If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a video might just be priceless. The number of daily videos produced on Instagram has quadrupled in the last five years, and YouTube users watch more than a billion hours of content every day. With stats like these, it’s no wonder 87 percent of online marketers are investing in video content. What does it take to create a top notch social video? To save you a bit of headache and a whole lot of blooper reel, we’re sharing some of our most effective tips here. Bonus: Want to know how a viral social video creator makes millions of dollars in sales? Download the free guide now. The 6 most important ingredients of a successful social video1. Be platform-consciousFrom YouTube to TikTok, there are dozens of different video platforms to choose from. Make sure you tailor your video accordingly, just like you would with any other content. Here are a few quick tips for getting it right:
Some platforms, like Facebook, have a wide user base, attracting different ages, genders, and income levels. Others reach only a narrow demographic. For example, Pinterest resonates with 25 to 44 year olds, while Snapchat almost exclusively attracts teens and young adults. Before you even pick up a camera, ask yourself two questions:
If you’re trying to educate your audience, consider posting your video on LinkedIn. If you’re simply trying to entertain, YouTube might be a better bet. Size really does matterThe ideal aspect ratio for your video can vary from platform to platform. Facebook alone supports more than five different formats! Make sure to brush up on the recommended specs for your platform of choice before producing your video. Optimize for each place you post to avoid stretched images or black bars around your content. If you don’t have time to optimize for each platform, a 1:1 aspect ratio usually does the trick. Plus, square videos take up 78 percent more social media feed real estate than landscape (16:9), so this strategy may win you some extra attention. Upload directly to the platformNot all platforms are compatible with each other—another reason it’s important to optimize your videos for different social channels. YouTube is owned by Google, a direct competitor to Facebook, which means YouTube links don’t do well on Facebook. By uploading directly to the platform, your video will look better and get up to 10x more organic shares. Here’s an example from our own Facebook page. This (adorable) YouTube video got a little lost in our feed, but our native content really pops. 2. Be mindful of timeOur attention span is just eight seconds long—shorter than a goldfish’s! Keeping viewers engaged from start to finish is tough, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Keep it short and sweetStick to a 60-second time limit if you can. While only five percent of people will stop watching a video after one minute, 60 percent will after two. Not only are short videos easier to finish, they also eat up less data—making them perfect for mobile viewers. But don’t rule out long-formLengthier videos can make their mark too. On Facebook, videos over 90 seconds get more views and shares. On YouTube, the average mobile user session is an hour long. But if you decide to go long, make sure your content is top notch. Luckily, brands like AirBnB and Hyundai are known for their long-form videos, so there are lots of great examples out there to learn from. This AirBnB video about a family in Palm Springs is more than a minute long, but is one of the company’s top-performers on YouTube. 3. Optimize for mobileOver half of all videos are viewed on mobile. For Twitter, that number is as high as 93 percent! Here are a couple of simple tips for getting mobile friendly. Simplify your graphicsMake sure your visuals look great on a small screen. Think bold, bright, and—if you’re using text—legible. Remove visual clutter to boost comprehension, and test your video on several different screens before posting it. For example, our Hootsuite Boost video uses vibrant colors and a clear, high impact font that’s easy to read, whatever the screen size. Play it with the sound offMost viewers will be watching your video in public spaces: on the bus, in line for coffee, at the office. This means they’re probably also watching it on mute. 85 percent of YouTube videos are now watched without sound! Before sharing your video, do a quick sound check. Is it engaging with and without audio? Add a compelling caption or description to help fill in any gaps, and add subtitles if needed. Bonus: subtitles will help make your video more accessible for hearing-impaired viewers. 4. Use analytics36 percent of businesses now use some form of video analytics. Don’t be the last to the data party! Here are two ways to get analytical: Track and improveThere are tons of helpful social media analytics tools out there. Keep tabs on how your videos are performing, and consider what you could do to improve them. Some key questions to ask include:
Reuse content with a proven track recordAnalytics are also great for generating ideas for future videos. Does your company have a blog? Dive into your user stats to identify top-performing content that could be repurposed for video. Before settling on any idea, check whether it meets these three criteria:
5. Offer quality contentIt may seem obvious, but it’s still worth saying: make your content worth it. Provide real valueWeb pages with a value proposition keep visitors engaged for longer. The same is true for social video. As adorable as cats on Roombas are, some of the top performing YouTube content is useful in some way. Just look at our video “5 Free Sites for Awesome Social Media Images”. It was one of our most watched videos in both 2017 and 2018. Why? Our video solved a real problem for marketers, who often spend hours browsing the web for free stock photos. Tell a storyStories are a basic part of human nature. Plus, because storytelling actually originated with visual stories, video is the ideal medium for putting your narrative skills to the test. As digital storytellers, we need to answer these questions:
Writing out a script, using a storyboard, or talking a colleague through the key plot points in your video are all great ways to make sure your story is strong. Apple’s “Unlock” is an example of visual storytelling at its best. Created to announce the launch of the new iPhone X, the video grabs attention with a fast-paced plot and a surprising twist. Get sentimentalEmotion is a powerful communication tool, just like stories. But not all emotions are created equal. Positive messages are more shareable than negative ones. High intensity emotions—like surprise, awe, and joy—are the most shareable of all. Videos can evoke far more emotions than photos. While not every video needs to pull at heartstrings, connecting with viewers on a human level can go a long way. For example, our “#knowyoursocial” video combines surprise and humour and has more than 10K views on YouTube. 6. Start with a bang—and end with a call to actionWe are predisposed to remember beginnings and endings better than anything else. Make sure you pack an extra punch at the start and end of your video: The first 3 seconds are the most importantForty-five percent of people who watch the first 3 seconds of a video will continue for at least 30 more. Hook viewers right from the start with something that sparks their interest, inspires their curiosity, or catches them off-guard. Our Facebook video “2019 Social Trends” literally starts with a bang. The first 3 seconds are dynamic and colourful, and the question “Are You Ready for 2019?” quickly piques the viewer’s interest. Seal the deal with a stellar CTAVideos have one of the highest conversion rates of all content. Including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by as much as 80 percent. Include a clear Call To Action at the end of your video to benefit from all the effort you’ve put in. Whether your goal is to get viewers to buy a product or simply to follow your brand, this crucial step moves your hard-won audience to the ‘next step’ in your sales funnel. Writing a compelling CTA can take some time and experimentation. It also differs between platforms. But all awesome CTAs share a few things in common: they’re personal, straightforward, actionable—and they pay off! Schedule and publish winning video content to all your social channels from one dashboard using Hootsuite. Save time, analyze your performance, and engage with followers in a meaningful way. Try it free today. The post The 6 Key Ingredients of a Perfect Social Video appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. The 6 Key Ingredients of a Perfect Social Video published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr The 6 Key Ingredients of a Perfect Social Video
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Now that online ads makes up more than half of all advertising dollars, social media and digital marketing skills are more essential than ever. To stay competitive in a constantly-evolving field, it’s critical for social media marketers to have up-to-date training and a solid understanding of the platforms and tools that matter most. Certificates are one way to prove to employers and clients that you have the skills needed to create and execute successful social media strategies. We’ve rounded up eight of the best options to help you get ahead. Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. 8 brand certifications to make you a better social media marketer1. Digital Marketing Nanodegree with UdacityThis three-month program was created with some of the biggest names in tech, including Google, Facebook, and your pals at Hootsuite. It’s designed to kickstart your career as a digital marketer. The program covers essential skills for key social platforms, while also providing a broad view of the digital marketing realm.. It’s a mix of online modules and practical assignments, like running and evaluating campaigns, and performing an SEO audit. Udacity goes beyond skill-building too. When you wrap up the program, you’ll receive career support from Udacity to connect with prospective employers like Amazon and IBM. You’ll also have a digital marketing portfolio of your completed projects to show them. Udacity will even review your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles to help you stand out in your job search. And you can build your professional connections through their alumni network of more than 40,000 graduates. Certification Cost: $999 USD Courses include:
2. Hootsuite AcademyWith more than 280,000 students and over 45,000 certified graduates, Hootsuite Academy offers a range of practical courses and industry-recognized certifications to make you a better social media marketer. The best place to start is our Social Marketing Training, a free six-part course that will teach you the core foundations of social media marketing, like building your audience, setting KPIs, and creating a content strategy. When you’re done sharpening your skills, you can opt for the certification exam to prove your expertise and join our directory of certified professionals. If you want to continue your learning and further develop your skills, we have a number of advanced certificate programs to support your growth. Certification Cost: $99 USD (Free courses) Courses include:
3. Marketing Leadership with Twitter Flight SchoolIf you’re looking to make a good impression on the 330 million Twitter users, Twitter’s own Flight School can help you master the platform. Twitter Flight School was created to help agencies use the platform successfully. They made it available to everyone in 2016. The Marketing Leadership flight path is designed to help businesses achieve their Twitter goals, grow their audiences, and analyze their data. It doesn’t take long to get your Twitter pilot’s license. The flight path contains five short modules, and each takes only 10 to 15 minutes to work through. Despite the Mach 5 speed, each one is packed with statistics, case studies and scenarios to enrich your understanding of the platform. You can also work through four additional modules on topics like Twitter Ads and Twitter video. Each module concludes with a test of your knowledge. When you complete all the modules successfully, you’ll receive a certificate that can be printed or added to your LinkedIn profile. Certification Cost: Free Courses include:
4. Social Media Marketing on LinkedIn LearningFormerly Lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform. It offers thousands of courses taught by experts in every field, including digital marketing and social media. On LinkedIn Learning, you’ll find nearly 60 social media marketing courses (comprised of over 1,600 video tutorials) at every level, beginner to expert. A benefit of Lynda’s massive catalogue is you can find some unique courses here for specialized skills and industries, like Social Media for Nonprofits and Learning Adobe Spark Post. They also offer a social media marketing learning path. This is an expert-led training program covering foundational topics, including community management, platform-specific marketing, and measuring ROI. It’s 15 hours of video tutorials and a certificate of completion upon finishing. LinkedIn Learning may not have the cachet of some other industry-accredited certificate programs, but it’s a great option if you’re looking for flexible, self-directed learning on a broad range of topics. Cost: $25 USD per month for platform access, certificates included. Courses offered:
5. Social Media Certification with Boot Camp DigitalFor more than a decade, Boot Camp Digital has been delivering online training in social media and digital marketing to tens of thousands of people. They’ve built an impressive roster of clients like Nike, NASA, and Google. Their Social Media Certification offers over 70 hours of online video instruction on platform-specific marketing techniques. It also provides downloadable resources and tip sheets to help you implement effective tactics and strategies quickly. Content in this program is updated regularly to keep up with evolving platforms and industry trends. A special benefit of this program is the weekly one-on-one sessions with a qualified trainer, where learners have the opportunity to ask questions specific to their business or industry or get help with a tricky topic. Graduates receive an industry-recognized certification, as well as a professional endorsement on LinkedIn. Boot Camp Digital also offers certifications in digital marketing and SEO. Certification Cost: $997 USD Courses include:
