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Do you wish you had a better plan for your social media marketing initiatives? Looking for tips to help you succeed? In this article, you’ll discover how to choose, pursue, and track your progress for four important social media marketing goals....
If there is one entrepreneur who knows the real value of building social relationships, and how they can extend into the world of social media, it’s health and fitness mogul Andy Frisella: founder of Supplement Superstores, Paradise Distribution, and the renowned fitness brand 1st Phorm International. These brands, among others, bring in more than $100 million a year.
How?
He has built a true community....
In a platform world, publishers face tough decisions on where to place their resources. In August, The Economist faced this head on and axed its ailing Pinterest and Tumblr accounts while ramping up its commitment to LinkedIn.
The publisher had been experimenting on Pinterest for the past six months. But even with a social media team that had grown from two to 10 people, The Economist couldn’t make it click. “From day one, it was a struggle,” said Denise Law, community editor at The Economist. “We found it difficult to articulate what our raison d’être for Pinterest was. It’s not the place to share serious content; it’s more where people go to share ideas.”
For Pinterest, The Economist was posting pieces from 1843, its culture and lifestyle magazine, then called Intelligent Life. Articles from travel blog Gulliver’s Travels were also going there, as well as pieces from its archives and links to items from The Economist Store. But it was gaining no traction. When it cut the account, it had 5,000 followers. “Not enough to move the needle,” said Law, adding that its Tumblr account shared the same fate. Earlier this year, The Economist also culled a number of its Twitter accounts.here's
The Economist’s approach to social media is, according to the publisher, to promote quality over quantity. It’s taken that mission to LinkedIn, which it uses for brand awareness rather than to drive traffic. By tweaking its approach to publish a broader spectrum of content, The Economist saw its LinkedIn follower count grow from half a million last year to 2.4 million, and it continues to grow at a rate of 25,000 followers a week, according to Law....
Perhaps most reflective of this has been the award-winning juggernaut of REI's #OptOutside campaign, which won the Titanium Grand Prix on Saturday. If for some reason you weren't one of its 6.7 billion media impressions, essentially the company closed its doors on Black Friday, encouraging its employees and everyone else to get out into the outdoors. Beyond the ad, starring REI chief exec Jerry Stritzke introducing the idea from a wide-open office, the brand also created a helpful online guide to hiking trails and other outdoor activities around the U.S.
By encouraging us to drop out of the annual shopping day, the outdoor retailer aims for more sales and brand loyalty. The company said the brand's social media impressions went up 7,000%, with 2.7 billion media impressions in 24 hours, while overall the campaign attracted 6.7 billion media impressions, 1.2 billion social impressions, and got more than 1.4 million people to spend the day outdoors. Meanwhile, more than 150 other companies joined REI to close their doors on Black Friday, and hundreds of state parks opened up for free.
If Cannes is the ad and marketing industry's Oscars, than this is arguably Best Picture. The Titanium category is meant to honor work that breaks new ground, crosses boundaries, and pushes the industry forward. The win adds to the campaign's Media and Promotions Grand Prix, picked up earlier in the week, and its run of wins at other industry awards like the D&ADs, and Best of Show at the One Show awards in May....
Not planning for your social media campaign can be a disaster for your business.
A social media campaign can deliver great results. It can also deliver really poor results and waste your money. What causes them to fail?
Not using cat videos… ha ha…
Ignoring cat videos, what really causes them to fail?
Planning....
Wondering how to use Medium for business? Want to use Medium to engage with prospects? Medium’s Letters feature lets you communicate directly with prospects so you can build meaningful relationships with them. In this article you’ll discover how to use Letters on Medium to nurture leads....
As social media becomes less shiny, many of our clients are realizing that social media success relies on having a content marketing plan.
While we’ve been hired to come in and “do” social media, our constant gentle push about sharing stories through original content (read: the RIGHT content for our customers) is finally being felt.
Our biggest client came to us this month ready to tackle the reason social media exists in the first place: storytelling. More specifically, telling their story in such a way that the consumer aligns with, trusts, and recognizes the brand.
While putting together their agenda, I thought it may be helpful to share so everyone can get clear on their content marketing plan or agenda for 2016....
One of the major theses we employ in our social media strategy process is this: Companies should focus more on how to BE social, and less on how to DO social media.
