Showing posts with label Social Platforms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Platforms. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Powerful Gen Z Marketing Tips?


Social media is one of the most effective marketing channels for companies of any size..

In fact, it works so well that more than half of U.S. small businesses are planning to increase their social media marketing budget this year..



Generation Z is at the forefront of social media -- they are extremely active on social networks, with half of Gen Z connected online via their smartphones for approximately 10 hours per day. This generation loves personalized apps, and a poll from SCG notes that 88% of Gen Zers are primarily using Instagram and Snapchat. Because of the new ways in which Gen Z is using social media, they’re changing the outlets associated with these platforms as well, with music at the forefront.

Fabrizio Moreira, founder of recording company VIP Music Records, understands the marketing punch social media can deliver, when executed correctly. The company is expanding rapidly, and recently inked a long-term contract with The Orchard, a division of Sony Music.

However, their primary focus has been Latin America, where they now hold the top spot for music distribution in the youth market. As a global study by Nielsen notes, listening to music is a primary source of Generation Z’s entertainment, with 37% of respondents stating it was top choice. This suggests Moreira is on his way to making his label a household name across the globe.



The fast growth of Moreira’s recording company and the success of its artists is a result of several factors, with a solid social media marketing strategy leading the way. I recently spoke with Moreira, and asked him for his top social media marketing tips for Gen Zers.

1. Test Multiple Social Platforms

According to Moreira, you aren’t going to know which social networks will provide value unless you test them. He says, “You have to think like your target customer, and determine what networks they are more than likely to be active on. Then you need to become active and put out a serious effort. It’s not something you can just play with for a day or two and expect to have a concrete answer.

It’s important to experiment with as many social networks as possible and think beyond just dollars when evaluating their value. “You might find that Twitter posts aren’t converting into immediate sales, but it’s a great source for driving new followers to your Instagram page, which does convert at a high rate,” Moreira notes.



2. Measure Everything With Scaling In Mind

Moreira suggests that all social media efforts should be designed and executed with scaling in mind.

“Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with the world, and when you identify a winning strategy, it can easily be scaled as high as your budget will allow. This is why you read so many stories of startups quickly scaling to millions of dollars in revenue in a short period of time. Social media gives you that unlimited reach ability.”

As the youths’ behavior is changing on these platforms, advertisers need to integrate themselves into their lifestyle. Moreira says, “Consumers are becoming very savvy when it comes to social media, and they are becoming immune to ads and promotional posts that lack creativity. You have to offer something of value if you expect to capture even a second of someone’s time on social media.”



3. Recognize Who Your Target Market Is

“Not knowing precisely who your target market is will lead to an epic fail,” according to Moreira. He suggests that you take the time to properly identify your target market and then utilize all of the targeting options available, with a focus on Facebook to start.

“Facebook has the most targeting options, allowing you to laser-focus your efforts. I see a lot of campaigns make the mistake of focusing on the reach rather than the target. Placing your offer in front of 1,000 highly targeted prospects is going to perform much better than showing it to 500,000 untargeted prospects.” Moreira notes that the smaller targeted audience will not only convert higher, but the overall ad spend will be lower since you are targeting a much smaller pool.

Though Facebook can be a great first test run for targeting, be wary of using it as your primary channel. According to the survey from SCG above, Generation Z’s usage is down, with only 66% using it daily.



4. Realize That You Have To Spend Money To Make Money

This is the point that Moreira really focused on. “Far too many brands think that they can post organically and that the business should roll in. Social media has become a pay-to-play platform and anyone complaining about that needs to re-evaluate the situation. These social networks are no different than the companies using them -- everyone is in it to turn a profit.”

Moreira suggests starting with a small budget and then increasing it once you find ad copy and ad formats that perform well. “You also need to realize that it’s going to require a testing budget before you should realistically expect results. You can’t load up $20 and then become discouraged when you don’t find immediate success.”

