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How to Create a Social Media Policy for Employees

How to Create a Social Media Policy for Employees

You can tell how long someone has worked in social media by asking about their biggest mistake. The mis-tweet that was deleted as quickly as it was sent. The time Facebook went live from a phone inside a pocket. 

Accidents happen, sure. But as social media enters its second decade of being someone’s job, accidents can become major offenses. Even fireable ones.

No one wants to lose their job because of social media. Employees and employers need to create a social media policy in order to align on the proper ways to use social media on company time. Boundaries and consequences must be defined alongside other company rules, usually in an employee handbook.

What is a social media policy?

A social media policy serves to protect employees as much as it does the company for which they work. It provides employees guidelines for personal social media use in a way that isn’t completely obvious and controlling, but also protects both the employee and employer.

History of Social Media Policies

What originated in the 2000s as “Blog Policy” was essentially a warning about what employees could and shouldn’t blog about or post on an online message board. This quickly evolved into guidelines for “online content” and, specifically, social media activity.

Zappos’ quick and simple policy, “Be real and use your best judgment,” may have passed the HR sniff test a decade ago. Today, though, organizations with a few or thousands of employees must define expectations for how to “be real” across a variety of social networks and what “best judgment” means to them.

When HR owns employee policy and the accompanying handbook, it may rely on resident subject matter experts in Communications, Marketing or Digital to assist in creating an employee policy. As you get started, research and read a few similar policies in your industry. This will help you understand how they tackle the inclusion of privacy concerns, legal information and personal responsibility.

Use the social media policy examples below and download our free template to get your employee policy into shape. Remember to review your social media policy with a lawyer before it is formally adopted.

What Should Be in a Social Media Policy

Part 1: Purpose

Begin a social media policy with a statement of purpose as to why the company uses social media and how it approaches this as a communications tool. Keep it succinct and applicable to those who will read it.

Here’s a great example from Brown University. They use three sentences to frame the intro of this social media policy:

“Social media are powerful communication tools. Every Brown-related account plays a crucial, integrated and supportive role in telling the University’s story.

Brown’s Office of University Communications uses social media to engage with a global audience, including current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, external media and local community members.”

Part 2: Definitions

Define “social media” as the company considers it to be. Generally, social media refers to conversations and content shared between one or more people through the Internet, including blogs, wikis, message boards, online forums, chat rooms, and social networking sites and apps.

Identify who in the company can be a resource for employees with questions about professional and personal use, including developing strategy for new accounts.

Part 3: Branding

Explain how to use brand assets (or not) in social media. Consider how existing brand standards for logo use and colors can be extended for use on social media. Will the company provide compatible versions of the logo and branding assets to fit social media profiles? Are there naming conventions for a company-related account, either for a division, product/service or individual?

Here’s how Tufts University handles this:

Use of the Tufts Name

“In addition to meeting the requirements set forth in the Guidelines on the use of Tufts’ names and insignias, there are unique challenges associated with using the Tufts name in social media, such as the potential need to abbreviate a program or entity name for a Twitter account.

  • Use of the Tufts seal or wordmark as a profile photo on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media account is not allowed.

  • Be as clear as possible when naming your social media accounts, while keeping in mind character limits. Avoid using acronyms that may not be universally recognized.”

Part 4: Distinguish How Social Media is Used

When employees post on their personal social media accounts, they are doing so as an individual and not necessarily as an employee. Employers must respect this and can encourage employees to present the best version of themselves online.

Employees are also the company’s first line of advocates and influencers. In most cases, they do not need to have access to the brand account to be amplifying content from the company. In fact, employee advocacy programs are designed to encourage employees to amplify content to their personal networks. This opens up the company, and the employee, to the additional risk that should be identified and explained in the policy.

Employees who contribute to branded company accounts should have another set of guidelines that are more closely tied to their job responsibilities.

Part 5: Do Not Act as a Spokesperson

Individual employees do not speak for the company on personal social media accounts.

Here’s a great example from Wal-Mart:

“Remember that we have a dedicated team tasked with responding to customer inquiries or criticism. Our official Walmart social team is responsible for engaging customers through our page. To avoid confusion, we ask that you not attempt to respond to customer inquiries or comments directed specifically to the Company or asking for an official Company response on this site.” 

Part 6: Own Your Opinion

Employees have sole responsibility for what is posted to their social media accounts and profiles. Social media communications are public record and can be discovered and shared.

In this example from Adidas, they stress that “the internet never forgets.”

“You are personally responsible for the content you publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media. Please remember that the internet never forgets. This means everything you publish will be visible to the world for a very, very long time. Common sense is a huge factor here. If you are about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review.”

Part 7: Disclosure

Disclose your work and employer when it is pertinent — like sharing a link to the company website or engaging in an online conversation about the company.

Let’s take a look at the social media policy example from Tufts again:

“For transparency, employees who use personal social media channels to talk about work or Tufts-related matters are asked to disclose their affiliation with Tufts. Employees may consider adding a disclaimer to their social media accounts stating that their thoughts are their own. For instance, on Twitter, users can use the “Bio” field to note that the views and thoughts expressed are their own and do not reflect the views of Tufts.”

Part 8: Watch the Words

Refrain from vulgar and obscene language about the company and co-workers.

Here’s how the National Labor Relations Board handles this:

“Such activity is not protected if you say things about your employer that are egregiously offensive or knowingly and deliberately false, or if you publicly disparage your employer’s products or services without relating your complaints to any labor controversy.”

Part 9: Confidentiality & Privacy

Employees generally know to keep confidential information about the company and stakeholders private — but may not know exactly what information applies to this rule.  It’s helpful to pre-identify the types of confidential and private information about the company that should not be shared online at any time.

Here’s how IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines handles confidentiality and privacy:

     “5.          Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.

  1. Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to IBM.

  2. Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.”

Part 10: Copyright

Ask employees to respect copyright laws and include proper attributions when necessary.

Part 11: Consequence

Identify the consequences of not following the policy, including termination. Take note, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that using social media can be a form of “protected concerted” activity — though this doesn’t hold up for individual griping on a social media post or video.

“Inappropriate postings that may include discriminatory remarks, harassment, and threats of violence or similar inappropriate or unlawful conduct will not be tolerated and may subject you to disciplinary action up to and including termination.”

The Legality of Employee Policies

No two social media policies are created equally. There are legal boundaries for how restrictive they can be. Some organizations pay more attention to what not to do, while others are helpful in framing guidelines in a way that helps employees better understand how to use social media personally and professionally.

Employee policies are subject to review by the National Labor Relation’s Board (NLRB). Over the past 10 years, the NLRB has made decisions and issued guidance on specific employee handbook rules. In 2018, a decision was issued in response to The Boeing Company that redefined some rules as presumptively lawful and unlawful.

