The Top 7 Social Trends That Will Emerge In 2014

Social Business has few advocates of change more vocal than one of its leading protagonists, Michael Krigsman of ZDNet. “With few exceptions, every company will face new challenges, competitors, and opportunities, as our society grows more connected,” he said in a recent article, and called on executives to, “step up your own skills and lead the charge!” Indeed, business is changing rapidly, but some argue that ‘social business’ is too broad or too vague.

So given Krigsman’s call to action and the need for more clarity, I asked IBM’s Scott Hebner, VP of Social Business to think about the trends in social business that he’s seeing and to provide his predictions as to what we can expect to see in 2014.

1. Social business is not just about collaboration, it’s about unlocking the engines of collective knowledge, differentiated expertise and rapid learning

Social is no longer just about collaboration. Social today is enabling businesses to break down organizational and hierarchical silos and barriers. It’s providing employees an opportunity to share knowledge and locate expertise. In 2014, we’ll see social transform into an organization’s enablement and learning platform, social learning, that is able to offer the ability to share knowledge and expertise through real-time videos and interactive social capabilities.

Social’s new role will be helping to build a smarter enterprise. For example, doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital are already moving in this direction with social; doctor’s across the globe are sharing peer-reviewed training videos and on-demand curricula to demonstrate the latest life-saving techniques in child care, building an ecosystem of well-trained healthcare professionals.

2. Social Businesses will begin to tap behavioral data to help drive decision making

In the past, business has relied on instrumented data — machine generated data — to help drive decision making. With the emergence of social and all the activity taking place over social networks, both internal and external, we now have access to behavioral data that is allowing organizations to analyze sentiment, listen and learn from customer experiences and behaviors and tap into the social pulse of their employees and customers.

With this information we can understand how, why, who, and what of our employees and consumers. This is a unique and groundbreaking capability, tapping into social behavioral analytics to build resilient and secure social business fabrics that collectively deliver value for both consumers and employees alike. In 2014, social behavioral data will be king.

3. The rise of the individual & “marketing as a service”

For most organizations social networking has been a marketing machine, providing the ability to build armies of advocates for your brand. As we enter into the next phase of social, it will be less about how many likes you can get, and more focused on the quality of those likes and who is doing the liking. Social, driven by the new behavioral data, will allow organizations to capitalize on this trend and individualize consumers.

Looking at customers as individuals instead of segments, marketers will now be able to deliver personalized experiences customized to individual or community needs. Social will transform marketing from a function to a service and consumers will reap the benefits.

4. Social takes on talent management

Similar to how marketers will personalize consumers’ experiences, human resource departments will also begin to capitalize on the power of social by integrating it into their Human Capital Management systems in order to deepen loyalty and engagement with employees. In a world where employees move from job to job at a rapid pace, when it comes to human capital, loyalty trumps everything. Organizations are searching for a means to not only recruit the right candidates, but more importantly retain and nuture that talent to become passionate, engaged and loyal.

In 2014, we’ll begin to see organizations tapping social and behavioral data to better understand what is important to employees, what motivates them, why they stay with an organization and much more. Say good-bye to the traditional HR survey and embrace a new set of social behavioral assets to build your elite workforce.

5. The customer activated social enterprise will drive innovations that really matter

For the past several years, social has been laser focused on internal collaboration or pushing out messages to clients and partners. In 2014, enterprises of all types will open up to customer influence, pioneering social and digital innovation and building engaging customer experiences. We’ll see workplaces and marketplaces fusing together like never before; enterprises will be thinking and acting differently in the context of social.

IBM's recent C-Suite study reveals that 70 percent of C-suite recognize the importance of shifting to new models of social and digital interaction to reach customers and new markets. In 2014, we’ll see that the highest performing businesses are those that recognize that digital and social technologies have spawned a new kind of consumer behavior and new ways to work that are highly intertwined.

6. The true convergence of Social, Mobile, Analytics and the Cloud

This coming year will bring the true convergence of social business, big data, the mobile workforce, and cloud computing as ‘business as usual.’ An organization’s social business platform will become the universal foundation for how the enterprise works and engages in the marketplace.

The platform must securely connect, empower and energize the workforce without anyone noticing the technology (i.e., performance, it’s bullet proof and it’s secure). The platform should enable self-service, it should process integrity; it should be intelligent and accessible anywhere, anytime.  Equally important is the ability to harvest data of all types and origins, as that is what fuels the personalized experiences that are so critical.  Bringing all these enterprise technologies together in a highly dynamic, ever-changing environment like a social business requires a well architected solution. Thus, organizations consider which platforms to build their social businesses upon, they will want a highly integrated, holistic platform that is based on SMAC – social, mobile, analytics and cloud.

7. Brand journalism will begin to gain traction 

This 7^th prediction doesn’t come from Hebner, but based on my observations of IBM. They have a reported 40,000+ content producers and brand journalists within IBM, some of which are writing for their industry’s most well-known publications. IBM is becoming a powerful media house and does not rely on the media to tell their story.

But volume is only part of the story, as more and more content is being produced, quality and social distribution matter – and that is usually derived from professionals with large social followings. Brands are starting to realize that hiring journalists or professional bloggers with large followings to create content for them will not only give them high profile attention, but provide myriad revenue opportunities as well.

Yahoo provides an example of how companies are starting to capitalize on the trend. They recently persuaded New York Times tech columnist David Pogue to lead their consumer tech reporting. Another example is Jesse Noyes, who was a business reporter for the Boston Business Journal and the Boston Herald and now Oracle’s (Eloqua‘s) managing editor.