6. Blueprint Certification with FacebookWith more than 2.2 billion users (and a billion on Instagram), Facebook is an arguably the most important advertising platform for your brand. It can also be a tough one to master, though. There are frequent changes to features and policies, not to mention millions of other companies competing for your audience’s attention. That’s where Facebook Blueprint comes in. Getting certified through Blueprint shows employers that you’ve developed advanced Facebook advertising skills, including targeting audiences, managing ads, and measuring campaign performance. Courses are broken down into short, specific modules, allowing you to gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of the platform. All courses are free. This means you can go beyond the required curriculum for Blueprint Certification and delve into additional courses on Messenger and Instagram. Facebook takes their certification seriously. They recommend at least six months of experience with Facebook advertising in a professional capacity before even taking the exam. It’s not a light undertaking, but that means the certification (valid for a year after you pass the exam) carries real weight with employers. Certification Cost: Up to $150 USD Courses include:
7. Content Marketing Institute Online CertificationAll the knowledge in the world about ad formats, measurement tools, and audience demographics won’t help you achieve your goals if your content is lackluster. Closing the ads gap with creative content is one of the top social media trends for 2019. That means you’ll need to outshine your competitors when it comes to smart, creative content. To learn how to produce content that resonates with your audience, consider a certificate from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). Unlike most of the other certifications, CMI isn’t focused on platform-specific tools or techniques. Instead, it focuses on developing your brand’s story and voice, and translating that into compelling and distinctive visual content. It also includes key considerations like audiences, measurement and sharing content across multiple channels. The pace of the program is self-determined. Materials are available for one year after registration. Once you complete all required courses and quizzes, you’ll receive your certificate. Certification Cost: $595–$995 USD per learner Courses include:
8. Google Analytics IQ CertificationChances are your marketing strategy involves driving audiences to your website to learn more about your business or purchase products and/or services. To understand the overall impact of your marketing efforts, you’re going to need a solid grasp of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that lets you measure key marketing objectives like web traffic, conversions, and sign-ups. It tracks some of the most important social media metrics, like bounce rate, and allows you to measure ROI through UTM parameters. Google Analytics Academy helps you develop an advanced proficiency with this tool through guided video tutorials and practice sessions. Along with the video courses, learners have access to a demo account with real data and exercises to practice their new skills. Each unit concludes with an exam to test your knowledge before you advance to the next. The course is focused on e-commerce, but the lessons are relevant to any business. After you complete the first two courses at your own pace, you can take the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) assessment over at the Google Academy for Ads. The exam covers topics like data collection, configuration, conversion and attribution, and reports. Your certificate will be valid for 12 months. Certification Cost: Free Courses include:
Learn the most important social media marketing skills you need to stay ahead of the pack with free training from Hootsuite Academy. The post 8 Brand Certifications to Make You a Better Social Media Marketer appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. 8 Brand Certifications to Make You a Better Social Media Marketer published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr 8 Brand Certifications to Make You a Better Social Media Marketer The post 270: How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog appeared first on ProBlogger. How Starting a Blog Helped Transform the Life of a BloggerHappy New Year! This first episode of 2019 launches a series of stories from new bloggers who started their blogs after completing our free Start a Blog course. The course features seven steps, which makes it a perfect way to celebrate International Start a Blog Day on February 7. The first story comes from Denise Bumby, who took our course last year and launched her Does Size Matter? blog about six months ago. Denise was searching for a way to cope with changes in her life. And she found her way through blogging, which brings her joy and hope. She may not have many subscribers yet, but that number is growing daily. And so is Denise. Denise’s tips on how to boost your blog:
Despite what you may think, anyone can start a blog – young or old, tech savvy or not. Blogging is for everyone. So, are you ready to start a blog? Links and Resources for How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog:CoursesJoin our Facebook group
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Darren: Hey there and welcome to the first episode of the ProBlogger podcast for 2019. This is episode 270. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/270. ProBlogger is a site for bloggers and prebloggers, who today’s episode is particularly for. It’s all designed to help you to build and grow a blog that not only makes your reader’s life better in some way but also helps you to achieve your goals and bring you a little joy to your life as well. We’re going to hear a story today where that happens. Today, we are launching another round of our bloggers’ stories. It’s a series that’s going to go for the next couple of weeks. They’re shorts stories from brand new bloggers. This series is all about starting a blog and hearing the stories of bloggers who started their blog over the last 12 months. They all started their blogs as a result of doing our Start A Blog course, which we are currently really pushing hard because on the 7th of February, we’re running our International Start A Blog Day for the second year in a row. Last year, we ran International Start A Blog Day and hundreds of bloggers started a blog on that particular day. As you’ll hear today, hundreds more started their blogs in the months afterwards. Some people needed a little bit more time. We want you to be a part of this year’s Start A Blog Day. Whether you are a blogger who’s about to start and you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or whether you know someone who should start a blog, we want you to encourage them to get involved. If you want to be a part of it or if you know someone who really does need to start a blog, our course is 100% free and it will help you to start that blog. You can find it at problogger.com/startablog. Before I introduce you to today’s story, I want to pause for a moment and say Happy New Year. I know it’s three weeks into the new year and I should apologize for the delay in getting this episode out but I do want to start off by saying Happy New Year. The reason for the delay this year is that it’s been a bit of a tough year so far. In fact, last year was a little bit tough as well. Many of you I know have been following my Facebook profile and my personal profile where I shared recently a couple of posts about my own battles with depression over the last year and also the recent loss of a friend. I wanted to mention those things here because I’m really aware that sometimes in the online space, we only talk about the good stuff, the highlights. I’m not sure how helpful that is for you as a listener to only hear the ups, the successes, the highlights, to see the good things that is going on. The reality is that sometimes life gets tough and there are good times to step back, to change things up, to take a break, to rest, and to heal. That’s what I’ve been doing really over the last six or so months as I changed the structure of this podcast and the start of this year, particularly, with the sad news that we’ve had. I also wanted to mention that here because so many have left kind messages for me over the last couple of weeks, particularly, and I just want to pause and say thank you. I love our community. I only hope that I can offer a little encouragement and support back to you. So, Happy New Year. But for those of you that is not a happy new year, that it’s just a new year, or a sad new year, I feel your pain. Hang in there, you’re not alone, and I hope that things improve for you. Okay, I’ve said I love that and I really do send my wishes to you today. But I also want to get on with today’s podcast and I’m going to move into today’s blogger story. I love this one. It’s a lovely story from Denise Bumby from a blog called Does Size Matter? which you can find at koryanddenise.com and I’m gonna link to it in today’s show notes if you want to check it out, and I encourage you to do. I encourage you to support these new bloggers that we are featuring in this series. Denise took part in a course last year and as you’ll hear, she worked though it at her own pace. She didn’t make the International Start A Blog Day launch but she launched it about six months ago and she battled through the learning process and she shares her story today. It’s a short story and it goes for about five or so minutes, but I hope it is one that will warm your heart as much as it warmed mine. Here’s Denise. Denise: My name is Denise Bumby and my blog’s name is Does Size Matter? We are a traveling RV review blog and we kind of just show things from our unique perspective. You can find us at koryanddenise.com. That’s kory with a K and denise dot com or on YouTube at youtube.com/doessizematter. I started this blog because I was searching. I was at that stage in my life when there were a lot of changes and I wasn’t coping well. My only child had gone away to school, we had moved out of our childhood home, and the medical clinic where I was a nurse had closed, so I lost my job. I know the first two things are good things but I still felt some loss from them. I know many people can relate to this but even though change can be good, there’s still loss associated with it. I had lost my identity as a mom, my purpose in the world as a nurse, and the familiarity of my home. Every night, Kory would come home to me sitting at the table crying. He would ask how he could help and all I could tell him was to just give me some time and I would find my way. I’d sit on my computer and read blogs, watch videos, and find myself starting to feel a little bit better. I wondered how can I do this, how can I continue to feel better, how could I be part of this blogging community. I started to search until I found the ProBlogger course and then I started to learn new things with that. I worked through it at my own pace and I didn’t launch my site on the projected date with the others because I just needed to learn so much and I wanted to do it at a pace that I felt good with. I went on in and I did finally launch my site in April and I put my first video out to the public in June. I went really slowly because I was that person in the office who cannot handle any new technology and I was always calling someone in to fix my computer and give me help. I truly learned everything from scratch, things most people just know I had to learn. So, along with my ProBlogger course, I searched everything and anything, a word, a step, anything I didn’t understand, the internet taught me how. So now, six months after we went public, we have 454 subscribers. I know it’s small in the grand scheme of things but it’s growing everyday and more importantly, so am I. The main highlight of this past year is that I have created something that people are watching and reading and enjoying. I love the comments and the discussion that comes from all of this. I’ve actually created something. When it comes to content creation, I find it super fun. I do lots of research, which I also like, on the places we go, the RVs we review. Some of them are really special and unique, and it’s just fun for me to do. We also like really helping people make their purchases or their plans of things they want to go or just giving them that little extra information they needed. The other part of our blog is to show people that you just got to go out there and do the things you want to do and not just because there might be some blocks or something, you can find a way around it. You can do things. You just might have to do them a little bit differently and that’s okay. When it came to finding readers, it’s been tough and I think that’s a pretty usual thing for newbies at this. But we just keep producing no matter what, we keep putting out content and we used lots of social media. We’ve had one video get over 19,000 views so we’re really proud of that. Then just another time randomly we ran into another blogger who mentioned us on his site and that gave us a boost as well. Every one of those boosts gives you a little bit of excitement and I need just keep moving forward and working harder and just keep producing consistent content. As for community, there’s a lot of like-minded bloggers, YouTubers, RVers, et cetera. People that are interested in the same kinds of things that we’re interested in, whether they be new or very successful people, they’re also very kind, easy to talk to, and willing to share suggestions and advice or what’s worked for them. It’s a broad and supportive group. We enjoyed to contact and the guidance. Sometimes, we just get it through a Facebook group or email or where we’ve even been to group gatherings that were really helpful. Next for me, I’ve got to go back and start all over with all my same trusted resources like ProBlogger, to learn and implement affiliate marketing and sponsorship. I can’t wait to see how this goes. What I do know is that it’s a whole other set of learning that I need to do. But I’m confident now that I will be able to handle this and I’ll be able to implement it into my site. So check back with me next year and see how much I made. My biggest tip is just keep working and learning. Even when it seems so above your head, the answers are out there. If you find some good, trusted resources that you can follow along with in a place like ProBlogger that has so many things, posts to read, podcast to listen to, there is just a wealth of information there. I just keep going to those places, looking for the information, learning it, and then learning how to implement it. Blogging seems like it’s only for the young or the computer geeks. But it can be for anybody. It can be for you, too. Don’t get discouraged by foreign things and hard work. Now, when Kory comes home, I’m too busy to be crying at the table because I truly have found my way. Darren: Thank you so much, Denise. I really appreciate you sharing your story with me and our community today. I wanted to share this story as the first one today because it kind of touched a nerve with me in some way. It’s a representative of the stories that I hear from many readers