Showing posts with label Social Media Markteting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media Markteting. Show all posts

Monday, August 27, 2018

Increase YOUR Social Media Engagement?


3 Surefire steps to increase your social media engagement..

While having a lot of followers is great, you need them to engage with your content to find success.



For many businesses, improving their social media engagement is one goal that requires a lot of attention.

Indeed, a bulk of marketing budgets are committed towards campaigns online, seeing that consumers and even the B2B crowd use Facebook and LinkedIn wherever they go.

In this sense, it’s always important to establish a social media marketing strategy that secures higher engagement. After all, improving your sales numbers depends on the number of opportunities you open up. The more people you engage, the more likely you will be making a sale.

You don’t always have to struggle to come up with a campaign that gets a lot of views and nurtures a lot of impressions. Securing better engagement numbers is very much possible if you apply the right steps.



Focus On Building Followers And Likes

An indispensable way for you to increase your social media engagement is through getting more followers across your social media accounts. There are several ways to do this.

One surefire way is to include an effective call-to-action. Tell your audience to like your Facebook page or become a Twitter follower. Be sure to provide a good reason for people to take action.

You can also try other tactics. You might want to buy Instagram likes, which allows you to secure greater visibility for your campaign using the platform. From there, your social media engagement will eventually snowball into getting more sales opportunities for your product or service.



Create Effective Social Media Copy

Whether you want to share a blog post from your main site or just want to earn a like, it’s essential to make sure you write social media descriptions that are engaging and clever. You can:

--Write short, one-sentence descriptions with a lot of value. Your target audience is bound to click on an external link if it’s relevant to them.
--Avoid giving too much away. You would want to stir interest, so it’s always best to create social media copy that’s intriguing but, at the same time, relevant to the content you are sharing.
--Use numbers. If your social media campaign is aimed at business owners, providing stats and figures is a good way to get them to engage, especially if these numbers and their corresponding content are relevant to their industry.



Choose The Right Hashtags

Digital marketers have this impression that the more hashtags you use in a social media post, the more people will be able to see it. However, this isn’t always the case -- using too many hashtags can trigger spam filters and decreases your brand’s reputation in the process.

With that being said, hashtags should be used sparingly. Moreover, a lot of effort has to be involved to find the best performing hashtags for your social media campaign. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo and Twitter Advanced Search. Just key in a topic or keyword, and you will be able to get a good view of the top performing hashtags. You can then compete for hashtags that get a lot of engagement and allow you to spread your brand’s clout.

Guest Authored By Faizan Raza. Faizan loves Tech authors, publishing, and talking incessantly about them. His passion is partnering with authors to bring worthwhile content to publication. He started this WusNews.com blog as a way to create a community of writers, both published and seeking publication. Follow Faizan on Twitter.





"Utilize these strategies to increase social media engagement and improve awareness of your brand.

And, above all, Be a Customer-Service Leader!


    • Post Crafted By:
      Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Salt Lake City, UT. where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)


    Published by at 9 comments:
    Labels: , , ,
    Location: Midvale, UT 84047, USA

    Wednesday, February 28, 2018

    Are YOUR Social Media Consumers Burned Out?


    Are consumers burning out on social media?

    It’s a troubling sign when Facebook publishes research to answer a serious question, one that we’ve all likely been trying to avoid for some time now: “Is social media bad for us?”



    Let’s not forget that social media has made a positive impact on how we interact with people, how we consume interesting and timely content, and how we share important moments in our lives.

    However, as with everything, it isn’t without its flaws. Simply consuming content passively, without any sort of interaction, has been shown to put people in a bad mood in just 10 minutes!

    On the other hand, positive interactions with friends and family -- from celebrating important milestones to reminiscing on the past -- can help people feel a greater sense of joy and a stronger sense of community, even if those interactions are purely digital.

    While the research ultimately concluded that social media could either negatively or positively skew people's overall sense of well-being, depending on how it's used, social media can still do a world of good as long as it remains “social” in nature.

    Unfortunately, it’s become more of a catalyst for social isolation. Here’s an extreme, yet funny take on this:



    Even celebrities like Ed Sheeran made resolutions earlier in the year to spend less time with their smartphones -- going as far as cutting them out of their lives entirely. Why? Because people are getting burned out.

    It used to be all about having fun or getting the latest news of the day. Now, it’s hard to get through a day on social media without feeling like the world is falling apart.

    In many ways, it’s now become an around-the-clock angry stream of consciousness --  fueled by salacious, hyperbolic, and often false click-inducing content, which is, more often than not, accompanied by an equally vile and hate-filled stream of commentary. I am no wallflower by any means –- and I have no problem joining in a spirited debate on social media –- but, let’s face it, the situation has become pretty bad.