So for me, not only are Hebner’s predictions something to closely watch, but also watch what IBM is doing closely. Take one of their latest hires, Andrew Grill (former CEO of social scoring site Kred). They hired him to be their Global Social Business Partner lead, but I suspect there’s something bigger going on beyond the scenes. I’ve recently interviewed Grill and will expand more in the next few weeks.

Article curated from Forbes

Facebook to roll out video advertising in test

Facebook has confirmed it is testing video advertising, following media reports that it will roll out video commercials later this week.

The social networking website said on Tuesday that it would be promoting a series of videos for the upcoming film "Divergent" this week -- but stressed it was only a test run. 

It comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that video ads would begin appearing in Facebook users' feeds on Thursday. 

"As this is a test, we don't have additional details to share at this time, but rest assured we'll continue to refine this new way for brands to tell stories on Facebook," a company spokesperson told CNBC in an email. 

The videos will run automatically in Facebook users' news feeds without sound; users will be able click on the video to hear the audio.

If the test is judged to be successful, Facebook will be in a good position to capture a share of the lucrative U.S. television ad space -- which is expected to hit $81.6 billion in 2017, according to PwC. 

Earlier this year speculation that Facebook would introduce 15-second video ads surfaced, but it is unclear how long the "Divergent" commercials will be. 

Facebook is looking to further increase its advertising revenue which saw a 66 percent rise in the third quarter of 2013 compared with the same quarter last year, with mobile advertising representing almost half of that figure. 

But earlier this year, it struck a cautious note about advertising amid fears that an increased number of commercials would push users away.

The social networking giant must balance its drive for revenue with the user experience, according to Ian Maude, an online media analyst at Enders Analysis. 

"So far there hasn't been a negative reaction from Facebook users and video advertising will really reinvigorated Facebook's business. The tricky part is getting balance between maximizing revenue and not annoying users to the point they leave Facebook," Maude told CNBC. 

Article curate from NBC News

Twitter Tests A New Nearby Location Based Local Timeline

Twitter is testing out a new service called “Nearby”. The idea is that, if you let them know your location, you will be able to see tweets from those in the same geographic location as yourself, even if you’re not following them. Perhaps, in the example the WSJ gives on this, you’ll be able to find out why those three fire engines just raced past lit up? I have to admit that this idea rather interests me because it’s leading to the exact and total opposite of what I’ve always taken the social aspect of the internet (and of social media) to be. That being to free us from the geographic based interest groups that we find ourselves in and allows us to find people based on a commonality of interests rather than just location.

The upper half of the “Nearby” screen is a map where a blue dot pulses over the user’s current location. The bottom half shows a timeline of recent nearby tweets, with icons on the map noting their locations. Clicking on an icon pulls the corresponding tweet to the front of the screen.

As you move around the map, more picture-linked tweets pop up in a manner similar to the way shopping carts spring up when searching for grocery stores on Google Maps.

One obvious possibility here is that Twitter would like more people to let them know their location (this is an option on this service) as that will enable them to offer location based ads to advertisers.

So far so good, an interesting addition to the service perhaps. But the thing that got me musing is that for me, as for so many other people, all of this internet, web, social media stuff has been exactly to free us from the tyranny of being stuck socially in our geography. I’m old enough to recall the days before mobile phones (no, really, I am) and who you met up with, who you could talk to, depended very much on who happened to be around. Subjects of conversation, activities, were near randomly determined by who actually was around. In many cases if was a matter of who happened to be propping up the bar at the pub on that particular evening.

What all of this electronic connectivity has done is freed us from those geographic limitations. Perhaps the first major example was on Usenet, where the strange people who like to talk about economics, or sci fi, of matters environmental, could all go and do those things. No longer did you have to pour your theories about Ricardian Equivalence into the ear of the poor lad trying to have a pint and read the footie scores. It was possible to find people, perhaps a continent away, who were perfectly happy to discuss such matters. That is, each minority interest group was freed from their geographic reality.

Very much the same is true of Twitter, Facebook and all the rest these days: we’re able to follow our interests without regard (other than, perhaps, timezones) to geography. All of which is why it amuses me rather to find that we’re trying to come full circle on this and turn these social media tools back into local ones, based on geographic not interest concerns.

 

3 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2014

Here are three cutting-edge trends that will be at the core of the most successful social media marketing campaigns in 2014.

 

Despite having nearly a decade of experience with social networks, many marketers still find social media a tough nut to crack. But other marketers are transforming how they use social networks in ways that increase brand reach with relevant audiences and drive real ROI.

Here are three cutting-edge trends that will be at the core of the most successful social media marketing campaigns in 2014. These trends aren't magic bullets or industry secrets that will give brands an edge overnight. They're organic strategies that can drive real rewards for organizations with the patience and diligence to implement them.

Increase Employee Advocacy With Social Media Governance

Designating employee advocates is one of the most cost-effective ways to extend brand reach on social media. It can also be a risky endeavor, however, if employees don't have clear guidance on the common do's and don'ts of interacting with the brand on social media.

Brands with a strong base of employee advocates typically have a well-written social media governance policy that serves as the anchor of the employee advocacy strategy. Developing a policy sounds like nails on a chalkboard to most digital marketers, but it really isn't that difficult. 
Developing the policy is just the beginning; your team must implement the policy across business units and keep the policy up to date. A governance policy can mitigate the risk of costly social media disasters and help your employee base work as a cohesive unit. Employee advocacy on social networks will stretch your team's digital marketing dollars when it comes to increasing brand reach.

Enhance Content Distribution Efforts

A recent article by Forrester analyst Ryan Skinner revealed how distribution, and specifically earned media, is a core component to successful content marketing.

