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gositeybuilder · 4 years ago

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The Best Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

Content marketing has been continuously evolving to keep pace with consumer demands, technologies, and trends. For example, social media, voice search, and the increasing use of mobile devices require to stay on the top. Also, some platforms are changing themselves. For example, Facebook has started attracting more older demographics, whereas Instagram has mainly attracted females. Content marketers need to adopt unique strategies to meet these changing trends to reach every section of audiences effectively and attract them. Recently, flexibility and adaptability have been central to content marketing. Many new trends are going to change of overall scenario of content marketing this year.

Content Optimization for Niche, Long Tail Keywords

The content marketers were focused on long-form content for a long time. But, now the scenario has been changed. Instead of focusing on long-form or detailed and lengthy content, content marketers have put their entire focus on using niche, long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords have made it easy for content marketers to rank their content on Google. It means getting more organic traffic which is the best for marketers targeting a specific niche. You can find these long-tail keywords using paid and free tools available in the market. For example, you can use Ubersuggest, Wordtracker, Moz.com, SEMrush, etc. Plus, you can use Google’s related search, Google Suggest, and the feature “people also searched for” on Google .

Building Big Communities

With over 24 million online stores out there, getting noticed is not so easy. You will need to look for a unique way to get noticed. Developing a community gives established and new brands an opportunity to learn, collaborate and come together. Plus, it offers community downloads, webinars, networking opportunities, discounted events, tools, books, and many more. Community marketing is all about engaging with the audience while reaching a broader base and developing loyalty and trust.

Repurpose Your Content Across Channels

When you repurpose your content, it augments your organic search, gets your brand in front of a different and broad audience, and saves you a lot of time. In simple terms, repurposing content means repackaging it into different formats like creating infographics from stats and research, transcribing your videos on YouTube and distributing them as blog content, newsletter, and podcast, embedding your videos on YouTube in your blog, and turning your blog posts into a newsletter content or an eBook.

You can take ESPN’s example, which proved how effective content repackaging could be when it launched its program ” We the Fans” and distributed it across a wide range of formats. The strategy of ESPN includes all formats like podcasts, social media networks, articles, and videos.

“Discover” Features

Google Discover, earlier known as Google Feed, combines evergreen content, news, and visual content like photos. The feature has undergone a significant transformation since the days it was launched. Google uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand users’ search history to fill the feed. You will find this feature on your mobile pages, and the users using Chrome will see it when opening a tab. If your content meets the guidelines of Google, then it can appear on Discover. Some of the guidelines set by Google to enhance the chances of your content to appear on Discover includes:

Providing exact details of authorship, including publication, name, and bylines.

High-quality imaging and descriptive titles avoiding click bait.

Posting unique and engaging content.

Creating timely and unique content.

Commentary from Experts

Including comments from a featured or a subject matter expert can enhance the performance of your content. Google does not consider subject matter content as its ranking factor. However, evaluators consider trustworthiness, authoritativeness, and expertise as the significant factors in the quality rankings. High-quality content is not the only subject of interest for Google, but consumers also want to look for it.

As per the Nielson study, over 85 percent of consumers occasionally look for expert and high-quality content before purchasing anything. Plus, more than 65 percent of the buyers say that they prefer unbiased expert recommendations before purchasing a product. According to InPowered, the institution that commissioned the survey, marketers should

Cut through the noise and build trust with expert content.

Share their content once they have gained the trust of consumers.

Ask customers for reviews and continue to build trust among them through their expert content.

“Story” Features

Stories are for many reasons getting popularity. For example, they can make great content on social media networks. Also, it will appear in Google images and mobile searches, enhancing the chances of your discoverability. Other factors playing an essential role in its growing popularity, such as Google Stories, have created stories accessible to every user. Similarly, Instagram Guides have provided curated content in the form of text, photos, and videos. The basic idea is to make content easy to find, so discovering influencers and brands become easy.

Personalization of Content

Content personalization can be defined as introducing the content to the customers based on their preferences or profile. Every customer who visits your website searches for a different product and has different needs. Your content must cater to these customers’ different needs and encourage them to take the next step.

Apart from following the best and latest content marketing practices that will dominate the year 2021, you should also research to improve your strategy for content marketing. Always keep an eye on the top-ranking content and use the relevant data and experimentation to improve your strategy.

Source: The Best Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

#contentmarketing #bestcontent #2021 #gositeybuilder #preductions

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cindylouwho-2 · 4 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, April 6, 2021

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the early March report, although some may be older than that.

I am hoping to launch a new ecommerce resource page on my website in May, although that is looking a bit ambitious with everything else I have on the go. (I've released the latest version of my Etsy search ebook, and am working on updating the keyword research ebook this week as well as still drafting a few new blog posts on Etsy search.)

If you have any questions, please drop me a line here on Tumblr, reply to this post, email me, or contact me on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Etsy Ads have been turning themselves on without sellers taking any action. There are threads here, here, here, and here. There is a video here with more people reporting the issue in the comments. A few cases seem to be related to using vacation mode, and at least one person reports a much higher budget than they would have chosen. So go check to make sure they ae still off (unless you want them running).

eBay, Etsy and some other marketplaces have formed a coalition to lobby against proposed laws they say could harm small sellers and microbusinesses. The Coalition to Protect American’s Small Sellers (PASS Coalition) is currently fighting the INFORM Consumers Act, which “would require online marketplaces to disclose third-party seller information to consumers, including name, address, email and telephone, or face civil penalties.” An Etsy rep said that this would be problematic because it would affect the privacy of sellers, and could potentially move communications off-site meaning Etsy would have less “ability to ensure seller integrity and consumer protections.”

PayPal is now allowing Americans to pay using cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin; this is rolling out over the next few months.

ETSY NEWS

Remember when Etsy Ads got way more expensive and stopped working for some people? Here’s the technical explanation of what they changed. [It is very technical in some parts, so most people will struggle with a lot of it] Note they explain that the Etsy Ads algorithm “ranks listings based on their bid price, multiplied by their predicted click-through rate”, and that they added contextual factors such as the time, the day of the week, and the buyer’s platform to tailor the bidding, and the expected order value is supposed to be part of the final bid calculation. They also mention that the current system is using the “30-day listing purchase rate” as a factor. The results of testing: “[t]he buyers saw more relevant results from ads (+6.19% CTR), the buyers made more purchases from ads (+3.08% PCCVR) and the sellers received more sales for every dollar they spent on Etsy Ads (+7.02% ROAS).” It’s clear that Etsy Ads are designed for the really big spenders, not small shops.

April’s attribute updates include candles and desks.

In their latest sustainability initiative, Etsy will now offset carbon emissions from packaging.

Etsy’s “disaster relief fund” has launched, but it is only available to US sellers, which is something not stated until you click to the application form. The FAQs actually state it is available to “all sellers”. Because everyone on Etsy is American, right?

Etsy donated $500,000 to two groups working against Asian hate. Ironically, they also got called out for having an algorithm that was surfacing “erotic” photos of Asian women as recommendations on listings that were completely unrelated items with only “Asian” as a common keyword. The issue was also noted in searches for “Asian photo”. Etsy’s response was to remove 3 listings and to promise to “continue to work on improving our algorithm to avoid surfacing recommendations where not relevant or appropriate.”

The Spring and Summer Trend Report is out, with the usual detail on trending items and keywords used. Some of the search trends:

“143% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for checkered prints”

Things like mushrooms, and “waves and squiggles” are hot

Outdoors, plants and gardening, staycations & decor related to travel are all expected to continue to be popular

“286% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for vintage colored glassware”

“42% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for pendant necklaces”

“86% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for clothing patterns”

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

If you are fairly new to SEO for search engines such as Google, you may find that it seems way too complex, and you might worry that you are missing something. Here is a great basic checklist for websites. Most of these items will not apply on marketplaces such as Etsy; e.g., Etsy rewrites the file name, and doesn’t allow you to create an URL separate from the listing title, or a meta description different from the listing description.

One of the most common questions I get is “how do I get backlinks”? Fortunately, Moz just came out with the Beginner's Guide to Link Building.

You know that links are very important for Google ranking, but do you know how Google decides that? Read this, and you will. [text with lots of graphics]

If you really want to know everything about SEO, Search Engine Journal compiled a fabulous list of resources. Some get very technical, so this list is definitely not for everyone.

A new study says that ⅔ of Google searches do not result in a click; people are getting the information they seek from various Google features on the search page. The study does not separate out simple searches such as the temperature outside, or a spelling check, in which users wouldn’t benefit from clicking. But while the click rate is dropping, users are still growing, so the total number of clicks continues to increase. Here’s a bit of commentary on the study.

Although Google says it likely won’t change ranking much, here’s a good overview of the upcoming Core Web Vitals algorithm update.

Good news! Bots don’t hurt your Google ranking.

SEO for videos on Google, appropriately in the form of a video. [links and highlights in the video’s description]

Former Google employees are involved in Neema, a subscription-based search engine which will protect users’ privacy. The site is currently in beta and there is a waitlist.

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Trends in the best headline/caption/title for sharing have changed. BuzzSumo’s review of 100 million posts shows that emotional phrases are no longer as big as they were in 2017, and the most shared headlines are now shorter: only 11 words/65 characters. There is a lot of analysis of Twitter and Facebook as well as general info here.

Ideal image size is different on every social media platform; this infographic gives you all the sizes for the major sites.

Reminder: don’t buy Instagram followers. A lot of the services sell bots and inactive accounts, which means you won’t get any engagement. The article ends with a few tips on how to get authentic followers that will actually help you.

Coming to Instagram: the ability to save drafts of Stories.

Reddit has opened a Canadian office, a logical decision since Canuck Redditors are the third-largest country base, and are increasing by 40% a year.

Which app was downloaded the most in the first quarter of 2021? You will be unsurprised to hear it is TikTok.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

You can’t know how successful your ads are, or how they could be improved, if you aren’t paying attention to several different metrics. Here is what to watch on Facebook.

Here is an overview of what we know about how Google is doing away with advertisers’ third party cookies; the new set up is called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

Ad design can be tricky; here are 11 tips for creating Facebook ads that will work.

TikTok is forcing users to see ads related to their TikTok history; as of April 15, you will not be able to opt out of ad personalization. You can still refuse to let them use your activity on other sites, though.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Here’s an overview of how the new version of Google Analytics works.

Facebook Analytics will be retired June 30, 2021, and some people do not feel there are adequate alternatives.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Poshmark now has listing videos. Any videos added also show up on a seller’s Posh Stories. eBay is also rolling out videos on listing pages and storefronts.

Walmart’s Marketplace now allows sellers from outside the United States; the first new group is from China.

Hudson’s Bay Company is the latest to invite third-party merchants to sell on its site, the Hudson’s Bay Marketplace. There isn’t much there yet, though.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Half of Americans hate seeing the same ads all of the time. 40% were interested in learning about deals through ads, while almost as many want ads that are “entertaining”.

Make sure you are using the correct words to get buyers to convert. This infographic lists some of the most useful psychological trigger words, depending on your goals.

Increasing the average order value is a smart way to increase your income without adding more new customers. Here are 4 pricing strategies to get you there.

Ecommerce spending is projected to continue increasing, and installment plans have been popular early in 2021.

How fast a website loads is directly related to sales and conversions. “If a page’s load time slowed from one second to three seconds, the chances of a bounce increased by almost a third (32%). And going from one to five seconds increased bounce rate by a whopping 90%!”

#etsysellernews #Etsynews #search engine optimization #content marketing #microbusiness #ecommerce

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remelitalia · 4 years ago

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10 Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond

Organizations that have made consistent and sound investments in content marketing have reported those investments paying dividends in recent years.

However, to maintain their growth, marketers must also stay tuned into the ever-changing content marketing landscape.

What worked last year may not be enough to creep ahead in 2021.

Being able to anticipate trends and changes in audience behavior based on technology trends and updates can help you adjust your strategy and get ahead of the wave.

Here, we’ll detail some trends to keep an eye on in 2021, but before we do, let’s look at why content marketing keeps evolving.

Why Does Content Marketing Change so Frequently?

Content marketing continues to evolve to keep pace with trends, technologies, and consumer demands. For instance, increasing use of mobile devices, voice search, and social media all require us to stay on top of things.

Then there are the platforms themselves that change. Established sites like Facebook have started to attract an older demographic, while newer platforms like TikTok appeal to a younger audience.

To reach their audiences effectively, content marketers must adapt their strategies to meet these changing trends.

10 Current Trends in Content Marketing

More recently, adaptability and flexibility have been central to content marketing. However, many of the preferred marketing methods remain the same.

Although many current content marketing trends are a continuation or evolution of existing ones, some trends are gaining considerable ground.

1. Building Communities

With as many as 24 million e-commerce stores out there, you need to find a way of getting noticed.

You achieve that in such a crowded space by developing a community.

Community marketing isn’t about getting a quick sale—it’s about engaging with customers while building trust and loyalty and reaching a wider audience.

The Dollar Shave Club (DSC) is an excellent example of this. DSC works on a subscription basis and considers all of its members a part of the community.

In addition to its social media presence and a blog to engage with customers, DSC features members in its monthly newsletter and ensures its subscribers are at the heart of the business.

Then there’s ProBlogger.

You might know ProBlogger from its jobs board or its blog. However, its community side is a considerable part of the brand too. The community gives new and established bloggers the chance to come together and learn and collaborate.

It also offers:

networking opportunities

webinars

discounted books, tools, and events

community downloads

2. Optimizing Content for Niche, Long Tail Keywords

For a long time, the focus for marketers was long-form content. However, more recently, content marketing has stepped back from detailed, lengthy article guides. Instead, the use of niche, long-tail keywords is becoming more prevalent, as long-tail keywords are more specific and have less competition.

Further, using long-tail keywords makes it easier to get your content ranked on Google. That means more organic traffic, which is good news for marketers targeting a competitive niche.

Finding these long-tail keywords needn’t been difficult. You’ll find there’s plenty of free and paid-for tools available, such as:

Ubersuggest

Semrush

Wordtracker

Moz.com

You can also use:

the “people also searched for” feature on Google

Google Suggest

Google’s related search

Once you’ve narrowed down your keywords, you can then focus on a specific segment of your business and create content around the subject.

3. Hiring Content Teams With Diverse Skill Sets

In recent years, there’s been a consistent shift away from content churning.

The brands experiencing the most success with content marketing aren’t just flooding their audience with content. They’re taking a media publishing approach.

The process is just as important as the content itself now. Having a team of writers isn’t enough anymore.

Your company needs to create a broader strategy with a more diverse group of talent and skills to meet your audience’s demands.

That means good writing isn’t enough. The content team will need to grow and adapt for the next year and should include people who have talent in:

video production and editing

graphic design, illustration, and editing

audio editing and production skills

content optimization

content distribution and promo

strategy development, execution, SEO, and campaign management

communications and branding

4. Repurposing Content Across Channels

Repurposing content saves time, gets you in front of a different audience, and enhances your organic search.

This simply means repackaging it into a different format. For example:

turning blog posts into an eBook or newsletter content

embedding YouTube videos in your blog

transcribing your YouTube videos and distributing them as podcast, newsletter, or blog content

creating infographics from research and stats.

ESPN showed how effective content repurposing could be. When ESPN launched “We the Fans,” it distributed the content across a range of formats. Articles, podcasts, videos, and social media were all part of ESPN’s strategy.

As Chad Millman, VP/editorial director of U.S. digital content, explains, “The idea was to take advantage of all of ESPN’s platforms.”

You should consider doing the same for your business.

Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond

Looking forward, the need for marketers to adapt their content plans will continue, and we’re likely to see a greater increase in existing trends like Google’s Discover and stories to engage readers and keep them on the page.

Let’s take a closer look at these content marketing trends.

5. “Discover” Features

Yoast, Search Engine Land, and HubSpot are just some of those talking about Google Discover. It was formerly known as Google Feed, but it’s undergone a significant transformation since its launch.

