social media marketing

Emojis

Emojis Can Increase Your Click Rates on Social Media

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Did you know that using popular emojis in your posts can actually increase engagement from your audience and click-through rates?

A study found that participants who were sent messages with emojis scored higher on memory than those who were sent messages without emojis, indicating that emojis can make your message more memorable.

That same study also found that emojis can help portray your business as friendlier: participants who chatted online with an expert who used emojis rated the expert as both friendlier and more competent, compared to participants who chatted with an expert who did not use emojis.

Sounds crazy that a little use of emojis can help your business, but the studies above give an indication that its worth looking into.

From a marketing standpoint, emojis are undeniably useful. Emojis in a tweet can increase engagement by 25.4 percent, and emojis in a Facebook post can increase the number of likes by 57 percent and the number of comments and shares by 33 percent. If emojis can so drastically increase the likelihood of engagement, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using them.

But with all that said, there are still 2,666 emojis to choose from. So which ones increase engagement the most? Which ones incentivize people to click your link? Which ones should you avoid?

Here are 10 emojis that seem to be the most popular among audience users:

The Top Ten Most Popular Emojis

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I would say that the “pointing finger” emoji is the most popular. Marketers use this when they are writing content to direct you somewhere else, so why not use it? Most of these emojis are useful year-round, but some, like the Christmas tree, are likely effective on a more seasonal basis. Some of them, like the winking emoji, are probably popular because they convey your sense of humor. It gives you and your business personality.

Hopefully, this data can help you humanize your brand and convey more meaning and emotion in your content. Emojis, even the octopi and horses … actually, especially the octopi and horses … encourage interaction from your audience, higher click-through rates, and better messaging from your brand.

But use them sparingly! You don’t want to use so many that your message gets lost in a heaping pile of emojis!

Modern Keyboard With Colored Social Network Buttons.

New Features to Try on Social Media in 2018

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Every year, new ways to engage in social media emerge. It’s important to review and implement these new features into your social media strategy. If you try new things on social media this year that other brands aren’t doing, you have a much better chance of surprising your audience and engaging them.

Here are some new features to try in 2018 on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook

  1. Create Stories in Groups and Events

Facebook’s Stories—which allow you to post content that disappears after 24 hours—is now available for groups and events. People can post Stories that are visible only to their groups or on any event page. These Stories will have a private hashtag and will be moderated by admins to make sure that content is appropriate and on-brand.

  1. Royalty Free Music

There’s now an easy, and free way, to to add soundtrack to your video. Facebook has introduced the video editing tool Sound Collection, which lets you add sound effects or music to your video clips. Audio files on Sound Collection are royalty-free so you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement or blowing your budget.

Instagram

  1. Story Highlights

Ready to showcase your best stories? Instagram Stories Highlights lets your brand make engaging stories and can be permanently posted on your Instagram profile. This feature is super valuable for brands because Stories Highlights can be saved, reposted, and measured for long-term performance. You can organize your own Stories Highlights however you want before you post, whether it’s by theme, campaign, or date.

Stories Highlights is also a good way for you to promote the content you want users to see first. They appear right below your bio for easy viewing.

  1. Broadcast Live with a Guest

Instagram now lets users and brands broadcast live with a guest in a split screen format. Broadcasts will appear in the Stories section of the platform with two circles (instead of the typical one circle). If your broadcast receives a lot of engagement, you could end up in Instagram’s Search and Explore tab.

When planning a collaborative broadcast, think about how two speakers can create unique content for this new format. You might choose to invite a guest from a strategic brand partnership for an announcement or ask an influencer to co-host an Instagram takeover.

Twitter

  1. Tell a story in 280 characters

Remember when Twitter had 140 word limit we had to work with in the past? Well, Twitter has finally increased the word count to 280-characters. Twitter said that the character increase would allow people to express more, while still encouraging the importance of brevity.

Play around with new storytelling concepts that would have been formerly impossible under the 140 character limit—but don’t write more just because you can. Being clear and succinct is still the way to go on Twitter.

  1. Send more creative, personalized direct messages

With Twitter’s Direct Message Cards, your brand can share engaging images and videos—with customizable call to action (CTA) buttons—all within your message conversations. DM cards give brands the freedom and flexibility to consider the customer experience and take a more visual approach to customer interactions.

Marketing trends

Marketing Trends in 2018

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4 Tips to get your Marketing on Track 2018

Staying ahead of marketing trends and mastering new techniques and technologies is a never-ending challenge for all of us. With so many options to engage followers, it can be overwhelming. Here are 4 trends to keep an eye on in 2018 that you can implement into your marketing strategy.

