New Social Media Commerce Tools Will Have Bigger Role in 2015

The primary attraction for businesses using social media has traditionally been the ability to organically grow their audience and raise brand awareness on the platforms. However, with Facebook’s blunt announcement that organic reach is on the decline, if brands want to be visible on user newsfeeds, they will now have to pay to be seen. Businesses are faced with the reality that dominant social media platforms have become oversaturated with content from businesses of all sizes, with brands generating content faster than users can consume them.

With the increase in sponsored posts and paid ads on Twitter, brands are now also competing with news companies for visibility. This is not particularly surprising coming from Twitter, a company that wants to redefine itself as an alternative news platform, with their combination of personal communication and real- time newsfeed a remarkably useful tool for those working in the media and entertainment industry.

In response, Facebook and Twitter have both announced the arrival of new commerce tools, designed to give businesses a ‘call to action’ option that will help to drive sales through social media. Twitter has also moved to give businesses more flexibility when paying for advertising, and according to Forbe.com’s Jayson DeMers:

“These objective-based campaigns, which are still currently in beta, will offer more flexibility including tweet engagements, website clicks or conversions, app installs, new followers and leads. These campaigns will be particularly appealing to small business owners who want to pay for results, not just for brand visibility.”

It is early days yet, and businesses are sure to be testing this option out this holiday season, however it also represents a shift in how businesses may now view the role of social media in their marketing/PR strategies.There is a new focus on social marketing, with marketers using social media to drive “sales over status updates and commerce over engagement.”

The average holiday consumer is now more likely to go to social media for information that will influence their purchasing decision, and Facebook and Twitter’s new ‘buy’ buttons would help facilitate smooth online transactions. If Facebook and Twitter’s new commerce capabilities prove to be useful for marketers, this may help to counteract the growing difficulty of organic reach experienced by businesses this year.

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11 Rules You Must Follow to Be a LinkedIn Marketing Master

At my company, Fusion Marketing Partners, we have a policy of not spending money on marketing or sales. We are “pull” (inbound) marketers to the core and this philosophy has served us well. Of course, we do lots of “push” (outbound) marketing for clients, but we try to move them in the direction of pull marketing in order to drive awareness and leads up and drive new customer acquisition costs down.

While we don’t incur direct marketing or sales expenses, there is definitely a cost in time and effort, and this is the tradeoff you will also have to make if you decide to adopt the pull marketing approach. As a B2B marketer, one of the best social media tools you can use is LinkedIn. It has gained us awareness, leads and revenue, and it can do the same for your company (as well as you as an individual). But to be successful with LinkedIn marketing, you need to follow some important rules, like:

1. Get started now. Lots of people talk about using LinkedIn effectively, but relatively few make it happen. Like most other worthwhile things in life, LinkedIn marketing becomes easier over time. The sooner you get started, the faster you get to the easy part of the deal.
2. Be a combination of the hare and the tortoise. Some Linked practitioners start out slow and stay that way. Others begin with a fast pace but quickly drop off. A better approach is to build up to and maintain a moderate pace. I wrote about this in a 2011 blog post titled Is Social Media a Marathon or a Sprint?
3. Offer value. Make sure your LinkedIn updates include you sharing content or ideas of value to your audience. A bit of humor and motivation are also good, but don’t overdo it.
4. Don’t always be selling. Remember Alec Baldwin in the chalkboard scene from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, where his character is haranguing his sales team and shouting “ABC, Always Be Closing!”  While that philosophy may work in high-pressure sales situations, it does not hold water when you are communicating on LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as a relationship medium first, then a selling medium.
5. Don’t pitch too soon. One of my pet peeves is people who connect with me and immediately try to sell me something. I bet you feel the same way about pushy salespeople. Build a relationship first, then make the offer.  It works better this way.
6. Connect with people. A technology company founder told me that he rejects most connection requests because he only wanted people he knows personally. In my opinion, this is shortsighted. It’s like only talking to people you already know at a cocktail party – you miss out on a lot of interesting opportunities. This is not to say you should connect with everyone.  I probably accept about 60 percent of connect requests.
7. Be visible. Even when you don’t have something pithy to say, you can stay visible by liking, commenting and sharing other people’s updates.  Participating in groups is another way to stay top of mind.
8. Don’t put social items on LinkedIn. Treat this medium as a way to showcase your company and personal attributes, not your personal life. Some examples of things not to talk about or share on LinkedIn:
   1. Photos of your family life (including children, pets, etc.)
   2. Photos of you drinking, partying or out with a group of friends
   3. Your religious or political opinions
   4. Your sports preferences
9. Keep it civil. Never gripe about your employer, employees, partners or customers. For that matter, if you feel the need to disagree or criticize someone else’s update, do so in as gentle a manner as possible.
10. Assume that everyone (yes, everyone!) can see everything you do on LinkedIn. If someone likes, shares or comments on one of your updates, all their followers can see it and it can certainly be copied and/or forwarded. Remember that your current and future employer, spouse, partners and friends will be able to see that irreverent, harsh or negative update that you thought was so clever at the time you posted it.
11. Post your blogs as LinkedIn articles. I leverage many of my blog posts this way and they tend to get very high readership.  Articles are a great to create or extend either your business or personal brand promise.