If you’re not familiar with Google Discover, it combines news, evergreen content, along with visuals like photos. To fill the feed, Google uses AI and machine learning to understand a user’s search history, meaning the viewer gets content likely to engage them.

You’ll find Discover on Google’s mobile pages, and mobile Chrome users will see the feed when they open a tab.

Over time, Discover becomes increasingly sophisticated. Just ask the Vogue and Vice’s publishers.

Your content is eligible to appear on Discover if it meets the guidelines and Google has indexed it. However, as Google states, it doesn’t guarantee your content will appear in its Discover feed.

Google does, however, have some guidelines to improve the chances of your content showing up.

These include:

posting “outstanding and engaging content”

creating content that’s unique and timely

providing exact authorship details (your name, publication, bylines, publication)

high-quality imaging

descriptive titles that avoid clickbait

6. “Story” Features

Stories are growing in popularity for several reasons. First, they make great social media content. Secondly, they’ll also show up in mobile searches and Google Images, increasing your chances of discoverability.

There are other factors in their growing popularity: platforms like Google Stories make story creation accessible to everyone.

Crucially, though, Google Web Stories cater to consumers’ business lifestyles and provide content for people on the move: the use of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) allows readers to flick through the same way you would with social media stories.

Another example of story features is Instagram Guides. These provide curated content in the form of videos, photos, and text. The idea is to make content easier to find, therefore making brands and influencers easier to discover.

7. Featured Experts

Commentary from experts that lends credibility to your content can help you stand out. That’s why including comments from a subject matter or featured expert could benefit your content’s performance.

Google doesn’t use subject matter content as a ranking factor (yet). However, evaluators consider the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT) factor in their quality rankings.

Google isn’t the only one interested in the quality content, though. Consumers are too.

According to a Nielsen study, 85 percent of consumers regularly or occasionally look for expert content before buying.

Additionally, 67 percent of buyers say unbiased expert endorsements make them more likely to consider a purchase.

InPowered, who commissioned the survey, says there are three main takeaways from the research. Marketers should:

build trust and cut through the noise with expert content

begin to share their stories once they’ve gained consumers’ trust

continue to build trust through expert content and ask customers to leave reviews

8 & 9. Generative Media & NLG

Generative media is increasing in use the same way that natural language generation (NLG) is. Like NLG, generative media uses AI to create content. The only difference is it makes computer-generated images rather than text.

It works in much the same way as NLP too:

The designer gives their instruction to the machine, detailing parameters/algorithms.

The machine uses these parameters to create an image.

However, the designer still has some input and can alter algorithms to produce the finished piece.

Tyler Lastovich of Lastly Studios predicted growth in generative media some time ago. As Lastovich points out, although there’s been a surge in use, we’ve yet to see its full potential. For instance, content marketers could use it in areas like:

contextual images

personalized content

realistic chatbots

According to a senior analyst at Techna, trial versions of generative design, cloud-based generative design solutions, and the rising integration of 3D printing with generative designs are just a few of the reasons behind this content marketing trend.

10. Content Driven Personalization

Yieldify defines content personalization as the “process of tailoring content that is visible to the customer based on their profile or preferences.”

Every customer who visits your website is at a different stage of the customer journey. Your content should cater to their specific needs and encourage them to take the next step.

A good example would be a customer that comes to your website to find out more about new kitchen units. When they return to your site, you could offer an e-book offering tips on choosing the ideal kitchen units for their home or a checklist on preparing for the revamp.

In case you’re wondering, content-driven personalization isn’t optional if you want to keep your customer satisfied. Research from Salesforce shows 84 percent of consumers say being treated like a person, not a number, is crucial to winning their business.

Further, fifty-nine percent say tailored engagement based on past interactions is crucial to winning their business.

Conclusion

While data support the trends listed here, trends aren’t everything. You should do your research to see how they can improve your content marketing strategy moving into 2021.

There’s also plenty of historical data that shows us how quickly trends can flop or die off.

Rather than chase content marketing trends, always do your research. Keep an eye on top performers in your space and use data—as well as experimentation—to fuel your strategy as you head into 2021.

Which of these content marketing trends for 2021 are you working on incorporating into your strategy?

The post 10 Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/content-marketing-trends/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, 10 Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/10-content-marketing-trends-for-2021-and-beyond via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

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margaretbeagle · 4 years ago

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Selling on Social 101: How Blume Markets and Sells to a Gen Z Audience

As the buying power of Gen Z grows, marketers at businesses of all sizes are searching for novel ways to connect with this audience and build lasting customer relationships.

It'll come as no surprise that social media platforms are of the best ways to connect with this generation — which includes today's teenagers and those in their early 20's. But marketing to Gen Zers means much more than simply posting pretty pictures and memes.

So what does it take to stand out and connect with this valuable audience in 2021?

One brand that has mastered the art of marketing to Gen Z is Blume, a fast-growing skin, body, and period care brand on a mission to break boundaries and smash taboos.

In this interview, you'll hear directly from Janice Cheng, Brand and Community Manager at Blume, and you'll learn:

How to build a brand that connects with Gen Z

How to market and sell on social media

The key to understanding Gen Z's preferences on social media

Successful strategies to use when marketing to Gen Z

This post is part of the #BufferBrandSpotlight, a Buffer Social Media series that shines a spotlight on the people that are helping build remarkable brands through social media, community building, content creation, and brand storytelling.

This series was born on Instagram stories, which means you can watch the original interview in our Highlights found on our @buffer Instagram profile.

Tell us more about you! What's Blume all about and what's your role there?

My name is Janice and I’m based in Vancouver! I’m the Brand Manager at Blume—a fast-growing skin, body, and period care brand on a mission to break boundaries and smash taboos. I joined the team back in June 2019 as the 3rd hire and EA to our founders Taran & Bunny. Now, I’ve been in this Brand role for almost 9 months.

Why do you think your Gen Z audience connects with your brand?

Gen Zers are conscious (smart) consumers and the most connected generation ever. Growing up with social media, they want transparency, community, and look for brands that align with their values. I think Blume checks off all those boxes in a really genuine way! Since day one, we’ve been more than just our products. Blume is breaking stigma by having conversations about extremely normal, yet still taboo topics, like acne, puberty, periods, and sex ed. As I’m sure most of us know, these are “issues” that carry well into adulthood, so a lot of our audience are millennials as well.

Gen Zers are conscious (smart) consumers and the most connected generation ever. Growing up with social media, they want transparency, community, and look for brands that align with their values.

We’re also a brand that cares. We launched the thestatesofsexed.com, Future World Shapers Award (created for Gen Z change-makers), and generally produce engaging and shareable content. More importantly, we prioritize using our platform to amplify the voices of our community and speak up on issues important to us; this includes climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and even our pandemic response. Our audience teaches us a lot, and more than anything, they’re our friends! This is all translated through our brand voice cohesively across all channels.

Tell us about a recent social media campaign. What made it so successful?

We’re only about 2.5 years old but one of my fave moments was our in-house Blume Celebrates Skin campaign (a campaign focused on being confident in our own skin is undefined and unrestricted by our physical appearances or the bumps and blemishes on our skin). We were only about five people then (half of our team now) and it was so much fun because it came from our hearts. Quickly and organically, it grabbed the attention of Allure and Daily Mail UK. Sometimes metrics are tricky with these kinds of campaigns. Say someone comes across this campaign and finds new strength and bravery in their natural skin. Although can’t quantify feelings, the reviews and customer testimonials are invaluable to our team.

Instagram post found here.

BUT! Meltdown (our best-selling acne treatment) continues to be our top community favorite and campaigns like Celebrate Skin reinforce that. Ultimately, our social media goal is to increase engagement, and this campaign accomplished that for us. We’re about to have some of our biggest campaigns this new year! So stay tuned.

Where do you find inspiration for Blume’s social media content?

Recently, a lot on TikTok (obviously), community pages like Girlboss, and also meme pages. We have an #inspo Slack channel where we share things we see on our feeds and Explore pages and what’s circulating in our own friend's groups! Pro tip: start an #inspo channel whether just for yourself or with your team.

How does Blume leverage user-generated content to connect with its Gen Z audience?

Community is core to all we do. Beyond our products, for us, it’s about adding value to Gen Z, and user-generated content (UGC) is a huge part of that. Using UGC is more impactful than using traditional models or lifestyle images because UGC is by actual people in our community—reflecting a range of real skin. It's the best way to relate to this audience!

Using UGC is more impactful than using traditional models or lifestyle images because UGC is by actual people in our community—reflecting a range of real skin.

Also, Gen Zers are so creative because producing content is second nature to them so partnerships together are so fun. I love looking through our tagged posts every week and seeing people embrace their shelfies and natural skin. We give them full creative freedom! So rather than believing what we have to say about our products, you should believe our community through UGC, their captions, reviews, and experiences.

Instagram post found here.

How does Blume embed UGC, customer testimonials, and reviews across all its marketing channels?

We have an incredible tiny team of two that keeps the rest of the team, especially marketing, up to date with all inquiries, trends, and themes of the week. For example, our Meltdown before & after shave has always been highly effective for us because a photo equals a thousand words.

In skincare, especially clean beauty care, it's really important for us to spotlight the effectiveness of the product and how our products actually work. We’ll use before/after photos and other UGC in ads, Instagram story features, and email newsletters. With permission, of course.

On a regular week, we try to post UGC and/or testimonials about 3-4x on our social media channels.

In skincare, especially clean beauty care, it's really important for us to spotlight the effectiveness of the product and how our products actually work.

What are Blume’s most successful social platforms for selling and why?

Definitely Instagram—still cracking the code for TikTok. Ultimately, Gen Zers are the trendsetters and determine what’s next. Something can come and go overnight so we have to be quick to pivot, adapt and execute. We can plan all we want but our best performing posts often tend to be non-product focused ones. If we had a Meltdown post planned on a day where the world actually needs more empathy and love, we’ll swap it for a journal prompt post or check-in.

What advice do you have for brands that want to start selling on social media?

Make a list of brands that you love and dig deep into the “why.” For Blume, the core criterion for selling on social is based on value; we focus our marketing on educational content about our products and brand, community building through UGC campaigns and partnerships, and aesthetic shareable graphics.

Also, GET. ON. TIKTOK. Whether to start your brand page or just to get in touch with Gen Z culture, it’s worthwhile I promise you. Here are three easy things you can start right away: write copy like a human (not a robot), have fun with emojis, and start following people to bring eyes to your page!

Fllow Blume on TikTok here.

For Blume, the core criterion for selling on social is based on value; we focus our marketing on educational content about our products and brand, community building through UGC campaigns and partnerships, and aesthetic shareable graphics.

How do you stay up to date on Gen Z trends?

Personally, I follow Gen Z brands that I admire, read lots of Glossy and Beauty Independent, and ask our awesome Influencer, Lead Eman, for the 411 on what’s cool and what’s not. I also used to scroll TikTok for 4 hours a day (lol) for simultaneous entertainment and market research.

What's your favorite Blume product and why?

I’d like to say Meltdown because that’s everyone's #1 and I’ve had a lot of stress acne through 2020, BUT my runner-up is definitely Hug Me, our natural deodorant. Random fact: the probiotics, our secret ingredient, has adapted to my body so well I hardly need deodorant anymore. It’s also unscented so I recommend it to EVERYONE. I might be biased but these two are also my faves because their names are so fun to play with when copywriting. 👋

Thanks for Bluming with us, Buffer friends! ❤️

We hope this interview with Janice helps you get started with or double down on your social media efforts. You can follow Blume on Instagram here!

Have any questions for Janice? Feel free to reply with your questions to the Twitter post below and Janice or someone from the Buffer team will get to them as soon as possible.

Selling on Social 101: How Blume Markets and Sells to a Gen Z Audience published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

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vroenis · 4 years ago

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2020 Music In Review

When this was a draft, it opened with a bit about me not writing, but then I started playing board games again and wrote two bits on board games. In the trashfire that 2020 was (add “trashfire” to dictionary, no I did not mean “trash fire”), and 2021 continues to be, somehow I ended up getting back into board games. Actually there are good and logical reasons I returned to them and if you’re interested in that, I go into some of it in those journals, but more interesting is just playing the games so you should totally HMU if you’re local, sorry I don’t do virtual/digital, I like handling physical pieces and sharing food.

The most natural way for me to wrap a year for me is in music and since Melbourne locked down in March, I spent a lot of time working from home and listening on my own gear which I can’t express enough the joy at being able to do - firstly at having good reference transducers and secondly not having to listen to trash radio.

Writing about art is always a bit weird but it’s good fun so we do it anyway so let’s write some words about art. There are three main ways I engage with music in no particular order - more or less however I happen to notice them;

Music and musicianship - tonal and rhythmic composition

Technical production - recording, editing/manipulionation, processing/production, mixing and balance, and mastering

Song-writing/lyrics - should there be any - excludes vocal performance as this is covered under the first one.

To get weirder about it, I tend to have both emotional and also pragmatic responses to those three things separately so that means there’s a wackadoo matrix of 6 criteria I seem to be assessing every piece of music I encounter against and yep, that’s a thing I do, all the time, every time. The better a piece of music is, tho, the more the line between the emotional and pragmatic blurs as the overall quality of the work is established. I might begin with an initial pragmatic appreciation of an excellent mix and balance, and technical execution of a recording and production, then come to get a feel for how emotional a work is - and vice-versa. Sometimes on rare occasions, it all happens at the same time - an album is just a smashing work of excellence in every way and I just love every aspect of it more over time.

It’s worth mentioning I don’t really have any great axe to grind with pop music - there has always been and continues to be great pop, and good pop isn’t by any means easy music to create. For me at least, and likely many people, what destroys pop as a listening experience is repetition which usually isn’t under the listener’s control, but an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying culture that sustains pop as an industry. I still appreciate and admire so much about pop-music and always keep a little in my collection from each decade. No matter what, always remind yourself that the kids are OK and that there’s always great pop-music around - stay in touch with it. Some of it is truly awesome, and I use the superlative with sincerity.

Albums Of The Year

A few things happened on the way to me actually getting to write this journal, including some surgery (I’m fine), but also I ended up nominating no less than 4 Albums Of The Year. I think they deserve their own lengthier write-ups, in a weirdly me thing to do, I feel like I want to talk less about them and you should just go and listen to them but they have been getting a lot of air-time on my channels - in any case, here’s a lazylink to the instagram post I did for them. They’re all great and they feature in the lists coming in this entry so give them a listen, they’re outstanding.

Personal Charts

When I set out to write a musical summary of the year, I went to my last.fm page to see what I’d listened to by number of plays polled. As mentioned, given the Covid lockdown and working from home so much, I’ve actually gotten to register a lot more of my listening on the site whereas in general so much of my listening happens offline, so to speak, be it in the car or on my mp3 player. This year has also seen a serious shift in my buying habits shift entirely to Bandcamp for a few reasons; Google shut down their Play store in favour of streaming because naturally it favours them and not artists - it also just makes sense for them from infrastructure and administrative perspectives, but also I just did more and more research and naturally found more and more artists and Bandcamp just made sense. I want to write a digest as to why you should do the same but I feel like people need to find their own way there or approach me directly so the motivation comes from them. Streaming is bad for artists and while I and indeed artists don’t want you to close your premium accounts just yet because closing any revenue streams to artists in any way is bad, I encourage you to do some research into just how much revenue there is in streaming, and what your expectations are for how you think the artists you love so much are supposed to make a living. I guess if your engagement level is fairly low, or the culture you’re into is pop-music, then this is the end of the discussion and that’s OK, we don’t need to take it any further. If you’re in any way curious about what this issue is, this video by Benn Jordan is a great place to start.