  1. Ephemeral Content

We’re all used to providing evergreen content – long-lasting content that can be repurposed for years to come. Sure, that always comes in handy, but with all the new social media stories, from Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat, there is now a demand for temporary content. The time-sensitive component makes it exciting and if done correctly, it can help you engage with your followers even more than ever before! Millennials are savvy with this new technology and they expect the brands they like to follow their footsteps. Using this kind of temporary content to highlight the human side of your brand is a great way to connect through social media and show off why your company is special.

  1. Videos

Video was already gaining in popularity throughout 2017, but heading into 2018 we now have even more stats to back up the effectiveness of this type of content.

  • 500 million hours of video content watched on YouTube per day
  • Facebook videos get 135% more organic views than photos
  • Video will represent up to 82% of all IP traffic by 2021

(statistics from business insider)

Videos don’t have to be hard. In fact, videos 2 minutes or less get the most engagement. No one wants to sit there and watch an hour video about what your company does. Hone in on the important points and make it into a visually appealing video.

  1. Live Streams

Similar to video content is live streaming. This type of content became wildly popular in 2017, with brands and influencers utilizing it across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Live streams are highly interactive and there are endless ways to use these tools. Here are just a few examples:

  • behind the scenes of an event
  • question and answer sessions
  • tutorials
  • sneak peeks of upcoming products or projects

The great part about live streams is that this content can last, especially if it’s successful.

  1. Artificial Intelligence 

Current AI is incredibly valuable, with “features such as chatbots, data analysis algorithms, and personalized recommendation systems [to] automatically direct audiences to content that’s relevant to their interests and circumstances.”

The one I like to use is Atomic Reach which gives me recommendations on type and level of language to use, when to post to social media for best engagement, how long my blog posts should be, and more. Embrace this useful technology, but never forget to use AI tools wisely—make sure to keep the human element in the equation. No matter how advanced the technology gets, creativity, empathy, tone, and interpretation are still something only humans can do.

Instagram

Step-up Your Game on Instagram

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You might know the basics of how to use Instagram, but that’s not enough to increase your profile visits and engagement with your content. There are some extra steps you can use to improve your discovery and popularity.

The below tips will help you ‘step up your game’:

  1. Use Polls to Increase Engagement

Polls are a smart way to engage people on social media because participation is easy. With a poll, you can survey your audience to see what they think of your content and you can crowdsource ideas from your followers – such as what your next social video topic should be about. It’s all about catering to your audience.

  1. Make Sure Your Brand Colors Stand Out

Be consistent with your brand colors and theme not only within your Instagram profile, but also with your Stories. Consistentcy is key so that your followers can instantly recognize who the content is coming from.

How to do it:

  • Tap the Aa icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
  • Tap and hold any of the default color options and swipe the color slider to select custom colors.
  1. Use Location and Hashtag Stickers

Don’t you want to get discovered? Every company does! By using hashtag stickers and including your location in your Stories, you can make it easier for you to gain new followers. These stickers will show you company in more searches making it easier for new people to follow you.

  1. Include a Call to Action

For a call to action (CTA) to be effective, it must be clear, actionable, and easy for the user to follow. Keep CTAs in your Instagram Stories short and simple, but also attention-grabbing. Make your CTAs pop by writing them out in big, bold font.

How to do it:

  • Tap the Aa icon and type out your message.
  • Next, tap the Aa icon again and type out the same message using a different color.
  • Move the top layer of text so that it’s slightly off-center from the bottom text (the original message).
  1. Shoot Vertically 

This might seem obvious, but shooting vertically is the best thing to do because this is the way they are watching your stories on their phone. It makes it easier for them to consume the content without flipping their phone sideways or bending their neck to see what’s going on.

  1. Plan your content in advance

Scheduling your content in advance can make your life easier. Your goal should be to post one article/photo/video to your profile and Stories each day. The more you post and use hashtags, the easier it is to gain more followers and likes.

A/B Testing

How to Perform A/B Testing on Social Media

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What is A/B Testing?

In essence, A/B testing is a way to measure two versions of something to see which is more successful.

Think about it this way: When you and your friend are coming home from your favorite coffee shop, you might discuss what route is the fastest way to get home. You might take one route that day and the next time you go to that same spot, maybe you’ll decide to try the other route and find out which one is fastest. It’s essentially a way to compare two similar things and figure out what’s the best way.

