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Social Video Marketing 101

Most social marketers we know fall into one of two camps:

  1. Have resources; integrate video strongly into social marketing strategy
  2. Don’t have enough resources; know they should integrate video more strongly into their social marketing strategy

Whichever camp you fall into, this guide offers actionable ways to bring video and a measurement framework into your brand’s social marketing plan.

Download the guide to learn:

  • How to integrate video (including emerging channels like Instagram Stories and Facebook Live) into your strategy, if you’re not already and have limited resources
  • How to improve your already-existing social video strategy
  • The correct measurement framework for your brand’s social video program

…and tons more. Download the guide today!

Bring video into the fold.

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Download the Guide

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Simply Measured Inc. — 2211 Elliott AVE Suite 310, Seattle Washington 98121 United States

How to Build an Audience-Aligned Social Marketing Strategy

How to Build an Audience-Aligned Social Marketing Strategy

How do you build an audience-aligned social marketing strategy from the ground up? With a solid understanding of your target audience, how to reach them, and the right measurement strategies in place to track your progress.

Here’s our tried-and-true process for making sure your social media campaigns do what they are supposed to.

1. Start with Personas

Begin with your personas. You likely don’t have just one target audience, or persona. You have multiple. Build these out and support your personas with social data from a listening solution, so you have real-time intel on what each demographic likely to buy your product is talking about and cares about.

With information about where each persona spends the most time, you’ll know how to target each persona differently, and on which social channels. You’ll know which times are best to post for your brand and industry for each persona, and you’ll even be able to do competitive research for inspiration and education.

All of this information will give you an intimate knowledge of your persona(s), and a jump start on putting together creative, effective social campaigns. 

2. Read the Metrics Map

Now that you know your target audience(s) inside and out, it’s time to to figure out where you want to target them on the buyer’s journey. Our Social Metrics Map is a great place to start.

Metrics MapSimply choose the stages of the buyer’s journey that your marketing team is most focused on right now, and align them with the objective, strategy, social activity, KPI’s, and business impact you see above.

3. Learn the Latest Approaches

You probably have heard a huge uptick in conversation about Facebook Groups and community engagement on Facebook. Why?

In Q4 2017, Facebook made algorithm changes to surface less viral video content in an effort to reduce “time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day.” Citing the recent division and anxiety in our world, Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to make sure Facebook is beneficial “for people’s well-being and for society overall.” This means the following:

  • “You will now see more content from friends, family, and groups that lead you to interact with people, and less public content that leads to more overall time spent.” Facebook users are now more likely to see user—not brand—content (which sparks comments and conversation), rather than branded videos (which receive a ton of likes or views).
    • What you can do about it: Start a Facebook Group around your brand, or a challenge that your brand has organized for its devotees, like a fitness challenge. Add this component to your next integrated campaign, and don’t use it as a sales tool—use it as an audience development tool.
Examples from the Flywheel Facebook Group

Another approach you can use on Facebook is “Invite to Like,” an action which is likely to show up in user notifications.

Some guidelines for this approach:

  • Don’t use this tactic unless you have a lot of strong content on your Facebook page. You don’t want to lead Facebook users to a location that misrepresents your brand and/or doesn’t deliver appealing content.
  • Leverage influencers big and small, as well as your personal network. Use influencers and your own personal network as a conduit towards lookalike audiences.  
  • Complement with paid. Like any social strategy today, you must complement with ads.

You’ll also notice in the notifications tab above that most my notifications came from offline events hosted by brands I’ve Liked in the past. Investing in offline events (or highlighting ones you’re already throwing and/or partnering with) is a good way to keep your brand top-of-mind with followers.

Did you know these facts about Instagram Stories?

  • More than 25 million Instagram Business accounts produce Instagram Stories
  • One in five organic Stories from businesses gets a direct message
  • More than half of Instagram’s 500 million daily active users are on Stories
  • Daily use of Instagram Stories surpasses Snapchat

If you found that your audience is on Instagram in the persona research you did back in Step 1, you should definitely invest in an Instagram Stories strategy. Here’s how.

4. Incorporate Paid

The biggest difference between Google ads and social ads is the type of traffic they generate. People who click Google ads are actively looking to buy, while people on social are in browse mode and may take longer to decide to buy.

Instead of running a social ad campaign that’s immediately focused on purchasing, it’s better to create additional experiences for your website visitors.

The first paid strategy I recommend employing is a simple nurture funnel. Launch several campaigns with different objectives to create your own ad funnel. This is what a simple nurture funnel would look like on Facebook.

Step 1: Invest in video

Step 2: Create a post engagement campaign targeting your ideal customer to create initial connection. Monitor and optimize campaign until it reaches 3K views.

Step 3: Create a traffic or conversion campaign targeting those who viewed at least 25% of your video. Visitors who exposed to your messages previously are 3-5 times more likely to conver than cold traffic.

