Yes, the small tests, experiments, and changes we can perform to our post and make it more interesting to increase your social media reach. All you have to do is to sprinkle your magic charm and play with your post to make it more compelling. Though experimentation could be a risky affair, it could be a good idea to perform a round of tests and establish metrics before trying out new social media marketing tactics.

The above infographic shows the various market tactics we can use to increase our reach on Facebook, a major social media platform. The options are galore. Some work, others do not. The need is to carefully analyze the ‘experiments’ that suits your product/service the most.

1. Use the Correct Words

Content is all about words. Words that leave an everlasting impact. They should have action, drama, emotions, and the power to convey the goal of the post.

Listed above are some of the most powerful words that can make your posts more attractive and compelling. ‘You’ is the consumer. It’s omnipotent and should be emphasized continuously. ‘You’ is the conversational language and if you can connect to your audience in a conversational tone, you are a winner all the way!

Caption A- “How to make more money?”
Caption B– “5 ways in which you can boost your income”

It is no secret that the second line leaves a greater impact. Simply, because it has the right choice of words!

2. Timing is Important

What we post on social media is important. Timing, albeit, is as crucial. Marketers must post their content on social media when it would be the most effective. Social media marketing tools make it easy for posting content in different time zones. Though it seems funny, people have their own time preferences when they like to read a particular content. For e.g. Funny, light, and upbeat content gets greater coverage on a Friday (people are supposedly happier……wierd!! but true). The ideal time to tweet is 12-3 pm and the peak time is 5 pm.

3. Customize Content for Each Platform

Are you catering to your post according to different platforms? A one-message-fits-all will not work here. You have to work your way to post your content correctly to get a uniform social media reach everywhere.

Stay Brief on Twitter

In the above snapshot, Fast Company does not use its title, it just tweets a summary which is brief and to-the-point.

Strike a Conversation on Facebook

This is the Facebook post of IBM which is surprisingly interesting and appealing. Though otherwise technical and professional, this IBM post caters to the Facebook audience and has a relaxed tone to it.

Similarly, you can share images on Google +, use engaging visuals and videos for marketing on Snapchat, and engage in professional discussions on Linkedin. The idea here is to customize your content to make it more shareable and engaging

4. Play With the Tone of Your Message

The same food served on a fancy platter and presented opulently will taste better any day. That holds true for content also. Try and change the tone of your message to bring about a novel feel.

You can rephrase the same statement in the form of a question, exclamation, quirky tone, first person, third person, or anything that brings a refreshing twist.

This offer was posted on Facebook By Einstein Bros Company. Instead of writing a lengthy article describing the offer, the caption just reads-‘Time is running out- Get this offer today.’

You can also use emojis and hashtags to add a tangy twist to your post, just like the snapshot below.

Emojis not only add the visual flavor, they make the post easier to understand.

5. Tie-Up with Influencers for Optimum Social Media Reach

If you are looking for a sure-shot way to extend your reach, we’ve got one for you. Collaborating with influencers is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience.

Creators have the advantage of being trusted and relatable to the common folk. This makes them the best choice to create a fitting brand image for you.

But never make the mistake of underestimating influencers. They are experts at what they do, hence they have made themselves into brands whose social media reach we can leverage.

Michael Le, a huge presence on TikTok with more than 51 million followers on the platform. In the above still, he has partnered-up with clothing brand, Hugo to promote their products. Now imagine how much the brand is increasing its exposure by collaborating with him.

6. Motivate and Inspire

As per statistics, quotes get a 19% increase in retweets. They are highly shareable as they are effective and pep up the spirits.

The above snapshot is of Upmonk, a clothing and lifestyle brand, which uses a popular quote by Steve Jobs. It’s apt, correct, and goes with the branding of the product.

As we see, Nike has a separate Pinterest account for its various segments. Since 80% of Pinterest users are women, Nike creates original content for Pinterest. It uses nice, motivational quotes for users to market their brand.

7. Incorporate User-generated Content

User-generated content is a great option as it engages the users to the post and also reduces the workload of the brand. Users come up with creative ideas that are showcased on the product’s page. Once you feature a customer or his services on your webpage, you will gain an ardent fan for life. You have given them the opportunity to shine and display their talent, for this, they will love you religiously.

IKEA showcases design ideas by fans. When you show real customers using your products, it is a big social proof.

8. Balance the scale with Promotional and Useful Content

Thinking from a business perspective, you will always want to use the platform you have to promote your brand first and foremost. But let us tell you, people on social media are too perceptive these days.

If you constantly keep giving the same promotional content, it’ll backfire on you. So we’ll let you in on the perfect balance between promotional and useful content.

80-20 is the magic number. 80% of your content should be of the non-commercial kind, which does not outright depict your business agenda. Peppered in between should be your promotional content, which reflects your brand and its products clearly.

Keep it versatile with images, video, and other types of content that people would naturally engage with.

9. Increase Social Media Reach with Perfect Hashtags

We have experimented with fonts, color, tone, quotes, and even added interesting visuals. How about some extra spice? #Hashtags.

The above snapshot is from the flowerona website. They use hashtags intelligently and subtly where instead of filling a single caption with hashtags, two captions are written. Hashtags have the potential to convert mundane messages into viral social media messages. They have a greater likelihood of being shared and read.

Kim Garst uses Hashtags lavishly in her posts. They make her posts more searchable. As she has used many hashtags for Facebook Friday, she will receive immense traffic in the search results.

Marketers should use hashtags not only on Twitter and Instagram, they can use them even on Facebook to increase their social media reach amongst the audience.

10. Call to Action and Landing Pages

To grab their attention- You have to appeal to your audience! So experiment with different call-to-actions to assess which attracts them the most. Keep experimenting until they are compelled to click and share whatever you present to them. Humor, fun, questions, contests, discounts, and fear, all draw the audience attention.

Humor

Grammarly guys sure know how to play with words. Check out how they use humor fabulously in the above picture.

Fear

The element of fear in the above ad will compel people to use the Allergy guard.

Happiness

If you can convince the viewers that your product will make them happy and contended, they will go for it. Kurly Klips Extensions markets its services by educating people about curls, hair styling, and hair care. Added to that, it gives discounts, making the audience happy and elated. Hence, along with giving valuable info about hair care and styling, they promote their products in an effective manner.

So, what is the secret of some top-notch brands getting the highest number of clicks and shares? You can try various online marketing tips to stay on the top, but one simple formula never fails. Post quality content while balancing consistency and innovation with the help of free social media tools. The social media marketing success yardstick is exceptionally high, so keep improving your performance and churn out creative ideas for your posts. And of course, use the above-mentioned marketing tips to increase your hold on social media. These small trends and tools could make an everlasting impact and help your business grow exceptionally.

The post How To Improve Your Social Media Reach – 10 Marketing Strategies appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

In early 2017, when Pinterest first launched Shop the Look Pins, they were only available to big brands, and they had to integrate with third-party partners in order to actually use them. Now, they are available to all businesses directly through Pinterest, and they’re totally free to use.

Keep reading to see how Shop the Look Pins work, learn why this announcement is a big deal for your business, and get tips on how you can add these to your Pinterest marketing strategy.

What are Shop the Look Pins?

In essence, Shop the Look Pins allow brands to tag products in their pins on Pinterest.

For instance, a Pin may be a photo of a model wearing multiple products from a brand. The brand can tag each of those products in the photo (the jacket, dress, purse, and boots) with a link to the product’s page on their website. Each tagged product is designated by a white dot on the Pin.

If you’ve ever used Instagram Shopping before, you’re familiar with how this works for the users. They can click on any of the white dots to pull up product information (such as product name, price, and availability), and then click again to purchase the item.

Who can use Shop the Look Pins?

Shop the Look product tagging is now available to businesses of any size with fashion and home decor Pins. To get started, all you need is a Pinterest business profile and a claimed website. Follow these steps to add product tags:

1. Add Pins the way you normally do
2. Click the tag icon
3. Click a product in the Pin
4. Enter the URL from your website
5. Pin your Pin!