When it comes to social media, A/B testing works in the same way. When you look at the comparison of two similar tweets, you would like to see that one of the posts has a significant edge in a particular stat. I did an A/B test on my twitter to show you an example of what I’m talking about.

1st Test
2nd Test

In the example above, the first tweet’s success with retweets, favorites, mentions, and potential indicated that it might be a better headline than the first.

Retweets and clicks are both useful metrics to observe, and we don’t necessarily like one more than another. Retweets are a great signal to us that people find the headline worth sharing with their own audience, and clicks are a helpful indicator that the headline drives curiosity enough to clickthrough and read. In some ways, retweets and clicks tell us a headline’s popularity or even an image’s popularity.

Of course, it might also be best to point out that A/B tests on social media are not perfect. The varying times of day, the hashtags we use and other significant variables can affect our tests as well. In order to keep it consistent, it would be wise to test your tweets at the same time of the day if possible. In the end, A/B testing gives us an insight into what works and what doesn’t to get engagement from our followers.

A few ways to vary your Tweets are with the following;

  • quotes
  • link tweets
  • questions for your followers
  • facts
  • include relevant photos

Images and links to the topic you’re talking about is SO important when it comes to marketing your products or blog posts. It’s a lot more visually appealing than a boring one sentence tweet with a bunch of hashtags. Also, including a link to either your product page or website will help drive more traffic and increase conversion rates. Social media scientist Dan Zarrella found in research prior to this change that Tweets using pic.twitter.com links were 94% more likely to be Retweeted. That’s a pretty high number, don’t you think?

Try it out and see how it works for you. It’s relatively easy to figure out and it just might help your company or blog in the long run.

Pinterest

Use Pinterest to Draw in Traffic

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What is Pinterest?

Many small businesses focus on creating a Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but there is a hidden social media market called Pinterest that is unnoticed by most B2C companies. Maybe it’s because they may not have heard about the site and its many benefits. With 200 million monthly users, Pinterest may not be a social media that’s as powerful as Facebook, but it’s an important social platform. Half of all U.S. millennials use Pinterest, for instance. Pinterest offers a different approach to gaining market exposure through the use of pictures that are linked to your articles or website.

Here is a screenshot of my Pinterest profile for Women’s Golf Content

If you want a more in-depth look at Pinterest and how it can benefit your company, here are some tips below: 

How Does it Work?

Pinterest is a network where people look for inspiration, including specifically seeking out ideas about new products to buy. Here are some of the elements of using Pinterest:

1. Pins

A Pin is simply any image or video that someone chooses to save to Pinterest. For businesses, more important than the image itself is the link: Every pin links back to the original source, so Pinterest can be a great source of referral traffic.

2. Boards

Users (called “Pinners”) save a lot of stuff—an incredible 100 billion Pins to date. In order to keep things organized, they sort their Pins into collections called boards. For example, you can have a board called “Golf Apparel” or “Golf Courses” so as to separate your photos by categories. The social media platform has many categories that can be broad or a niche topic. Your profile can contain as many boards as you would like and you can either create original pins or re-pin from other users onto your board.

Pinners can follow your entire account, or just the specific boards that interest them most. Then, the Pins you save will appear in their feed. Each pin should have a link attached to the image, which will direct the user to whatever website you want them to go to.

3. Feed

A Pinterest feed is just like a feed on any other social network—it’s a collection of links and content from boards and users that the Pinner has followed.

 

Golf Galaxy whole board of pins

What Will Pinterest Do For Your Company?

Pinterest provides a marketing strategy that’s different from other platforms. The idea that you can create boards, post or re-post pins and include links for each one is a great tool to use.

With the use of these pins you can draw interested users to your main site, thus increasing qualified web traffic. Additionally, by re-pinning relative content onto your own page, you draw more users to the content on your boards through popular pins. However in order to successfully use this site, you must actively post new pins and re-pin relevant, popular pins onto your own boards each day.

By frequently pinning content, you create an opportunity for users to notice your brand and potentially increase the number of followers on your profile.

#Hashtag

Why #Hashtag Matters For B2B Social Media Marketers

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Tips on How to Effectively Use #Hashtag in your Marketing Campaign

With social media expanding its reach everyday in order for users to connect online, there are some new tools you might not understand how to use properly – and one of these tools is called the hashtag. The #hashtag—a word or phrase without spaces or special characters and preceded by a “#”—can become a profitable and powerful addition to your marketing arsenal.