There are two charts I’d like to share - one is my top 10 albums I’ve chosen, the other is the same albums by number of plays as per my last.fm polling. These aren’t the top 10 albums I polled, mind-you. Sometimes I listen to an album a whole bunch just because I’m into it or because it slaps, but it isn’t one I’d nominate as an album that encapsulates the year.

You’ll immediately notice not every album was released in 2020, however my conditions are that they either had to have been released close enough to 2020 that I’d have done heavy listening in the year, or I had to have purchased them in 2020 so they were new to me in the year.

Here are the 10 albums I chose;

And here they are by number of plays polled in 2020 - bear in mind I probably played one or two favourite tracks a few times more, so they don’t neatly divide by number of tracks listed on the album;

A few immediate things to note;

- Dreams Are Not Enough is significantly underrepresented because I don’t listen to it at my PC while I work. In general, I definitely listen to this far more in environments offline, but also it’s not exactly an all occasions album given its tone and atmosphere, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t - give it a listen and find out.

- La Favière on the other hand is more or less a bit of a party so I play it a lot… yet when it comes to my personal rankings, it’s not that I like it less per se, it’s just that I love the other albums more - tons of respect to Iversen. It still made 10th on a list of hundreds of albums and netted 161 plays out of thousands of files I have.

- Had I done this kind of list in 2019 and known about Reid Willis, I suspect The Longing Device would have been an Album Of The Year then. It was a dead ringer for an Album Of The Year for me this year except then he released Mother Of and that is an absolute killer, so he outdid himself and I selected that instead. Reid Willis is a genius.

- There’s a long story as to why I only bought Hanan Townshend’s soundtrack for To The Wonder in 2020 but at least I was delayed long enough to not produce any more plastic, given my original intention once upon a time was to get it on CD. In any case, I had to buy it on iTunes and was bedstricken from illness for days after. iTunes is cursed.

Telefon Tel Aviv - Dreams Are Not Enough (October 2019)

In 2009, Telefon Tel Aviv released their album Immolate Yourself and then Charles Cooper died. I didn’t actually find out about his death until after I’d heard the album a few times over, but the album stayed with me for the 10 years to the new album as a landmark like no other. In part for the mourning of Charles, but simultaneously and separately as something that stood apart as some sound for my life that no other music could touch. Maybe The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation, maybe Darkside’s Psychic, but each of those in different ways.

10 years later and Joshua Eustis continues his long journey and releases Dreams Are Not Enough in the Telefon Tel Aviv name. After my first listen, I tweeted to him that I felt like deleting the rest of my music collection which we had a laugh about (he’s a very sociable person, by the way, if you’re not an asshole - he’s also someone you can learn a lot about the industry from). The thing is - I want to have these kinds of exaggerated reactions to the art I engage with - I want them to be world-destroying. Sure, not every piece of art has to be immense and euphoric and devastating, but it can’t all be run-of-the-mill either.

It’s difficult for me to describe Dreams Are Not Enough in practical terms, it is still a Telefon album, it is also Telefon without Charles, it’s also mourning him, is it moving on in his absence? It is definitely its own art for you to engage with as a unique work, to you the individual. It’s uniquely Telefon Tel Aviv in a way that no other electronic artist does the same way - it feels a specific way and there are times when no other music will do. One of my running jokes is that Porpentine’s Howling Dogs and Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero will be my Game(s) Of The Year every year forever and Dreams Are Not Enough now with Immolate Yourself are going to last 10, 20 years - longer - as Albums Of The Year forever too because there’s just never anything else like them.

Reid Willis - The Longing Device (January 2019)

The good thing about having made my choices earlier in 2020 is that Reid WIllis’ Mother Of wasn’t out when I wrote-up the list, so I get to talk about The Longing Device.

Reid Willis was an absolutely random find on Bandcamp. Occasionally I like to dive into subgenres and just go hunting. You can imagine that 9 times out of 10 this is a fruitless endeavour and might think this is frustrating but I really enjoy doing it as an exercise in critical listening. By whatever turn of divine Bandcamp listing, I came across the first chronological album he has up, Crude Healing (2016) and from memory listened to four tracks before instant-buying his entire discography available. I did go hunting on the Google Play store before it was shuttered and buy the most recent album from 2013, The Sunken Half listed from his older works before he jumped over to Bandcamp for all his newer albums and it’s definitely a transitional work to what he does now and well worth having. While Crude Healing initially blew me away, The Longing Device is a more mature album that has been more carefully shaped, skills having been honed and focussed into a less raw and yet more powerful sound. Very rarely am I ever an “I liked your old stuff better than your new stuff” kind of person, in general I tend to go with an artist when they evolve and grow unless on occasion they go in a completely different direction in which case hey - I respect it but sometimes it’s just not something I feel.

Here Willis’ orchestrations are careful, beautiful and languished in the right moments - cut with beats and edits, and the beats and edits likewise deftly cut with orchestrations. This is such a stunning exhibition of creativity, it’s one of the more esoteric examples of my music collection and also in some ways perhaps one of the more approachable works. Then in November Willis released Mother Of where he just takes everything to the next level.

Mat Zo - Illusion Of Depth (October 2020)

In July of 2020, Above & Beyond released their ongoing regular compilation Anjunabeats volume 15 and finished the first disc with a bangin’ Mat Zo track called Problems, an instant favourite of mine as soon as I heard it. It’s a tough year for DJs and musos all round not being able to tour, Josh Eustice and many others have been doing year-round commentary about irresponsible alleged “underground” gigs have nothing to do with the old-school spirit of underground at all and have turned into superspreader events, and how publishers and labels haven’t supported artists through Covid. Leading up to October, Anjuna and Mat Zo promote his forthcoming album and I have to admit, I’m pretty hyped and then it drops.

Holy shit.

In a year of such terrible events, this felt like such a timely dose of positivity that arrived at just the right time. I wrote a whole damn entry for this on instragram, and it’s one of my Albums Of The Year, but far out the digest of this album. On one hand, it’s a hugely technically accomplished work - it’s a diverse exhibition of styles, musicianship, stellar production, and absolutely pristine mix and balance - on the other hand, it’s just an absolute fucken banger-riot-party of an album. The album stands up to a clinical listening on reference transducers, it’s such a delight to audition and examine in every way, but you can set all of that aside and just enjoy the experience, front to back through the tracks in order and as an album, that’s becoming quite rare. There are levels of production discipline on display in this album, especially for electronic music in difficult mixing environments with potentially cluttered frequency ranges that a lot of artists need to learn from, yet Maz Zo executes with ease. This has a lot to give no matter who you are, whether you want to sit down and listen, dance all night or go for a drive - a word of warning, it might make you want to drive fast!

It’s also worth noting that Mat toured this album virtually in Minecraft in order to be Covid-safe and that is absolutely freaken amazing.

Hanan Townshend - To The Wonder (April 2013)

Not the best choice of cover-art, but to be fair, no-one likes Terrence Malick films so it doesn’t really matter. Like most things, getting into music tends to be multifaceted. To The Wonder is my favourite Malick film and yes, I love many of them (you can check the Film Notes page), probably because it’s the most intimate and grounded of his narratives. I still like the more grand and abstract stories he tells, they’re very much my bag, too, but To The Wonder really is a simple story about people told from a closeness that is for some perhaps uncomfortable, but I love that closeness. There’s a dream-like quality to Malick’s filmmaking and indeed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s photography that is both surreal and organic that makes the film feel very real and then like recollection once it’s done. Hanan Townshend’s music perfectly matches it, and then like all good soundtracks transcends the purpose for which it was written and can be applied to life outside of its matching media. There is a certain framing I have in my mind and at times, with the way I quite literally see, that makes me cue this soundtrack. Very few other soundtracks have this kind of power - Kenji Kawaii’s work for Ghost In The Shell (inclusive of Innocence), Hajime Mizogughi’s Jin-Roh and Cliff Martinez’ Solaris would be some of the others.

Daniel McCagh - Altered States (April 2020)

Another semi-random Bandcamp find, I was chuffed to learn that Daniel McCagh is from Albury, NSW, Australia. It’s always amazing to find local artists who are this astonishingly talented. I tend to associate Australian musicians at the not-quite-there-yet level of art and still do. That’s not a criticism of the artists themselves, it’s a criticism of our government and their backwards attitude towards arts funding and economics in this country. We are a developed country in the age of the internet where information and culture is shared instantly but we deny our people opportunities in so many ways - in education, facilities, commerce and economic infrastructure - the state of internet services in this country for a start is appalling and has been behind global standards forever. It will take us so much time, funds, resources and coordination to catch-up and of-course the longer we wait, the greater the cost and each successive government makes their excuses as to why we can never quite afford to do things right.

Props to individuals who can make it stick, tho, and Daniel McCagh is one of them. It’s probably shockingly unfair to hold someone up on a pedestal every time they do well but I can’t help it - Altered States is on par with Reid Willis’ and other dark ambient/electronic works or whatever genre you want to put them into. On Bandcamp these darker synth and drone-centric artists are a dime a dozen and to be fair, a lot of them are quite good but finding works that truly stand out in excellence can be difficult. The low play-count is due to having only found and bought the album quite late, but it goes into rotation fairly often and it’s a growing genre in my collection.

The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form (May 2020)

The closest thing to pop music to hit this list, NOACF was going to appear at some point - just getting pipped at the finish-line by Reid Willis, all told. I listened to this in the car quite a bit when I was still in rotation in the office before full lockdown.

Writing about The 1975 will be a Thing - either you’ll know something about them or nothing at all. For me, I guess I engage with them entirely differently from superfans - I’m in my late 30s so it won’t surprise you that I don’t have a TikTok account nor do I op a Spotify account and I’m not active at all on Facebook altho neither are gen Z. That said, I’m not entirely sure who their core fanbase will be - they don’t strike me as chart-topping, TikTok everpresent pop-culture icons. Their lead singer certainly has the awareness of pop-culture to communicate with their fan-base to keep up, but they don’t seem to engage at the same level of the lists you see on say, Todd in the Shadows - but I’ve not watched enough of him to know if he’s ever mentioned them.

Anyway I’m enough of a musician (read: snob) to dig their lofty musical stuff - it’s the perfect follow-up and follow-on from ABIIOR and I Like It When You Sleep... before that. Their sound stays uniquely theirs while slowly evolving with contemporary sounds, all the while the production stays top-notch and I’m always pleased with what I hear from a mixing and balance perspective. It also sort of launched with one of the most exciting singles I’ve heard in a while If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know) which has to be one of the absolute best recreations of the quintessential 90’s sound yet with contemporary production discipline I’ve ever heard. Many have tried yet most have failed. I always have so much respect when an artist can nail this kind of thing because it’s immensely difficult to do and I’m so proud of The 1975 for pulling this off. All of their genre homages and tilts on this album - actually on all of their albums since I Like It When You Sleep… have been stellar and I continue to be impressed.

I’m also completely onboard with their performative behaviour - they remind me of the angsty political U2 et al of old, but with the necessary contemporary tilt we need. Matty as a front-person is grounded, sensible, vulnerable, flawed - been thru some shit and talks openly about it. I don’t care how much of it is genuine, it reads and plays genuinely. I’m not a superfan so I don’t have posters of him on my wall nor hang on every word he says, but if I was 16 or 23 and did, I think he’s saying the right things. Setting that aside because it doesn’t matter, as a late 30’s adult, this album is fucking great and the band is aging, whether the fanbase likes it or not. There is so much creativity in it and I feel like while they play like they don’t care whether anyone comes along with them or not, they actually really sincerely hope we all do - and I also hope we all really do come along with them because I am coming along with them. None of this “play Antichrist” bullshit - leave the past in the past. Play Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied. They just cancelled their 2021 tour plans due to Covid which was a really good move, and confirmed a new album in the works, and I can’t wait to hear what they have coming.

The Midnight - Monsters (July 2020)

One of the most exciting releases last year, I was amped for the drop and was anticipating another solid, top-notch contemporary synthwave album from who I regard to be one of the very best in the genre. They’d released America Online some months prior which I really loved but it didn’t really indicate what the album was going to be like. Monsters ended up being waaaaay better than I expected - and I expected it to be really great. I don’t know whether it was a conscious decision by the band that perhaps the synthwave space was perhaps wearing out the 80’s a little bit - even pop-music was starting to take nibbles at the genre albeit pretty poorly by comparison, not that radio-punters would know it. With the new album tho, we’re taken into this wonderful in-between of not fully 90’s but not wholly 80’s either and even some contemporary r’n’b thrown in there but always stellar production and it’s just a massive album. It’s like a film you watch that ends up being an instant favourite you wish you could watch again for the first time because that first experience was so great. EVERYTHING lands perfectly in this album… with perhaps the exception of the lyric

“friends become lovers under covers”

in the song Prom Night because celebrating teens being sexually active is probably not something I cherish too much but hey, whaddayagonnado some things are just facts LET’S TURN THIS INTO A TEACHING OPPORTUNITY ABOUT CONSENT let’s not at least not right now.

Jeremy Blake - Object Permanence (December 2019)

Jeremy Blake is also known as Red Means Recording and he is a Synthlord. He has a YouTube channel and I am a superfan of his, so much so that I wrote a feature about him right here in this journal. I have a lot of his albums and Object Permanence is one of my favourites.

Jeremy is the definition of good faith. Everything he does is done with the intention of creating goodness in this world, in whatever way it can, somehow. Whether it’s just by listening to something that you might find pleasing, or whether it’s watching a video intended to help you create music on a piece of hardware or learn about software or licensing or platforms, distribution or business in some way. I happen to really dig the kinds of music styles he’s into as we seem to have had similar roots when it comes to some of the rock and electronic music we grew up on and have been into in our music lives, so the music he makes now really gels well with me. It was super difficult to choose between the album he released before this called Soft Music To Do Nothing To and Object Permanence but ultimately I think this is the right choice as far as an exhibition of his talent goes. Soft Music is still great, it’s more of a long jam he performed with only three pieces of gear which is pretty amazing and I listen to it all the time, but Object Permanence has some distinct tracks in varying styles I really get into.

I highly recommend Jeremy’s YouTube channel as an entry-point into his style, but if you’re a synth-head and like beats, breaks and groovy bleeps and bloops, you definitely won’t go astray by dropping into any one of his albums on Bandcamp.

The Paper Kites - On The Corner Where You Live (September 2018)

File The Paper Kites under “holy shit another Australian artist that isn’t rubbish” and from Melbourne, my hometown at that. In 2018, they split their new tracks effectively into two albums which works really well. The first is called On The Train Ride Home which is wholly downtempo and almost entirely acoustic with no drums, the second is this album and is a more energetic. I don’t actually prefer one over the other and have just made myself a playlist with contributions from other artists that only includes songs from On The Train Ride Home, but for this list I chose the second album for its exhibition of the band’s overall breadth of song-writing, performance and production. I guess I associate this sound with bands like Rogue Valley and other north and Pacific Northwest bands in the US but to be fair, I don’t really go hunting for this kind of sound - Nashville?? I don’t associate this very cooled-down acoustic-electric sound with Nashville, it’s not very Country (I have some Country in my collection which probably doesn’t surprise you), it’s almost like ultra-chilled mid-90’s ballad in a sense. Someone will have to tell me what it really is and where to find more but only of this calibre because I’m picky about quality. Google says they’re “folk music, folk rock, indie rock, alternative/indie” and that’s useless so throw that in the bin where it belongs.

This sound is definitely a mood. I hunted thru my entire collection including the aforementioned Rogue Valley and started a first playlist of just this kind of thing. I have the acoustic list done and will do an electric counterpart that will include more material from this album, as well as the one song I bought from Night Traveler called Don’t Forget Me as long as it’s not too energetic, it all depends on what makes it to the final list. This music speaks of drives thru rural landscapes, late nights in the city, time alone or with just one other person, closeness, loneliness, introspection, of long journeys and separation.