of ProBlogger. Whether you’re brand new in blogging or whether you’ve been blogging for a while, I hear this story again and again from people about how blogging has a potential to bring joy and hope and purpose to people’s lives. This is my own experience in the early days of starting a blog. I started my blog on impulse, not knowing what I was doing, not really understanding what a blog was at all. But there’s something about the constant creation of content, the building of community with my readers. Those interactions that I had, the development of my ideas and the sharing of my experiences, putting those things out into the world, it not only became an income and became success in terms of the numbers, but it brought hope and it brought life to me. It changed my life in numerous ways on a more personal level. Whilst you might listen to stories like Denise’s and say, “Well, she’s only got a small number of readers or a small number of subscribers or she’s not yet making an income.” What I actually hear in the story is the story of someone who has already had her life change through blogging. She’s gone from a time of sadness and that’s part of all of our lives, I certainly understand that, but blogging has actually brought her through that and has given her something else, and added something else into her life. I wanted to share that and this story for that reason mainly, but I also love her tips. Her tips of keep working, keep learning, don’t give up, there’s always something new to learn in blogging. Whether you are just starting out or you’re about to start your blog, you’re about to enter into a steep learning curve if you’re just starting out. But don’t be scared about that. There’s plenty of great resources out there and there’s plenty of support out there for new bloggers as well. But if you’re listening to this and you’ve been blogging for a while but you’re about to start monetizing for the first time like Denise is, or whether you are thinking about moving from one blogging platform to another, or exploring a new medium, keep learning. The learning curve gets steep from time to time. Keep producing content, keep learning, keep serving your readers, and don’t give up. Lastly, I love that Denise said that blogging is for everyone. Often, people think blogging is just for young people. The reality is, as I look at our audience, our audience is actually older than you might expect. I don’t have the stats right in front of me but the vast majority of ProBlogger readers are my age—I’m 46—or are older, there’s quite a few. We do have younger readers as well but it’s certainly isn’t just a young person’s game. Denise took her time. She doesn’t feel super techy but she learnt what she needed to do and she got through it. Denise took her time going through the course and if you are wanting to start the course, you can go to problogger.com/startablog. You’ll see that we’ve outlined the course in seven steps. We see some of our students right through those steps in seven days. Some people who’ve got the time, maybe a little bit of experience, or maybe some support, they go through it in seven days. Some even go through it in a shorter period. But many of our students do take longer and that’s totally fine. If you make our 7th of February International Start A Blog Day, then that’s great. But if you take a little longer, you’re still part of the family and most importantly, you too can have that life-changing experience of starting your blog. Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcst/270. We’ve got all the links there to Denise’s blog, also to the Start A Blog course, or you could go there directly at problogger.com/startablog. We’ll also be promoting it around the site at the moment, particularly going to lead up to the 7th of February. I do encourage you to take that step. Sign up and get involved. We are doing some support on our Facebook pages as well at the moment. I really can’t wait to see the new blogs that come out of this year’s batch of students to go through Start A Blog course. How did you go with today’s episode?Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts. The post 270: How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog appeared first on ProBlogger. 270: How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr 270: How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog Is there really a best time to post on Instagram? Since Instagram switched to an algorithm-based feed in 2016, the question of timing has become especially fraught. If posts don’t show up chronologically, does the time you post them even matter anymore? The answer is yes, to an extent. The Instagram algorithm favors “recency” when it determines which posts you will see in your feed. Though no longer strictly chronological, it’s designed to serve you fresh content that you’re likely to engage with. That means newer posts are more likely to appear in your feed first, no matter how many times you refresh it. What does this mean for brands? You need to make sure your posts are “recent” when your followers are most likely to be online. That way, they’ll be more likely to see, like, and engage with your content. Below, we’ll show you the best time and day of the week to post on Instagram based on your industry, using data from 258,956 posts and the top 20 Instagram accounts in North America from 11 different industries. We’ll also show you how to use this data to inform your publishing schedule. Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear. When is the best time to post on Instagram?One easy way to find out when your followers are online and most likely to engage with your content is by digging into your Instagram analytics. But it’s also helpful to find out what times work for other brands in your industry, especially if you’re starting from scratch. Using data from Unmetric, a social media benchmarking tool, we analyzed the top 20 Instagram accounts in 11 different industries over the span of 18 months to find out when their posts received the most engagement. Remember: timing can’t make up for bad content. As a metric, timing should only be used to boost Instagram content that is already optimized to perform well. Also, just because these are the “best times to post” doesn’t mean you can’t post content at any other time. A solid Instagram strategy makes room for lots of experimentation and testing. Your brand and your audience are unique. What works for some brands may not work for others (i.e., YMMV). These timing recommendations work best as starting points and are meant to be supplemented with internal data. They are timezone agnostic. Travel & Tourism Friday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.According to Unmetric data, brands in this industry experienced the most engagement with their Instagram content when they posted at 11 a.m. or 1 p.m., but also 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. (in more recent quarters). On average, Friday was the best performing day for Travel and Tourism brands on Instagram, followed by Tuesday and Monday. Likely, followers of these accounts are primed to engage with travel content as they plan their weekends. On Monday and Tuesday, however, they might be reminiscing about their time on the beach or the slopes. When not to post: If you’re starting fresh in the Instagram travel industry, avoid posting after 1 p.m. Also steer clear of weekends, when your followers are having their own adventures #irl. Brands included: Disneyland, Walt Disney World, The Museum of Modern Art, The Met, Beaches N Resorts, Guggenheim Museum, Trip Advisor, AirBnb, Disney Cruise Line, Four Seasons, Royal Caribbean, Carnival Cruise Line, Ritz Carlton, Norwegian Cruise Line, Space X, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Airbus, LATAM Airlines, Singapore Airlines Media & Entertainment Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12 to 3 p.m.According to Unmetric data, the top 20 Instagram accounts in Media and Entertainment experienced the most engagement when they posted at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., followed by 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. Audiences are likely scrolling through their feeds during lunch hour and into the old “afternoon slump,” looking for a burst of inspiration or humor to get them through the rest of their day. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the clear winners for engagement by day-of-the-week in this industry. But Mondays and Saturdays are also strong performers. This could mean any number of things, but followers likely find media and entertainment Instagram content engaging regardless of the day it’s posted on. That it’s served to such a large audience means that this category has to account for a wide range of usage behaviors, too. When not to post: Mornings. Brands included: National Geographic, E! News, ESPN, Tasty, Humans of New York, Bleacher Report, BuzzFeed, Vogue, Playboy, HYPEBEAST, TIME, 9GAG, Marvel Entertainment, EA Sports FIFA, Disney, Netflix, Ellen, SportsCenter, Lonely Planet, Epic Reads Food & Beverage Fridays at 12 p.m.This one’s hardly a surprise. Top accounts in the food and beverage industry have the most success posting at 12 p.m., when many people are taking a break from their workday to consume, well, food and beverages. Whether they’re looking for inspiration, motivation, or something tastier than their own #saddesklunch, lunch hour is the clear winner in terms of engagement. If your brand only posts once a day, this is the time to do it. Fridays are the most engaging day of the week, on average. But, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, are also strong contenders for this industry. When not to post: Newcomers to this Instagram community should avoid posting outside of mealtimes. Brands included: Redbull, So Yummy, Monster Energy, Coca-Cola, Flavorgod Seasonings, Oreo, CakeGuide, Food52, Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon, Corona, Starbucks Coffee, McDonalds, Burger King, Dunkin’, Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, KFC, Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A Inc. Retail Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 12 p.m.Lunch hour is also popular outside of the food and beverage industry. Top retail brands have the most success engaging their Instagram followers at this time too, especially on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. When not to post: If you’re just starting a retail-focussed Instagram account, avoid posting outside of the lunch hour window, a.k.a, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Brands included: Nike, Victoria’s Secret, Nike Football (Soccer), adidas Originals, Zara, H&M, Adidas Football, Footlocker, ASOS, boohoo.com, Target, HomeGoods, Nordstrom, Who What Wear, AliExpress, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana Professional Services Friday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.On average, top professional services brands seem to have the most luck posting early on in the workday, especially on Fridays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. These types of companies often post useful educational content to their Instagram feeds, such as links to blog posts or videos. Likely, people prefer to consume this type of content earlier in the day rather than later. And while they’re at work, already in the mood to do so. When not to post: If you’re a brand new professional services account, avoid posting on weekends and evenings, unless your data tells you otherwise. Brands included: Lootcrate, Roam, Progressive Calisthenics, Pursuit of Portraits, Ogilvy, Later.com, Wieden+Kennedy, MAKERS, VaynerMedia, Leo Burnett, Huge, TBWA WORLDWIDE, Hootsuite, AKQA, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, 72andsunny, Deloitte, DDB Worldwide, Droga5 Unmetric’s data shows that the top 20 non-profit brands on Instagram have had the most success, on average, posting at 4 p.m. But for the first half of 2018, followers engaged the most with content posted at 10 a.m. So consider both 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. when crafting your own Instagram schedule. Content posted on Tuesdays received the most engagement, but Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays were also high performers. When not to post: unless your analytics show otherwise, non-profit brands should avoid posting outside of business hours on Mondays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Brands included: TED Talks, UNICEF, World Wildlife Fund, WWF International, Malala Fund, Greenpeace International, UNESCO, TeamUSA, Oceana, UNWomen, Save the Children, Ducks Unlimited Inc, Love Your Melon, UN Refugee Agency, James Beard Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, UN Environment, Planned Parenthood, Charity Water, UNICEF USA Non-retail e-commerce Thursday at 9 p.m. or 4 p.m.The top non-retail e-commerce brands have the most success posting on Instagram at night and in the early evening on all weekdays, but especially Thursday. 9 p.m. was the most successful time, followed closely by 4 p.m. This category includes brands like Bumble, Tinder, Grindr, and Match. It’s possible that followers are most primed to engage with entertaining, romance-focussed content after work. When not to post: New brands in this space should consider not posting during their followers’ workdays. Brands included: Bumble, Groupon, Kickstarter, Tinder, Sotheby’s International Realty, Grindr, Postmates, Zoosk, Zomato, Omaze, Match, Ticketmaster, Hinge, Ibotta Inc., Yelp, Seatgeek, Ancestry, Eventbrite, Foodler, Grubhub Pharma & Healthcare Wednesday and Sunday at 9 a.m.The top brands in this category are largely fitness-focussed accounts and their followers tend to engage the most with content posted on Instagram at 9 a.m. Wednesday and Sunday are the top performing days. This is likely when people are looking for a motivational boost (in the middle of their workweek, or before the workweek starts). But Monday and Saturday are also high performers. When not to post: Always take time to experiment, but avoid posting outside of morning hours if you’re looking for tons of engagement. Brands included: Fit Girls Guide, Instagram Body Building, Healthy Fitness Meals, How To Meal Prep, Home Workouts For You, CrossFit, Fit Healthy Recipes, Ab Workouts, Shredz, Ig_WeightLoss, GYM HELP, FitTea, Flat Tummy Co, Tone It Up, Fitness Motivation, How To Get Abs, Zumba, Skinny Bunny Tea, The Squat Guide, Glutes Personal Care Friday and Thursday at 1, 2, or 3 p.m.Largely cosmetics-focussed, the top accounts in this category find the most success posting in early afternoon near the end of the workweek. However, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are also good options. Save your best content for these times and days. When not to post: New brands in this space should avoid putting a lot of effort into posting on weekends or outside the afternoon. Brands included: M·A·C Cosmetics, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Kylie Cosmetics, Sephora, NYX Professional Makeup, Too Faced Cosmetics, Urban Decay Cosmetics, Tarte Cosmetics, Benefit Cosmetics, Maybelline New York, Morphe Brushes, ColourPop Cosmetics, NARS Cosmetics, L’Oréal Paris Makeup, FENTY BEAUTY BY RIHANNA, Ulta Beauty, Kat Von D Beauty, YSL Beauty, Makeup For Ever, Smashbox Cosmetics Technology Monday and Tuesday at 2 p.m.The top tech Instagram accounts get the most engagement, on average, when they post on Tuesday at 2 p.m. More recently, however, their top performing day has switched to Monday. Both days are good options to post. When not to post: There’s no reason not to experiment with your posting schedule. Just make sure you also post on Monday and Tuesday at 2 p.m. Brands included: Instagram, YouTube, Apple, Google, Vevo, Facebook, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft, iTunes, Windows, GoPro, PlayStation, Xbox, Sony, Nintendo, Beats by Dre, Samsung Mobile, OnePlus, Sony Mobile, HTC Education Thursday at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.Everyone knows the weekend begins on Friday for university students. So, if you’re a post-secondary educational institution (like many of the top accounts in this space), make sure you catch your followers before they tune you out: on Thursday at 4 or 5 p.m.. However, Fridays and Wednesdays are also high performers for educational institutions on Instagram. Some people are paying attention on Fridays, it seems. 