Skinner's article quotes a VP of marketing saying, "Marketers always ask me how to make more or better content, and it's almost always the wrong question. The right question is: "How do I get my content in front of the right people?""

As organizations continue to focus on using paid, owned and earned media to increase branded content distribution, social media can be used as a support mechanism to enhance distribution to relevant audiences on social media. Brands that enhance paid and earned media campaigns by distributing this content to relevant audiences on social networks can develop an edge in their respective industries.

Lead With Education, Not Conversation

Research shows that targeted educational content distribution is a much more effective strategy for building audiences than social media conversations. A recent HubSpot study found that all of the top-100 non-celebrity Twitter accounts used targeted content to build these giant audiences.

Conversations on social media are best left to bottom-of-funnel sales cycles and customer service. When building relevant audiences and extending brand reach, it's better to focus on delivering targeted educational content on a regular basis.

These Strategies Aren't Silver Bullets

The strategies mentioned above won't deliver returns immediately, but they also won't take multiple quarters to implement. A bit of smart hard work over the next couple of months can point your organization in the right direction and provide lasting brand reach on social networks. Get started on these strategies today, and explode out of the gates in 2014!

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

Harnessing the Power of Online Reviews This Christmas

It’s holiday season and that means one thing, Christmas presents. With the retail industry set to be caught in a whirlwind over the next month it is clear that this is an opportunity to really make your business stand out from the crowd. And one way of doing this is by harnessing the power of online reviews.

Whatever you might think of them, the power of online reviews cannot be ignored. Whether you’re a small e-tailer, an online giant, or a global blue-chip – online reviews have an impact.

Research from Nielsen revealed that recommendations from acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of ‘advertising.’ A recent blog post from eConsultancy shows that:

    61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision

    Reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales

    47% of Britons have reviewed products online

With the explosion of online shopping – latest figures show that UK shoppers spent £586.9m a week online, on average, in June 2013 (that’s 18.3% up on the same month in 2012) – reviews have taken on a whole new significance. By not allowing customers to rate and comment on your company, you run the risk of online shoppers taking their business straight to competitors that do.

Research from a recent TripAdvisor study also revealed that:

53% of travelers won’t book a hotel if it doesn’t have any reviews. Some 78% say reviews help them to feel more confident in making a booking decision. Whatever way you look at it, if you sell online, then not having online review options is going to have a serious impact on your profits.

5 reasons why you need online reviews

Online reviews are basically a word-of-mouth marketing strategy, which has long been known as the most powerful endorsement a brand can have. Here are 5 reasons you should include reviews on your website:

    Reason #1 – They help you build consumer confidence and trust.

You’re obviously going to be providing the best products and services that you possibly can, so the vast majority of your reviews will reflect this. This builds confidence and trust in customers who haven’t used you before as the more 3-5 star ratings you have, the more likely they are to believe all those people can’t be wrong.

    Reason #2 – They increase your click-through rates (CTRs).

Featuring reviews from your happy customers in search results when consumers search for your product gets you more click-throughs and, in turn, more conversions. Find a platform that feeds your reviews straight into your Google Seller Ratings: on average, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings.

    Reason #3 – They can help improve conversion rates

Businesses that have been using online review solutions show that their online sales have increased anywhere from 7.5% to 60% due to increased trust from skeptical buyers.

    Reason #4 – They give you great content to share on social media

With 92% of people trusting recommendations from people they know, an online review system that lets you share your reviews easily on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ will enable your customers to spread trust among their peers, increasing your customer base.

    Reason #5 – They keep your customers engaged

By letting your customers comment on your company and taking the time to respond to them you make them feel valued and wanted. They are more likely to want to become part of the company – PROsumers, not just CONsumers. This goes for negative as well as positive reviews – even if someone is unhappy, by responding quickly and positively you can turn things around.

According to Forbes, where online reviews matter most is in the home electronics market (77% say consumer reviews influence purchase decisions compared to just 23% for editorial reviews) and automotive industries. But they also point out that any business that operates a significant portion of its retail platform online, apart from the FMCG sector, has a lot to lose or gain when it comes to online reviews of products and services.

What next? 5 steps to getting started with reviews

So now that you know why online reviews are a must-have for your business, and how to use them to win more customers and more repeat business, what do you do next?

You need to:

• Embrace the new world of online reviews and learn how to make them work for your business to increase conversions.
• Review your online review platform options and choose the one that best suits your needs. Can you respond to reviews? Will it push your reviews to Google and feed them into your Google Seller Ratings? Can it share them easily to social media platforms?
• Get your platform up and running and start collecting reviews from your existing customers before your competition does.
• Respond to your reviews, good and bad, and share them across all of your marketing channels.
• Sit back and watch as your glowing reviews generate more business.

Has this post got you thinking about the power of online reviews? 

Article curated from Business 2 Community

Email Marketing: How to Write Subject Lines That Get Clicks

If you don't grab customers with your subject line, you've lost them. Check out these pointers for crafting one that makes people click.

Think you know email marketing backwards and forwards? Able to dash off a contact email or sales pitch without a second thought? Check that impulse, because you may get only a fraction of the responses you could receive with some thought and experimentation.

That may not seem surprising if your professional life has been steeped in direct response. Some of the old tested rules of thumb in print would have been startling the first time you heard them, like use the word "you" in copy and write headlines longer than seven or so words. Such fundamentals came from experts who had done extensive testing that pitted one variation against another, time and time again, from many marketers, to learn what patterns tended to hold true.

