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Top 10 Powerful Moments That Shaped Social Media History Over the Last 20 Years

Do you remember your first social media profile? Or, how about your first social media post?

My first profile was on Myspace, my first friend was “Tom from Myspace,” and my first post was something like, “Myspace is awesome!”

The rest is history.

Social media has changed and evolved so much since the early days, it’s almost hard to believe how far we’ve come. How people use social media has changed as well. Gen Zs (now beginning to enter the workforce) only know a world with social media, compared to their counterparts – Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers – who can still fondly remember back to the days of snail mail and dial-up modems!

In light of #SMDay (6/30/2017), we’re teaming up with Bitly to share stories and celebrate the positive impact that social media has had on individuals, businesses, and the globe over the last 20 glorious years – all using the hashtag #impactofsocial. Check out the details at the bottom of this post about how you can join in on the fun!

Here’s a look at 10 powerful moments that shaped the social media history.

Let’s dive in!

Top 10 powerful moments that shaped social media history

There have been so many wonderful moments over the last 20 years on social media that it was quite a challenge to boil them down to just 10! But since we’re celebrating the positive impact of social media on people’s lives and on the world for this campaign, these are all particularly meaningful and important moments in the social media history.

Feel free to jump to a certain moment(s) in the social media history!

The Birth of Facebook

Miracle on the Hudson

Going “Viral”

Ellen’s Selfie (and the Nuggets guy)

NASA’s #YearInSpace

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

#BlackLivesMatter

Arab Spring

Community Support during World Tragedies

Natural Disaster Relief

Let’s count down to the top moment in the social media history!

10. The Birth of Facebook

Facebook, the social media network that has an incredible two billion monthly active users (nearly a third of the earth’s population), is the only network that I’ll mention in this post for moments-sake. Given its sheer size, the impact it has made on families, friends, businesses, and world events, I felt as though I might be remiss without a mention of Facebook somewhere!

It’s amazing to imagine what the world might be like if Facebook had never captured the hearts and minds of so many people the way it did. One of my favorite Facebook moments, in particular, is during an early 2004 interview on CNBC with Mark Zuckerberg:

The anchor asks: “Now there’s a new form of cyber matching making, college networking websites. Is this perhaps the next big thing? The Facebook. Mark, if someone was to put the question to you about the magnitude of what you’ve launched; how big do you think your product or service is?”

We all know the rest!

A short six years after this interview (2010), Zuckerberg would go on to become Time’s Person of the Year along with many other accolades along the way. Facebook has changed the way we interact and communicate on all levels and only time will tell if another network will come along and take its place in social media history.

9. Miracle on the Hudson

It was January 15, 2009 when U.S. Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York and struck a flock of birds on the way up. Moments later, both engines were lost and Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, along with his co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, were asked to pull off the miraculous landing.

When the plane finally landed safely in the frigid Hudson River waters, all 155 passengers on board were safe. The “Miracle on the Hudson” has been called the most successful ditching in aviation history.

But something else happened that day… Jeff Krums tweeted:

http://ift.tt/XCC72i – There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.

— Janis Krums (@jkrums) January 15, 2009

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey told CNBC in 2013 how that changed Twitter and the way people get news.

It changed everything. Suddenly the world turned its attention because we were the source of news—and it wasn’t us, it was this person in the boat using the service, which is even more amazing.

One small tweet began the Twitter revolution. Hundreds of millions of people now turn to Twitter as a source of news, a place to build a following, a place to share your stories and connect with others.

Twitter is also the platform that our co-founder, Joel Gascoigne, successfully built Buffer on back in 2010! This powerful moment in social media history has a special place in our hearts.

8. Going “Viral”

How many of you have sat around with friends or family and binge-watched several classic YouTube videos in a row? I know I have!

What is now one of the largest social media networks on the planet (more than 1.5 billion people log in every month), started with a few viral hits and began a trend that today we might call, “going viral.” This launched YouTube into a massive entertainment hub – complete with TV streaming, movies, music videos, tutorials, celebrities, vloggers, and of course, viral videos.

Let’s take a look at three early videos that helped to shape the viral side of social media history:

Charlie Bit My Finger (Published: 5/22/2007 – 851,140,074 views)

“Chocolate Rain” (Published: 4/22/2007 – 113,787,749 views)

Numa Numa (Published: 12/11/2006 – 26,800,130 views)

Honorable Mention: “Lazy Sunday” 

In December of 2005, the first “viral video” appeared online under the name “Lazy Sunday.” It was the second-ever SNL Digital Short aired and featured cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. Following its appearance on SNL, the video appeared on YouTube and was viewed more than five million times until February 2006 when NBC Universal asked the site to remove it.

7. Ellen’s Selfie (and #NuggsForCarter)

Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie that took the social media world by storm is the epitome of everything that is awesome about social media.

If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars http://pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014

First, it is the fact that this photo is in “selfie” form which has come to be a staple of how photos are taken and shared across social media platforms. Two, it shows just how light-hearted, yet powerful social media can be. A smiling group of beloved actors, actresses, and performers has the ability to touch the lives of the more than 3,400,000 people who retweeted it and the millions more that saw it. For more than three years, Ellen’s selfie held the title of the most retweeted tweet of all time.

That was until Nevada teenager Carter Wilkerson’s plea for free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s went viral.

HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS http://pic.twitter.com/4SrfHmEMo3

— Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 6, 2017

The world watched as #NuggsForCarter swept Twitter like wildfire – eventually passing Ellen’s selfie as the most retweeted tweet of all time. And although the #NuggsForCarter tweet never quite reached 18 million, Wendy’s still awarded Carter free nuggets for a year anyways. A win-win!

In my experience, we as social media managers tend to take social media very seriously. But if we can learn anything from Ellen’s selfie and #NuggsForCarter, it’s that social media is meant to be a fun and sprightly place for people to share stories, connect, and be themselves.

If you’d like to hear more about the “Nuggs Guy” and how entrepreneurs and small businesses use social media, check out episode #47 of The Science of Social Media where we chat with Paul Jarvis. 

6. NASA’s #YearInSpace

Named one of the most influential social media campaigns of 2016 (and maybe of all time), NASA’s #AYearInSpace demonstrates the wildly powerful ability of social media to document the human condition.

Day 179. The #Nile at night is a beautiful sight for these sore eyes. Good night from @space_station! #YearInSpace http://pic.twitter.com/eAMBZ9p428

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 22, 2015

What made the mission so unique is that NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly has an identical twin brother he was to be compared with (physically) upon his return in hopes to uncover what happens to the human body after long exposures in space.

Astronaut Kelly tweeted continuously using the hashtag #YearInSpace, which was followed closely by millions of intrigued spectators. While tumbling around in zero gravity aboard the ISS, he even hosted an AMA session on Reddit!

This was a powerful moment in the social media history because we were able to experience space first-hand from the comfort of our own homes. People from all over the world chimed in using #YearInSpace to express their support, marvel in the wonder of the cosmos, and share an interconnectedness of human activity.

5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a wonderful testament to the power of social media to make a charitable impact on an important cause. Since 2014, largely due to social media, the ALS Association has raised more than $115 million for research towards Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

It drew the attention of hundreds of thousands of people, including celebrities like President Obama, LeBron James, Lady Gaga, Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg, and Bill Gates. Within the first 15 days of the campaign taking off, the ALS Association had received $15 million in donations from 307,600 new, first-time donors.

What followed was an interesting study into viral content and how organizations might be able to repeat this virality in the future. And while no definite conclusion was made from Facebook’s study and visualization, many attribute the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge success to former Boston College baseball player, Pete Frates, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2012 (helping to explain the concentration).

The Ice Bucket Challenge can help to act as a guide or blueprint for achieving viral success via social media. As TechCrunch author, Sarah Perez writes, “Simply ask the selfie generation to once again turn their cameras on themselves, but infuse that act with a higher purpose” and you have a recipe for success.

4. #BlackLivesMatter

Over the past several years, social media has become an important communication tool for political groups and social movements to organize and take action. One of those social movements, #BlackLivesMatter, has become one of the largest in the social media history. Used more than 12 million times, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is the third most-used Twitter hashtag around a social cause.

#BlackLivesMatter is an incredibly powerful example of how a social media hashtag can ignite action in the real world and be tied directly to a major movement. The implications for something like this are huge considering that we are all only becoming more digitally connected by the day.

A quote from Bijan Stephen in WIRED helps to sum it up perfectly:

“In the 1960s, if you were a civil rights worker and you needed to get some urgent news out to the rest of the world, you would likely head straight for a telephone. If you’re a civil rights activist in 2015 and you need to get some news out, your first move is to choose a social media platform.”

3. Arab Spring

I’ll never forget the digital marketing course I took in college that examined social media’s impact on the Arab Spring. It was then, back in 2011 as a student, that I realized the true power and potential implications of social media. Up until that point, I thought social media was only for sharing pictures with friends and family!

There has since been a strong debate over the role and influence that social media played in the Arab Spring. Researchers at the University of Washington examined more than three million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content, and thousands of blog posts and found that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.

“Our evidence suggests that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising,” said Philip Howard, project lead and professor at the University of Washington. “People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom.”

2. Community Support during World Tragedies

Social media can mean the difference between a few minutes or even a few seconds, and in unforeseen often-desperate situations, a few seconds can mean the world.

Moments after the tragic events in Brussels, friends and family members turned to Facebook and Twitter for information regarding anyone they might have known to be involved.

Following the Boston Marathon bombings, one-quarter of Americans looked to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites for information, according to The Pew Research Center. Boston community members offered complete strangers a warm bed, food, and a shower when roads and hotels were closed (via a simple Google Doc).

Social media also provides essential communication channels after these tragic events. Thinking back to Paris in 2015, social media helped to give many people a feeling of comfort, of solidarity, and of solace knowing that they would not have to face this alone. It acted as a support system even though we were all thousands of miles apart.

1. Natural Disaster Relief

One of the biggest strengths of social media is the speed at which it can disseminate important information to a large number of people in a very short amount of time. For example, after a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, non-profits and relief groups used social media to mobilize rescue efforts and support the community in various ways.

According to a CNN report, social media – Twitter specifically – became a pivotal tool in the fundraising efforts that raised millions of dollars in aid for the country. By the end of the week, the use of social media helped to raise more than $8 million in relief.

Photo: Yale Economic Review

Haiti is just one of many cases where social media played an integral role in disaster relief. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan (2011), Hurricane Irene (2011), Superstorm Sandy (2012), and the earthquake in Nepal (2015) are examples of the power of instant communication. During Sandy, 10,000 Instagram photos (#sandy) were uploaded per second, many complete with geo-tagged locations!

Social media provides real-time, first-person information so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about where to focus their efforts. A critical piece in ensuring that relief is provided where and when it is needed most.

Over to you

It’s quite hard to fathom that social media is only 20 years young and that the majority of growth and innovation has happened over the last few years. It’s even harder to believe that we’ve likely only just begun! As the world population continues to increase, communities become more connected, and the internet becomes available for more and more cities around the world, we will undoubtedly witness a deeper integration of social media into our everyday lives.

This list doesn’t even begin to cover the hundreds of amazing moments throughout social media history. And so it’s up to all of us to celebrate its positive impact on our lives whenever we can. Let’s encourage each other to not take this incredible tool for granted!

Here’s to 20 more years of powerful, wonderful, and world-changing social media history (and beyond!)

Feeling inspired? We’d love for you to share your story!

How has social media positively impacted you? On June 30th (#SMDay) and throughout the weekend,  share your social media story with us using the hashtag #impactofsocial! We’ll be retweeting some of our favorites and picking a few winners to receive some special Buffer swag. We’re also hosting five exclusive Facebook Live chats throughout the day, check out the awesome schedule we have planned below!

Facebook Live #impactofsocial schedule (Tune in Here!)

Tom Redman (Product Manager at Buffer) – 7:00am PT, 10:00am ET

Arielle Tannenbaum & Hailley Griffis (Community & PR at Buffer) – 8:30am PT, 11:30am ET

Mark Josephson (CEO at Bitly) – 10:00am PT, 1:00pm ET

Brian Fanzo (iSocialFanz) – 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET

Courtney Seiter (Director of People at Buffer) – 1:30pm PT, 4:30pm ET

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The Complete Guide to Using Stock Photos in Your Marketing

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Which Facebook Ad Objective Should I Choose?