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. are also good options for timing. When not to post: It’s probably best to stay away from early mornings and weekends, but anything is possible. Brands included: Harvard, Smithsonian, Stanford, Teachers Pay Teachers, New York Public Library, Skillshare, Harvard Business School, We Are Teachers, Yale, Udemy, Princeton, Texas A&M University, University of Michigan, Goodreads, UCLA, Bluprint, Ohio State University, Columbia University, New York University, Full Sail Instagram timing best practices1. Know your audience (location, habits, etc.)It can’t be stressed enough. Knowing your audience is critical to your success on Instagram. Even a cursory glance at your Instagram analytics will show you what time they are most often using the app, their basic demographics, and what kind of content they like best. Most importantly, your Instagram analytics will tell you what timezone the majority of your followers reside in. Use the timing recommendations above in accordance with that timezone for best results. 2. Always be testingDon’t limit your Instagram posting schedule to only “the best times.” It almost goes without saying, but things change. The demographics and habits of your audience are in flux. The Instagram feed algorithm is likely continually under revision. There’s no true way to “set it and forget it” in social media. Hootsuite’s social team is always testing different posting times on their feeds, outside the ones they already know work well (1 p.m. on Instagram). Because of this, they discovered that Twitter content posted in the early hours of the North American morning performs well with audiences outside our own timezone. If they hadn’t taken a risk and tested it, we would be missing thousands of eyeballs on our blog content every day. Pro tip: Test new times at least twice to make sure an Instagram post’s success is not just about its content. 3. Optimize your contentTiming isn’t the only factor in a post’s success. If your goal is to effectively engage your audience on Instagram, you’ll need professional looking photos, catchy captions, and smart hashtags too. If you want to go a step further, consider optimizing your posts for Instagram shopping, and create an effective landing page on which followers can browse your products. 4. Schedule your posts in advanceUsing a social media scheduling tool like Hootsuite means you never have to miss posting at the “best time,” even if you’re on vacation or asleep at your desk. Hootsuite’s post composer also suggests optimal times to post based on your account’s built-in analytics. Save time managing your Instagram presence using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule and publish photos directly to Instagram, engage the audience, measure performance, and run all your other social media profiles. Try it free today. Get Started The post The Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2019 (and the Worst) appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. The Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2019 (and the Worst) published first on http://bit.ly/2u73Z29 via Tumblr The Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2019 (and the Worst) The post 6 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic in the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on Episode 177 of the ProBlogger podcast. Did your blog have a bit of a holiday slump? Many bloggers find they lose momentum with their traffic in January. So if it happened to you, you’re not alone. Your readers were probably online less than usual. A lot of my fellow Aussie bloggers struggle at this time of year because their readers are enjoying the beach or off on vacation. You may have taken some time away from blogging as well to spend time with friends and family. But now you’re back at your desk, and want to start working on your blog in earnest. Today, we’ll be looking at six things you can do to boost your traffic and get it back to where it was (or perhaps even higher). Tip #1: Focus on Creating Shareable ContentHead to BuzzSumo.com and type in your URL. You’ll discover what content from your site was shared the most during the previous year.
Look at the top three or four posts and ask yourself, “Could I repurpose that content into a different medium?” Maybe you could turn a blog post into a video or a SlideShare presentation. Perhaps it could even become a podcast. If something’s been shared a lot as a blog post, and you repurpose it into another type of content, chances are the new version will be shared a lot too. Another question to ask is, “Could I update this?” Perhaps you could do a second post with a fresh take on that topic for the new year. You could also ask yourself, “How could I apply this format to a new topic?” For instance, on Digital Photography School posts such as “21 Mistakes that Wedding Photographers Make” always do well. A post like that could be repurposed for a different part of our audience. How about “21 Mistakes that Travel Photographers Make”, for instance, or “21 Mistakes that Portrait Photographers Make”? Other options are to do a roundup post (where you link to other people’s content on the topic, as well as your own), or even interview influencers in your niche about that topic. Tip #2: Create a Highly Valuable ‘Mega Post’On Digital Photography School, we sometimes publish what we call ‘mega posts’. These are long, in-depth posts that are often titled “The Ultimate Guide to…” Here are a couple of examples:
With these posts we choose one of our categories (e.g. “landscape photography”) and put together a 5,000–7,000-word post that covers the area in depth. They take a lot of time and effort, but they get shared a lot. Along with the post, we normally create an email opt-in where readers can enter their email address to get a downloadable version of the post. So these posts also help us grow our email list. To make the most of the time you invest in creating mega posts, you might also want to turn them into an autoresponder series or a free online course. You could also repurpose the content for SlideShare or for videos. Tip #3: Create a Series of Blog PostsAnother great way to build momentum is to run some kind of event or project on your site. An ongoing series of blog posts – particularly one that addresses a core problem your readers want to tackle or a goal they want to reach – can really build excitement and anticipation. Announce the series to your readers, and explain what’s coming up. This gives them a reason to subscribe and keep coming back to your blog. You might even want to build some sort of challenge into your series. This gets your readers not just reading your content but also taking some action. I first did this with the “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” series, which gave readers a little bit of homework each day. Getting readers to engage and participate can really build a sense of energy around your blog. And it can help you grow your traffic a lot. During the series, you may want to publish content more frequently than usual. When I ran the “Find Your Blogging Groove Challenge” on the ProBlogger podcast, I did a week of daily shows (instead of publishing two shows a week). Each day there was a little bit of teaching and a challenge. This resulted in a huge increase to our download numbers during that week. And even when I returned to the normal frequency, the numbers were still higher than they were beforehand. Tip #4: Create Guest Content in Other Places OnlineYou’ve probably come across the idea of “guest blogging” before. But guest content can encompass a lot more than just blog posts (though those are still well worth doing). Your guest content could include:
With all of these, you’re adding value to someone else’s blog or podcast. And in return you get to borrow their audience and profile. You can find more about these ideas and others in Episode 37 of the ProBlogger podcast. Tip #5: Warm Up Your Email ListSometimes our traffic drops off because our email list activity has also dropped off. If you haven’t sent an email to your list recently (or you’ve only been sending promotional emails), send them something useful. For example, you could answer some frequently asked questions you get. Or you could write a short article that tackles a particular problem your readers may have. Another good thing to do here is to update your autoresponder sequence (a sequence of emails that go out automatically to new subscribers). They can easily become dated over time, and refreshing them to highlight your best recent content can really help drive traffic. You can learn more about autoresponders in Episode 70 of the podcast. Tip #6: Pick a Fight (Yes, Really!)Name something big you want to attack as a community, and announce it to your readers. I’m not suggesting you pick a fight with another person, or that you pick a fight for the sake of being controversial. Instead, choose something you’re going to be passionate about during the next few weeks or months. Something you want to take a stand on. It might be tied in with a series of posts you’re writing. For instance, I was talking to a blogger who writes about fashion for mums, and she’d decided to write a post each month on the topic of body image to help readers think more positively about it. Fights can be positive. By giving your readers something to rally around, something to believe in, you can really build momentum on your site. Any one of these things could get your traffic out of a slump. And if you can do several of them, you’ll hopefully give your site a real boost, creating energy and anticipation among your readers. If you try any of these – or something else completely – to grow your traffic, leave a comment below to tell us how you got on. Image Credit: SpaceX The post 6 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic in the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger. 6 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic in the New Year published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr 6 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic in the New Year Whether it’s the latest news or the latest meme, Twitter consistently punches above its weight in our cultural consciousness. And it’s an important space for brands to make an impression on potential customers. We’ve gone ahead and compiled all the Twitter statistics that you need to know to market among the microbloggers in 2019. Bonus: Download the free strategy guide that reveals how Hootsuite grew our Twitter following to over 8 million users and learn how you can put the tactics to work for your business. General Twitter stats1. 500 million tweets are sent each dayThat’s 5,787 tweets every second. Yes, this official number is impressive, but let us please note it was first announced in 2014 and hasn’t changed in the years since. 2. Twitter only became profitable in 2017It wasn’t til Q3 2017 that Twitter posted its first profit: 91 million dollars. And according to analysts, that was based more on cost-cutting (in sales, marketing and R&D) than business growth. However, Twitter has been consistently profitable for the last four quarters, and it posted its largest profit ever in Q3 2018. The stock market likes this bump: Twitter was #21 on Forbes’ Top 100 Digital Companies list for 2018 (beating out Facebook at #26). 3. The most popular emoji on Twitter in 2018 was the laugh-cry faceFollowed by heart-eyes at #2, and cry-cry at #3.
(Okay, you didn’t really need to know that. But you wanted to.) Twitter user stats4. 326 million people use Twitter every monthThat’s nine million fewer than in mid-2018, and four million fewer than late 2017. Management blames bot purges, Europe’s new data privacy laws, and some technical issues for the decline. 5. 9% more people are using Twitter on a daily basisWhile monthly users decrease, the number of daily users has been increasing consistently since 2016.
This lines up with Pew Research’s finding that 46 percent of American Twitter users visit the site at least once a day. CEO Jack Dorsey stated that Twitter is focussing on making the platform “a healthier and valuable everyday service.” If these numbers reflect Twitter’s goal to be more attractive to good users while booting bad ones, they may translate to higher-quality audiences for advertisers. 6. 80% of Twitter’s users aren’t American259 million of those 326 are international users. Twitter supports these users with 35 offices around the world, and the platform operates in 33 languages. (34 if you count emoji.) Additionally, Twitter actively supports uptake in the developing world via Twitter Lite, the app’s data-friendly alternative. Twitter Lite is available in more than 45 countries, and this dedication to growing new markets has translated to increased international revenue growth for Twitter. 7. 24% of US adults use TwitterOf those adults, Twitter users tend to skew urban, educated, and higher-income.
For more detail, check out our comprehensive breakdown of Twitter’s demographics. 8. User growth is predicted at less than 1%, in the USEmarketer predicts that Twitter will only add 500,000 American users in 2019. Most of the new users will be adults over the age of 25. 9. Only 6% of US teens say Twitter is the most important social networkAccording to Statista, teens don’t prioritize Twitter over other platforms. (Yes, Snapchat still reigns supreme.)