Blanket rules, or those that are all-encompassing for employees without regard to specific situations, are the rules deemed mostly unlawful by the NLRB.

When writing an employee handbook policy, it’s best to be aware to avoid the following:

  • Blanket rules prohibiting employees from making disparaging or negative remarks about the company;
  • Blanket rules prohibiting employees from criticizing the employer;
  • Blanket rules prohibiting employees from making false or inaccurate statements;
  • Blanket rules providing that wages, benefits, or working conditions are confidential or preventing employees from discussing them; and
  • Blanket rules prohibiting employees from joining outside organizations.

Set an annual reminder to review and update your social media policy. The policy should be a living document to reflect how quickly the norms of online behavior and activities change. 

The post How to Create a Social Media Policy for Employees appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

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5 Top Social Auditing and Assessment Tools for 2022

5 Top Social Auditing and Assessment Tools for 2022

Would you like to generate more traffic and conversions from social media marketing?

Do you feel that your social media channels could be doing better?

Most business owners will answer “Yes!” to both of these questions.

To boost the performance of your social media marketing strategy you need to identify what has worked or failed to work in your strategy so far.

To help you with that part, here are top social media assessment tools to prioritize what’s working (and a few tools to make it work better!)

1. Agorapulse: Analyze your content on Twitter & Instagram

Agorapulse is a social media management platform that also includes a powerful reporting feature that you can use to analyze your content performance.

The report includes:

  • Your following growth
  • Your day-to-day engagements
  • Your brand awareness score (i.e. Number of mentions of your username and listening searches containing your brand name for the selected period. )
  • The effectiveness of hashtags you use (i.e. Number of interactions generated by hashtags used in your tweets.)
  • Your (or your team’s) content publishing activity
  • Your top content
  • Your most effective days and time to publish content (which for me is surprisingly Saturday)

agorapulse best day and time to publish example

The tool supports Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (business pages only) but I have found the reports for Twitter and Instagram the most useful.

To turn these insights into action:

  • Make the most of your most active days
  • Make a better use of your most effective hashtags

Hashtagify is a cool tool that will allow you to identify related hashtags to the one that has worked best for you.  The tool is freemium and it will show you related and popular hashtags for free:

hashtagify Related Hashtags example screenshot

2. Buzzsumo: Analyze (and compare) your content on Facebook

Buzzsumo has a handy Facebook audit feature allowing you to analyze the content of any page, and even compare it to competitors’ pages.

You don’t have to be a manager of any analyzed page but you can surely analyze your own page using the tool. The report includes:

  • Average engagement by day of the week
  • Page activity (posts published every day within your specified period)
  • Average engagement per post type
  • Popular reactions to Facebook updates
  • Most engaging types of content (images, videos, question, giveaway, link)

buzzsumo

To turn these insights into action:

  • Identify your most engaging days of the week and time of the day to publish content
  • Analyze your competitors’ content engagement tactics, like giveaways and lead magnets
  • Prioritize update types that work best for you or your competitor

Videoleap is a great app allowing you to prioritize video content to create more engaging social media content to publish across your social media channels. The app offers a huge library of templates and effects to make your content irresistible.

videoleapapp

Videoleap provides you with a powerful video editor and video effects to create original and well-branded social media content that is hard to miss.

3. Keyhole: Identify your followers and engaged users on Twitter & Instagram

Keyhole is a premium social media audit tool that builds advanced reports on any social media profile activity. The report contains lots of sections you’ll enjoy browsing but my favorite parts are:

  • Top social media updates (by engagement) mentioning your name
  • Sentiment analysis of your social media mentions
  • Your most engaged influential connections (or influencers mentioning your (brand) name). This is by far the most useful section.
  • Compare your social media activity with that of your competitors
  • Social media profiles that mention your name the most

To turn these insights into action:

  • Connect to influencers who mentioned your brand and engage with their updates.
  • Identify if there are any opportunities for collaboration with those influential users who are aware of your brand
  • Connect to your most active promoters to follow and thank them.
  • Find opportunities for curating and publicizing social proof

Dovetale is a great platform to keep all the information on your engaged influencers. The tool makes your contacts searchable and well-organized:

dovetale

4. Awario: Analyze your brand mentions

Awario is a social media listening dashboard that comes with detailed reports analyzing (and comparing) popularity of your brand or product name:

  • Frequency of mentions
  • Locations: Which countries the mentions are coming from
  • Topic cloud includes the most popular context around your brand name
  • Sentiment comparison of your and your competitors’ mentions
  • Most popular platforms the brand mentions are coming from

awario

Using Awario API, you can also set up your own dashboard to prioritize types of data you want to focus on.

To turn these insights into action:

  • Identify platforms your competitors’ brands are more popular than you are (and try to create a more effective strategy for those)
  • Identify competitors with more negative sentiment and analyze their mistakes (to avoid those or build an effective product positioning strategy based on those)
  • Find fast-rising competitors and analyze their social media strategy

Use tools on this list to identify your competitors’ social media tactics you may want to learn from, including their best-working hashtags, engaged influencers, most engaging content, etc.

If you are planning to launch a new project, use this report to analyze your market and find what your future social media competitors do right wrong. According to Mobiversal, failure to research your market and future competitors is why most projects fail. A social media audit is one of the best ways to better understand your market and perform user research.

5. Emplifi: Analyze your Instagram following

Emplifi is a customer experience platform that also offers social media analytics features. The tool gives a handy overview of any social media profile, so it can be used to audit your own profiles as well as that of your competitors:

  • Watch the audience growth
  • Monitor the interactions
  • Analyze your (competitors’) social media reach
  • Analyze the frequency of updates

To turn these insights into action:

  • Based on your competitors’ numbers, set your goals for social media growth
  • Identify your (competitors’) best performing Instagram updates

Again, tools like Videoleap will help you create better and more engaging social media updates to overcome your Instagram competitors. Analyze your competitors’ top performing content and set up a better social media content strategy.

Conclusion

This may sound cliche but it is still so true: You cannot improve what you are not monitoring or analyzing. These tools will help you identify your most effective social media marketing tactics and give up on something that doesn’t work.

There’s no need to use all the tools I have just listed but make sure to try all of them for a few days. All the tools here have free trials (at least 7 days long) allowing you to get a feel of each report and find out if it will work for your niche. Good luck!

The post 5 Top Social Auditing and Assessment Tools for 2022 appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

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4 Ways to Become a True Thought Leader

You’re not interesting simply because you run a company. 

There. I said it.

While you may have incredible insight to share, so do the other C-level execs running companies in your category. Question is, how do you separate yourself as a trusted voice in the industry and use thought leadership as a business driver?

A survey of more than 3,000 B2B decision-makers found that the pandemic spurred an increase in the consumption of thought leadership content, but most of it was rated as low quality (e.g. doesn’t offer valuable insights). This may sound like bad news for a burgeoning thought leader, but it really means this: You need to say something beyond surface level, challenging industry norms and inspiring people to think differently. 