    Even worse is the rapid influx of branded content taking center stage on our social newsfeeds. It’s really no surprise, then, that people are starting to feel disconnected from their own social feeds.



    It’s almost as if their own social media experience belongs less to them and their social community of friends, family, and colleagues, and more to the brands that want to capture their attention.

    However, because social media has become so intertwined in our daily lives, we really can’t just give it up and shut it out altogether, even though it sometimes feels like that’s our best option. Instead, we should ask ourselves: “Is it actually possible to foster meaningful interactions through social anymore?”

    Facebook realized that, given the current state of social, people simply can’t. That’s why the company decided to take the newsfeed experience in a different direction this year, putting a spotlight on the personal moments in people’s lives that allow them to connect with each other in more relevant and meaningful ways. What this basically means is that posts from brands and businesses have done a pretty bang up job of crowding those personal moments out.

    But Facebook’s shifting course isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even though it will force you to change your overall approach to Facebook. Here’s why. Consumers, especially millennials, are tired of brands “shouting at them” via social media.



    In a Lithium study, we found that 74 percent of “digital natives” – millennials (aged 20-39) and Gen Z (aged 16-19) – object to being targeted by brands in their social media feeds, with 56 percent reporting they’ve either cut back or stopped using social media entirely due to ads in their feed. Even worse, only 54 percent of younger consumers trust social networks. No wonder why brands are finding it harder to cut through the noise.

    People don’t want the digital world becoming an endless string of promotional or “clickbait” content. Brands need to help lead this charge.

    Fortunately, there are a few things you can do now to help consumers cope with burnout. The added benefit is that it’ll also help you demonstrate that your brand’s goal is to make their lives better in some way -- rather than to intrude on their relationships.

    Now, here’s the truth: consumers know brands are constantly trying to sell them something. They get it. We all get it –- because we are all consumers. So, stop for a minute and think about what you, as a consumer, need from brands as well as how you ideally want to be treated by them through social media.

    Then, follow these steps to get consumers back on your side:



    1. Rebuild Trust

    For all the good things that social media has done to create new and more impactful customer-brand relationships, it has also compromised the trust that consumers have with brands, simply by becoming a water hose of promotional content.

    But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Consumers want to have a positive relationship with your brand. You just have to be much more proactive about enabling those relationships. To do this, you need to shift your entire approach for communicating and marketing to your customers through social.

    This involves thinking about social media less as just another channel for broadcasting promotions or publishing branded content and more like a platform for building relationships with customers. A good place to start is by simply being where your consumers already are or where they need you to be. Your brand is only as strong as your most loyal customers. The bonus is on you to help them see how important they are to your brand.

    When they need your help, enthusiastically lend a helping hand. When they ask a question, answer immediately. When they give you feedback, say thank you. It really is as easy as that. Show your customers that you truly care, and they’ll reward you with their trust, loyalty, and positive word of mouth.



    2. Master The Basics of Digital Customer Service

    This is a no-brainer. If a customer reaches out to your brand on social media for any reason, be ready to respond – and fast! Every time. Part of winning the loyalty and love of consumers is by mastering and, more often than not, over-delivering on the basics of customer service.

    It sounds really easy in principle, but you’d be surprised that the vast majority of brands out there just don’t cut it. In fact, a mere 10 percent of brands we recently surveyed have invested in the right tools, platforms, and resources to grow and scale their digital footprint effectively – including their social customer service efforts.

    If you care about your current customers just as much as you care about earning the loyalty of new customers, then you’ve got to approach social with a customer-first mindset. This includes investing in the right tools that make it easy to respond quickly. Doing so is pretty much the only way you can earn the trust and loyalty of customers today. Brands are competing more than ever before on customer experience. If you don’t deliver, your customers will look the other way.



    3. Don't Broadcast. Engage!

    One great way to deliver truly amazing digital customer experiences is to fundamentally change how you communicate with consumers via social. A lot of research we’ve seen lately points to one thing: consumers aren’t interested in a one-way dialogue with brands.

    If you want their attention, you have to engage them in real conversations. Funny thing is, they really want you to do that, too. As fickle as consumers may seem today – especially digital-first consumers who thrive on instant gratification – they are more than happy to engage with brands as long as brands give them a good reason to.

    If your prerogative is to broadcast one promotion after another, it’s almost guaranteed they’ll quickly tune you out. However, if you authentically engage with them and do whatever you can to personalize the interactions you have with them, there’s a good chance they’ll respond – and even become your biggest advocates over time (it won’t happen instantly).