Guest Authored By Deep Patel. Deep is the Founder of Owl Metrics, a serial entrepreneur, marketer and bestselling author of A Paperboy’s Fable: The 11 Principles of Success. The book was dubbed the #1 best business book in 2016 by Success Magazine and named the best book for entrepreneurs in 2016 by Entrepreneur Magazine. Also recognized as a top 25 marketing influencer by Forbes, He has worked with VC-backed startups to Fortune 500 companies. He's am also a contributor at Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post and Success Magazine. Follow Deep on Twitter.




When marketing to Gen Z on social media, it can be tough to find the quantitative levels of success you’re after.

However, by sticking with a plan that is telling a genuine, relatable story, you can reach not just fans, but followers for years to come.

And if anyone knows how to do this, it’s the man who will probably have a bust of himself in Cleveland someday soon..

    • 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 ;)
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    Wednesday, September 12, 2018

    Best Time Of Day For Social Media Posting?


    A study shows the best times of day to post to social media..

    U.S. companies are expected to spend more than $37 billion dollars on social media promotion annually each year by 2020, representing 24% of the economy’s total digital advertising spend. It’s an astounding number, given that the vast majority of social media managers charged with getting customers to click on posts and through to their websites operate with little strategy beyond what we call “spray and pray,” an approach that litters social media with firm generated content in the hopes that one or more of those posts draw in customers.



    There is a better way. Our research on circadian rhythms suggests that content platforms like CNN, ESPN, National Geographic, and others can enhance their profit payoffs by at least 8% simply by posting content following the biological responses of their audience’s sleep-wake cycles and targeting content types to when the audience is most naturally receptive to it.

    On the surface such an approach doesn’t sound difficult. But social media managers face innumerable possibilities for posting content. For example, a social media manager tasked with posting 10 stories in a day and with a budget to promote four of those stories can schedule the sequence of social media posts in over 7 trillion ways. By replacing rules-of-thumb and gut feeling with precise science rooted in biology, we believe social media scheduling can not only be more cost-efficient, but also be a strong part of content platforms’ profitability.



    Putting an Ad Hoc Strategy to the Test

    We interviewed social media managers from several major content platforms about how they decide what to post and when. Overwhelmingly, we heard that they made decisions using simple rules of thumb. For example, they would post between 7 am and 9 am and pace stories at least 30 minutes apart. In this time period, they generally focused on local and sports news but did not pay attention to whether the posts were meant to make readers angry or happy or surprise them.

    Also, the managers typically had a budget for “boosting” posts. That is, they were able to pay social media platforms to advertise specific posts to broader audiences based on demographics, interests, and location, which potentially increased the click-through rate. Most of the managers we spoke with spent a bulk of their budget on boosting local and sports news, which they believed would match their audience’s preferences. Regardless of whether or not a post was boosted, social media managers had a specific goal: to attract a proportion of interested visitors to click-through to their website. Because advertisers featured on the content platform’s website are willing to pay for unique impressions, the impressions channeled through social media link clicks generate significant digital advertising revenue for the content platform.



    When we examined the link clicks of 5,706 posts on the Facebook page of a major U.S. newspaper, we found that, true to what social media managers suspected, morning posts had higher click-through rates than posts at other times of the day. Specifically, content posted in the morning attracted 8.8% more link clicks than content posted in the afternoon, and 11.1% more link clicks than content posted in the evening. But the managers’ ad hoc approach to “boosted posts” did little to bring in revenue, nor did their assumptions about when to post specific content types prove true.

    Surprisingly, we saw that boosted posts in this data set earned $60,921 more in revenue in the afternoon than in the morning, and that while local and sports stories were popular, entertainment and lifestyle stories generated the most amount of link clicks. Most surprising to the managers we interviewed was our conclusion that social media content that made readers feel angry or worried led to more links clicks in the morning compared to posting content that elicited the same feelings in the afternoon or evening. In short, all else being equal, posting content with a negative slant in the morning, and boosting posts in the afternoon yielded overall higher click-through rates and better returns than what social media managers typically saw with “spray and pray.”