10. 80% of Twitter users are affluent millennialsThat’s what Twitter says, anyway. This number lines up with what we know about the platform’s general demographics. 45 percent of American 18- to 25-year-olds say they use Twitter, for instance. But does it line up with the fact that the most retweeted tweet of all time is a plea for free chicken nuggets? Twitter usage stats11. 71% of Twitter users are reading news thereAnd, according to the same study by Pew Research, that works out to 12 percent of all Americans. No other platform rivals Twitter for bleeding-edge news and up-to-the-second happenings. This relevance is quite possibly the reason Twitter continues to be such a major player in the social media landscape, despite size and reach. After all, Twitter invented the hashtag, and live-tweeting. (And Vine. RIP Vine. Never forget.) 12. Twitter is the number one platform for government leadersTwitter outdoes Facebook and Instagram among powerbrokers. According to the 2018 Twiplomacy study, 187 governments and heads of state maintain an official presence on Twitter. And in related news that is surprising to no one, Twitter is politically polarized. But since outrage is the most viral emotion on the internet, at least marketers can count on Twitter users being engaged. Just keep the relatively volatile nature of this environment in mind as you build your Twitter marketing strategy. 13. People are 31% more likely to recall what they saw on TwitterThis, as opposed to what they recall while browsing online in general. Apparently, Twitter maintains a special place in its users’ hearts and minds. Or is it just that pithy content is stickier? Regardless, this is a notable lift that’s worth capitalizing on. Twitter stats for business14. 75% of B2B businesses market on Twitter
And 65 percent of B2C businesses are marketing there. That means Twitter outranks Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. 15. 85% of SMB Twitter users say providing customer service there is importantOne of the top reasons businesses feel they need to be on Twitter is customer service. It’s almost de rigueur now to @ your airline about every twenty-minute flight delay. However, smaller brands can also jump on the opportunity to turn frowns upside down. 16. Only 3% of customers will @ you when they complainAccording to Edison Research, brands need to put in some legwork and broaden their Twitter customer service horizons. Check out our full guide to social listening here. Or, if you haven’t already, demo the sentiment analysis tools from Hootsuite Insights. Twitter advertising stats17. Twitter posted a 50% increase in ad engagements between October 2017 and 2018As of their Q3 2018 conference call, ad engagements on Twitter continue to rise. If Twitter’s ROI wasn’t competitive last year for your industry and audience, it may well be now. 18. Twitter also saw a 14% decline in cost per engagement over the same periodLikewise, given lowering prices, if you’re not paying for Twitter ads right now maybe it‘s time to crunch those CPC and CTR numbers again. 19. Twitter ads are 11% more effective than TV ads during live eventsMore effective at “stimulating mental engagement,” to be precise. (And 9 percent better at memory encoding). This is according to a NeuroInsight study that also found people spend 4 percent more time on Twitter during a live event than they would normally. Take, for instance, the 4.8 billion Tweet impressions during Superbowl LII last year, most of which—I can only assume—was everyone looking at pictures of Nick Foles holding his baby. More than any other platform, Twitter lives for major events. That kind of predictable surge in interest is worth experimenting with in your paid strategy. 20. 40% of users say they’ve made a purchase because of an influencer’s tweetTwitter is an indispensible platform for many experts and thought leaders, not to mention comedians. Have you considered complementing your traditional ads with a well-placed shout-out from the right voice? Twitter publishing stats21. The half-life of a tweet is 24 minutesIn other words, a tweet gets half its interactions in the first half hour, and then starts a long, slow decline into the fog of time. This is why some guides don’t have upward limits on the number of times a brand ought to tweet in a day. 22. Brands tweeted an average of 122 times a month last year
What does that work out to, four tweets a day? Six per workday? Although, we hope they aren’t only tweeting on workdays. A better idea: schedule your tweets in advance to catch your audience when they’re online and engaged. 23. The best time to tweet is 3 p.m. on weekdaysIn our studies we’ve found that engagement on Twitter peaks around mid-afternoon, if you’re a B2B brand. B2C brands might have even better results scheduling around working hours. (Think commutes and lunch hours.) That said, check out your audience’s habits using Hootsuite Analytics if you want to fine-tune your timing. 24. Tweets with a GIF get 55% more engagementTwitter studied 3.7 million accounts in order to reach this, the conclusion everyone already knew. But it’s nice to know the exact percentage, right guys? Twitter video stats25. 93% of Twitter videos are viewed on mobileThis statistic from Twitter’s internal data is a good reminder that video content needs to be equally effective whether or not users have their sound on. In fact, mobile optimization across the board is a good bet: short, punchy, and vertical. 26. Tweets with video attract 10x as much engagementWe’re all still smarting from Facebook’s (um, alleged) inflation of video views, but this is a pretty compelling number. If you haven’t brought your video assets to Twitter yet, now is the time. 27. Promoted tweets with video saved 50% on their cost per engagementSince Twitter Business is the one who came up with this statistic, it feels almost like they’re announcing a discount. However, it could make for an easy ROI lift for those of you with spare video content in your back pockets. 28. In-stream video ads lift purchase intent by 6%Twitter’s new type of video ad is pre-roll before video content from Twitter’s publisher partners. Essentially, you can position your 15 second ad before desirable, “brand-safe” content (think: sports highlights, models talking about dogs) from big publishers like Condé Nast, Fox, Reuters, et cetera. According to Nielsen Brand Effect’s data, these ads are performing effectively for their brands and are worth considering if you’re looking for a new tool to reach your audience.
Save time managing your Twitter presence by using Hootsuite to share video, schedule posts, and monitor your efforts. Try it free today. The post 28 Twitter Statistics All Marketers Need to Know in 2019 appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. 28 Twitter Statistics All Marketers Need to Know in 2019 published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr 28 Twitter Statistics All Marketers Need to Know in 2019 Does your audience feel inspired to share or engage with your blog post after reading it? Learning how to write blog posts that get read and shared is essential to an effective content marketing strategy. I donât know about you, but when I invest my time, energy and resources into creating a blog post for my business, I want to know that my audience is finding extreme value from it, and that they are engaging with my content. After more than eight years of publishing hundreds of blog posts, I have discovered many key strategies to significantly increase the number of people finding and reading my blog posts but also, more importantly, engaging with and sharing it. I am going to share these tips here with you in the hope that you too can increase the engagement with your blog, as engagement is an essential part of building relationships and generating new clients. 10 Tips on How to Write Blog Posts That Get ReadBlog Tip 1. Know Your Audience and What They WantIf you want great engagement and an increase of shares of your blog posts, you must create content with your audience â ideal clients â in mind. If you try to create content that is for everyone, then your content is of value to no one. The blog content that you make (write, record, design, etc.) must be 100% audience-focused and provide immense value to your readers. You do this by finding out what their problems and challenges are and then creating content that offers a solution. If you understand where theyâre coming from, what their motivations are, and if you speak their language, youâll be able to connect with them in a meaningful way and increase engagement. Create Your Blog Audience PersonaTo help you start to create an audience persona, ask yourself the following questions:
Create your audience persona in detail using the example below as a starting point. If you have more than one, create a persona for each of your identified ideal clients. Example Audience PersonaAudience Persona Name: Bob Job Title/Role: Sales Professional Level of Experience: 10+ years Industry Type: Marketing and Advertising Top-Priority Goal: Meeting the modern buyer where they are with social selling and increasing sales Frustration/Obstacles: Not sure how to use social media to find and attract new clients Key Influencers: Top Dog Social Media Blog, LinkedIn Sales Solutions Blog Known Content Preferences: Blog posts, infographics, checklists, webinars Relevant Keywords: social selling, lead generation, new client acquisition Blog Tip 2. Connect Emotionally with Your Why StoryBe clear on your why message. Your why story is your differentiator. Let me explain. In addition to determining who your audience is and what they need, you also need to be clear on who you are, what you stand for, and why you do what you do. While there is probably no one who clarifies this concept as succinctly as Simon Sinek in his TED Talk, âHow great leaders inspire action,â which has had over 41 million views, I will attempt to explain what it is and why it is so vital to your success. Your audience has many options; they will choose you specifically when they can emotionally connect with your message and why you do what you do. If you fail to do this, you wonât get their attention, and no one will read your blog posts, much less engage with them. If you can speak and connect with a particular audience and build a relationship of trust with them, you will have a loyal group of people who WANT to engage and share your content. Writing Your Why StoryWhat is your why story? Watch Simon Sinekâs TED Talk, âHow great leaders inspire action,â and get clear on your why message. Donât get stuck on what you do or how you do it, but focus instead on the underlying reason why you offer your products or services. Simplify this to a few sentences that reflect your motivations to your ideal clients. I previously worked with a client who couldnât identify his why. His name is Neal, a financial advisor whose ideal clients were mostly high net worth individuals. I asked him several times why he does what he does, but he couldnât tell me his why. Not until he shared his story from his childhood. When he was a child, his father lost his business and their family home. Their family of four became very poor and had to move into a one-bedroom apartment. Neal vowed never to let it happen again. And he didnât want the same to happen to anyone else either. That had inspired him to help others grow their wealth, for the safety and security it provided. In the financial services industry trust is paramount when deciding with whom you want to invest your money. After Neal galvanized his why he was able to differentiate himself from other financial advisors. He was able to gain substantial trust with new prospects much more quickly. His business thrived. How about you? What is your why story? Write your why story including the related emotional motivations. Keep this brief. Ideally, something that could be shared in a minute or less. Blog Tip 3. Write in Your Customerâs LanguageLeave creativity to artists. One big mistake most marketers, businesses, and bloggers make is trying to be creative rather than effectively speaking the language of their audience. While you might create helpful, interesting content that will be of value to your audience, if you do not use the words and phrases that they use, your content will not draw or keep their attention, and they will just ignore it, along with all of the rest of the white noise on the internet. So, do your homework and write and speak the language of your ideal customers. Doing so will attract their attention and allow your message to resonate with them as you gain their trust in solving their problem for them. Use the Language of Your Ideal CustomersBeing aware of the words and phrases commonly used by your ideal customers is very important because that is the exact language you want to include in your content. The best way to know the words and phrases your audience uses is to:
Notice all three require you to listen, to really listen. Take notes each time you are speaking to your prospects and customers, and write down the precise language they use. The key to how to write blog posts that get read is to let their desires be reflected in the content you create and share. Blog Tip 4. Give Generously with Your âHow toâ ContentDonât tell people what to do, instead, show them how to do it. If the goal of your blog posts is to grow an audience and develop a relationship of trust with them, then you will want to create content that helps your audience to solve their challenges or problems. There is no better way to do this than with how-to content, whether it is an article, video, podcast or infographic. Despite your hesitation at giving your audience a complete step-by-step guide to solving their challenge, being vague with your âhow-toâ advice can leave the impression that your content is fluffy and not worth their time and attention. If you want to increase your blog engagement, you must be willing to share your knowledge with your audience. Not just some of itâbut all of it. Your very best tips and strategies, the knowledge that makes you an expert at what you do. Now you might be thinking, âIf I give it all away, then what do I have left to sell?â The answer is you, and your product or service. There will always be the do-it-yourself (DIY) types who either lack the funds to pay for your services or like the challenge of doing it themselves. They would never have paid for your services either way. But, they will share your content, and just how generous and knowledgeable you are, with their network. Then there are those who either lack the time or the desire to do what you do and will gladly pay for the services of an expert. By giving away your best information in the form of in-depth âhow toâ blog posts you position yourself as a trusted authority and will be top of mind when they are interested in what you offer. Writing Effective How-To Blog ContentGreat âhow toâ blog content is both simple to understand and follow. It should be clear and brief. Mostly, your audience should be able to read, watch or listen to your tips and then take action on the topic right away. When creating your blog content make an outline of each step needed, from beginning to end, for the reader to successfully achieve the desired result. Take each of these steps and make them your headings. Next, fill in the details of how a reader can complete each step. Again, this information needs to be simultaneously complete and concise. Only include the information that is required to make it easy for those that fit your audience personas to complete each step and solve their challenge successfully. Blog Tip 5. Share Your Voice in Your Blog ContentDonât just mechanically share your knowledge. Increase your blog engagement and shares by always including your one-of-a-kind style and personality into your content. The unique tone and flavor you add to your content will help your audience to recognize your content wherever they see it and, like your Why story, it will help your audience to be able to connect to you and your content emotionally. While the information that you are sharing may not be unique on the internet, your perspective is. This is what will get the attention of your readers, help them to get to know you and ultimately create engagement or discussion about your content. Writing Content That Includes Your PersonalityAdd your unique voice to your content by writing your blog posts like a casual conversation between you and your readers. Once you have written the information-driven, core content that will solve your audienceâs challenge, read the whole blog post out loud. Thatâs right. Read it out loud word for word. This is a quick and easy way to see where and how you can modify or add text within the article to better reflect your personal style and voice. Another great way to add your personality to content is to include your perspective and insights on the topic you are writing on. Your audience wants to know what you think or feel about what you are writing about. Itâs your perspective on the topic that will differentiate your content from your competitors and the millions of other articles across the Internet. Blog Tip 6. Add Visual Elements to Increase EngagementMake great content better, and more engaging with visual elements. Not only are images an easy way to create impact and share information, but they are also shared much more often than text alone. Articles with images get 94% more total views (Source). In fact, 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business, with blogging in second at 27% (Source). These are some excellent reasons to add more visuals to your content. Increase Your Blog Engagement With ImagesAdd a relevant image or two to your blog posts. Here are a few types of visuals that you can incorporate that can increase your shares and engagement:
You can use a variety of apps to help you create free or affordable visuals such as Adobe Spark, Canva or Pic Monkey. Always ensure that any visuals you add look professional and when applicable, branded with your personal or company branding. Blog Tip 7. Incorporate Interactive ContentA fantastic way to increase engagement with your blog is by making it more interactive for your readers. There are many ways to easily do this such as:
Embed a Video That Supports Your PointA great way to add value to your content and create more engagement is to include videos in your blog posts. People respond well to video content. Video humanizes you and allows people to get to know you more intimately. It is one of the best ways to establish authority on your topic and in your niche. People relate to video, and science shows that the brain is hard-wired to trust the human face. 79% of consumers agree video is the easiest way to get to know a brand online. Whether you are sharing your own videos, or videos that are created by others, your goal (besides the increased engagement) is to become a resource for answers and knowledge for your audience by including videos that solve their problems and help them overcome their challenges. If you are creating your own videos, some helpful video best practices include:
Here is an example of what an embedded video will look like in your blog post. Embed Social Media Posts into Your BlogAnother effective way to increase engagement on your blog is to embed social media posts from your social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It is essential to ensure that any posts you embed are relevant to the point you are making. An additional benefit of embedding social media posts into your content is the social proof that they can provide both you and the topic you are discussing. Here is an example of an embedded tweet.