First gaining popularity on Twitter, where tweets with hashtags receive 2x the engagement of those without, the tactic has become a standard conversation-starting and engagement-driving tool across many social outlets. However, Instagram is beginning to take the lead with the #hashtag tool, allowing your business to obtain more organic followers that have a keen interest in what your company is all about.

Here are some tips on using hashtags effectively in your B2B social outreach:

  1. Create a static list of hashtags you will always use, and then add new hashtags after

The first thing you’ll want to do in order to implement hashtags into your marketing campaign is to make a list of all the hashtaghs that you believe will be relevant to your audience that you will want to use regularly. For example, when I write about golf fashion and I post a photo on my social media I will use hashtags such as, “#GolfFashion,” #WomensApparel,” #Instagolf.” Just to name a few.

You want to make sure you choose hashtags that are popular enough, but not TOO popular. You can tell whether a hashtag is too popular if you type it into the search bar on Instagram. For example, #Golf has 13 million posts, whereas #GolfGirls has only 58,000 posts. So remember, your post will be a needle in a haystack if you choose hashtags that have too large of a popularity and you won’t be gaining traction with your social media marketing.

Instead, you’ll want to create two lists: existing hashtags that are already buzz-worthy conversation starters within your niche, and new hashtags that you’re specifically creating to publicize your brand.

Here are some ways to do so:

  • Evergreen – This term refers to words or phrases or topics that will be relevant now and in the future for your audience. Make sure a sizable number of your hashtags speak to topics that have staying power.
  • Newsworthy – Any big news or events happening within your products industry? Make sure to always keep tabs on the latest newsworthy items and add specific hashtags about the subject into your already existing list.

At the end of the process, you’ll have a list of hashtags ready to go across your social channels!

  1. Use your hashtags to join in on conversations

Hashtags also has another important role – it can lead to engagement scenarios and conversations with interested prospects – giving your company the opportunity to make more connections and share content. If you don’t quite understand here’s an example: this golf brand that I follow made up his own hashtag #makegolffunagain. Since I’ve been a follower of his from quite some time he will comment on my golf posts (when appropriate) and use his hashtag. This will generate more leads for him as more people start to notice the hashtag on relevant posts within your industry’s niche.

  • Join existing conversations that are relevant. Social listening is great for this. Be sure to note where you can meaningfully contribute or comment on something, and within your message, make sure you use the same hashtags that other interested parties are using.
  • Introduce branded hashtags with loyal customers. The best promoters of your unique, branded hashtags are those who are already involved with your brand and helping spread your message organically. Introduce new hashtags into social messages and particularly focus on those who consistently share your social posts, as they’ll help the new hashtags spread the fastest. (ie. #makegolffunagain)

Those are the basics to using and implementing hashtags into your business social media strategy. Hashtags are a powerful way to increase engagement and attract new leads. Start using hashtags in your posts, and you’ll strengthen your social campaigns!

Facebook Live

Tips When Using Facebook Live Streaming

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Facebook Live Can Help You Get More Followers

Social media is always changing and finding new ways for people to engage with one another, so it takes us a bit to integrate them into our social media marketing strategy. Facebook Live is about bringing fans face-to-face with hosts and/or guests that they are interested in. It’s all the buzz now and is even getting the attention of media companies. Celebrity Chefs are adopting Facebook Live and the popular morning television show Today recently launched a Facebook Live video booth that Facebook paid for in their green room.

Facebook Live enables you to stream your live video feed from your mobile device through the Facebook application. You can film you or use the away feature to film what you are viewing. This can be a great tool to use to boost your followers and audience along with the fact that you can show users you are up to date with the newest feature of the social media platform.

Tips

  1. Plan your Facebook Live stream in advance — tell your followers about the broadcast and encourage them to participate.
  2. Ask your viewers to subscribe to your live videos so that they are always notified when you are live and broadcasting.
  3. Plan a broadcast that is at least 5 minutes.Dead air, especially when it comes to live streaming, dampens the user experience. Plus, you have to give fans a chance to tune in.
  4. A good way to fill in the content for those 5 minutes is to use the comment section as a Q&A and respond to their questions live.
  5. Have a strong internet connection. Wi-Fi is suggested, but a 4G cellphone can also work as long as you have a strong connection. If you do lose your signal, the stream will pause until you are reconnecting and you can lose your audience.

Don’t worry if not many people tune in. When the broadcast is finished the video will post on your timeline and they can watch it later.