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Important Instagram Insights and Best Practices for Success

The photo and video sharing social network has proven to be a force to be reckoned with. Not only does it have the photo-editing features people enjoy but has over 200 million active users (MAU). The parent company, Facebook, put all the eggs in the right basket when it acquired the company. Companies or brands have to adopt their own brand of marketing and identity on the platform while respecting the rules of engagement.

What certainly became an internet sensation for fans of Instagram was the addition of the video feature in 2013. This not only dazzled its user base, but marketers certainly found a useful way to present products and services to better target their messages to these masses.

As with any existing social media networking service there are a few strategies to consider and certain practices to stay away from. Whatever the hobby, activity or job-related venture you are currently in chances are you have a story that you can tell with Instagram’s phenomenal visual power.

Instagram milestones and trends in 2013

When the company was initially bought out by Facebook the transaction was met with plenty of skepticism and criticism. Since that time both companies financial status have proved wrong the critics.

According to Mashable Instagram not only looked like a billion dollar company yet it accomplished some impressive metrics in 2013. The 150 million-plus users share 55 million pictures through the app on a daily basis. Look for this activity to continue to grow in 2014 as well.

The top Instagram post goes of course to longtime social media celebrity Justin Bieber. Upon creating an account the young pop star sensation he immediately generate one million likes for his photo posted.

If you feel uncomfortable with using hashtags well get in the habit of using them if you want good organic exposure. The top performing Instagram hashtag was #love in 2013. Other notable categories hashtags to make the ranks included #tbt (throw back Thursday), #friends, #fashion, #food, and #selfie.

Tips and tricks to apply on Instagram

Bearing in mind getting familiarized with social media etiquette comes with moderating the activity and the types of posts you should steer away from. In social media marketing trends change from one year to the next radically so be mindful of the content you are going to share.

According to Thoughtcatalog.com these were the list of trends Instagram that came to mind that you must stop:

• No more than one sixth of your photos should be selfies
• Do not post more than twice a day
• Pictures of food should not exceed 50 percent of your posts
• Do not overuse the black and white filter
• Posting pics of your baby, pet or significant other
• Limit the reposts of inspirational quotes
• Stay away from using words like “bae” and “hipster”
• Do not post pictures from more than one app
• Use hashtags moderately

To succeed on the platform staying away from these practices will certainly give you solid and measurable results. Unlike any other time everyone now has unlimited and uncensored access to posting information about themselves, so balance your professional and personal life on social networks.

Takeaways or benefits of Instagram

Now that you have learned a bit the ropes on how to tackle this social networking service (SNS) there a couple of resources to consider. Each individual social media site has a set of requirements on how to get setup and what specs go into creating an account.

Infographics are all over the web these days, but Visual.ly for example provides plenty of useful cheat sheets for Instagram. Pay attention to this section as it will give you all the specs you need to create a beautifully designed profile.

Growing followers is no easy task unless you have some form of celebrity status or you just invented a revolutionary hack. Telling your own story is definitely start and being original too.

One other area that sometimes comes into debate is the strategy of buying Instagram followers. Even though the practice is heavily discouraged, why is there a category that quantifies how many followers each individual account has?

Each social platform has had their hands full with cracking down on fake accounts, comments or likes these days. But there are a few services out there and let’s face it for a company or brand to take your expertise into consideration the numbers will speak loads.

There is definitely nothing wrong about trying to get a lot of followers quickly. However, do not revolve your business as a scam because anything related to bad publicity travels extremely fast on the web. Find a balance is key if you are considering the purchase of followers.

Nevertheless, do not heavily depend on this method entirely because once you organize a campaign to action the little or no engagement will permanently taint your reputation as a professional. 

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Satisfied Customers Promote Brands on Facebook More Than Any Other Social Network

In Q1, eMarketer predicted that global B2C eCommerce sales will reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2014 (a 20.1% increase over last year) due in part to the growth of Internet availability and a mobile use base in emerging markets. In response, many major brands are extending their reach internationally. This year, Asia Pacific (APAC)consumers are expected to spend the most on eCommerce purchases, surpassing North America for the first time ever.