Here is an example of an embedded Instagram post. Include Tweetable Quotes in Your Blog PostGive your audience something to take action on when reading your blog content by including tweetable quotes within your blog post. A tweetable quote is one that is both short and includes interesting, humorous, or useful information. Your audience can then either manually grab that tweetable quote right out of your post and share it or can use tools such as Buffer to grab and share the quote. You can also use tools such as Click To Tweet, which can make it quick and easy for your readers to share specific, impactful tweets that you include in your post. Here is an example of a tweetable quote added in a blog post using Click to Tweet:
Blog Tip 8. Add a Call-to-Action (CTA) to Your Blog PostsSharing valuable content on your blog without a proper call-to-action (CTA) is a missed opportunity to increase your engagement and blog shares. Your CTA may be as simple as asking them to share their thoughts on the article or share your blog post on social media. Remember, people are more likely to take action when you explicitly tell them the action you want them to take. As much as possible, be direct with your CTA without being too blunt or sounding desperate. If you want people to comment, invite them to comment, but provide something substantial for them to comment on in the first place. Choose the Right CTAIf a reader reaches the end of your blog post, they are engaged and more likely to take the action you are suggesting. The key is to choose a CTA that makes sense within the context of the post and then to tell them exactly what you want them to do. Some of the different CTAs that you can add to your blog post to increase engagement include:
While you want to add a CTA to every post, it is important that not only does the CTA make sense as part of that post, but you also want to mix up which type you use regularly. It is also usually a good idea to limit how often you include a sales related CTA, as this can annoy some members of your audience. Blog Tip 9. Share, Promote and Distribute Your Blog ContentSocial sharing helps give your content more exposure than what it would otherwise get. The more people that you drive to your blog posts, the more people who will read them and the more people who read them, means the more people who can then engage and share them. This is why you want to share every blog you post, on each of your social media channels as well as through your email newsletter. Drive Traffic to Your Blog with Your NewsletterIf you are serious about the success of your blog, then you need to build an email list and start sharing each new blog post with your email list. Creating a weekly newsletter doesnât have to be a daunting task. There are plenty of great newsletter tools out there that make the process simple, such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact. Here are five simple tips to help you create a newsletter that your audience opens and reads. 1. Write Engaging Email Subject LinesEven if your audience signs up for your emails, thereâs no guarantee that they will open your newsletter once they get it. You need to create an engaging subject line that makes them curious or excited to open each newsletter you send. 2. Keep Your Design and Copy MinimalNo one has a lot of time to invest in reading a long, cluttered newsletter from you. In fact, you donât even want your audience members to spend much time reading your newsletter. What you do want is to send them to your blog to consume the whole piece of content. This is why you need to create short, concise copy that gives them a taste of your content and makes them want to click through to your blog post and learn more. My weekly newsletters no longer include any design or images which has increased deliverability and open rates. Keep it simple. 3. Set Expectations When People SubscribeThe best way to ensure that you wonât annoy your audience with what you include in your newsletter and the frequency that they receive it is by setting clear expectations about what they can expect when they subscribe. Be specific and stick to those expectations. 4. Aim For 90/10 RuleAnother great way to help ensure that you donât have your audience running to unsubscribe from your newsletter is by following the 90/10, which is to make about 90% of your emails educational and limit it to 10% promotional emails. 5. Focus On One Main CTAYou already know that your readerâs time and attention is limited. As your newsletters will also be extremely short and concise, you want to continue this clarity with only one main call-to-action. If from time to time you want to include another CTA, be sure to highlight the one main thing that you would like your subscribers to do and make the rest, âin-case-you-have-timeâ options. PRO MARKETER TIP: Drive traffic to your blog posts with a Facebook Messenger Chatbot Effective content distribution meets your ideal customers where they spend their time. Do they prefer to receive notifications via Facebook Messenger? Then set up a Chatbot and notify people of your new blog posts via Messenger. Would you like to receive updates from me when I publish new blog posts? I regularly share in-depth tutorials like this on topics such as LinkedIn, Social Selling and Content Marketing. Click here to get notifications on Facebook Messenger. Blog Tip 10. Optimize Your Blog Post for SEOHow much traffic are you missing out on to your blog posts by not optimizing them for SEO? The short answer⦠A LOT! Most people know me as a LinkedIn and social selling expert. They would assume that most of my traffic would come from LinkedIn. But what they donât realize, for me to have ever been considered an expert at LinkedIn, I would have had to display that through the use of high-quality content. Below is a report from my Google Analytics account last month that shows that 81.5% of my blog traffic came from organic search (aka SEO). Iâd go as far to say if you are not optimizing your content, you are wasting your time writing it in the first place. If it canât be found, why write content in the first place? Without SEO, you could be losing thousands, even tens of thousands of eyeballs on your content, representing tremendous lost opportunities. With all the competition out there for readers, it is vital your posts show up high in Google searches. If I didnât optimize my blog posts for SEO, I would have approximately 30,000 fewer viewers on my blog each and every month. To put that in context, in a year that is well over 300,000 viewers I would have missed out on had I not optimized my blog posts for SEO. Thatâs a lot of lost opportunity considering that just in the past month I provided LinkedIn training to a Fortune 500 company, a large privately held company in Boston, 17 European Government Agencies and I spoke at a Financial Services Conference in the Bahamas. The first three opportunities came through a Google search, the fourth through LinkedIn. There is an art and science to doing this effectively, and I wrote a comprehensive blog post on it called: How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO, where you can read the full tutorial. How to Write Blog Posts That Get Read: Summed UpIf you are going to invest resources in building a blog for your business, you need to ensure that you are getting an ROI. Thereâs two that are important to me: Return on Investment and Return on Impact. Blog engagement and shares are a great way to not only help you track and measure this, but they are also the foundation of starting a natural conversation with your audience and begin to build a relationship with them. Keep in mind, people buy from people that they know, like and trust and blogging is a fantastic tool to help you accomplish just that. I hope these tips on how to write blog posts that get read will help you to increase traffic, engagement, and provide additional value to your community. Long-form blog content has always been a foundational part of my content marketing strategy and has allowed me to generate inbound leads consistently without hiring an SEO company or spending money on advertising. Would you like to receive updates from me when I publish new blog posts? Each week I share in-depth tutorials like this on topics such as LinkedIn, Social Selling and Content Marketing. The post How to Write Blog Posts That Get Read and Shared appeared first on Top Dog Social Media. How to Write Blog Posts That Get Read and Shared published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr How to Write Blog Posts That Get Read and Shared Getting started with social media can feel overwhelming for small businesses. But you don’t need to rack up millions of followers or have a slick brand campaign to make effective use of these budget-friendly tools. Social media is one of the best ways to connect with fans and potential customers. If you don’t have a presence on the main networks, you’re missing out on an audience that’s ready and willing to connect with your brand. Using social media for small business doesn’t have to be scary or expensive. Using these 11 simple social media marketing tips, businesses of any size can reach new markets, build awareness, and drive sales. Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. 11 essential social media tips for small business1. Start with a planEvery good business strategy starts with a good plan. Social media marketing for small business is no different. Since it’s so easy to use and you can get started with organic posts for free, it might be tempting to dive in and just start posting. But without a plan, you have no way of knowing what you’re trying to achieve with your social media posts, and no way to measure whether you get there. Taking the time to create a social media plan right upfront will ensure that all your social efforts support specific business goals. As we outline in our guide to creating a social media marketing plan, you need to:
2. Decide which platforms are right for youDon’t make assumptions about where your audience spends their time online. Your instinct might tell you that you should skip Facebook and focus on Instagram and Snapchat if you’re targeting millennials, but the data shows that 82 percent of millennials still use Facebook. We’ve compiled demographics information for all of the major social networks that can help you gauge where your audience spends their time online. Keep in mind that you can use different social channels to reach different audiences, or to meet different business goals. And remember that these demographics are just an overview. It’s important to understand how to reach your specific audience. In order to figure that out, you’ll need to make sure that you really… 3. Know your audienceUsing social media for small business let you micro-target your audience—but first you need to understand who your audience is. By compiling data on your current customers and then digging deeper with social media analytics, you can develop a solid picture of who’s buying from you and who’s already interacting with you online. Then you can revisit your social media plan to include ways to reach more people just like them. For example, Jimmy Beans Wool clearly understood its core market was crafty knitters and crocheters across the United States and Canada. But when the company first started, it had limited access to this huge group. The company had an email subscription list of dedicated fans, but that was not a large enough audience to sustain and grow the company. When Jimmy Beans launched a first-of-its-kind subscription service for yarn samples and supply kits, they used a Facebook lookalike audience to reach people who shared the same characteristics as their existing dedicated fans. The ads brought in 1,000 subscribers in 36 hours—such a massive response that Jimmy Beans had to pause the ad for a few days so they could catch up with the orders. That’s a sure sign that the company understood its audience well and created an offer that spoke directly to their wants and needs. Using social media marketing, this small yarn shop has grown into a multi-million-dollar business. 4. Build relationshipsThe unique benefit of social media compared to other marketing channels is that it allows you to talk directly to customers and followers. You can build relationships over time, rather than asking for a sale right upfront. That’s one reason why 93 percent of people who follow small- and medium-sized business on Twitter plan to purchase from the SMBs they follow, according to a report from Twitter and Research Now. When people engage with your organic content or ads, you can jump in and reply, helping to build trust and form the early stages of a rewarding customer relationship—like SkinnyMint did here: Facebook Groups are another great way to build community and establish relationships and brand loyalty. Sticking with SkinnyMint, they have a group in which women can show off their weight loss and support each other. The SkinnyMintBabes group has more than 3,300 members who act as brand champions for the product just by showing what they’ve achieved. Using social channels, you can also build connections and relationships with other entrepreneurs and influencers in your niche. Think your business is too small to work with influencers? Consider that microinfluencers (starting with 10,000 followers) can be incredibly effective for establishing brand trust, and they are often not out of budget range for smaller brands. 5. Expand your audienceOnce you have dominated your original market niche, you can use social tools to reach out to new audiences. For example, the nutritional supplements company GoSupps started as a small business in the United Arab Emirates. Its original audience was primarily made up of bodybuilders. In order to grow the business, GoSupps needed to expand its audience to a more general sports and fitness demographic. Using Facebook targeting options, the company reached out to new potential customers who were interested in health and fitness. The campaign resulted in a four times return on ad spend, and GoSupps has grown its Facebook Page to nearly 97,000 fans. While the company still has a strong focus on its original bodybuilder audience, it also posts social content that has broader appeal. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = ‘https://ift.tt/2yXZ2vG’; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script’, 'facebook-jssdk’));
