Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
What is good graphic design? That is a question akin to “What is good art?” The first thing one needs to remember is that graphic design is an art form. Unlike traditional art, however, it is art for commerce, marketing goods and/or services and follows several key design components. Of course, it is more complicated […]
The post Design, The good, The bad, and The Unaesthetically Pleasing. first appeared on Social Media Management Training.
Writers have love affairs with words. As a writer, I am fascinated by the words’ ability to inspire to unite and to enlighten. At the same time, I am distressed by their ability to horrify, to divide, to wound, to belittle and incite. Working with social media, all of us need to be extremely sensitive […]
The post Language Sensitivity Critical to Social Media Managers first appeared on Social Media Management Training.
by Author: K. Leah O’Connor 05/27/2020 This article contains clickable links to websites that are not on Facebook. TikTok is a social platform that people can use to create, edit, add music, and or special effects to a short video and share it with other users around the globe. To be a success on any […]
The post What Social Media Managers need to know about TikTok first appeared on Social Media Management Training.
The age we live in is one of the most globally connected eras. This is both good, bad, and ugly, just like humanity itself. In some ways, we are becoming more fragmented and media and many seem to benefit from accentuating extremes. For every group excited that someone other group was silenced or devalued on […]
The post Alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Youtube first appeared on Social Media Management Training.
Part of the challenge of being a Social Media Manager is keeping up with the constantly changing world of social media and digital marketing. Graduates of our certificate program have the option of keeping up with the changes throughout the monthly meeting via Zoom. Two of the new and important players that have arrived on […]
The post The Core Competencies of Tik Tok and Clubhouse for Social Media Managers first appeared on Social Media Management Training.
1. Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a popular social media management tool that allows users to schedule and publish posts on multiple social media platforms, monitor conversations, and analyze social media performance.
Social media has become an essential tool for businesses to connect with their customers, promote their products and services, and drive sales. With millions of users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, having a strong social media presence is crucial for any business looking to succeed in today's digital world. However, managing multiple social media accounts can be time-consuming and overwhelming, which is why many businesses are turning to social media management and automation tools to streamline their efforts.
Social media management tools allow businesses to schedule posts in advance, track engagement, and analyze their performance across different platforms. By using these tools, businesses can save time, stay organized, and create a consistent brand image across all their social media channels. Automation tools can also help businesses reach a larger audience by allowing them to post content at optimal times when their followers are most active.
One of the biggest benefits of social media management and automation is the ability to engage with customers in real-time. By monitoring social media mentions and comments, businesses can quickly respond to customer inquiries, resolve issues, and build relationships with their followers. This level of engagement not only improves customer satisfaction but also helps businesses gather valuable feedback and insights to improve their products and services.
Although social media management and automation tools can help businesses save time and improve their social media strategy, it's important to strike a balance between automation and human interaction. While automation can handle routine tasks like scheduling posts and tracking metrics, it's essential for businesses to still engage with their followers authentically and respond to their comments and messages personally.
As businesses continue to rely on social media as a key marketing tool, the demand for social media management and automation tools is only expected to grow. By leveraging these tools effectively, businesses can streamline their social media efforts, reach a larger audience, and ultimately drive growth and success in the digital age.
In conclusion, social media management and automation are crucial for businesses looking to establish a strong online presence and connect with customers in today's digital world. By utilizing these tools effectively, businesses can save time, improve engagement, and ultimately drive results on social media platforms. So, if you want to stay ahead of the competition and reach your target audience, it's time to consider incorporating social media management and automation into your marketing strategy.
If you’re a social media professional, chances are you’ve been thinking about Snapchat for a while. The platform is 🔥. Celebrities and influencers are all over it. All the cool brands are building channels. But does it make sense for your business?
We have a lot of fun at Hootsuite, but at our core we’re B2B marketers, laser-focused on helping businesses succeed with social media and telling stories about the awesome things social marketers do. Without the ability to attribute results directly from Snapchat, it’s been tough for us to prioritize spending time there, or to allocate resources to building the channel. But we knew we had to get going. We had to to make the business case, and get buy-in from Hootsuite’s marketing leadership. It was time for… the executive pitch. Wondering how to pitch Snapchat to your boss? Here’s how we made our case:
Before we could get executive signoff for Hootsuite’s Snapchat channel, we had to get buy-in for Snapchat itself as a marketing platform. Despite the buzz, it’s not immediately clear to non-users how content is delivered and consumed, or at what scale people are logging in and engaging with brands.
To make a case for the value of Snapchat you need two things: An emotional hook and supporting statistics. In our case, Hootsuite takes social video seriously, and that value is well understood at all levels. Building on that foundation, we titled our pitch presentation: “Snapchat: The Future of Social Video,” a statement which immediately grabbed attention and evoked emotional reaction. Then we followed up with supporting statistics to drive the point home. Specifically, these three:
Whoa. Now we had their attention. On to step two.
Once we’d shown that Snapchat matters, it was time to make the case for why it matters to us. Sure, it’s big, it’s huge. But why should Hootsuite be on there?