How Shop the Look Pins can benefit your small business

As a small business, you may be thinking, “Okay, that sounds easy enough, but why should I care? Is Pinterest really a viable marketing channel?”

The answer, based on the data, is a resounding yes. Here are five reasons to be excited about using Shop the Look for your small business:

1. Pinterest’s user base is active, and growing

The size of the platform alone is a sufficient reason to be excited about Shop the Look access. Over 250 million people use Pinterest every month, according to September’s latest numbers.

Admittedly, those numbers are small when you consider Facebook and Instagram billion-plus user bases, but it’s important to note that Pinterest is actually growing at a much faster rate than other major networks like Snapchat and Twitter.

2. Pinners use Pinterest to find products

Two-thirds of Pinterest users say they’ve discovered a new product or brand through Pinterest.

While those product discovery rates are on par with the other top social networks, Pinterest users stand out because they actively want to discover products when they’re on there. 93% of them report using Pinterest specifically for product discovery. In other words, when your brand promotes your products on Pinterest, you’re promoting them to a willing and engaged audience.

Moreover, it’s an audience that takes action. People use Pinterest for ideas on how to do something, which often leads to them having to buy something in order to do so. 98% of Pinners actually go out and attempt the ideas they dream up on Pinterest, as opposed to only 71% of other social media users.

Pinterest is an idea board where people figure out how to accomplish the things they want to do. When they see a Shop the Look pin, your brand is helping them do just that.

3. Pinners are spenders

Not only are they doers, but Pinterest users are spenders, too – big ones, in fact.

A quarter of Pinterest’s user base claims a household income of $150K or more, and they’re more likely to shop at high-end retailers than non-Pinterest users.

High-end or not, Pinterest users tend to spend more than non-Pinterest users. In fashion and home decor, the two categories where Shop the Look pins are currently available, Pinterest users spend 30% and 27% more than non-Pinterest users, respectively.

4. Shop the Look Pins are popular

Pinterest reported a 38% increase in style idea Pins and a 35% increase in home DIY project Pins over the past year.

Fashion and home decor are popular categories on Pinterest. That’s why they chose them for Shop the Look Pins, after all.

Shop the Look Pins appear to be equally popular. According to Pinterest, users engage with them up to 4 times more often than a regular Pin and they save them 5 times more often. They’re also 2 to 3 times more likely to visit the brand’s website than with a regular Pin.

5. Pinterest gives these Pins special treatment

In August, Pinterest rolled out an algorithm update that gave Shop the Look Pins quite a boost.

According to a Medium post by the Pinterest Engineering team, the improvements were designed to recommend more relevant pins to users. One of the side effects was a 25% increase in impressions for Shop the Look Pins.

In other words, there’s never been a better time for small businesses to join the Shop the Look trend.

Smart ways your small business can use Shop the Look Pins

Ready to start tagging? Here are four ways your small business can get creative with Shop the Look Pins.

1. Repurpose your product catalog photos

You’re already creating stunning product photography to feature on your website. Recreate that product catalog on Pinterest. For example, Anthropologie’s Fall Home Journal 2018 board is essentially a collection on the photos from their latest catalog.

Let’s say you’re a fashion retailer. You don’t just take photos of a shirt lying on a white background. You take a photo of a model wearing it, and you outfit them with other products to complete the look. Upload these images to Pinterest, and tag the individual products so users can shop the entire look.

The same goes for home decor brands. Stage your photos so they feature multiple products, and you can transform a “Living Room” catalog photo into a Shop the Look Pin.

2. Get influencers involved

Shop The Look is available to all business accounts on Pinterest, whether they’re run by a brand or an influencer, so it’s well suited for influencer marketing. As long as your influencers are set up with a business account, they can launch Shop the Look Pins for your brand, too. Instead of putting in the direct link to your website, they’ll load in their affiliate link instead.

To make your influencer’s Pins appear less sponsored, you might encourage them to create a product roundup Pin. Instead of simply pinning your product, they can upload Pins that feature multiple brands. Partner with your influencers to feature your brand, among other, complementary brands, in single Pin.

For example, in this sponsored Pin for Scotch, Pinterest influencer Poppytalk explains how she uses Post-its to plan for back-to-school. If this were a roundup Pin where she was sponsored by multiple brands, she could link to the individual Scotch products, as well as the chair, hat, and guitar.

Roundup Pins give your influencers an opportunity to boost their revenue from a single post, while giving your brand the opportunity to be featured in more of their Pins. Pinterest business accounts also have access to analytics, so you can track your influencer marketing metrics.

3. Use boards to curate product collections

Boards are a great way to expand your brand reach on Pinterest. Create boards with search-friendly titles, like The Home Depot’s below, to make it easy for Pinners to find your board. Then, embed links to your Pinterest board on your small business website, to boost your follows and help surface the board to more Pinners.

Whether your board is a collection of looks or a set of tutorial infographic, you can tag all the products you’re featuring in the individual Pins. In this how-to board by The Home Depot, for example, they could tag the holiday decoration products.

4. Boost your Pins with Pinterest Ads

If you have a Shop the Look Pin that’s performing especially well, or one that you want to perform even better (perhaps in preparation for a sale or promotion), you can give it a boost with Promoted Pins.

The best part about Promoted Pins is that they blend in well with regular pins. The only difference is the extra “Promoted by” text above the pinner’s name.

To create an ad for your Shop the Look Pin, just click the red Promote button on the top right.

Conclusion

There are a variety of ways you can promote your small business on social media. Thanks to Pinterest, you now have one more option. And given Pinterest users’ penchant for taking action, it’s a very good option.

So, how are you planning to use “Shop the Look Pins” in your Pinterest strategy? Let me know in the comments’ section below.

The post How Small Businesses Can Make the Best of New ‘Shop the Look’ Pins appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

Increase Social Media Engagement

Your social media fans want to see excitement from your posts. This isn’t easy to do on a daily basis, but you can create a sense of excitement and suspense with:

• Giveaways
• Release Countdowns
• Fan Competitions
• Scavenger Hunts
• Behind the Scenes
• Social Media Hooks

These are just a few of the most common ways to create suspense, and, when used correctly, they are great for building and engaging your fan base.

1. Giveaways

A giveaway is a perfect way to create suspense and to build up your audience.  It’s also very simple.  First, come up with a prize that will grab attention. This could be a free trip, a big gift card, or some free items from your store.  Next, you’ll need to let your fans know about the giveaway:

• Reveal the Prize
• Explain the Rules
• Announce the Date of the Giveaway.

This should be done over the course of several posts.  After this, you’ll want to send out reminders for those who either forgot or who didn’t see the initial posts about the giveaway. Many companies have giveaways that encourage fans to like their page or share a post in order to get entered into the drawing. Make the rules up as you see fit, but make sure the action you ask fans to take is beneficial to your campaign.

You’ll want to leave plenty of time in between the start and end of your giveaway so the word can spread and more fans can sign up.  Two weeks is a good minimum time for a giveaway.  Once it’s over, be sure to make a big deal about the winner and tell fans to keep an eye out for the next giveaway.  This will once again create suspense and keep fans checking back into your social media page.

2. Release Countdowns

Often used by artists, release countdowns are a great way to build suspense.  Although it works best for artists, you don’t need to be one to make this strategy work.  Simply choose a big product or service release to focus on.  Then, start counting down the days to when it will be released.

Try giving clues about what will be released, and, if appropriate, small samples, so fans can get a taste of what they’re waiting for.  For example, you could discuss the inspiration behind the project, show a making of clip, or even show bits and pieces in photos or videos.

You might even ask fans to offer ideas as to what they believe will be included in the release.  Just make sure you don’t give too much away.  What fans don’t know and what they want to know is exactly what creates the suspense in a release countdown.

Fan Competitions

One of the best ways to get fans engaged by far is hosting a competition.  Nothing gets fans to interact better, and interaction is exactly what you want.

“The key to a good social media campaign is interaction.” Says Jenelle McCleary of Jurevicious Studios,

“You want your audience to feel like they are having a conversation and participating, not just being talked at.” A contest can do just that.

