The same video uploaded twice, by the two parties responsible for its production respectively, with very different results. Why?
The impending organic reach apocalypse might seem like doom and gloom, but there are some things you can do to prepare your business for this seemingly inevitable event.
Creating meaningful social media content on an ongoing basis is a common challenge for SMBs, large corporations and agencies alike.
As they frequently do, Facebook has relatively recently made some changes to their platform that have changed how you go about activating targeting options for Timeline posts.
“Now, When a Page tags another Page, we may show the post to some of the people who like or follow the tagged Page”. – Facebook
It’s clear that engaging your business’ audience on mobile social media is becoming increasingly critical.
The trouble I find many businesses have isn’t about realizing that mobile is an important platform on which to have a solid presence, however, it’s how to establish that presence, and where.
If you don’t know PewDiePie, just look at any list of top subscribed YouTube channels and look toward the top of the list.
With over 22 million subscribers – only bested by YouTube category channels for ‘music’ and ‘popular on YouTube – Worldwide’ – there’s no arguing that this is what ultimate YouTube success looks like.
There are actions you can take to support your content, amplify its success, enhance your returns from having made a meaningful contribution, and maybe even increase your chances of having subsequent guest contributions published.
Real-time marketing is here, and it has been here, to stay. There is huge opportunity for businesses and brands to interact with their audiences in real-time.
Businesses and brands, however, shouldn’t one day per year get a ‘real-time war room’ together and hope for some serendipitous opportunity to present itself, or worse, shoehorn their message into a less than memorable moment.
Visible Measures reported that Super Bowl ads saw a total of 370 million online views last year, and ads released ahead of time received between 200-600 percent more impressions than those that didn’t
So, this is all well and good, but what can be learned from this phenomenon and applied to your business?
The real reason I’ve historically been so interested in the Super Bowl really has nothing to do with the competition on the field, but more to do with the competition for consumers’ attention and wallets, the advertising. And I know I’m not alone on this front.
In effort to shed some light on how Twitter can help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Twitter engaged Market Probe International to conduct research in hopes of proving how their platform can lead to real business results.
Some interesting findings emerged that – surprise, surprise – demonstrate that Twitter can indeed have a positive impact for SMBs.
It’s been a while since I’ve published a 3 LINKS post featuring recent articles that I’ve found to be interesting, useful, entertaining or inspiring, but alas, here we go:
A problem that many of us have is that we create or crop our images to look best on the original site of publication, but don’t take into account the many places our content may be spread.
There is a work around for this, however, which is pretty simple, and will all but guarantee that wherever you see the image associated with your blog post, that it will look great.
In my experience, job descriptions tend to kind of just… well… be job descriptions.
What I mean by that is that they’re not exactly the first thing that businesses think about when conceiving of ways to push their business forward, promote and lead innovation, build and sustain brand advocacy, and ensure employees and coworkers are driving forces behind organizational social media success.
Predictions about what impact wearable tech will have on the social interactions brands have with, and digital utility that brands provide to, their audiences.
As the volume of content being created and published continues to explode, finding every opportunity to place your content in front of as large a proportion of your audience as possible is of utmost importance to maximize results.
You shouldn’t simply follow best practices.
Of the 104 articles published on the RGB Social blog in 2013, the following 10 received the most number of views.
Setting goals and objectives to guide your social media marketing activity is critical to ensure that your efforts are making a meaningful and positive impact on your business.
Without well-defined goals and objectives, there is no way to determine what success looks like, no way to measure success, and no way to optimize. In short, without established goals and objectives, you’re completely flying blind.
Google’s YouTube Rewind video and compellations of top trending videos serve as a great way to remember, and in some cases discover, what people have been paying attention to over the last 300-some-odd days, and to gain some perspective of where video content may be headed in 2014.
For a medium that is supposed to be intrinsically social, much time can be spent on social media without having meaningful conversations.
This is particularly so for businesses and brands, where many use social media platforms not necessarily to be social, but to broadcast their message.
How can businesses effectively provide customer service on social media while not having their profile be overrun by negativity?
No matter how much time you spend thinking about every conceivable scenario that might play out on social media, it is impossible to think of them all.
Opportunities arise, competitors emerge, trolls attack, sites go down, preferences change, and sometimes, pigs fly.
This is the nature of social media and the world in which we live and our businesses operate. Things change fast. Really fast.
Spurring interaction and greater levels of engagement are effective for growing the loyalty and strength of your audience, as well as attracting new people to your brand.
Following are 4 methods to gain higher levels of interaction with your blog content.
It’s no secret that people are making more purchases, and purchase decisions, online. Consumer purchase behaviour is undergoing a dramatic shift that is getting more pronounced every day, and unprepared retailers are seeing declines as a result.
Over the course of the last week or so, there have been several revealing statistics released to support that consumers are not only spending more time shopping online, but that brick and mortar shopping behaviour is being influenced by digital interactions, which of course includes social media.