"Social is an important part of any marketer’s mix. A big portion of our new subscribers comes from a “refer a friend,” and we’re going to continue using our customers’ networks to grow our business." - Barry Judge, CMO of LivingSocial

Last month, eMarketer released its 17-page Social eCommerce Roundup, exploring the impact that social media has in driving sales and brand awareness for retailers online. With over half (54%) of all US residents estimated to use social networking sites at least monthly this year, and the vast majority logging in to  Facebook, the social media giant remains top of mind for eCommerce companies looking to boost their advertising reach.

Here are some highlights from eMarketer's roundup of trends and stats, as well as bonus material from comScore's Pulse of the Online Shopper study:

Facebook still reigns supreme amongst media buyers and users alike

As you can see from the chart above, US digital buyers strongly favor promoting brands and products that they are satisfied with on Facebook over any other social media site, far surpassing second-place Twitter by 52%. The good news for those investing in newsfeed, promoted page posts and right hand side ads? One in five respondents reported that they have used Facebook to make a purchase decision.

These stats should be particularly of interest for brands targeting millennials, as this younger demographic is heavily influenced by peer recommendations and opinions. Keep in mind, the appeal of Facebook's ads is also social context; if a shopper "likes" a brand's page, connected friends and family will see this "like" when viewing the brand's ads on desktop and mobile.

Paid advertising is not the only way that brands are engaging consumers. Including social media sharing buttons and soliciting consumer reviews on website landing pages are easy ways eCommerce companies can build more of a relationship with online shoppers and build trust, turning media channels into not just a marketplace but a research tool for other consumers. Referral programs, loyalty bonuses and free sample incentives are also popular methods.

Business Insider came out with a staggering figure in August: $4 trillion in items will be abandoned in shopping carts this year. Here's one potential reason why: as purchasing incentives go, it turns out free shipping heavily influences consumer decisions. Of comScore's consumer study respondents, 58% revealed that they have spent more on an order just to get free shipping, and 30% admitted they have delayed making a purchase until free shipping was offered.

Another reason could simply be that mobile purchasing technology has not been able to keep up with the explosive growth of mobile use. Online shoppers still cite desktop computers as their go-to resource for research, and 41% of respondents prefer a retailer's website over its mobile counterpart (34) or app (25%).

With the back to school season once again around the corner, and the holidays not far behind, eCommerce companies are in prime position to see their strongest two quarters of the year, provided they pay attention to consumer behavior across all digital channels and adapt accordingly. Meanwhile, as devices, targeting methods and ad types continue to evolve, Facebook advertising remains a steady bet.

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Super Effective Facebook Advertising

On Facebook’s tenth birthday the platform boasts more than 1.9 billion active users, with 802 million people logging in daily and five new profiles created every second. The massive and diverse audience makes the social media channel a goldmine for businesses. Any good marketer knows you need to reach your target audience where they spend their time and the statistics tell us that for the majority of businesses that is on Facebook. How can you ignore a platform your grandma, cousin, the postman and your dad all use .

Why Facebook Advertising?

There are now more than 30 million brands using Facebook to connect with their target audience. And with the increased popularity of the platform and fierce competition for consumer attention, Facebook is moving towards a pay to play model, makingFacebook advertising crucial to your digital marketing success in 2014 and beyond. Whilst Facebook’s efforts to make us pay to reach their audience has left a lot of marketers scathing – I am not too concerned because in terms of ‘bang for buck’, Facebook is more cost effective than any other advertising medium:

• The platform delivers more return on investment (ROI) to reach 1000 people than any of its competition


• Facebook ads have the potential to reach as many people as radio or TV advertising, but with far superior targeting capabilities


• The depth of social profiling and behavioural data Facebook has is eons ahead of any other platform (barring Google)


• And you don’t need a Hollywood movie budget, you can get results for as little as $1 per day

Today, I am going to let you in on 3 proven Facebook advertising strategies that will help you maximise your social media return on investment.

1. Use News Feed Placed Ads rather than Right Hand Side Placed Ad’s

Let’s put our consumer hat’s on for a minute. Why do you log in to Facebook? To enjoy the advertising? I would place a safe bet to say the answer’s no. You log in to connect with friends, be entertained or source valuable information. Therefore, what advertisement would get your attention? One that was delivered in context with the user experience (a news feed placed ad) or one on the peripheral of the page (right hand side ad). With any advertising the first aim should be to get the consumers attention and to do that you need to deliver advertising in context with the user experience. Remember, no matter how good your ad is without the consumer’s attention you have nothing!

Also, news feed placed ads are the only ad type that appear on mobile devices. With mobile internet usage surpassing desktop internet usage by the end of the year- Mobile optimised ads will play a huge role in your Facebook Advertising Success.

