Why You Should Give A 'Dan' about #SocialMedia (1/30/17)

'Social Media Monday' will be a weekly blog I do regarding the latest trends and ideas happening in social media. I look forward to learning more about the industry, as well as help you, the reader, learn how to better use social media in your personal and professional life.

How To Get Results on LinkedIn Without Breaking the Bank (via: NUVI)

Important points to remember:

It's Powerful, But How Do You Use It?

“LinkedIn boasts the highest concentration of educated professionals on social media, all of whom self-specify personal information such as industry, position title, educational background, and geographical information to get the most out of their experience on the site. The abundance of professional, categorizable information creates many options for detailed targeting and makes it easy for advertisers to build relationships with target prospects.”

Why this is important: LinkedIn is a powerful professional tool that allows us to connect with business leaders all over the world. I have been heavily involved in LinkedIn for several years and through different jobs as I built connections and professional relationships with business leaders from the c-suite level, all the way down. This helped me significantly to create new business opportunities, as well as share ideas and learn from others.

What Are The Two Different Kind Of LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn includes several different ad opportunities. To get started, I suggest you visit the LinkedIn Ads page. These different ads allow you to create your own budget, pay by clicks or impressions.

Some of the different ads include:

• Sponsored Content: Your content is displayed in front of a larger group of people than your following.
• Sponsored InMail: This type of ad reaches LinkedIn Inboxes of those most likely to interact with your business. You can target these ads for different groups.
• Dynamic Ads: Created based on the actions of platform users, these ads create personalized displays that attract users.
• Display Ads: Meant to build brand awareness and keep people thinking about your business, display ads run a desktop display campaigns.
• Text Ads: This is the least expensive, and most self-created option. These are simple text ads that appear on the site.

The second type of ad on LinkedIn is the direct ad. An indirect ad is content. By developing news and articles, as well as using the website to connect with others puts yourself and your brand in front of a lot of people who will likely become your customers.

Why this is important: LinkedIn ads can be VERY affective as the platform is designed and built for business, meaning business leaders and professionals are seeing your ads every single day. By creating the right ads, either direct or indirect, you have the opportunity to reach the professional customers you are looking for.

How to Find Your Audience on LinkedIn

We must first remember that LinkedIn is a B2B market. To find your audience and customers, you first must ask specific questions:

• Who is your ideal customer?
• Who do you want to engage with on the site?
• What industry and type of business is your buyer in?
• What level of authority does your buyer need to have?
• What things set your potential buyers apart from non-buyers? What traits can you exclude?

Targeting through LinkedIn is a great place to start. You can design and target your ads to reach a specific group.

“As the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising industry goes, LinkedIn Ads is the angsty teenager – it’s immature and difficult to work with at times, but the targeting is hands-down the best for reaching business-facing customers, and it exposes your ads to the most qualified traffic from any source. In short, it’s a gold mine if you can figure it out.” (AJ Wilcox)

Best Practices for Images and Copy on LinkedIn

• Set up a Sponsored Ad. You’ll have 600 characters to use and room for an image.
• For those promoting direct sponsored content, you only really have 160 characters. More than that will not show up on the company page for your business.
• For the best results, target your ads based on job function, job title, or education.
• For Text Ads, add an image that’s no larger than 50 by 50. Then, add a 25-character headline and another 75 characters for content that describes your ad.
• No using overly sales words like “Free.” It will just get pulled down. You can create 15 variations of each text ad.
• Your content needs to really showcase what you have to say. That is, why is this piece different than all the others on the site?

Why this is important: Images and content are still king. How your ad or post looks is a majority, if not all, of the battle. A ad that is clean, professional, and includes an appropriate call to action has the power to convince even the stiffest of professionals to click on your ad.