A contest between your fans will get them on your page, involved in your brand, and hooked until the winner is announced.  A contest like this should last a month or more to give fans plenty of time to prepare and present their entry.  It should be easy to get entries because fans will want the opportunity to show off their work.  This is also great for marketing because they will be more likely to like, comment on, and share their entry once it posts to your page.

What kind of contest will you run? According to Jay Baer of Convince and Convert, “there are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are:

• Sweepstakes (nothing required – most common on Twitter)
• Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter)
• Like (like a particular piece of content to enter)
• Share (share a piece of content to enter)
• Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter)
• Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter)

Choose the one that works best for your brand.

Need some ideas?  Consider hosting a competition for a fan-created:

• Commercial
• Testimonial
• Demo
• Logo
• Slogan
• Branded Art

3. Social Media Scavenger Hunts

If you really want your fans to go somewhere and do something, consider starting a social media scavenger hunt campaign. Instead of having all of the information on your social media page and instead of herding fans directly to your website, set up a less direct path. The scavenger hunt should start with one clue on the social media page (and an engagement announcement on social media of the scavenger hunt). That clue could then lead them to your page on a different platform where they will find the next clue.

Ultimately, you do want to lead people back to your site, so you’ll need to create a landing page for the hunt. This page should not only contain the final answer, but also a call to action. This could be asking fans to post the final answer on their social media profile, to share the original clue, or to make a purchase.

4. Behind the Scenes

Another way to create suspense is to reveal some behind the scenes footage on your social media pages.  Businesses often post about their products and services, but they don’t often post about the making of.  Believe it or not, fans and industry experts alike are drawn to these.  While watching a behind the scenes video about how a particular product was made or about how a service is prepared and carried out can give clues to the people and strategies behind your brand.

In a sense, you’re taking them through your process, so they will anticipate, and hopefully want, the final product.  It’s also a great way to show off your talents so you can become known as an expert or innovator in your field.

5. Social Media Hooks

Over the course of doing business, you probably create a lot of media.  Don’t let it go to waste!  You could be showing fans your bits and pieces of media to increase anticipation.  Consider using all the marketing media you create for your products as posts for your social media pages to increase social media engagement. This works best for companies that release larger media, but it can work for your brand too.

What qualifies as a media hook? It could be anything you’ve created to develop, advertise, or demo your product.  Most social media sites allow media posting and hopefully, one of your social media posting tools does as well. It simply needs to be something that informs people about at least one part of your service and product to get them to anticipate the rest of it. For example, consider showing off:

• Movie or Event Trailers
• Product Packaging
• Branded Art
• Product Demos
• Soundtracks

What Keeps You Coming Back?

These six suggestions aren’t the only way to create suspense for your brand. When creating your suspense strategy, consider what keeps you coming back for more. You’ll also want to consider which platforms you’re using or if you plan to use more than one. Each site has its own culture, so you’ll probably want to use different suspense strategies for each one.

However, if you do it on more than one, just remember to reshape your engagement announcement on social media to fit each fan base. Luckily, if you plan the campaign in advance, you can use social media tools to spread the word.

So what kind of suspense have you seen on social media? What gets you hooked? Which suspense campaigns work on your demographic? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Increasing Suspense to Boost Social Media Engagement appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

Different platforms on social media have different complexities. These cannot be easily mastered in a just a matter of days. As a result, the time that needs to be utilized for carrying out promotional activities is spent on acquiring platform expertise or gaining insights. This potentially causes setback to their project(s). What adds to the woes is that businesses have a number of products/solutions that need paramount attention and promotion. Therefore, they are simply devoid of manpower for creating and customizing posts, scheduling them and handling social media platforms. This is to say nothing of getting this accomplished quickly.

So, is this the end of the road for them? Well, the answer is no. Small businesses can rely on social media management tools, which can guarantee them effective results minus the Herculean task.

These tools can be a game-changer for small businesses. They assist by optimizing their time and delivering visible outputs within a limited time frame. With a number of such tools available on the market, the one with most advanced features stands as the best bet. As a result, it becomes so much easier when there is a well-defined strategy in place. The tool resonates by boosting the strategy and taking said business to even greater heights. Let’s take a look at the ways to use social media management tools effectively for your business.

1. Maintain Regularity in Publishing

Social media management tools like SocialPilot give you a dashboard from where you can access unlimited social media accounts. This includes their groups, pages, and profiles at any given time. Consequently, posting fresh content regularly on these accounts is one of the most beneficial activities. It can be so stressful if done only manually. Therefore, the tools make it a breeze as they automate the scheduling of your posts on multiple platforms. Suppose you have several profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Also, let’s assume that you want the same links to be shared on each of them on a specific date. You can use a flexible scheduling feature to accomplish your task. This works great for time-sensitive content (such as those meant for festivals and holidays). As a result, you can plan ahead without manually hitting the ‘Post’ button on that particular date.

2. Easily Overview and Monitor Your Activities:

Curating content and posting it through your social media accounts doesn’t guarantee you good results. I mean, how do you know which of the posts will guarantee attention from your target audience? How can you be sure which type of posts will be more appealing to your target audience to be specific? A social media management tool gives you the chance to review your viral footprints on various channels. For instance, you can monitor all the interactions and engagement with your existing and potential customers. This will surely serve you better as your established strategy. In other words, you can focus more on platforms or posts. These tend to generate desired results and you use them to your advantage by implementing a new strategy in the next course of action.

You can benefit even if you spend only a few minutes each day for the overview. It will still help you to mold your social media marketing activities to enhance your presence on the channels at a steady pace.

3. Analyze Your Social Media Presence on Various Networks:

Taking a cue from the point mentioned above, here is another benefit of having a social media management tool. It helps you analyze data and statistics from different social media activities. For instance, the tool will let you know which of the social networking websites has a maximum number of your target audience. It can even tell you what the current trends are that they follow. Additionally, it can inform you of what steps need to be taken to create a call to action relevant to your business. Based on this analysis, you can create a new strategy to maximize your returns on investment in the tool. SocialPilot is one such tool that offers different innovative features to measure and analyze your social media account performance. It does so with the help of its social media analytics feature.

4. Interconnect Your Social Media Profiles:

An array of social media accounts makes it difficult for businesses to manage their profiles, groups or pages at a given time. A social media management tool like Zapier can simplify the task by interconnecting your different social media platforms on a single interface. What if you want to automatically publish your Instagram updates on other profiles? Simply integrate your SocialPilot account with Zapier and start publishing your updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social media profiles. This stops the senseless juggling of multiple accounts and can even streamline efforts like Facebook recruiting to enhance your hiring strategy. Also, integrating accounts means getting a unified branding solution, which puts your business – the products and solutions – in the limelight.

5. Monitor Your Competitor’s Social Media Presence:

Social media content is an amalgamation of text, images, links, audio and video. As per a survey, the two most popular formats for marketing content are articles and video. Consequently, you can create content that combines both of these elements. It’s the best of both worlds. A social media tool helps by bringing fresh content varieties for you to share with your audience via your accounts. You can select from an entire range of share-worthy content on topics directly or indirectly relevant to your business by using the tool. Additionally, it helps you create content packages in quick and easy steps. This benefits you by minimizing your efforts but maximizing your output. SocialPilot is one of such tool offers social media analysis of the content based on its social sharing.

The crux of it all is that small business need to have effective social media strategies. A smart, strong business can better implement those strategies by using the right kind of social media management tool.

The post 5 Proven Social Media Management Tips for Small Businesses appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

Hearing this term again and again make me crazy because I couldn’t understand how I will find my target audience?

I know there are certain ways which can take you to your customers. But how will you know who is interested in your products beyond assumptions?

With a little research, I come across to the way one can walk on to attract those having a keen interest in your products or services.

That way is none other than LinkedIn Groups.

8000 new groups are created daily on LinkedIn giving businesses more leads!- @WeRSM

LinkedIn Group is the place where you don’t need to go separately to find out where your customers are. In fact, they will come to you if they want to buy from you.