Have you ever been confused as to which Facebook Ad objective you should choose when setting up your Facebook Ad campaigns?

I see too many people stumbling at this very first hurdle when setting up their ads, so they revert to the easier method of just boosting their posts. But there is a better way — that has the potential to generate better results — if you just take the time to understand what each of the objectives means.

Facebook uses the data it obtains from people’s actions on Facebook to assist in deciding which people within the target audience you have chosen for your ad campaign should get priority in seeing your ads. You can assist Facebook in delivering your ads to those people who are most likely to take your desired action by choosing the right Facebook ad objective for your campaign.

An Array of Facebook Ad Objectives

Facebook breaks objectives up into three categories — Awareness, Consideration and Conversion — with various options under each.

Pick the category that works best with where people are in your sales funnel.

Awareness objectives are top of funnel objectives that aim to generate interest in what you have to offer.

Consideration objectives are more middle funnel. Consider using these to reach people who may have some interest in what you have to offer and are likely to want to engage or discover more information.

Conversion objectives are toward the bottom of your funnel and should be used when you want people to register, opt-in, download, purchase, or visit your store.

Within each of these options are specific objectives you can choose from. Select a Facebook ad objective that best aligns with the goal you have for your campaign, based on the desired action you wish your target audience to take. Each of these objectives have been described below, along with examples of when you might use each, as well as some potential exceptions that you should take into consideration.

Awareness Objectives

Here are the two choices you have when your objective is focused on awareness.

Brand Awareness

Use the Brand Awareness objective when you are looking to increase awareness for your brand and don’t necessarily want people to engage with your content, click through, opt-in, or purchase. This objective will assist you in reaching people who are more likely to pay attention to what you are promoting in your ad.

This objective may be of value to large companies, such as McDonald’s who are trying to put their brand front of mind with consumers and are not necessarily looking to generate web traffic, leads or sales. However, smaller businesses with limited advertising budgets might not find as much value in this type of objective when compared against some of the other options.

Reach

Use the Reach objective to get your ad seen by as many people as possible within your target audience and budget constraints.

This objective can helpful to target a small audience and your priority is to reach as many people within that audience as possible, even if you also want them to visit your website, watch your video, or convert on your website. You would choose Reach over those other objectives in this case as choosing one of the other objectives could limit your potential reach based on the likely actions of your target audience.

Consideration

When you want the audience to do more than ooh and ah, you should try one of these five objectives.

Traffic

Use the Traffic objective when your goal is to drive traffic outside of Facebook. This might be to read a blog post, listen to a podcast episode, visit your landing page, or discover your app. Facebook will show your ad to those people within your target audience that are most likely to click on your link, based on their past behaviors.

However, if you want people to visit your website to opt-in, register, or purchase and you have the ability to track that they have achieved that objective (i.e. they land on a specific “thank-you” page that indicates they have achieved your desired objective), then you would usually choose the Conversion objective rather than the Traffic objective. More on that shortly…

Engagement

Use the Engagement objective when you want more people to engage with your ad. Engagements on your ads include reactions, likes, comments, and shares. You can also use the Engagement objective when you wish to generate more Page Likes, Event Responses, or Offer Claims.

Optimizing your campaigns for Engagement means that Facebook will deliver your ads to those people who are most likely to engage with your ad. This can have the added bonus of generating additional reach, as people’s engagement with your content can generate additional stories and organic reach into news feeds beyond the initial audience you have paid to access.

Choosing the Engagement objective can also assist you in building your Facebook Page Engagement Audiences that you can use for retargeting purposes for future advertising campaigns.

App Installs

Use the App Installs objective if you have an app and wish to send people to the store where they can download your app.

Video Views

Use the Video Views objective when you are promoting a video and your primary objective is to get more people to view your video and your priority is not for them to click on your link or convert on whatever you are promoting.

Video Views is a great objective to choose when you wish to build up a video engagement audience that you can use for retargeting purposes for future advertising campaigns.

However, just because you are using video, doesn’t mean that you have to choose the Video Views objective. For example, if you are looking to get people to click through from your video, then you should use the Traffic objective and choose video as the format for your content.

Similarly, if you are wishing to get people to convert after they watch your video, then you should use Conversion as your objective and choose video as the format for your content.

Lead Generation

Use the Lead Generation objective when you want to generate leads on Facebook right within the ad and without driving traffic to your website. Facebook Lead Generation ads allow you to capture data such as name, email address, phone number, etc, auto-populating this information where this is already available.

For example, Facebook will auto-populate their name, email address and perhaps even phone number (if that is a field you have chosen and they have already provided that data to Facebook as part of their profile). This makes it really easy for people to complete you lead form and can often result in you obtaining their best data, as most people would use their best email address as the email they use to login to Facebook.

If you are using Lead Ads, you need to use a third party tool that integrates with Facebook and automatically takes those emails you are capturing via your Lead Ads and inputs them into the email marketing software or CRM you are using to deliver the offer you are promoting. You can do this within the Leads Setup section of your Publishing Tools on your Facebook Page. It is important that you do this, as most people will expect to receive what you are offering immediately after opting in.

If you don’t have this integration setup you will need to go into the Forms Library within the Publishing Tools section of your Facebook Page and download any captured leads and then manually deliver them what you have promised in your ad. This is not an ideal user experience.

One of the drawbacks in using the Lead Generation objective over other objectives is that you won’t be building your website traffic audience as a result of the lead capturing experience, as people don’t have to visit your website to opt-in. However, this does generate a Lead Ad Custom Audience that you can use for retargeting purposes in future.

Conversion

Use the Conversion objective when your goal is to get people to convert for a specific action, whether that be opt-in, register or purchase.

Conversions

To optimize for Conversions, you need to have a minimum of 15-25 conversions per week. This minimum number of conversions provides Facebook with sufficient data to be able to learn about those people that convert and make assumptions around those people who are most likely to convert within your target audience and then deliver your ads to more of those people. 15-25 conversions is a bare minimum. 50-100+ is ideal and the more conversions, the better as this provides more data for Facebook to work with.

If there is insufficient data available, then Facebook won’t be able to learn about the characteristics of those people who are converting and therefore Facebook won’t be able to accurately optimize the delivery of your ads for this objective. Where this is the case, delivery of that ad might be limited when using the Conversion objective.

With this in mind, if you have a very low traffic to conversion ratio (as might be the case with a high priced product or service) you may choose the Traffic objective over the Conversion objective, even if your primary objective is to get people to visit your website to opt-in, register or purchase. This is because while you want people to convert, choosing the Conversion objective may limit your reach due to insufficient data being captured as a result of the low conversion rate.

Assuming you have targeted your audience well, optimizing for Traffic may be good enough and a better option than Conversion, given the lack of available data for Facebook to work with.

Product Catalog Sales

Use the Product Catalog objective when you have an e-commerce store and would like to promote products from your product catalog. This requires you integrating your product catalog with Facebook and generating product feeds that you can choose from when creating your campaigns.

Store Visits

Use the Store Visits Facebook ad objective when you have multiple business locations and wish to promote your business to people who are nearby. You will need to setup your business locations in business manager before you will be able to use this objective.

This can be a great way to capture foot traffic to your business, delivering ads that are timely based on people’s current location.

Optimizing for Ad Delivery

Choosing the appropriate objective based on your goal for each campaign will by default optimize your ads for delivery based on that objective. You can change this at the Ad Set level, however I would recommend that you go with the default option in most cases, which will allow the Facebook Ad’s algorithm to help you get the results you want for the lowest cost.

Testing Your Next Facebook Ad Objective

Like always, you should be testing your objectives to see what is working best for you. I have some clients who get a much lower cost per link click and cost per conversion when they optimize for Engagement rather than Traffic or Conversion.

This seems counterintuitive, but it seems to work well for them, as they have a highly engaged audience and by optimizing for engagement they get a lot of additional organic reach as a result of people reacting, commenting, and sharing their content. This results in their ads being seen by people beyond their initial Facebook Ads audience targeting, which generates a lot of traffic to their opt-in and sales pages that they haven’t paid for and many of those people do convert.

I have tested optimizing campaigns for Engagement for other clients who have less engaged audiences and opt-ins and conversions have been much lower as a result.

The key thing here is that we never would’ve known this if we hadn’t tried, so I encourage you to try optimizing your campaigns for different objectives and start comparing your campaigns to discover what works best for your Facebook Ads.

Which Facebook ad objective do you use that generates the best results for your business? Let us know in the comments below so others can learn from your experiences.

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Think You Can Apply a SWOT Analysis to Social Media Marketing?

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How to Get Your LinkedIn Articles Read by More People

If you have started to use LinkedIn Publishing, you may be wondering how to get your articles read by more people.

More views with your LinkedIn articles means that you have the ability to build more credibility and recognition, make new connections, and get additional proposal requests and clients. If this sounds tempting, read on for this simple, step-by-step guide on how to make it all happen.

Regularly Write  Your LinkedIn  Articles

A good first step to getting your content seen more frequently is to write more frequently. You should create a plan that you can stick to, whether that is once a month or once a week. Creating more content also give the added benefit of being able to see what your readers respond the best to, so you can write more of that. If you use a social media calendar, make sure you include “Write LinkedIn article” at least once a month.

As a related tip – use LinkedIn regularly. When you are on the platform and interacting in groups or newsfeed posts, people will be more likely to click through to your profile and see your posts.

Share on LinkedIn

When you first publish a LinkedIn article, it will prompt you to add a message and it will not only publish it to your profile, but share it as a story to your newsfeed. One big mistake that people make is they stop there. Most, if not all, of your content on LinkedIn will be evergreen content. You can schedule it on a repeating basis to be posted on multiple platforms, using a scheduling tool like Agorapulse, and get a much wider reach for your content.

Share Your LinkedIn Articles with Specific People

It is important that you don’t spam your personal contacts with an individual message every time you publish a LinkedIn article.

Think through who in your contacts would genuinely benefit from the knowledge and information you shared in your post. Then send them a personalized message with a link. Something like:

“Good morning/afternoon, [First Name]! I just wrote an article about how to get more views on LinkedIn Publishing posts, and I know this is something you had mentioned you are exploring. I hope you find it useful, and would love to know your thoughts if you have a minute. Thanks!”

Share with LinkedIn Groups

Like with personal messages, there is a right, and a very wrong way to share in groups. Here are some important guidelines:

Always read the group rules first to make sure they don’t explicitly ban sharing your own links

Participate in the group regularly, not only when you have something to push

Make sure it is genuinely helpful information, and not a promotional tactic

Customize which content you share based on the specific purpose and demographics of the group

Personalize your message to make it clear why you are sharing this article with this group

Make sure to comment and follow up on any comments and responses in the group, don’t drive-by link drop

When done correctly, this is a great way to be seen as a useful resource. Do it wrong, and you will more likely be thought of as a spammer.

Share with Other Social Media and/or Email

This one is a tricky one, as it depends on your bigger picture social media strategy and goals. If you are repurposing your own blog content as LinkedIn articles, then you may prefer to send them to the original source on your website, rather than your LinkedIn profile.

If however you have not shared the same content in another way with your email list or other social media accounts, then share on! Follow all the same guidelines to personalize and customize. And if possible, add it to your Agorapulse or other social media scheduling tool.

Be Aware of Search Optimization Best Practices

Are you still not seeing the number of readers you would like on your articles? Maybe the way you wrote the article itself needs to be evaluated.

LinkedIn is really both another social media platform, as well as its own search engine. Optimization is important in your headline, text, and images. Think through who it is that you want to read this article, and what they are searching for, or what frustration they are having. Do you answer their questions? Do you solve their problem?

What Are Your Results with LinkedIn Articles?

What about you? Have you been using LinkedIn Publishing? Have you been getting a lot of readers and profile views? Any other keys to success you want to share with others? Leave a comment and let us know!

The post How to Get Your LinkedIn Articles Read by More People appeared first on Agorapulse.

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How to Get Your First 1,000 Followers on Every Major Social Network

This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated with the latest tips and tricks to grow your following on every social media network. It also includes the latest podcast episode from The Science of Social Media! 

You’re taking the dive into a new social network, or you’re itching to grow your existing profile. You’ve got a social media strategy in place and a plan in mind. You’re raring to go.

What would be one of the most encouraging signs when you’re first starting off? We’d imagine it’d be gaining followers!