The Statistics

According to Marine Software Social Index report from Q2-Q3 2013:

• News feed ads attained a 44 x higher click through rate (CTR) than right hand side placed ads


• Newsfeed ads attained a 5x higher click through rate (CTR) than right hand side placed ads


• Newsfeed ads achieve 67% lower cost per click than right hand side ads


• Newsfeed ads achieve 64% lower cost per acquisition than right hand side placed ads

My Recommendations

• Invest the largest portion of your Facebook Advertising budget in news feed placed ads


• Advertise published content with high organic engagement (shares, likes, clicks) through newsfeed placed ad’s


• For additional targeting functionality and better return on investment Create page post ads through the ad manager tool instead of ‘boosting posts’ (to do this you have to go into Facebook’s power editor or ad campaign manager )

2.Use Custom Audience Targeting

Facebook’s new custom audiences feature allows you to deliver advertising to prospects that you already have a relationship with elsewhere. You can upload email lists, phone number lists, Google+ circles, app user or Facebook Id’s and serve targeted advertising to these consumers. As email open rates are declining, uploading your email list and serving advertising through Facebook can be a perfect way to regain these consumers attention. Remember, attention is key, without it you are marketing to crickets.

Another effective tool within custom audience’s is Facebook’s remarketing feature. Once you install the Facebook remarketing Pixel on your website you can build custom audience’s based on your website visitors activity, which you can later use to serve ads too.

Remarketing to website visitors who have abandoned the sales or conversion process delivers exceptional results – if it’s done properly. For successful Facebook remarketing the key is to provide a compelling reason for the consumer to complete the sales process, whether that be a discount or a special offer. For example, an online fashion retailer could serve a news feed ad with a free shipping or discount code to those who have “abandoned cart” on their website. If you think about the psychology of why someone will abandon the sales process at the checkout, it is usually price related.

The Statistics

• Custom audience re-targeting has a 14% lower cost per click (CPC) than category or interest based targeting alone


• Custom audience re-targeting has a 64% lower cost per conversion than category based targeting alone


• Ad- creative using custom re-targeting has conversion rates 3.87x greater than ad creative using demographic or category-based targeting options alone.

My Recommendations

• Segment your custom audiences well. Email Addresses should be one (audience), mobile phone numbers should be one (audience), app user IDs and Google+ circles should all be separate audiences


• Advertise published content with high organic engagement (shares, likes, clicks) through newsfeed placed ad’s


• Use custom audiences to reach existing email segments that you can cross and upsell your other services to. This will only work if you have customer lists that are segmented based on their action (newsletter sign-up, lead form and specific product purchase). This enables you to serve targeted communication to prospects based on their position in the sales funnel


• Upload the segment of your email list that never open emails and regain their attention through compelling ad creative on Facebook


• Create a remarketing audience for consumers who fall off your sales or conversion (blog sign up) completion page. Target these people with a compelling reason to go back and complete the process

3. Use rotating ad creative to maximise click through rates (CTR)

If you frequent Facebook I am sure you have been overexposed to an advertisement before. Eventually you become that frustrated by it you will go out of your way not to buy from that company (this is the extreme). The technical term for this is ad fatigue – meaning there is an optimum “ad frequency” you should expose your target audience to and anything over this will have a negative impact on your brand. It is important to also understand that if you over expose your target audience to advertising, click through rates will drop (Percentage of those exposed v those who have clicked) and Facebook will only keep an advertisement in its newsfeed with high click through rates, thus impressions (eyeballs on the advertisement) will naturally suffer.

The solution is creating an ad rotation strategy to keep ad creative (images and ad copy) fresh and click through rates high. As seen below, the two most important metrics to monitor are frequency and CTR’s. As frequency (the average number of times people saw your ad) increases and CTR starts to drop dramatically you should change the ad. As a rule of thumb you shouldn’t let ad frequency get over 5, but you should monitor the relationship between CTR and Frequency and set a standard for ad rotation within your company. This standard may change from campaign to campaign.

The Statistics

• Direct Response Campaigns using automated creative rotation produce 35% higher CTR’s than those that don’t use automated creative rotation


• Direct Response campaigns using automated creative rotation produce 38% lower cost per clicks than those that don’t use automated creative rotation


• Direct Response campaigns using automated creative rotation produce 34% lower cost per acquisition than those


• Fan acquisition campaigns using automated ad creative rotation produce 60% higher CTR’s than those that don’t use creative ad rotations


• Fan Acquisition Campaigns using creative rotations deliver 75% lower cost per fan than those that don’t use creative ad rotations

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Is Your Facebook Contest Legal?