The same survey found effective thought leadership can: 

  • Repair a brand reputation. 
  • Earn trust and credibility.
  • Draw attention to meaningful topics not covered by newsrooms.
  • Attract better talent. 

And roughly half of decision-makers surveyed said after engaging with a high-quality piece of thought leadership, they’re at least sometimes likely to increase the amount of business they did with an organization or purchase a new product or service. Let that sink in – your customers may buy more of your stuff if they feel you are a trusted voice in the industry. 

But how will you become a thought leader who can break through the noise and offer meaningful insight? It starts with understanding your audience and defining your narrative. From there, you must find your voice, build your audience and maintain consistency to be a meaningful part of the broader conversation. 

No. 1: Define your narrative. 

Becoming a true thought leader is all about building a personal narrative that resonates with your audience. The best way to start is defining the audience you are looking to influence in the first place. Whether it’s investors, talent or prospects, become laser-focused on how you can speak to their pain points and help solve their problems through a unique perspective that can’t be found anywhere else. 

Finding something original to say is easier said than done.Try focusing your efforts on topics about which you are truly passionate and can offer a unique perspective. You can smell someone trying to jump on a trend bandwagon from a mile away. There’s nothing original about it. But if you have a willingness to share an authentic perspective about a particular topic, you’ll be able to add something new to the conversation — and the passion becomes obvious. 

Building your personal narrative doesn’t mean you have to share intimate details of your life, but it does mean finding a comfortable level of transparency you are willing to share. You want to make people feel a certain way about the brand and you as its leader. There must be human elements woven into your thought leadership efforts. Whether it’s telling a personal story, sharing a relatable struggle or naming those who have helped shape you as a leader, making the audience feel a part of your “inner circle” is critical to being an effective thought leader. 

As you consider the topics you’d like to weigh in on, remember that beyond a unique take, your readers will be looking for value. You can offer the lessons you’ve learned, mistakes that changed your outlook and meaningful experiences which helped you grow. Your ultimate goal as a thought leader isn’t to hype yourself up: It’s to add value to ongoing conversations, spur engagement and serve as a trusted resource.

No. 2: Find your voice. No, not one you like. Your own. 

“The Great Resignation” reverberated across every part of work. Many people who left jobs did so to seek greater meaning in their work lives. There’s a greater demand for authenticity in and out of our workplaces. And as Gen Z joins the workforce, they bring a values-driven approach to their careers, skepticism toward corporations and a hunger for purpose.

At the same time, remote work at the height of the pandemic broke down long-established barriers between the personal and the professional. Let’s face it: Our workplaces are now often the same tables where we feed our children, have intimate conversations and nourish our inner lives. 

It’s impossible to unring that bell. What you offer as a thought leader — especially when you’re starting the journey — has to meet this unprecedented moment, and critical to developing credibility as a thought leader is finding and owning your unique voice. 

No one has your same perspective, your sense of humor, your exact fast-food order when no one’s looking. Also, no one has your voice. How freeing! You don’t have to speak for anyone else or emulate what you think makes a great thought leader. 

Even if you admire certain storytellers and thought leaders, you don’t have to don their tone or parrot their talk tracks to grow into a thought leader. Taking the time to reflect and consider your own voice, including its idiosyncrasies and unique ability to connect with others, will give you a foundation to build content reflecting your lived experience, personality and expertise. 

Tips for finding your thought leadership voice

Your voice is a mix of your experience and knowledge, conveyed through your tone, the words you choose and your delivery cadence. You might be able to identify these features of some of your favorite speakers, but you’ll have to do some research on yourself to nail down a voice that you can use with consistency throughout your thought leadership efforts. 

Read your authored blogs and LinkedIn posts. Listen to recordings of yourself from speaking engagements, podcasts and even company events. Those will all give you a sense of the rhythms and speech patterns you use when telling a story or inspiring your colleagues. Once you’ve identified some of what makes your voice yours, strengthen that muscle with practice. 

No. 3: Test and evangelize your narrative.

Start small with what you can control, like your blog or personal social channels.ee if your talk track and voice resonates enough for people to engage. These conversations will supply you with feedback and help you stretch your boldness and confidence. 

Remember, it’s A-Okay if the audience doesn’t agree — the presence of a vocal minority means you are accomplishing what you set out to do, which is to provoke thought and start a discussion. 

Then, begin offering your insights to a broader audience through opportunities like speaking at conferences, placing contributed content in relevant publications, or taking to the podcast circuit. Heck, you can take it step further and launch your own podcast. I host a podcast called SaaS Half Full, and sitting down with peers in the SaaS marketing industry helps me not only build an audience, but also test out my narrative and voice. 

Listening is as essential as speaking to gain a larger audience, as becoming a thought leader doesn’t stop at your ideas alone. You need relevant fuel to develop perspectives and form opinions on topics at the forefront of people’s interests. 

You can succeed in your thought leadership by taking a bold or contrarian view. But to do that, you’ll need working knowledge about the topics and trends newly taking shape. 

No. 4: Build momentum with consistency.

Once you’ve found your point of view, nailed down your voice and begun expanding your audience, you’ll need to build consistency. 

You’d be disappointed if the latest episode of your favorite show didn’t drop as scheduled, right? Your audience, too, will rely on hearing from you as they scroll on social media, check their inbox or listen to podcasts. It’s better to start small and grow consistently than throw yourself into unattainable goals across a dozen platforms and ghost your audience when it all becomes too much.

Think about your bandwidth and the channels where your audience spends most of their time. Then give yourself attainable goals for the most important channels (personal socials, podcasts, personal blog or Medium, speaking opportunities or a newsletter). Establish a posting cadence, whether it’s once a week or more. As you reach those goals, add a platform and adjust your cadence as needed. 

Become the Thought Leader You Were Meant to Be

Being a true thought leader brings a human element to your business so that you’re seen as a person, not just an entity. It also provides an opportunity to be sought out more often for commentary, allowing you to share your perspective on important topics and issues more regularly. Instead of trying to emulate another thought leader’s moves, embrace your personal passions, voice and point of view … and get that vocal minority talking. 

The post 4 Ways to Become a True Thought Leader appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

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How to Create Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy in 6 steps

How to Create Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps

When it comes to general content marketing, the leading question brands need to ask themselves is how they can create a meaningful customer experience and show they offer the best solution on the market. 

And even though I used the word “customers,” don’t think for a second that this only applies to your “normal” client base. 

B2B marketing, at its core, is not that different from B2C marketing. You’re still trying to be helpful, successful, trustworthy, and people’s first choice.

Still, there are many differences between the two, with the biggest one being that a lot more is at stake when you’re dealing with B2B clients. 