Iversen - La Favière (August 2018)

The story of how I got this album is hilarious - one of my gaming friends who buys stuff on Humble Bundle and itch.io and god knows what else tweets me this link and says “hey there’s this synthwave bundle for like $2 you should get it it’s $2 it has all this music in” and as someone who won’t buy bad music for even $2, I go investigating and you can listen to some samples and lo-and-behold, most of it is pretty great. I paid a lot more than $2 as that only got you 4 albums and for another $5 or something, you got another 4 albums plus I always pay more because I want more revenue to go to the contributing artists. I ended up not liking about half of the music on offer but in the bundle I discovered Lost Outrider, Morgan Willis and Iversen, all of which I’ve gone on to buy more music from on Bandcamp. As for La Favière, I bought it again on Bandcamp because I love the album so much and wanted to support the artist - it’s really excellent. Oddly tho, two of the best tracks from it were bonuses that only came with the bundle version and not the Bandcamp version, called Sunset Rider and Visions of Blue, so if you want those, I’m not entirely sure how you can get a hold of them - I’m sure if you contact Josh Iverson and tell him you want to pay for them, he’ll try to sort you out unless there are labels involved in which case, not his fault. Regardless, you still get one of the best chilled synth tracks of all time In Dreams which is worth the price of admission all on its own, it is absolutely epic and you should give it a listen.

Goodbye 2020

Time of writing is Sunday 16th January and what a ride it’s been already, hey. I might still write up my actual Albums Of The Year given two of them didn’t get mentioned - Reid Willis - Mother Of and Gidge - New Light, so I cheated a bit, but they’re my nominations, awards and lists so I can do whatever I like. I’m always excited about music, both listening with a critical ear and also emotionally engaging with it. There’s never a shortage of good new music or discovering material I hadn’t from years past. Sometimes it feels like wading thru endless fields of dross to find the gold but it’s always there and getting to it is a true delight.

There were honourable mentions and I couldn’t quite get the list to 10 - there are 8. I might write them up but for the moment, here they are in vague order of vagueness. Importance? Order of purchase? I got into Lapalux and Enter Shikari very late in the year. Apparat’s - LP5 is a very special album to me, almost Dreams Are Not Enough special. I do want to talk about how Jacob Collier’s album is both very very good and also not good enough.

The majority of the music listed here can be purchased on Bandcamp. There are links to most of it on my Bandcamp profile if you want to go hunting - I might add lazylinks later-on if I get the time.

Here is my last.fm full listing for 2020 if you’re curious about that kind of thing. Stats are great.

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clarencenicholsonata · 4 years ago

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9 Proven Digital Marketing Tips to Scale Your Online Business

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 50% of small businesses fail within the first four years of existence. Moreover, Forbes discovered earlier in 2013 that only two to three businesses out of ten will survive fifteen or more years.

If you want to keep your brand growing, you'll need to consider scaling as your next step. Scaling is an art, like most crucial business steps. If you scale too soon or too slow, you can end up losing sales. As a marketer, I know that scaling a business, whether brick and mortar or online, is a big deal. You're faced with two questions:

Am I ready to scale my online business?

And if so, what's the best way to scale my online business?

Whether or not you know the answer to these questions, this article is sure to be a big help. I'll be showing you how to decide if you're ready to scale and how to scale your online store with these nine proven marketing and branding tips.

Let's dive in.

Are You Ready to Scale Your Business

If you're still stuck on the first question I asked in the introduction, "Am I ready to scale my online business?" it really boils down to these two factors: capability and capacity.

Brands that are ready to scale usually meet two or more of these requirements to scale:

Strong cash flow and repeatable sales: You've been getting consistent sales, and your customer base is growing. The demand for your product and service is consistent. You can meet your current expenses.

You're approached with more business opportunities: Along with a steady amount of sales, you'll be getting approached by brands or influencers for business partnerships and opportunities. This means that not only are customers willing to buy from you, but others see this as well.

Your business is in a position to grow: Your business needs more employees, tools, and features as it demands more of you to grow. Sometimes your company is literally showing us that we need to scale rather than answering the question ourselves. For example, you have a higher customer service request and need more chat support.

1. Evaluate Your Data & Tools for Areas of Improvement

Before you start scaling and putting things into effect, take a look at the Start by doing an S.W.OT analysis on the tools you have and see which tools you can take with you and which you'll need to replace to help you reach your scaling goals.

SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. For example, this can help you understand if you need to upgrade your email marketing tool or find a new email marketing tool. Do this SWOT analysis for each of your department's tech and software, so you're improving all areas of your online store.

I know that finding the right tools for your business and online store can be hard, so I compiled a list of our "best tools" guides you can easily go through below:

150 Best Shopify Apps (Paid & Free) To Increase Sales for 2021

9 Must-Have Marketing Tools Business Owners Need for 2021

10 Expert Conversion Rate Optimization Tools You Should Be Using

77 Tremendous Tools to Make You a Content Marketing Superstar

20 Best Must-Have Slack Apps (Paid & Free)

2. Up Your Social Media Marketing Game

One of the most overlooked staples of your marketing efforts is social media presence. Brands think that as they grow, it will eventually grow with them without putting much work into their social media. But that's not the case. When you're scaling an online store, you'll also have to up your social media marketing efforts because:

You'll need to widen your reach so that you can attract more potential customers.

Solidify your social media presence amongst your competitors.

Social media marketing is apart of your omnichannel marketing (which we'll talk about later)

You can serve and nurture your die-hard fans and customers who are on social media.

You can monitor and change the conversation being said about you on social media with social listening and monitoring.

When brands like Barkbox, GymShark, and Glossier started scaling their business, their social media marketing increased—not decreased. Like it or not 54% of people browsing on social media use the platform to research products they intend on purchasing, so if you're slacking, you're missing out on being found in their search or popping up on their feed.

Need help marketing your eCommerce store?

Book a free call to learn how our team of eCommerce experts can help you generate leads, boost traffic and drive MORE sales.

Tips for Using Social Media Marketing to Scale

Here are some top-tier tips you should know when using social media to help scale your business:

Start using more business features: Social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram allow you to have shopping and business features. These make it easier for your followers to access your products and shop directly on your profile without having to leave to click on your website link.

You can use Shoppable tags so that customers can learn more about your products, and you can also easily partner with influencers and track your brand partnership engagement, and so much more.

Start creating and publishing content consistently: Social media users are spoiled rotten when it comes to content, and like it or not, you'll have to stay active in their feed and beat the algorithm you'll need to be consistent in posting. When you post once in a blue moon or stop posting according to schedule, your engagement starts to flatline.

Since there are tons of other brands competing for your follower's attention, you can be easily forgotten, so will your products. To prevent that create a social media strategy and stick to it. You can also use tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule your content in advance with auto-posting, so you don't have to be glued to your phone every day when you scale your online store.

Invest more in social media ads: Expand your reach and increase sales with social media ads. Let's not forget that platforms like Facebook and Instagram are pay to play platforms. In order for your business to grow, you'll have to push more paid content. Facebook has outrightly said on multiple occasions that it deliberately stunts organic growth for brands, so they have to rely on paid ads and features to grow.

If you need more help with social media marketing for your online store, here are some helpful guides we created to do just that and then some:

How to Make a Social Media Checklist (Free Template)

45 Best Brands on Social Media (Based on Niche) & What We Learned From Them

5 Effortless Tips to Create a Hashtag strategy for Social Media

5 Expert Ways to Increase Your Social Media ROI

3. Update & Improve Your Online Store's Website

As you scale, you'll need a website that can handle the new demands, traffic, and shoppers that will come with your growth. This means optimizing your website. For example, you'll notice that the server or website provider you've been using might need an upgrade. Maybe the layout you loved from the beginning might be limiting how your new wave of customers are shopping now.

When your updating and improving your online store's website for scaling, here's a quick checklist of things you should do or have on hand:

Always optimize your website for mobile: No matter how much you scale your business or optimize your website, if it's not mobile-friendly, you'll be missing out on much-needed sales. By 2021, mobile eCommerce sales are expected to account for 54% of total eCommerce sales.

Ensure that your loading speed is fast: Think with Google found that sites that load in five seconds (compared to those that load in 19) see 70% longer average sessions. So ensure that whatever new elements, apps, or integrations don't affect your website's load time.

Move or Upgrade your website: When you started your online store, you probably didn't realize how fast you would have to scale. Now that it's here, you'll either have to choose, upgrade your website based on the website builder you've used. For example, Shopify has Shopify Plus for eCommerce stores that need more space, faster transactions, and enterprise software to handle the massive traffic coming and going to the store.

Your next option might also be to move your store entirely to a new website builder or platform. If you’re using a website builder like Shopify but you'd prefer another online platform, feel free to check out 7 Best Shopify Alternatives For Your Next eCommerce Store

4. Ask Your Customer How You Can Improve

The one person who will be using your online store as much as you is your customer. Why not ask them what you can do to improve your website as you scale your online store. BigCommerce found that 43% of U.S. customers report spending more on brands that are known to listen to their customers.

Asking your customers how you can better improve your online store is also a form of customer service or satisfaction. The truth be told, customer service means a lot; 80% of people claim they'll quit doing business with a company after a poor customer service experience.

You're also not limited to sending out a traditional survey to customers to get feedback. You can use social media, like Instagram stories or posts, email marketing, or reward customers who provide reviews for your products or online store.

6 Creative Survey Examples to Help Boost Your Engagement

How to Use a Quiz Funnel to Grow Your Email List

5. Up Your Email Marketing Efforts

Don't forget to scale your email marketing, as well. This could mean investing in a more integrated email marketing tool. After all, around 59% of customers say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.

The first step would be to take a look at your customer's shopping behavior and see where you can scale your email marketing efforts around it. From there, create email marketing campaigns triggered by actions, or lack thereof, to boost open rates and sales.

Wishpond used email marketing to help our client SHOC make over $45,000 in sales. With Wishpond, you can create, manage, monitor, and automate your emails along with segmentation and personalization features to fit your email marketing needs.

Ready to start automating your marketing?

Book a free call to learn how our team of marketing experts can help you create high converting email marketing today.

6. Track Every Single Conversion Possible

Tracking conversion on every single platform seems like a tedious task, but it pays off in the long run. When you have no idea where or how to track your data, you won't be able to track ahead of time changes you'll need to make to improve your online store as you scale.

One way to track all your conversions merely is by using tools like Google Analytics. Google Analytics helps your entire team to know what's going on with your eCommerce store on the backend. You can use your Google Analytics reports to learn about your website traffic sources. Google Analytics can show you detailed reports on:

Organic Traffic

Referral Traffic

Social Traffic

Direct Traffic

Email Traffic

The data you have stored here can be used to guide you as you scale your online store to see what's working and what's not, as well as the best approach to using tech to help you scale.

For more on to use Google Analytics for your online store, check out these 9 Amazing Ways to Use Google Analytics for E-Commerce

7. Build Deeper Connections with Brand Advocates

Around 55% of people will search online for reviews and recommendations before making a purchase, with 47% visiting the company website, 26% checking out the physical store, and 23% of people talking with friends and family.

Brand advocates are people who rave about your products/services on or offline. They advocate for your brand. They refer you to friends and family, share reviews, and user-generated content to boost sales. The more you invest in your brand advocate, the easier it is for them to advocate, create content, and share your brand with others.

Start by finding and using UGC (user-generated content) to help build your brand advocate's confidence that you acknowledge and value them. Here's a helpful video from Wishpond's YouTube channel to get you started.

youtube

8. Continue to Improve Your Site's SEO

Improving your SEO will be a crucial factor in solidifying your online presence as you scale your online store.

Leaving out SEO in your growth plan will only leave you losing ranks on search engines, allowing your competitors to outdo you. Safari Digital found that 82% of people who implemented an SEO strategy found it to be effective

Being #1 on Google drives 32.5% of the traffic to your website and that 32.5% only decreases the further down you are in the ranking. We haven't even spoken about how much traffic links on the second pages of Google received, which is far less than you'd expect.

You can use these Ecommerce SEO Checklist to get started to help you take an inside look at how you can improve and scale your SEO alone with your store.

9. Invest in Getting Help from Marketing Experts

As great as these tips are, without the right expert to help you get the ball rolling, you might feel overwhelmed trying to DIY your own marketing and scaling tactics. Scaling your online store means you now have more on your plate than ever. You'll need help working towards the results you need to boost your online conversion rates.

If you can't do it alone, why not hire marketing experts to help you. We provide a dedicated marketing executive that will work with you to ensure your campaign is a success. Get unparalleled support 24/7 with access to designers, ads specialists, content writers, and more.

Summary

Scaling your online store is a new and exciting adventure. With the right tools and techniques, you can begin to see your business flourish.

A word to the wise: just because you can scale your business doesn't ensure it's a success. Scaling your online store is taking your business to unchartered waters. Only take on as much risk as possible and be prepared for what comes after you start implementing your scaling techniques.

If you still need a bit of inspiration, here are some inspiring eCommerce stories to give you an extra push:

7 Shopify Success Stories That Will Inspire You to Make Your Own

Case Study: How SHOC Made Over $45,000 in Sales with Wishpond

Case Study: How Retyche Gain Over $100,000 in Sales with a Shopping Spree Giveaway

Get the world’s easiest marketing platform and the team to do it for you!

Book a free call to learn how you can get unparalleled support 24/7 with access to designers, ads specialists, content writers, and more for your brand.

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muhamedshafaan · 4 years ago

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The Latest Digital Marketing Trends For 2021

1)No Click Searches(Featured Snippet)

Generally, when you have a question, you type your question into Google, hit enter, and click on the article that best answers your question or gives you the information you need.

Sometimes though, the answer is suggested to you in a paragraph at the top of the result page. These boxes, called Position Zero in search engine results, often come with an image and all the information you were looking for displayed in an easy to distinguish box. You have the answer you need, so you don’t need to click on an article. This is what’s called a no-click search. Google and other search engines provide these to help people find answers quickly and keep people on their website (and off of yours).

When search engines use your website to show information to searchers, it shows you’re providing valuable content. The trick is to make sure you add something to these snippets that will draw the reader in and entice them to click on your website for more information, and away from the search engine that has provided them with a quick answer.

2)Google Verified Listings For Local SEO

Having a geographically-defined service area with Google My Business listing aids in showing up for “near me” searches. It also lets customers learn more about your business within Google Search results. At a glance your potential customer can see your open hours, address, and star rating left by other users.

In order to make sure the information displayed is correct, you should verify your Google business listing and keep information up to date. The benefits of verifying your business are:

You can manage your business information in Search, Maps, and other Google properties.

Verified businesses are considered more trustworthy and reputable than unverified competitors.

When you verify your business, you’re preventing fraud in the event that someone else tries to act as the owner and claims your listing as theirs.

3)Voice Search

Voice-activated digital assistants continue to be huge sellers, and let’s be realistic – some households talk to Alexa, Siri, or Cortana more than they speak to family members. The popularity of voice search both at home and on our phones has led to one of the most significant shifts in using keywords. When writing content, choose your keywords based on the questions people may ask when using Siri or Alexa. This can increase your visibility, and this digital marketing trend shows no sign of slowing down.

4)Visual Search

Instead of typing a description into Google, users can now upload an image and get information about an item just from a picture. If they’re uploading a plant photo, the search returns species information, while a landmark image will return historical data. When a user searches a product, it returns similar products and where to buy them. Google Lens, Pinterest Lens, and related search tools turn a user’s camera into a search bar.

You can Add high-quality images tagged with descriptive keywords, introduce an image search into your online inventory, having an image sitemap will increase the likelihood of your images being discovered by search engines , use descriptive filenames for images before uploading them to your website, add alternative text to all image aka “Alt tags”.

