad. Consider changing your headline to include a question, your brand name or even a call-to-action (CTA). Another option would be to change the language to target a specific audience. For instance, men would prefer a more humorous content while women opt for something subtle. Power words like “Instantly,” “Sensational,” “Free” and “Now” can boost the odds of having a more positive response to your ads.
2. Tweak Ad Displays
Tweak the design of your ads tocapture your audience’s interest once more. Something as simple as changing the background color can make a huge difference so try experimenting with different hues. You can also utilize a simpler image to catch people’s eyes. A photo of a happy woman apparently works best in Facebook ads. Avoid images with lots of details and keep the use of text in the picture to a minimum.
3. Rotate Demographics and Audience Network
When you keep utilizing the same group on the platform’s Audience Network, desktop, and mobile iterations, the ad frequency will increase, thereby raising the dangers of ad fatigue. Separate your ad groups for every placement. This will make tracking bidding and frequency rates more effective. You should also consider rotating your ads and the target audience every few days to reduce individual ad frequency and keep things fresh.
4. Try Out Different Call-to-Actions
Your ad requires a strong call-to-action if you want to nab those conversions. Test five to six distinct CTAs as you rotate your ads and see which one gives the best result. For instance, you can start with a straight CTA this week (ex. Take that vacation now!). You can then try one that begins with a question (Need a break from work?) the following week.
5. Stop Underperforming Campaigns
If all else fails, you have the option to stop underperforming campaigns until you can develop something better. Evaluate every aspect of your marketing campaign, from the images you used to the target groups to the value proposition, to see what is causing the sluggish conversion rates. You can also freeze your ads once the frequency becomes too high and wait until people don’t recognize them anymore.
Fighting ad fatigue on Facebook is crucial to the success of your campaign. Utilize a variety of strategies like changing background colors or rotating the audience network to keep things interesting. Bear in mind that these ads are pay-per-click, so you have more than enough leeway to try something different.
Popups – you either love them or hate them. But no one can deny how essential they are to eCommerce businesses. When used correctly, popups can give companies the conversions they need.
Understanding PopUps
While a lot of people find popups annoying and blame them for disrupting their website visits, successful bloggers, top SaaS companies, global online publications, and premiere eCommerce brands all utilize popups.
The reason is simple – popups work really well. And one reason why they are so effective is due to today’s typical consumer attitude. Most consumers have short attention spans, minimal brand loyalty, and are often looking for products that give the utmost value. Popups can engage people in a compelling manner through visible call-to-action and incentives.
The SkinnyMe Tea company is a prime example of the power of popups. The Australian-based business came up with an email popup that gave shoppers a promo code for a 10% discount, provided said shoppers subscribed to their newsletter. These customers clearly saw the value in the offer and email sign-ups increased by 758%. Aside from the padded email list, the company also saw a 50% rise in conversions for the duration of the campaign.
5 Ways to Use PopUps to Boost Conversion
Many other eCommerce businesses were also able to use popups successfully by thinking outside the box. Here are five ways to use this type of advertising to boost conversion rates and sales.
Offer Something Extra With Your Welcome Popup
It’s vital for eCommerce businesses to try and convert new visitors to either social followers or email subscribers. Even if the visitor doesn’t end up buying initially, the odds become better if you can get them to return, either with a newsletter or some form of social media interaction.
One way to do this would be to have a well-designed popup that asks them to like the company’s social profile or to submit their email address. Once done, the visitor will be rewarded with a promo code for a substantial discount.
Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates With a Catchy Exit Popup
Cart abandonment slows revenue down and hinders conversion rates. But exit-intent popups can do a lot in deflecting customers from their intention of leaving the page without finishing their order.
It’s a good bet that most of your customers are interested in buying but are wary of clicking that final button because of the price. This could also cause prospective clients to check out the competition. If you want to prevent lost sales from these customers, try enforcing exit-intent offers that blatantly interrupt their leaving. Maybe you can prevent them from leaving prematurely by offering special discounts or giving away a free product if they continue with their purchase.