So how do new social media accounts do it? How do you gain your first 1,000 followers on social media?

Follower count is one of those metrics that has tons of meaning – both for the confidence of the social media manager and for the distribution of the content you share. If you want to grow your followers, there are tons of useful tips to try. Here are some key learnings we’ve drummed up about how to get that first initial batch of followers on some of the major social media networks (specifically Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn)

[Interested in listening to this post in podcast format? We invite you to check out Buffer’s very own podcast – The Science of Social Media!] 

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

Quick tips: The best general strategies for growing your audience

Regardless of the social network you choose, there seem to be some similar, high-level strategies that apply to getting new followers on every network—Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

If you’re looking to build your profile and add new followers, here are some of the standard best practices. Lots more detail on each of these below.

Fill out your profile completely

Share a link to your profile via your other networks and via email

Place follow links and widgets on your blog or website

Add your new social profile to your email signature

How to get your first 1,000 followers on Twitter

Step one: Fill out your profile completely

This includes:

Writing an awesome bio with one or two select keywords or hashtags

Adding your URL and location – URL is great for adding context, location is great for getting found via search and geographic tools

Uploading a profile picture and cover photo. Check out the image below for what it looks like when someone clicks your username from Twitter’s desktop site.

Seeding your Twitter account with 5 to 10 original Tweets

Experimenting with adding emoji to your name

If you want to get your profile even more optimized, you can use the Pinned Tweet feature to pin a tweet to the top of your profile page. Choose a tweet that embodies what your Twitter profile is all about or shows a lot of social proof, i.e. one with a lot of favorites and retweets.

Step two: Share a link to your profile via other networks and via email

Share with your Facebook friends that you’ve started a Twitter account. Add an announcement to your next company newsletter or in an email to friends.

Step three: Include a Follow button on your website or blog

Twitter offers four types of buttons that you can use to help visitors connect with you on Twitter.

Share a link

Follow

Hashtag

Mention

The Follow button is the most direct means of gaining more followers. You can place it in a popular place on your website or blog. For instance, we’ve added the follow button to the author profiles on the Buffer blog.

Step four: Find relevant accounts to follow

Many users on Twitter will follow back those who follow them. This is a popular strategy for those just starting out on Twitter to help connect with others, and thanks to Twitter lists, users can customize the information they see on Twitter, which makes following tons of people all the easier to manage.

Sign up for a free tool like Tweepi or Followerwonk so you can see a list of followers for other users in your niche.

Optimize this list of followers by sorting it by recent activity.

Follow up to 100 of these new folks per, whoever seems relevant and interesting to you (any more than 100 per day and you risk a Twitter ban).

Every so often, to balance out your follower/following ratio, you can check into a tool like JustUnfollow to unfollow any accounts that haven’t followed you back. JustUnfollow has a whitelist option, too, so you can skip over the accounts you wish to keep following no matter what.

Step five: Use relevant hashtags

When you use a hashtag, people outside of those you follow will be exposed to your tweet. To find the best hashtags to use, there’s a great app called Focalmark that allows you to generate relevant hashtags based on the topic or theme you’re looking for.

Step six: Join a Twitter chat and contribute value

If you’re in the digital marketing space, we’d love to have you join a #BufferChat, which takes place every Wednesday at noon ET/9:00 a.m. PT and 4:00pm AEST/8:00am CEST. Other great resources for finding a relevant Twitter chat include:

Chat Salad is a great place to find chats that are currently happening or taking place in the near future.

Tweet Reports also has a great listing of Twitter chats.

Twubs, a website where you can register a hashtag, has an easy-to-read and thorough listing of chats.

This huge Google doc spreadsheet includes hundreds of Twitter chats.

Summary

Fill out your profile completely

Share a link to your profile

Place Twitter follow buttons on your site

Find relevant accounts to follow

Use relevant hashtags

Join a Twitter chat

How to get your first 1,000 fans on Facebook

Step one: Fill out your page completely

Facebook pages offer an incredible level of detail and information. Many businesses even use them as their main website. To maximize your chances of gaining as many fans as possible, you’ll want to fill out your profile as thoroughly as possible.

About section

URL

Profile picture & cover photo/video

Profile theme or template (new feature from Facebook!)

Call-to-action button

Address (for brick-and-mortar businesses)

Long description and mission

Phone number and/or email address

Create several updates so there is content on the page

One helpful tip for getting Facebook fans that we shared in our Facebook Page starter guide is to make a great first impression by maximizing the eye-catching ability of your Facebook Cover Photo. We’ve included a video on the Buffer Page which now has more than 2,700 views!

Step two: Invite your friends to the page

From your Facebook page, you can select the option to Invite Your Friends and then browse through your friend list to send an invite. It might be best to select a handful of friends you think would be most interested rather than blasting the invitation to all.

If possible, it’d be great to get to 25 fans via this method. Once you hit the 25-fan threshold, you can then claim a vanity URL for your page (e.g., http://ift.tt/1uVMdud), which will look more appealing when you share the URL in later steps.

Step three: Share a link to your profile via other networks and via email

Tweet your Facebook page URL to your followers, or share your Facebook page

Step four: Add Facebook buttons to your website

Facebook offers a huge helping of buttons and widgets that you can add to your site. Here’s the complete list of their social plugins:

Save Button

Like, Share, Send, & Quote

Embedded Posts & Video Player

Page Plugin

Comments

Follow Button

If you’re looking to get more fans on your Facebook page, the Like button and Share button are two of your best bets. (The “Follow” button, while it sounds enticing, is more for individuals with profiles who want to offer people the chance to follow rather than friend.)

If you’d prefer the Like or Like Box button, you can set your Facebook page URL and edit options for showing a feed of your posts, the height and width of the box, and a handful of other options. The box will take up a bit more space on your site, but you get the added value of your Facebook profile picture appearing the box, too.

Step five: Spend a little on Facebook advertising

Facebook lacks many of the organic options of getting your name out there. With a news feed algorithm and the sheer mass of users, paying a bit for extended reach and boost can help.

A couple of tips:

Advertise to those interested in your niche. When in doubt, go more targeted. Fewer than 100,000 people is generally best.

Retarget the ads to people who have visited your website or blog.

Step six: Try a Facebook call-to-action on your blog. 

We have a handful of calls-to-action on our blog, including our HelloBar at the top of the page and a slideup box that appears as you scroll. Either of these could be repurposed for Facebook calls-to-action as well (or any other social network, for that matter).

Summary

Fill out your profile completely

Invite your friends

Share a link to your profile

Add Facebook buttons

Spend a little on Facebook ads

Calls-to-action on the blog

How to get your first 1,000 followers on Pinterest

Step one: Fill out your profile completely

Pinterest creates a distinction between individual users and business users. You can switch your individual account to a business account at any time and then enjoy features like rich pins, customized Pin It buttons and widgets, and more.

To fully complete the information on your profile, when viewing your profile click the gear icon and then “Account Settings.” Clicking the “Edit Profile” button lets you edit only the basic information and nothing deeper.

In Account Settings, you can fill out the following:

Email

Business type

Contact name

Business name

Profile picture

Custom username and vanity URL

About section

Location

Website

Connected social networks

For the website, Pinterest can step you through verification options that will help with their Rich Pins services as well as add a verified icon to the website on your profile, which may give potential followers more confidence in following you.

Step two: Share a link to your profile via other networks and via email

Publish an update on Twitter or Facebook with a link to your Pinterest page. Share your new page with your email list. Pinterest makes it super easy to do so. Here’s a quick peek at what it looks like from Buffer’s Pinterest Profile:

Step three: Include a Pinterest button on your website or blog

Pinterest offers five different styles of buttons and widgets that you can place on your website.

Pin It button

Follow button

Pin widget

Profile widget

Board widget

The Pin It button is helpful for getting the content on your website more traction on Pinterest. There are also some helpful WordPress plugins that can help add Pinterest functionality.

If you’re interested in boosting your followers, something more akin to the Follow button or the Profile and Board widgets might come in handy.

The Follow button is super simple. Enter your Pinterest URL and your full name, and build the button. You get an HTML code to place wherever you’d like the button to appear.

The Profile and Board widgets let you display an interactive preview of all your pins or just the pins from a particular board. You can choose the layout size—square, sidebar, header, or custom.

Buffer Social Blog Pinterest Board

Buffer Pinterest Profile

Step four: Follow the boards of your competitors’ followers

Matthew Barby has a number of neat strategies for getting more initial followers on various social networks. Here’s a strategy that he tested with great success for Pinterest:

Find a selection of your competitors’ Pinterest pages and click on their followers.

Go through and follow around 50-100 of their followers’ boards each day (do this for around 2 weeks). You can also search for users based on hashtags relevant to your niche.

Now create between 5 and 10 boards of your own that span across a range of different topics. Each week, you should aim to create another 3-4 boards.

Pin as much content from your website as possible into a selection of your different boards. Add long descriptions to each pin with 2-4 hashtags. Try to space this out – don’t pin too many things at one time or you’ll flood everyone’s feeds. Try to stick to no more than 10-15 pins in an hour.

Now, on a daily basis, go through your feed and repin around 10 pins onto your different boards – do this twice a day.

Summary

Fill out your profile completely

Share a link to your profile

Include a Pinterest button on your site

Include Pinterest Board and Profile widgets on your site

Follow the boards of your competitors’ followers

How to get your first 1,000 followers on LinkedIn

There are a couple unique ways to look at the climb to 1,000 followers on LinkedIn. Are you seeking followers for your personal profile or for your company page? The advice below touches on each.

Step one: Fill out your profile completely

LinkedIn places great value in its users filling out their profiles completely. Your profile likely has a Profile Strength icon that shows you how thoroughly you’ve filled in your information.

The more information you add, the more likely it is that someone may find you. Fill out as much as you’re comfortable with, and be sure to take advantage of LinkedIn’s new cover photos and rich media options for your profile. For instance, you could add a relevant industry image as your cover photo and place portfolio images and links into your profile. Here’s what Brian’s profile looks like to the public:

This same concept goes for businesses. The profile options are a bit more limited, but you can still add cover photo and profile picture, URL, about information, and the specialties with which you’re involved.

Step two: Post frequently to increase awareness. 

LinkedIn offers a few different options for individuals to post great content to LinkedIn to increase awareness and page growth.

One of my favorite publishing avenues is via LinkedIn Pulse. Similar to Medium and Facebook Notes, the content appears native within the news feed. And in addition, each time you post to Pulse, the article appears at the top of your profile – showcasing your work in a beautiful way.

Step three: Create a business Showcase Page

LinkedIn now offers a new option for businesses to create a Showcase Page and extend their reach:

Step four: Invite your coworkers to join LinkedIn and fill out their profile

This tip comes in handy for company pages on LinkedIn. When employees add you as their current employer on LinkedIn, your logo appears on their profile and it links directly to your LinkedIn company page.

Step five: Send an original connection request, and accept requests from everyone

Chris Lee shared an interesting strategy about how he handles the giving and receiving of LinkedIn requests.

Be indiscriminate about accepting connection requests. I accept all requests – they could potentially endorse you for multiple skills, share your profile to their network, and expand your reach. You should aim to have 500+ connections on your profile.

When sending out connection requests, try to modify the default message to something more personalized to increase the chances of your request being accepted. You can include your LinkedIn profile URL in your signature, “Connect with me.”

Here’s an example of a request he might send.

Summary

Fill out your profile completely

Share a link to your profile

Create a Business Showcase Page

Get your coworkers involved

Accept all requests, and customize the requests you send

How to get your first 1,000 followers on Instagram

Update: You might enjoy our an advanced guide for getting even more followers on Instagram!

Step one: Fill out your Instagram profile completely

What might Instagram users consider when they decide whether to follow you? Chances are good that they’ll check out your profile first.

To that end, if you want to get followers on Instagram, be sure you have completed your profile with a profile picture, a description, and a link to your website.

What’s more is that you want the photos themselves to look complete and professional. Instagram’s header section is composed of seven of your most popular images. Be sure that you’ve taken at least seven images before you begin promoting your profile. Lifestyle and personal images tend to do best.

Step two: Connect your Instagram and Facebook account

Doing so will help your Facebook friends find you and follow you on Instagram and allow you to advertise on Instagram through the Facebook Ads Manager.