5)Online Reviews

Online reviews can make or break your business’s ability to attract new customers or clients. While any company can talk up their products or services, other consumers can provide real, unbiased reviews. Having many reviews from verified sources can make your business stand out from the competition and start building trust before they even click on your website. The most useful review for a business to receive is through Google Business. These are the most trusted sources, they’re the most visible, and your Google Business listing lets people call or visit the website. Facebook is another excellent source of online reviews, and you can use them to build a testimonials page on your website, while Yelp is suitable for restaurants, hotels, and recreational businesses.

6)Automated And Smart Bidding In Google Ads

To get the best possible results from a Google Ads campaign, Ads specialists analyze every piece of data and continuously tweak and adjust keywords, bids, and ad phrasing. While this obsessive attention to detail gets results, it’s exhausting. A business owner trying to run a campaign may become completely overwhelmed and end up failing.

Enter automated bidding strategies. These allow Google to use machine learning to analyze the tremendous amount of data it has on its users to adjust your bids in real-time. Ads specialists can embrace automated strategies while still being in complete control. Automated bidding isn’t anything new – Smart Bidding made its debut in 2016 – but most business owners aren’t aware of what it is or what it does.

It’s important to note that there are still plenty of human strategies involved in optimizing PPC performance. You can’t just set it and forget it and expect results – you still need to test everything, including testing automated bid strategies against each other.

7)Interactive Content

Adding interactive sections to your website is a great way to provide value for visitors, get them to engage with your website, and learn more about them.

Examples of interactive marketing include:

Assessments like quizzes

Polls and surveys

Calculators

Contests

8)Shoppable Posts

If you’ve got an e-commerce business, having a link to your shop in your bio or linking to a specific product in your Instagram Stories is great. Over the past few years, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook have all introduced ways for e-commerce stores to create shoppable posts. Using a native integration, they’ve made it easy to tag and shop products directly in your posts. For online retailers, this is a great way to drive traffic to product pages .

9)Social Media Stories

Social media stories are easy to use and are an incredible way to feature products, events, and even behind-the-scenes experiences. When you consider that one-third of the Instagram Stories with the highest amount of views come from businesses, it’s hard to ignore that Instagram Stories and Stories on other platforms are an effective form of digital marketing. Once you offer a behind the scenes look, discount code, or limited edition product through Stories, followers will be hooked on your updates – as long as you deliver.

Some easy ideas for adding value to your social media stories are:

Search for customer content your business is tagged in and repost it onto your Stories

Upload livestream video for people who didn’t see it live

Utilize polls, Q&As, and quizzes to engage viewers with your brand and encourage their involvement in your content

Create simple animations and short videos of your product or service in action

9)Employee Engagement

If you have a business with multiple employees that are dedicated, engaged, and excited about the work they do, this can be a tremendous asset not only to your company in general but also to your online reputation.

When employees love their work and the company they do it for, they tend to talk about it. And they should be encouraged to talk about it online while tagging or mentioning the company and sharing interesting stories.

Employee engagement builds your online community in a natural and relatable way. LinkedIn is an excellent example of how this works. You can have a company page where you post events and share articles, but to get even more traffic and engagement, have your employees share and comment on these posts.

The LinkedIn algorithm values personal connections, so this spreads the news out to more connections, signaling to LinkedIn that the people behind the post are active and engaged with their company. You may also consider setting goals and rewarding employees who often share your content; that way, the people who work for you are even more excited about sharing company news with their network.

10) Mobile First Websites

Why choose a mobile-first web design?

Your page will load faster, improving both visitor experience and search engine ranking results.

Less expensive than building an app and a website.

Integrate mobile features like voice detection and camera use into your website.

Increased sales and conversions! Improving the user experience on mobile helps users navigate the website with greater ease and increases conversions.

11)Video Marketing

Think about the benefits of video marketing:

Customers respond well to videos.

They increase engagement.

It’s an effective way to show off new and existing products.

It’s easy to put together and cost-effective, especially compared to graphics and copy.

Live video, such as Facebook Live and Instagram Live, keeps people watching three times longer than standard video. It triggers the “fear of missing out” and hooks viewers in so they are the first to find some big news.

Personalized video advertising is being integrated into emails to create more personalized messages, share information more quickly, and prevent your message from being lost in a wall of text. Emails with videos have a click-through-rate that’s 8x higher than traditional email.

Product videos make customers feel more confident in what they’re buying, and they can offer a better sense of scale and specifications that text and pictures just can’t.

12)Page Speed

A slow-loading page is the number one reason users leave a website within a minute of landing on the page (also called the bounce rate)—even a second or two of a delay in how the page loads can negatively affect your conversion.

The good news is you can speed up your page load times pretty easily. First, optimize your images and make sure there are no large image files. If there are, compress them to where they are less than 100KB.

Next, reduce the number of internal redirects, specifically redirect chains that go through several redirects before landing on the correct URL and internal links to redirects. Reducing these can speed up your authority in Google and your page load speeds (both good things).

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#latest digital marketing trends

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managementblogbuzrush · 5 years ago

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Social Media Video Marketing

Social Media Video Marketing are king and are poised to remain so, with a predicted 80% of all traffic consisting of video by 2021 according to data from Cisco. And according to Tech Crunch people watch 1 billion hours of YouTube social video per day.

So, no matter what your business is, it should be a key part of your content strategy. But when you’ve in no way tried it in the past, or you’ve tried and are not acquiring success, in which does one launch?

On the plus side, there are a lot of sources and methods on the market these days - here is the failure in the ideas. You decide on one or maybe a several that will fit your budget and business as well as other communal techniques and strategies.

What is So Excellent About Video clip?

The attraction of social media marketing video is reasonably quick: In a very society precisely where our company is repeatedly swamped by electronic digital emails that seem until now out and impersonal, seeing a person’s cope with and seeing and hearing them chat is cherished. It provides an up-near-and-unique becoming and lends reliability to the person’s content additionally. This equates to much higher depend on.

Videos is furthermore really adaptive. We are able to build just one or a variety of smaller snippets that turn into placeholders and trade name-developing software for our own business and shareshare and re-share over time and over numerous websites.

Although there are several fancy, attention-grabbing stuff you can do (increased-top notch online video will keep having a edge against your competitors), we are able to also ensure that is stays awesome simple. Often basically a simple but highly effective message on the comfort of our very own property can say a whole lot more compared to a wording-significant webpage or perhaps an exceedingly-salesy advertisement.

Before commencing

An outstanding You tube or video marketing plan takes some planning, and with respect to the quality you want; you may want to consult with a professional or organisation for help. But no matter if you should do this, it’s important that you enjoy a apparent perception of the reason you are performing it to begin with.

As with every other bit of posts, your video or video line is going to have a phone call to steps (CTA) that is bound to a good discounts and promoting target.

•How can it easily fit into with each of your complete tactic?

•So what is your CTA?

•What sort of experience do you need the recording to receive?

•The place and when are you currently considering conveying it on social network sites?

•Sow how does it fit the buyer’s excursion?

•What persona do you find yourself targeting?

Buyer’s Process Review

Bear in mind that you are currently looking to have apleasant and frictionless, and steer practical knowledge that fills up a buyer’s demand in the supplied step of your path. So, if you are working on general brand awareness, create a story, and if you are selling a course for instance, make the value explicitly clear.

Here are several methods for producing your movie dependant upon what step with the journey you can be at:

1. Attention

You can be building a offering and story priceless knowledge about your service or product. Maintain your moviehelpful and short, and motivational or interesting. Your CTA may lead to a landing page or higher complete website content to assist the crowd admittance some exceptional details.

2. Awareness

The client is considering any purchase and probably looking around on line for a variety of choices. So, you need to be clear about differentiation, here. To the current final, you’ll intend to make the recording a little for a longer period, comprise demos and opinions, in particular. You should exhibit the product and this is why movie graphics and explainers can be quite useful.

3. Verdict

Your prospect is going to obtain and you must get this a smooth, very clear activity. You also have to ensure that the shopper seems like they offer control over the method. You can earn sure they grasp obviously ways to use, assemble and return goods, one example is.

4. Foster / Re-take part

You can always come back around to them and remind them about your product and all the amazing things that your company is doing if someone has made a purchase or even came close to it.

At this point there is a possibility to nurture previous customers, astonish them, joy them, say thanks to them, and also have a minimal enjoyment participating.

You can also include testimonials and videos from other people here. Alternatively, offer opportunities for customers to interact with each other around your brand.

Models of Footage

You will discover varied formats of online video one can make the decision to market your solution. Below are a few differing types Social Media Video Marketing

•Explainers

•Vlogs or survive

•Job interviews

•Presentations

•Product critiques

•Demos

•Video ads

So, which is best to use? It truly hinges on your level and budget of knowledge. Or an out-of-this-world script, you’ll want to hire a digital marketing or video production company to create something professional, if you want a slick and professional look.

How many years is the best video size?

HubSpot advocates this lengths for films:

•Instagram: 30 seconds

•Facebook: 45 mere seconds

•Twitter: 1 minute

•Metacafe: 2 a short time

You’ll note that length is almost correlated to station reason. Shorter is preferable due to our concise recognition spans - it is possible quickly and cheaply. Use visuals to make sure that your market is active - a basic slideshow and many wonderful graphic can work magic.

An extended video clip does have some rewards, such as featuring a great deal more appreciate and clearer in-level reason. But it’s most effective restricted to elaborate or huge-technical forms of setups that truly will require all those data. A fantastic guideline is: never have a very rather long video for absolutely no reason.

Discussing your Videos

With regards to your blog or website, you’ll find it easy to submit or add a relevant video - the whole thing really needs to be fairly personal-explanatory. You’ll want to do some pretty extensive video marketing on social media channels. That is what’s more strategic and effective.

Here are some tips for best rehearse:

Include things like captions on any autoplay video lessons, keep them on muted, and don’t put them with regards to your home-page. You don’t plan to disrupt people’s societal knowledge of an abrupt high in volume advertorial which simply will become in the way of anything they are doing - you want them to visit you.

•Always make sure training videos are phone helpful - mobile or portable is queen currently, and all that you do is required to be well noticeable around a spectrum of several devices.

•Optimize your video according to the best practices and SEO standards for a particular platform.

•Preserve all sorts of things online within the planned library.

•Make Use Of A/B tests to determine what times of occasion your instructional videos get noticed and once probably the most engagement is.

•Include things like your video with distinct types of article content.

•More graphics could be very powerful, most definitely on networks like Instagram and Snapchat - you can contribute captions across top of engaging artwork to boot.

Go for channels that suit your primary goal/label. LinkedIn, like, has lots of space that you should reveal various information, together with slideshows, video recordings and websites. It’s an amazing destination for a hook up with other trained professionals into your niche.

Preserve important things tremendously fast and sorted on Flickr! Hashtags and by hand constructed captions can also be important here.

Go Are living

Stay video tutorial continues to constitute the front make-up throughout 10 Per cent of web site traffic by 2021. Instagram are living is a warm device for anyone and everyone to employ. The allure of it is that videos only stay up for 24 hours and are posted in a real-time format.

It’s super straightforward to test out, very. Whatever you do is swipe to the Instagram Reviews Digital camera and it will alert some other individuals to view.

Twitter live your life also is another way to wake up in close proximity and personal inside of a realistic-time format through having an option of helping people to react and leave reviews.

Tricks for implementing Facebook . com Stay:

•Commentary are live but tend to be a little late

•It’s not well suited for communication and interaction for one massive listeners but sometimes easily be good for rendering an close up and private feel in an function or important news

•Beneficial to relaxed, daily messages simultaneously (just keep these concise)

•Do make it possible for your readers know before hand that you will be doing a exist video

•Purchase a few critical social networking stations to express the live your life videos on as well

•Think about preparing a online video with appeal that may be re-revealed later - you will publish to You tube and edit it also.

•Take advantage of the engagement and comments to body your video recording

•Include the recording into other sorts of articles like e-mail blasts

Improving for Research And Tracking Effects

The label on your video recording needs to be specified and appeal-driven. You need to remember that this is not just something that people are finding via your brand channel, but also something that they will find on the web.

So, using your brand and company as a part of the title is really crucial here if it’s a demo or product overview. To that extent, a title that is generally useful can also bring them to their brand, but it must add value and be related. You must however make it as quick as you possibly can.

Descriptions are very very important and needs to comprise key terms. They will probably be created for each of those hunt consumers and engines in order that you can not just create a list of keywords and phrases.

YouTube’s key phrase program just might help you get key terms on your complete posts and it can be used that may help you contemplate new ideas for link and topics them with your sites along with other subject matter in addition to work with it to develop movie postings

You could use Bing Stats tracking to understand more information on how your films are conducting, who is paying attention to them and a great deal extra. This really is a wonderful way to get yourself a rock solid perception of what communal stations your online videos are carrying out the best quality, whereby they can be getting propagated. Continue all sorts of things on track record and constantly be using it to refine your system.

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rickhorrow · 5 years ago

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15 To Watch : Decade in Review Tech & Media

15 TO WATCH: DECADE IN REVIEW

RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA ISSUES OF 2010-2019

with Tanner Simkins

It’s hard to believe, but we have reached the end of yet another decade. And in the business of sport, it’s been a busy one. Here are Rick Horrow’s top 15 sports technology and media trends and issues of the decade just ending. Stay tuned throughout December for most influential philanthropic/corporate social responsibility actions in sports, and an early look at the year and decade ahead.

High Definition (HD). The most essential element for the sports consumer? Watching the game. High definition pushed the envelope this decade so much that now anything non-HD seems archaic – just think about what those old “Wide World of Sports” clips look like. The first major sporting event broadcast nationwide in the U.S. in HD was Super Bowl XXXIV, broadcast by ABC on January 30, 2000. By the 2014–2015 television season, every network show producing new episodes had transitioned to high definition. And virtually all HD technology was developed by global sports league partners, with broadcasting live sporting events that delivered almost the same immediacy as being there a top line goal for developers. Over 90% of U.S. homes have an HD television, and nearly 30% have a 4K TV. 4K (UltraHD) is here and 8k coming, virtual reality is next, the envelope is still being pushed.

Second screen. It’s hard to imagine a world without tablets, phones, and the many other connected devices we carry around with us. But this too was an advent of the 2010s. Now, second screen technology is so prevalent that we are plugged into a screen in one way or another every single day. A study by Strategy Analytics shows for around 33 billion total devices on the planet by end of the decade, this is about 4.3 smart devices per person. In sports, especially among the younger next generation of fans, it’s almost unheard of to watch a live or televised sporting event without engaging in a simultaneous second screen experience – to share with friends or fellow fans on social media, check stats and scores from other games, and participate in fantasy sports.

Smart phones. Yes, Virginia, there are smart devices galore, but still the most core to our use is the mobile phone. iPhone and Samsung are the champions here, with Apple really being the pioneer. Sports properties have utilized apps to benefit their content, communications, data, and marketing efforts. Fans use their smart phones for all of those second screen tasks just listed, as well as to take pictures and videos at live events and watch parties. In and around sports venues, smart phones are now used to find parking, get in via mobile ticketing, and order and pay for food and drinks. What didn’t survive, however – dedicated mobile devices from sports brand partners. Remember the short-lived Mobile ESPN? It didn’t even make it to the 2010s, dying a premature death in 2006 after losing ESPN a reported $150 million.

Content. In media, content is king. Text, audio, video, and all their possible creative combinations powered the 2010s to call claim to everything from viral memes to over the top (OTT) programming. The 2010s saw an explosion of broadcast and digital sports content. NFL Red Zone, for example, debuted in 2009 via cable but soon found a much wider audience as a mobile streaming option. Disney acquired the media assets of FOX for $71.3 billion and then sold, by government mandate, the FOX RSNs to Sinclair for $10.6 billion. Bill Simmons went from being an on air personality at ESPN to editing the acclaimed online sports magazine Grantland to founding The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, in 2016 and still serves as its CEO. The 2010s saw Grantland go under but subscription-based The Athletic rise in its place – the site and app, which has poached many of the best sports writers in the biz from traditional newspapers and magazines, is expecting to reach one million subscribers by year end. Pro athletes, finally, are developing media empires of their own, with LeBron James’ Uninterrupted leading the way.