Imagine you’re a significant paper supplier called Mumder Difflin. If one school kid decides to buy a different print paper for their poetry class, you won’t lose money. But if a big chain of stores goes with your rival supplier, things get serious. 

Simply put, you don’t have a lot of room for experiments and failure. Big companies usually make up their minds about a brand only once and have difficulty switching to a different provider. And there are so many things that can turn them off during the purchase process!

77 percent of b2b buyers

Those 77% will most likely not return to the same vendor ever again.

Besides offering a simple buyer’s journey, another way to build that trust from the beginning and become everyone’s first choice is to have a successful B2B content marketing strategy. 

And if you’re wondering how to do that, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s dive in. 

What are the main differences between B2B and B2C content marketing? 

I talked a bit about this in the intro but let’s go deeper.

In B2C marketing, the target customers are regular people that make a purchase for themselves, friends, or family members. Just as I said in the example, our fictional student is getting print paper for himself, and he will use it for his poetry class. When he finishes school, he might go to a clothing store and look for a new jacket that he will wear.

You get the gist.

A B2B marketing strategy, on the other hand, will target the needs, pain points, and interests of potential customers that represent a particular company or another business. They are the decision-makers and make choices that will affect an entire team or even a company.

To put it simply, you have two entirely different buyer personas that will require various content marketing campaigns to decide about buying your product or service.

Let’s take a look.

Goals and motivations

B2C customers are usually driven by emotion and buy products or services to fulfill their own needs or the ones of their family and friends. They are attracted by deals and wish to be entertained, so advertising platforms for B2C are usually more fun and flashy. B2C purchases are also often spontaneous and illogical.

On the other hand, businesses look for convenience, ROI, expertise, and efficiency. It’s never about satisfying a whim and more about making a purchase decision that is part of a more comprehensive strategy. Logic and financial gain are at the forefront of their motivations.

Number of decision-makers

B2C customers usually conduct their independent research and make the purchase decision themselves. Rarely would they need to consult someone else, especially if it’s a spontaneous purchase. So even if they hear an opposite opinion, they have likely made up their minds already, and nothing will change it.

On the other hand, business clients rarely decide by themselves. Typically, an entire board needs to determine whether this is the best possible solution for whatever problem needs to be solved. One person speaks to the sales team or representative, but in the end, it’s a mutual decision that requires the majority of participants to agree to it.

Aspects of your purchase process

Purchase process

Individual clients that don’t represent a company make various purchases all the time. It’s frequently part of a routine or connected to an event. For example, every week you would do a more extensive grocery shop, and every year you have to buy presents for someone’s birthday. 

The most common process is going to the shop and making a purchase. Maybe if it’s a more significant purchase like an expensive laptop or workout equipment, the person would appreciate some sort of advice from a sales professional. Still, it’s an entirely individual buyer’s journey.

Prospective customers who are part of a business need to consult with a sales expert and often accept offers from various providers to get the best possible solution. When you consider that they have to consult with the other decision-makers, the entire process might take months before it’s completed. Many factors will determine the purchase, making a B2B buyer’s journey highly specific.

Long-term goals

An individual client rarely has a relationship with the vendor and does not look for anything long-term. They buy the product, and that usually ends their interaction. If they are happy with whatever they purchased, be it some cucumbers from a local farmer, or a bundle from a streaming service, they will most likely return to that place, but that doesn’t mean they have a personalized experience with that brand.

B2B clients build a relationship with the company and require special attention, usually in the form of a dedicated sales consultant. Once they commit to becoming a client of your company, they typically have to sign a contract and pay in advance. The payment terms are service-specific, but the consensus is that enterprises look for a meaningful long-term commitment rather than a spur-of-the-moment purchase.

As you can see, there are a lot of differences between those two types of clients, and they will highly influence your content strategy and digital marketing goals.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s how to create your own B2B content marketing strategy!

Building a B2B content marketing campaign from scratch

Building anything from scratch can be difficult, but it has to start somewhere. 

1. Research your target audience 

This is crucial to any content marketing campaign. Inbound marketing is all about creating a tailored and personalized experience for your leads, and you can’t do that without knowing them. 

So the first step is to create a buyer’s persona – the interests and pain points of that persona will guide your content creation process and generate leads and organic traffic to your website. 

Here are the best ways of analyzing your target audience to help create a solid strategy for your marketing efforts besides creating a persona: 

  • Inspect your current client base and conduct interviews; 
  • Conduct detailed market research to identify trends and client behavior; 
  • Realize who the people that cannot be a part of your target audience are; 
  • Research and analyze your competitors and their client base.

2. Identify your KPIs, goals, and timeline 

The other factors your B2B content marketing strategy depends on are the goals and KPIs. After all, you can’t leave the station if you don’t know where you’re going. 

Priorities for B2B companies change all the time. Years ago, revenue and ROI were essentials in a CEO’s mind. Nowadays, it’s a bit different.

primary objectives of digital marketing strategy

Think about what you need the most. Improving and building brand awareness is a trend that has recently risen to power because businesses finally realize how important it is to be visible and to be known.

Once you have your goals figured out, think about specific KPIs and metrics that will aid your content marketing strategy. Here are some example KPIs that can be pretty useful:

  • The organic traffic of your website or blog;
  • The number of content pieces produced and published in a specific timeframe;
  • The type of content that performs best;
  • The rankings of essential keywords;
  • The number of sales that can be attributed to your content marketing strategy;
  • The number of subscribers (if you decide to launch a newsletter);
  • The backlinks and mentions of your company or produced content.

You need to choose the ones that align with your content strategy and will help you reach your goals.

And finally, you need to work with a strict timeline. To improve, you need a deadline for your content marketing experiments – you can’t track the results of a campaign that is still ongoing.

When you decide on a strategy, content distribution channel, and everything else that I’m going to share in this article, choose an initial timeline – 3 months, for example. When those 3 months end, you will be able to analyze the results and make improvements for the next one.

Bonus tip: Make sure you talk and discuss the goals amongst the team. Studies have found that setting clear goals and expectations fosters higher-performing teams. 

Confidence in ability to hit goals

3. Choose the most relevant B2B content distribution channels

Experience is indeed the most valuable teacher, but there are certain aspects of content marketing that you can easily predict, and the content distribution channels are a great example. What you decide depends on a few factors such as:

  • The type of product or service that your offer;
  • Your target audience;
  • The type of your business – local or global.

Focus on your strengths. Do you have a fantastic writing staff that can create in-depth guides to help other businesses? Then the answer is a blog.

Maybe your design team is innovative and skilled at making valuable infographics. Then clearly, you need to spread them out.

Sit down with your team members and think about your goals, what type of content works best for you, and the platform where it will be the most successful. 

Social media platforms are another popular way of introducing your brand to the world, but there is one that stands out. You’re right; I’m talking about LinkedIn. 

I’ve talked about this platform in-depth in my guide on how to audit and improve your LinkedIn Business profile, but I wanted to give it its own space in this article, as well. 