Use Specially Triggered Popups to Upsell or Cross-Sell Products
Amazon is a prime example of how beneficial upselling or cross-selling is to online retailers, and this technique could be enhanced further with the use of popups. You can design ones that are triggered when a customer searches for a particular product. For instance, a customer shopping for new Levi’s might encounter a popup suggesting boots that look good with that style of denim.
You can make it even better by offering discounts for the cross-sell or upsell product. This gives the customer an incentive to buy another product that would go well with the item that they’re already purchasing. This is an inspired way to boost sales, as selling to current customers is easier than trying to convince new customers to buy something.
Subtly Push Customers into Action with Time-Sensitive Popups
Another useful strategy is to create time-sensitive popups that will give customers a push into taking immediate action. For instance, a company can implement a popup that offers a $10 discount and free shipping if the customer can complete their order at a certain time. Aside from providing a sense of urgency, it also gives the customer an incentive to complete the checkout process.
Use Popups to Inform Customers of Shipping Policies
Shipping is one of the main concerns of online shoppers. Unfortunately, customers are not in the habit of scrolling to the end of the page just to check out the company’s shipping policies. So if you’re shipping to their location, it’s best to use a popup to let the customer know that in advance. Auto geolocation technology can be used to detect and identify the customer’s IP address. Once that data has been ascertained, a popup can be triggered that informs the client of their shipping options.
Don’t drive your customers away with run-of-the-mill popups. Find creative ways to harness the power of these little windows and use them to enhance conversion rates and boost sales.
Snapchat has been on quite a roll. In 2016, the image and multimedia messaging app become the fastest growing social media company in the US. But this might not be so surprising considering that over 10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat daily. A Nielsen study even revealed that the app reaches 41% of the country’s 18 to 34-year-olds. More importantly, millions of its users are creating their own content.
Snapchat still hasn’t oversthrown Instagram, but it is nipping at its heels. The intense engagement of the app’s users and followers can only mean good things to companies as they can have greater access to various demographics, even those seemingly hard-to-reach groups.
The question now is how to tap into this goldmine and grow your audience with Snapchat. Here are two effective ways to do it:
Arrange a Takeover
Arrange for aninfluencer to take over your Snapchat account. This means an influencer would literally take over your account for a period of time and create content for you. Takeovers are proving to be a very effective way of growing your Snapchat audience.
One reason for this is that it gives your brand a humanizing element. Seeing a favorite influencer using your product and your Snap account creates a sort of relationship, as the follower gets an honest look at another person’s perspective. Aside from the established connection, it also introduces your account to new followers.
However, influencers don’t usually come cheap. In some cases, this type of marketing might cost a hefty sum. Bear in mind that most influencers work with a limited amount of brands as too many deals might leave their followers disgruntled. They are also very careful with the companies they work with as they only choose brands that reflect their image or message.
Use Other Social Media to Cross-Promote
Snapchat is still a baby when compared to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. So if you have existing accounts on these platforms, it’s logical to assume that you have more followers there as these accounts are older. Take advantage of those followers andcross-promote your Snapchat account in these channels.
A prime example is YouTube personality Shane Dawson, who has shown an aptitude for cross-promoting his brand. The author and sketch comedian tends to promote his Snapchat account to his more than 8 million viewers on YouTube by keeping his Snap handle up in most of his videos. He does the same thing on his Snap account by posting updates there whenever he has a new video up.
There’s no shame in indulging in some self-promotion on your own channels, as long as you’re providing decent content most of the time. To ensure that your audience doesn’t tire of too much self-promotion, try to keep it at 80/20 – 80% entertaining content and 20% self-promotion.
Now would be the best time to create a Snapchat account and start building followers. If you already have an existing account, try incorporating it with your other social media accounts or find someone to do a shout out or takeover. You might have to shell out some cash or offer a sweet deal in return, but it will be worth it.