Cameras. Cameras being built into devices was seen as a value add to tech products, especially mobile devices. The more cool tech things a gizmo could do the better, so cameras started appearing everywhere. We’ve already touched on how sports fans use their cameras, but advancing HDTV technology and ubiquitous mobile cameras also pushed the commercial broadcast tech to also improve. Other advances like aerial drone photography and augmented reality came from the pressure to innovate. The aerial camera technology was first introduced to Super Bowl fans in 1984, but didn't become regularly used by the NFL until around 2001. Now, aerial cameras are almost standard fixtures in stadiums, covering everything from football to soccer to tennis. In the 2010s we began to take drones for granted, starting at outdoor sporting and concert events and spreading outward. And launched in 2016, the Drone Racing League is currently in its fourth season, featuring seven races worldwide and broadcast on Twitter, NBC, SkySports, and other global media partners.

Wearables. Sport and fitness wearables emerged in the last decade and are here to stay. The ability to measure both performance and biometrics data proved to be big business for serious athletes and weekend warriors alike. Wearables are not limited to on your person, they have been implemented in game equipment and apparel. Top wearable device companies include FitBit, founded in 2007, which now reports to have sold more than 100 million devices and have 28 million users (and is being eyed by Google at a cool $2.1 billion purchase price); Apple, which now leads the market after entering in 2015 with its first smartwatch; Samsung; and Chinese giant Xiaomi, introduced in 2010, which includes earphones and VR headsets among its wearable offerings. And speaking of headphones, pro athletes remain one of the marketing cornerstones of Beats by Dre, which now boasts a market share north of 64% in the U.S. for headphones priced higher than $100, largely thanks to its partnering with athletes, hip hop artists, and other celebrities to develop and market co-branded products.

Connectivity. WiFi, Bluetooth, mobile data plans, cloud services, the Internet of Things (IoT) and getting devices communicating with other devices has created opportunities limited only by creativity. When devices can interact and share information, the smarter decisions media and tech companies can make. From minor league ballparks to arenas, soccer-specific stadiums, and the almost completed $4.93 billion SoFi Stadium and entertainment complex in Los Angeles, the “Connected Facility” over the last decade has become the absolute standard in sports stadia, empowering teams and vendors every bit as much as fans. At SoFi (named by a tech company, of course), according to CNBC, “Technology that will make the stadium experience unique includes a 70,000-sq-ft Oculus display board that will have 4K double-sided video; 5G communications network; Wi-Fi 6, the next generation of wireless to deliver faster speeds, and digital ticketing provided by Ticketmaster.

Social media. Social media has changed the world. While we all are understandably focused on the impact that social media has on global politics these days, outside of politics, there is nowhere that social media has made more of an impact than in sports and entertainment. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram remain the big three here (RIP MySpace, Friendster, Vine, and Google Plus), but with dozens of other players, social media and social media marketing specifically has given a voice to sport – everyone from players to fans. Witness the rise of social media influencers inside and outside of sports, who can command seven-figure paydays from brands eager to reach their followers. Pro athletes are only as good as their Instagram Stories – just ask Cristiano Ronaldo (158.91 million followers); Neymar (112.71 million); David Beckham (54.89 million); LeBron James (47.91 million); and Gareth Bale (38.95 million). And it’s no coincidence that one of the main arguments for NCAA amateur athletes’ Name, Image, and Likeness ownership fight is the desire to capitalize on their own social media followings.

Esports. Esports events sell out arenas, it’s a Division 1 intercollegiate sport, professional leagues are continuing to grow, and there are countless other upward trajectories. The overall esports economy now tops $1 billion and 500 million viewers. All this for a sport (based largely on tech) that didn't exist prior to this decade. As we noted last week, by 2018, according to the Motley Fool, esports viewership grew 13.8% to 380 million people worldwide. And analysts expect this number to reach 557 million by 2021. U.S. pro sports leagues and team owners are investing in esports operations at all levels. At baseball’s Winter Meetings in San Diego, for example, the operators of the minor league Albuquerque Isotopes on Sunday floated the idea of holding nightly esports tournaments at Isotopes Park to introduce a whole new fan base to baseball. And just this week, Astralis becomes first esports firm to go public. The esports organization plans to raise between $18-22 million, with shares priced at $1.32.

Sports gaming. Whether it’s traditional gambling, fantasy sports, or a fusion of the two; media companies are covering it. The last decade brought us Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS), which paved the way for legalized sports betting as slowly, sports leagues realized that sports gaming enhanced their product rather than threatened it. Founded in 2011, American DFS contest and sports betting provider DraftKings allows users to enter daily and weekly fantasy sports–related contests and win money based on individual player and team performances in five major American sports (MLB, the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, and the PGA), Premier League and UEFA Champions League soccer, NASCAR, and more recently, MMA and tennis. DraftKings’ biggest competitor was FanDuel, founded in 2009, before the two agreed to merge in 2016. And over the last decade, the smooth proliferation of sports gaming and legal sports wagering also removed the Las Vegas taboo from American sports leagues – Vegas now has the NHL Stanley Cup-competing Golden Knights, and next year, the NFL Raiders.

Sport for cause, online. Brands and leagues should always be compelled to give back, but this past decade provided extra motivation. As a happy consequence to the decade’s proliferation of digital media, the demand for sports content stretched the box score and media companies began covering the social impact of sports. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) became a buzzword for brands in the space as an overall sense that sports should give back increased. Olympic athletes successfully raised the money they need to compete via GoFundMe campaigns, and sports cause-related organizations such as LIVEStrong (which lives on despite founder Lance Armstrong’s downfall), the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and Oklahoma City-based Fields & Futures owe the vast majority of their reach to digital fundraising, marketing, and educational initiatives. Sport, finally, used the power of digital communication and texting functions to raise funds to help when disaster struck, from hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico to flooding in Houston and deadly fires in Northern California.

Media rights. This past decade was defined by mega deals in sports media rights. Whether it’s new networks, broadcast rights, digital rights, streaming rights, on demand, or over the top, the media rights deals now are now not uncommon to be in the billions. U.S. sports rights are estimated to be worth a total of $22.42 billion in 2019, about 44% of the total worldwide sports media market, according to SportBusiness Media. And a rising number of major sporting events available via streaming services is set to drive the revenue for global broadcast rights beyond $85 billion by the end of 2024, according to a recent Rethink TV report. The Sports Rights Forecast to 2025 paper shows the global value of sports rights currently at around $48.6 billion, though the report predicts an increase of 75% over the next five years due to a growth in audiences choosing direct-to-consumer (DTC) content.

Ticketing. Going to a sporting event is still core to the sports experience. In this past decade, the ticketing business saw tech related advances like dynamic pricing, paperless tickets, and digital second market sellers, all of which backed by data and CRM. As with so many things in our lives now, your mobile phone is now your sports ticket. At that Next Big Thing sports tech lab otherwise known as SoFi Stadium, CNBC notes the SafeTix digital ticketing provided by Ticketmaster “uses a rotating entry token that refreshes an encrypted barcode every 15 seconds to prevent counterfeiting and improve security. The digital ticket will also send customized messages to the ticketholder on a host of things — from VIP events to updates on parking information and merchandising offers.” And just last week, Swiss ticketing firm Viagogo agreed to buy StubHub for $4.05 billion, looking to leverage the brand globally.

Paywall. We saw the closing of many physical newspapers this decade, with the media companies behind them opting instead for digital content on their website. Different revenue models emerged like premium content paywalls for example. We’ve mentioned the success of The Athletic – and now venerable Sports Illustrated, under new millennial-focused ownership, is considering a paywall for its revamped short form content. DAZN, a London-based OTT subscription sports streaming service, first launched in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan in August 2016 and now has former ESPN chief John Skipper as its chairman as it is halfway to its magic number for an IPO. In the last few months alone we have seen the launch of ESPN+, Apple TV, and now Disney+, all subscription based Video on Demand streaming services. And YouTube, for years a free platform for literally billions of videos, is now making moves to segregate some of its sports and entertainment content behind a paywall.

Data analytics. Whether it is a team front office employing a cap room specialist, a coaching staff utilizing predictive analytics, an apparel company using purchase data to better understand consumer behavior, or the like, data analytics left its mark this past decade. What originated with sabermetrics and Bill James’ “Baseball Abstracts” that originated in 1977 by the 2010s had evolved to the point that most pro sports teams, in baseball and otherwise, have a full analytics staff working year round. And the tools have been simplified enough that they are now fully accessible to public school systems, volunteer youth sports coaches, and individual athletes looking to gauge and improve their own performances via stats, wearable tech, and other smart data-producing devices.

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lindyhunt · 7 years ago

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The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Every month, there are over two billion active users on Facebook, one billion on Instagram, and 365 million on Twitter worldwide.

In the U.S. alone, 77% of the population has a social media account of some kind. Whether it’s to chat with friends, stay connected to people across the globe, or for business and networking purposes, consumers are on social media for a multitude of reasons — and marketers know it.

Due to the sheer number of active users on these platforms, marketers are quickly learning about the importance of targeting their customers through social media. In fact, investments in social media advertising across the world are projected to grow to about 48 billion U.S. dollars by 2021.

With so many people checking their smartphone notifications and social media feeds while traveling, commuting, and even relaxing, what better way to market than on social media?

Social media advertising reaches audiences in a low-cost, impactful, and effective way. This is exactly why social media campaigns have become a crucial marketing technique for businesses everywhere. With billions of people on social platforms — and continued growth in monthly users and influence — it’s hard to imagine how businesses could remain relevant without creating a social media presence.

Using social media will allow you to reach your target audience, engage with current and potential customers, create brand loyalty, increase website traffic, and drive sales. Marketing on social is not just a trend, it’s a powerful industry technique that is here to stay and will help you reach more people all over the world.

How to Set Social Media Marketing Campaign Goals

When creating a social media marketing campaign, you should keep specific goals in mind to ensure your work is as effective as possible. Here are some goals to consider and examples of companies that executed them well.

Improve Brand Awareness

Your business can improve brand awareness through social media by posting your campaigns on a variety of platforms. You can also use specific hashtags and provide followers with incentives for sharing your content and tagging their friends.

Improving your brand awareness through social doesn’t need to take a lot of time either. In fact, 91% of marketers said they noticed an increase in their brand visibility by only spending a few hours per week on social media. Once you have a plan for your campaign, you will be able to map out exactly where and when it should be posted to keep things efficient.

A great example of using social media marketing to raise brand awareness is Apple’s “Shot On iPhone” campaign. Apple’s impressive iPhone cameras allow their 90 million+ users to take pictures that look like they were taken with professional cameras.

Taking beautiful pictures has also become increasingly important for social media users over the years, especially with photo-focused platforms such as Instagram. Apple decided to mesh these ideas together and launch the “Shot On iPhone” campaign which features iPhone photos taken by customers.

Users take pictures with their iPhones, post them to social (typically on Instagram in this case), and use the campaign’s hashtag, #shotoniphone, which has been tagged in over 4.3 million posts thus far. Apple shares select photos on their Instagram page to their 6.8 million followers and gives participants a chance to have their photo on a billboard.

Apple’s social media marketing campaign increases brand awareness through their Instagram page, hashtag, and the requirement that people share their photos with their own followers.

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Apple started the campaign, but iPhone users are the people doing the hard work. Through this campaign, the company builds a feed of the most beautiful and unique pictures that also serve as a way to improve brand awareness and market the iPhone camera feature.

Connect With Your Audience

Connecting with your audience is important in all types of marketing. In a world with growing distractions and diminishing patience, effective marketing tactics are more important than ever. The good news is that social media has made it easier to connect with potential customers anywhere around the world.

When working on a social media marketing campaign, you want to connect with your audience both on a surface level — through a follow, comment, or a “like” — and on a deeper level — through a relatable post that gets them feeling a certain way about your brand or products.

Coca-Cola’s ”Share a Coke” social media campaign successfully connects the company with their audience on a deeper level. By selling bottles of Coke with people’s names on them, Coca-Cola personalizes the buying experience which gets customers excited about purchasing and sharing the bottles.

Whether it’s their own name or the name of a family member, friend, or co-worker, customers feel a connection to these bottles of Coke. Some of the bottles even have stickers on them that customers can peel off and wear as a name tag or give to someone else.

Coca-Cola made the campaign even more relatable by creating labels with multiple different spellings of names and including less-common names. Customers can also personalize their own bottle on the company’s website for $5. The company found a way to engage with everyone through this campaign.

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Coca-Cola also promoted a hashtag, #shareacoke, so social media users can share their pictures and videos with friends and followers. Since the campaign has gone viral, the hashtag has been used on millions of Twitter and Instagram posts. And for those who want to share a Coke, or post a picture about their own experience, there are links to more information about the campaign in the bio section of Coca-Cola’s social profiles.

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The “Share a Coke” campaign gets people excited about a personalized bottle of Coke and makes customers feel connected to the brand on a deeper level. In turn, millions have been motivated to share pictures, videos, and stories on social media about their experiences buying and sharing a Coke.

Increase Website Traffic

Social media is a great way to boost website traffic. Simply putting your website in your profile bio helps guide users to your site where they can learn more about your company or a specific product. Customers have little patience and lose interest quickly. By including the URL in your bio, you will avoid any confusion and keep things simple for your potential customers.

Your campaign team can also respond to followers on social with URLs to specific landing pages on your website. Adding links to your website as part of a natural conversation or organic post is a great way to show them you are listening and boost website traffic.

Lastly, you can just add a website or landing page URL to your actual post on social. You will increase website traffic by providing followers with links to the resources they need to answer their questions and concerns on their own.

For example, many news stations across the country add URLs to their stories on social media. They are often seen posting an eye-catching image, video, quote, or statement along with a link to the actual story.

This works well because it increases their website traffic. If followers don’t follow the link to the station’s website, they can always click “Like”, or “Share” if they still want to interact.

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Drive Sales

Marketers want customers to get excited about their products and brand. When a business can do this successfully, they will most likely see an increase in sales. Social media campaigns are a great way to get people excited about new products because of the ability to share, use images, get the word out.

One example of this was the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino campaign. Starbucks has been known to create special “secret menu” items, and these drinks have become increasingly popular to photograph, as they often make for fun Instagram and Twitter posts. The company took advantage of this and started selling the Unicorn Frappuccino — a bright, colorful drink that was only in stock for a limited time.

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Starbucks shared pictures of the Frappuccino all over social media and drummed up excitement around the drink. They also created a hashtag, #unicornfrappuccino, to encourage customers to share their experiences purchasing and drinking the beverage.

The $5 drink was so popular with customers that during the single week it was available in April 2017, there were over 180,000 posts on social media that featured the drink. The drink also led to an increase in same-store sales for the second quarter by 3%, and same-store sales were up 4% in March 2017.

Now that we have reviewed some of the most successful social media marketing campaigns, let’s dive into the ways you can kick start your own.

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Campaign

There are a number of ways to create a successful social media marketing campaign. Plans vary based on industry, social media platform, and campaign type. Use the following tips to create your own social media marketing campaign.

Research Your Competition

In the planning stages of your social media marketing campaign, consider your competition.

Which companies are similar to yours and already have successful social media accounts?

Which companies have campaigns that you know did well?

Do the companies you are reviewing typically conduct giveaways, contests, or live videos?

What is engagement like on their social posts?

By taking a step back and asking yourself these questions, you’ll start to understand what’s working well in your industry. You will also be able to determine how you can make your own campaign unique.

Look for inspiration elsewhere, too. If your competition isn’t on social, you’re not a fan of their previous campaign style, or you have an exceptionally unique business, then look for other campaigns that inspire you and determine how you can apply elements such as a similar style, level of engagement, aesthetic, or a specific message to your own campaign.