Step three: Come up with a commenting strategy

Any given second on Instagram, there are 575 likes on a picture compares to 81 comments. A comment figures to get noticed (and appreciated) much more than a like.

Comment from a computer, using a tool like Iconosquare. This way you can leave comments quicker and easier than typing out on a mobile device.

Search for a relevant hashtag.

Comment on photos posted within the last day or two.

Comment on photos with fewer than five other comments (to make sure your comment is seen and appreciated).

Step four: Like a lot of posts

Neil Patel tried out several Instagram strategies to gain more followers, and his number one takeaway was this:

If you want to grow your account by a few hundred followers a day, the best way to accomplish it is to randomly like thousands of images a day.

Step five: Discover the best hashtags

Find out what the influencers in your industry are tagging. For a more scientific view, check into the Webstagram Top 100 to see the overall trends and top picks for hashtags on Instagram. (You can gain more Instagram followers by using the hashtags people are looking for!)

Step six: Place a hashtagged feed of Instagram posts on your website or blog

This way, visitors to your site can notice your Instagram account and send you follows. There are some helpful sites—Webstagram and Instansive, for instance—that assist with getting the feed on your site. WordPress users have a lot of plugin options as well.

In addition, Instagram also offers five different types/sizes of badges that you can place on your website.

Step seven: Tag people

Tag and mention the accounts that are relevant to you. This could lead to the accounts themselves following you back or with these users paying the love forward by mentioning you on one of their photos.

Step eight: Share a link to your profile on other social channels and email

You can pick up more followers by sharing a link to your profile with the people who are already following you on other social networks.

Step nine: Use geo-tagging for your pictures and your store

Instagram revealed a photo maps feature which lets users see the pictures that were taken from a certain location. If you enable geo-tagging on your pictures, you can be part of this map. Same goes for a brick-and-mortar store you own. Connect your Instagram via Foursquare to turn on this feature.

Summary

Fill out your Instagram profile completely, and make sure that you have at least seven high-quality images on your account

Connect your Instagram account to your Facebook account

Comment on as many images as you can

Like as many images as you can

Share your profile across channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and email

Use geo-tagging in your picture to increase awareness

[Interested in listening to this post in podcast format? We invite you to check out Buffer’s very own podcast – The Science of Social Media!] 

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

Over to you!

Which tips might you try to get more followers on these social channels?

What have you found that has worked well for you in the past?

We’re curious to try some of these tips out on our Buffer social media profiles! Many of these we’ve tried-and-tested; others are new. It’d be great to test them all out and report back with what works. And we’d also love to hear your feedback on this episode from The Science of Social Media. Thanks for listening!

How to Get Your First 1,000 Followers on Every Major Social Network posted first on http://ift.tt/2rAuuxO

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The Mobile Marketing Studio: 26 Apps to Help You Create Epic Social Media Content on Your Smartphone

[socialscooppage]

25 Days, 25 Expert Social Media Growth Strategies [New Email Course for Marketers]

What’s working for you social media these days?

One of our goals at Buffer is to always be iterating and experimenting with what we do on social media and in marketing. Whether it’s cutting our posting frequency, curating content, or creating square videos, we’re always up for trying new strategies! Lots of times these experiments fail (and we learn valuable lessons) and other times they end up revealing great opportunities to grow.

So what are you experimenting with on social media this week? This month? This year?

We’d love to help with some ideas!

We’ve collected our 25 most effective social media growth strategies that have helped us move the needle over the past year. These tips and strategies are straight from our Buffer playbook and have helped people (including us) find great success on social media! We’re excited to deliver these strategies to you in a free daily email.

Join us for 25 days of social media growth strategies!

We’d count it an amazing privilege to share with you these strategies over the next several days. You can join for free by visiting the landing page below.

Join this course — 25 unique, social media growth strategies, delivered a day-at-a-time, for free!

We’ll send you one email per day, Monday through Friday, for the next 25 days.

All of the lessons contain detailed knowledge-packed information on how you can get started with that specific strategy immediately. These are real strategies, resources, and tips that we’re currently using here Buffer or that we have used in the recent past.

A huge shoutout to the amazing folks who are blazing trails on social media marketing and inspired many of the strategies that you will read about in this email course. Lots of them have been guests on the Buffer Podcast – The Science of Social Media!

Bonus: Many of the social media growth strategies include a short video tutorial!

Course preview

Here’s a quick look at what’s in store for our social media growth strategies course in the first 15 lessons:

The “Why” and the “How” behind social media marketing

The web’s top (free) social media content curation tool

Tools for creating videos on a budget

5 hidden Instagram marketing features

Must-have image creation tools for savvy marketers

The power of resharing content on Facebook

10 incredible stock photo websites to bookmark

Building your brand through content curation

Sell your product through educational screen recordings

Less is more with Facebook posting (preview below)

Understanding social media algorithms

6 time-saving social media tools

Social media analytics and benchmarking

5 secrets of successful video marketing

Strategies for sharing content across social media

Join our 25-day social media growth strategies course to see these lessons in detail and receive the remaining 10 lessons! 

A sample lesson

We’re excited to make sure that you get all of the information and takeaways you want from these emails and so I’m happy to share here a sample of one of the lessons from the course. Here’s lesson #10 (in-full) – Less is more with Facebook posting: (View full email in browser)

Less is more with Facebook posting In October of 2016 we dramatically changed our Facebook posting strategy.

A gradual, but noticeable shift in many social media algorithms and an influx of brand advertising on Facebook meant that it was important for us to either start experimenting or we’d continue to see a decline in organic reach and engagement.

We needed to make a change.

We cut our posting frequency by more than 50% on Facebook and began to truly focus on quality over quantity. What happened next, even the most optimistic social media manager couldn’t have expected:

Our Facebook reach and engagement began to increase even though we were posting less!

We’ve written a detailed breakdown on the impact this change has had on our Facebook results – But in the meantime, here’s a quick overview of our current Facebook strategy that we hope will help to spark some inspiration:

One or two posts per day maximum The main reason why I believe we’re seeing such a dramatic increase in reach and engagement is that we’re only posting one or two pieces of content per day on Facebook.

This serves two valuable purposes:

1. It forces us to only share the best of the best content because we literally have limited space 2. It allows the Facebook algorithm to focus on delivering one piece of content (vs. multiple) to our audience

Curated content Previously, we used to shy away from curated content because it didn’t directly affect the bottom-line: traffic, subscriptions, sales, etc.

However, sorting our Facebook posts by “Most Reach” shows exactly the impact it has had on our Page and growth: 7 of 11 of our most successful posts throughout the last 14 months are curated (not created by Buffer). These posts have combined to reach more than 750,000 people, averaging to about 107,000 people per post.

Curated content may not “directly” affect our bottom line, but it plays a significant role in reach, engagement (likes, comments, shares) and page growth.

Focusing on brand awareness and engagement Focusing on brand awareness and engagement vs. driving traffic to our website has become a staple of our strategy as well.

We’ve witnessed a shift in many social media networks over the last year. It used to be that brands and businesses could post links to their blog posts and watch the traffic flow in. And while that’s still the case for many publishers, savvy marketers can benefit from thinking about their content strategy as a whole – focusing on both direct traffic as well as engagement.

Posting content that aims to drive engagement only helps to build an activate Facebook audience. Then, right when you need them most, you can deliver a piece of brand content that will help move the bottom line.

Boosted Posts Last, but not least, I’d love to address how important Facebook boosted posts have been in increasing reach and engagement on our Page.

Currently, we spend roughly $40 per day boosting our best-performing content on Facebook.

Boosting posts takes content that’s already performing well and amplifies it on a huge scale. As that implies, the key is to focus on boosting great content, not necessarily posts that aren’t doing well and “forcing” them with advertising dollars.

You Can Do It Head over to your Facebook Analytics and calculate your average post engagement for the previous 7 days (total number of engagements / total number of posts).

Then, cut the number of times you post over the next 7 days by 50% and really focus on only posting your best content. Once 7 days is up, calculate your average post engagement again.

Did your engagement rate and total engagements go up or down? We’d love to hear!

Thanks for joining us, Brian & the Buffer Team

F.A.Q. – Frequently Asked Questions about this course

Does the course cost anything?

It’s 100% free!

We’re excited to give these strategies away in hopes that might be helpful for you and your social media marketing efforts.

Who is it for?

Everyone! It’s not tied to Buffer accounts at all, so both current Buffer users and yet-to-be Buffer users can join.

What happens at the end of the 25 days?

At the end of the 25-day course, we’d love to send you a congratulatory email (on a job well done!) plus details on where you can continue your education and connect with peers online. I’ll also be around to answer any follow-up questions you might have about the emails and subjects included in this course.

Will you be signing me up for other newsletters or lists, too?

Nope, we will not sign you up for other email lists without your express permission. Your email’s safe with us.

Help! I haven’t received my confirmation email yet!

If you can let us know the email you signed up with, I’d be happy to look you up in our system to see if all’s in working order. The first email should be headed your way shortly after signup, or first thing on Monday if you’ve signed up on the weekend. If you’re yet to see anything, I’d be very happy to investigate for you!

(Often times, some folks experience a bit more of a delay than others, depending on email service provider)

We’d love to invite you to join this course!

It would be awesome to have the opportunity to share these social media growth strategies and connect with you over the next 25 days.

If this course interests you at all, you can sign up directly online here!

We’re excited for the chance to share with you!

Feel free to leave any thoughts, questions, or comments here on the article, and I’ll hop right on them!

25 Days, 25 Expert Social Media Growth Strategies [New Email Course for Marketers] posted first on http://ift.tt/2rAuuxO

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3 Facebook Search Tips You Might Not Know About

Can Facebook search really help you reach your social media marketing goals? Unlike Twitter, Facebook doesn’t have a separate advanced search function. All we’ve got is the “Search Facebook” bar in the top left hand corner.

It wasn’t always like this.

Back in 2013, Facebook released a natural language search engine called Graph Search. The tool rolled out over the next year, starting with the United States. Digital marketing publications including Social Media Examiner, Marketing Land and the Moz Blog wrote about its potential.

Yet, when you look for Graph Search today it is mysteriously absent. Most articles about it date from 2013 to 2015.

What Happened to Graph Search?

So what exactly happened? 

Graph Search was revolutionary. It was a powerful, semantic natural language search that tapped into one of the biggest databases of people on the planet, pulling information from posts and personal profiles.

You could search for people and posts based on specific correlations. Recruiters could try a string like “software engineers who live in Boston, graduated MIT, and like Python.” Marketers could search for ideal clients with strings like “vegans who live in New York, work in retail, and like running.”

The results were both incredible and creepy. In the early days, Graph Search had very little filtering. Many saw this as an invasion on privacy. Privacy concerns aren’t a new thing on social media but posts like this one showing the dark side of the search functionality took them to the next level.

Life after Graph Search

These days, if I try typing in a  search string like “people from Boston who like ice cream and chocolate,” I’m greeted with a sad face and zero results. 

I know that there are people from Boston who love these things but Facebook will no longer help me find them.

Part of this is because Facebook quietly killed some of Graph’s functionality and replaced them with the search we’ve got today. Plus, Facebook users are becoming more discerning. We are using tighter permission controls and limiting access to information.

Using Facebook Search Today for Your Business

Although Facebook Search is definitely a “light” version of what it once once, marketers can still use it effectively.

1. Market research

You can still use natural language strings to find people who like certain pages. Let’s say you’ve found that 50% of your ideal client base tend to love HubSpot.

You can try a search string like “people who like HubSpot” to find some of those people and check out what other interest they have. Facebook will show you the results in tiers, starting with your friends who like Hubspot, friends of friends who like Hubspot and finally ending with strangers.

Facebook search is designed to help you find information that’s relevant to you and your social circles first, before moving outwards.

Why is this great for marketers? You can use it for a few different research exercises, including:

Checking out the competition. Use the results to find out what other interests they have that you can tap into.

Building up your ideal client avatar. Search the interests you know they’ve got and find out what else they are into. This is really useful for building up targeted Facebook ad campaigns.

2. Competitive analysis

There are some great ways to spy on your competition using Facebook. You can use the “pages to watch” feature or just like them on Facebook and study their posts. But, using Facebook search can help you take your fledgling James Bond skills to next level, no tuxedo required.

Just type in the name your competitor along with a term you are interested in learning more about.