But it’s tricky.

LinkedIn Groups are the lock with rare keys. This is not a place where you will find potential customers with sales pitches or in sincere comments. This is the place where you need to put efforts providing value to your users.

Through this article, you will learn what efforts one should put to fetch potential customers via LinkedIn Group.

1. Put User-Generated Conversations in Front

Tell me who will be interested in your products or services?

Obviously, people who are talking about it.

Why not give these people a place to discuss in-depth and find a solution too? LinkedIn groups are home to people looking for answers- Salesforce.com

LinkedIn Group is a community based discussion forum where you should put the topics your customers are talking about and give them answers too. I robbed this strategy from Swip Systems, a custom software development company, who gathered data on what its audience want to talk about and started a LinkedIn Group named “Midwest Manufacturing Leaders”. This group is full of discussions and content, manufacturers often talk about.

Have a look on Tom Swip’s, owner of the group, recent question with answer on the board:

Today, this Group has 6000+ members with competency to get new clients and raise brand-awareness.

Takeaway: Gather data regarding what your targeted audience is talking about and put the same conversation on your LinkedIn Groups.

How to Find “What Your Customers are Talking About”?

Let me give you my own example:

Being a content marketer at SocialPilot, a comprehensive social media scheduling tool and one of the most advanced LinkedIn marketing tools my targeted audience is: small and medium sized business and marketing agencies.

To target this type of audience, I will start a LinkedIn group named “Social Media Marketing Takeaways” because SMBs and marketing agencies are always in a hunt of tips to increase their customers from Social Media. Also, this topic is relevant to my industry.

Next, I want to put topics that SMBs and marketing agencies are generally talking about. This is how I will find them:

1. Quora

That’s my first stop whenever I want to know about problems my audience is facing. On Quora, I will just type “Social Media Marketing” to get a whole list of topics users must be interested in.

Here’s a screenshot of queries on Quora that I can put to discussion on LinkedIn Group:

2. Forums

After Quora, next stop to find out user-generated topics is Forums. Typing “keywords + forum” in Google will give you a list of sites where discussions take place – relevant to your industry.

I typed “Social media marketing forum” in Google and got Warrior Forum at the top. Clicking on link took me to questions my audience would like to have answers for:

3. Join Other Groups

Joining others groups on LinkedIn, Facebook or wherever you prefer will also give you a good idea of most debatable topics.

Here’s a list of queries I found on Search Engine Land’s LinkedIn Group:

2. Focus on One Market at a Time

One question that hit me badly when I checked out the “Midwest Manufacturing Leader” group is: why would a software development company start a group of manufacturing leaders? A software development company can target people from all niches. After all, in today’s generation, every company needs software or an app.

Then why only manufacturers?

Josh Turner, Founder of LinkedSelling, explained this concept in an interview with Mixergy:

“You know, as far as LinkedIn goes, it’s difficult really to build a campaign that’s going to work really well if you’re trying to be all things to all people. Let’s zero in on a niche or a vertical that works really well for you guys, and manufacturing was one that really stood out.”

Takeaway: Even if your targeted audience belongs to multiple markets, focusing on one market at a time, for creating a LinkedIn Group, would benefit you the most.

3. Ask Easy-to-Answer Questions

One of the best ways to get users contribute to your LinkedIn Group is asking them questions which are extremely easy to answer.

There was a question I came across to during my visits to LinkedIn Groups:

Isn’t it easy to offer advice for H1 tags? You can see the results: 43 Comments with 22 Likes.

Or you can ask something as simple as “how you got into social media marketing?” This will lead members to share their own stories while making your group more interesting to put conversations in.

Users like to offer help whenever possible, but only if it comes at the cost of little time. Questions demanding enormous time will get lesser engagement than the one taking a minute or two to answer.

Takeaway: Ask questions that take only 1 minute to answer.

4. Post Your Own Threads and Participate

With a newly built LinkedIn Group, it is close to impossible to get users participate in discussions.

Here’s the trick:

You and your members can genuinely contribute to the discussions.

More comments than discussions indicates highly engaged members, whereas many discussions and few comments indicate a group with little real activity and lots of self-promotion. – Socialmediaexaminer

Simon Lewis, group owner of The UK Marketing Network, calls it a content strategy.

One of his proven tactics is get the group managers to join in threads and conversations. In his case study of growing a LinkedIn Group beyond 50K members, he said that initially group managers were generating threads and participated in discussions. Things started taking off only when the group reached to 10K members.

Takeaway: Start your own threads. Tell your members to share their opinions. Once you have good number of threads with wise discussions from other members, you can send invitation to your connections. But don’t stop there. Keep up with your threads and discussions till your group has enormous members to initiate a chat.

5. A Secret LinkedIn Hack: One-on-One

Do you know, sending personalized mails to users is actually a hack for those who want to generate leads?

When you send a LinkedIn Group invitation to your contacts, LinkedIn sends an auto-generated welcome message which is: “I would like to invite you to join my group on LinkedIn”.

What if you make it the way like it is made for the person to whom you are sending invitation? Yes, I am pointing to personalized message or you can also name it one-on-one message.

Why does it matter?

As per SocialMediaExaminer, an auto-generated LinkedIn message has about 1% chance of getting someone to your group.

If you want people to take a genuine interest in your group, you have to give them some strong get-connect reasons. That’s possible only when you design a message or mail made for users.

Jill Konrath is an expert of sending personalized emails and LinkedIn messages.

Here is her well-crafted LinkedIn Group invitationemail to members:

LinkedIn Group Invitation Mail

Key Points to Include:

• What user will get from your group
• Which problems your group can solve
• Resources or Freebies you provide
• Call-to-Action like “Join Now”
• Unique selling points of your group
• Branding of your company and group

But, it’s not the end here.

You have to send a thank-you mail when users join or ask to join your group.

I received the below given mail when I asked to join Fresh Sales Strategies Group:

Thanks to Join the Group Message

Once you accept the request, it’s time to send a welcome message:

LinkedIn Group Welcome Message

Points you should cover:

• A warm welcome
• Group rules
• Freebies
• A humble request to invite others

Now what?

Once members join your group, you need to keep sending emails regarding updates, announcements, important conversation that fit their field, etc. Make sure, you do it once in a week as frequent mails may make them helpless to leave your group.

Don’t forget to constantly monitor your engagement statistics to understand what is working and what is not using LinkedIn analytics tools like Socialpilot, Unmetric, Socialinsider to name a few.

Where does it all take you?

I know that’s too much. An invitation, a thank-you note and a welcome message. The purpose is to bring “targeted audience” in conversations, make them aware of your brand, let them know how they need you without being promotional and then drive them towards conversion.

So, do you have LinkedIn Group or thinking to start the one?

The post How to Draw Attention of Potential Customers via LinkedIn Group? appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

Twitter Chat is a great way to build up some exposure and your following. A perfect place to connect with those sharing familiar interests.

Twitter chat is no less than an interactive party and that too without a dress code. All of you can join to put your tweets as answers to the questions asked and build up conversations where there’s plenty to gain and acknowledge for.

Let’s get to know more about it.

What is a Twitter Chat?

Twitter chat is basically a twitter conversation/talk carried out by a host around a unique #hashtag. This hashtag allows you to participate and discuss on a predetermined topic. The host posts questions Q1, Q2 and so on for the participants to answer and discuss with A1, A2 tags to the questions, which typically lasts for an hour or one & a half hour. Twitter chat is also known as Tweet Chat, Tweet Party or Twitter Party.

Why Twitter Chat?

As we know Twitter chat is run around a specific topic, it helps in encouraging interaction between like-minded people.

• You get to share your experiences, knowledge with other fellow participants.
• You get to learn new ideas or apply tested strategies by other people who are a step ahead of you.
• You get to interact with influencers and build a whole new network growing your circle who may also want to work, share their knowledge with you.
• More interaction, pulls more engagement which in turn can be beneficial for you.
• You get to interact with the professionals all around the globe.