Craft Your Strategy

Next, craft your campaign strategy. To determine your campaign goal, first consider your target audience.

1. Appeal to your target audience.

Who are you trying to reach?

How would you classify your target audience?

What are you hoping this campaign will achieve for your company and your audience?

How can you create continued engagement with your followers throughout your campaign?

Ensuring your content and messaging appeals to your target audience should always be your top priority. Remember this important rule throughout your social media marketing campaign. Don’t lose sight of who you are trying to connect with and why.

Otherwise, your audience will likely scroll right by your social posts or lose interest in your campaign in a matter of seconds.

Here are some ways to appeal to your target audience on social media:

Consider current trends.

What do people want to view these days? For example, Instagram stories and live streaming have become quite popular. Can you incorporate these trends into your social routine and campaign?

Be informative.

Make your audience want to stop and listen. If you don’t have information worth their time, why would they check out your post or campaign? Provide your audience with an incentive — create a giveaway that requires your audience to read your description from start to finish. In addition, you should also tell them how to participate in the giveaway and when you will announce a winner.

Create unique and compelling visual content.

Whether it’s a video on Facebook or an edited picture on Instagram, make sure your visual content is compelling and entertaining. Give your audience something they haven’t seen before.

Engage with your audience.

After posting on social media, 84% of consumers expect companies to respond within 24-hours. If your followers leave questions, comments, or concerns on your posts, you should reach back out to them. You will form a personal bond with your audience that will make them more loyal to you and your brand. You will also earn their trust more efficiently.

2. Choose your content type and format.

To determine content type, think about why you’re creating your campaign. Here are some instances in which a company might create a social media marketing campaign:

Holidays

Special occasions or milestones

Partnerships with other businesses

User-generated content promotions

Contests or giveaways

Consider which content type should be used on what platform. For example, if your campaign uses a lot of still photography, then maybe Instagram is the platform for you. If you require live streaming and longer form video, Facebook might be a good option, and if you want to release shorter bursts of information, Twitter could be a good fit. Think about what each platform is best for and go from there.

3. Manage your results.

No matter why you’re creating your campaign, you’ll probably be interested in knowing your campaign’s level of success.To make any conclusions about your success, you’ll need some type of metrics to measure and monitor throughout your campaign.

A popular way to do this is through a metric tracker such as Google Analytics or HubSpot’s social monitoring and metric tracking tool. This type of concrete data will provide you with information like the amount of overall campaign traffic, how many new followers that you attract (as well as how many followers you lose), your level of engagement, changes in website traffic, and any change in sales.

Promote Your Content

Now it’s time to start sharing your campaign and promoting your content. Consider the following techniques on how to promote and share your content.

Promote one message throughout your campaign.

You should start by promoting one message on multiple different platforms using content that fits the chosen platform. By consistently sharing the same message across your campaign, your followers will hear the same information over and over again, which will allow them to retain your message.

In fact, marketing campaigns in the past have proven that messages are most effective when repeated. Repetition will result in familiarity, which will foster trust between your audience and your message, brand, and product. Redundant messages stick.

Balance your promotional and non-promotional content.

Your followers will notice if you’re constantly pushing promotional content on them. By balancing promotional and non-promotional, your followers will perceive you as being helpful and will want to engage with you more.

This is about your followers not feeling pressured or pushed into becoming a customer. You will be most effective if you provide your followers with promotional content that is balanced out with content that they find helpful and engaging.

Ensure your content is unique to your business.

Create an aesthetic for your campaign that matches your brand. You want this to be unique — anyone that lands on your page should know that it’s yours without reading your profile handle. Being unique and authentic helps you stand out … it also gives people a reason to want to follow you over your competitors.

Engage with your audience regularly.

No matter how many followers you have, you should set aside a bit of time to answer questions, “like” comments, and respond to feedback. By taking the time to engage with your followers, you will give them a personal experience that they won’t forget. These are the types of relationships and experiences that keep followers invested in your brand.

Create a unique hashtag for your campaign.

All major social media campaigns have a hashtag that should be the same across your social platforms. Hashtags allow your team members to keep track of interactions and make it easy for your followers to engage with your campaign. Your hashtag should be unique and memorable.

For example, Snickers has a popular social media campaign, “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.” They depict people lashing out, losing their minds, and even turning into different people because they are “hangry” … or hungry-angry. These people go back to their normal selves once they eat a bite of a Snickers bar and satisfy their hunger.

Their hashtag for the campaign is #EatASnickers. It’s straightforward, simple to remember, and action-oriented. Additionally, “Eat a Snickers” is also one of their ad taglines, which contributes to the uniformity across the campaign.

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Automate your content with scheduling software.

Although creating engaging content and interacting with your followers may be time-consuming, there is a way to schedule your campaign posts ahead of time to save you from having to do it in real time.

Tools such as Hootsuite, Crowdfire, and CoSchedule allow marketers to schedule posts with text, photos, videos, hashtags, and more. Some of these scheduling tools even contain analytics that help users determine which scheduled posts are doing well and which posts may need to be modified.

Use live stream to your advantage.

By 2021, live streaming is expected to become more than a $70 billion industry. With live streaming, audience members can watch content in real-time from anywhere around the world, which creates a unique and engaging experience.

Facebook Live is one of the most popular ways to stream live content, followed by other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You can use live streaming to update followers on news as it happens, conduct giveaways and contests, interview guests and influencers, or simply make followers feel personally connected to your brand.

The way you promote your content is your decision, but don’t forget to test and analyze your results. This way, you will know if there are any immediate changes that can and should be modified while the campaign is live. You can also apply this information to future campaigns.

Conclusion

Social media has taken the world by storm. Although some trends are changing, social media is here to stay. Social media marketing campaigns are a great option for businesses that want to remain relevant and promote their content in an effective and efficient way.

With the possibility of significant reach, ability to directly engage with followers and customers, the ease of sharing your content with thousands (or even millions) of people, and the budget-friendly nature of the work, social media marketing campaigns are appealing to both businesses and consumers alike.

Get started creating unique and engaging content for your social followers and make an impact that drives sales and gets people pumped about your brand.

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unifiedsocialblog · 7 years ago

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Top Social Media Trends to Watch Right Now

The world has never been into social media as much, as it is now. There are more than 3 billion active users on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social platforms. This is almost half of the worldwide population. Many businesses continue to find social media is the most effective way to reach audiences.

We realize it perfectly at Chanty. Building a simple AI-powered Slack alternative, our team has just started sailing in the rough waters of social media. This is how I got curious about the top social media trends for businesses to pay attention to.

I’ve dived into dozens of articles and expert opinions on the topic, picking up the most important social media trends. I’ll briefly review them in this article, providing some case studies. Have a read at the 7 social media trends to pay attention to this year.

1. Videos are good, live streaming is better

We all know videos rock, right? According to Cisco forecasts, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be video by 2021. Pre-recorded content works well, but the benefit can be even greater if you incorporate live streaming into your marketing mix. Live streaming makes up 66% of all internet usage, and this number is growing. The options for live broadcasting are endless.

A live streaming case study.

Dunkin’ Donuts’ live tour of the DD test kitchen. Video source.

In 2016, Dunkin’ Donuts, a US coffeehouse company, debuted with its first Facebook Live video. The presenters gave a sneak peek to their “test kitchen” and created a big donut-themed wedding cake. This behind-the-scenes video attracted 48K viewers so far, which is quite an impressive number considering the unpretentious topic of the video.

Here’s a tip. Going “viral” won’t help much if you’re not reaching your target market. Be sure to use content marketing tools, such as Google Analytics to measure ROI.

2. Micro-influencers can work magic

This social media trend might be your safest bet. Influencer marketing is one of the most trusted forms of advertising. Influencers tend to have higher user engagement than content generated by brands. But guess what? Way too often, star campaigns didn’t cover the expenses.

The thing is that celebrities may seem a too far apart from their fans, so they don’t get enough empathy from their audience. However, bloggers who have fewer followers (approximately 10K) are perceived as more authentic and relatable. This helps them to engage more people in their promotional campaigns. So, sorry, dear Kardashian family, we’re turning to everyday people.

A micro-influencer marketing case study.

Banana Republic influencer campaign. Image source.

Banana Republic’s Instagram campaign can serve as a successful example of the micro-influencer marketing. The American clothing retailer works extensively with bloggers who try on its clothing in a variety of settings. By seeking fashion influencers known for their sense of style Banana Republic claimed to reach a large and targeted audience.

There is another advantage of turning to micro-influencers. Having a smaller group of followers, they can afford to keep things personal, responding to comments and messages.

Here’s a tip. Make sure that the influencers you choose fit your target audience. If you work worldwide, remember that the popularity of social media platforms varies by region. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are banned in China. Instagram, however, doubled its user base in India last year.

3. Tell your story (using ephemeral content)

Ephemeral content tops record levels. Instagram Stories grew up to 400 million daily users. So why do people love the short-lived content? I would say, it’s because of love and fear. First, it plays on the FOMO (fear of missing out). We don’t want to miss any news about summer discounts of our favorite brand, right? Second, people (especially millennials) love authentic connections to brands, which is exactly what ephemeral content offers.

An ephemeral content case study.

The Instagram Story of the Beyond Yoga brand. Image source.

Here’s a typical example of how a retail company uses the ephemeral content. In this Instagram Story, Beyond Yoga features a woman getting through her workout in the branded clothes. This is an effective way to create buzz for a new product.

The ephemeral content provides plenty of possibilities for marketers from unveiling a product line to the behind-the-scenes coverage of a company’s workflows.

Here’s a tip. It’s a good idea to keep your content personal and casual. It shouldn’t take visitors away from the main feed of your social media account.

4. Get a friendly chatbot

Here’s the thing: your customers would love to talk to you. In case you’re busy, they won’t even mind a friendly bot. Since marketers became aware of this, live chats have been an integral part of sales. When customers engage with a brand via chat, they are 4.5 times more likely to make a purchase and far more likely to become loyal clients. The hyper-personalized customer journeys make visitors feel they are special and worth attention.

A chatbot case study.

Kia Motors chatbot. Image source.

Many brands design Facebook Messenger chatbots to answer questions and requests from their potential customers. Above is a common example. KIA, a South Korea automobile manufacturer, introduced a chatbot. It can answer car buyers’ questions and guide them to the vehicle that fits their needs. This feature resulted in 3 times higher online conversion rates.

Chatbots have a bright future, especially since they are entering the financial sector. Reportedly, Citibank is rolling out the first Facebook Messenger-embedded chatbot that will allow customers to access their financial records and conduct transactions. This is considered to herald a new era of mobile banking.

Here’s a tip. Chatbots should be skillfully crafted and work seamlessly on a variety of devices. Be sure they provide good linguistics and are bug-free. This will excite your customers, so they will come again and spread the word about you.

5. Embrace augmented reality

Nearly all talks about augmented reality start with a clause, “It’s not fully there yet.” Indeed, AR seems a lot like a promise. But a very fulfilling one. It has been slowly conquering apps, games,

global positioning systems and… social media. We already feel at home with AR selfie filters

– bunny ears and mustaches used in Facebook or Instagram Stories.

However, in May 2018 Facebook introduced a more advanced AR feature – the camera effects in Messenger. The idea is the following: when users are chatting with your company’s bot, they can click “try on looks”. The command opens up the camera pre-populated with filters and AR effects specific to your brand.

An augmented reality case study.

AR for the Facebook Messenger Platform. Image source.

At launch, four brands introduced AR effects for their Messenger experiences: ASUS, KIA, Nike, and Sephora. As an example, Nike is using Messenger to promote a new pair of sneakers. The brand provides users with an exclusive sneak peek at their product. Reportedly, after launching the feature Nike saw higher engagement from users who interacted with these AR experiences.

Though not publicly available yet, AR camera effects in Messenger are to become a common solution for businesses. Meanwhile, Facebook moved on to the next tech endeavor – AR advertisements. The pilot brand partners testing the feature include Sephora, Bobbi Brown, and Pottery Barn.

Here’s a tip. For now, consider incorporating the embed branded AR camera effects into your Facebook messenger bot. The platform works in beta as of August 2018. But you can request access to it, by adding your company to the waitlist. There’s much more to come in AR technologies, so be prepared.

6. Incorporate social advertising

Your social media ads budget can be tight, as in most companies. But as Facebook continues to slash organic reach for businesses, the paid promotion might be your healthy choice. Luckily, Facebook has pioneered some of the most precise ad targeting tools ever. Do you want to target fifty-something, well-to-do, Texas farmers, who like dogs and rodeo? No problem. However, there’s a nuance you should be aware of. 53 percent of people want to see more video content, so make sure video ads fit into your social media strategy.

A social advertising case study.

Kay Jewelers’ video ad. Video source.

This video ad from Kay Jewelers, an American jewelry company, tells a quick but touching story, using just a few seconds of your time. You don’t even need the sound to get the message the company is sending.

Here’s a tip. If you are going to use video ads, be sure your ad has a clear (and, preferably, happy) ending. People view videos more passively on Facebook than they do on YouTube. They won’t have time to interpret your ad if it’s too long or complex.

7. Build communities, connect offline

People have built communities from time immemorial. This human tendency has never been so important for us, marketers, as it is now. Surfing the web, users get tired of automation and being sold to. They want real experiences and interactions. That’s why a loyal community can be a lifesaver for businesses.

Facebook Groups can be powerful for building communities. At Chanty, we started one recently, and it seems like a long and exciting journey is ahead. There are multiple ways to engage people in your community: from asking them for some feedback to building a creative promotion your customers are interested in. Ideally, it all comes to connecting in real life. If possible, take your communities to an offline setting.

A case study online to offline.

Image source.

This is an Instagram post from Kylie Jenner, the owner of a cosmetic company. She founded her business online, and it exploded in popularity thanks in part to social media. In 2016, when the company announced a pop-up store, fans were ecstatic. They finally got a chance to handle the product in-person, try out the colors, and even meet their fashion idol in real life.

Here’s a tip. Create a community for your passionate customers, but don’t try to control it too much. It’s better not to delete posts (unless it’s spam) or sanitize negative feedback. Keep in mind that your community is an extremely useful reality check and feedback mechanism and whenever possible try to find a way to connect offline as well.

Wrapping up today’s top social media trends

We’ve listed the seven top social media trends that you can’t turn a blind eye to. To recap:

Post high-quality live videos. Craft messages you send to viewers and use analytics tools to measure ROI.

Collaborate with micro-influencers, but make sure they are in touch with your target audience. Keep in mind that popularity of social media platforms varies by region.

Use ephemeral content to show the human side of your brand. Keep your stories personal and casual not to distract your visitors from the main feed.

Adopt a friendly chatbot to create a real-time engagement with prospective customers. It should be bug-free and work reliably across devices.

Be prepared for the best AR technologies coming to the social media. Consider joining Facebook AR camera effects beta program or placing an AR advertisement.

Utilize social advertising and paid promotions as the organic reach in social media has extremely declined. Experiment with using video ads, as they tend to resonate better than static image ads.

Build communities, online and offline, and provide them with great content. Consider connecting with your potential and actual clients offline whenever possible.

Did I miss anything from this list of top social media trends? Feel free to leave your comments below. And if you found this article helpful, please share it on your favorite social platform.

Aleksey Chepalov is on the marketing team at Chanty — a simple AI-powered business messenger and a single notification center. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work.

The post Top Social Media Trends to Watch Right Now appeared first on Top Dog Social Media.

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marie85marketing · 7 years ago

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7 Social Media Trends to Watch and Capitalize On in 2018

The trend is your friend.

Why? Because trends often become the norm, and getting in early allows you to harness its power without too much competition or noise. Write something off as “just” a trend, and you may be late to the party of the year.

Remember when Facebook was a “trend”? Or Twitter? Instagram? Now, those are a key component to your digital marketing plan (and if not, they should be).

