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Social Media Trends to Put into Practice in 2018 (Hootsuite Webinar)

Social Media Trends to Put into Practice in 2018 (Hootsuite Webinar)

As 2017 is coming to an end, marketers are getting ready for the upcoming year. They predict new trends, and prepare new strategies. I recently listened to Hootsuite’s Webinar on social media trends for 2018, so I’ll share with you the key takeaways to help you prepare your social media strategies effectively and on time.

I. Where social media networks are headed

Social media networks are constantly evolving, and they will offer new opportunities for businesses next year.

Facebook – Facebook is pushing three important features for 2018: mobile video; messenger ads to encourage businesses to communicate more with their customers; and FB groups as a way for brands to engage with their audiences, and people to engage with content outside of the crowded newsfeed.

YouTube – YouTube will focus more on high-quality content in the future. It will become the go-to platform for mobile streaming, and it will grow into a platform for live streaming and social tv content.

Instagram – Instagram is growing fast and brands are seeing organic and peer-to-peer success on this network. They are introducing a lot of new advertising features, such as links in ads and stories which you can add to your e-commerce or website.

Twitter – Twitter has now a lot of video and personalized recommendations, direct response ad formats, and a particularly important feature is in-stream video ads. Twitter is partnering with some big media brands, and that can help you reach broad audiences.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn will have more CRM integrations with Microsoft cloud products, which will be key for B2B businesses. They want to become the number 1 platform where professionals consume content, so they are introducing many social features, such as video creation tool, messenger features, Snapchat geofilters for events and conferences, etc.

II. Three key challenges for organizations in 2018

Organizations will face three key challenges in the upcoming year:

  1. To find solution for declining organic reach
  2. To keep pace with algorithmic shifts and social network innovation
  3. Proving the ROI of existing strategies, before moving to new innovation

III. Global social behaviors

  • Social dominates time spent on mobile – Every 1 in 3 minutes spent on mobile is spent inside a social app. As consumers spent more time on social networks, new types of behaviors increase.
  • Passive social behaviors continue to climb – Users primarily use social media to find entertainment, to access the news, and fill their spare time. There is more engagement on specialized social media platforms.
  • Consumers integrate social deeper into their purchase journeys – 28% of global internet users use social network for online product research. This sets the stage for social commerce and more functional uses of social media.

IV. Five social media trends for 2018

These are the social media trends Hootsuite shared for next year, and practical ways for you to put them into action.

Trend 1: The evolution of social ROI

Marketers that are not being able to prove ROI find it difficult to be successful on social media, to win executive support, or get budget for new innovations. The problem is that while data is easy to collect, it’s hard to tie to business outcomes. Three shifts to ROI measurement need to be made: measuring beyond content performance metrics; measuring the activity with customer journey stages; and CMOs helping in identifying the business objectives for social.

Hootsuite recommendations: invest first in what you can measure; nail the basics with UTM codes; follow Hootsuite’s ROI framework; and map your metrics to the customer journey.

Trend 2: Mobile fuels the growth of social TV

Social video is on the rise, and social networks are shifting more toward broadcast style content and metrics. It’s also estimated that Internet advertising spend will outpace traditional TV spend. The main social TV opportunities for companies include: extending traditional TV content to mobile audiences; creating new partnerships with micro influencers and community engagement with groups; and launching products with live podcasts and innovating with Facebook’s Live API.

Hootsuite recommendations: include social video as a tactic in your strategy; combine SEO and Facebook Live; partner with Watch Tab influencers; and consider shifting budgets back to Facebook video ads.

Trend 3: Trust declines, while peer influence rises

People lack faith in the old institutions that include government, media, business, and NGOs, and they turn to people they know and trust. Peers have become more relevant than any other source of information. Marketers are also becoming skeptical about mega influencers and celebrity endorsements, and they are too valuing peer-to-peer recommendations and genuine endorsements from people close to the brand or the product. So, 2018 will reward businesses that put people at the center of their marketing strategy.

Hootsuite recommendation: think beyond reach and traffic and focus on creating customer and employee advocacy; build advocate communities with FB groups; use micro and macro influencers; and go unscripted on Facebook Live.

Trend 4: Humans, meet AI

There is an interest and adoption of AI by some innovative companies, and there will be more adoption and practical applications of AI in 2018. However, brands need to make sure that their AI strategies are human, helpful, and relevant. AI use cases for social marketing include: humans and bots helping customers together to elevate customer care; messaging apps will become much more personalized content channels; and AI will provide faster time to insights with predictive analysis.

Hootsuite recommendations: you can get your own report robot, like Quill Engage Google Analytics tool, and build with a bot template, so you can find a solution partner that will augment your social media strategy with AI.