    4. Grow Your Base of Advocates

    Perfect segue – and another reason why it’s so important to take the time to build and nurture relationships with your best customers through social media. As Facebook and other social media networks crack down on the amount of brand-oriented content that gets surfaced organically in a person’s newsfeed, you’re going to have to be much more proactive about enlisting your biggest advocates to do some of the heavy lifting for you.

    What does that entail? You need to get them talking about your brand or sharing interesting content that you’ve posted on your social channels to help outsmart the changes to news feed algorithms that are most definitely no longer in your favor. The more people share your content and talk positively about your brand, the more likely your content will be algorithmically tagged as “quality content” and eventually surface higher up in more people’s news feeds.

    The reality is, every time Facebook changes its algorithm, brands have to think one step ahead. In this case, however, it’s a bigger call-to-action than that; it’s about putting your customers first – their wants, needs, and expectations – and empowering them to be a megaphone for your brand in the most genuine and authentic ways possible. That’s how you will be able to make the most of the latest algorithm changes.



    What To Do Now?

    So, what’s the big takeaway here? Consumers (which includes all of you, too!) are getting tired of social media and are ready and willing to tune it out completely.

    As a brand, you have a choice: continue to lead them down the path of burnout or empower them to use social media to create a stronger relationship with you.

    Remember, at the end of the day, we’re all consumers, too. If you feel even the slightest inclination to slow down your social media consumption, there’s a good chance your target consumers are feeling the same urge. Step into their shoes and ask yourself, “How would I want my brand to speak to me via social media if I were my audience members?”

    Guest Authored By Dayle Hall. Dayle is SVP of Marketing for Lithium Technologies. In his role, Dayle is the head of marketing, responsible for all strategic marketing activities for the company including branding, positioning, communications, customer acquisition programs and go-to-market strategy. Dayle is a marketing executive with 19+ years’ experience across all marketing disciplines. Prior to joining Lithium, Dayle led Corporate Marketing and Corporate Communications at Aruba Networks. He has also held multiple marketing roles at Cisco and Oracle. Follow Dayle on Twitter.





    Remember, at the end of the day, we’re all consumers, too.

    If you feel even the slightest inclination to slow down your social media consumption, there’s a good chance your target consumers are feeling the same urge.

    Step into their shoes and ask yourself, “How would I want my brand to speak to me via social media if I were my audience members?” -DayleHall

      • Authored by:
        Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBr@nd.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
      Published by at No comments:
      Labels: , , , , , ,
      Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA

      Sunday, February 25, 2018

      The 25 Top Social Media Marketing Tools?


      Top 25 social media tools for marketers..

      With today’s society becoming more connected and more reliant on the internet, business ties are increasing being forged online rather than in a boardroom. Nowadays, most brands have at least one online presence, and most have several.



      Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are the new homes of conducting business, creating consumer bases and advertising products.

      However, the overwhelming presence of businesses on these platforms creates a good deal of pressure for companies trying to beat out their nearest competitors.

      Fortunately, marketing teams don’t have to go it alone in their efforts to raise their brand to the top. A number of third-party apps exist that can enhance certain features of these social platforms and make social media marketing a more lucrative and intuitive experience. Here are 25 social media resources designed to help marketers advertise their brands more effectively.




      Used by McDonalds, Sprint and major industry influencers with millions of followers, SocialDrift is an Instagram marketer’s best friend. The platform automates Instagram interactions, which help to organically increase follower count. Users just need to provide SocialDrift with information about ideal Instagram followers, and the platform will use machine learning to engage users through likes, comments and follows. Because of this engagement, users will frequently follow accounts in return.

      In time, SocialDrift can dramatically increase the number of high-quality Instagram followers through the platform’s Instagram bot, named Securebot.

      2. Buffer

      Buffer offers a swift solution for businesses swamped by the multiple social media accounts they must manage. The application innovates marketing by allowing individuals and businesses to queue posts for their various accounts. Buffer works for several third-party extensions, in addition to the regular line-up of social platforms.



      Furthermore, the app boasts many powerful tools like photo editing, group collaboration and detailed data analytics about social media performance. Essentially, Buffer can take a jumble of social media accounts, organize them and in the process make marketing more manageable.


      Are you a team managing social media for a lot of different clients? Sendible is the tool for you. Sendible has unique inboxes for each brand, accessible by any member of your team, so communication is streamlined. They also offer a content engine that suggests new material based on the topics of your profiles and followers. In addition, calendars are fully interactive. Who said teamwork has to be hard?