You can also use social media to drive new customers to your local business. For example, Hootsuite geo-search streams can help you monitor and respond to local conversations about your business, and build relationships with other local businesses in your area. 6. Share compelling visuals whenever you canPeople have come to expect social posts to include a visual component. Twitter’s internal data, for example, shows that people are three times more likely to engage with Tweets that have visual elements like a video, photo, infographic, or GIF. Social images drive real-world action, too. More than half of millennials have made travel plans or visited a restaurant based on an image or video a friend shared on social. Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, in particular, are visual-first networks. If your content doesn’t look good, no one will stop scrolling to read what you have to say. The Peach Truck has a business that’s practically made for Instagram. They sell fresh Georgia peaches across the United States, and all those gorgeous peaches are perfect for sharing in social posts. They’ve got a beautiful feed on Instagram and they’re making great use of Pinterest, too. View this post on Instagram Social media was a critical component of The Peach Truck’s early growth. They started out literally selling their peaches from the back of a truck, and they used social ads to get the word out about where they would be each week. More than half of the people who came out to buy their peaches heard about the company on Facebook. Even if you’re not selling beautiful fruit, it’s important to use great imagery in your social posts to increase engagement. For service businesses in particular, this can be a bit of a challenge. But every business can tell its story through photos and videos. Maybe you can showcase your company culture with images from inside your office.
Or maybe you can use photos of your customers to highlight how they use your service. Square does this really well, highlighting customer success and creating a warm and fuzzy feeling about what is at heart a pretty boring (though important) product. Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. Get the free guide right now!View this post on Instagram Another option is to use stock photos. There are plenty of free, high-quality photos online that you can legitimately use in your social posts. We’ve compiled a list of 21 free stock photo sites you can use to find images for your posts. Just make sure you stick to using appropriately licenced stock photography (like you’ll find on the sites in our list), since using random images you find online is definitely not okay and can get you in some serious trouble. If it’s GIFs you’re looking for, check out Giphy. 7. Focus on quality over quantityThe sheer number of social media marketing options for small business might seem overwhelming—but you don’t need to do it all. It’s much more important to create quality content on a couple of key channels where you can really connect with your audience than it is to have a presence on every single social network. Above all, be sure that your social posts offer value. If all you do is pitch and sell, there’s very little motivation for people to follow you. Remember, social marketing is all about building relationships. Be human. Be honest. Provide great content. This is important, and you can’t fake it. According to a survey from Stackla, 86 percent of consumers say authenticity influences which brands they like and support. You can’t do it all, and there’s no reason to try. Reach out to your audience in the places where they’re already spending time online. Focus on using one or two social channels really well, at least to start. Once you’ve got those mastered, you can build from what you’ve learned and expand your efforts. 8. Use the right toolsThe secret to effective social media use is to take advantage of tools that automate or simplify much of the work. There are loads of tools to help boost your productivity so you can take make great use of social media marketing for your small business without having a full-scale social media team.
9. Monitor and respond to all social media conversations around your businessWe’ve already talked about the importance of responding to people who post comments or questions on your social properties. But there’s more to social engagement than that. You need to be aware of the conversations that are happening about your business elsewhere online and respond where appropriate. This is known as social listening, and we’ve created a whole guide on how to use social listening for your business. 10. Schedule your content to free up more time for engagementWe talked about creating a social content calendar way back at the beginning of this post. Once you have that calendar in place, you can create your social posts in advance and use scheduling tools to post them automatically at the right time. This allows you to dedicate one block of time per day or per week to creating your social content, rather than having it become an activity that takes you away from other tasks throughout the day. 11. Track and refine your performanceAs you implement your social strategy, it’s important to keep track of what works and what doesn’t so you can fine-tune your efforts and improve your results. All of the analytics tools mentioned above give you a great picture of your social efforts and can help you track whichever metrics matter the most to you. Once you have a baseline picture of how your strategy is working, it’s time to start looking for ways to get even better results. Using A/B testing, you can make small changes to your strategy that boost your success over time. No matter how small your business, social tools can help you better connect with your audience, reach new potential customers, and increase awareness of your brand. If the possibilities seem overwhelming, start small. Remember: you don’t need to do it all. Take a focused approach—start small with one or two key networks and build your social media marketing efforts over time. Social media for small business is easy with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule messages, engage your audience, and monitor relevant conversations across multiple social networks. Try it free today. The post How to Use Social Media for Small Business: 11 Simple Tips appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. How to Use Social Media for Small Business: 11 Simple Tips published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr How to Use Social Media for Small Business: 11 Simple Tips Instagram story highlight icons are your Instagram business profile’s secret weapon. With more than 200 million users visiting at least one business profile daily, Instagram is more than just a social network—it’s your brand’s digital storefront. However, just like a messy store doesn’t give the best first impression to your customers, a disorganized Instagram profile looks unprofessional and lazy. In this post, we’ll explore how you can use icons for your Instagram stories highlights to make your Instagram profile look professional and showcase the best of your brand. As a thank you to our dedicated readers, we’ll also give you a designer pack of Instagram story highlight icons that will boost the look of your profile right away. If only all renovations were this easy. Table of ContentsWhat are Instagram Story Highlight icons?Why brands should use Instagram Stories HighlightsHow to create your own Instagram Stories Highlight iconsBonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear. What are Instagram Story Highlight icons?Instagram introduced Stories Highlights in December 2017 to let users like you “hold on to your favorite moments from Instagram Stories and share them in ways that help you express yourself.” Since then, brands have found many creative ways to share the best of their stories. One effective way has been with the use of “covers” or “icons.” You’ve probably noticed these visually-appealing icons popping up on the profiles of your favorite Instagram users—and for good reason. Brands and influencers like Alexandra Grant of To Vogue or Bust, Monika Hibbs, and home and garden site Jungalow use covers for their Instagram Stories Highlights to showcase their brand and bring added value to their audience.
Why brands should use Instagram Stories HighlightsBoost the longevity of your contentInstagram Stories Highlights lets your brand showcase your best Stories and post them permanently on your Instagram profile. As explained in our post 14 exciting new things to try on social media in 2018, “This feature is super valuable for brands because, unlike self-destructing Story content, Stories Highlights can be saved, reposted, and measured for long-term performance.” This means that content such as a question and answer session you do with your followers can live permanently on your profile as an FAQ, so you aren’t wasting time constantly explaining the same things over and over again. Drive more traffic to your websiteSince you can share unlimited links in your Stories with the “swipe up” feature, Highlights enables you to drive more traffic to your website. This let’s you direct your audience to external pages. Giving one use-case example, AdWeek explains, “Marketers can link to lead-generation forms from their respective email marketing software and boom, your email list is going off the roof.” Whether you’re trying to increase sales by linking to a product page or growing your email list, Highlights allow you to host these valuable links for as long as your business needs. Establish a solid brandBy adding covers or icons to your Instagram Stories Highlights, you show your audience that your business is dedicated to making their experience as elevated as possible. Clear and compelling covers and icons are a great way to give visitors to your profile a quick look at what they can expect from your brand. How do you want potential customers to see your brand—disorganized and cluttered, or sleek and thoughtful? While other businesses might have Instagram Stories Highlights, if they don’t have clear categories with associated icons they’re not making it easy for the audience to navigate their content. Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear. Get the free checklist right now!How to create your own Instagram Stories Highlight iconsInstagram Stories Highlights covers can easily be customized to reflect your brand and business needs with Canva, a desktop and mobile graphic design tool. To make this even easier for you, Hootsuite’s talented designers created a free download of 30 professional icons and covers: Click here to download 30 free Instagram Stories Highlights coversHere’s how to customize these icons and covers to for your brand. 1. Open the Canva desktop version by going to the Canva website. 2. Under the ‘Create a design’ section, select ‘Use custom dimensions.’ 3. Enter 1080 as the value in the first box, and 1920 as the value in the second box. Make sure the value is measured in ‘px’ and click the green ‘Design!’ button. 4. Now that you have your template ready, open and upload the icons we provided. Either drag and drop the .PNG file from the folder, or locate it manually. 5. To locate manually, click on the ‘Uploads’ icon on the left toolbar, then select the grey icon labeled ‘Uploads’ and click the green ‘Upload your own images’ button. 6. Locate the icons folder, select the 1_icononly file and select the icon you want to create the cover with. (Tip: The files may look blank, but it’s because they are transparent.) 7. To add a background color or pattern of your choice, select the ‘Bkground’ option from the left toolbar. Choose a color or pattern. 8. To create more covers (recommended), click on the ‘+Add a new page’ button below your image and repeat steps 4 through 7 until you have your desired number of covers. 9. You’re ready to download your new Instagram Stories Highlights icons! Click the ‘Download’ button at the top of the page and choose the format you want (PNG or JPG file). Transfer them to your phone via your desired method. 10. Once you have the covers saved on your phone, upload them to your Instagram Story. It’s also a good time to make sure your Instagram Story archive is turned on. 11. Turn on your Instagram Story archive by going to your settings, clicking on ‘Story Settings’ and scrolling down to the ‘Save to Archive’ selection and switching it on. 12. Now that that’s ready, upload your highlights covers to your Instagram Story. For instructions on how to do this, see our post on how to use Instagram Stories. 13. After you have your covers up on your Instagram Story, click the ‘Highlight’ little heart icon in the bottom right corner. 14. When you click ‘Highlight,’ you can either add the post to an existing Highlight or create a new one. 15. Repeat until you have all of your desired covers added. 16. To edit, add to, or remove a Highlight, click the ‘More’ ellipsis in the bottom right hand corner of the image. Now that you’ve uploaded all your Instagram Story Highlights icons, your profile is showing off your best content and your brand—just like @gloridays is doing below. Save time managing your Instagram presence using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule and publish photos directly to Instagram, engage the audience, measure performance, and run all your other social media profiles. Try it free today. The post 30 Free Instagram Stories Highlight Icons for Your Business appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. 30 Free Instagram Stories Highlight Icons for Your Business published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr 30 Free Instagram Stories Highlight Icons for Your Business Social listening allows you to track, analyze, and respond to conversations about your brand and industry online. It’s a key component of audience research. If you don’t have a social listening strategy in place, you’re missing out on valuable insights. What do your customers think about your brand? What are they saying about your competitors? This guide will show you how to uncover those insights and more. And then we’ll tell you what to do with them. But first… Table of ContentsWhat is social listeningWhy social listening mattersHow to get set up for social listeningSocial listening tipsSocial listening toolsBonus: Download a free guide to discover how to get more sales and conversions with social media monitoring on Hootsuite—no tricks or boring tips. What is social listening?Social listening is a two-step process. First, you monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and any keywords relevant to your business. Next, you analyze that information and look for ways to put what you learn into action. Taking action might mean something as simple as responding to a happy customer or something as huge as shifting your overall brand positioning. Taking action is what makes social listening different from social media monitoring. Social media monitoring is all about collecting data. It allows you to look back at what has already happened. For instance, you can use the information you gather through social media monitoring to test one campaign against another or monitor ROI. It’s also great information to help prove the value of social when it comes time to set the yearly budget. Social media monitoring is based on metrics like engagement rate and number of mentions. Social listening looks beyond the numbers to consider the mood behind those social media posts. This helps you understand how people actually feel about you and your competitors, rather than simply counting the number of times your name comes up. This “online mood” is also called social media sentiment. Keeping tabs on social media sentiment is a key part of social media listening. Understanding how people feel about your brand helps you keep your marketing and product development efforts on track. It also allows you to respond right away to positive or negative posts.