LinkedIn is great because it allows companies to showcase several aspects of their business as providers, partners, and employers. In addition, you can share achievements, conduct surveys, and connect with your leads on a more personal level. 

Going back to the content you should put there, the best strategy is to stick to polls, case studies, videos, testimonials by clients and partners, images with statistics, company and industry news, and milestones. Invest in competitor research and see how other businesses create content and communicate with the audience.

Another thing that many professionals tend to forget, however, is that B2B influencer marketing exists, and with the right tactic, it can be pretty successful. Creating content for social media can be challenging, so working with an influencer could be helpful for your B2B content marketing strategy. 

To put it simply, experiment and see what resonates with your current customers and followers.

4. Create high-quality content

types of b2b content

Finally, we reach the different types of content B2B companies can use to attract potential customers. Remember that not all of them will work for your company and target audience; you should check your Google Analytics to see which content has historically performed best regarding your goals and KPIs. 

These are the most effective content formats for B2B content marketing: 

  • Email newsletters – Create customized email marketing campaigns that cater to the needs of your email list and remind them of your business in a non-intrusive way; 
  • Case studies – Use actual data to drive targeted traffic to your websites and improve your reputation as a professional in the field; 
  • Video content – Produce content that people can engage with for a longer time. Informational Youtube videos and guides are usually the best choices here. 
  • Blog posts – Create long-form content guides closely related to your niche, include templates and examples that bring a unique point of view and help you stand out from competitors; 
  • Podcasts – Share your expert opinion, invite other professionals in the field and create an environment of growth and motivation; 
  • Infographics – Use interesting data and research to create captivating infographics that will get shared all over the digital world.

I won’t go too deep into all of them, but there are some worthy mentions – the first being infographics. 

You can put many things on an infographic – research data, case studies, tips,  advice, etc. The best part is that they can be repurposed from other content you’re already creating.  

For example, if you just wrote a blog post on how to conduct SMS campaigns, then repurpose the main points (headers) as an infographic.

Infographic examples

They can be custom, which is always the best option, but you can also use a tool like Canva, Vista Create, or Venngage. These platforms offer free templates that you can customize to your taste and make a unique piece of visual content used by companies and individuals alike. 

Another worthy mention is case studies. The team at Convince and Convert regularly creates impressive case studies for their clients and makes them widely available for everyone to read. Such content demonstrates their skills as an analysis and advisory company and shares their expertise with people who want to learn and better themselves. 

It’s a great tactic for creating meaningful relationships with people – from freelancers and students to mega-corporations looking for someone to help them with content marketing strategies. 

Overall, creating content that brings value and educating customers should be a top priority. 

5. Try out A/B testing 

Split testing can be pretty beneficial, but it needs to be used wisely. Here is how you can get the maximum from it: 

  1. Make sure you have a strong hypothesis at hand; 
  2. Test only two variables at a time; 
  3. Get the right sample size of people; 
  4. Be patient and don’t make any changes in the middle of the experiment; 
  5. Learn from the data and improve your B2B content marketing campaign. 

The beauty of A/B testing is that it lets you know what works and what doesn’t. But beyond that, it allows you to understand what strategies you can scale. 

For example, when I started building backlinks to amplify my content, I tested tactics with free tools like Ahrefs and gradually used tools like Buzzstream and other link-building tools to scale successful strategies.

6. Track your B2B content marketing efforts 

Everyone in the marketing and sales world knows that you can’t get anywhere without tracking all of your efforts. That applies especially to content marketers. 

You need to know whether your content has reached the ideal target audience and if the interactions you intended are realized the way they should be. 

You can do that in many ways, such as through Google Analytics, a CRM, the analytics tools of relevant social media channels, and other search engine optimization tools. 

The best tactic will be to use a tool that combines multiple channels and will helps you gather data faster, so you don’t waste time between campaigns. 

Many software options include a free trial, so make sure you take advantage of that and choose the best possible one for your business. 

Are you ready to become a leader in B2B content marketing? 

Content marketing remains one of the best ways to connect with your audience, so you need to ensure it’s done correctly. Nobody starts perfectly, and you have to consciously expect that you will not achieve the ideal results from your very first campaign. 

It’s a process and not a destination. But if you apply creativity and logic, track your efforts, and constantly improve, results will come and turn your business around. 

And if it sounds a bit overwhelming, just book a consultation with our B2B marketing experts and let us help you connect with your customers. 

So, are you ready to make an impact? 

The post How to Create Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy in 6 steps appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

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The Audience Experience is More Important than Customer Experience

The Audience Experience is More Important than Customer Experience

There’s no dispute Customer Experience (CX) is a hot topic these days and with good reason. But there is a potential problem that almost anyone responsible for improving customer experience is not thinking about. The customer is only a piece of the experience puzzle, and in this article, we’ll explain why you have to think broader than the customer experience in order to better serve the customer.

Every organization has multiple audiences with which they communicate and interact. In a recent project we led for a state-wide K-12 school system, the stakeholders readily identified upwards of 20 distinct audiences in less than 10 minutes. Each of those audiences has an experience — not just customers. We should be thinking about the audience experience (AX) more so than just the customer experience (CX).

Potential Buyer Experience Is NOT Customer Experience

For people who work on selling, they must focus on customer experience, or more accurately, the potential buyer experience. Examining your current customer journey map and see how much of it is really pre-transaction vs. post-transaction. There is nothing wrong with having the whole journey mapped out together but do recognize there are distantly different phases and different experiences associated with each touch point.

Customer Experience touchpoints
In practice, once a potential buyer transacts—becomes a customer—often the customer experience ceases. Does your customer experience continue post-transaction to foster retention, loyalty, referrals, word-of-mouth, and advocacy? Those are the actual stages of the customer experience. In our observations, most truly defined “customer experience” efforts are really targeting the potential buyer experience.

Marketers Think Too Narrowly — But Should They?

Fans, followers, subscribers, are all audiences—but not all are customers.

This is where customer experience is generically too narrow as a category. Understand that each segment of audience or stakeholders must be narrowed down, so touchpoints can be designed for those specific audiences. Marketers tend to focus on the sales-related journey and experiences. That’s understandable and probably prudent. But, who else in your organization is focusing on all the other audiences and audience experiences that all contribute to organizational success?

One thing to consider: Customer service should heavily influence the customer experience. That may in fact roll up under marketing as it does include retention, cross-sell, and other factors contributing to life-time value. 

Fans and Fandom — Why It Matters

You have audiences that are not customers and will never be customers. But they are still important and valuable. 

Take fans for example. What does it mean to be a “fan”? Unlike the potential-customer experience, that audience has somegoal or desired outcome or a problem and is seeking a solution. Not so with fans.