Job one was to define our audience. It’s important to be clear about who you’re talking to on any social platform, but Snapchat in particular requires crystal-clarity to dispel the myth that the platform is “just for teenagers” or “ only used by millennials.” We started by relating the channel strategy to our customer personas: social media professionals in organizations ranging from tiny (one-person agencies and solopreneurs) to massive (Fortune 1,000 brands that trust Hootsuite). These social professionals are evangelists and early adopters—quick to jump on new platforms and figure out how to leverage them. These are our people and they’re on Snapchat. With our audience defined, Snapchat’s role becomes clear, a channel to connect with our customers, prospects, and community where they already are.
If you already have customer personas developed—awesome! You’re ahead of the game. Work to relate the audience statement in your Snapchat strategy to those personas, or to a persona segment. For those who haven’t yet built customer personas, take a few minutes to develop an audience statement that clarifies specifically which types of people you’re trying to reach with Snapchat. Pro tip: use your social media data to get started.
Once you know who you’re talking to, the second part of the “why” informs your content strategy, and will help set your direction for the channel. Hootsuite’s “why” for Snapchat is simple: We’re there to inspire, educate, and engage our community with social media storytelling. These guiding principles form the foundation of our evolving content strategy. They’ll help us choose what we snap, how and when we snap it, and how we engage with our Friends.
Note that this part of the “why” is concise and simple. Content strategy flows from this guiding principle, not the other way around. It’s also very clear for an executive audience. So when your CMO asks your Director “Why are we on Snapchat again?” they’ll be able to easily speak to the high-level business value of the platform. That’s a win for both of you.
Any good strategy clearly articulates the major 🔑s on your journey to success. How will you measure your progress? What metrics will you look at? How will you capture insights?
With Snapchat in its infancy as a brand platform, this isn’t an easy thing to do. Unless you’re making a media buy with Snapchat to place content in the “Discover” feed or creating branded engagement options (like Gatorade did during the Super Bowl), it’s tough to get much from the platform in the way of analytics. Unfortunately when you’re pitching your boss, you’ll have a tough time making a compelling business case from “metrics are hard to get so we just won’t measure this.” You need to have something to show for your efforts.
There are two key (free) metrics you can get from Snapchat: Story Views and Friends. For the purposes of our pitch, we tweaked the language for consistency with our other social media platforms, referring to them as “Video Views” instead of “Story Views” and “Followers” instead of “Friends”. These words are well-understood and build clarity through familiarity, allowing us to easily equate the value of these metrics to the same types of numbers we report for our other social channels. That consistency is super important when making the case for impact.
The qualitative side of success matters as well. For smart social marketers, it’s not just about the numbers but about storytelling and engagement. While that idea isn’t new, how it’s done with Snapchat isn’t immediately clear unless you experience it yourself. We found that including examples of branded Snapchat Stories in our pitch (shoutout to Callaway Golf, lululemon, and Warby Parker for the screenshots) helped us paint a compelling picture of what’s possible with the platform—branded stories that are truly immersive, engaging, and memorable.
Screenshots from lululemon, Warby Parker, and Callaway Golf’s Snapchat accounts
If you’ve done your homework and built a strong business case, there’s a good chance you’re going to get the thumbs-up. Congrats—you did it! Now make sure you’re prepared to speak about next steps.
An appendix to your pitch should be a project plan, with a proposed timeline. Include what you’ll need to get started, outline who’s going to be involved, and demonstrate how you’re going to build traction for the new channel. Our appendix included our proposed launch date (today!), a project plan with stakeholders and dependencies, and a promo plan outlining how we would tell our friends about the new channel (write a blog post.. check). It doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but make sure you can answer the “Now what?” question in an effective way.
Now it’s all about trying new things and testing, zeroing in on what resonates with your audience. This is when social gets fun, when you start to engage with your audience on the world’s hottest channel. We’ll see you on the journey to success. Bless up 🙏
Click this link on mobile to go directly to Hootsuite’s profile or scan the Snapcode below to add Hootsuite as a Friend on Snapchat.
The post How We Pitched Snapchat to Our Boss appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
This post was originally published on Creative Market.
Over the last three years, Instagram has evolved from a place to post photos of your food to a powerful driver of business for some of the biggest brands in the world. Adoption among internet users and businesses has exploded and, unlike on most other social networks, people tend to fill their Instagram feeds with brand content. In fact, according to Forrester, Instagram has the highest engagement rates between brands and customers compared to other major social networks.
A social network where people actually want businesses to get involved sounds like a dream come true, but don’t take that openness for granted. Your fans expect you to treat Instagram just like they would: filling your feed with beautiful images, commenting on the photos of others, and generally being engaging.
If you’re not sure how to engage your audience beyond likes and comments, we’ve gathered a handful of other methods to really make an impression on Instagram.
If you’re looking to increase your visibility, consider reaching out to other influential Instagram users and accounts. These days, social media influencers are like modern-day celebrities. Collaborating with influencers will help increase your reach, brand awareness, and show people that you’re paying attention to trends.
One of the more important aspects of successfully partnering with influencers is choosing people that are the right fit for your brand. Keeping in mind who your audience is, you want to find influencers who have more than just a big following; you want to find the influencers who have the right following. The best influencers for your Instagram marketing strategy will be the people who resonate with your target audience and drive engagement amongst that community.