Why social listening mattersIf you’re not using social media listening, your marketing strategy has significant blind spots. Real people are talking about you and your industry online. You want to listen to them, right? Simply put, if you care about your customers, you care about the insights you can get from social listening. Here are some of the ways social listening can benefit your brand. Customer engagementSocial media listening helps you identify opportunities to engage in conversations about your brand. This could be anything from someone saying how much they love your product to a customer service request. For example, on its annual Purdue Day of Giving, Purdue University uses social listening to identify donors. They then to respond personally to everyone who mentions on social media that they donated. This creates donor engagement and excitement, increasing the odds that people will donate again the next year. It also helps the university keep the momentum going on this critically important fundraising day.
The online fundraising event is growing each year, with more than $37 million raised during the 2018 event. Tweak your strategy in real timeRemember, engagement is great, but only if comes with positive social sentiment. Social listening allows you to spot changes in sentiment in real time, so you can get a sense of what triggered the change. Look at your recent posts to get a sense of what has gone so right—or so wrong. If you’re getting a lot of positive engagement, look for the reasons behind it. Your customers share a ton of useful information about what they like and what they don’t. Those lessons can help guide your strategy across channels. For example, Penguin Random House used social listening to guide its publicity strategy for Leah Remini’s book “Troublemaker.” The book was getting good reviews, but they wanted to understand why. What exactly did readers like? Using social listening, the publisher learned that people most liked Leah’s personal storytelling and authentic voice. Based on that finding, Penguin Random House focused promotional attention on Leah herself, rather than on Scientology—the subject of the book. When they hosted an author Q&A on Goodreads, they specifically focused on questions about Leah’s own life. Social listening also helps you address PR disasters before they get out of hand. If sentiment is down, review the social feedback for lessons that could prevent a similar misstep in the future. If sentiment is way down, look for the cause and make changes right away, by pulling a problem post, or apologizing for an insensitive Tweet. Maybe you’re not getting much social engagement at all. Social listening can help you adjust your strategy to get your engagement numbers up. For example, Oslo Metropolitan University was not seeing much social engagement. Using social listening, the university was able to determine which topics its audience wanted to talk about. They started by monitoring and analyzing keywords. They learned that alumni stories, student life, lab work, and job vacancies created the most engagement. By focusing on those subjects, they were able to engage students, potential students, and potential job applicants on their social channels. View this post on Instagram The university also uses social listening to discover relevant conversations. They can then get attention from valuable contacts who might not otherwise have engaged with their social accounts. “We listen to young people talk about what they want to become when they grow up,” said Hallvard Lavoll, the university’s Social Media Manager. “We listen to what journalists are talking about on Twitter—when they’re looking for experts, we tell them about our scientists and researchers. We listen to our graduates. We go in, say thanks for staying with us and good luck.” Learn how people think about you compared to your competitionSocial listening is more than understanding what people say about you. You also want to know what they say about your competitors. This gives you important insights into where you fit in the marketplace. You will also learn what your competitors are up to in real-time. Are they launching new products? Developing new marketing campaigns? Taking a beating in the press? Social listening allows you to find out about these new opportunities and threats as they happen, so you can plan and respond accordingly. Uncover pain points you can be the first to addressWhen you monitor important industry keywords, you will uncover conversations about products, services, and features that don’t currently work for customers. This is great information to feed through to your product development team. Can you tweak an existing product or add a feature to resolve the problems people are talking about? Maybe what you learn will spur a new product idea. You’ll also learn about frustrations with your current products. Can you tweak your products to help address the concerns? If you do, be sure to tell people about it with a targeted marketing campaign. For example, through social listening, Brita learned that customers often complained that the people they lived with did not refill their Brita pitcher. When the company released a product that reduced filtration time, they used this complaint as the basis for their ads. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = ‘https://ift.tt/2yXZ2vG’; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script’, 'facebook-jssdk’));
Develop new sales leadsSocial listening helps you identify people asking questions about your industry. It’s not often a great idea to leap into someone’s online conversation with a hard sell. But you might find great leads that you can nurture into relationships for social selling. Reach out, make a connection, and share helpful information. This will help establish your brand as the best resource when it comes time to make a purchase decision. Identify influencers and advocatesMonitoring social conversation about your industry will give you a sense of who the important influencers are. These are important people to connect with. As the term implies, they can have a huge influence on how their followers and fans feel about you—or your competitors. How to get set up for social media listeningBefore you dig into the nitty-gritty work of social media listening, you need to decide what you want to listen for. The keywords and topics you monitor will likely evolve over time. Using social listening tools, you will learn what kinds of words people tend to use when they talk about your business and your industry. You’ll also start to get a sense of what kinds of insights are most useful for you. That said, here’s a list of important keywords and topics to monitor right from the start:
You should also monitor common misspellings and abbreviations. We’ll show you some social listening tools that can help you keep an eye (or ear) on all of this at the end of this post. Social listening tipsHere are some important points to help you get the most from your social listening efforts. 1. Identify where people talk about you, not just what they sayDon’t limit yourself to one or two social networks. Cast a wide net with your social listening program. You might find that the conversation about your brand or your industry is very different on LinkedIn or industry blogs than it is on Facebook. Maybe people talk about you a lot on Twitter, but not at all on Instagram. You need to know where people are talking about you and your industry, and how those conversations vary across networks. This will allow you to create a clear strategy to join the conversation through both organic engagement and paid advertising. 2. Learn from the competitionYou never want to copy someone else’s strategy. But you can gain plenty of insight about what works and what doesn’t by listening closely to what people think about your competitors. It’s a lot less painful to learn a hard lesson by watching your competitors make a mistake than by making it yourself. Learn what you can from your competition’s wins, but keep an even closer eye on their missteps. 3. Collaborate with other teamsYour social listening efforts will provide a wide range of information that will be useful to share throughout your company. Maybe it’s a customer post that needs a response right away. Maybe it’s a great idea for a blog post. Or maybe it’s an idea for a new product or new feature for an existing product. The customer service, content marketing, and product development teams could all benefit from what you learn. Seek input from those teams, too. They might have specific questions you could answer by tweaking your social listening setup. 4. Keep an eye out for changeAs you start to collect social information, you’ll develop a sense of the normal conversation and sentiment about your brand. Then, you can watch for changes. Major changes in engagement or sentiment can mean that the overall perception of your brand has changed. You need to understand why so you can adapt your strategy appropriately. That may mean riding a wave of positivity, or correcting a misstep to get back on course. 5. Learn from what the data tells youRemember: If you don’t take action, you’re only engaged in social media monitoring, not social listening. Social listening is not just about tracking metrics. It’s about gaining real insights into what your customers and potential customers want from you, and how you can better address those needs. 10 social listening toolsWith so many sources to monitor, you need tools to help you with social listening. Here are some of our favorites. 1. HootsuiteYou can use Hootsuite to set up social media streams that monitor conversations and keywords. When you see an opportunity to reach out to potential customers, influencers, or advocates, you can respond directly or assign the response to someone else on your team. 2. Hootsuite InsightsTake things a step further with graphical reports that allow you to monitor more than 100 million data sources, including from news sites, blogs, and forums. You can also track sentiment by location, language, and gender. 3. ReviewTrackersReviewTrackers allows you to monitor reviews from more than 85 reviews sites, including TripAdvisor and Google Maps, as soon as 15 minutes after they’re posted. 4. TalkwalkerTalkwalker offers advanced social listening capabilities covering blogs, forums, videos, news sites, and review sites, as well as social networks. 5. SynthesioTrack conversations on highly specific topics within carefully segmented audiences. Synthesio can tag mentions by language, location, demographics, sentiment, and influence, and the reports include a social reputation score. 6. AudienseWith Audiense, you can identify any audience, no matter how large or how specific. You can then create reports that tell you what they talk about, what they like, and even how they think and behave. 7. BrandwatchBrandwatch lets you monitor the tone and impact of the conversation across 95 million data sources. You can set up email alerts to let you know when an important conversation is taking place. 8. MentionlyticsTrack mentions, keywords, and sentiment in multiple languages and find potential influencers across social networks and other online sources. 9. Reddit Keyword Monitor ProReddit sees 114.5 million unique views a month, and is a prime site for in-depth discussions. Conversations here are a key source of social intelligence, and this app will help you find and track them. 10. NetBaseNetBase uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) so you can find the most relevant conversations across the social web.
Hootsuite makes it easy to monitor keywords and conversations on social media, so you can focus on taking action on the insights available. Try it free today. The post What is Social Listening, Why it Matters, and 10 Tools to Make it Easier appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management. What is Social Listening, Why it Matters, and 10 Tools to Make it Easier published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr What is Social Listening, Why it Matters, and 10 Tools to Make it Easier |
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