With all the new tools and platforms constantly emerging, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking about social media through a tactical prism instead of a strategic one. The best social media strategic plans are tools-agnostic, and set forth objectives and metrics that supersede any particular social venue....
So what are the digital marketing trends that could destroy your business if you don’t start now? You can be sure that your savvy competitors will be getting in on the digital action! So it’s time to beat them to the punch. And you can’t ignore the looming reality that the new start-ups will also disrupt....
The content marketing space is an ever-evolving environment. Staying abreast of what’s on the SEO horizon is essential to being successful on the web. As a content marketing strategist, I need to know what works now, and what hasn’t work in the past, so I can provide my clients with the most up to date recommendations that will generate the highest value.
In reality, I’m often the go-to resource on all things SEO for my busy clients. And sometimes, I get cringe-worthy questions about marketing practices I know my clients shouldn’t be using. To be clear: These questions aren’t unwelcome because it’s a nuisance to answer them or provide information, but because it ignites a concern that marketers are investing in content marketing for the wrong reasons.
Here are five questions a strategist never wants you to ask (and what they should tell you if they’re looking out for your best marketing interests!)...
Brand messages are validated with each and every person who reads or interacts with them. A PR professional must not only create successful content and campaigns for clients but also expand his or her personal brand through building influence among fans, followers, clients and other PR professionals.
Doing so requires just as much effort as securing your client’s news in print. Several tools and resources can make it easier to show off your communications expertise.
Here are five ways you can show off—and build—your influence online:...
This round-up of pro social media hacks comes from fourteen hard-hitting social media pros.
Use these 15 helpful and actionable social optimization tricks to boost your engagement, productivity, revenue, and following....
With both competitors and potential customers constantly online, digital marketing channels are quickly outpacing traditional channel strategies. Simply put, digital marketing is essential in today’s fast-paced environment, and more marketers plan to invest.
So which channels are top of mind for marketers this year? According to a survey by Strong View, marketers plan to increvase spend in the following areas: - Email Marketing 67% - Social Media 48.9% - Mobile Marketing 40.2% - Search (SEO / PPC) 38.3%...
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With the caveat in the section above–that we’re often doing a little of both–and some informal polling of many esteemed marketers I know, here is where I’ve landed on social marketing vs. content marketing. Social marketing is a channel where we find potential customers by listening to earned conversations and analyzing our owned accounts. We then interact with those people to move them through the customer journey. You can use various tactics to make that movement happen. Content marketing is a tactic. It’s a method of marketing that allows companies to add value for potential customers by creating and distributing (sometimes through social) collateral like blog posts, videos, and web pages. These pieces of collateral entertain and educate your target audience about topics related to your product. They’re intended to generate interest in your offering by reinforcing relevant problems, challenges, misconceptions, and, finally, solutions....
Now that we're well into 2017, are you checking items off your marketing to-do list? Or, like many of us procrastinators, do you have a to-do list that consists of just one item: "Make 2017 marketing to-do list"? If the latter is the case, IBM has you covered. The software company has put together an infographic guide to help marketers prioritize their efforts this year, and it also explains the benefits that each idea can have on your program. For example, stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts or figures alone, the infographic claims, and it gives tips on how to captivate your audience with better stories this year....
When you create landing pages, sometimes you’re forced to make some tough calls — deciding on the type of headline, all the way down to the colors on the page, and CTA button copy. Every single decision has a significant impact on your conversion rate. Of course, this puts added pressure on you to get all the elements perfect before you publish the page.
The data you collect with A/B testing puts a lot of the CRO questions to bed, but the thing with testing is that it’s not an immediate solution. You can’t rely on A/B testing data as soon as you publish your page.
This is where CRO best practices come into play. We’re going to make a case for both types of pages and argue why one should take precedence over the other. Then, we’ll give you a list of factors that will help you decide the length of your pages once and for all.
Let the debate begin....
Some people go to great lengths to find the best ways to share to social media.Social media management tools definitely help, and so too do the workflows and tactics that social media marketers discover to save time each and every day. This is especially true for busy marketing agencies who run social media marketing in addition to a host of other duties. The folks at iM Image Marketing, a digital agency from Youngstown, Ohio, most definitely fit this description, juggling social media management on top of web design, branding, and so much more. Their team manages more than 100 social profiles! And they do so with some really smart workflows that help them save time and gain great results for their clients. The iM team was kind enough to sit down with us and share some of these secrets. Here’s a bit more about how they do it....