Reaching a large community is only valuable if you’re also able to create solid engagement. Look beyond follower numbers and hone in on influencers who drive a huge amount of interactions. Partnering with those who are already creating high engagement means that you will be able to be part of a conversation, instead of trying to take one over or start your own from scratch.
One of the most powerful ways to engage your Instagram followers is to turn to them for user-generated content. Regramming—the practice of posting a photo from someone else’s Instagram account to your own, along with appropriate credit—is one of the easiest and most effective means of engaging your audience. The photo’s creator gets a personal shout-out from a brand and increased exposure through their network. As a brand, you prove to your audience that you’re paying attention to them, and are willing to share their content.
If one of your favorite brands likes your photo enough to actually share it on their feed, that’s something most people will get excited about. It creates a sort of mutually beneficial relationship, and can turn a casual fan into an ambassador for your brand. Plus, it helps you fill your feed with great photos while saving you the time it would take to go out and shoot them yourself.
Seeing these Regrammed photos will likely prompt your other fans to start sharing more, ideally creating a cycle of available user generated content (UGC) for you to use. But how do you encourage fans to share their photos with you in the first place?
Some tips for attracting UGC on Instagram include:
Far too many brands treat the Instagram caption as an afterthought. Yes, Instagram is a visual social network and the photos matter most, but your caption is valuable real estate that you can use to prompt further engagement.
A good caption, believe it or not, probably won’t be just a few words. The best Instagrammers in the world tend to tell a story, ask a question or use fun hashtags or emojis. Spending time carefully crafting the perfect caption will bring your image to life and help your followers relate to you and your content.
Find a consistent voice. Make your life easier by coming up with some soft guidelines, such as adding a date or timestamp, or posting fitting lyrics. Are you a storyteller who writes a paragraph or do you like to use share prompts that encourage your followers to do the talking? Finding your personal voice is important and will help you when dealing with writer’s block in the future.
A photo posted by ChrisBurkard (@chrisburkard) on Nov 12, 2015 at 5:27pm PST
Monitoring what your followers are saying about the photos you post, both positive and negative is a big part of engaging your audience. Thank people for kind comments, or for tagging their friends. Actually respond to comments where people ask you questions about the photo, or about your business.
By taking the time to acknowledge them, you prove that you care about what they have to say. It doesn’t take long, but responding to comments, questions, and concerns that pop up in your Instagram feeds also creates strong brand loyalty and shows that there is a real person behind the images.
Hosting a contest can build some serious excitement around your business or brand. Instagram actually makes it pretty easy to run quick contests that will build your following and increase engagement. The only limitations are your own creativity. Think about what you’re trying to get out of a contest and then consider your options.
Here are a few different types of contests you might want to consider:
Like contests are one of the easiest to host. These simply ask users to like your photos in order to enter a contest for a prize of your choosing.
Comment contests ask followers to do slightly more work, by commenting on your photo in order to enter the contest. These contests are often framed as “tell us why you want to win this prize” or “tag three of your friends.” Asking your followers to comment or tag other Instagram users will provide you with awesome feedback as well as direct new traffic to your business’s Instagram account.
Regram contests ask those users who want to enter your contest to Regram an image, tagging your business or branded account. This way, an image of your choosing will be shared with not only your followers, but the followers of your followers. #followerception.
Photo challenge contests are a really popular type of Instagram contest. They tell users who want to enter to post one of their own photos on their personal accounts, using specific hashtags. This past summer, men’s underwear company MyPakage held an Instagram contest asking their followers to share photos using the hashtag #permissiontoplay. They explained that they were granting permissions “… to get out of class, permission to complete life goals, permission to leave your daily routine… Permission To Play.” Soon, the contest gained speed as followers (new and old) shared photos of “getting out there and being awesome.” Even after the contest ended, Instagram users have continued to use the hashtag, which has garnered over 7,200 posts.
Engage your audience on Instagram by using Hootsuite to schedule posts, monitor mentions, run contests, and more.
The post 5 Great Ways to Engage Your Audience on Instagram appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
Let’s consider a somewhat unfortunate hypothetical: your company is not the most popular color in the crayon box. You live a life where the general consensus in the high school lunchroom of the marketplace is “you can’t sit with us.” As a scenario, it’s not that hard to imagine: maybe you’re in the parking enforcement business, or you’re the market leader in super-annoying pop-up ads. Whatever. For some organizations, it’s just a fact of business that, while they have their place in the world, they’re not going to be well-loved.
As a social media marketer, running social media for a company that everybody hates is probably one of the most challenging opportunities you’ll face in your career. But there’s an upside to having so much working against you: you have a huge chance to defy your critics, or at least keep your current customers happy, and not aggravate those who aren’t your biggest fans. To help you navigate these very treacherous waters, we’ve put together the following guide.
Before we get started with the tips, it’s helpful to understand why being hated might not actually be the worst thing in the world for your brand. You’ve most likely heard the common phrase “Any publicity is good publicity,” and the same principle can apply to buzz around your company. In a piece providing advice for brands who have found newfound communities of haters, Fast Company argues “For a brand, a lot of indifference is more damaging than a little hatred—which means that you should actually find comfort that those newfound haters are simply validating the saliency of your brand.”