While you’re undoubtedly busy planning your personal social schedule with family and friends, now is also a perfect time to be planning your social media activity for the coming weeks. Planning can be critical to ensure you’ve got your ducks in a row for when you inevitably take a bit of time off to enjoy the season, and to sustain activity and engagement with your audience during this time.
If we stop thinking about the ‘return’ of ROI as end sales, and start thinking about ‘return’ as a sum of the value of all of the relevant aforementioned factors – which ultimately lead to sales – then calculating an ROI of social media can be much more achievable; not simple, but achievable.
Believe it or not, while I took the week off of social media, the world kept spinning, my business survived, my face didn’t melt off, and no other catastrophes occurred as a direct result (as far as I know anyway).
By their nature, best practices tend to be generalizations. Typically, they don’t specifically address your unique situation, opportunities and challenges. And getting too caught up in following best practices can affect your comfort and willingness to take a chance and do something amazing that may be contrary to conventions.
The observation of Remembrance Day shouldn’t be seen as a social media opportunity. If you want to pay tribute to the soldiers that have served your country on your organization’s social media properties, it is my recommendation to do it tastefully, in a tone that is appropriate for the day, and keep it solely focused on honouring those deserving of being honoured.
The close proximity of this 3 Links post to the last works out quite well because I’ve read some really great content in the last week or so that is certainly deserving of your attention.
Whether you’ve spent a couple of hours, or a couple of days working on your latest post, you’ll want to ensure you get as much as you can out of it.
Following is a post-publication action plan that you may want to consider the next time you publish a new blog post.
Every day there are businesses and brands producing and publishing amazing content, and tightly integrating traditional media with their digital and social programs.
It wasn’t long ago that I was writing about Ikea’s awesome 2014 augmented reality print catalogue, and Ikea has knocked it out of the park again with their second-hand furniture campaign.
Imagine if you could have access to all of the best information, articles, whitepapers, reports, and resources that your coworkers are paying attention to.
Also imagine if they had access to everything you were checking out online.
You would all be better for it, right?
3 Links is pretty simple; I collect a series of three blog posts on social media, digital or content marketing that I feel may be worthy of your attention. Simple as that.
Here are 15 things you can do – some productive, some not so much – while Facebook is experiencing technical issues.
Interacting and engaging with your current and prospective consumers at events gives you opportunity to further prove your brand’s promise, build affinity and awareness, showcase your value proposition, humanize your brand, and much more.
Additionally, the proper utilization of social media can serve as an amazing support and amplification tool to optimize your results and ROI when running events.
The secret is out! Running promotions on social media can be an effective way to reward existing fans of your brand, further prove your brand’s promise, and attract new people to your brand.
To maximize the ROI of running a promotion, however, you’re going to want to promote your activity to boost awareness and attract a maximum number of relevant participants.
If you know where to look and who to talk to, there is a great deal of inspiration to be found for content creation, and it’s probably sitting right in front of you.
Here are 5 places to find inspiration for content ideas to keep things fresh and valuable for your targeted audience.
Roughly two weeks ago – I know, I know… ancient news – Facebook added functionality allowing users to edit posts.
For many, this is a long overdue feature. It seems like pretty basic functionality to allow users to edit their posts following publication.
Through social listening, reading reviews and comments, and paying attention to competitive communities you can learn what you’re doing well, what needs improving, and gain a stronger understanding of what you can do to enhance the performance of your business.
Nobody cares that you have an account on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.
If you’re solely broadcasting and republishing readily accessible information, nobody will care because there is no added value to ‘liking’ your Page, following your business, or subscribing to your social media channels.
Choosing a prize, or creating a prizing structure for your promotions should be carefully thought through so that it builds on your brand’s core value proposition, is attractive to your targeted audience, and rewards existing consumers in a way that is of contextual relevance.
For some businesses on social media, being proactively social can be fraught with organizational challenges.
Success isn’t about the thousands of people that read your blog but never take action. Success is about the one person who reads your blog and makes a purchase.
Listen up agency friends!
I know there are some of you that find the ongoing creation of social media content to be a bit of a drag, but there is huge creative opportunity here that you really should be excited for.
Despite having an amazing opportunity to initiate and sustain meaningful dialogues with their consumers, many brands treat social media primarily as a broadcast platform.
Testing is the best way to maximize the efficiency of your spend, achieve the best possible results, and learn what copy and visuals users find to be most motivating.
Social media marketing is perfectly suited to sustain relationships with your consumers, even after they’ve made a purchase.
An effective social media strategy that accomplishes this will result in sustaining and strengthening loyalty, and will ultimately result in higher repeat purchase intent.
Amp Up Sociability on Your YouTube Channel
YouTube shouldn’t be viewed solely as a video publication platform.
It should be just as socially driven as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any other social media network.
Read more…