There’s no question about the hold Facebook has in our lives, as more than 2 billion people use it monthly. Businesses had successfully used this social media giant to boost the public’s engagement with their brand. Unfortunately, that all changed around two years ago when Facebook changed its algorithm so that only content relevant to the user will appear in their News Feed.
User engagement is one of the factors that determine whether your brand or content will show up in a user’s News Feed. This means that the more likes, comments, and shares a post gets, the more likely it will be seen by a larger audience. The trick now is to know how toget your audience engaged.
Luckily, there are some tips and tricks you can do to increase Facebook engagement. Here are 7 of them:
Post When the Timing is Right
The enormous amount of posts being published on Facebook means there’s a lot of competition. The trick is to know the right time to post. Surprisingly, this doesn’t mean the time when most people are logged in to the site. Studies have shown that it’s more effective to post content sometime between 10pm and midnight (local time) as this receives the most engagement.
Posting at 11 am is also a good, but engagement during this time is minimal, as people are just skimming through their News Feed. This is in direct contrast to night time, when fewer posts are made but users have more time to really go through each post.
Share Content Your Audience Wants, Not What You Want
To get people engaged with your post, share content that they want. Most of the time, businesses think that since they’re in a certain niche, that all their content should be related to that field. For example, an online book shop might post content about their book prices, company news, and best sellers. But that’s not what audiences want to keep reading about daily. To keep things interesting, expand the type of content that you share. In our example, the bookshop could post recipes on how to recreate dishes that were mentioned in a popular book series or share a beloved writer’s top 10 favorite characters. Some tips on writing or reading would also be appreciated. The trick is to post something different, but not so different that it would seem out of place.
Use Real and Personal Photos
Pictures are undoubtedly one of the most engaging content that a business can share, especially when they’re real and not just some generic photo. Users would rather see original and personal photos than stock images. This is why we keep looking at photos of what our friends ate than those sleek images a famous burger brand might put out.
Reply to Your Audience and Build Relationships
Since you’re making a lot of effort to get people engagedwith your post, it makes sense that you should also take the time to reply to their comments. Don’t just post content and forget. Check the comments and reply as soon as you can. Engage your audience in a conversation. Yes, you need to deal with the usual troll but remember that people who leave comments did so because the post connected with them. Reply and make them feel appreciated. They will be more inclined to engage with your other posts as well.
Make Blog Posts That Fits Facebook Perfectly
Links will go a long way to keep your audience engaged on Facebook. To ensure this happens, create a company blog and start making content that’s tailored specifically to Facebook. List posts and content that tickles people’s curiosity are the ones that perform well on the social media site. You can even look at content that you previously shared and create similar content or search for keywords that are engaging and interesting.
Make Your Posts Sweet and Short
Blog posts are well and good, but remember that your Facebook page is not the company blog. People on Facebook are not there to read long content. Posts that are between 1 to 50 characters long garnered the most engagement. The more characters or words used in the post, the less engaged the audience is. So take out the unnecessary details and just treat your posts like headlines that will pull people in and get them to click on your link.
Ask the Audience to Get Engaged
If youwant your audience to be engaged, then give them clearinstructions on what you want them to do. A Call to Action is something that a lot of businesses or marketers forget but it’s what consumers respond to. Do you want your audience to share your post or to comment? Give them instructions on what they should do next. After all, if they took the time to read the whole post, they’re already interested in the content and are willing to take the next step.
Facebook’s billions of monthly users give you billions of opportunities to reach out to them. Plan your strategy well and make sure you have the right management tools to increase your Facebook engagement.
Contrary to popular notion, Instagram is not all about celebrities, food, fashion, dogs and cats, or homes and gardens. It’s also a great way for brands and businesses to engage with their target market and close sales. However, many marketers and business owners are still trying to get a clear picture about their accounts. Luckily, the Internet always has something for everyone. Here are five awesome Instagram analytic tools that you can use.