If your company is hated, it probably means you’ve taken some risks. If a brand isn’t one that sticks out in your mind, it’s safe to say that they’ve kept their marketing and outreach efforts relatively conservative. It’s a natural human—and professional—instinct to want to be liked, however, as Fast Company explains, “All of this concern causes us to dull the edges of our brand, keeping us from doing something that might actually stand out and be noticed.”
The last thing I would want to advise is for brands to continuously play it safe and never do anything remotely risky, but there are definitely some better ways to go about doing this. Through reflecting on the practices of some brands who have faced more backlash than most, I’ve come up with the following tips to help you run a social media strategy for a company that everybody hates.
While many brands are rightfully loathed, occasionally there are simple miscommunications that cause for widespread hatred. Sometimes, even when you’re simply clarifying and providing information, people will still hate you—or hate you even more. That’s okay. If you have taken the time to clarify and educate the pitchfork-waving masses, at least you have enabled them to construct an opinion on fact, rather than hearsay or myth. As no stranger to controversy, agricultural company Monsanto has a social media team who are continuously working with very few people rooting for them. When speaking on the SocialPros podcast, Monsanto’s online engagement coordinator Janice Person shares that a key goal of their social media strategy is to educate, saying “We need to make sure that our information, our perspective, is out there in a way that people who are interested can find it.”
A prime focus within the realm of education for this purpose, is actually knowing when to engage and provide information, and when it’s best to refrain from this course of action. Regarding Monsanto, “When dealing with some of the controversy surrounding a few of her brand’s products, Janice says that it’s not a question of how to behave; it’s a question of when to engage.” If your company spends all day simply coming up with retorts to trolls and those continuously throwing hate and insults at your brand, you aren’t spending your time wisely. Instead, use your judgement to evaluate which users would be open to actually learning about your product or service, or answering questions that would inform and help a large group of people.
If you recognize that you’re running social media for an unloved company, you have probably come to the realization that haters will find contempt with just about anything you post. However, it’s important to use your judgement and ensure that you’re not giving them extra reasons to hate or make fun of you. Our post on what people hate about brands on social media is a great resource to help you with general guidelines that will help you stay neutral, but some tips include :
While you may have accepted the fact that your company isn’t well-loved, your job as a social media manager or content marketer means that you are still required to help direct messages surrounding the company. Rather than spending all of your time responding to trolls and fruitless insults from haters on social media, use your time to develop a strategy for getting ahead of the complaints.
As one of the only companies we could find who openly discuss these challenges, Monsanto’s Janice Person spoke to Convince and Convert and explained, “It’s a fine balance between proactive and reactive. They monitor conversations on various social media outlets while also creating content allowing people to see behind the scenes in the lives of Monsanto farmers. From the Monsanto blog to the America’s Farmers campaign, the social media team makes sure to address negativity while also creating positive content surrounding the brand.”
As University of Illinois researcher Wilhelm Peekhaus explains in his paper “Monsanto Discovers New Media,” rather than constantly responding to the latest accusations surrounding the company and their practices, “Monsanto wants to open up and steer a conversation about how agriculture is going to meet the needs of the world in 2050, when, according to current population estimates, there will be 9 billion people on the planet, meaning that we will have to produce as much food in the next 50 years as we have in the past 10,000.” I’m not suggesting that you ignore genuine customer inquiries and questions, but use your judgement to politely ignore pure, unconstrained, and hopeless hate-filled content, and instead minimize any future incidences by getting ahead of the message. If your company has honest and factual positive developments, highlight these in a non-arrogant way and provide thorough and transparent information. Dispel any myths in a humble way, while recognizing that you are not going to be loved by everyone. Being loved unconditionally is overrated anyways.
The post How to Run Social Media for a Company Everybody Hates appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
Today’s customers expect to be able to reach your company and provide feedback whenever they want. Social media has become a key part of this new customer service expectation, with interactions on Twitter growing 2.5 times over the last two years.
To help businesses make the most of their customer service potential, Hootsuite is excited to be selected as an integration partner for Twitter’s new Customer Feedback feature. Coming soon, this new experience will allow businesses to collect their audience’s feedback after service interactions through standard customer satisfaction and Net Promoter® questions.
For businesses, being able to receive quick feedback on their customer service efforts is incredibly valuable—and something that Hootsuite champions. By easily capturing customer opinions on Twitter, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, increase revenue, and decrease costs. If you need further persuading, Twitter’s research has shown that:
We’re excited to integrate Twitter Customer Feedback into Hootsuite’s customer service solution to help organizations strengthen their relationships with customers. Along with Hootsuite’s help desk and CRM integrations, businesses can efficiently resolve support issues and provide their customers a seamless experience.
Twitter Customer Feedback will be available in Hootsuite soon. See how Hootsuite helps deliver more responsive social customer service and schedule a live Hootsuite demo today.
The post Hootsuite Integrates Twitter’s New Customer Feedback Feature to Improve Social Customer Service appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
University graduates who earn Hootsuite certification have a better understanding of the professional application of social media tools, concepts, and strategies for business, a recent study found.