When it comes to email marketing, mass email vendor MailChimp has just added to what marketers know with a big comparison of subject lines to response rates. The company looked at 24 billion emails sent and 22,000 words in emails sent in the U.S. with tracking. Each email had to go to at least 500 people and the client must have sent at least 10 previous campaigns. In other words, no complete novices and stick to one national demographic for a more reasonable analysis. Even though it was somewhat self-selecting, as only MailChimp clients could wind up in the data pool, the results are still worth considering. Here's what they found.

Personal Works, Chumminess Doesn't

Put the first and last names of recipients into the subject line and you're doing a third of a standard deviation better in open rates than average. That's almost double as effective as using a last name only and close to four times as effective as using a first name only.

And while talking about first names, the effect depends heavily on the industry. Government gets the biggest email open bang for the buck when using a first name only. Creative services and agencies get maybe half that amount. Politics, less. At the bottom is the legal industry, where using someone's first name in the subject line will actually drive many people away from opening the message.

Don't Use the Word 'Free' So Freely

"Free" is supposed to be one of the magic words that make people open messages. When it comes to email subject lines, however, adding free often does nothing. According to MailChimp, on average it helped 0.02 standard deviations. Compare that to the term "freebie," which resulted in a 0.26 standard deviation. In other words, freebie rules. Furthermore, the use of free varies widely in effectiveness, with recruitment and staffing, restaurant, and beauty and personal care enjoying the most benefit. The industries where it did badly, actually lowering response, were surprising--travel and transportation, real estate, and retail saw drops in their response rates.

Keep Things Positive

Creating the perception of time sensitivity is an old direct marketing trick. "Urgent," "breaking," and "important" all performed relatively well. But go too negative, like using the word "cancellation," and you could see a drop in response.

There is more that you should read for yourself. The big point is that the need to test and refine language, images, concepts, and every other aspect of marketing has only become more critical.
 

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

For the Holidays: Your Digital Marketing Checklist

Here's a guide to digital marketing throughout the holidays, in four channels

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas--at least online.

With Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and the abundance of shopping in between, businesses around the world are already unleashing their of holiday marketing campaigns. These digital recommendations will help you get the most out of your holiday marketing dollars.

Paid Search
Stand out from the competition by focusing on the details. You can do this by putting together seasonal paid search campaigns using the season's highest searched keywords.
For example, the query volume for '"sale" keywords consistently increases during the holidays. Take advantage of this trend by using sale terminology in your ad copy. Leverage incremental search queries, rotate holiday ads that are closely derived from the ads that have worked the best for you, and use day-parting to massively scale up and down during short time periods.

It's also important to pay special attention to the unusually short stretch between Black Friday and Christmas this year. Because Thanksgiving falls on November 28, the shopping period between the two shopping holidays is shortened to a mere 25 days.

With less time for consumers to tackle their holiday shopping, researchers are expecting consumers to start earlier. You can encourage early shoppers to become early buyers through pre-Black Friday and pre-Cyber Monday promotions and perks. Make sure to keep your analytics and retargeting up-to-date so that you can see which of your products get the most views, which reviews are the most read, and which items get added to wish lists. Use this data to figure out which products are likely to be in the highest demand. That'll help focus your digital efforts later in the holiday season.

Social Media
During last year's holiday season, traffic to social media sites converted at a rate 77% higher than it did during the rest of the year. Social media campaigns for the holiday season are starting earlier each year, which means you need to gear up earlier too if you want to take advantage of relatively low costs.

Display
Display ads allow marketers to target individuals who have previously interacted with their brand on social networks and other websites, making this second touch point more likely to convert. Display ads also allow marketers to target individuals based on the particular device that they use to interact with their brand.

In addition to targeting capabilities, display advertising is ideal for updating your creative with relevant offers. While you should be doing this anyway, the holiday season provides a unique opportunity to target users on a granular level because of the increases in individuals' online activities. The more data you have to work with, the better you can target your best consumers or qualified leads. The prices of available inventory skyrocket during the holiday season, so it's important to target only the most relevant customers.

Out of sight is out of mind, so don't allow your brand to slip from your customer's minds. Stay in front of them with display advertising.

Email
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways for marketers to reach consumers at the last minute and on modest budgets. That said, customers will receive hundreds of emails a day during the holiday season. The majority of online shoppers will use an email during their path to purchase, so make your email marketing campaign count with dynamic content that is relevant and tailored to users.

Customize your holiday email content with gift specifics such as pricing, who will be receiving the gift, unique gift categories, product type and best sellers. Consumers will appreciate the unique content, and your email campaign will have a better chance of increasing ROI.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

SEO Is Dead. Here's What Is Taking Its Place

Thanks to recent Google changes, search engine optimization isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be. But that's OK--there's a better way.

BY Erik Sherman

If you've ever tried to deal with search engine optimization, you most likely have, at some point or another, wanted to bundle your whole site up and toss it into the nearest virtual trash can. Particularly if you felt compelled to focus on keywords, or any other technique calculated to artificially pique someone's mouse clicks.

You should be delighted to hear then, if you haven't heard yet, that the old-fashioned concept of SEO is deader than last week's sandwich. Google pretty much pounded the crap out of keyword stuffing and other absurdities with the search algorithm changes it's made over the last couple of years. And then Google made search secure, which means you can't even see what keywords someone used to get to your site.

It's about time, because all the minutiae blinded entrepreneurs to what is really important: making a connection with an audience. The term--not exactly new--that seems to be displacing SEO is OAO, online audience optimization. Before getting too squirrelly about another Three Letter Acronym, let's get grounded and think about what's important.