If you are running a promotional campaign for a sustainable retail business you can research how competitors like Everlane market their sales. The search results will bring posts from the brand, from fans mentioning the brand in a public place as well as posts and articles about it giving you a much deeper insight than scrolling through their page. On top of that, you can search posts by year and study how their strategy has evolved!

3. Hashtag research

Hashtags aren’t just for Twitter and Instagram. You can use Facebook to check out who is using specific hashtags, how they use them and how audiences respond to them.

The #smallbusinesswins hashtag brought up a surprising number of publicly available posts.

Start with your current list of hashtags or some of your favorites from other platforms and see how they are doing on Facebook. This can be a great way get exposure for more of your posts and give your Facebook page a little boost.

Using Facebook Search the Right Way

Graph search was incredibly powerful but its scope was a little problematic. There is such a thing as being able to find too much information. Some people have tried to revive it through third party apps but to be honest, I’d advice staying away from those. It’s best to only access the information your customers actually want you to see. Anything else can cross that fine line and shatter trust.

Facebook’s new search is more moderate, largely built to help users make the most of their Facebook experience and find old posts and photos easily. But, with a bit of patience and some know-how, social media marketers can use this iteration of search to get to know their ideal clients even better and run stronger campaigns.

Which of these Facebook search tips are you most apt to try? Let us know in the comments!

The post 3 Facebook Search Tips You Might Not Know About appeared first on Agorapulse.

3 Facebook Search Tips You Might Not Know About posted first on http://ift.tt/2rAuuxO

[socialscooppage]

7 TweetDeck Alternatives You Should Start Thinking About

There is some very real talk about Twitter offering a paid subscription to power users which would be contained within TweetDeck. Its mobile app is already gone and there’s a very real possibility that the desktop version of TweetDeck could be removed or upgraded to paid only.

Maybe it’s time to consider some TweetDeck alternatives for your business. Here are seven ready contenders.

1.  ManageFlitter

With 3,672,855 users, ManageFlitter is certainly a viable TweetDeck alternative. This platform offers you much more than multiple account management; it also offers you access to some of the meatier analytics that are available. Additional features not included on TweetDeck are “Unfollow,” which will immediately show you the people who you’ve followed who don’t follow you back. “Copy Followers” which allows you to filter and copy another person’s followers and a much deeper search which allows you to filter by keywords, followers, age, location, and much more.

The Verdict

ManageFlitter is certainly a useful Twitter management tool for brands with multiple channels and those looking for better analytics, something TweetDeck never really provided. However, this tool doesn’t come cheap and for a social media manager like myself, with 10 + accounts it would be $43 per month. When you consider that’s just for Twitter, it’s a significant expense.

2.  Tweepi

Over 1,500.00 people are using Tweepi because it’s a neat little tool that cuts down on your management time whilst also giving you a little extra in the way of functionality. Tweepi offers a one screen dashboard with up to 200 users displayed on each page (platinum solution). Tweepi has a remote account management option which allows busy users to be more automated with their follows whilst also providing useful follower data.

On the pro accounts, you have the ability to load the Klout scores of your followers. The Klout Score is a number between 1-100 that represents your influence. The more influential you are, the higher your Klout Score, Barack Obama scores a 99 for example.

image source

The Verdict

This is a great tool tool to clean up your Twitter account and get rid of irrelevant or inactive users. It also provides heaps of insightful Twitter stats to understand the social value of your followers and your overall productivity. BUT and it is a big but, Tweepi only links to one Twitter account and not multiple ones like TweetDeck. Therefore, it’s great for a big brand looking to gain additional functionality but not a good option for agencies. Prices start from $12.99 per month.

3.  Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a real and affordable alternative to TweetDeck with some cheeky added extras thrown in. With the ability to easily manage multiple accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, Agorapulse doesn’t stop there. With a chrome extension, mobile app and desktop view, this is a management system for busy people on the go. With features such as scheduling, monitoring and reporting all rolled in, your social spend really goes a long way by eliminating the need for a second toolbox.

When it comes to Twitter, Agorapulse enables you to carry out a full range of activities such as review, retweet, reply, schedule, requeue and send direct messages all from one dashboard. This makes it super easy to flick between accounts which could all be Twitter or a pic n mix of all your social media profiles.

The Verdict

With pricing starting from $49 per month for 3 profiles and the ability to add extra accounts for just $15, this is a great option for companies needing fully functional, scalable solutions.

4.  Tweeten

Developed by @mehedih_ and @gus33000, Tweeten is basically TweetDeck after a spot of technical Botox! Available on Chrome, Windows, OS X, Linux, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, this is a nice little platform that picks up where TweetDeck left off. In fact, some say Tweeten is better as it was built with Electron. Electron was initially designed for GitHub’s Atom Editor but since has experienced massive adoption by Slack, Microsoft, Facebook and many others.

The Verdict

If you’re a diehard TweetDeck fan and you are simply looking for a backup option in case something happens to TweetDeck then this is it. Tweeten is free, very similar in appearance and perhaps even a bit slicker than TweetDeck. It won’t monitor or analyze your fans but it will let you manage multiple accounts.

What About Mobile TweetDeck Alternatives?

Do you like to manage your Twitter accounts on the go? Since TweetDeck stopped its mobile apps back in 2013 and its Windows App ceased functioning on April 15, 2016, Android and iPhone users have been left with the web desktop version of the program. For hardcore social media managers, this certainly left a gap in the market for a new app to replace it. Let’s take a look at the best of the bunch for mobile.

5.  Tweetbot

Tweetbot is a Twitter management tool for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. It can help you manage multiple accounts and lists and with its iCloud capabilities you can certainly expect more. However, at $19.99 per month on the Mac App Store it is a pretty pricey choice for a mobile only app. Personally, I would prefer to pay a licence for a desktop which also includes an app.

6.  Twitterrific

A more reasonably priced option for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. It’s $4.99 is Twitterific. (Note: it’s sadly not available for we Android users!) As a cool added extra though, it is available for your Apple watch so you can manage, filter, and tweet like James Bond.

7.  UberSocial

Previously known as Twidroyd, UberSocial a great option for BlackBerry users looking for TweetDeck alternatives. It now also incorporates  iPhone and Android and features multiple account management, posting to Facebook, muting users and searching for Tweets. The basic version is free, with a pro upgrade available for $4.99.

The future of TweetDeck is not certain and if, like me, you are relying on it for your Twitter management, now is a great time to try out some alternatives. What do you think about the possibility of TweetDeck being discontinued?

The post 7 TweetDeck Alternatives You Should Start Thinking About appeared first on Agorapulse.

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[socialscooppage]

The Ultimate List of Snapchat Best Practices

Snapchat feels different than other social media marketing platforms. As a marketer, I avoided it for as long as possible: why would I possibly want to spend time and money creating content that would only disappear in 24 hours and was difficult to track?

Then I realized that Facebook Ads don’t really stay on your timeline forever, and I spend a lot of time and money running those for my clients. And now, there are metrics available to track your Snaps’ viewership.

As it turns out, Snapchat can be an incredible marketing tool for businesses as long as they know how to adapt their content to the unique platform. In this post, we’re going to go over all the Snapchat best practices you need to create killer content your audience will love.

1. Check That Your Audience is On Snapchat

Wondering if Snapchat could really work for you? The one question you need to be able to answer positively is this: is my target audience on Snapchat? If it’s not, focus on the other social media platforms. If they are, though, full steam ahead.

Simply put: if your target audience contains Millennials, get on Snapchat immediately. 30% of Millennials use Snapchat daily.

Snapchat’s largest demographic is 18-24 year olds at 37% of all users, though 25-34 year olds come in at 26%. And according to Snapchat, about 41% of these combined age groups logs onto the app on any given day. About 70% of Snapchat users identify as female.

Certain countries also have higher rates of Snapchat usage than the US. In Norway, about 50% of all smartphone users have Snapchat; in the UK, it’s 25%. 

2. Keep Videos Under a Minute

Like copywriting, Snapchat marketing is often more effective when the video clocks in at a shorter time frame. Largely thanks to the disappearing, impermanent content, Snapchat focuses more on brief snapshots of a moment instead of long content. It’s more about fast fun than anything else, like Tinder as the online dating equivalent to eHarmony.

This story is just a few seconds long, but sends traffic to their much-longer YouTube video.

Keep your Snaps and stories to a minute or less; any longer, and you’ll lose user interest. If you have a longer video that’s just so great, share it elsewhere on Facebook or YouTube in its full-length glory and shorten it for Snapchat.

3. Tell Stories with Your Stories

Stories are the Snapchat pictures or videos that you can choose to share with your entire audience, instead of a Snap that you send to individuals. These stories will be displayed on the closest thing Snapchat has to a newsfeed, and users can rewatch them for 24 hours. If it sounds a lot like Instagram Stories, it should (but Snapchat did it first).

As much as I detest the Kardashians, this is an excellent example of connecting stories.

The point of this tip: use traditional storytelling methods. Connect the stories that you have on any single day. Show multiple different areas at an event, upload interviews in multiple stages, and keep users on edge when advertising a new product or promo code that will come later in the day. These stories keep users engaged continually, instead of losing them in a too-long video.

It’s also important to remember that we don’t have captions, or tagging, or anything else that allows us to explain the image we’re sharing—we only have the text we add to the snap. So make your captions as informative as possible.

4. Use Snapchat Memories

I was REALLY happy when Snapchat Memories was finally a thing. Now, you can upload images and videos that you’ve already taken to create Snaps and stories, instead of needing to shoot the content right away.

This means that you can upload content that you’ve edited outside the app, including the additions of branded logos and content. While your images should still feel like they’ve been snapped with an iPhone instead of a $5,000 camera (a big difference from Instagram), a little editing never hurt. This is especially true for videos, which can now be edited and modified more effectively.

To use images or videos taken in the past, you can click on the small circle (which will likely have a tiny picture in it) just underneath the main button you’ll use to take pictures in the app.

Once there, you can upload content into Snapchat. You can edit it like any other pictures you’d take within the app, and it’ll be shown as regular Snaps or stories to your followers.

5. Track Your Metrics

Snapchat marketing is difficult to track, which is a nightmare for marketers. It’s one of the reasons I’m not personally a huge fan of the platform (though I fully acknowledge its necessity). There’s no Snapchat version of Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics for Snapchat, after all.

To get the data from your story, you need to tap on it after it’s been viewed. You’ll be able to see how many views it’s had (the number for which will appear next to the eye symbol), and number of screenshots taken right next to it. You can manually track this data over time.

If you want to automate the process and make it a lot easier, you can use Snaplytics analytics software. As for as Snapchat goes, it’s an incredible tool. They’ll show you all the data on every story you’ve had in a certain time frame. Even better, they’ll also show you the data on your competitors.

6. Don’t Just Snap a Picture

That’s what Instagram is for. Snapchat is fun and quirky, and since there are no captions, you should use Snapchat’s in-app editing/add-on tools to adapt your content to the platform. Yes, that means you have to use the filters, drawing tools, and emojis. You’re a business, but you still want your content to fit into the platform.

Additional Tips

Still looking for more tips? This incredible infographic from Salesforce has you covered, with fantastic advice on conversions, geofilters, and more.

Click Infographic To Enlarge

I have embraced the necessity for Snapchat, particularly for the businesses whose audience is active on the platform. While it may not be my favorite platform as a user, I have friends who are nearly addicted to it.

Snapchat’s daily users are loyal to the platform, so if you’re able to connect with them here, great! You’ll likely have an easier time getting their attention, too, since there aren’t as many brands on the platform as other social media sites, keeping competition low.

Combined with our list of Snapchat best practices, this can mean big results, and that’s always work investing in.

What do you think? Do you use Snapchat marketing as part of your overall strategy? Which best practices have you used? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

 The post The Ultimate List of Snapchat Best Practices appeared first on Agorapulse.

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[socialscooppage]

127 Time-Saving Keyboard Shortcuts for Social Media Marketers

I used to think the few seconds I save by using keyboard shortcuts are not useful. I mean, what can I do with those few seconds?

A lot, it seems…

A few seconds here and there can add up. And according to Brainscape, you can save up to eight workdays per year! Just by using shortcuts—enough time for a long vacation.

Being a social media marketer, you spend a lot of time on the various social media platforms and your favorite social media tools. Often repeating the same actions: Like, reply, and more.