As more small businesses get involved with Facebook, they’re using contests to engage more of their followers. Unfortunately, not all businesses follow Facebook’s official rules and guidelines for contents; in some cases, failure to follow these guidelines can put businesses at risk of having their Facebook page removed from the social network altogether.

Thankfully, Facebook has loosened its rules for contests and promotions over the last few years. Previously, Facebook forbade business users from any contests that required users to like or comment on a post, forcing them to turn to third-party apps to run their contests. Now there are fewer limitations on businesses, and you can even use Facebook advertising to make your contest reach more Facebook users’ News Feeds.

Still, local marketing experts say it’s important to make sure that any contest or promotion you develop is legal before your business launches it.

Here is a quick guide from local social media marketing experts about what’s legal and what’s not:

What’s Not Legal

·       Requiring users to share your Page to enter the contest

·       Requiring users to like your Page to enter the contest

·       Enabling users to enter a contest by tagging themselves in a photo

·       Requiring users to enter by liking another Page

·       Allow contest participants to receive additional entries by sharing information about the contest on a friend’s timeline

What Is Legal

·       Requiring users to like or comment on a post to enter

·       Requiring users to post on your Page or send a message to your Page to enter

·       Requiring users to like a Page so that they can complete a contest entry form

·       Vote for other participants by liking a photo, post or comment

·       Notifying winners through a status update or Facebook comment

Tips for Your Facebook Contest

One of the simplest ways to run a Facebook contest is to post a photo and contest details and ask followers to enter by commenting on the post. For example, you might have a new product that needs a name, and you can get users involved in the process by submitting their creative ideas. The winner in this case might receive the product for free. As people comment on the post, the contest will get more exposure.

While this method is simple and low-cost, it may be best for larger companies that can afford to spend a little money to use an application that enables them to collect email addresses and other useful data. Also, using an application can make it easier to manage large-scale campaigns.

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How to Effectively Use Hashtags for Maximum Engagement

Hashtags. When used properly, they are a kind of glue that can hold your social media marketing campaigns together across networks and bring you new business. When used improperly, they can be the most annoying thing about social media, period. So what are the right and wrong ways to use them? The first thing you need to understand is that simply placing a hashtag in front of words doesn't make those words any more powerful. In fact, it can make them less powerful in some situations. There aren't many hard and fast rules for using them, but data suggests that there are a few guidelines you should definitely follow if you want to increase your SMM success rather than be #completelyannoying.

A Unifying Force

The beauty of hashtags is their simplicity and their ability to unify your campaigns across social networks, your website, TV advertising, and more. Almost every commercial you see on television today has a hashtag displayed on the screen somewhere, which is a way for the brand to let you know that if you search for that hashtagged phrase online you will find out more information about whatever they are promoting. That could be a product, a service, a fund or donation drive, or just about anything else. While the hashtag started on Twitter, it has spread to every other social network and well beyond, becoming a staple of modern marketing. 

Twitter: The Originator

It started on Twitter and it continues to be a driving force there, with trending topics almost always beginning with #. Although it's now been cited more times than some can count, the research on Twitter hashtags can't be overstated. According to it, tweets with one or two hashtags doubles the chances of engagement. Be careful though, because if you exceed two hashtags in a tweet your chances of engagement actually drop by 17%. There's a fine line between 2 and 3 with Twitter hashtags. It's also important to note how "engagement" is defined in this research. Only 22% of engagement with a brand's tweets are replies. However, 78% are retweets and a whopping 92% are link clicks. So if you include an appropriate hashtag or two in your tweets as a brand, you are massively increasing the chances of exposure and click-throughs on the site. Going from 10 to 20 - in retweets or link clicks - is a huge deal. Surprisingly, only about one quarter of the tweets they measured included hashtags in them. Now that you know the research, you'd be foolish not to implement it immediately. As a side note, Pinterest uses hashtags the same way that Twitter and Facebook do. There isn't much else to say about that, except that they are the second largest social site in the US in number of users and the highest revenue-generating social site for businesses hands down. Probably worth remembering...

Facebook: Proceed with Caution

Facebook is another story entirely. Yes, they allow hashtags and yes, people use them. Way too much. In fact, three months after adopting the practice research that used EdgeRank information found that Facebook posts with hashtags had less engagement than those without.

Further studies from earlier this year show that, similar to Twitter, less hashtags mean more engagement. This means that using hashtags on Facebook is like a double-edged sword, and requires testing out your practices to see how your target audience responds. Concluding that you shouldn't use them on Facebook at all is probably not the best answer, since you lose the cross-network cohesion that will serve you better in the long run. Just keep them to one or two, just like Twitter, and use them wisely and purposefully rather than just for the fun of it.