Really Know Your Audience
Over on the Marketingland blog, Brian Clark quoted great old-time advertising copyrighter Eugene Schwartz:

One hour a day, read. Read everything in the world except your business. Read junk. Very much junk. Read so that anything that interests you will stick in your memory. Just read, just read, just read... There is your audience. There is the language. There are the words that they use.

Clark takes this to mean that you have to understand the language and words people use so you know how to talk to them. I'll take it a step further. Not only do you need to know how they talk, which lets you better guess how they might specifically look for what you offer, but you also need to understand what they find funny. What scares them. What is important to them. How they think. Until you do, they're only marks and you do nothing more than run calculated cons. After you do understand them, they're real people and you might find yourself caring a bit about them. Good--care more.

Translate Caring Into Specific Actions
Do you care about your significant other, family members, or friends? If so, then there are plenty of times that you'll do specific things that you know make them happy. Emotion isn't an abstract concept, but something that drives behavior. Let the same thing happen in your marketing after you start to care about the audience. For example, Linda Ruth lists nine steps for OAO, including be consistent and clear about strategy and purpose, encourage audience participation, and employ engagement metrics and gamification techniques. 

Maybe you'll find that your list is the same. Maybe it will be somewhat different. Just make sure it comes with a focus on customers and how you can provide what they need.

It's like going into a shop you like where the people recognize you and get your interests and tastes. That's all you're trying to do. When the technology, any technology, gets in the way, drop it out back and return to the basics.

 Article curated from Inc. Magazine

How to Master the 4 Big Social-Media Platforms

Most people think of social media as distribution and use the same messaging on every platform. That's not fully exploiting the tools.

Think of how you act with your friends versus how you act with your clients. You behave differently based on your environment. Social media is the same thing. Every platform is like a different meeting, a different room, and you have to be cool or quality depending where you are. Most people think of social media as distribution and use the same messaging on every platform. That's not fully exploiting the tools. Instead, it's important to figure out how to natively tell stories on each platform and which visuals and copy will enhance the likelihood of a given post's going viral.

Twitter

I included #business, because it was a trending topic at the time of this tweet. When you use a hashtag that's trending, you have a substantially better chance of getting engagement from people who aren't your followers. The couple hundred people who click that hashtag every hour around the world might also see it, and I might get some traction I might not otherwise have gotten.I also made my tweet a question, because it makes your brain think about the answer. If I can get someone to stop for half a second to ponder, I've got him in my ecosystem. Also, line breaks allow your tweet to take up a larger portion of the phone screen and attract attention.

Facebook
It all starts with the image. Notice, this image isn't just the label of the bottle. It's an original piece. When you're developing images for Facebook, think about print and magazine advertising. I want people to know what wine it is (hence the crop in on the label) and how good it is (hence the Wine Enthusiast score). Keep your copy short. Include the important information that people will care about. In this case, it's the rating, the price, and the right hook: Click here to buy now. And don't be afraid to go in for the sale. If you want someone to do something, you have to ask him or her to do it. I made sure to include the word buy before the link.

Instagram
Instagram is all about real images. Where are you? What are you looking at? What are you doing now? Unlike the polished images you'll see for Facebook and Pinterest, this is a simple shot taken on a phone. It's native to the platform. That doesn't mean you can't include information or text in your photo. I wrote some of the tasting notes directly onto the tablecloth. The only place where links are clickable in the Instagram app is in your bio. Rather than including a link in the post copy for people to copy and paste in a browser (because, honestly, who would ever do that?), I put the link in my bio. Remember, the more you act human, the more you win. Instagram is personal. It's for those real-life moments.

Pinterest
Pinterest is all about aspiration or utility. Here, I'm not just selling wine; I'm giving knowledge. This infographic gives context and tells you everything you could want to know about this bottle. This is just too much text for any other platform, but it feels right at home on Pinterest. People are shopping on Pinterest, so they're spending more time on the content and looking at it with a critical eye. I used a much longer image on Pinterest than on any other platform. The platform dimensions are different and allow for it, but more important--similar to what I did on Twitter--longer pins take up more real estate.



Article curated from Inc. Magazine

To learn more about how social media can help your business, click here to contact IES Marketing.

6 Ways to Get Sales Email Opened

Practical rules to ensure customer and potential customers actually read what you've written for them.

 

I recently received an email from a reader that contained an excellent question: "Do you have any Subject Line templates/best practices for prospecting emails?"  Here are some guidelines, based partly on my own experience and partly from published research:

1. Make the subject line simple. There are several reasons why this is true.  First, busy people get a LOT of emails and usually decide which ones to open based upon a quick scan of the list of messages that have recently arrived.

Since they're not actually reading the Subject Lines, a Subject Line that requires the recipient to consciously think about its meaning is unlikely to be opened.  Here are some examples from emails I've received over the past couple of days:

Wrong:
Subject: Ernesto Zedillo to Chair 21st Century Council of Berggruen Institute on Governance

Right:
Subject: The "Call Me Back After the Holidays" Stall

2. Make the subject line short. A short Subject Line makes it more likely that the entire Subject Line will appear on the list and not be cut off mid sentence.  The two examples below are exactly as they appeared in my inbox:

Wrong:
Subject: Webinar: Register Now to Learn How...

Right:
Subject: You've Been Promoted, Now What?

According to the email vendor MailChimp (which I do not use but which has good information), emails are more likely to be opened if the Subject Line is less than 50 characters. I never use subject lines more than 40 characters.

3. Use a pre-tested subject line. The Internet in general and your own website in particular are excellent test beds for what interests people enough to click on it.  Using the title of a popular blog post (yours or somebody else's) as your Subject Line almost guarantees a high open rate.