Sounds great right?

You’d never want to miss such an opportunity, isn’t it?

So, let’s check out how you can participate in one Twitter chat.

Tools for a Twitter Chat

There are many tools, you can use to participate in a Twitter Chat, like tchat.io, TweetDeck, Twubs. But I like and prefer tchat.io a Twitter management tool, when it comes to joining and participating in one.

The best part about using tchat.io as a tool Twitter users can use is the hashtag of that Twitter chat is automatically posted with your answers to the question.

It’s just awesome!

The main chunk of a Twitter chat is the unique hashtag which has to be mentioned in every answer or replies and tchat.io does that for you. So you can just focus on your answers than being tensed whether you included the unique hashtag or not.

There are a plenty of Twitter chats running around all over the globe, on different timings and days. You can choose your perfect twitter chat, join the room and just get started.

How to participate in a Twitter Chat using Tchat?

Using Tchat is very simple. You don’t need a pro account or membership to use this tool to join/participate in a twitter chat. You just need a working Twitter profile.

1. Open tchat.io on your browser.

2. Inscribe the unique hashtag you want to start interaction and participating for and click on ‘Go’. For eg: #semrushchat

3. You will be asked to authorize your Twitter profile. Follow the instructions and if you have already authorized you will be led that unique hashtag chat room.

4. You will see a couple of answers and discussions already done with that hashtag.

5. In that text-box you can type in your answer using tags A1, A2 and so on and click on Tweet button.

6. You can also reply to a specific tweet using the reply icon and also like, retweet a particular one.

7. If you want to join other chats, at that moment, you can click on the Active Rooms button and select the hashtag you’d like to join

This is how you use tchat.io simply to participate and join a Twitter Chat or a Twitter Party as you would like to call it.

What you got to say!

Have you been a part of a Twitter Chat before? Are you also a fan of tchat.io or any other tool for participating in one?

The post A Step-by-Step Guide to Joining a Twitter Chat appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

“When you are curious, you find lots of interesting things to do”- Walt Disney

We all know that quality content never goes out of style. But how to constantly keep churning out fresh ideas that captivate and compel the audience enough to sit up and take notice?

Challenging, Right? You are not alone.

With the growing struggle of producing engaging content, it’s time to find a way out. Content strategists have to find out what works for them and what does not.

Sounds easy?

Well, no.

There are numerous elements that make storytelling a success. A blog that started all dressed and shimmery should maintain its glam and never run out of ideas.

It’s time to rise and shine as here we are with a list of ways to find interesting topics for your audience.

1. Use keyword tools and trending topics from social media

Find out what are the most frequently searched terms related to your business.

There are tools that help you determine the keywords that users type while searching for your line of products.

Once you have determined what the main keywords are, you can frame content around those keywords.

Also, search for the trending topics on all social media platforms. These topics are the flavor of the season and the audience is bent on engaging with these topics.

To come to your aid, there are numerous keyword planners that enable marketers to determine the topics to frame the content around and build their social media ad campaigns. You can then create an action plan for content around these keywords.

These keyword ideas and topics also come in handy when you are trying to figure out which topics have already been covered and shared across social media platforms the most.

You would need a content curation tool for that. (psst.. SocialPilot has a free content curation tool!)

2. Reviews and testimonials

Platforms like Quora, G2 crowd, google reviews are the places where one can find plenty of problem statements being posted by the users. What do you have to look for?

• The reviews and feedback that the customers leave behind about the products and services
• Comments and customer queries in the comment section of the blog
• Testimonials and forums
• The website’s search results
• Comments on social media accounts

Before you create content for your targeted audience, you have to first understand their preferences.

Start browsing through product/services reviews and see what audience like and unlike. Respond to the audience comments and suggestions on your own blogs, other relevant blogs and competitors’ blogs.

Don’t forget to scan your social media accounts where users’ often come to find the solution of their problems or to criticize the brand.

Do check out what your readers are writing in comments and where they are facing problems. Start a conversation with them. Provide guides and tutorial videos to sort out their problems.

See how Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO and founder of VaynerMedia, solve users’ problems or queries through video tutorials.

This is how your content will get a shape around the audience requirements.

3. Keep an eye on your competition

It’s a game of numbers and you have to track what your competitors are up to. Keeping a close vigil on your competitors will give you new topics and ideas of social media marketing.

Facebook is the largest social media network and it’s important to keep track of what competitors are marketing on this network.

Social networking platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter can also provide useful insights, trending news and stories of competitors that you should too incorporate in your marketing campaigns.

How am I supposed to find out what my competitors are planning?

Check what new ideas your competitors are coming up with, like their content, high ranking keywords, daily marketing activities, etc.

Next, go through the competitors’ social media profiles and see what audience are liking.

Find out the most shared content of your competitors’ blog because it’s your greatest challenge. Take up the challenge and use those topics (plus comments of audience on that topic) to create even more interesting and appealing content.

Brands compete with you for their products or search rankings. A large publication or blog might be difficult to outrank in terms of numbers.

But, you can.

Monitor the competitors’ market presence. Follow their reach and understand their audience behavior. You can then use all the data to build your own content. Being constantly in touch with competition provides new ideas to bloggers and businesses.

4. Interview your people

Your employees could be the biggest source of information about your customers’ likes and preferences. Your sales team and customer service know exactly what people are inclined towards.

Speak to your workforce!

These people might have valuable advice for you as they are in the frontline and constantly interact with the customers.

They will point out the loopholes and weak points of customers. Note everything down and work on every detail to design a better social media marketing strategy.

Schedule regular meetings with your sales employees and ask them for their suggestion on new topics.

Then later, take time and go through the notes. You might be surprised to discover that you already have a enjoyable story brewing up for your social media audience.

5. Data analytics and trending news

Social media is a mammoth concept and keeping track of each and every detail manually is an impossible task.

Then how do we monitor the audience behavior on the various social media channels? Social media analytics could come to your rescue.

Discover and analyze the audience behavior and your existing content engagement to get new ideas for blogs.

Understand what lures the audience the most and write interesting blogs based on the framework.

Subscribe to periodicals, newsletters, and business forums to discover what is new in the industry.

Some useful tools for blog ideas

• LinkedIn today will give you insights about your industry
• Google Trends tells you what is being viewed the most on the internet (trending stories and news)
• Conduct a social-meta search with Topsy, SocialMention, TalkerWalker Alerts or Who’s Talking
• Use the Google blog search to learn all about your competitors’ blogs
• Check out Twitter Profiles of your competitors’ to detect @mentions

6. Social media hashtags

Usually, a person’s main activity on social media revolves around finding out what the other person is up to (Seriously, no kidding).

And most of the people use hashtags without knowing the significance. But for those who know, it could be a great social media marketing tool for higher engagements and conversions.

Use effective tools to find out the popular Hashtags across Facebook, twitter, and Instagram. Hashtags make keywords and social posts more prominent and you can use the hashtags content as useful contexts for creating new topics.

SocialPilot’s analytics enables you to track and keep tabs on the most used hashtags on your page. You can start by looking into those!

7. Mind mapping

The mind is the biggest storehouse of exciting new ideas and creativity. You have to unleash its power to bring out unique topics.

There are various online tools available that will enable you to unearth ideas and synchronize your thoughts in a productive manner.

Coggle, Mindmaple, and Weje are some of the free online mind-mapping softwares you can use. Or just use a pen and paper to device your own mind map and get ideas.

Wrap-up

Let me repeat again. Pay attention to what your customers, viewers, and sales people have to say. There is a story behind each question, each comment. Observe, imagine and get inspired!

If your existing content is effective, it will boost your efforts and willingness to create even better posts in future. Social media marketing tools could just be the right solution a marketer is looking for. They aid marketers in managing and monitoring content which could also lead them towards innovative ideas for the content generation.

At last, I know, being a writer or marketer, you too are full of ideas. Must share your “topic-finding” ideas in the comment section given below. We would love to learn from you.