Iconosquare
This is a great app to start your journey into the realm of Instagram analytics and management. Iconosquare evaluates a user’s Instagram account and displays key metrics like audience or market engagement, growth over a period of time, and top followers. Its editorial calendar easily assists the user to draft and schedule posts and to monitor comments and interactions on each post. It has an expansive media library of high-res images and can also be utilized to find the top bloggers and influencers. More importantly, users can do all these from one dashboard, making Iconosquare the perfect app for freelancers or companies with multiple clients.
Keyhole
What sets Keyhole apart from other tools is the real-time feedback it provides its customers. For instance, it can show users how many likes, impressions or retweets a campaign has garnered or how many people have posted using one specific hashtag. It can also track and narrow down the people or influencers who are engaging their brand. Users can do all these from Keyhole’s user-friendly interface. What’s more, clients and colleagues can also easily see how well a campaign is doing either through a link to the user’s Keyhole dashboard or a printable PDF.
Picture.io
If you’re just starting to get the hang of social media, particularly Instagram, or are on a tight budget, then Picture.io Influence Score is the app for you. This simple and free analytics tool provides users with an Instagram influence score that designates weights to their engagement, network size, and community interactions. This gives users critical data that can help when making decisions about using Instagram.
Simply Measured
As the name implies, Simply Measured is designed to provide much-needed analytics metrics of audience engagement, content analysis, and keyword analysis in a simple and straightforward manner. The app can daily track and identify new options, plan social media campaigns, optimize strategies for better outcomes and give reports on ongoing campaigns to show how it fares on social media. Simply Measured is the go-to analytics tool of over 100,000 digital marketers and has been vouched for by social media giants like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Sprout Social
Like Iconosquare, Sprout Social has merged analytics with management and content creation tools that larger companies would undoubtedly appreciate. It’s a web-based app that allows users to manage numerous social profiles across a swath of social media networks all from one interface. The app has a centralized media library with built-in editing tools and a push notification feature that updates users about the next step to do. Users can also make use of a social CRM that can help improve conversions or check hashtag performances. All these metrics can also be compiled into insightful reports that can be downloaded by clients.
Since launching in 2009, WhatsApp has become one of the most popular ways for people to communicate with each other across the globe. Today, the mobile app’s active user base is second only to its parent company, Facebook, with over 1.2 billion people using it to send messages and share data every month.
Social network sites ranked by number of active users (in millions) as of April 2017
For most users, WhatsApp is a chatting application for casual conversations between friends and family. However, the app also has a lot of potential for doing business.
Here are a few reasons Whatsapp makes a great business tool:
Easily send brochures, catalogs, e-books, images, and videos.
Get customer feedback by using WhatsApp as a survey tool.
Send alerts and notifications about sales and events.
Accept sales inquiries
Receive payment from purchases instantly.
Direct engagement via phone calls.
Getting Started With Whatsapp
Perhaps one of the reasons behind WhatsApp’s popularity is its advertisement free experience. However, the lack of advertisement opportunities has caused business people to believe that there is no revenue to gain in WhatsApp.
The thing is there are no media to invest in or ad space to purchase, and you most certainly can’t get away with spamming people you don’t know. Fortunately, there are still a number of ways to make the app a useful business tool. Here’s how to get started:
1. Build a Phone Database
The one thing that can stand between your messages and your target audience in WhatsApp is their phone number. Without a phone number, you cannot send messages to prospective customers which means you’ll have to earn their contact invitation. You can do this by offering something of value to catch their interest, such as a special promo, a free service, or a free item.
2. Establish User Loyalty
Take advantage of WhatsApp’s extremely loyal users. The group lists on Whatsapp have shown more brand loyalty than any other social media groups. Couple this with a friendly and personal brand persona, and you will be able to develop a great reputation with your target audience.
3. Be Quick on Your Feet
WhatsApp has an amazing 70 percent open rate, which means that more often than not, your target audience is online and will see your messages. If you receive an inquiry, you must respond promptly. The worst thing you can do is establish a massive phone list and fail to reply to your customers.