Creating your social media strategy and tactical plan1 - Building the strategy noun Strategy / A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. First you need to understand what a strategy is, and isn’t it. A strategy should define the main aim of your social media presence and set the parameters for what it will deliver and how it will be delivered. It will be supported by a tactical plan that defines how the strategy will be delivered, including the channels, resource and budgets to achieve it. Tip – ensure your strategy is no more than 3-4 pages long. A strategy has to be concise and provide the governing principles that guide the plan. Below is a summary of key content to include in your strategy document....
“How can we get more visitors to our website?”… You’re certainly not alone, as increasing traffic is often the number one problem faced by marketers today. The bad news? Saying “get more traffic” is easier said than done. You could write guest posts (Leo wrote 150 articles in 9 months when Buffer first launched), optimize for SEO traffic, or drive visitors through social media. The options are endless. This article focuses on the latter, though. In this post, I’ll share the seven most powerful lessons we learned at Hubspot from running social media experiments to increase our social media referral traffic by 241%....
But here’s what you need to do to plan your campaign: - Pre-campaign planning
- Define your campaign goals and metrics
- Targeting – who you are going to target and how
- Map out your funnels
- Create your content and build your editorial calendar
- Get all your tracking in place – goals, URL builder, etc.
- Campaign Launch
- Optimization – assess and adjust
- Evaluate at the end of project.
We call this the rocket formula, so of course we have an image of a rocket!...
Campaign Monitor, a simple email marketing solution for businesses and professionals, has taken this bottom-up approach to building a social strategy. And we’re honored to share how they’ve done it.
Campaign Monitor is a fast-growing, industry-leading company with some really incredible ideas on growth and strategy. Their marketing team, which has grown to five times the size in just over eight months, has the awesome privilege of sharing the email marketing message with others via a big number of different channels, social media included, and has just undergone this very exercise of hitting the drawing board and coming up with a rockin’ new plan.
Here’s a bit more about how Campaign Monitor redefining their social media strategy in light of their new ambitions, and how social management tools like Buffer fit into their daily workflow....
“Every good content strategy starts with a “content audit,” which is a fancy term for figuring out what you’ve got, what the other guys have, and most importantly what opportunities you’re missing out on. If you don’t know a whole lot about SEO and don’t have time to read a dozen content strategy books, try these quick and dirty tips to get a feel for what your current content situation is.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a content strategist for Cheerios, the classic cereal brand from General Mills. Pop open an “incognito window” in your browser that’s detached from all of your personal search history....
It’s well documented that companies with a defined strategy are the ones that experience the most success on social. For others, the challenge is knowing where to start.
According to Gretchen Fox, cofounder of the social strategy and training agency Made To Order, the social media marketing industry is operating under the guise of nascence, but that’s not the reality anymore: "The industry has been around long enough that we need some procedures; we need some standards. This is our attempt at starting to create some standards"....
If you’re starting from square one, it might feel equal parts thrilling and overwhelming. You know what you want to do and why. You can see that others have climbed the social media mountain; you’ve got few ideas how to get there yourself.
It’d help to have a plan.
We’ve shared before about different parts of a social media marketing plan—the data and research and personal experience behind what works on social media. Now we’re pleased to put it all into a cohesive, step-by-step blueprint that you can use to get started. If you need a social media marketing plan, start here.
Oh, and our friends at online infographic maker Venngage were kind enough to wrap all that follows into a comprehensive infographic that’s easy to keep, share and reference:...
It’s fantastic that interest in social media is so high, but I’m alarmed at the number of brands and agencies that are ready to jump into social media to take “advantage” of audience concentration in Facebook, Twitter, and other fast-growth outposts. What’s lacking in most social media programs is an actual strategy.1 If you don’t know precisely why you’re in social media, with whom you want to engage, and how you’re going to measure success, you’re not ready to start.
I use a 7-step Social Media Strategy Worksheet to create a framework that governs what the initiative aims to accomplish.
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Wish you had a better plan for your social media marketing initiatives? Discover how to pursue and track your progress for 4 social media marketing goals.