Let’s help you save your eight precious days every year with these social media keyboard shortcuts.

Top Social Media Keyboard Shortcuts to Save You Time

Here’re all the social media platforms and tools we’ll cover in this blog post. Click on the respective bullet point to jump to the platform or tool you’re interested in:

Social media platforms

Facebook

Messenger

Twitter

LinkedIn

Instagram (mobile app shortcuts)

Pinterest (mobile app shortcuts)

Google+

YouTube

Medium

Tumblr

Tools

Buffer

Respond

Feedly

Pocket

Canva

Trello

One Keyboard Shortcut to Rule Them All

I struggle to remember all the keyboard shortcuts since different platforms and tools tend to have different keyboard shortcuts (even for similar actions such as Liking a post).

Fortunately, many platforms and tools have a keyboard shortcut to show all the keyboard shortcuts! If there’s one to remember, this is it.

“?” or Shift + /

Facebook Keyboard Shortcuts

Facebook keyboard shortcuts differ by computer operating system and by browser:

Chrome for PC: Alt + #

Firefox for PC: Shift + Alt + #

Internet Explorer for PC: Alt + #, then Enter

Chrome, Safari, and Firefox for Mac: Ctrl + Opt + #

Replace # with the following numbers to access the respective features or pages on Facebook. For example, Alt + 1 will bring you to your Facebook home page on Chrome on a PC.

0 – Help

1 – Home

2 – Timeline

3 – Friends

4 – Inbox

5 – Notifications

6 – Settings

7 – Activity Log

8 – About

9 – Terms

Here’re a few more keyboard shortcuts for actions you might regularly take:

j or k – Scroll down or up between News Feed stories

Enter – See more of the selected story

p – Post a new status

l – Like or unlike the selected story

c – Comment on the selected story

s – Share the selected story

o – Open the link or expand the photo from the selected story

/ – Search

To see the full list of keyboard shortcuts, type “?” on any Facebook page.

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Messenger Keyboard Shortcuts

Increasingly, more businesses are using Messenger to provide social customer support. Being able to speed up your workflow allows you to reply your customers faster. The only keyboard shortcut for Messenger seems to this:

Opt + Up arrow or Down arrow / Alt + Up arrow or Down arrow – Jump to the conversation above or below

If you want to enhance your Messenger workflow, Allen Guo has developed a Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on, which adds several useful keyboard shortcuts to the Messenger web app (i.e. messenger.com).

Here’re two handy ones to know:

Opt + Shift + (number) / Alt + Shift + (number) – Jump to the X-th conversation from the top (e.g. Opt + Shift + 3 brings you to the third conversation from the top)

Opt + Shift + q / Alt + Shift + q – Search

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Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts

Hop to different Twitter pages with these keyboard shortcuts:

g + h – Home

g + n – Notifications

g + r – Mentions

g + p – Profile

g + l – Likes

g + i – Lists

g + m – Messages

g + s – Settings

g + u – Go to user…

Here’re a few more keyboard shortcuts for actions you might regularly take:

n – New tweets

Cmd + Enter / Ctrl + Enter – Send tweets

j or k – Next or previous tweet

l – Like

r – Reply

t – Retweet

m – Direct message

Enter – Open tweet details

o – Expand photo

/ – Search

To see the full list of keyboard shortcuts, type “?” on any Twitter page.

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LinkedIn Keyboard Shortcuts

It seems that LinkedIn does not have keyboard shortcuts for navigation and actions. But here’re two browser shortcuts you can use when commenting on a post:

Tab + Enter – Add an image

Tab + Tab + Enter – Post your comment

Do you know of any other handy LinkedIn keyboard shortcuts? Share them in the comments.

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Instagram App Shortcuts

While Instagram doesn’t have any keyboard shortcuts, it has some shortcuts for its mobile app.

Tap and hold a post in grid view in Search & Explore or on a profile – Expand the post (then swipe up to like the post, view the profile, or send the post as a message)

Tap and hold a profile or hashtag on your feed – Get a preview of the recent posts (then swipe up to view the profile, turn post notifications on, or send the profile or hashtag as a message)

Give the app icon a firm press – Get shortcuts to create a new post, view activities or direct messages, search, and more (only for iPhone 6s or later)

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Pinterest App Shortcuts

Pinterest also doesn’t have any keyboard shortcuts but if you use Pinterest on your mobile phone (iPhone 6s or later, Android 7.1 or higher), give the app icon a firm press and you’ll see four Pinterest shortcuts.

Lens – Find pins related to anything you snap (only available to users with the Lens feature)

Explore – See the trending ideas for the day

Saved – Jump right to the ideas you saved

Search – Search for ideas on Pinterest

For Android users, you can even move the shortcuts onto your home screen by tapping and dragging the shortcut over.

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Google+ Keyboard Shortcuts

Google+ uses a few different keyboard shortcuts from most social media platforms for common actions such as comment and +1 (or Like). Just type “?” on most Google+ pages when you want to see the keyboard shortcuts.

j or k – Next or previous post

/ – Search

c – Create a new post

r – Comment on selected post

s – Share selected post

v – View attachment on selected post

+ – Add or remove a +1 on the selected post

Here’s a little bonus: Google+ might be the only major social media platform where you can style your text with markdown.

– (dash before and after the text) – Strikethrough

* (asterisks before and after the text) – Bold

_ (underscore before and after the text) – Italics

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YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts

YouTube has over 30 keyboard shortcuts. Here’re the few you might use most often:

k or Spacebar – Play or pause video

Left arrow or j – Go back 5 or 10 seconds

Right arrow or l – Go forward 5 or 10 seconds

1 to 9 – Skip to X0 percent of the video (e.g. 5 skips to 50 percent of the video)

0 – Restart video

> or < – Speed up or slow down the video

Shift + n or p – Next or previous video in the playlist

c – Turn captions on or off

If you would like to learn all the keyboard shortcuts, Hong Kiat has compiled a great list on its site.

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Medium Keyboard Shortcuts

Medium does not have keyboard shortcuts for navigation but its keyboard shortcuts for editing and formatting can save you quite some time!

Here’re a few notable ones:

Cmd + k / Ctrl + k – Add a link (works for images, too)

Cmd + Alt + 5 / Ctrl + Alt + 5 – Block quote (press again for a pull quote)

Cmd + Enter / Ctrl + Enter – Add a separator

t + k – Leave a TK reminder

Cmd + Alt + 8 / Ctrl + Alt + 8 / Shift + f – Set image as featured image

Opt + Click / Alt + Click – Set focal point on featured image (which will be taken into account when the image is cropped on the feed)

` + ` + ` – Add a code block

To see the keyboard shortcuts while you are writing your Medium post, hit Cmd + ? or Ctrl + ?.

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Tumblr Keyboard Shortcuts

Tumblr has keyboard shortcuts for navigation, posting, and composing (such as inserting a GIF ). Type “?” on your Tumblr dashboard to pull out the list of keyboard shortcuts.

Here’re a few you might use more frequently:

j or k – Next or previous post

l – Like a post

s – Share a post

n – View a post’s notes

Enter – Open a post’s blog

/ – Search

Opt + c / Alt + c – Compose a new post

Opt + r / Alt + r – Reblog a post

Opt + e / Alt + e – Add a post to your queue

Oh, and of course,

Cmd + Shift + g / Ctrl + Shift + g – Insert GIF

Tumblr keyboard shortcuts also work on its mobile app if you have a Bluetooth keyboard connected to your mobile device.

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Buffer Keyboard Shortcuts

We also have some nifty keyboard shortcuts for the Buffer app and browser extension to help you speed up your social media sharing and management.

Opt + (number) / Alt + (number) – Switch between your connected profiles in the Buffer dashboard

Opt + b / Alt + b – Open the Buffer browser extension if you have it installed

Cmd + Enter / Ctrl + Enter – Add updates to your Buffer queue

You can customize the keyboard shortcut for opening the browser extension in your browser extension settings. For example, for Chrome, go to Settings > Extensions > Options (under Buffer).

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Respond Keyboard Shortcuts

We built Respond to help you engage with your social media fans more effectively. Naturally, we included many keyboard shortcuts to help you zoom through your social media conversations. (This is the secret to our fast responses during #bufferchat!)

Here’re the few shortcuts that I use regularly:

g + o – Go to team inbox

g + m – Go to mine (conversations assigned to you)

f – Like a tweet or Facebook comment

w – Follow user

e – Archive conversation

Enter – Focus on the composer

Cmd + Enter / Ctrl + Enter – Send reply, archive conversation, and move to the next conversation

Cmd + Shift + Enter / Ctrl + Shift + Enter – Send reply and stay in the conversation

: – Insert emoji (e.g. :smile:)

You can see the full list of keyboard shortcuts here or from the app (Help > Keyboard Shortcuts).

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Feedly Keyboard Shortcuts

Feedly is my go-to tool for staying up to date with industry news. Learning its keyboard shortcuts allowed me to quickly navigate around my Feedly dashboard and catch up on the blogs I’m following.

Here’re the few I found very useful:

g + g – Search and navigate to a particular feed or source

g + f – Go to Favourites feed

g + l – Go to Read later feed

n or p – Next or previous story

o – Open or close currently selected story

v – Open original in a new tab

x – Mark as read and hide

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Pocket Keyboard Shortcuts

Pocket is one of our favorite content curation tools, and I found out that it also has several keyboard shortcuts to help me navigate and find the articles and videos I want quickly.

Here’re the ones I like:

g + l or f or a – Switch to My List, Favorites, or Archive

g + r or v or i – Filter by articles, videos, or images

g + s – Search

j or k – Next or previous item

a – Archive the selected item

f – Favorite the selected item

o – Open the original of selected item in a new tab

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Canva Keyboard Shortcuts

We use and recommend Canva regularly because it’s easy and quick for creating social media graphics. With its keyboard shortcuts, you can reduce the time you take to create graphics even further.

Here’re a few handy ones to know:

t – Add a text

Opt + Shift + b / Alt + Shift + b – Add border around your text box

Cmd + Shift + k / Ctrl + Shift + k – Transform your text to uppercase

Cmd + Shift + l or r or c / Ctrl + Shift + l or r or c – Left or right or center align your text

Cmd + g / Ctrl + g – Group elements (Add Shift to ungroup)

Cmd + Click / Ctrl + Click – Select elements behind other elements

Cmd + Up arrow or Down arrow / Ctrl + Up arrow or Down arrow – Move an element in front of or behind other elements

Cmd + ; / Ctrl + ; – Turn grid lines on or off

Canva provides tutorials where you can learn and practice the most useful keyboard shortcuts.

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Trello Keyboard Shortcuts

Trello is a great tool for managing your social media schedule (and a tool we heavily rely on in the marketing team). While Trello is already easy to use, knowing the keyboard shortcuts can help you quickly create, change, and archive your cards.

Hover over a card to use the respective shortcuts on the card.

e – Open quick edit mode (for changing the title, labels, members, and more)

l – Open labels option

c – Archive the card

d – Set or change due date

f – Open card filter menu

, or . – Move the card to the bottom of the list on the left or right

< or > – Move the card to the top of the list on the left or right

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What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts?

With so many keyboard shortcuts available on all the social media platforms and tools, I’m sure you have found several that you love and use regularly.

Which are the ones that you use most often or the ones that save you the most time?

—

Image credit: Unsplash, Tumblr, MacRumors, and Hong Kiat

127 Time-Saving Keyboard Shortcuts for Social Media Marketers posted first on http://ift.tt/2rAuuxO

[socialscooppage]

Why Social Media Automation Will Eventually Kill Social Media (Unless We Do Something About It)

Let me take you back in time — to May 2017.

I popped into my Agorapulse dashboard and saw this tweet.

“Tools to Help Your Business Succeed In 2016…” followed by a list of tools.

Did I mention that it was May *2017*?

Oh. And one of the tools mentioned in that tweet, Instagress, was shut down a month prior.

Did someone fall asleep at the social media wheel or have automated tools taken over our social media newsfeeds?

I think it’s the latter — which has also spurred on the former.

Both are bad news.

Why social media automation has been so successful?

Social media is time consuming. And most of us don’t have the time to be on Twitter all day.

So here come “social media automation tools” with incredibly powerful claims.