4. Create Quality Content
You’ll have to stop thinking of WhatsApp as a mere chatting application. That being said, you must ensure that you deliver top notch quality content. Similar to how you would advertise on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, your WhatsApp ads must adhere to your brand’s style and format.
WhatsApp is a very direct and personal app, so it pays to make sure that your brand is represented by a friendly persona to engage with customers. Like any other social media platforms, you’ll have to prioritize your target audience to get the most out of it.
Digital marketing might have already passed its peak and is currently on the downslide. In the future, it’s likely that robots and machine-learning will dominate the advertising sphere, which would make human intervention almost irrelevant.
Nevertheless, it appears as if its death is greatly exaggerated—in the near future at least. The rise of eCommerce, as brick and mortar stores are closing at a rapid pace, does highlight the need to hire a digital marketing agency to drive traffic to your site, and more importantly, convert this traffic into sales.
You might say, “I can do this myself. How hard can that be?” This has to be one of the most common phrases uttered by businesses before quickly realizing their mistake when their self-initiated marketing strategy goes down in flames.
If you do decide to hire a digital marketing agency, here are seven tips in choosing one:
1. Narrow Down Your Goals
It’s going to be hard to craft a focused digital marketing campaign when you don’t know what your targets are. Do you have a specific amount of monthly traffic in mind? Do you want to land among the top results in search engine pages? Do you want a data report to determine where you are in your industry? It’s important that the digital marketing agency is able to provide you with all of these options.
2. Don’t Get Too Hung Up on Price
Sure, price is definitely going to be a factor when hiring somebody to handle your marketing campaign, especially if you are on a tight budget. But this should not be a deal-breaker. Avoid making the mistake of hiring somebody because they are the cheapest when they bring little value to the table.
3. Look for Someone You Understand
If you walk out more confused than when you walked in, it’s time to walk away and never look back. Be wary of
agencies that can’t give you straight answers to simple questions, or try to regale you with technical terms and jargon without really explaining anything.
4. Don’t Forget the Expert
Executives like to talk to fellow execs, and that’s understandable. During meetings, you are likely going to talk to the top honchos of the digital marketing agency. But really, they are not going to be the ones who will do the heavy lifting.Try to find the one who will be assigned to your account and deal with that person directly.
5. Vet, Vet, Vet
Always take their word at face value. When you hire your employees, you always ask for their CVs and conduct extensive background checks. It’s the same with digital marketers who have to prove their capability to handle your account. Ask for references and talk to those clients personally. Would they recommend the company to you?
6. Look Forward to the Future
You have to grow with the digital marketing agency. Bestraightforward with each other in the effort to boost your numbers. You need somebody who will think of your company as a showcase of their best practices, and not just a means to earn a profit. If the agency doesn’t return calls immediately, you could be down the totem pole in terms of their priority.
7. Check Your Ego
Some executives and supervisors are too proud to admit their ignorance. If you can’t understand what the digital marketing agency is saying, just ask. If you want something done but you’re not sure how to do it, collaborate. The success of the marketing campaign should not be the sole responsibility of the third-party provider. This is your business and you, more than anybody out there, has the biggest stake in the outcome.
When it comes to digital marketing, content is still king. Content marketing comprised 20.3% of the digital marketing techniques implemented so far in 2017, although big data (crunching numbers to reveal buying patterns, for instance) is quickly gaining a foothold in online commerce.
The point is, businesses that still do not see the significance of digital marketing to boost their presence and revenue will end up being left behind by the competition.
According to a report fromStatista, digital ad spending in the U.S. is expected to grow to $118 billion in 2020 from just a shade under $60 billion in 2015. That’s more than double in just five years. In the global scale, the amount is expected to reach over $250 billion by 2018.