The post How to Find New Topics That Your Audience Loves? appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

“If you don’t start in the right spot, you are going to lose the game before you even get started.”
-Mike O’Neil (@mikeoneilrocks)

Right? Well…absolutely! Social media has become the terrain and domain of the marketers who know how to derive the best out of their marketing platforms.

Social media analytics are the yardsticks that enable businesses to evaluate their performance and determine where they stand.

As social media influencer Mike O’ Neil states, we need to work in the right direction to achieve our marketing goals.

These goals can be rightfully set using the best social media management tools for small business.

With 95% of retail brands using social media channels for marketing, businesses need the best social media tracker.

Competition is tough and media analytics results can be leveraged in every aspect of a business; from maintaining relationships with stakeholders and clients to human resource management.

So what does this ‘magic’ tool do?

An effective analytics tool like the Social Media Analytics by SocialPilot is the power weapon that will enable businesses to devise their marketing strategies.

Analytics for social media provides volumes of data in the form of user engagement, page clicks, posts shared, the total reach and much more.

As an organization, you have to decipher these statistics to get a complete understanding of the customer preferences and the areas of business opportunity.

The main objectives of social analytics tools are:

• Getting feedback from customers about the products and services
• Track the social media marketing strategies
• Brand reputation management
• Lead generation
• Measuring the ROI on social media marketing
• Providing performance reports to all members of the organization, stakeholders, and clients

Social Media Analytics by SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a comprehensive platform that helps you automate and manage your social media marketing strategies. So how does SocialPilot Analytics help you achieve the data that you are looking for across various platforms?

1. You can find all your platform analytics under one dashboard
   
2. Monitor post performances and trending hashtags
   
3. Send across PDF reports via email for your team to be on the same page
   

Now the question is: How to leverage social media analytics for businesses?

Let’s find out.

1. Consistently monitor performance

Social media has become such an intrinsic part of our lives that all are marketing decisions are based on reviews that we get from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms. Customers consider these reviews organic and make their choices accordingly.

Companies need to constantly monitor the performance of their products to enhance their performance and work on upgrades. Social media listening is an important measure to improve your marketing strategies.

As a marketer, you can try out different strategies and if something does not work, assess the analytics for social media to analyze what went wrong and then work on the improvement strategies.

2. Social media strategies that worked

Let’s go by an example:

Travel industry works largely on establishing relationships with present and prospective clients over the social media. With an epidemic of travel agencies all around the world, how can travel companies leverage their spaces in the competitive environment?

Social media analytics could be pivotal for travel companies to determine their next course of action.

Travel is an ever-evolving/changing business and media analytics gives a greater vision of understanding and evaluating the changing dynamics.

The statistics of the marketing tools could help save companies millions of bucks by re-evaluating their performance strategies and tuning into the present customer needs.

This is particularly useful for small businesses that have limited resources and like to use them for the correct promotional activities.

3. Targeted marketing

A business must foremost analyze: Who is my target audience? Which area does this audience come from?

Once you identify these insights and recognize the future trends, you can target your marketing strategies on those lines.

All the data generated from the analytics for social media can then be compiled and reviewed to concentrate efforts towards a more tailored marketing.

One more thing, the analytics tools inferences sometimes have surprises in store for their businesses.

As a business, you have been targeting your efforts to tap women over 30, but hey wait!! The analytics depicts a different perspective. Even men in 20’s are interested in your product.

Your next move?

Channelize your efforts in tapping the segment “men in 20’s”. So here we see that the social media analytics tool was pivotal in reframing the company’s policy and enabled marketers to discover the untapped audience!

4. Social analytics tool for customer feedback

Currently, 33% of customers use social media platforms than the telephone to contact their brands(Neilson report)

Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook gather large amounts of customer feedback for the brands. These reviews help companies in analyzing the weak points and hurdles they have to cross to reach their customers.

It is the immaculate user experience that compels the consumers to come back for more. Businesses should take all complaints and problems into consideration and work towards resolving them before they start losing customers. This helps them in their overall brand reputation management.

The social media analytics tools will not just identify problem areas; they will help you in getting positive results by monitoring the new course of action.

14% of tweets to major brands are from consumers having problems in-store (Conversocial research)

A brand that responds well to its consumers and looks into their problems is always the consumer’s favourite brand. And of course, brands that do not respond will never develop a strong fan following.

So use your media analytics to find out about customer complaints and devise solutions thereafter. Also if a business promptly looks into user complaints, it would rectify the problem in time and save wastage and losses resulting from a failing venture.Incorporating these insights into your venture capital business plan can help ensure long-term success.

Using the best social media analytics tools will not only result in escalating profits but also save your business from losing valuable customers.

5. Socialize your best content

Social media marketing revolves around tweeting, pinning and sharing content. When you consistently track your post performances, you can ascertain the most engaging content.

Once you figure that out, repost that content where relevant. You can make use of tools like Zoho Social to help you ease scheduling.

Your social analytics tool is the yardstick which helps you compare all posts and select the most ‘socializing’ one.

Ideally, brands use various marketing platforms to post content and use social media scheduling tools to bulk post at the relevant times. But without using any metrics, it is impossible to identify the most shareable content.

With the ever changing times and trends, user preferences keep changing. So track your posts with the analytics tools and use the compiled data to increase your conversions, traffic and reach on social media.

6. Competitor analysis

The moods, behaviors and preferences of people change at unpredictable rates. What works today, will become obsolete by maybe…. midnight?

The crux here is that the analysis wheel has to continue moving. No customer activity should escape the analytics radar.

Depending on the scale of your business, you can carry out daily or weekly measurements.

These social analytics tools also help in comparing engagement levels with competitors.

You will know exactly where you stand by comparing your results with competitors.

You can analyze the social footprint created by your competitors across all social channels and use this data to add-on to your strategic efforts.

The hospitality industry uses analytics for social media extensively to evaluate and compare performances among competitors.

Starbucks has always been active in its social media marketing campaigns.

It looks into every aspect of marketing and leverages social media analytics to stay ahead in the competition. So does your company connect with customers the way this coffee chain does?

7. Influencer mapping

An online survey shows 22% of marketers see influencer marketing emerging as a rapidly-growing social marketing tool.

Influencers definitely create brand awareness. But is this awareness action driven? Is it leading to engagements and conversions?

Relax and take a deep breath:

Use your social media tools effectively to analyze and map your influencers. The world is so well-connected and some influencers are more powerful than others. Use their charm to lure your customers!

Further, you can use the analytics to identify the exact type of content that these influencers should share. Probe deep and gather insights from the statistics to find out how these influencers are improving your marketing reach.

Identify areas which are untapped by these experts and help them foray into those avenues.

8. Unleash the power of Facebook

Approximately 70 million small business pages are active on Facebook and out of them about 7 million pay for social media marketing on Facebook.

By far, Facebook is still the reigning social media king. 79% of online adults use Facebook (source- Pew Research Center).

The surprising fact here is that the young adults using Facebook have recently been joined by the older adults.

Using the social media analytics tools for Facebook is the best way to monitor, review, compile and analyze all Facebook results at one place.

You can also compare your Facebook performances against other social platforms.

Measure all metrics and check the progress of your posts by comparing previous records, to understand the behavioral psychology of your fans and followers.

Bottom Line

Monitor your audience growth, compare the results with competitors, analyze the engagements and shares; and discover the hidden secret of achieving marketing success.

This media analytics can help you establish a connection with the sentiments of the customers. Use these statistics to study the difficulties faced by consumers and take proactive measures to rectify them.

Social media is said to consist of seven layers.

The visible layers consist of actions and texts, which can be identified easily. Social media analytic tools allow marketers to unearth the invisible layers like hyperlinks and mobile data.

Hence leverage the Social media Analytics to transform the unprocessed data into clear and useful insights that have the potential to boost your business outcomes!

The post 8 Ways Brands Leverage Social Media Analytics for Businesses appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

So how do you stand out from all your competitors? The answer is simple. By grabbing as much audience interest as possible.

However, the question that must haunt all is how to increase your social media engagement and audience. If a brand is trying to leverage prominent social media platforms for its business goals, every move on its part is made strategically.