Try out Facebook Live a few times to determine if it will work for your company. The more that you use Facebook Live the better you will get at it and the more loyal your followers will be when it comes to tuning in.

Native Advertising

High-Quality Native Advertising Has Important Benefits

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Why is Native Advertising Effective?

The ways we advertise our brands or products to encourage consumers to engage with us have changed drastically over the past decade. Remember those incessant pop-up ads whenever you would click on a website’s URL? Remember feeling immediately turned off by the site and exiting out? Yeah, those annoying ads are now a thing of the past. Rather than being the main focus of the content, and potentially disrupting customers, native advertising provides content in the context of the existing user experience. Success is based on relevancy, engagement, and share ability. It’s advertisement that blends in with its surroundings.

Traditional forms of “interruption” marketing such as pop-up ads are proving to be ineffective. Last year alone, approximately 200 million people installed ad-blocking software worldwide to combat display ads. Developing quality content is the key to getting around ad-blocking programs.

Your content should meet the following criteria:

  • Organically displayed on an external website.
  • Designed to fit in with the natural flow of the publication.
  • Curated for the target audience.

Since we’re now in a world where most of what we publish online is heavily content-based, native advertising offers advertisers a way to reach out to their audience without being overbearing. According to research, this means that many native ads are viewed for the same amount of time as editorial content, and native ads are far more likely to be shared than banner ads, increasing your marketing potential for going viral. 

Three Benefits of Native Advertising

  1. Captures More Attention

If you can’t get your audience to engage with your advertisements – it’s pointless. For professionals in the world of marketing, performance metrics are essential, and native advertising generally offers higher viewing rates, greater conversions, and more engagement than almost any advertisement. If you’re using native advertising to share content, you can even increase your chances of your audience doing the marketing for you, by sharing sponsored tweets with friends, or liking your Facebook posts.

  1. Builds Relevance

Being able to form a trusting and loyal relationship with your customers is an essential part of not only building a network of devoted buyers and encouraging the arrival of new customers who may want to join in. When brands associate the content of their native advertisement with the target’s tastes and the outlet in question, they improve their level of shareability – which is the best way to help your chances of going viral.

  1. Empowers Customers

When I shop online, I’m usually looking for a solution to a problem, such as a phone case that will protect my phone from shattering if I drop it. Many people have similar thoughts and as such, they appreciate valuable content from brands that seems to want to provide assistance, rather than simply make money. Using native advertising, it is possible to present branded content in a subtle and convincing way that offers empowering information to customers. You need to convince your customers that you care about them and not just about the money. Often, you’ll see customers reward you for this effort with their loyalty.

Email

Generate Better Leads With Creative Email Opt-in Ideas

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It isn’t very appealing to consumers when you just having a box on your website that says, “Sign up for my email list!” When building an email list for your business, you need to give an incentive to sign up by offering something of value for free.

You’re probably thinking, “Why would I want to give away something…for free?!” but the truth is, consumers are more likely to be enticed or at least become more interested in signing up for your email list. This free piece of magic is called a lead magnet and will get you way better results than any basic sign-up form will.

Here are 4 email opt-in ideas to assist in your business’s lead generation.

  1. Free Sample / Trial 

A free trial or free sample could be the best type of lead magnet depending on what type of business you have. Offer a free sample of a product or service you have. Maybe a 30-day free trial will give potential customers a better sense of what your business has to offer and if it’s worth signing up for. It’s a great way to show off the quality of your products or services.

  1. E-Book 

Offering tips/best practices is something that will show consumers specific methods for doing something or ways that your product or service can solve your customer’s problem. Whatever you decide to create as an informational incentive for potential customers, ensure that it is concise and specific. This is the best way to position yourself as an expert in your industry.

  1. A Checklist 

When condensing a blog post down to a simple checklist or a checklist of all of the steps that someone needs to take when implementing a service/product that your business offers is very smart to do. This works because it’s very clear about what steps need to be taken to accomplish something and can lead to sales when the person realizes this isn’t something they can do alone.

  1. Promo Video

Not everyone learns by reading. Some are more visual and audible learners. By creating a promo video, you can quickly educate your visitors on your product or service. Videos also allow you to leverage third-party platforms like YouTube and the social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, which is poised to give video extra reach in their newsfeed.

When considering how to create a good lead generation you need to ask a the basic question: What does your business offer and what do your customers want from you? You can’t simply expect that your business is important enough for someone to hand over their email address – you have to prove it with something of value.

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