Here are just five of the digital marketing trends to watch for this year:
1. AR & VR Technology
The potential of augmented reality and virtual reality in business applications has never been more promising. After the gaming industry latched on to the new technology to enhance the user experience for gamers, developers have released apps that can help boost businesses. For instance, architects can make use of AR to give clients a virtual tour of what the finished product would be like. In digital marketing, businesses can exploit VR to help customers get a better picture of their vision more than any other type of messaging could.
2. Live Videos
Facebook Live and Snapchat Videos are just some of the platforms that can be exploited by digital marketers. Video content will dominate the scene in the next few years with Cisco predicting that 80% of consumer internet traffic by 2020 will be cornered by videos. Meanwhile, Facebook Live is growing 94% each year in the U.S. with eight billion views daily.
Facebook was embroiled in a scandal when its video platform was used to broadcast several violent attacks, which prompted founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce the hiring of 3,000 more people to police the platform of any offensive content.
3. Apps for Data Visualization
Applications like Data Hero, Tableau, Dygraphs, and Visual.ly have been helping digital marketers package big data for easy consumption not just for businesses but the consumers as well. This is not exactly a new trend. However, for this year, it’s projected that businesses will make sure to exert more effort in using these tools to interpret the facts and figures at their disposal.
4. Viral Videos Won’t Go Away Anytime Soon
Last year, Samsung was the big winner after three of its video ads went viral. By December 2016, they already had almost 500 million views total. Viral marketing will continue to be an effective tool for brand recall. Google’s new updates, particularly on placing more importance on the social status for ranking, will really benefit businesses that invest in quality content. The downside is the short lifespan of viral video marketing. The trick is when to increase engagement, boost traffic, and convert them into income before interest wanes.
5. Content With Short Shelf Life
Businesses might dismiss expiring content as an effective means to build on the brand. After all, Facebook Stories or Instagram Stories only stay for about 24 hours before they are no longer seen again. Of course, this concept was copied from Snapchat, which has a similar feature. Digital marketers arebasically exploiting the “fear of missing out,” which is human nature. Nobody likes to be the odd man out when everybody is talking about the latest video or when they grab the latest product, which is the reason why Kylie lip products sell like hotcakes even if they don’t really offer anything new.
It seems Mark Zuckerberg’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012 is paying off, as the social media site is expected to hit $5 billion in sales by 2018.
In fact, apart from Facebook or Twitter, Instagram has become the go-to platform for businesses seeking to increase awareness and engagement, not to mention sales. While other social media sites such as Twitter have suffered some fluctuations in sales and population, Instagram has benefited from piggybacking on the Facebook architecture.
Instagram users are only a drop in the bucket when compared to Facebook’s 1.9 billion users. But what Zuckerberg provides is stability. As Facebook grows possibly to be the first company to be worth $1 trillion, the photo-sharing site is bound to be carried along.
Below are some tips on how to leverage the platform in marketing your business:
1. Use Instagram Insights
Just like Facebook Insights, there’s a tool in Instagram which is invaluable to any business, providing important metrics such as the number of times your post or video has been viewed (impressions), the number of clicks your link is getting, how many followers you are getting daily, and more. The results of this tool also include demographic info, which indicates the gender and age of your followers. This gives you a quick peek into the general profile of your followers so you can customize your marketing campaign to match their preferences.
2. Engage Your Followers
Followers, particularly die-hard fans of a particular brand, like to be rewarded for their loyalty. This is why businesses should also assign an administrator to reply to relevant comments if they can’t do it themselves. Your customers will appreciate that their voices are being heard whether they’re giving suggestions or expressing complaints. It’s also good to follow your followers back to learn about their tendencies, likes, travels, hobbies, and any information you can use for your own benefit.
3. Link Your Instagram Page to Your Website
Some businesses don’t connect their websites to their official Instagram account and vice versa. This is a lost opportunity for further marketing. You should also avoid flooding your page with photos of your products. Instead, use it as an opportunity to show the “human side” of your business. Buzzfeed is well-known for using its employees in its videos. As a result, traffic has gone up because viewers now relate more to the company because they know the people behind it. Don’t forget to add the location to your photos and videos for geo-tagging or search engine optimization.