“The Social Media Scheduling Tool That Manages Itself”

“Social Media on Autopilot”

“Set It and Forget It Scheduling”

These promises sound like lifesavers to we busy business owners or professionals. Here comes something we have to do but don’t really have the time to do. And here comes a solution that will help us “be social” without us really “being social?”

These services have nailed the “product – market fit” and they can only experience massive growth. Except for one thing.

They don’t work.

Why the social media automation promise is usually a scam 

Looking at the claims in the screenshots above I was thinking: “Are you kidding us? Do you really think our “voice” can be automated? Our content production can manage itself? We can honestly set our presence on social media once and forget it?”

Is this the social media equivalent of all those “work from home” claims we get in the comments on our blog?

How can this really work?

Social media is all about talking to your audience, providing value, and building and maintaining relationships. How can a tool do this?

Would you automate your text messages to your spouse or friends?

Imagine setting a text on auto-repeat to your spouse everyday at 6 pm: “Hey baby! How was your day?”

While it’s a good idea to check in with your better half, do you think this automated message will spark more engagement with your spouse and guarantee a healthier relationship?

Of course not. The automation scheme will be spotted at the second or third message and your partner will feel that you’re trying to fool her/him. The guaranteed result will be a slap in the face, not a healthier relationship.

In due time, you’ll get the same reaction from your social audience.

Goodbye to you. 

Is social media automation all bad?

Of course, like most things, social media automation is not all bad and can have some benefits.

We all know that the life span of social media post is pretty short. When you tweet something, chances are that most of your audience won’t see it.

So yes — repeating a tweet will help you get more eyeballs for a particular message over time. Most users who start automating the republishing of their social media posts will notice a significant bump in traffic early on.

Repeating a social media post, especially on Twitter, is a sound thing to do. 

We’ve even built our own social media automation function for this purpose. We have a “requeue” option for Twitter in our publishing options and we’re planning to extend this option and improve it very soon.

Our Twitter requeue option

But the repeating of tweets is being used wrong way too often by way too many people.

So what’s my biggest beef with social media automation?

For all the glorious claims these tools make, they haven’t built in protection against “bad” behaviors.

They will keep posting that tweet promoting your event from last month as long as it’s in their “queue.” They put the onus on you to remember to go in and remove that tweet (and all others) that are no longer relevant, tweeted too often, or have not resonated with your audience at all.

If you can’t remember to tweet regularly, how can you possibly remember to pull a Marie Kondo on a consistent basis?

Will you do this with your social media? Don’t think so. 

Autopilot? Set-and-forget? Less work?

It’s actually more work!

As a consequence, irrelevant and outdated content keeps being retweeted again and again.

When we launched our requeue feature, we engineered it to repeat the piece a limited number of times (3 times, 10 times and so on). It’s not as bad because you have more control without having to constantly update your content queues.

But even our social media automation system is not perfect. If you put in “repeat 99 times,” you’ll repeat too much. This function of the tool lets people do foolish stuff. And we all know that people do foolish stuff on social media all – the – time.

I’m not exempt from this. I’ve tweeted outdated content lately because, as most of business owners, I didn’t have time to check my content queues often enough.

So what the heck should we do about this?

Let’s get constructive.

As I said earlier, I think reposting content can be a good thing.

I also recognize the problem: scheduling enough unique content (or adding it to a queue) is awfully time consuming.

Repeating content on social media can help with both: putting a little more content out there and giving it a little more eyeballs.

But can’t we do it in a way that doesn’t make us look automated, irrelevant, outdated, or just plain boring?

Let’s look at the main issues of today’s automation and what solutions we can build for them:

Problem 1: Posting outdated content

This happens when you post something that is time sensitive but is set to run ad infinitum. Remember that post mentioned above about “building your business in 2016” that I spotted in May 2017?

That tweet should have ended in December 2016. Period.

A good automation tool should let you enter an end date. We here at Agorapulse are working on that.

Problem 2: Posting the same content too often

When adding content to a content queue, you usually cannot define how often you’d like that content to be published.

Let’s say you’ve created 5 content slots per day and you add 25 pieces of content in your content queue. Each piece will be repeated every 5 days, for ever, without any guardrail.

In a nutshell, you can do stupid things without knowing it.

You should be able to set a repeat interval that’s reasonable. Like once a week or every 2 weeks. Whatever the amount of content you have in your content queue at any given time. That way you avoid the risk of repeating that content too often.

Problem 3: Posting the same content for eternity

No content queue should be set to “forever.” 

A content queue where a piece can potentially be posted hundreds of time if you don’t pay attention is dangerous. You’ll most likely let it post too often.

I’m convinced that the republishing of a social media post should be limited to a sensible time frame. 

And you disagree with me because…

How do you feel about this whole social media automation topic?

Am I being too harsh? Or do you agree?

Don’t worry, I’ll still love you if you disagree 🙂

The post Why Social Media Automation Will Eventually Kill Social Media (Unless We Do Something About It) appeared first on Agorapulse.

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[socialscooppage]

Why Your Facebook Ads (Desperately) Need Social Proof

When you’re online researching a potential purchase, what’s the one thing you almost always make sure you do first?

If you’re like about 9 in 10 customers, you’re going to go looking for online reviews created by actual customers.

Thanks to the widespread nature of social media, there’s more interaction on all of our content than ever before. This includes our social ads.

Now, when a user sees the ads you run on Facebook, they take everything into consideration—including how many other people seemed to like your ad before they ever saw it. None of us do this consciously, but we all look for signs that other people liked the ad before we saw it. What we’re looking for here is social proof.

Social proof is public social engagement that other users can see. This includes likes (or other reactions), comments, and shares of your ad. It can also include adding user generated content to the actual ad itself. These small interactions can matter just as much as the ad copy when it comes to gaining more conversions, and we’re going to take a closer look at why.

Why Your Facebook Ads Need Social Proof

If you see a Facebook ad with fifty positive comments (even from people who haven’t tried it yet) and a few hundred likes, you’ll probably be more likely to pay attention to the ad than if it only had two likes and one comment that was hidden as spam.

The reason why is simple.

While we may not always like to admit it, there’s something of a hive mind mentality on social media thanks to the surge of FOMO (fear of missing out). Customers want to know what the next big thing is. And if one ad got 400 likes, they want to know why, and they’re ready to like it, too.

If there are reactions aside from likes, that only sweetens the deal; they want to know what’s funny, shocking, or infuriating so they can laugh, be stunned, or be enraged, too.

User generated content (UGC) is the most persuasive type of content our businesses can obtain, largely thanks to the fact that it’s seen as the most authentic and trustworthy. Social proof works on the same concept; users trust another brand more if they have plenty of engagement from the users who came before them. That trust translates directly into clicks and conversions.

We automatically will pay more attention to an ad with an abundance of social proof than an ad with none.

This is why Facebook Ads with some sort of social proof had 300% more conversions, and 50% lower CPAs and CPCs.

In addition to the obvious appeal that social proof provides to other users, social proof has an additional behind-the-scenes benefit, too. All that engagement happening on your post boosts your relevance score. This  gives you higher priority in the ads bidding system and can lower the cost of your ads.

How to Get Social Proof on Facebook Ads

Want to amp up the social proof on your Facebook Ads?

One of the easiest ways to use social proof on your Facebook Ads is to take customer reviews or UGC and make it the bulk of your ad copy. Even though this won’t be likes and comments on the actual ad, it still shows that you have great customer testimonials. Since the key of social proof is showing users than other customers love you, this is a great strategy to use.

Another great strategy revolves around keeping the social proof that you already have on one ad, and utilizing it again in another campaign. Basically, because all Facebook Ads can be viewed as actual posts, you can continue to curate social proof on it for a long period of time. Then, once the social proof is high, you can create another ad campaign with it for a new audience, which will start off with all those likes and ads. The video below from James Grandstaff is an excellent tutorial on how to do this.

  Actively managing and engaging with social proof on your ads is also essential to increasing the amount of social proof you have and shaping how it affects conversions. Which brings us to our next section of this post…

Managing Social Proof

You definitely want lots of engagement on your Facebook Ads, which creates social proof. While lots of social proof can typically good, the last thing you want is a few comments to incite an angry mob on your Facebook Ad—and that can happen a lot sooner than you’d think.

Today, I saw a Facebook Ad for a hair product featured on Shark Tank, trying to increase orders. As it turns out, the company has a massive delay on their orders—with backups on orders all the way from March.

Some of these backed-up orders saw the ad, and were not happy that they were trying to get more sales. Instead of jumping in and letting everyone know that their orders will be fulfilled soon, the company was nowhere to be seen. The negative comments worked their way into the hundreds, making them impossible to miss—or to dismiss. It almost definitely cost them sales.

Agorapulse’s monitoring software allows you to see every single comment on every single Facebook Ads. This allows your team to keep the social proof moving in the direction you want it to go. This can help you increase conversions, and show potential and current customers that you’re invested in them, too.

As an added perk, the more you engage, the higher your comment count will go. Even though this is technically superficially inflating that number, all most users will see is a bigger comment number when they see your ad. This works in your favor.

Final Thoughts

Social proof is one of the most powerful selling tools that you can have; in many cases, it can often be more persuasive than the actual ad itself.

By focusing on strategies to increase and manage social proof on your ad campaigns, you can count on seeing more conversions. Our customers are also our best salespeople too, after all, and having them singing their praises on our ads is the best marketing we could ever get.

What do you think? How do you get social proof on your ads? Do you use Agorapulse’s Facebook Ads monitoring tool? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

 The post Why Your Facebook Ads (Desperately) Need Social Proof appeared first on Agorapulse.

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[socialscooppage]

On Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Social Media and Becoming a Better Marketer – Paul Jarvis [SSM047]

For all of history creativity has, in a sense, been taken advantage of by business.

Look at any musician’s record deal. Or any painter who has found someone to represent them and put their work in galleries. Or the author whose book you see atop the NY Times Bestseller list.

It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship. Well, that is, until recently.

Over the last decade, there has been a sharp rise in creatives as business people. But how can you, as a business person or marketer, learn to hone your inner creativity to thrive in today’s market?

Paul Jarvis, one-time touring musician, veterinary assistant, and paperboy turned full-time entrepreneur shares his insights into how many brands and marketers may be looking at social media all wrong. He also shares how creativity and human connection on social media might be easier than you think.

A huge thank you to Paul for packing episode #47 of The Science of Social Media full of inspiration and actionable takeaways for marketers looking to hone their inner creativity and drive real, human connections on social media. (Part of our brand new podcast series!)

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

iTunes

Google Play

Stitcher

Sound Cloud

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Paul Jarvis shares his journey from one-time touring musician to full-time entrepreneur. We dive into the intricacies creativity and the important role that it plays in social media and marketing success as well as how you can hone your inner creativity. We also get into some other great things like:

How the best career moves can happen by accident (and often do)

Why the “clutch” factor has been key in Paul’s career success

How passion often follows expertise, not the other way around

The importance of following market demand for your brand

Why human connection is the most important factor for social media success

The essence of creativity and how we’re all capable of being extraordinary

Why being human is one of the most important things your brand can do to connect

In Paul’s words…

“There are a lot of things that are dehumanizing in the marketing and corporate world today. There’s chatbots, and AI, and corporate jargon everywhere you look – even landing pages of most major companies! People create “humanity” in everything that they do, but that’s silly. We’re all surrounded by humans. People simply crave real connection with other people.”

A Great Moment

“Social media is the hook. People aren’t going to see your Twitter account and instantly buy something. But it’s a great place to give people a micro taste of your brand.”

– Paul Jarvis

Awesome People and Stuff Mentioned in the Show

Paul Jarvis Home

Paul Jarvis: Sunday Dispatches [Podcast]

CNBC: Inside the Wendy’s Nuggs Guy and 18 Million Retweets [Article]

Nuggs and Sass: Inside Wendy’s Social Media Secret Sauce [Forbes]

Cal Newport – “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” [Book]

Favorite Quotes

Being an entrepreneur and in my business specifically, I see social media as the hook. People aren’t going to see my Twitter account and then buy something from me, but they are getting micro tastes of my brand (of who I am).

Most entrepreneurs super powers come from their ability to not be afraid to look silly or stupid and just try things.

Content marketing is built around trust because sales and audience growth can’t happen without trust. You can’t fake it and you can’t build it immediately, it happens over time.

Things start to go well when brands truly begin question how they can connect with their audience as real human beings. If you’re engaging, human, real, and interesting then that’s a massive benefit to your audience.