      MavSocial is a management tool that focuses on graphics and videos for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr. You can schedule or preview content to any or all of those platforms. And if you’ve run out of content, simply reschedule. MavSocial also has features for engagement analytics, collaboration, galleries, image database and campaign creation. Choose from their 5 plans to get what works best for you.




      Snapchat’s introduction of Stories in 2013 has rapidly spread the feature across social media, with many other platforms joining the trend to reap some of its benefits. Storyheap is tailored for the Story feature, allowing brands to manage their Story straight from the web.

      In addition, Storyheap offers in-depth analytics about the current and projected popularity of a brand’s Story. For now, the app is limited to Snapchat and Instagram, but support for other platforms is in the works.


      Having high-quality content and images is crucial; after all, nothing drives away a follower like poor quality. Unsplash is a database of gorgeous, high-resolution, watermark-free images that are free for use. You can use the search engine, or browse collections like “Still Life” or “Photos for Parent Bloggers.”

      Once you find an image you want to use, you can either download it or save it in your own collection for future use. Unsplash allows anyone to have high-quality, high-resolution images.



      7. Canva

      Photo and video are highly influential on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Consequently, marketing teams are often pressured to produce beautiful visuals and graphics to get attention and increase brand visibility.

      Canva contains plenty of design tools, tutorials, templates and more, so users have the materials to create almost anything they can conceive. With Canva, marketing teams with limited experience can still generate stunning content and gather a larger following.


      Marketers may often feel at a loss when it comes to conjuring up fresh content, but third-party algorithms can always be of assistance. nTuitive.social combines detailed data analytics with refined publishing and scheduling tools to ensure brands can consistently provide interesting content.

      With compatibility across more than 20 platforms, the app monitors discussion of the brand, analyzes social media decisions and offers suggestions to increase audience engagement. nTuitive.social acts as a social media multi-tool for businesses trying to revamp their marketing strategy.




      While many of the resources in this list work on multiple platforms, others excel with one. Grytics, with its focus on Facebook Groups, is one such application.

      The app gathers a wealth of information from the posts and members of specific groups. It then displays these statistics for businesses to manage these groups or tailor their strategies to better suit audience interests. Businesses using Grytics can successfully get the most out of any associated Facebook Groups.

      10. Yotpo

      On Instagram, consumers freely post pictures of brands and products they’ve engaged with. Wouldn’t it be useful for marketers to be able to easily share these images of consumers using their products and following their brands?

      Yotpo makes this a reality. Its Social Curation feature collects posts relevant to a brand and helps these businesses contact users for permission to use their posts in advertising. In addition, Yotpo implements a Shop Now feature in Instagram, letting users buy products seen in their feed. Yotpo helps businesses make their Instagram accounts more marketable to consumers.




      On the surface, AgoraPulse is a feature-heavy social media management app. Offering content scheduling and message tracking, the app greatly increases the efficiency for any business active on social media. However, its in-depth analytics and report-creation features make AgoraPulse even more effective.

      Whether businesses need to measure their performance or just want to discuss their social media traffic with one another, AgoraPulse offers more than enough tools.


      With social media attracting so much traffic from marketing teams and consumers alike, it would be helpful for marketers to be able to see how much attention certain topics and types of content are getting without wading through piles of data. BuzzSumo’s data analytics allows its users to do that, with minimal hassle.

      BuzzSumo’s search bar takes in search words and returns a list of relevant links on the internet and social media. With so much easily accessible information, marketers can quickly determine the popularity of different types of content and adapt their marketing strategies.




      Most businesses using third-party applications to enhance their marketing are seeking a comprehensive boost to all their platforms. Oktopost’s features make this possible.

      With powerful data analytics, post scheduling, content curation and discussion tracking, the application allows businesses to increase their productivity, while at the same time pinpointing any glaring weaknesses. Oktopost is an invaluable resource for businesses trying to increase their social media performance.

      14. Quuu

      Completely automated social media marketing is swiftly becoming a reality. However, there’s still a place for hand-picked curations, which can resonate more with living, breathing consumers. Quu offers that experience.

      Businesses using Quuu first select their interests from over 300 categories. Then Quuu sends users a list of recommendations for types of content to post in order to represent those interests. At that point, businesses can either manually post content or let Quuu take the wheel. Importantly, all the content suggested by Quuu is hand-reviewed, meaning it has a better chance of connecting with humans.



      15. IFTTT

      Most of the platforms in this list offer similar tools, like post scheduling and data analytics; however, apps like IFTTT operate entirely differently. Running through platform-specific applets instead of catch-all features, IFTTT offers a much more specialized approach to marketing.