You can have an audience of fans without them being customers. They engage and transact like the best customers, but they transact in loyalty and advocacy, not in dollars and cents. In your own life, are you a fan of a sports team, a musical group or performer, or a political candidate? The best fans don’t have to be customers, except they’re transacting with loyalty to the brand and what it stands for through their individual advocacy, amplification, and word of mouth. There is strength in numbers. The larger the fan following, the greater the collective voice becomes. 

If your brand is any good at all, it has fans. No need to be a rock-star band, all brands have fans. The fan experience deserves strategic planning, too—not with the intent to turn it into a potential-customer experience, but rather to acknowledge, engage with, and grow the fan audience.

Which Audiences Matter Most?

Above we mentioned a particular higher ed organization with upwards of 20 audiences, and thus, about 20 audience experiencers to address. Consider your organization and your audience’s experiences. Beyond the prospective- and customer-experience, do you pay attention to the:

  • Employee Experience
  • Fan/Follower Experience
  • Media/Influencer Experience
  • Dealer or Reseller Experience (retail)
  • Supplier/Vendor Experience (manufacturing)
  • Investor/Donor Experience (fund raising)
  • Parent Experience (higher education)
  • Alumni Experience (higher education)
  • Donor Experience (higher education)

We’ll stop short of 20 but you get the idea. With these and a few more relevant to your organization you can see lots of interconnected and essential opportunities to improve each experience overall and over time. Each audience, if important, needs attention to that overall experience, from inception to termination.

How Good Can CX Be Without a Great Employee Experience (EX)?

Well before the Great Resignation, employers vied to attract the best talent to achieve the business’s goals. It’s simply harder now when the talent pool is shrinking, and unemployment is low. Even so, often the talent you’re trying to attract is already employed elsewhere. This is where the employee experience really matters. Brian Solis, VP, Global Innovation Evangelist @ Salesforce writes, “The employee is also part of the customer experience. In fact, employee experience plus customer experience—EX+CX—is what will equal growth.”

“EX+CX—is what will equal growth.”
— Brian Solis

Ask your HR leader if they have a journey map that covers recruitment and onboarding and all the probable touch points that comprise the potential-employee and then employee experiences. Think of the value of each employee and the cost of replacing an employee. Think of the implication of a poor employee experience and how that may impact other areas of customer interaction. There is a real, measurable cost tied to a poor employee experience including the impact on the customer experience.

A well-tuned potential-employee experience and employee experience are powerful factors with many ripple effects impacting operations, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Conversely, a not-so-good employee experience is costly and an opportunity for the competition to steal away good talent and brain trust.

Great organizations strive to deliver great experiences.

What Next?

Do this:

  1. List 10 audiences with whom your organization interacts regularly. Specificity is key here, to help you in the next step. 
  2. Rank them in order from the most essential to the lesser essential. Sure, they’re all going to be important or else you wouldn’t be interacting with them. Apply a filter based on which are most essential to the success of the business down to those that are perhaps tangentially necessary for success.
  3. On your list of 10, write in the name of the person in your organization responsible for each of those audience experiences.
  4. Ask those individuals to describe to you their process and method of measurement for the audience experience they own.

That fourth one is the kicker. If there is no process, no journey map for an audience, no definable plan for each interaction and outcomes, you have an operational liability. Great audience experiences don’t happen accidentally. It takes recognizing the need and making the investment to ensure those essential audiences all have the best experience possible. Great organizations strive to deliver great experiences.

 

Continue the CX Series by Anthony

The Two CXs You Have to Deal With — Customer Experience vs Customer Expectations

Why Brands Believe Their CX is Better Than It Really Is

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7 Ways AI is Revolutionizing Content Creation

7 Ways AI is Revolutionizing Content Creation

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have proven their worth in digital marketing. But will they steal the jobs of content writers?

While that may be a far-fetched question, marketers can improve the quality of content creation using AI.

Statista estimates that by 2025, the total data creation will grow to more than 180 zettabytes globally. And AI and ML will certainly play their role in this content creation.

Statista

Image Source – Statista

While several experts see content creation using AI as a threat to content writers, in reality, it can serve as a highly efficient assistant to enhance their productivity.

In fact, I believe content creation using AI can help brands deliver a great customer experience. AI’s capacity to process and analyze data can be leveraged to create customer-specific content.

Are you skeptical about what I am saying? Do you need some convincing? 

Allow me to explain how AI is already a part of the content creation process and how it will influence the future of content marketing. 

Let’s get right to it. 

7 Reasons Content Creation Using AI is the Future

Content writing is more of a human-centered job compared to other fields of digital marketing.

But content writers can use any kind of assistance to improve the speed and quality of content creation. That’s where AI has stepped in and transformed the way we create content. 

Take a look at 7 ways content creation using AI is revolutionizing content marketing. 

1. Content Creation Using AI Takes Personalization to a New Level 

Do you know that personalization is key to better customer engagement in this era?

And to create personalized content, marketers need to better understand their customers and their expectations. That’s where content creation using AI can be of great help. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can gather valuable customer data and analyze it to create specific customer profiles and segments.

These insights can be utilized in creating highly personalized recommendations and messages to better connect with your customers.  

Marketers today have left behind generalized email marketing campaigns and with the help of AI-powered tools, they can create personalized email marketing content. So, if you’ve got a career in the communications field, AI can prove to be a great asset for you.

What’s the result? Better engagement and lead generation. And that’s why content creation using AI is imperative. 

2. It Can Provide Natural Language Generation 

Machines have proven that they can ‘learn’.

Based on what they learn from the data at hand, content creation using AI is made possible by an automated software process called “Natural Language Generation (NLG)”. 

You would be surprised to know that the world’s noted media houses like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, and several others are already relying on NLG tools for content creation.

QuillBot, Amazon Polly, Google’s Text-to-Speech, and Wordsmith are some of the highly efficient NLG tools in use today. 

Quill

Image Source – QuillBot

Everything from product descriptions to tweets, business data reports, news articles, and even poetry can be written using such AI tools. 

What’s the good news for content writers? They can create a framework and guidelines for their content requirements and NLG tools can complete the narratives efficiently and fast.

Going further, humans and machines will work even closer for quality content creation. 

3. It Can Automate Small Content Requirements 

Let’s face it, humans can only write at a certain pace, no matter how fast they are.

What if you had an efficient assistant who could fulfill the small content requirements for you?

The AI tools I mentioned above are capable of crafting personalized content with little guidance from humans. 

Content creation using AI can be used to generate data-specific content for social media posts, brief reports, news updates, and notifications for personal messaging apps. 

What’s more, the entire process of content creation using AI can be automated with minimal human interference.

As AI technology evolves, you can expect it to handle such content creation tasks much more efficiently. 

4. It Can Generate Fresh Keywords and Topics

AI has the distinct capacity to process data and draw insights in a way that humans can never do.