    The Science Behind a Successful Strategy

    We can explain why the negative morning posts and the boosted afternoon posts are most profitable for content platforms by considering human working memory, which is responsible for temporary storage and manipulation of information needed for our daily tasks. Human working memory exhibits inherent variation across time of day and is highest when we wake up in the morning, lowest in mid-afternoon, and moderate in the evening. Higher availability of working memory makes individuals alert and feel the need to seek information. This means that consumers’ desire to engage with content will likely be highest in the morning, lowest in the afternoon, and moderate in the evening.

    Importantly, when working memory is more resource deprived, the brain prioritizes preferential information in order to stay efficient. When consumers are exposed to boosted content—which is required by law to look different from non-boosted content—on social media, the working memory picks up an external cue that this is important information. Thus, boosted content is most effective in the afternoon (when our working memory is low) and least effective in the morning (when our working memory is high). Consumers’ receptivity to content eliciting deep cognitive processing varies according to the availability of working memory, too. In our research we saw articles that required deeper engagement with ideas—think op-eds and science-based articles—were more frequently clicked on in when working memory was high.



    As the working memory becomes resource deprived in the afternoon, it activates a natural mechanism that inhibits any information that creates emotional responses which hinder the function of working memory. This minimizes distraction toward focal tasks and in turn increases attention toward focal cognitive tasks, which results in higher engagement toward posts involving superior cognitive processing.

    Using Biology to Gain an Advantage

    Knowing how social media posts perform by time of day, content type, and boosting we built a prescriptive decision support tool to help social media managers decide which time slots to pick for each post, which posts to boost, and how many posts to boost in a day given a boosting budget. We also drew on two other important findings of our research: that the sweet spot for inter-post duration within our data lies in the range of 30-90 minutes and that while every dollar spent on boosting does increase link clicks, increased spending has diminishing returns. We calibrated our model parameters using Facebook posts from 355 days for a major U.S. newspaper and then used these model parameters within our decision support tool to predict profit-maximizing schedules for the next 10 days, constraining the budget for boosting to the one that the newspaper firm had allocated for those 10 days. When we compared the projected gross profit resulting from the proposed schedule with the actual gross profit realized by the firm during those 10 days, we found that the proposed schedule resulted, on average, in an 8% increase in gross profits.



    While the tool did make profitable decisions, many of our lessons can be implemented quickly and independently by any organization. For instance:

    --All else equal, posting content in the morning results in higher engagement.
    --Boosting posts is most effective when the target audience is experiencing low working memory.
    --Assuming the majority of the audience start their day in the morning, it is ideal to post content conveying high-arousal emotion (i.e., angry or worried) in the morning and “deep think” content in the afternoon.
    --A firm does not need additional boosting budget to increase gross profits. Simply rearranging the posts to match content preferences of target audience can do the trick.
    --Increasing boosting budget does not necessarily increase gross profits. There is a tipping point where additional spending results in only marginal increases in gross profits.

    Guest Authored By Vamsi K. Kanuri, Shrihari Sridhar and Yixing Chen. Vamsi is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. Shrihari is a CED Professor of Marketing and Presidential Impact Fellow in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. Yixing is a Ph.D. student in Business Administration (Marketing) in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. Yixing holds an MBA from University of New Mexico and a Bachelor's degree in Finance from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.





    "In this burgeoning and lucrative field of social media content scheduling, the aforementioned guidelines can and should replace “spray and pray.”

    In 2017 alone, users worldwide consumed about 5.53 billion hours per day of social media content, up by 264% in the past five years.

    With a real strategy, built from an understanding of WHY consumers engage with a firm’s social media content, content platforms have a chance at capturing more and more of that valuable attention and being able to monetize their digital content.."


      • 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 ;)
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      Location: Midvale, UT 84047, 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 ;)
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        Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA
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