      The app divides its applications into features specific to platforms like Google, iOS, photography and more. Simply selecting a few of these applets automates their processes, freeing up precious time for businesses. These features include automatically saving attachments to Google Drive, backing up texts and sending notifications for person-specific emails. With IFTTT’s applets, marketing teams can increase their productivity and give themselves more time to create advertisements.

      16. Qwaya

      For many businesses, revenue flows through more routes than just product sales and business deals. Several companies rely heavily on ad revenue, and Qwaya makes the process of managing advertisements much more intuitive.

      The app allows businesses to schedule and queue certain ads, while at the same time restricting certain content. It also supports user collaboration, so ad performance can easily be discussed and adapted. For businesses advertising on Facebook and Instagram, Qwaya is an immensely powerful resource.





      Content scheduling is one of the most popular tools in this list. While marketing teams may be relieved to schedule their posts weeks in advance, MeetEdgar adds an extra step.

      Instead of using one-time updates, the app automatically reshares certain posts over time, eliminating the need for long lists of posts. In addition, MeetEdgar boasts direct video uploads and an unlimited library of updates, and allows users to choose which posts are and aren’t reposted over time.


      Platform-specific tools have the power to revolutionize vanilla applications and make them into far more productive tools of trade. TweetDeck is one powerful enhancement to Twitter.

      The app allows businesses to schedule, monitor and queue up Tweets remotely. The app ensures that marketers can discuss certain content and analyze audience tastes to release Tweets best suited to their followers’ interests. TweetDeck can make Twitter an even more lucrative platform for businesses.



      19. RivalIQ

      Rival IQ is first and foremost a data analytics tool. Its data-analyzing software collects relevant bits of information on a business’s social media activity and automatically generates in-depth displays. For example, the app shows audience growth, interactions, changes between time periods, similar statistics for close competitors and the topics most popular with the existing audience.

      Rival IQ’s tracking features go far beyond these, but even a fraction of its functions would prove useful to businesses trying to gauge their overall social media performance.

      20. Animoto

      The big social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat – all share an affinity for video. In social media marketing, photo and video are the primary modes of communication, and businesses that can’t create stimulating visual content are at a serious disadvantage.

      Animoto makes this a non-issue. With loads of photo- and video-editing tools, Animoto allows even inexperienced marketers to create eye-catching and stimulating content for their audience.



      21. Soceto

      Socedo revolves around the concept of “social intent data.” The term denotes actions that signify what people are interested in. Socedo gathers all this data to better understand lucrative trends and prescribe helpful marketing suggestions to businesses.

      Boasting features like audience discovery and engagement, the app gives businesses a way to connect to people who might be interested in their brand. Socedo guarantees audience growth and increased brand visibility for businesses using the application.

      22. Narrow

      Narrow connects businesses to users who may be interested in their content, based on their previous actions on the social platform.

      Offering detailed data analytics and an audience research tool, the app allows businesses to tailor their marketing strategy to attract a larger following. With Narrow, marketing teams can easily increase their audience on Twitter.



      23. Grum

      Grum is an application specifically created for Instagram. The application contains specialized features for making Instagram more effective as a marketing tool.

      With tools like content scheduling, remote management and multiple account support, the app packs a ton of features onto basic vanilla Instagram. With Grum, businesses and marketing teams can increase their Instagram performance and free up more time to create fresh content.


      The hardest part of managing social media accounts is consistently coming up with interesting content to share. Post Planner provides a solution.

      The app essentially analyzes audience interests with a variety of algorithms to recommend topics to post about. In addition, the app includes an intuitive post-scheduling tool to guarantee that the most effective content is posted at the right times. Post Planner allows marketing teams to post as efficiently as possible.




      Sometimes the simpler an application, the more impactful it is. WordSwag is a prime example.

      The app boasts just one feature – adding customized text to photos. It allows customization of color and font, and has resulted in thousands of fascinating images.

      Businesses that require a minimalist but powerful graphic-design app need look no further than WordSwag.

      Guest Authored By Steve Olinkski. Steve is a Marketer who also happens to be among the most influential writers in the space. He's been called The CMO Whisperer & Distiller of Truth. He's looking for his next challenge. Follow Steve on Twitter.





      "Fortunately, marketing teams don’t have to go it alone in their efforts to raise their brand to the top.

      A number of third-party apps exist that can enhance certain features of these social platforms and make social media marketing a more lucrative and intuitive experience.." -SteveOlenski


        • Authored by:
          Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
        Published by at No comments:
        Labels: , , , ,
        Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA
        Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)