A group of university professors and researchers examined the impact that social media certification program Hootsuite University’s certification program had on students, employers, and professors. The main findings go a long way in demonstrating the value that Hootsuite Certified graduates bring to today’s businesses.
The study, Hootsuite University: Equipping Academics and Future PR Professionals for Social Media Success, was published in the Journal of Public Relations Education, a publication “devoted to the presentation of research and commentary that advances the field of public relations education.” It explored the value to students who are enrolled in Hootsuite’s Higher Education Program in the classroom, the perceptions of employers who hire recent graduates, and the partnership between professors and Hootsuite.
Professors from five different universities worked together to research the topic.
The study authors were:
In order to study the impact of social media education, they conducted interviews with students, employers, and educators.
No one doubts that digital natives are skilled at using social media. What is becoming increasingly clear is that they need to learn how to transition the skills they use on personal accounts into the professional sphere.
Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes recently made the case that there’s a huge social media skills gap: “Nearly 90 percent of U.S. companies are currently using Twitter, Facebook, and other networks—all jockeying for their share of the estimated $1.3 trillion in value that social media stands to unlock. There’s just one small problem: The contemporary workforce is woefully ill-equipped to help companies unlock it… The clearest culprit is the breakneck proliferation of new platforms and features… At the same time, how social media is used in the workplace is fundamentally changing… Reports of social media gaffes and blunders in the workplace are still routine. Meanwhile, the real price of the skills gap often goes unnoticed—billions of dollars in missed opportunities and lost revenue.”
Study author and Syracuse University professor William Ward concurs that the skills gap is a pressing issue.
Ward explains: “The real problem is that we expect people to know these skills without providing any training. Social media know-how isn’t something you just pick up as a casual user. And it isn’t just older employees who are in the dark—millennial hires need training, too. Because somebody grows up being a social media native, it doesn’t make them an expert in using social media at work. That’s like saying, ‘I grew up with a fax machine, so that makes me an expert in business.’”
The study found that social media education empowered students, giving them the tools they needed to be successful.
In the paper’s conclusion, the authors wrote: “[Some students] felt the training they received from Hootsuite University not only empowered them, but gave them the confidence needed to become a leader within their organization.”
Of the students who responded to the post-certification survey, 82 percent indicated that they thought their Hootsuite University social media education would help them in their job search.
Emily Maher, one of the students interviewed for the paper, became a reporter for Hearst Television after graduating. Her Hootsuite University training became useful very soon after beginning her new job: “[Within] the first six to eight months I was there, they started using Hootsuite at work. Everyone else had a learning curve, so I was already ahead of the game.”
Another grad quoted in the study, Alex Ptachick, went on to work with USA Today’s social media team. She summed up the value of the training: “There’s really nothing quite like Hootsuite University in the sense that someone is actually telling you what to do, how to do it, and why it’s important that it’s done.”
Adelyn Biendenbach, director of digital for the Florida Panthers hockey team, explained how applicable Hootsuite training is to her position: “I use it for social listening to see every Tweet from and about our players and prospects. The season at a pro-sports team really is year-round with long hours and crazy busy days. I was able to so quickly jump into and adapt to this atmosphere because of the extensive training I already had in the Hootsuite software.”
Hootsuite was thrilled for our social media education to be the focus of this study. In addition to product training and certification through Hootsuite University, Hootsuite offers free social media education through Podium. Hootsuite has also partnered with industry and academic leaders on certifications, including the Advanced Social Media Strategy Certification with Syracuse University and the Social Media Basics Certificate for Healthcare with Mayo Clinic.
Learn more about Hootsuite’s social media education offerings today!
The post Social Media Education Empowers the Next Generation of Marketing Mavens appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
At this point in your career, you might be feeling as if you’ve read everything you could possibly ever read about using social media for your business. However, the very nature of the industry means that networks and platforms are constantly evolving and changing. News and tips become outdated so quickly and regularly, making the role of a content marketer one of continuous re-learning and re-mastering previously understood techniques.
Because it exists in an almost constant state of change (often for the better),using Twitter for your business will mean keeping yourself up to date on all of the changes taking hold in 2016. With new features focusing on up-and-coming trends and best practices, the following guide will help you stay ahead of the curve—no professors required.
Sometimes the message you are trying to convey cannot accurately be described by words alone. Thankfully, the popularity of emojis, memes, and GIFs has skyrocketed, making the inclusion of such visual messages practically a language of their own.
As a animated images, GIFs add an extra touch to certain messages and can usually add a feeling or emotion that words alone cannot. Recognizing the power of the GIF, Twitter recently announced GIF search—a feature that will allow users to search a GIF library provided by GIPHY and Riffsy and easily include their chosen GIF in direct messages and Tweets. While your brand’s Twitter account might have previously included solely text or static images, 2016 will be filled with GIF-centric content. That new features announcement you’re going to Tweet about can now include a GIF of a surprised panda—an image that will appeal to your audience’s attention span and emotions more than a text-only Tweet could.
We were lucky enough to have GIPHY join us for a #HootChat recently, and they shared the following three key tips for using GIFS, all of which can be applied to your business’ Twitter strategy in 2016.