Benchmarks for Good Ads: How You’ll Know You Are Doing Well

Now to the most important question, 'how are you doing?' This can be very difficult to measure and track. To understand if our ads are doing well, NUVI suggests we focus on a few key areas:

• Clicks – Who clicked, how they clicked, and what they did
• Click through rate – The number of people who went into the piece
• Average cost per click – How much each of those clicks cost you
• Social actions – When an individual shares, comments, or promotes your content

Why this is important: If you can accurately measure your ads performance, as well as your own strategy and execution, you can learn and build off of what works. You can also create highly effective ads over and over again. Success doesn't come easy. Be prepared and ready to do a lot of legwork and research to get the right format for your industry.

What Bloggers Can Teach You About Marketing On Pinterest (via: NUVI)

I'll be the first to admit that it has taken me YEARS to embrace Pinterest and realize the true potential it has in a business environment. I am disappointed that I did not embrace the social platform sooner. If you are not on Pinterest, here are some BIG numbers you are missing out on. (via: SocialPilot)

• The site has more than 110 million users and 176 million accounts
• 83% of those using the site say they would rather follow a brand than a celebrity
• Users spend 98 minutes a month on the site

What Type of Content Does Well On Pinterest?

“Unlike other social networks, where people mostly share things that have already happened, most of the pins on Pinterest are about things people want to do or achieve. The word “dream” is commonly found on Pinterest, especially in board titles, such as dream wedding, dream vacation, dream wardrobe and even dream man cave.” (Cynthia Sanches)

Why this is important: Pinterest is a very visual and creative social network which means all pins need to be visually engaging to the audience. This can be difficult in a platform that focuses on visual content.

How to Target Your Audience on Pinterest

As with LinkedIn in the article above, you need to ask specific questions before deciding who to target.

• Who is your end customer and target viewer? Be specific about age and other demographics.
• What is this person looking for on the site? Generally, this will be ideas, inspiration, solutions to problems, and new opportunities.
• What do you want the individual to do? Ensure your boards showcase your products or services primarily so they know where to go.

Unlike other social platforms, more than half of Pinterest users do so to shop. This creates a unique opportunity to promote your products.

Pinterest Ads Manager is a great tool to help create targeted audiences for your next campaign. You can target these groups in three ways:

• Create a customer list that targets potential customers using mobile ad IDs and emails.
• Create visitor retargeting to reach people who have already come to your website.
• Use lookalike targeting to create a bigger reach by choosing people that are much like and act like your current audience.

Why this is important: As stated above, with over 50% of users looking to shop and purchase products, Pinterest creates a unique opportunity to get more bang for your buck in advertising and targeting on the platform.

Best Practices for Ad Images, Videos, and Copy on Pinterest

• Optimize your boards: Keep boards appealing and neat. They need to have titles that offer information, but each board needs an image as well. Pick a board’s name based on what a person looking for that content might use.
• Optimize your pins: Every pin you add to the board needs to provide some quality of information. You need to ensure you incorporate SEO into these pins to help search engines to find it.
• Size matters: When creating a pin on the site, choose vertically oriented pins first. These tend to stand out better because they work better with mobile screens. You’ll find that this also helps create a neater board.
• Image quality: Never use pins with photos that are anything but ideal. They need to be sharp and well composed. Investing in professional photography really does matter here.
• Create engaging descriptions: People click for the photo, but they read the description and take action. Be sure you create a clear description that’s actionable.
• Video: Promoted Videos on Pinterest are new and they have a great deal of power to them. Create videos that promote how-to tutorials or inspirational messages. Keep products front-and-center, but ensure the video offers a message. Promoted Video ads are getting four times as much attention – lifting brands much higher.

Why this is important: With visual presentation being the MOST important aspect to Pinterest, it is critical that your images, videos and copy are nearly perfect. With so many other professionals all fighting for attention on Pinterest, it is worth the time, money and effort to create effective ads, pins, and targets.

Mind-Blowing Stats About Snapchat (via: CMO)

Snapchat has been unbelievable in it's growth and engagement, and it has surly cashed in on the popularity. As an active Snapchat user, I find the app addicting, engaging, and about as 'real-time' as it gets!