As many of you know, I write and send a free weekly newsletter by email.  I have never gotten less than a 25% open rate and sometimes achieve more than 33% (anyone in the business will tell you that's really good.)

I credit this to the fact that my Subject Lines are almost always based on the most popular blog post of the past week.  For example, here are the five newsletter titles that got my highest open rate with a link to the original post:

• 10 Dumb Sales Tactics to Avoid
• 6 Tips for Persuasive Sales Messages
• Eliminate Stress and Have Fun at Work
• 9 Easy Habits That Make You Happier
• 12 Great Motivational Quotes for 2013

If you click on the links, you'll notice that all of these posts received a large amount of "Shares" which is why I used them in the Subject Line of my newsletter.

4. Avoid words that recipients hate. Your email won't get read if it's caught by a SPAM filter.  Most people know some of the words that trigger filters, like "FREE" and "CIALIS," but few people realize that there are actually about 100 of these words.  Here's a comprehensive list.

In addition to the above, MailChimp has identified three words that generally get through SPAM filters but which for some reason, people don't like when it comes to opening emails: Help, Percent off (% off), and Reminder.

With this in mind, here are two subject lines from MailChimp's research.  The first received open rate of less than 1%, the second an open rate of over 90%:

Wrong:
Subject: Final reminder for complimentary entry to attend the West Freelands BCI Cluster Conference 2006

Right:
Subject: Your April Website Stats

5. Localize but don't personalize. According to MailChimp again, people tend to open emails that have a Subject Line that refers to the city or town in which the recipient lives.  However, they tend to ignore Subject Lines that contain the prospect's name.

It's not hard to see why.  Everybody knows that your emailing programs will insert the recipient's name anywhere you like.  However, inserting the location is less common and implies that that the source of the email is local.

Wrong:
Subject: John, are you ready for the new year?

Right:
Subject: Reach decision-makers in St. Louis.

6. Have content that delivers the goods. Recipients tend to ignore emails from people they don't know and read emails from they know (or know of).  That's why you'll get a much higher open rate if you're emailing current customers, former customers or people who've "signed up" to get emails from you.

This is not to say that generating email lists from online sources (like LinkedIn) doesn't work, but only that your emails will have a much lower open rate.

However, regardless of how you found the email address, once the recipient has gotten an email from you and opened it, the recipient will decide whether or not it's worthwhile to open any future emails you send.

If you've got a fantastic Subject Line but the contents stink, you're just going to irritate the recipient.  It's like unwrapping a package with a beautiful bow that turns out to contain a box of crap. People remember that.

On the other hand, if your email contains got great content, there's a good chance that the recipient will open future sales emails, even if the Subject Line isn't fabulous.

To learn more about how email marketing can help your business, click here.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

Email Still Trumps Social Media for Online Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Email marketing wins more online customers than Facebook and Twitter, but it lags behind organic search.

The customer acquisition landscape is constantly in flux. The introduction of disruptive technologies and tools over the last few years has spawned enormous changes in online marketing. But a recent report from Custora, maker of a predictive analytics platform, reveals that online retailers are winning new customers via traditional email marketing at quadruple the rate they did four years ago. The good old-fashioned marketing method still provides the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to reaching and retaining high-value customers online.

The study analyzed data from 72 million customers from 86 U.S. retailers across 14 industries and tracked the channels from which customers were clicking to e-commerce sites. While email proved to be a strong channel for growing a customer base, organic search was found to be the most popular driver. Facebook drove very few sales and Twitter drove none. Email was also shown to carry a higher customer lifetime value (the profit a company expects to earn from their entire future relationship with a customer) than social media channels.

The report also revealed that the lifetime value of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average, and that the most valuable online shoppers tend to come from more rural states. Here is some more detailed information from the study:

Channels

Customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the last 4 years.

Email marketing has been a growing trend in e-commerce, with an increasing number of retailers building communities and collecting email addresses, then converting those contacts into customers. Organic search continues to grow as a reliable channel, accounting for nearly 16% of customers acquired. The latter finding reinforces the use of content marketing along with investing in search engine marketing.

Customer lifetime value

The CLV of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) refers to the future profit a company expects to earn from a customer throughout their relationship with the business. The highest-value customers arrive through organic searches (54% higher than average). Customers acquired through Twitter tend to be worth about 23% less than average. This may be attributed to the frequency of discounts offered within tweets.

Geography

The most valuable online shoppers overall tend to come from more rural states.

Shoppers in rural areas tend to have fewer options for buying specialty goods locally and make more purchases online.




Article curated from Social Media Today

To learn more about how email marketing can help your business, call us at 855-IES-MARK or click here.

4 More Ways to Boost Your Twitter Followers

Social media experts weigh in on the best ways to attract loyal followers.

I'm so close I can feel it.

Over the past months, I've been experimenting more and more with social media, trying to find out how to gain more followers. It's not just for fun. If you only have a few hundred followers, you're speaking to a small audience.

For me, Twitter helps spread the word about new articles and keeps me connected with readers. It's also one of the primary tools I use for connecting with public relations folks. Sometimes, I even send out a mass tweet and let people know I'm leaving for the day or that I'm focusing on answering emails for the next hour or so. It's invaluable.

Back in 2011, I wrote a fairly seminal piece (at least, it was seminal for me) about gaining more Twitter followers. My goal back then was to hit 800 followers in a few weeks. I used a tool called Sprout Social. (In fact, I'm still using this app on my HTC One smartphone, on the Web, and on my iPad after two years.) It's best feature is the ability to post one tweet to multiple accounts at once and then track your success in how many people retweet what you say. And, I love the simple interface.