I don’t build software companies, make courses, or write books because I feel like it. I would rather sit and watch Netflix. But when I start to notice that more people want something specific from me, that’s what I let drive me. In other words, I let market demand dictate what I do next.

There gets to a point, in the path of many careers, where you realize that you’re not doing what you want to do. And it took me a long time to understand that passion follows mastery. In looking at people who are happy with their jobs, they tend to have mastered them.

How to Say Hello to Paul (and us)

Pau Jarvis is one of my personal favorites to follow along with online and on Twitter. And he would love to say hello to you! You can find Paul on Twitter here. And if you’re interested in checking out more of Paul’s incredible work or podcast (or anything else), head on over to www.pjrvs.com.

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing strategies from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 10,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

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[socialscooppage]

Does Working with Micro Influencers Bring in Big ROI?

Working with influencers is a great way to gain exposure for your brand or business. But can micro influencers really bring in ROI? Let’s break down the benefits of working with micro influencers.

What Is A Micro Influencer?

When it comes to social media marketing, an influencer is an individual who has established credibility, can have an effect on purchase decisions, and usually has amassed a large audience following.

A micro influencer still has all the attributes of an influencer but with a  smaller audience base. The parameters that define a micro influencer can fluctuate depending on who you ask. I consider an individual a micro influencer when they have a following of 5,000 – 50,000 followers but in general someone can be considered a micro influencer if they have fewer than 100,000 followers.

Benefits Of Working With Micro Influencers

There are many benefits to working with with smaller influencers. Here are some ways for higher micro influencer ROI.

They have higher engagement rates. Many studies have shown that as follower numbers increase, engagement rates decrease. This means working with micro influencers, who’s audiences haven’t ballooned yet might bring higher ROI for you brand.

They are usually specialize in a niche: Another way micro influencer ROI can end up being higher than when using a larger influencer is that many times micro influencers have very specific niches. This means a more highly targeted audience – which leaves you with higher conversions.

They are usually perceived as more authentic. Micro influencers are usually perceived as more authentic by their audience than larger influencers.

They are looking for opportunities. Micro influencers are most likely in an earlier stage of building their presence. This means they are more open an eager to work with brands to both build their credibility and begin to monetize their audiences.

They will cost you less. Micro influencer ROI can outperform larger influencer ROI because it will cost you less to work with micro influencers. Many times larger influencers have already started to monetize their following, which may mean they are charging for endorsements on their channels. Since micro influencers haven’t reached that point yet, they will be less expensive to work with requiring smaller fees or will be open to post in exchange for a product or service. Devise your micro influencer compensation package before reaching out.

Micro influencers are perceived as more authentic. Their smaller, more niche audiences are engaged with the content and products presented by the influencer.

How To Find Micro Influencers

To ensure high micro influencer ROI, the first step is to find the right influencers for you brand. Find influencers that relate to your product or service, with an audience that is engaged and responding to said influencers’ posts.

Dive in and quality check people liking and leaving comments to verify that they are your target audience. Make sure the micro influencer complements your brand’s voice and visual aesthetic. Here are some ways you can go about finding the right micro influencers for your brand.

Start with your own following

You may have some micro influencers already interacting with you online! Browse your social media posts and take a look at who the top users interacting with you are. Take a look at their profiles and notice their follower numbers, and how engaged their audience is.

You can use a tool like the Twitter Report Card to see just how active a Twitter user’s followers are. See the differences between these two juvenile fiction authors with very similar follower counts?

Put your detective hat on

Another way to find micro influencers that will get you a good return on your investment is to do a little research. Remember that micro influencers are usually dialed into specific niches. Try researching industry specific hashtags or keywords. You can use built in search tools like the Explore tab on Instagram to help you discover posts that are popular under your specific keyword. Once you find a good micro influencer take a look at their posts to take note of what other hashtags they are using to lead you to more influencers.

After you’ve found your micro influencers keep track of them and interact with their social media accounts regularly to start building a relationship. The process will help the influencer get familiar with your brand so this won’t be a cold contact when you finally reach out.

Create an Excel or Google Sheets list or use a tool like Agorapulse to help you keep monitor micro influencers and their posts. Agorapulse makes the process streamlined with “tags.”  Tag users as “microinfluencer” to help you keep track of relevant accounts and conversations.

Reach out and touch someone (but not in a sleazy way)

Reaching out to micro influencers can be really easy! You can send them a message on the platform you’ve been interacting with them on or send them an email. Many influencers will list their email addresses on their profiles or will have contact forms on their sites. When sending them an email or message make sure to introduce yourself, and let them know why you think they’d be a good fit for you campaign.

So How Can I Gain Micro Influencer ROI?

There are many different campaigns you can run to gain micro influencer ROI.

Sharing Tips: Ask your influencer to share tips about their area of expertise with your following. Make sure they invite their audience to your channels to follow along. This campaign is great for growing your following with targeted audience. You might want to enlist someone who already creates lists or tutorials for this kind of project.

How Tos: Work with a micro influencer to create content around different, innovative ways to use your product.

Announcements: If you want to make a big splash announcements are a perfect reason to try micro influencers. Work with several to break news to so many new eyes!

Product Reviews:  Microinfluencers care about the quality of the content they share with their audience, and their followers know it. Getting the right influencer to review and recommend your product can help with brand awareness and sales.

Giveaways: Partner with a micro influencer (or a few) to create or promote a giveaway for your brand, increasing the visibility of the campaign.

Content Partnerships: You can work with micro influencers to create content for your brand and share on their social media networks.

Account takeovers: Account takeovers are another great way to gain high micro influencer ROI. Since micro influencers have very engaged audiences they’re perfect for takeovers in which they influencer posts from your brand’s account for a day. The idea is that they invite their audience to your brand’s channels for the exclusive content.

Content partnerships with micro influencers can enforce the authority of your brand while bringing new eyes to your social media accounts.

Bringing in micro influencer ROI can be an easy way to grow your following and gain awareness for your business. it’s also a good way to ease into influencer marketing.

Will you try to partner with micro influencers for your brand this year? Let me know in the comments!

 The post Does Working with Micro Influencers Bring in Big ROI? appeared first on Agorapulse.

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[socialscooppage]

Follow These Facebook Ad Automation Steps (If You Dare)

Facebook Ad Automation Rules automatically perform checks and make decisions based on the performance of your Facebook Ads that you would otherwise have to do manually, allowing you to automatically control your ad spend based on the performance.

But should you use it?

Absolutely. If done well, automation can save you time, prevent you from overspending on underperforming ads, and help you leverage those ads that are performing well by automatically increasing your budget.

You can set automation rules at the campaign, ad set and ad level, giving you the power to automate at whatever level you require.

The Automated Rules that you setup will automatically update and/or notify you of changes when the conditions you set for each of your rules trigger.

I’ll show you how I set up my favorite Facebook Ad Automation rules.

Creating Facebook Ad Automation Rule Conditions

Facebook Ad Automation Rules can be setup in the Ads Manager or Power Editor.

You determine the conditions under which your rules trigger. You can set conditions based on:

Cost per Website Add of Payment Info

Cost per Website Add to Cart

Cost per Website Add to Wishlist

Cost per Website Registration Completed

Cost per Website Initiate Checkout

Cost per Website Lead

Cost per Mobile App Install

Cost per Website Purchase

Cost per Website Search

Cost per Website Content Views

Cost per Result

CPC (Link)

CPM

CTR (Link)

Lifetime Impressions

Impressions

Reach

Leads

Daily Spent

Lifetime Spent

Frequency

Results

Hours Since Creation

You can set the conditions within your automated rules to trigger when the value you choose:

Is greater than

Is smaller than

Is between

In not between

The following actions can be automated when the conditions for your rules are met:

Send a notification to yourself of other people on your ad account when your rule makes changes (notifications can be received on Facebook, via email or both)

Turn off your campaign, ad set or ad

Increase or decrease the daily or lifetime budget of your ad set

Increase or decrease the bid of your ad set

For example, you can create rules that:

Send an email notification to the person who is managing the campaign, as well as the ad account owner when your Daily Spend is greater than $500

Turns off an ad when the cost per Website Registration Completed raises above $3

Increase your ad budget when your ad CTR (Link) is greater than 5%

Decrease the bid of your ad set when the frequency is greater than 3 times

You can set your rules to trigger when only one condition is met (as per the above examples) or when multiple conditions are met. For example, you can trigger an ad to decrease your daily budget spend by 25% (with a minimum daily budget cap of $10) when the average cost per Lead is greater than $2, the Frequency is greater than 2.5 times, the Clickthrough Rate is smaller than 4% and Lifetime Impressions are greater than 8,000.

Their are so many possibilities and combinations that you can apply, allowing you to create rules appropriate to your needs.

You can only setup 100 automated rules (including active and inactive rules) per ad account and a single rule can be applied to up to 200 separate objects (i.e 200 ad sets or 200 ads). Each rule can have more than one condition, but can only have condition type. For example, you cannot use the Cost Per Result rule more than once.

You can apply rules to:

All active campaigns

All active ad sets

All active ads

For example, if you are having issues with your CPM frequently being unacceptably high across all your campaigns, then you can set the rule to apply on “all active campaigns.”

This can be a limitation when you are running campaigns with different objectives concurrently and you want to set triggers at different levels for different campaigns, so you need to keep this in mind when setting automation rules. Fortunately Facebook does tell you when you create a new rule which campaigns, ad sets and ads that you currently have running already meet your conditions.

You should also make sure you name your rules in a way that are easily identifiable so that you don’t accidentally apply the incorrect rule to an ad campaign.

Once your automation rules are setup, you can manage those rules within the “Manage Rules” section of your Ads Account.

Facebook Ad Automation Rule Monitoring

Depending on the the rule you create, Facebook will either monitor your performance continuously (as often as possible – usually every 30 minutes) or daily (at 12am in your ad account’s time zone). You can see how frequently the rule will run when you set it up or within the activity table when your rule is already setup.

It’s important that you give the Facebook Ads Algorithm sufficient time to stabilize before you trigger off any of your automated rules. This is because performance is often poorest in the early stages of your ad campaign whilst the Facebook Ads Algorithm is learning what the optimal bid is for your ads.

Similarly, you need to ensure there is sufficient sample size before your automated rules kick in, as Facebook needs data in order to o. If your budget is low, then you might want to delay the rule from kicking in until a certain amount of reach or impressions are achieved. You can do this by adding another condition to the rule, however Facebook will sometimes do this for you by adding in a suggested minimum Lifetime Impressions value when you add conditions to your rules.

If you set your trigger condition values too low, you might find that your ads are being stopped or adjusted prematurely, which can impact the long-term performance of your results.

You can also select the number of days worth of data you’d like to apply your rule to. You can choose between:

Previous day

Last 3 days

Last 7 days

Last 14 days

Last 30 days

Lifetime

Setting a longer duration for the rule will allow your ads more flexibility to fluctuate above the trigger point, as long as the average figure does not exceed the trigger point for the rule to kick in.

However, if your ads were performing well below the trigger points in the early days of the campaign and then they suddenly rise above the trigger points, your actions probably won’t trigger in a timely manner, as the overall ad performance within that period will still be considered within your desirable range, even though your ads are displaying signs that they are no longer effective. This is something to keep in mind when considering how long you should set the Time Range for.

You also have control over the attribution window for your automation rules. These should be set to reflect the attribution windows you set when creating your ad campaigns and are likely to vary based on what you are promoting.

Things To Consider Before You Automate

Before you setup your Facebook Ad Automation rules, it’s important to have already run sufficient Facebook Ad campaigns to generate enough data to create performance benchmarks specific to your business. That way you will have an understanding of what an “acceptable” range (across a range of metrics) would be for the different types of campaigns you run.

Whilst automated rules can save you time and give you more peace of mind that you won’t be going over budget, you should still regularly jump into your ads account to monitor the overall performance of your Facebook Ads, as well as continue to split test and tweak your campaigns as necessary to ensure you are optimizing your ads to achieve your marketing objectives. Doing this will also allow you to spot any new trends that may impact your ad campaign performance (positively or negatively) moving forward.

Even with these automation features, Facebook Ads should never be “set and completely forget,” as you still need to monitor engagement and any other variables that can impact the performance of your ads that your automation rules might not pick up.

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