Below are some interesting stats about the rapid growth of Snapchat:

• In the past 12 months, awareness of snapchat among Americans 12 and older grew from 60% to 71%.
• Snapchat has more users than twitter, pinterest, or linkedin.
• Sixty percent of snapchat’s daily users contribute content to the platform.
• Snapchat users share 9,000 snaps (photos) per second.
• Snapchat’s daily video views have increased 400% year over year.
• Twenty-two percent of ad excepts plan to advertise on the $20 billion-valued app.
• Snapchat ads are seen anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million times per day.
• Snapchat user stories fuel 10 billion daily video views.
• Sixty percent of snapchat’s monthly U.S. users are aged 13-24.
• Sixty-five percent of Snapchat users upload their own photos daily.

It's important to remember that since this post, these numbers have already increased! That is how quickly Snapchat is growing! Now if someone could just find one of those Snapchat bots and send me a pair!

NFL, 'Walking Dead' Light Up Social Media On Sunday Nights (via: Forbes)

If you're like me, then you are a fan of the 'two-screen' phenomenon going on right now. It seems that any time there is a sporting event, television program, or reality series airing, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of social media conversations happening at the same time. I find it very useful and entertaining to follow the conversation surrounding sporting events. I am able to find deeper insights as well as recognize ideas during these events. Forbes recently wrote an article about the power of social media surrounding live programs and Sunday specifically.

Between Sunday Night Football and The Walking Dead, Sunday is the biggest night for social engagement around television"

• 43% of weekly Facebook & 33% of weekly Twitter activity occurred on Sunday in 2016.
• These posts, tweets, likes, comments and shares contributed to a daily average of 14.2 million social media interactions about TV across Facebook and Twitter in the U.S. this past Fall, according to Nielsen's Social Media Report.
• When a Facebook friend posts about a TV show, for example, it will get an average of four engagements.This translated to a daily average of 11.8 million TV-related interactions on Facebook from 5.9 million people this past Fall.
• An average of 681,000 people in the U.S. interacted (tweeted, retweeted, replied and shared) with TV-related content each day on Twitter this fall, which amounted to an average of 2.4 million daily interactions. Only 81% of this engagement comes about organically, while 19% is pushed by owned content, be it a football player's personal account or a TV-show's official handle.

Why this is important: Brands and companies have an opportunity to penetrate these conversations and jump into the action as they aim to interact with potential customers on social media. Have you ever seen a company or brand use a hashtag surrounding a sporting event or television program at the same time you are watching? Of course you have. This opportunity allows businesses to better connect with their target audience because they are engaging in programs and themes that their customers are interested in.

Quote Of The Week: Steve Kazee

"Social Media is it's own sort of thing: Twitter and Facebook have changed the way everyone perceives everything."

Twitter: How Branded Emojis Can Supercharge Your Campaigns (via: wersm)

With the rise in Twitter popularity, and the popularity of hashtags and creating common conversations through these hashtags, Twitter has developed the way for businesses to brand a hashtag.

I know what you are thinking, "why is this important, and who cares?" This is important for a number of reasons. First, branded hashtags have created more engagement for brands and second, branded hashtags are expensive, turning this strategy into a 'pay to play' atmosphere.

More and more brands are using emojis on Twitter as they foster emotional bonds with users, and have surely contributed to the success of many campaigns. Twitter also says that branded emojis can supercharge campaigns.

WERSM explains why these branded hashtags and branded emojis are so important for business as well as provide ideas and suggestions to make your branded emoji more effective:

• Focus your tweet around the emoji and hashtag. The copy should be short and engaging.
• Inspire people to tweet the hashtag by making it easy to remember and giving them an incentive.
• Educate your audience on how you want them to use the emoji. Should they retweet it or answer a question, or are you inviting a discussion? Inspire conversation and engagement leading the way.
• Combine your emoji with an engaging, shareable video. Videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos and three times more likely than GIFs, so combine emojis and video to boost your expected results.

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