After two years, I am now approaching about 5,000 followers. It's great. I know my social media efforts have paid off and that there's a wider audience that reads what I post. What I've heard from a few experts is that my audience for social media is more "organic" than most. People seem to follow because they really want to read my posts. They say it's better to have fewer "real" followers than thousands of fake ones who may or may not care about what you have to say--and never click on your links.

That said, I'm still open to ideas. So I put out a call with a few social media experts who looked at my Twitter activity and they came up with a few more ideas. These tips seem to be working so far, although I have not quite hit the 5,000 mark yet. I'm close!

1. Post the same links multiple times
Rebecca Caroe is a social media expert at Creative Agency Secrets in New Zealand. She helped me quite a bit because I was making a big mistake. I usually only posted a link once or twice, but people tend to make "drive-bys" on a Twitter stream and only check for recent activity. There's a reason why the show Million Second Quiz on NBC posts a dozen tweets an hour. They are hoping casual followers at least see a few interesting links.

Caroe told me to post my own links at least three times in a day hitting a few different time zones. I've started doing this lately. Over the past month, I've added about 130 followers which seems to be tied to this change in how I post my links. I may even start posting the same link more times per day and see if that helps.

These links increase your followers when people visit your Twitter page and see what you've been up to and what you do. People follow active posters.

2. Follow your followers on other social channels
This one seems obvious but it's easy to overlook. The fact is, the followers you have on Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn might not be following you on Twitter.

Maybe they don't even know you are on Twitter--or they don't know your handle. Caroe also told me to ping my followers on other nets and ask them if they want to follow me on Twitter. This is a manual process, unfortunately. (There's a good start-up idea right there--a tool to automate this.)

Of course, the trick is to follow people in your same field and who have similar interests. You should also look for "influencers" who have a lot of followers. By following these folks, you are making an introduction to state your intent and, in many cases, they will follow you back. In general, following the influencers is a strategy every social media expert told me about. 

By spending a few minutes looking for the gurus and following them, you can find a bastion of new followers for yourself.

3. Interact with your followers like crazy
Harry Hawk, the social media strategist for Leske's Bakery in Brooklyn, told me he increased his followers to 5,000 in just two months, mostly by following key influencers. He says the key is to go beyond just a follow, though. He told me he's interacted with high-profile companies like @KlondikeBars and @Toyota by posting questions and interacting with them. Eventually, after a relationship develops, the influencers will feel compelled to follow you back. This is also a great way to keep the followers you do have--letting them know you are alive and active on Twitter, not comatose.

4. Show your personality
I keep hearing this advice from most social media experts like Phil Laboon, the CEO of marketing agency EyeFlow, so I've been trying to live this one out. The idea is to be yourself--to show your character. Too many Twitter streams have a banal list of links and nothing else. You get the feeling there's a bot generating them. New followers will find you eventually, but they will decide whether they want to stick around when they see you are a real person talking about a real company. I've been inserting a few jokes here and there, adding quips and quotes, and always (always!) answering direct messages. When someone gives me a mention on Twitter, I try to thank them and post a follow-up response. This tells new followers they will get the same kind of attentive response.

"Don't just build followers. You really need to stay active and continually engage with your audience, not just build useless followers you never engage with. You need to share engaging, valuable, or educational content. You really have to establish yourself as an resource for something whether tips, articles, news, opinions, or humor," says Laboon.

After two years of working hard, my goal is on the horizon. When I finally do hit 5,000, I'll post again with the tips that worked the best.

To learn more about how Twitter can help your business, click here.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

4 Key Elements of Your Facebook Marketing

With all the ongoing changes happening with Facebook, it’s sometimes tough to keep up and sort out what’s important and what may or may not impact your everyday efforts to engage with a vibrant community, reach a wider audience and ultimately communicate more efficiently. Below are the four key components to consider in order for brands to succeed on Facebook:

1. ORGANIC EFFORTS

Folks familiar with Facebook’s infamous EdgeRank algorithm will know that brands posting on Facebook will only reach, on average, 16% of their fans. Depending on size of page, type of industry and audience and, more importantly, how the page is managed, this percentage can vary anywhere between 7% to 33%, and sometimes as high as 50%. To reach such levels of penetration within your Facebook fan base usually requires dynamic community management, with tactics such as:

• Posting aspirational, humorous or emotional pictures
• Asking questions, not always directly linked to the brand, but coherent with its identity and community interests
• Contests and special offers – after all, number one reason why people “like” a brand is in order to get deals, discounts or access to exclusive offers or events
• Sharing relevant articles, photos and videos
• Asking people to complete a sentence, fill in the blank, insert a caption, etc.

As part of its recent major changes, Facebook announced two features – Story Bump and Last Actor – allowing engaging posts you haven’t seen to be bumped up to the top of News Feed later in the day, thus increasing the odds of you seeing it and interacting with its content: like, comment or share.

2. PAID COMPONENTS

The truth, however, is that no matter how dynamic their community management may be, brands now need to plan for investments on Facebook in order to reach more people, get more likes, shares and comments, and to enhance the overall page performance. And while Facebook ads are still part of the equation, there are now a variety of options to consider:

1. Classic Facebook Ads, appearing in the right side – desktop only. These can be purchased directly within the Facebook ad platform, or through more sophisticated techniques using retargeting, through Facebook Exchange (FBX).
   