You’ve got to reach and engage with your audience where they spend time online. And where is that? Say it with me: social media.

In its State of Social 2018 Report, Buffer found that businesses are overwhelmingly on the social train. 96% use Facebook, with Twitter (89%), LinkedIn (70%), Instagram (70%), and YouTube (57%) rounding out the top five. The report also revealed that 85% of businesses plan to create more video content on those platforms than they did last year.

We spend an average of 2 hours and 15 minutes on social media each day, which accounts for one-third of our online time, and twice as much as any other activity.

Customers spend anywhere from 20-40% more on companies that engage with them on social media.

The most popular social media platforms in January 2018 include Facebook (2.2 billion users), YouTube (1.5 billion), WhatsApp (1.3 billion), Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion), and WeChat (980 million). Three of the top five are messenger apps.

There were 2.46 billion social media users in 2017. That number is expected to hit 2.62 billion in 2018, and 3.02 billion by 2021.

Social media is popular with Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.

The statistics paint a very clear picture: social media must be an integral part of your marketing mix in 2018 and beyond. Ignore it at your peril.

That said, social media is an evolving beast, with new features popping up all the time.

Some are destined for the trash heap of history – remember how much “fun” poking was on Facebook? – while others become cornerstones of the platform that we can’t remember living without.

So what to do, which platforms to use, and what trends to try?

Here are seven for the new year:

Social Listening

Live Streaming and Video

Influencer Marketing

Facebook Continues to Set the Pace

Increased Engagement on Messaging Platforms

Instagram Stories

Augmented Reality

1. Social Listening

This may not be completely new, but it’ll take on increased importance in 2018 and the years to come. Social media in all its forms is only getting bigger and more popular, and by extension you’ll have to start paying more attention to it.

But that goes beyond just having a few accounts on a few different platforms. You’ll even have to do more than “just” having an active presence on those platforms. You need to listen to what people are saying about you, your competition, your brand, and your products, and respond accordingly. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

People are talking about you more often than just when they’re engaging directly with you. People are making complaints, lavishing praise, and showing off your stuff on many different platforms and networks. Some you belong to, and some you don’t.

But that’s beside the point: if they’re talking to or about you, they expect a response from you.

In fact, 60% of consumers that post a complaint on social media expect a response in less than 60 minutes. You’ve got one hour to notice and respond. And if you don’t, 88% of them are unlikely to buy from you again or recommend you to friends and family.

Enter social listening.

You need systems in place to monitor many different channels for your particular keywords and phrases, and to bring those mentions to your attention so you can examine them for both insight and opportunities.

What are people saying about your brand? How do they feel about your latest product? What problems or complaints do they have? An active social listening strategy can provide those answers and more.

And as we increasingly use social media for everything, there’s a lot of insight you could harvest, to say nothing of the improved customer experience you can provide by responding to issues and complaints in a timely and convenient manner.

The bigger you get, the more important it is to be aware of what others are saying about you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, review sites, and more.

A simple way to get started is Google Alerts. You can quickly set up email notifications for the words and phrases you want to monitor by entering them into the search bar, setting your preferences on frequency, sources, region, and more, and clicking the “Create Alert” button. It’s just that easy.

But to truly get the most out of social listening, you need a service or tool that specializes in it. A few of the best include Brandwatch, Hootsuite Insights, Mention, ReviewTrackers, Talkwalker, and TrackReddit.

Respond quickly to complaints. Collect valuable data on your customers. Manage a crisis. Find influencers. Generate reports. Analyze your competition. Understand your audience and industry better. Measure impact. Gauge brand sentiment. Enhance customer service and engagement.

The list of what social listening can’t do is much shorter than what it can do. If you’re not already using it, I highly recommend you start. Sign up and start listening today.

Being aware of public opinion and sentiment towards your brand are as important as the product or service itself. Social listening gives that to you.

2. Live Streaming and Video

Video – whether recorded or live – is becoming the social media tactic you can’t afford to ignore. That’ll only get more apparent in 2018.

According to a recent post by Hubspot, 43% of social media users want to see more video content from marketers, businesses now publish an average of 18 videos each month, the average video retains a little over one-third of its viewers (37%) to the very end, and 85% of businesses have in-house personnel and resources for video creation.

Do you? Are you using video and its younger-but-equally-popular brother, live streaming, as part of your social media efforts? You should. Consider:

Over 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

YouTube users enjoy 1 billion hours per day

Two-thirds of people – a full 67% – are more likely to buy a ticket to an event after watching a live video about it

Live video is both created and watched by people in virtually every age category, from teenagers to those 55 and older. Overall, 36% of Americans watch it, while 22% create it.

80% prefer watching a live video from a brand than reading a blog post, and 82% prefer live video over any other type of social media post

Live videos on Facebook are watched 3x longer and get 10x more comments than those that are recorded

36% of internet users have watched a live video as of November 2016

Live.me – a mobile-only live streaming app – is less than two years old, but already has over 20 million active users who create more than 200,000 hours of new content each day

Viewers respond positively to live video streaming because of the immediacy and engagement it creates with their favorite brands and personalities.

Brands and personalities can quickly deliver an enhanced customer experience with live video. The four most popular types are explainers, product demos, how-tos, and testimonials, but you can do so much more: live events, announcements, product reveals, interviews, behind-the-scenes, Q&A sessions, demonstrations, and on and on.

Most social media platforms now have native live streaming capabilities or easy integration, so you can pick and choose where and when to do it. Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, Twitter, Snapchat, Twitch, and Instagram Live are all great platforms to try depending on where your customers and audience are hanging out.

To set yourself up for success, let your followers and fans know you’ll be live streaming beforehand. Post about it, send a reminder, create a daily or weekly or monthly schedule, be consistent, get the word out to generate as big an audience as possible.

Then click that “Go Live” button. Be authentic, informative, and remember to breath. Connect and build a relationship with your audience, and they’ll become not only loyal, but vocal advocates on your behalf.

3. Influencer Marketing

Some have called this one dead and done, but influencer marketing is not only still alive, it’s growing. That’s not to say it hasn’t evolved, though.

In 2018, it’s less about riding the coattails of whomever is most popular at any given moment, and more about building meaningful relationships and finding the influencers that reflect your brand ethos.

Many companies have found themselves in defense mode after partnering with an influencer based solely on numbers, only to discover later that they’ve shared sexist, racist, grossly inappropriate, or bigoted content on their channels. 73% of marketers list “finding the right influencer” as the biggest challenge.

YouTuber PewDiePie, for example, has over 60 million subscribers and makes millions of dollars each year on the platform. In February of 2017, he had lucrative partnerships with Google and Disney…that is until he was fired from both after he posted objectionable and anti-Semitic material. Not the kind of exposure Google and Disney were trying to get.

Don’t make that mistake. Launching a successful influencer marketing campaign should never be based on the number of followers or fans. You need to look for relevancy to your industry, products, and target audience – Kim Kardashian to promote your new robo-advisor might not be the best fit – their average amount of comments and other engagement metrics, and the overall sentiment towards them (you can find that with social listening).

Choose wisely, as your designated influencer is a reflection of your brand. You want it to be a positive one. Once you’ve identified one, reach out and connect. Build the relationship. Ask for their ideas if their interested, but don’t feel obligated to grant them complete control and freedom. Influencer marketing works best when it’s a true partnership.

But what about the $64,000 question: does it work?

Influencer marketing was tied for first with email marketing as the most cost-effective online acquisition channel. Marketers in the same poll listed blogs (37%), Facebook (25%), and YouTube (6%) as the top three platforms for the tactic.

Don’t automatically associate “celebrity” with “influencer”. In fact, Markerly found that the rate of engagement decreases as the number of followers rises. Those with 10+ million followers saw likes 1.6% of the time, and comments only 0.04% of the time, compared to 8% and 0.5% respectively for those with less than 1000 followers. They suggest working with a micro-influencer in the 10k-100k range of followers for maximum reach and engagement.

Influencer marketing generates an average return of $7.65 for every $1 spent, while 84% of polled marketers describe it as an “effective” strategy, and 67% plan to increase their budget for it.

70% of teenage YouTube users trust influencers more than traditional celebrities.

Influencers created 86% of the most watched beauty videos on YouTube, while only 14% were created by beauty brands themselves.

On Twitter, there’s a 5.2x increase in purchase intent when consumers see tweets from both brands and influencers. Just under half of Twitter users (49%) say they rely on recommendations from influencers, while 40% have made a purchase based on a tweet from an influencer.

Marketers in a Linqia survey listed Facebook (87%), Instagram (87%), blogs (48%), Twitter (44%), and Pinterest (40%) as the platforms most important to their influencer campaigns. Do you need to use all of them? Absolutely not. Find your audience, identify relevant influencers on that platform, and go from there.

The same survey identified CPE (cost-per-engagement) and CPC (cost-per-click) as the two most preferred pricing models.

Are you game to give it a go? The payoff for a well planned and strategic influencer marketing campaign can far exceed your wildest expectations. Expect this tactic to continue to grow in 2018.

4. Facebook Continues to Set the Pace

It’s easy to consider Facebook past its prime. It’s been around since 2004 – a lifetime in the digital realm – and the news and trends frequently focus on what’s new and emerging.

That’s a major mistake. Facebook is the platform to rule all platforms. Was, is, and will continue to be. If you only engage on two platforms, it should be Facebook and one other. Three? Facebook and two others. You get the idea.

The social media behemoth had 1.40 billion daily active users and 2.13 billion monthly active users as of December 2017. And that’s not all:

Facebook averages more than 8 billion video views each day.

91% of millennials are on the platform.

Over 800 million users “like” something on it every day.

Males have an average of 145 friends, while females have 166. Your content or post reaches an exponentially bigger audience with each share and like.

Long story short: be active on Facebook. Regardless of your age group or target, they are on that platform.

With numbers like that, Facebook could just sit back and count its ad revenue. But it doesn’t. It continues to evolve and innovate at a breakneck speed.

In 2018, there’s a lot going on at Facebook. These three should be on your radar:

Facebook Messenger – Originally integrated with Facebook itself, it’s now a standalone – and very popular – app. It boasts 1.3 billion users, and 11% of the worldwide population uses it monthly. 60 million businesses are on it, as are half of all teenagers in the United States. It’s a bigger platform than Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat combined, and it hosts 7 billion conversations daily. And with A.I. and chatbot integration, the channel has the potential to be huge.

Facebook Spaces. Let’s ignore the whole virtual vs. augmented reality debate for now. Both are gaining in popularity and prevalence. Both are opening up unparalleled opportunities for engagement. Facebook has launched its own virtual reality meeting place called Spaces for use with Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. Users can build and customize their own appearance, connect with others, draw 3D objects, and immerse themselves in a 360-degree virtual environment. You can even host live events as you would with live video streaming. As it grows and improves, businesses will be able to present fully-realized stores, behind-the-scenes features, and more to their audience. It’s not quite there yet…but stay tuned.

Facebook Watch. We live in an on-demand culture these days. We want what we want when we want it. If you can deliver that to your customers, you’re ahead of the curve. The new Watch feature is a video-on-demand service for long-form content and shows. Ball in the Family – the reality show built around three basketball players and their father – is hosted on the platform. Businesses can create videos and shows to engage with their community, connect directly with their users, and more.

Facebook may be old by social media standards, but it’s proof-positive that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

5. Increased Engagement on Messaging Platforms

We already mentioned Facebook Messenger, but that’s not the only circus in town. The popularity of messaging platforms is exploding. WhatsApp (1.3 billion monthly active users), WeChat (963 million MAUs), and Facebook Messenger (1.2 billion MAUs) are leading the charge.

And with easy integration of both artificial intelligence and chatbots, you can automatically increase engagement and the customer experience.

Facebook research shows that 54.5% of US social media users prefer messaging channels over email, phone and online chat, and 67 percent of business owners plan to increase their messaging over the next two years.

Messaging allows you to reach your audience at scale and on their preferred channel. 89% of consumers would like to use it to communicate with businesses, but only 48% of businesses are able to do so. Those numbers don’t add up.

In fact, users would rather give up using the telephone, their morning coffee, and sex before they’d give up messaging. On average, 77% of users keep messaging notifications turned on so they never miss a thing. FOMO is a powerful motivator.

And I know from firsthand experience that you get achieve an 88% open and 56% click-through rate using Facebook Messenger.

Allow me to state the obvious: messaging is big, effective, and only getting bigger. With it, you can deliver messaging sequences, automate conversations with your users, create a sales funnel, and push out announcements, resources, and new content, to name just a few.

A chatbot – yes, the majority of bots are good – can automate your sales, help desk, complaint department, and more. You can communicate with your customers on their turf and whenever they want to, not the other way around.

Not convinced? Check out these ten examples of effective chatbots on Messenger to see how useful and entertaining they can be.

If you’re itching to give it a try, look to popular platforms and services to build and launch your own (many without the need for coding skills):

Chatfuel

Botsify

Landbot.io

Chattypeople

FlowXO

Beep Boop

Bots aren’t evil. And messaging isn’t going away anytime soon. Take full advantage of both.

6. Instagram Stories

Introduced in August 2016 to compete with a similar feature on Snapchat, Instagram Stories quickly grew to over 100 million daily active users (DAU) in just a few months, hit 200 million DAUs in well under a year, and now boasts an impressive 250 million DAUs. It’s growth and popularity far outpaces that of Snapchat, and is still trending upward.

Are you using it?

About half of all businesses on Instagram post at least one Story each month, while 20% of those stories generate at least one direct message. How’s that for engagement?

The Story feature allows users to post both videos and photos that disappear in 24 hours. You can add filters, stickers, text, and drawings. You can even create simple polls to ask questions and collect valuable data on your audience.

Using the Instagram Story feature is not complicated, and even if you’ve never used Instagram before, you’ll quickly discover all it has to over.

Instagram itself has an impressive 800 million monthly active users, which is more than Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest combined. It should most definitely be part of your social media tool belt.

Include the recent Instagram Shopping functionality – a feature that allows you to tag up to five items within an image with a clickable link to more information – and you can increase engagement and sales even more.

7. Augmented Reality

While virtual reality creates an immersive experience, it does have some major drawbacks. For starters, it limits the mobility of the user wearing the VR headgear. And since most of us access the online world via our mobile devices, that’s a big issue.

That’s where augmented reality (AR) has a distinct advantage. Because users don’t have their vision restricted, mobility is not impeded. In fact, AR typically promotes greater mobility as users search for virtual elements within the physical world.

It’s already taking the gaming industry by storm. Remember Pokémon Go? The company behind it – Niantic – will be releasing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite in the near future. It will presumably have the same opportunity that Pokémon Go had for businesses to market themselves in partnership with the game.

Purchase a “lure”, and it not only lured the Pokémon to your business, but it also lured players to your physical location to capture them. Win-win.

Augmented reality is poised to have a similar impact on social media, allowing online personalities and products to be brought directly into homes, photos, and videos. And as it doesn’t require additional hardware other than your smartphone, most of us are already equipped to enjoy it.

Face filters and lenses fall under the AR umbrella, too.

Lens Studio by Snapchat gives everyone the ability to create and share custom lenses and “magical AR experiences”. Let your followers and fans play with your brand and products in the real world.

With augmented reality you can let your hair down and have some fun while still spreading brand awareness and engaging with leads and customers. Get in on it.

Conclusion

I personally think these seven will be the ones to watch in 2018. Pick one, pick a few, and try them out.

Social media is all about connection, relationships, and engagement.

But to do that, you need to stay current on the latest trends and popular features. Don’t jump on the bandwagon of every one – some will not be a good fit for you, your brand, and your customers – but it’s worth selectively choosing those that make sense to your business and goals.

Trends come. Trends go. But some survive to become tomorrow’s mainstays. Get in before the masses, and you stand to win big.

What other social media trends have you noticed in the past few months? What are you most excited about trying?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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