4. Contests and Rewards
Small tokens are a great way to reward your followers. You can hold contests like who can write the best caption or description for a photo or video that you share. You can also ask your customers to send their best photos during holidays or special occasions like Mother’s Day. This type of marketing campaign is considered “low-cost, high-reward.”
5. Make Hashtags More Relevant
Industry specific hashtags in Instagram marketing are a given, but try to find your niche in the industry to distinguish yourself from all the companies out there. There are websites such asSoldsie that help businesses tweak their hashtags for optimization. It’s important that your hashtag is related to the image or video to prevent it from being categorized as spam. Piggybacking on trending hashtags is also a good idea, but make sure you don’t overdo it.
One more thing to consider is timing. This is very important for Instagram marketing. Whereas peak hours will yield you more traffic (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), sharing your post after 5 p.m. EST will likely result in more engagement. If your marketing campaign is geared for other businesses, weekdays would be a good time to go online. Posting at 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. would be worthless as this has been found to be the worsttime for engagement.
Twitter announced a useful new tool today that helps businesses better connect with customers and community. Twitter Dashboard is a free iOS app as well as a desktop platform that is designed to become the Twitter platform for business. The Dashboard is especially helpful for small businesses which don’t have the use of expensive third party tools or outside consultants to manage their Twitter image and Twitter related marketing. Twitter is hoping that the Dashboard encourages business owners to engage with Twitter more and make Twitter more mainstream in their marketing.
The Twitter Dashboard provides businesses a clear view of what’s being said about them at any given time via a custom feed so that business owners can react and engage authentically in realtime. The app also lets a business schedule Tweets, edit Tweets and provide analytics related to the businesses use of Twitter. The idea is to help business owners and others working in a small business the opportunity to react and communicate with their customers quickly whether in the office or out.
One idea Twitter posted about is for small businesses to schedule Tweet tips related to their business in order help start the conversation and engage their followers. For example:
“If you work at a restaurant, a tip like, “Your team is as unique as your business. Tweet a surprising fact about one of your team members,” might remind you to share some recent recognition your chef received. Or, if you’re an interior designer, seeing, “Share the love. Like and Retweet kind words from your customers,” might prompt you to Retweet a customer’s excited reaction to one of your recent projects.”
Twitter asked some businesses to comment on how they would integrate Twitter Dashboard into their marketing:
Being able to easily schedule Tweets and manage my queue with Twitter Dashboard is critical to staying on track with our engagement campaigns on Twitter.
Logan Robinson, Social Media Manager, @GarnetandGold:
From our first use we could tell Twitter Dashboard would become an essential tool for our business. Not only is scheduling Tweets now a seamless experience, but having access to a custom timeline is helping us identify the best opportunities to engage with our customers and potential customers on Twitter. — Jeff Kitchen, Online Community Manager @Crutchfield
I recently wrote a long post looking at different types of content (mostly from social media) that you can embed on your blog. I remembered that you could embed pins from Pinterest, which I don’t think I’ve ever actually done, but wanted to include it nonetheless. When I went to Pinterest to grab an example, I realized the share button (which used to include the embed code option) had changed.
That wasn’t the only thing I noticed. It also used to include a Twitter option, but now seemed to be exclusively for Facebook. I don’t know how long this has been the case. While I cover Pinterest news on a fairly regular basis, I just don’t really use the service that way, so if that’s old news, please forgive me for bringing it up.
There is another change with the share button, however, which must be relatively recent, as it was brought to my attention in an email newsletter from veteran Pinterest marketer Vincent Ng, whom we recently spoke with about Pinterest marketing tactics. He says it was brought to his attention by Anna Vanlandingham of Pinterest Pro Solutions. The change makes it easier to share content from Pinterest to Facebook Pages, which should be helpful for social media marketers.