When it comes to content creation, AI can provide valuable insights drawn from analyzing customer data. 

It can provide a clear idea about your target audiences’ interests and preferences. That’s how you can come up with fresh topics that will resonate well with your target audience. 

Can content creation using AI produce more SEO-friendly results? It sure can.

Advanced keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs are capable of measuring keyword search volume, organic competition, and several other metrics to help marketers choose the exact keywords to achieve SEO goals. 

Using AI tools for keyword research can speed up the process.

It can deliver more accurate results to help writers create content that successfully engages their preferred audience. 

5. It Can Improve the Performance of Social Media Content

You can improve your social media content creation using AI.

Let’s see how that can happen.

The main goal of social media content is to build a brand’s presence and drive more traffic to the desired landing pages.

And marketers heavily rely on customer demographics for social media content creation.

AI has emerged as a game-changer in this regard.

Tools powered by artificial intelligence can go beyond demographics and analyze customer behaviors, sentiments, and preferences.

This valuable information can help marketers fine-tune their SMM campaigns to ensure better user engagement.

It can be further used to identify and track sales leads, which strengthens your sales funnel. 

6. It Can Curate User-Generated Content 

Social media users today are excellent content creators and consumers.

A majority of millennials are more likely to base their buying decisions on user-generated content (UGC) than branded content.

This generation is far more open to sharing their shopping experiences and opinions about brands with their connections on social media. 

As a brand, you’d certainly want to leverage UGC for brand reputation analysis and to boost it.

AI tools can scout through various social media platforms to identify brand mentions and collect feedback and customer reviews related to your brand and products. 

AI can not only recognize user-generated text related to your products, but also images and videos using visual-recognition technology.

Thus, AI tools can curate high-quality UGC which can be used in your social media campaigns to boost brand visibility and credibility. 

7. It Delivers Quality Customer Service 

We all know how chatbots are already proving to be helpful in easing the responsibilities of customer service agents.

With the inclusion of AI, advanced chatbots are now capable of understanding customer queries and responding to them in a similar manner as humans do, all thanks to deep learning. 

Based on the specific requirements of users, the AI-assisted chatbots can provide the most relevant information to help customers:

  • Understand a product’s USP
  • Complete their purchases
  • Get acquainted with different types of referral programs
  • Build a relationship with your brand

By eliminating delays in response and providing the specific information that customers are looking for, AI chatbots can enhance customer experience and improve customers’ buying journeys.

Are You Ready to Try Content Creation Using AI? 

I am sure you are convinced by now that content creation using AI is the future.

It’s important for marketers to generate quality content to create a consistent brand image online and using AI tools for this task is a smart and futuristic choice. 

Go ahead and explore some of the best AI-assisted tools out there and see how they can take your content creation process to a whole new level.

You would be pleasantly surprised by what this technology can achieve for your business.

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Boomers, Gen X & Millennials, We’re Talking To You

Boomers, Gen X & Millennials, We’re Talking To You

“Germany, we’re coming for you,” said a speaker at Visit California’s Outlook Forum in San Fransisco this past February. He reminded the audience that if California was a sovereign nation, it would be the world’s 5th largest economy (ahead of the United Kingdom and India, and behind Germany). 

I traveled to the Visit California forum to pulse check the travel industry. Here are some of my learnings:

  1. Content creators are re-introducing destination spots

Content creators are taking social media audiences to places they’ve never considered, with new vantage points. 

Gone are the days where the Hollywood Sign or the Golden Gate Bridge are the main draw; people are looking for a more localized experience – a dive bar off of Highway 1, or a cliff with a perfect sunset view, perhaps.  

(IMO, the GGB is still amazing!) 

In contrast to influencers, content creators provide relatable and everyday human viewpoints without being overly produced. This new behavior drives higher engagement and is re-energizing travelers as pandemic regulations and mandates lift and shift.  

You can’t create content for your consumers without listening.
Click To Tweet

  1. Social listening is still valuable 

With any global footprint or audience, breaking apart and digesting market uniqueness is essential to creating content that attracts your audience.  

ICUC’s Director of Strategy Jazmin Griffith spoke at the Forum. She explained, “Social listening helps put your strategy to the test. You can’t create content for your consumers without listening. Consumers want mission-led brands and social listening can be the key to unlock that.”  

  1. Safety remains at the forefront for travelers

Visit California’s research revealed most international travelers still say that the safety protocols are an important consideration to them in selecting their destination.  

 If you’re in the travel sector, or if any part of your content involves mobilizing people to travel, get clear on your destination’s regulations around COVID-19, and provide accurate information all digital touch points.  

  1. Tiktok is now a need, not a want 

 TikTok was mentioned at every. single. talk.  

Some of our readers are on the platform. Just make sure to maintain a measurement framework, foster partnerships with creators, and plan for community management. From there, you’re off to the races. 

 Perhaps you can be like @tk.california, a Forum fan favorite dubbed the “unofficial California advocate.” His method to follower growth? Roasting other states (gently, of course).  

31% of Gen Z respondents said they think about cultural appropriation when traveling and 46% said they get most of their travel inspiration from social media.
Click To Tweet

  1. Gen Z is in high focus

As Gen Z enters the workforce with money to spend and places to go to, their values and behaviors are making a stronger impact on the hospitality workforce and travel industry. 

A disruptive generation born between the 90s and less than a decade ago(!) with an incredible amount of passion, they appreciate advertising and messaging fit their unique needs. They prefer it. 

According to JUV Consulting, 31% of Gen Z respondents said they think about cultural appropriation when traveling and 46% said they get most of their travel inspiration from social media. 

Some of you may be thinking – ‘That’s still not my target audience.’ Fair. But in our book, understanding a NEW generation provides contrast to understanding former generations. 

We often don’t know who WE are until we have someone or something to compare to (Boomers, Gen X & Millennials, we’re talking to you) 

Understand your generation by understanding Gen Z in our newest white paper: How to Connect with Gen Z. Who knows? You may want to adopt a thing or two.

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Don’t Ignore Social Commerce

Don't Ignore Social Commerce

When 2022 began and the world was optimistic for a post-pandemic era, trend spotters predicted (despite the opening of brick-and-mortar stores) that e-commerce would continue to grow.  

According to a recent industry report, e-commerce will account for 20.4% of global retail sales by the end of 2022, up from 10% only five years ago.  

The real segment of e-commerce’s explosion is social commerce, the practice of purchasing solely from social media platforms. 

Gen Z has profound comfort navigating social commerce. A full 97% say social media is their top source of shopping inspiration. That same crowd say they would prefer to purchase items without ever leaving the app they’re using. 

Low and behold, TikTok is a key driver.  

Businesses can bolster success based on their TikTok community alone, still with minimal overhead nor traditional advertising costs. 