1. Context is key: Now that you can easily search and include GIFs in your Twitter content, it’s tempting to just choose the first one that catches your eye to include alongside your content. However, as we explained previously, “Before you share anything, you should make sure that you know what that context is so that you don’t accidentally share a GIF that definitely doesn’t mean what you thought it did.” In 2016, everything has the potential to become a GIF (and I mean everything), so ensure that you’re not sharing moments from potentially awkward sources. If you can’t explain the context of a certain GIF to your parents, you might want to refrain from including it alongside your branded Twitter content.
2. Avoid being too casual: While it’s tempting to continuously use that Step Brothers bunk bed GIF (eight years old, by the way), if you’re continuously being purely silly through your image selection you run the risk of alienating certain audience members. As the GIPHY team explained to us, “It’s like reciting movie quotes. When someone uses the perfect GIF, it’s entertaining…[But] when a brand gets too meme-y or ‘hip with the kids,’ it’s time to get off the internet.” As we explain, you can use GIFs to animate data, add life to potentially boring content, showcase your product or service, and for a myriad other non-slapstick comedy purposes.
3. Skip the overly branded content: This is a given, but in 2016 your audience is savvy and can usually immediately recognize overly-salesy content. With technology today making it easier than ever to create a custom GIF for your company, it can be tempting to splash your logo or motto everywhere. Instead, as GIPHY advises, “keep it simple and skip the over-done branding in favor of a mini logo in the corner, some subtle product placement, or no official branding at all.”
It’s 2016, and companies are finally starting to recognize the immense power they have in their own employees. In a post our own Ryan Holmes wrote declaring five trends that will change how companies use social media in 2016, employee advocacy was one of the top five. As Holmes explains, “Employee social advocacy programs, which encourage staff to share updates about the business on their own social media accounts, have grown by 191 percent since 2013 and are due to take off in the year ahead.”
Twitter is an ideal network for employee advocacy initiatives. Emphasizing this, Ad Week explains, “All Tweets are public, and easily amplified across audience segments—making it ideal for employee messages to reach potential customers.” The goal here is not to hijack your employees Twitter accounts or monitor them to ensure that their accounts are scrubbed to a corporate sheen, but rather to give them the resources so that when your business does have positive news to share, they can easily do so. In fact, one could argue that having a non-sanitized Twitter account makes audience members listen more, and in turn trust an employee’s messages much more. As Holmes explains, “Content shared by employees, by one recent measure, gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels.”
If you want to make the process of sharing messages of advocacy to Twitter and other social networks as effortless as possible, Hootsuite’s Amplify facilitates employee sharing and enables them to “build their professional brand, share content with their networks, and stay on top of the stories and news resonating across different departments, divisions, and regions.” In 2016 (and beyond), Twitter will be a hotbed for employee advocacy initiatives, and tools such as Amplify help make this as easy on businesses as possible.
If you aren’t already doing this, social media customer service is something to consider seriously for your business in 2016. With 80 percent of social customer service interactions taking place there, Twitter is the perfect place for this. With two new customer service tools being introduced by the platform in 2016, it’s obvious that Twitter takes their role as a social feedback hub seriously. These tools, Customer Feedback and a Direct Message prompt feature, make social customer service through Twitter as seamless as possible.
When using Twitter for your business as a customer service tool, it’s important to know when to take the conversation offline, as well as make the process as easy for your customers as possible. With the DM prompt feature, “A business can now add a deep link to their Tweets that automatically displays a call to action button, which allows the customer to send the business a Direct Message, quickly and easily.” Respond to any inquiries you receive through this feedback tool as soon as you can, as you want to ensure you are doing everything in your power to help your customers and enhance their perception of your business.
The second new feature being introduced by Twitter in 2016 will allow your customers to privately share their opinions of your business with you—incredibly valuable information that can help shape your future strategies. After a customer service interaction, you will be able to send your customer a survey using “two industry standard question formats: Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS®) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).” You will also be able to export this information, which is a highly valuable feature offering you a goldmine of information about your business. To help your business make the most of social media customer service efforts in 2016, “we’re excited to integrate Twitter Customer Feedback into Hootsuite’s customer service solution.”
Now that you’ve seen the ways you can use Twitter in 2016 and beyond, discover how Hootsuite can put these lessons into practice.
The post How to Use Twitter for Business in 2016 and Beyond appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
There are many occasions in life where you will hear or be given the same advice over and over again. Often, this advice is conflicting and you feel as if you’d have been better off not hearing anything at all. The moment you get engaged, you’ll hear all of the reasons for having a large wedding, as well as why a small, more intimate gathering is best. Announce your pregnancy, and you’ll hear unsolicited advice on everything from whether you should find out your baby’s sex to whether you should use pain medication during the birth. As a social media manager or content marketer—yes, I’m comparing marketing to giving birth—you can probably relate to the feeling of trying to sift through an overwhelming amount of advice.
As someone who stays up to date on social media news and best practices, you have probably heard some form of the following pieces of advice. With a focus on staying critical of all popular opinion, I challenge these commonly shared tips.
One of the most popular topics in the social media marketing world (and the actual world) surrounds the number of followers one has. While there is a grain of truth to perceptions around an official social media account having enough followers to support their authority, if all you are concentrating on is the number of followers your brand’s account has, you are most likely missing huge opportunities for growth.