Trend 5: The promise and reality of social data

Organizations are struggling with social data because of: lack of time and resources needed for social data projects; integration of social data with other tools; and culture and politics, because different departments have different agendas and data can be political.

Hootsuite recommendations: Marketers need to be comfortable making assumptions and pull out insights to make better decisions and guide new strategies. They can also combine social data with more traditional sources of customer insight, like market research.

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It seems like 2018 will be an exciting year for social media, and now that you now what to expect, start creating appropriate social media strategies for your business.

6 Types of Content That Perform Well on Instagram

6 Types of Content That Perform Well on Instagram

Instagram is currently one of the most popular social media networks in existence. According to Statista, they had 800 million monthly active users as of September this year. The platform is mainly used for sharing photos and videos from smartphones, and about a year ago Instagram launched their new feature – Instagram Stories, which was an instant success.

Since there are so many users on Instagram, many companies are taking advantage of the platform to promote and grow their business. They create accounts and share content to engage with their customers. However, certain types of content perform better than others. So, here is a list of the most engaging types of content on Instagram.

#1 UGC

User generated content (UGC) is when brands repost photos from their customers on their own profiles. It has become a popular social media marketing trend, and for a good reason. It is affordable yet powerful strategy for increasing your brand’s visibility and customer engagement. Regramming your customer’s photos shows them you appreciate them and their opinion about your products. Additionally, you always have available new content to post on your profile, and you save time and money for creating your own. GoPro is the best example of a brand that superbly uses UGC. They continuously engage their customers by encouraging them to post cool photos taken with GoPro cameras, and then reposting the photos on their profile which has millions of followers.

#2 Behind the scenes

By posting behind the scenes photos you show the human side of your brand. Keep in mind that everybody likes brands that value their employees. You can post photos of your happy employees working hard, activities where they show off their specific skills, their work spaces, and different types of events, such as birthdays, holiday celebrations in the office, or even a simple launch break. By posting this type of content you show you have a great company culture and a good working environment. This may also inspire your employees to share photos on their own profiles, thus further increasing their popularity and reach.

#3 Motivational and inspirational quotes

People like stuff that makes them feel motivated and inspired. If you post a motivational or inspirational quote that really hits the nerve of people, chances are they will like it and share it with others. Quotes from famous people that your customers admire can always perform well, but if you can come up with something original and awesome yourself, then you should go for it.

#4 Contests

Contests are a great way to engage your followers and promote your brand. You can organize fun contests with simple rules and give different kinds of prizes to motivate people to participate. The prizes don’t have to be something glamorous or too expensive as long as they’re exciting enough for your customers. For example, you can reward the winners with gift cards, discount cards, or they can win some of your products for free.

#5 Funny posts

If it’s appropriate for your brand, consider posting something funny from time to time. Everybody absolutely loves positive content. A hilarious joke, or a funny photo or meme can go a long way. This type of content gets shared a lot, and generates huge engagement. So, brighten up the day of your customers by giving them a good laugh.

#6 Product photos

Your audience follows you to keep up with news about your brand and products, so don’t forget to post photos of your products highlighting their features. You can post photos of what you have in-store, your best-selling items, product pairings, etc. Make sure you post quality photos with great colors and make use of the Instagram filters to make your photos look even better. By promoting your products, you also promote your brand, thus increasing brand awareness, and boosting sales.

5 Useful Tools for Social Media Marketing

5 Useful Tools for Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is all about creating and publishing awesome content on social media, with the aim of getting and retaining customers. Although it sounds easy, it can sometimes be a very demanding job. Luckily, there is a variety of online tools that you can use for creating and managing your social media content. So, I made a list of 5 handy tools that can help you work on your social media marketing projects.

#1 Canva

Canva is an online tool for creating graphic designs and documents. It is used by both professionals and non-professionals. You can use Canva to create many different types of designs such as: social media posts, presentations, posters, postcards, flyers, and many others. There are number of different layouts and elements you can choose from when creating your designs. In the free version of Canva there are a lot of photos, icons, illustrations and other elements that you can use for free, but there is also a great choice of priced elements that you can buy for 1 dollar.  There are also paid versions of Canva (Canva for work and Canva Enterprise) which offer additional options, but the free version works good enough for most people.

Page link: https://www.canva.com/

#2 Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform, for managing multiple social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Instagram, and many more. This tool is great if you need to manage a few different social media accounts. There is a dashboard where you can publish and schedule content on all your accounts, you can receive messages, monitor the activities of your followers and interact with them, etc. You can do all of this for free if you manage up to 3 different accounts, or you can upgrade for an additional cost, and get more options.