Google+: #blackops

I know that there are probably some out there who are tired of hearing me prattle on about how great Google+ is. Especially since you don't hear much about it other than the standard line that "no one uses it but Google employees". Get over it. The key point is still, and always will be, that it is slowly but surely becoming the center of Google's universe, which makes it the center of the internet's universe, user count be damned.

Let that sink in a second. If you post on G+, even if you don't use a hashtag, your post is automatically assigned a hashtag and made searchable through the largest search engine in the world. Are you really going to disregard that?Google does more behind the scenes than they do on stage in front of everyone, and the same is true of G+. With hashtags, they are working overtime. Even if you don't use a hashtag in a post on Google+, Google assigns at least one to your post using the post text and the headline of the link if there is one. Then they organize hashtags by category and add them to Google's searchable database, as well as using them to compile trending topics like Twitter and Facebook.

Instagram: Keep 'em Coming

Instagram is an outlier when it comes to hashtags. While the other sites give you a diminishing return if you use more than one or two, on Instagram the rule is the more the merrier. You can load up your pictures with an infinite number of hashtags, and the more you use the more likely you are to get them noticed, liked, and shared. The posts with the highest number of interactions have 11 or more hashtags attached, so go crazy. Go figure.

Choosing and Tracking Hashtags

You don't want to just pick any word or phrase that comes to mind and create a hashtag from it. It's best to know what hashtags are already in use and in what context. It's very possible (it's happened more than once) that you could use a hashtag that you think fits your business or campaign perfectly, only to discover later that someone else has already been using it in a completely different context. Then you've wasted an opportunity.

There are several tools you can use when deciding on a hashtag. Hashtagify.me and RiteTag are good places to start. You can also browse the Twubs hashtag directory to find ideas and what is already in use. If your business benefits from local traffic, Trendsmap will tell you what are the most trending topics in your geographic location. To optimally use hashtags across the social spectrum, nothing is more helpful than a good social media management tool that will give you a single platform for distribution as well as a way to track and analyze your campaigns with reporting.

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Why Outsourcing Social Media Is a Winning Strategy

On average, business owners waste about 4 billion hourseach year dealing with tasks that could easily be delegated to vendors or other employees, yet they work twice as much as their employees. Business strategists recommend delegating as many non-critical tasks as possible to work smarter, not harder.

Outsourcing social media is a winning strategy for maximizing the most of your time without sacrificing the quality of your customer engagement campaigns.

Good for budgets

There’s scarcely a business owner on the planet who isn’t watching the bottom line all the time. Tight budgets mean every penny must be pinched and every dollar squeezed, especially for startups operating on a shoestring.

Unfortunately, in-house media teams are often besieged with runaway costs and overages that eat away at their piece of the budgetary pie. Whether it’s unplanned overtime to cover for a marketing department member whose out sick or the unexpected cost of buying analytics tools to track your progress across social channels, it’s easy to end up in the red before you’ve posted your final Facebook update for the week.

When you outsource your social media, there are no surprise expenses, no last-minute software purchases, and no scrambling to cover gaps in coverage. You know what  your costs are upfront and can plan accordingly, knowing your social accounts are in good hands.

Surround yourself with experts

You know that old adage, business owners don’t need to know everything if they surround themselves with people who are experts in their own field? Bringing in an outside social media team fits this concept perfectly.

Unless you’re running a social media firm, your expertise probably lie in other areas. Just as you’d hire an electrician to wire the fire alarms in your office, so should you hire professionals to handle this unique aspect of your marketing strategy.

Businesses that hand off important social media tasks to a new intern or recent hire are brands that don’t fare as well in social marketing. You don’t need to know everything about the nuts and bolts of social media management as long as you hire a team that does.

Hang in there

Social marketing takes momentum and time to build. It’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t see immediate results, especially when you feel like your time could be better spent working on other ways to grow your business.

Too many small businesses that try social media marketing either don't do it right or don't do it long enough, or both, and then give up, thinking it doesn't work. You can absolutely use social media to drive and track new leads and sales, increased frequency of purchase from current customers, both very hard business metrics, but don't expect this to happen overnight, or over three weeks. Expect to see (and by all means track!) results within six to nine months.

It takes a long time to see results because business owners are pulled in many directions and only have a limited time to devote to making it work. Outsourcing teams have the expertise and ability to groom your social media accounts for solid growth in less time.

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How Businesses Can Improve Their Apps

App creation, in spite of what you might have believed when you first sat down with your coder, is never really done. There are always improvements to be made and concerns to address. There are always things that you can do to improve your buyers’ experiences. How, though, do you figure out what those concerns and improvements are? In this article we will show you 4 things that you can do to make sure that your app’s users have the best experience possible.