As Ng explains, “In the past you weren’t able to pin directly from Pinterest to a Facebook page within the Pinterest platform. (Boo!) But now all you can. (Yeah!) All you need to do is log into the desktop version of Pinterest. Click on the pin you want to share and have it pop up. Then click on the ‘Share’ button at the top right corner and choose the tab ‘Page You Manage.’ From there you choose the page you want to post to.”
The functionality essentially reflects that of the Facebook share button everywhere else, enabling you to post to your own timeline, to a page you manage, or even to a group or in a private message.
Here’s what the pin from the screenshot above looks like when shared on a Facebook page. It maintains the title and description from the pin itself.
“This will save you lots of time in cross promoting your pins onto Facebook,” says Ng. “This is one of those great tactics that can help you grow your Pinterest following and make your Facebook marketing more visual.”
This week, Pinterest itself announced the launch of a new “Pin It” flow to make saving things faster and easier. The functionality was built by the team from Icebergs, which Pinterest acquired last summer.
The company also released some growth stats as it just turned five years old. Notably, 2/3 of pins come from business sites.
A shockingly low percentage of brands are using Instagram despite its potential for excellent engagement, according to Yesmail study we recently looked at. That will likely change over time, but for the time being, brands have a great deal to gain in a space that is significantly less crowded than Facebook.
Socialbakers has put together a new set of statistics about Instagram engagement. According to the firm, 6% of all Instagram posts were videos in 2014.
“That may not sound like much, but it’s a 600% growth rate year-on-year,” writes Socialbakers’ Alexandria McCulloch. “We took a look at more than 2,000 brand, media, and celebrity profiles and analyzed over 600,000 brand and media posts to get a clear picture of 2014 on Instagram.
Here’s a look at average profile interactions on the top 10 most engaging profiles across the celebrity, media, and brand categories.
“According to the data, celebrities received 3× more interactions than the most engaging brands,” says McCulloch. “Notice here that the top brands and media are garnering similar levels of interactions. With so much talk about the changes in the News Feed on Facebook, this demonstrates that Instagram is somewhat of an equalizer among other platforms in terms of interactions.”
Indeed Facebook’s News Feed changes are driving brands to Instagram.
“Facebook’s News Feed algorithm restricts the organic reach of content on the platform, and is particularly punishing for brands with large followings (500k+),” says L2 in its recent Instagram Intelligence Report. In contrast, Instagram communities defy gravity, with no negative correlation between a brand’s follower count and engagement rate.”
Brands’ follower counts grew 26 percent overall last year, according to that.
While video on Instagram may be on the rise, it’s still largely a photo sharing service, and photos get the highest volume of interactions at 13% on average, according to Socialbakers.
Have you considered how brands are using Instagram’s filters? Believe it or not, most aren’t even using them. Take a look at this:
“81% brands’ photos are posted under a normal filter (#nofilter) – which indicates that they’re probably already touched-up or altered in another third party program before being uploaded to Instagram,” writes McCulloch. “Importantly, it also shows that brands care more about the network than the actual photo-editing capabilities. Brands know their Instagram followers are more interested in beautiful images that tell a story than any filter or shadow alterations.”
The research shows the services, alcohol, auto, retail, and beauty industries use filters more often than others, and that brands are only stylizing their videos 10% of the time.
Here’s a look at average engagement rate by the length of the text that accompanies a post:
And here’s how brands are using hashtags on Instagram:
So why aren’t more brands taking advantage of Instagram?
Bob Sybydlo, Director, Market Intelligence and Deliverability at Yesmail tells WebProNews, “Instagram is still a fairly new platform, and is late in the advertising game – the platform introduced sponsored posts just two years ago. It’s possible that before 2013, marketers didn’t view Instagram as a must-have, but rather as a nice to have. As engagement and users increase, I have no doubt that we’ll see more brands adopt the platform.”
It comes as no surprise that Pages and Groups also have drawbacks. For example, it’s a well-known fact 
. It’s simply word-of-mouth.