The best way of playing it smart for any marketer is to make interactive social media posts. The prime goal is to indulge the audiences’ whims and draw them in so they engage with our fun social media engagement posts.

This blog will highlight some interactive social media post ideas for business, which will bring you likes, comments, and shares.

What is Interactive Content?

Interactive content is the type that evokes a reaction from the audience. The response can be of any kind, a like, comment, share, or some specific action asked of them in the post itself.

Making interactive content is not as simple as it seems. As a marketer, you would have to have a thorough knowledge of these two things:

• Your target demographic
• Marketing objectives which you want to achieve

This will narrow down your perspective, and your social media campaign will be effective to the maximum extent. Leveraging the benefits of interactive content can benefit your business in every aspect, from customer loyalty to achieving those sales targets.

Let’s have some of those pros of having the right content online.

5 Benefits of Interactive Social Media Posts

Any social media marketer would surely know why everyone runs after those numbers regarding engagement metrics. The whole concept of visibility rests on the engagement from interactive posts for social media.

Here are the benefits as to why we netizens make all these efforts to bring in those audience engagements.

1. Inclusive Participation

Any digital marketer knows that “content is king”, be it any platform. So when your content is good, the audience is bound to interact with it. It might be a single like or comment. But know this, every single one counts in increasing your visibility.

The more people interact with your content, the better it is, which applies to all content creators. You can take references from some inspiring social media campaigns to verify that good content will get you those engagements.

2. Tap into the Audience’s Emotions

Connecting is the key. Mustering up social media campaign ideas will become a cakewalk when you know what kind of content is working on the platform. Understand what it is that your audience relates to the most.

Then create interactive post ideas that will engage your audience.

It can be funny, emotional, inspirational, or an opinion piece on a controversial topic. As long as you make them tick, know that you are reaching them and making an impression.

3. Demographic Data via Engagements

There is a point to every move a marketer makes. When people engage with your content, you come to know what they like. Their reactions are essential information that we marketers carefully collect and leverage.

Businesses nowadays can take the help of popular social media analytics tools to gain rigorous insights. This data helps us draw the reference point in our strategic roadmap. The more engagement, the more we know, and the more effective our predictions will be.

4. Brand Loyalty Boosted

The relevance of content matters to the marketer and the audience. If people see you promoting something noble or delivering a social message, the intentions of that content will reflect on your brand.

You might have seen Apple’s curated user-generated content. This has built them an identity of having superior cameras which shoot high-quality but authentic visuals. The above still is from a video ad done by Apple highlighting black photographers in the United States. 

5. Spike in Traffic and Sales

If you are an online or e-commerce business, social media marketing is crucial. The primary marketing goals, i.e., brand awareness and website traffic, will get a massive boost if you optimize your social media marketing strategy accordingly.

Marketers often place CTAs strategically integrating with their interactive social media posts. If the audience engages with the content, such as when businesses embed Instagram posts on their website, they are way more likely to click on the call to action button, leading them to the seller’s website.

There are many direct and indirect advantages that creating interactive social media engagement posts will bring to your business. These apply to every social platform, though the strategy might have to be slightly tweaked, the pros are all the same.

But how to ensure that the people ARE engaging with your content?

10 Types of Interactive Social Media Post Ideas

There is a vast variety of content floating around on the internet. Here are some compelling social media engagement post types that capture your audience’s attention.

1. Test your Audience with Quizzes

If the demographic is right, quizzes can be one of the best ways to draw people in to interact. Even better if it’s a scoring quiz!

They can be trivia questions, personality quizzes, knowledge or entertainment-based true or false, or games like spin the wheel. Buzzfeed is the champ in using all quiz-based interactive posts to drive engagement most effectively.

The platform is most known for its quizzes we all have taken at some point, telling us which cartoon character is our spirit animal based on the type of coffee we like. We don’t believe in them, but we still take them because they are fun.

Using quizzes has worked wonders for Buzzfeed. Many other brands also use this interactive social media post idea to achieve those engagements. It just might click with your audience and boost your audience interactions.

2. Excite Them with Contests and Giveaways

Netizens love trying their luck. So a good old contest always seems to work when it comes to getting them to respond. Many brands use this strategy to hike up their social media engagements.

According to data, 91% of the posts on Instagram having more than 1000 likes or comments are related to contests. And pages that run contests on a regular basis tend to grow 70% faster than those that don’t. This proves the point.

A contest in itself works great, but if you pepper it with a prize or giveaway, the exponential rise of interest will surprise you. You can also excite the audience at an offline event with these giveaways by displaying a social media QR code. QR codes will give them easy access to the giveaway. Also, it will help you spread your brand’s reach and its messaging.

GoPro, being an adventurous brand, conducts contests all the time. One of their notable ones would be the #GoProMillionDollarChallenge. The brand had asked its audience to submit videos of their active lives, shot with the newly launched HERO 7 Black.

The brand had offered a million dollars to the winner. But going with the huge number of entries and GoPro’s values, they selected multiple winners. All of them ended up sharing the prize equally and got featured on the brand’s Instagram profile.

3. Crunch Some Numbers with Appealing Infographics

Visual content is always better at drawing people’s attention than any basic text, especially in social media. The data reveals that people retain 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read.

Infographics are an excellent way to engage the audience and help them retain our content. Using them makes your posts more easily digestible. Imagine the data given below as simple sentences. It would have hardly looked as interesting as this illustration does.

If you present some form of data in the infographic format, the probability of them being interested or interacting with the post will automatically increase. For example, you can use Instagram reel stats on your infographics if you post about Instagram growth.

Interactive social media posts include infographics in the form of click-throughs to other landing pages, pop-ups, informative content, etc. Even quizzes and contests can use interactive infographics to make a bunch of fun interactive posts.

4. Periodic Series to Get those Recurring Visits

You might have seen creators making their content in series with a common theme. This can be on a weekly or monthly basis. If the concept of the series appeals to the audience, they will come back to check out the post next in line and keep coming back.

The above post is from the beauty brand Clinique which posts make-up tutorial posts every Monday. This is an excellent way of boosting user engagement with your post. The trick is to reel them in, and tuning into your content will become a habit for them!

To keep track of the regular posting, you can use social media content calendar tools. Plan out the episodes beforehand so you don’t miss posting that day when your audience is waiting for it.

5. Seek Audience Opinion with Polls and Surveys

Netizens feel more involved in your social media campaign ideas if you can make them believe that what they say makes a difference. And this feeling of involvement will encourage engagement and interest on their part.

Surveys and polls can involve any topic.

You might ask them what sort of look might suit your office, or it might be something as important as a change needed for your product or any current happenings in the industry or even the world.

Polls and surveys are effective as interactive social media posts, and depending on the question or the context, you might end up gathering important insights into public opinion. You can even showcase the results of your surveys via Google Forms to help your audience.

6. Let Them Know You Better with Q&A Sessions

Aside from knowing your audience, you must let them in on some information about you and your business. This interactive post idea will familiarize you with the people and hike up their interests.

You can let them ask you questions and selectively answer some of them publicly. If you are flooded with questions, know that you have been noticed and roused public curiosity.

7. Sneak Peek with Teasers and Announcements

Teasers and sneak peeks work wonders to increase the audience’s interest. It can be minor hints or countdown clocks.

Think of the incoming engagement interactive posts for social media will bring but do maintain a certain mystery around the campaign.

Drop snippets of information, revealing as little as possible but keep on reminding them. So when the actual post or content drops, its engagement will shoot through the roof.

Most movies are promoted this way, creating a buzz before any actual trailer is dropped.

8. Pull A Broad Smile with Jokes and Memes

Humorous and fun social media engagement posts are also ideal for drawing netizens’ attention. Memes are one of the most abundant content on social media.

You can complement your content with funny jokes and memes, but remember it has to match your pre-existing brand identity’s theme. This will also help you build brand awareness effectively. McDonald’s has always marketed itself with the online image of humor and fun. Here is their recent meme regarding the flavor and strength of their Sprite. This goes in perfect harmony with their vibe.