1. Customer Feedback

This is the easiest (and, frankly, most obvious) place to start. Pay attention to the ratings and reviews your app receives in the app store. Make sure you read every email you get about a user’s experience. Look for independent reviews online. Don’t, though, wait for people to just volunteer their insights. Come right out and ask for it! Encourage your buyers to send you feedback directly. Tell your buyers that you’re eager for positive as well as negative feedback.

Make sure that it is as easy as possible for app users to send you feedback. You might even build a “send us feedback” option into the app itself. If your feedback rate is low, there is nothing wrong with offering users an incentive for sharing their opinions.

2. Go Back Into Research Mode

You probably did some market research when you were still developing your app idea. You don’t have to limit your market research to your development phase. Remember: life moves pretty fast and what your market was clamoring for six months ago might have changed. Find out what your competitors have been doing to improve the apps they’ve released. You know the drill.

3. Test Test Test

Make sure you thoroughly test out any change you make before releasing it to the public. Do not, however, limit this to formal software testing or QA. Instead, offer your “update” to existing and new customers as a limited edition beta test. People love participating in beta tests. It allows them to test your product (and its updates) for free and make them feel special. It’s a great way to build brand loyalty while simultaneously improving your company’s app.

4. Analytics

Tracking user behavior is not limited to a web based or cloud environment. Tracking user behavior is something that mobile developers do too. App analytics solutions like those at Appsee.com let developers track both small trends like user level analytics and big trends, such as aggregated level  analysis of touch heatmaps and UI analysis.

Just like in a web based environment, this data can tell you things that you would never learn through a survey or independent review. For example, if you notice that 90% of your users are force quitting the app from page X, that might mean that there is a bug in the code that causes the app to freeze on that page. Analytics are like flashlights pointing toward the areas that are most in need of your attention.

Remember: releasing your app does not necessarily mean that all of the work is done. If that was true, we’d all still be using first generation iPhones and OS1. If you want to keep your customers happy (and sell more apps and products) you have to always be looking for ways to improve your buyers’ experiences.

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How To Build Brand Awareness Through Internet Marketing

Are you looking for some effective (yet free) ways to grow your business online? There are many channels (like social media, search engines, blogging, etc.) when it comes to building brand awareness and marketing your products and services on the Internet.

 

Naturally, you might be wondering where you should start or what channels you should use to achieve the best results, right?

 

Sadly, there is no one answer because it varies from business to business.

 

But fret not.

 

Neil Patel created a handy infographic that proposes some tips on how to build brand awareness for your company through internet marketing.

 

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Why Facebook Advertising is Winning

The latest Facebook advertising changes are a fairly momentous shift for the platform. After the battle to monetize following the IPO, Zuckerberg’s team finally seem to all be pulling in the same direction. With product and advertising teams all working towards the same goals, the advertising offering has been refined, and immensely improved.

 

The problem for many people with Facebook advertising was that it was either too complicated to set up properly, or that the ongoing management didn’t seem to work as campaigns started to tail off in performance and react in a more unpredictable way than Google AdWords and other platforms. 

 

However, Facebook advertising is well worth investing time and money in. It does take a bit of getting use to in terms of how to optimise campaigns, correct set up practices, and appropriate targeting sets and creative. When you begin to understand how to create and maintain successful campaigns, the results can be quite astonishing.

 

Facebook is often seen as more of a non-buying/converting environment, whereas Google paid search is where the ability to bid based on search intent is meant to generate higher levels of sales. Whilst you can target people who have searched “buy Nike shoes” at that moment on Google, on Facebook you can target people who like Nike, are in the target demographic, and using custom audiences, you could target people who potentially have bought before. But, Google gives the real time desire and intent of their search. Facebook’s audience is more passive, but the advantage is you can show strong imagery to sell product or promote a service.

 

Take one of our current clients for instance. We’re running campaigns on AdWords and on Facebook simultaneously. The goal is to get people to convert through a booking system with a target cost per acquisition of £10. We initially allocated a higher budget to AdWords as the product in question was thought to be something where search intent would be more important than the display capabilities of Facebook with a more passive audience. We were wrong. 

 

Facebook is massively outperforming the AdWords campaign, with a cost per acquisition of £6.20, as compared to AdWords at £9.50. Whilst both are hitting the target cost, the volume of conversions through Facebook is also much higher. 

 

The reason for this is, whilst the conversion rate is slightly lower through the Facebook ads compared to the clickthrough rate, the number of clicks for the budget is much higher as the cost-per-click levels are lower. In essence, the lower competition and bid thresholds on Facebook allow you to sacrifice conversion rate slightly in order to drive more traffic and generate a higher volume of conversions at a lower CPA.