Page link: https://hootsuite.com/

#3 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a great content tracking tool. When you want to track information on a certain topic, Google Alerts can notify you via e-mail about the most recent articles, web pages, blogs, scientific studies and other information sources, which are on that topic. This way you can be constantly updated with new information about any search term you want to track, without spending time doing your own research. This can be very helpful if you’re writing blogs or any kind of content. You can set either g-mail or a different e-mail address to receive your Google Alerts, and you can use this tool for free.

Page link: https://www.google.com/alerts

#4 Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service, that tracks website traffic using a tracking JavaScript code, and creates reports. It’s one of the most powerful tools businesses use for getting different website statistics and data about their customers. So it provides you with great insight you can use for your marketing strategies. In Google Analytics you can set and track different social media goals and metrics, which can help you make appropriate marketing decisions in the future.

Page link: https://analytics.google.com/

#5 Asana

Asana is a web-based tool, that teams use to track their tasks and projects. It allows them to easily coordinate their work by online collaboration. You can use Asana to organize your team, supervise the work progress of your employees, or to work together with your colleagues on certain tasks. Using this tool, you can more conveniently share and comment projects with your team, compared to using an e-mail. This tool can be also helpful for coordinating your social media marketing activities, especially if you have an outsourcing job.

Page link: https://asana.com/

What are Hashtags, and How to Use Them on Instagram

What are Hashtags, and How to Use Them on Instagram

Hashtags are words or phrases that appear as clickable links on social media posts. They are preceded by the # symbol, also known as pound sign, or hash sign. People use hashtags to give context to their posts, and make their content easily shareable and easily found. Hashtagging categorizes and aggregates posts based on a common topic. When you click on a hashtag, you can see other posts that include the same hashtag.

Hashtags first appeared in 2007 on Twitter, as a way to categorize messages. Today, they are used on all major social media networks, such as Instagram, Facebook, Google plus, etc.

Adding hashtags can be fun, but it can also help you create a great social media presence and build brand awareness for your business, if you do it right. Instagram has become the leader in hashtags usage, so we will give you some tips on how to use them on this social media platform.

#1 Right wording

If you decide to use hashtags in your posts on Instagram to make them more discoverable, it’s best to use words or phrases that are relatively short and common. Long and complicated phrases confuse people, and might not be frequently used or searched for by others. If you add an unusual or uncommon hashtag, people won’t search for it, meaning your post won’t show up in their feed.

According to HootSuite “when it comes to choosing Instagram hashtags, the golden rule is: use only hashtags that are relevant to your brand, industry, and target audience.” If you want to build brand awareness, you need to tailor your hashtags according to your business. Use words that people will easily connect to your brand when they see them. It’s usually clever to come up with an original word or phrase that you will constantly include in your posts, so whenever people search for it, it will bring them to your posts and page.

#2 Number of hashtags

Depending on your post, you need to choose the optimal number of hashtags you’re going to use. This number varies greatly among different social media networks. For example, Twitter users are limited to texting 140 characters per tweet. This leaves them little room for experimenting with hashtags. On the other hand, Instagram has a limit of 30 hashtags per post. However, this doesn’t mean that you should add so many tags in all your posts. According to a research from TrackMaven, the optimal number of hashtags to include in an Instagram post is 9. So, keep this data in mind if you plan to add tags on your photos and videos on Instagram.

#3 Choosing hashtags

When it comes down to deciding on the actual tags you will use, there are few things you can consider, to help you choose the right ones. Generally, two types of Instagram hashtags are used: branded and community hashtags. Branded hashtags are the ones relevant to your brand and industry, and community hashtags are used to connect people based on mutual things of interest. You can use both types in your posts, to achieve optimal results. Start by researching your competition, see what kind of hashtags they use and how well they work. Then, you can use this information to come up with different, more relevant tags to reach more audience. Also, a good way to grow your audience on Instagram is to use trending hashtags. You can research which hashtags are trending at the given moment, and find tags that are relevant to your business. Finally, create your own hashtags that you think will resonate with your audience, but don’t forget to use the right wording.

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Adding hashtags on your Instagram posts can be very valuable. It can help you reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness. So, next time you post a photo or video on Instagram, use these tips to come up with some awesome hashtags.

#HappyHashtagging ?

The Pros & Cons of Outsourcing Social Media Marketing

The Pros & Cons of Outsourcing Social Media Marketing

Most companies nowadays incorporate social media in their marketing strategies, because it is of key importance for the success of their business. If you own a business, a good social media presence will help you reach more customers and promote your products and services without investing too much money. While many entrepreneurs want to market their businesses on social media, some have the dilemma of whether they should hire marketing agencies or other marketing professionals to take care of their social media marketing activities, instead of their in-house teams.