    
    
    
    

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Boosting a Post on Facebook

   
   
2. Promoted Posts, also known as “boost” posts. For a given amount, you can ensure that a given post will reach a wider audience, with the range varying according to the set amount you invest in.
3. Page Post Ads are similar to promoted posts, in that they serve to highlight a given post. However, its mechanism resembles more of classic media buy, with CPM  or CPC targets, and more precise audience demographics and targeting capabilities.
4. Sponsored Stories are ads appearing in your Newsfeed, including on mobile devices. This is important since 60% of active users access their account through a mobile device! Brands highlight a given user’s activity, so there is less creativity and control, but these ads tend to perform better given their authentic nature, since user’s friends are exposed to a “genuine”message from someone in their network.
5. Facebook Offers. Facebook used to offer the option to send out online offers to fans, but this ceased on July 3rd, 2013. There is still the possibility to extend in-store offers, using the “offers” feature. Facebook Offers are free to create, but you will need to spend some money to promote them to your selected audience.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to spend money to spark your fan base, and savvy community managers now juggle between some of these initiatives in order to follow up with organic, more natural techniques to keep the interest alive and conversation going.

3. CROSSING PLATFORMS

The biggest mistake brands make, and most organizations in general, is to look at Facebook as its own entity. Facebook is a great platform, but it ought to be inserted in an over-arching online vision and strategy, aligning with email marketing initiatives, i.e. newsletters, automated emails, etc. as well as other social media, such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube or TripAdvisor. There also needs to be a content marketing approach, identifying what role for the corporate blog, what role for social media, what role for user-review sites, and so on… within an editorial and tactic calendar.

Brands who achieve optimal results with Facebook are those who cross-promote their various channels, including moving beyond online with offline (in-store) offers, for examples. Such initiatives also help providing tangible results, which in turn tend to contribute to ROI calculations that are often an issue to demonstrate, specially for brands who rely solely on engagement indicators.

4. ANALYTICS

Speaking of indicators, Facebook greatly enhanced its Insights module in the administrative panel. Among other improvements, we can now clearly see the distinction between paid and organic reach, with simpler metrics and easier to download, for those wo wish to export or extract data for further analysis. In case you missed them, here are some of the salient improvements:

• Each post now has its own scorecard, which helps to determine which type of post works better for your specific audience.
• The “Virality” indicator has been replaced by “Engagement”, in which post clicks are now included.
• There are now six tabs to choose from and where one can dig for lots of useful data about the page performance: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.

BONUS: A REVIEW SITE?

A lesser known feature was also unveiled recently that could prove to be a boon or a bombshell with the travel & hospitality vertical: the “Review” button that now appears on Facebook pages.

The new “Review” button on Facebook Pages

Most people don’t necessarily rely on Facebook for other users’ reviews and comments, with sites such as TripAdvisor or Yelp that have a strong leadership and awareness for this purpose alone. Nevertheless, Facebook positioned itself strategically earlier this year within the search field, launching its Graph Search functionality, so it would only make sense to now add this layer of user reviews. For an upcoming trip to Las Vegas, Chicago, Paris or Rome, users may want to use their Facebook search capabilities, now combined with these reviews that add context, in particular if comments come from folks within our network. Is that really Facebook’s intention? Hard to tell at this point, but travel marketers should take note of these developments. One never knows…

Sample of user reviews for Fairmont Chateau Frontenac hotel, in Quebec City

Are there other new features within Facebook you think are true game-changers or should have been mentioned in this post? 

To learn more about Facebook's recent changes or how Facebook marketing can help your business, click here for a free quote from IES Marketing.

Article curated from Social Media Today

Five Easy Ways to Expand Your Clientele Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a versatile platform for businesses to expand in many different ways. If you know how to use the networking site to your advantage, you can take your company to greater levels using it. Here are five simple tactics by which you can bring in more clients and more value to your business.

Use company status updates






If your gutter guard manufacturing company has a LinkedIn page, then make sure that you use the facility where certain employees and managers under you can update news and other relevant information on the page directly. By doing this, you are effectively cutting down your own work regarding developing and updating the page, and at the same time keeping your followers engaged. These updates can then be shared, commented on and liked by viewers, which helps keep them thinking about your company at all times. This way, clients will think of your company first because of the repetition and frequent renewal of interest.

Focus on specialization and find an exact target group



LinkedIn is different from other networking sites because it is targeted at working professionals and people who wish to expand their network of like-minded people in their areas of expertise. Since the target group is already specialized, you can grab the attention of a very specific group of individuals. These people are already prospective clients, making it easier for you to communicate with them.

Head hunting and LinkedIn



Search for skilled labor through this networking platform. LinkedIn makes things easier for you because information is freely available. Background checks can be done and you will be able to hire
 competent and efficient workers. If your staff is good, it is an automatic indicator that your company will deliver positive results. Many clients look at the employees of a company before working with the company itself.

Differentiate yourself and stand out among the crowd



There are many opportunities for you to expand your clientele using LinkedIn. However, it is important to remember that there are a large number of organizations participating in similar activities as you, each one trying to best the other. If you do not have anything special to catch people’s attention, it will be difficult for you to be found, even to your target audience.

Use LinkedIn as a place to promote even offline activities



If your company conducts seminars or other such sources of information regularly, it is advisable to promote this through LinkedIn. Send out invitations to such events online, and you will find that you have an additional number of interested people attending them. This will give you a better opportunity to pitch your business strategy and acquire more clients. Offline methods are excellent for sealing deals.

LinkedIn can only help you get the attention of potential clients. Offline advertising has more of a personal touch and is directed only at the select viewers at that moment. The Internet simply provides you with opportunities to eliminate a large number of people so that you know who to pitch to. 

Article curated from Social Media Today