The second important part of a rudimentary paid strategy is to use your customer and/or email list to create lookalike audiences to target on paid. This will ensure you are getting the biggest bang for your buck. On Facebook, you can upload an entire customer file to do this.

5. Label Your Content + Track Your Progress

Measurement should be threaded through all your social media efforts, so you can optimize as you go along. That said, here I will focus on end-of-campaign measurement. I will begin with content labeling.

Content labeling is a social marketer’s secret weapon. It tells you which content works best for your brand. For instance, let’s take the Trader Joe’s example below.

If Trader Joe’s labeled their content, they would know the answers to questions like:

  • Do pictures of food or pictures of influencers perform better?
  • Do recipes or product shots perform better?
  • Which captions best resonate with our audience?
  • Do videos featuring customers or videos featuring influencers perform better?
  • Does UGC or studio-composed content perform better?

And basically any other question. This takes the guesswork out of their strategy, so their social team can be creative, efficient, and test easily.

And remember: Always. Be. Measuring. 

8 Tips To Organize Your Business

a Hub blog Organizing in RI

GUEST Blog! We are SO excited to share some fantastic tips on how to get organized by RI’s Organization Guru, Kristin MacRae of Organizing In RI, LLC in this month’s Guest Blog! Check it out and be sure to follow (and use) this rockstar to get yourself organized so you can rock 2017!

Whether you’re starting a home based business, a start-up, or you’re already established, you need to read this article.  If you’re disorganized, you’re going to create more work for yourself and you aren’t going to work at your fullest potential.  In order to maintain organization in your office, you’ll need to have systems in place for processing day to day functions.

Here are 8 systems you’ll need:  

Process your mail. Many people have difficulty with paper management. Most have difficulty setting up and following through with a system.  I can’t stress this enough: Process your mail every day.  As soon as you touch it, either file it, attach to your to- do list to take care of during the week, shred it or handle it right away. It will be easier to take 5 minutes and tackle it when it arrives than to spend hours on it at the end of the month.

Process your email.  Create categorized folders. Have a process to handle an email as soon as you open it. Treat it just as you would treat your physical mail. Decide whether to send it to a folder, trash it, act on it, or print it and attach it to your to-do list.

Work with a to-do list. Keep a daily to-do list. Make a to-do list every night before you leave work. You’ll know exactly what you need to do when you arrive to work the next day. This process will keep you on track with your day. Clear the mental clutter by getting things out of your head and onto paper. The less clutter you’re carrying around in your mind, the better.

Filing systems.  Without filings systems, piles will form and chaos will ensue. If you need to locate an important paper, you should be able to locate it in less than 10 seconds. Keep files that you utilize on a daily basis close to you. Files that you use less frequently, you can keep in another area of the office. I’ve seen many important business deals that fell through, found significant sums of money and very important documents in piles of papers on desks because business owners didn’t have filing systems in place.

Keep track of your bills. If you’re receiving bills through the mail, create a system where the bills aren’t lying around on your desk buried under papers. Incorporate due dates into your calendar to remind you to pay and file immediately after you pay them.

Business cards. Every business owner I work with has issues with business cards.  You must develop a system to file your business cards. Whether it is through electronics or good old rolodex, or a binder with clear card inserts, you must have a system. Be realistic, how often do you refer to them?

Workspace.  Have a place for everything at your desk. Only keep items you use on a daily basis on your desk top.  Have an organized pile that you need to work on the next day with your to-do list on top of the pile. Try to avoid having a corkboard at your desk with too much information pinned to it. Less is more. Utilize drawer organizers and organizing supplies to keep you organized.

Time management.  Be as efficient and productive as you can be. If you’re a disorganized person, you have to get organized in order to have great time management skills. Take a look at your physical space, get organized and then you’ll realize that your time management skills may fall into place. Look at the way you function. I’m always trying to find an easier way to do something. How long does it take you to complete a task? Can you take it from 8 steps to 4?

Just because your fellow business owners have a smooth system that works for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. Evaluate how you function and create a system that works for you. The more complicated the system, the more likely it is to failure. Keep the system simple and streamlined. Many offices I work with have made attempts at getting organized, but the systems have failed and a new attempt at another system was never made. Once you create a system, re-visit the system in a couple of months and tweak what isn’t working to make it work better for you.

Kristin M. MacRae, Organizing & Efficiency Expert, Owner, Organizing In RI, LLC

Stop Whining, Start Blogging

hub-class-2

Don’t want to blog? We don’t CARE! (Ok, we do care, but hear us out). It doesn’t matter if you don’t like blogging. You HAVE to do it anyways! Blogging is one of the MOST effective things you can do to promote your business online.

– Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages in Google than those that do not.
– Marketers who use blogs get 67% more leads that those that don’t.
– 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before purchasing or contacting a company.

And in order to help you, we’ve officially launched our newest class, “Stop Whining, Start Blogging”. We’re sharing some of our biggest blogging secrets and walking you step-by-step through our best practices to guarantee you’ll be successful!  Click here to learn more about this class.

 

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