Let’s look at both sides of the argument and list some pros and cons of outsourcing social media marketing.

Pros:

#1 Competence

People who do this job have an expert knowledge and experience in the field, and they know exactly what and how needs to be done. They have the necessary writing, designing, and other job specific skills, so they are highly competent and little likely to disappoint.

#2 Time

Outsourcing your social media activities will help you save time. Coming up with good social media marketing strategies, content design and creation, and sharing on social media takes time. So, if for example, you hire a marketing agency to take care of those things, in the same time you and your in-house team can focus your attention on other important issues in your business.

#3 Speed

If you hire experienced professionals to run your social media activities, you can expect fast and timely delivery. Good professionals can agree on specific deadlines and finish tasks on time. Furthermore, they will always be up to date with your business, and deliver new relevant content with a great speed.

#4 Trends

Marketers are always up to date with the latest news and trends in the industry. They spend plenty of time reading and researching new information, and are knowledgeable about important facts concerning marketing and social media. This influences the way they work, helping them come up with the best marketing strategies for your business. That’s another great benefit of outsourcing your social media marketing activities to experts.

Cons:

#1 Cost

Hiring marketing professionals costs money. While prices vary, there are many available agencies and individuals on the market that you can choose from. However, most of them are pricey, and would probably cost more than paying your in-house team to do the same job.

#2 Mistakes

A potential problem that can arise if other people are running your social media accounts, is making mistakes. The reason is that outsiders will never have the same inside knowledge of your company as your in-house team. If for example, someone asks a question on social media, they might not be able to know the right answer, and will end up either replying wrong, or ignoring the person. This kind of mistake can contribute to creating a bad image for your business.

#3 Relationships

Hired marketing professionals can engage with your audience on social media, but they will always lack authenticity and sincerity, since the business is yours and not theirs. The people in your team know your company best and are more loyal to your business than anyone outside the company. That’s why they can create much better connections and relationships with your followers on social media.

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Outsourcing social media marketing can be costly and somewhat risky, but it can save you time and provide you a regular, great social media presence. Do you think outsourcing social media marketing is good for your business? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

How to Get More Likes on Your Facebook Business Page

How to Get More Likes on Your Facebook Business Page

Facebook stands out as one of the largest social media networks out there, with the highest number of active users. That’s why millions of businesses use it to promote their products and services. If you have a Facebook page for your business and you’re trying to get more people to like it, you know it’s a tough job.

To successfully promote your business on Facebook you need to have people that see, like, and follow your page, because those people are your potential customers. There are plenty of methods you can use to attract people to your page and get more likes, so here are some that have been proven to work.

#1 Create valuable content

You should focus on creating valuable content that will inspire people to like and share it with other people. The better your content, the more people will like and share it. And the more people like and share your content, the more people will see it. Try to create entertaining, educational, and informational posts. And make sure you make your posts public, so they can be seen and shared by anyone.

#2 Post visuals

Whether it’s a photo, a video, or an illustration, people like visual content. According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. So, make sure you often post relevant but eye-catching photos and other visuals to your page. This can significantly increase your visibility, and get you new page likes.

#3 Keep it short and simple

Your posts should be brief and pleasant. People have short attention spans, so you don’t want to bore them with too much information. If you’re sharing a text, limit it to a small number of characters. According to jeffbullas.com, “posts with less than 80 characters in length receive 66% higher engagement than longer posts. Very concise posts – those between one and 40 characters – generate highest engagement.”

#4 Use the right timing

To get the best results, you should post your content at the right time of the day. This means the time of day when your target audience is most likely to be online. For example, people are more active on Facebook during the “non-busy” hours, when they are not at work. However, the best time to post depends on your business and your audience, so do some tests and research to find out what’s the optimal time to share your content.

#5 Use Facebook ads

Paid ads are always a good way to promote your products and services, and reach new potential fans on Facebook. You can target your audience based on location, demographics, interests, and so on. Based on your budget, Facebook will give you an estimation of the number of people you’re reaching.

#6 Promote your page

You can also attract people to your Facebook page by promoting it on other sites. For example, share it on all the other social media networks you use, and promote it on your main website. Let people outside of Facebook know that your page exists, and invite them to visit, like and share it.

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Capturing the attention of your Facebook audience is important because it can help you achieve your business goals. By getting more followers on Facebook, you’re getting new potential customers.

Use the above methods in your strategy, and good luck on your quest to improve your Facebook presence, and get more likes on your page!