 

We’re seeing this trend across all types of campaigns. From ecommerce store sales, to classified ad bookings, to getting people to apply for a job on a recruitment site and more.

 

The key is to segment and target your Facebook advertising in the right way. Facebook’s system has incredible targeting capabilities based on the amount of data they hold on their users. Whether you want to target previous customers, people by age, gender, relationship status, job, education level, life stage, or pages that they like, there’s a targeting option to suit your needs.

 

Start by understanding your audience – what kind of user will convert best for you and what do they look like in terms of their interest profile, and other key aspects on Facebook that you can target by. Use Facebook insights, your CRM, Google Analytics, and Audience Insights as a starting point to understand your audience. From a position of understanding you are able to better create targeting sets that will make sense for your business, make full use of the targeting options available, and most importantly – convert.

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Google+ Tools Every Marketer Should Use

Social media marketers benefit greatly from tools that help automate aspects of their daily marketing functions. Each social media platform has a variety of tools available either from the network itself or from a third-party provider.

As the social layer to all of Google’s offerings online, Google+ is made up of many different features that at times can be cumbersome to properly manage. With the many Google+ tools available that add to its functionality, it’s easy to get confused as to which options are best for your needs.

Here are some of the best tools marketers can use to effectively manage a Google+ page.

1. Google’s +Post Ads

Now available to all advertisers, +Post ads enable a company to incorporate a post from their Google+ page as a display ad online. Any page with more than a thousand followers can use this feature to integrate engaging content into their existing display ad campaigns to help promote an upcoming Hangout on Air, a new product line, visuals already shared with their Google+ audience and more.

A user can expand one of these +Post ads across the web and interact with the content in real-time, which helps your Google+ content reach in front of a much larger, target audience online. An advertiser only has to pay when a person engages with the ad, not when they see it and pass it by.

Use +Post ads to drive additional awareness and interaction with your content, especially your Hangouts on Air, because participants can engage in a Q&A, leave comments and view the broadcast from an ad across the Web.

2. YouTube Integration

Another Google-owned social network, YouTube is deeply integrated with Google+ making it a helpful tool to build your social presence on both channels. Whenever you’re hosting a Hangout on Air on Google+, a YouTube video will be created after the event is over that will then live on your YouTube channel and will appear on the video tab of your Google+ page. It’s important to also share this video on your Google+ page and other social networks so that those who missed it can still watch your video.

This integration of your YouTube channel and Google+ page is fairly simple (see video below). It’s important to use YouTube as a tool to grow your Google+ following because it’s another way of getting your video content to your audience wherever they are most active.

3. Buffer App

The widely used social media management tool Buffer is a helpful resource for pre-scheduling your Google+ page content. Even though many third-party social media scheduling tools on Google+ are available, Buffer stands out from the rest because of its robust set of features and easy-to-use interface to suit the needs of all levels of marketers. The tool enables you to schedule content for your Google+ page, while also balancing the content scheduled across other social platforms as well.

Buffer enables you to share videos and photos as part of your scheduled Google+ posts to drive deeper engagement from a page’s following. The best feature of Buffer is the ability to set the times you wish to post content on a network ahead of time on a schedule. Your content will automatically get posted at those specific times. This enables you to schedule content on a regular basis.

4. All My + Statistics

An extremely helpful tool for visualizing statistics, trends and other actionable data about your Google+ activity on your page is All My + Statistics. This free measurement tool helps visualize key aspects of your company’s activity on Google+ in charts and graphs that highlight your page’s activity per post, your most popular content, timelines of your activity and posting behaviors, all the photos shared on your page, each member of your audience and more.

This tool can be used on any Google+ page or profile, which makes it an excellent way to analyze what competitors in and outside of your industry are doing on Google+.

Simply copy and paste the URL to your own page or the page of a competitor to get a deeper understanding of what’s happening with their Google+ content. These insights can help your business understand what times are better for posting content, what content typically performs better on your page, the increase or decrease of engagement on your page’s content over time and more.

5. SoundCloud

The audio platform SoundCloud has a deep integration with Google+ enabling you to easily embed audio files directly onto your page and into the feed of your following. It’s important to share a variety of media with your audience on Google+ and audio is an excellent way to help provide different content directly from your page.

Whether you’re sharing music, your company’s podcast, the spoken version of written content or the audio transcript from a recent event, offering audio-focused content to your Google+ audience is an effective way to stand out from the noise.

Simply paste a link on Google+ to a SoundCloud track and it will automatically embed in your post. Experiment with sharing SoundCloud content on your Google+ page to see if your audience is interested in interacting with this type of media generated or curated by your business.

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