The success of your organization’s social media strategy should not be focused on the quantity of followers you have, but rather the quality of these followers. If you approach your plan with the aims of increasing engagement amongst your followers however, you will naturally see this community grow. I have too often heard people get worked up and obsessed with how many followers they have, or companies using this number as an indication of whether their social media strategies are successful. This is misguided, and can lead to not only missed opportunities for community growth as mentioned above, but to questionable practices such as purchasing followers. What’s more embarrassing for your brand—Having under a certain number of followers, or getting caught buying followers? The answer here is clear.
When I was on the job hunt, one of the top pieces of advice I heard was to scrub my social media accounts clean. Keep everything super professional and conventional, unless you never want to find that dream job. As someone who was using my Twitter account to post ridiculous quotes from my dad, feminist and social justice articles, and countless photos of cute animals, my account wasn’t exactly working as a purely professional resume.
However, I was told shortly after being hired that my Twitter presence actually helped rather than hurt my chances of getting the job. In having an online presence that wasn’t super sterile, my future employer was able to recognize that I had a personality and a (debatable) sense of humor.
It’s also a widespread belief that when you actually have the job, your social media accounts should act as a reflection of your most professional self. Many imply the belief that one should not post anything that even remotely suggests you have a life outside of work. All that you do is think of marketing plans, KPIs, and content strategies, right? Obviously, wrong. Your followers know that your life is not 24/7 work, and to suggest anything otherwise comes across as inauthentic. Our own Ryan Holmes even wrote a comprehensive piece on the subject, Why employees shouldn’t have to sanitize their social media accounts, where he explains “People have private lives outside the office—lives full of family, friends, goofy selfies, bar nights, and all the rest. Why, then, do we insist employees’ social media accounts reflect some buttoned-down ideal of an office drone? Honesty in the workplace means moving beyond that and understanding that employees are people first.” Of course, I trust it’s understood this doesn’t mean posting a racist rant, sharing prejudiced beliefs, or inappropriate content on your accounts. As Holmes states, “There’s no reason a company or organization should tolerate racist or insensitive content shared by its employees.” Use your judgment, but let your personality and interests show.
While this advice is usually presented as common sense, it’s truthfully more of a knee-jerk reaction. Although it’s understandable that you may naturally feel that it is best to immediately delete or hide any kind of negativity aimed at your brand on social media, complaints or insults (when respectful and without offensive language or content) can act as a great source of information. If, for example, a customer complains that the flowers they had delivered arrived looking less than perfect, your company has a wonderful opportunity to showcase your stellar customer service skills. As we explain in our post about what not to do on social media, a negative comment enables you to:
Here, when you reply to the negative comment and offer a remedy that goes above and beyond, you are publicly highlighting your organization’s dedication to their customers, as well as allowing transparency. If you saw a branded social media account or page that had only 100 percent positive and gushing comments or interactions, you’d start to get suspicious and probably not fully trust the sources. Through responding to legitimate complaints and fair negativity in a respectful and helpful way, you are adding value and authenticity to your organization.
Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a real thing and can be hard to ignore when you keep hearing about the newest and greatest social media networks. The truth is that if you’re looking to grow and nurture your social media presence, you don’t need to immediately jump on every social media network bandwagon. The quality over quantity principle rings truer than ever here, as it’s much better to have a consistent, reliable, and engaging presence on a select number of key social media networks rather than trying to do the same on too many and failing. As our previous post on how to manage your social media presence explains, there are three key ways that trying to be present on every platform can do more harm than good.
If someone follows you on Instagram or Twitter, they expect that you will be posting regularly and with valuable content. If your last Instagram post was 58 weeks ago, your followers will notice this and question the legitimacy of your accounts and the trustworthiness of your business.
With social media customer service becoming more common and expected by the day, if you aren’t keeping up to date and active on any of your channels, you are inviting the possibility of missing and seemingly ignoring customer inquiries. As we previously explained, “By ignoring your online audience’s feedback you risk not only losing those customers, but also failing to address the potential hurdles in your services or product development. Not paying attention to your online audience can cause you to lose followers on your social networks, and even potential customers.”
As a result of these factors, you risk your brand’s online reputation being damaged. As we explain, “Decreased attention means a higher chance of committing one of many social media faux pas that could seriously threaten your brand’s reputation.” With the aim of an organization’s social media being to enhance a reputation and engage with customers, if you can’t satisfy these two key areas it might be time to rethink your current strategy.
With all of this said, my main piece of advice would be to question everything. I don’t mean this in a tinfoil hat-wearing way, but as a suggestion to always think critically about information you see, read, and hear and use your own judgment. All businesses are different, so test out various pieces of advice and find what works best for your specific industry and brand.
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The post Popular Social Media Advice That You Shouldn’t Follow appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
Unlike influencers, brand advocates don’t have to be hugely influential individuals with gigantic social media followings. They can be anyone who happens to love your brand or product. Simply put, brand advocates (also known as customer advocates) are people who invest their time and reputation to support and promote your brand. They’re your biggest fans and they want to be a part of your brand for reasons ranging from a love of free swag to their efforts to build their own personal (or professional) brand by association.