Founder and CEO of Gen Z content platform Culted, Pavel Dler relates to its ingenuity as a next gen entrepreneur. “For brands, TikTok is a more suitable application to share your process. You can show how you develop clothing or add artwork – it’s more creative and encourages people to get involved.” 

Don’t be mistaken — Millennials aren’t far behind in their use of social commerce and Baby Boomers too have become reliable online shoppers.  

Brand advantages   

Live shopping — a form of social commerce — is hitting its stride. Live shopping is like a real-time livestreamed “commercials,” only rather than a one-way conversation, the host interacts freely with viewers on said social channel.  

TikTok accounted for $470 billion in livestreaming e-commerce sales in China alone this past year. North America and Europe are ramping up.  

For enterprise brands who have reached across the aisle to dive in, their investment has shown fruitful returns.   

Samsung is a notable example. Ahead of debuting the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G mobile phone, the cell company leveraged live shopping to reach Gen Z. The brand and its partners reported 15K interactions and a 127% conversion rate to goal… impressive. 

The team over at ICUC created a reference guide where we dispel some myths, breakdown channel opportunities, and discuss safety measures. Hope you enjoy it! 

EXPLORE OUR LIVE SHOPPING GUIDE 

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5 Tools to Fine-Tune Your Social Media Advertising Strategy

Five Tools to Fine-Tune Your Social Media Advertising Strategy

Social media advertising is a great way to quickly generate new customers and create a social media buzz around your (new) product.

But it can be quite costly, especially if your team fails to continuously invest time into fine-tuning your strategy.

Social media strategy needs constant tweaking, analyzing and learning from your or your competitors’ success and failures.

Apart from the obvious tools (like Facebook and Twitter Analytics), here are five tools to help you come with new social media advertising tactics:

1. Awario: Position your brand better

What engages your social media best? What types of special offers and product features are being discussed on social media? What annoys your customers most, urging them to voice their complaints on social media?

A well set-up social listening strategy will answer all of these questions and more. Apart from using social media listening as part of your customer support and relationship management strategy, make sure to set up a few more alerts to keep an eye on:

  • Your competitors’ unhappy customers: Are they complaining on missing or limited features? Can you create a product positioning strategy to cover that gap and reflect that positioning strategy in your social media ads?
  • Existing product names: What are well known product names in your niche? You can learn a lot about how your target customers are using competing products by monitoring their names.
  • Your core keywords: Keep an eye on general niche discussions to better understand what your target customers are discussing online and peaks their interests.

Social media listening strategy provides a goldmine of data for you to create a better informed advertising strategy.

Awario is an advanced social media listening platform that has a powerful market research component allowing you to better understand your niche. Use Awario boolean search feature to create advanced alerts that include several of your competitors’ names within one dashboard or let you monitor all of your target keywords.

Awario uses smart algorithms to prioritize those mentions and generate handy email digest for you to save time going through daily alerts.

Apart from using social listening for market research, there’s another powerful tactic few brands are utilizing: Curate your brand’s social proof and use it as an ad copy. Create a separate alert to get notified of your brand’s mentions with positive sentiment and collect those updates for future reference when you are fine-tuning your ad copy or looking for new ideas to position your brand when advertising on social media.

Finally, Awario allows you to evaluate your new advertising strategy by giving you access to your brand’s growth stats and allowing you to see how the sentiment has been changing:

Awario social listening tool Mentions and Sentiment screenshot

In fact, when creating a social media ad, try using all kinds of marketing experiments. For example, look at your most effective email blasts and try re-using those subject lines. Or look at your most successful headlines or CTAs and find a way to follow the same style in your advertising copy.

2. Buzzsumo: Spy on your competitors

While you may already be aware of Facebook ads library allowing you to see which advertising strategies your competitors were using, Buzzsumo’s Facebook tools may be new to you.

Buzzsumo allows you to compare two or more Facebook pages and their content performance, side by side.

Buzzsumo comparison screenshot

You can filter updates by post type to evaluate your competitors’ more creative tactics, like engaging questions they ask their audience or videos they invest into promoting.

3. Text Optimizer: Create a better copy

Finding the right words for an engaging ad copy is art.

It’s also a process that never ends. You need to constantly come up with new ways to craft a message so that it could engage new customers.

Text Optimizer is my source of never-ending inspiration. Just type your core keyword and it will come with a huge list of related concepts your customers are also interested about. It will also allow you to analyze popular niche questions and suggest the most relevant and engaging context.

TextOptimizer keyword research

Use the tool whenever you feel stuck and need some inspiration, like new angles and copy ideas.

SE Ranking keyword research is another ideation tool I often use for any type of content marketing, including social media copy. It shows popular ads for any keywords allowing me to see which wording competitors are using for their PPC ads:

SE Ranking keyword research tool screenshot

4. SparkToro: Research your audience

Who are those people behind your target social media accounts? Which hashtags are they using? Who are they listening to?

Answering all of those questions can help you on many levels, from creating a buyer’s personas to target your ads better to finding more ways to create your targeting strategy, like hashtag- or influencer-driven targeting.

SparkToro is an audience research tool that allows you to access lots of well-organized data on how your customers are discussing your primary topic, who they engage with on social media, which Youtube channels they are subscribed to and which blogs or magazines they read.

SparkToro audience research tool

There’s also a detailed report of your target audience demographics and popular topics they tend to discuss:

SparkToro demographics

Click any report section to access even more data.

All in all, the platform is everything you need to create a smarter targeting strategy.

When it comes to marketing research, surveying your current customers is also always a great idea. This is the fundamental customer-centric content tactic that will breathe new life in any marketing strategy.

5. Heatmaps: Understand your visitors

Don’t you want to know how your social media users engage with your landing page?

Surely, your response would be “yes”, because you spend money on attracting that click. Obviously, you want to make sure that visitor will engage with the page and become your customer.

While you are already using Google Analytics, it is not always easy to visualize what really attracts your site visitors’ attention and what attracts them.

Any time you are launching a new advertising campaign, set up a new tracking campaign using heatmaps. Heatmaps visualize clicks and mouse movements on your page allowing you to see which page elements should be rearranged to make the page easier to navigate.

heatmaps clicks

Unlike Google Analytics that is continuously running on your pages, heat-mapping tools rely on a sample of data. Create new tracking, every time you have a new ad. This way you will be able to go back and compare your past heatmaps and identify what worked and what may have made things worse. Using A/B testing to pick a better performing landing page is also a very good idea.

Conclusion

As they say, when starting a social media campaign, it’s more about collecting the data than sales. Focus on learning from your successes and failures and make sure to use Facebook remarketing pixel to be able to reach out to those visitors again with better targeted ads.

There are lots of businesses who readily invest into social media ads because they seem to be more affordable than Google ads and require less set-up time. Yet, few of those advertising are doing their best to boost their strategy performance. Hopefully the above tools will give you ideas on how to innovate and improve your social media strategy. Good luck!

 

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