The best part? Your brand likely already has potential advocates—you just need to find them and activate their potential.
Image via Influitive
Advocate marketing expert Cassandra Jowett, senior content marketing manager at Influitive (and Hootsuite Ambassador), recently joined us for an engaging #HootChat about advocate marketing. Here are three interesting insights she shared that could help you grow your own community of advocates for your business.
“Start in the obvious places: high NPS scores, [people] who say positive things about you on social, [are] satisfied with support, etc.” wrote Jowett in a series of Tweets for Influitive. “Also ask your sales and customer success reps, get existing advocates to refer to their peers—you can always find new advocates.”
Before you can ask anything of your advocates, you need to have some. There are lots of ways to find advocates, but essentially you want to look for people who’ve had a good experience with your brand. Influitive recommends starting with customers who have high net-promoter scores (NPS), which means they’d be likely to recommend your brand to others. They also suggest approaching customers who’ve received customer support and were happy with the experience.
Of course, Social media listening is a great way to find potential brand advocates. Search for people who are saying good things about your brand online, whether they’re sending messages directly to your brand, reviewing your brand or product on sites like Yelp, or simply mentioning it in a positive light in their own posts. You can also look for people who engage with your brand on social, such as followers who frequently Retweet, like, comment on, or share your posts. While they may not be as vocal as those who talk about your brand on social, they’re likely loyal and supportive followers and you don’t want to overlook them.
Image via Influitive eBook on advocate marketing
Then, do the opposite: look for your brand’s critics. As Jillian Wood explains in an Influitive blog post: “Customers who constantly sing your praises are nice, but in order to truly grow as a company you have to know your weaknesses. And who better to discuss your weak points than customers who aren’t afraid to point them out?” You may find that your biggest critics are actually critical because they support your brand. Plus, if you listen to and (when applicable) act on their feedback, you could turn them into brand champions.
And, last but not least, don’t forget to use the resources within your company: ask the employees who deal most often with your brand’s customers (such as sales and customer service representatives) about potential advocates. If your company runs an education program, that can be an excellent place to find brand advocates. And, of course, if you already have some existing advocates, ask them to refer their peers.
Image via Influitive
Still looking for ideas? Influitive has a great blog post that details five surprising places to find top brand advocates. And you may want to consider creating advocate personas (and no, they’re not the same as buyer personas) to help you find more advocates moving forward.
“Start with simple, easy-to-do activities so they can flex their advocacy muscle—Tweets, comments, feedback, shares, etc.” wrote Jowett in a series of Tweets for Influitive. “Some advocates will stop there, that’s fine. Others will want more. Ask [and] listen to find out what those super advocates want. Nurture those advocates toward slightly bigger requests that ‘cost’ more time, effort, [and] reputation—be clear about benefits.”
Once you have a pool of advocates to dip into, you need to activate them. But how?
In an advocate marketing ebook, Influtive recommends making sure that your advocates always have access to at least 10 activities, or ‘asks,’ to choose from at any given time. Some options you can include are:
Use the ‘rule of thirds’ to provide a mix of asks, education, and fun challenges—like photo caption contests or trivia challenges—for your brand advocates to engage with.
“The best [advocate marketing] programs are beneficial for both your brand and your advocates—not just one-sided taketaketake,” wrote Jowett in a series of Tweets for Influitive. “[A] huge mistake [is] focusing too much on your brand’s objectives and not enough on your advocates’ goals. If your number one priority isn’t the advocate experience, you’re doing [advocate marketing] wrong. Plain and simple. Find ways to recognize folks who are already advocates. Say THANK YOU. Surprise [and] delight with small tokens of appreciation.”
So you’ve got some brand advocates and you’ve given them a few asks. Now what?
It’s crucial to make sure that your brand advocacy program isn’t all about your brand. It may sound counterintuitive (after all, your goal is to market your brand), but if all you ever ask of your advocates is that they promote your brand through reviews, messages, etc. you’ll very likely find that pool of advocates drying up.
Image via Influitive
You need to think about your advocates’ needs as well as your brand’s when you set up an advocate program. Create a mutually beneficial relationship with your advocates and they’ll keep coming back. You may be wondering just how to do that. The answer lies in providing value. Make it worth your advocates’ time to participate in your program.
Influitive talks about a framework of four powerful motivators that can guide how you reward your brand advocates: status, access, power, and stuff. The categories form the acronym SAPS.
Advocates will be motivated by different things. Find out what those motivators are and reward them accordingly:
Status: These advocates want to be recognized by others. They often verge on influencer status, with larger networks of their own and the power to influence others.
Image via Influitive
In addition to recognizing different advocate needs and rewarding them accordingly, one thing you may want to consider doing that would serve as a perk for a variety of brand advocates is building a community. As Adam Gerard explains in an Influitive blog post: “ Advocacy isn’t just between you and a customer. You’ll multiply your results if you build a community where your advocates can hang out, trade ideas, and learn from each other.”
Use Hootsuite to find and engage your brand advocates. Sign up today!
The post 3 Things You Should Know About Advocate Marketing According to an Expert appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.