9. Go Live for On Spot Engagement

Live streams are the most direct mode of engagement through interactive posts for social media platforms. This feature is available on almost every social platform.

Famous social media influencers and even celebrities often live-stream, and millions of viewers join the session to chat directly and drop comments on the stream. And it’s not just sitting and conversing. People live stream while doing certain activities like traveling, unboxing a product, and even cooking.

For example, if you are looking to market your restaurant, live streaming while cooking is a great option, and you can refer to Live-cook’s channel on YouTube for the same.

Live streams also host productive sessions like webinars and discussions by collaborating with other personalities right there. This is as direct as online conversations with the masses go.

Beauty brands like Sephora use Instagram live sessions as a go-to marketing tactic. They talk about their products, chat with the audience, and often invite celebrities to promote the brand.

10. Teach’em with How-to’s

DIY and tutorial content is well-loved by the audience these days. The trend of teaching oneself with the help of online videos is a familiar concept now. People don’t ask others about simple tasks. They simply watch tutorials and do it themselves.

These clips might range from “How to boil water” or “How to become a successful digital marketer” and so much more. We all know how popular make-up tutorials are among the young female audience.

Tutorials are used as short-form content, a series, or long-form video. It depends on the brands and their requirements.

As a brand, you can produce videos and blog posts related to your industry and product-related things, showing people how to use them.

Social media marketing for a brand is a tricky business. If the style and theme of your branding differ in every social channel, you won’t be able to create a concrete brand identity, and your marketing efforts and all that engagement will go in vain.

We can’t define any definite outline for every type of industry or even company. The kind of content we have listed above will bring you traffic, but you have to keep the whole of your strategy on every platform in harmony.

To help you streamline your social media marketing management, you might need a little help. Here’s how you get it.

Top 6 Tools to Publish Interactive Social Media Posts

Social media marketing automation tools are your answers to all those marketing challenges you face as a professional marketer. An all-rounder tool will take care of all aspects of your social media campaigns, such as posting, content curation, social listening, analytics, etc.

Here are the top 5 tools for a hassle-free social media marketing experience:

1. SocialPilot: Social media management tool
2. Canva: Graphic designing tool
3. Keyhole: Social listening tool
4. Google Analytics: Analytics tool
5. Promo: Video editing tool
6. Paraphraser: Content optimization tool

The point to be noted here is that all these tools have specific expertise and are not affordable for smaller companies or solopreneurs. In that case, go with an all-rounder who looks after all aspects of your social media marketing. SocialPilot is a great tool that offers excellent features at more economical pricing, so it is a great option to start with.

Conclusion

If you want to garner some attention from netizens, interactive social media posts are the way to go. But being a social media marketer, you have to keep in mind that not all engagement is good engagement.

Identify your target demographic as precisely as possible. It makes creating practical social media post ideas with a social media post maker to make business easy. This will bring the most relevant traffic and achieve your marketing objectives.

We hope this blog post helped you to grasp the concept of interactive social media posts to boost engagement and what type of content works best for this purpose. For more insightful content, keep an eye on this space. And if you have some insights of your own to share, do consider writing for us.

The post 10 Interactive Social Media Posts for Businesses appeared first on Social Media Marketing.

Not surprising, we say.

And, what does that tell you if you have recently set up a business?

It means that emails can be a great marketing strategy if done right.

The most significant benefit of email marketing for small businesses is to help you reach your business goals on a budget.

Keep in mind that not every email pertains to sales or offers. As a marketer, you must tailor your content to appeal to your audience.

In this article, we’ll discuss email marketing, list out some email marketing services for small businesses, and even offer some email marketing tips.

Let’s start.

Why do Small Businesses Need Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a strategy that integrates customized emails as a channel to promote products or services. If done correctly, this powerful content strategy can aid brand loyalty and even help you increase your sales.

Not only is email cost-effective, but it is also a great way to stay connected to your customers.

Here are its most tangible benefits:

• Great for doing surveys or collecting feedback
• Helps to strengthen customer relationship
• Aids in generating leads (recent statistics have shown that 89% of marketing professionals rely on emails to generate leads)
• Offers an impressive ROI
• Allows you to segment your audience to provide personalized content
• Boosts traffic and sales

And so much more! You got the gist, right?

With so many benefits from a marketing channel, you surely want to incorporate it into your marketing and brand building strategy. So, where do you start?

First of all, check out these email marketing tips for small businesses that can help you ace the email game!

10 Email Marketing Tips for Small Business

We’ve outlined some handy email marketing tips that can get you ahead in the marketing game:

1. Keep Your Emails Short and Simple

Don’t complicate your emails or newsletters by adding too much information. This could overwhelm your readers or dilute your CTA. Keep in mind that most readers have short attention spans.

Your subject line must address what your email is all about. Add relevant images to your emails and a table of content whenever possible.

2. Use Customer Segmentation

Your customers are unique, which means that not every email caters to every customer. Create a clean email list for every segment, build cohorts, and plan your content accordingly. Incorporate the personalization tools to address your customers and provide them with what they need.

3. Prioritize on Quality of the Emails Over Quantity

No one likes to receive too many emails, especially if they contain the same information. A great email copy would send the message across in one go. Avoid using all caps or adding too many emojis. Think about what you’d like as a reader and start from there.

4. Send Mobile-friendly Emails

Test if your emails work well on mobile devices. If your email content is not readable on smartphones, you may miss out on potential customers. Some services offer mobile-friendly templates as well.

5. Personalize Your Messages

The key to making the best use of email marketing is personalization. Your messages should be relevant to your customers. Collect user data and customize your email copy to target your audience.

6. Make use of Automated Emails

Automated emails can make your work very easy. Things like welcome emails, password updates, or purchase confirmation emails can be automated with the help of email marketing CRM.

7. Set Clear Expectations

On the sign-up forms, you can always specify how often you would send out emails. Your audience would appreciate this transparency. You can also give your audience options to subscribe to different newsletters.

8. Encourage Sign-ups

Give your audience a chance to sign-up for your emails or newsletters. Place embedded forms or pop-ups on your website so that the readers can easily access them. Or even better, use magic links for easy access and increased security.

9. Include Information About your Social Media

Your emails can be a great way to invite your audience to your brand’s social profiles. Allow your audience to connect with you so they can be updated with more content through your social media.

10. Track and See What Works

This is the most essential tip to ensure success in email marketing. Email marketing can help you in saving time and money.

But it can all go to waste if your marketing strategy doesn’t give you the expected returns. Be open to experimenting with your plan and track the metrics consistently.

For added convenience, consider using a free QR code generator to enhance your email marketing campaigns.

So, now that you know how to send emails to your customers, the next thing on your radar should be an email marketing service to make your work easier.

Don’t know what it is? No worries. Keep on reading.

What is an Email Marketing Service?

Email marketing services help businesses by creating optimal emails, monitor email campaigns, check analytics, and even provide contact relationship management or CRM.

Of course, different brands offer different tools and packages. But at the very least, these services will get the right email or newsletter to the right audience.

Here we have listed out top email marketing services that you can opt for.

Top 8 Email Marketing Services for Small Business

1. MailerLite

One of the most affordable services on our list, MailerLite, has free and paid plans that include A/B Testing. This test allows you to compare two marketing plans and confirm which one is more effective.

MailerLite not only gives you tools to design your email, but you can also get audience insight through forms and pop-ups.

Key features:

• Access to A/B Testing
• Allows personalization of your campaigns through email automation and segmentation
• Auto-resend email option
• Surveys and reports for your campaign
• Subscription and sign-up forms
• Email and photo editor
• Templates for newsletter

2. SendInBlue

SendInBlue is a great intuitive service that sends out transaction-based emails. These are automated emails that businesses send out to complement a transaction or service requested by the recipient. They offer different price plans based on email volume and access to advanced features.

Key features:

• A library filled with stylish email templates
• Allows you to send SMS to customers
• Incorporate Facebook Ads
• Check your email performance
• API Integration
• Add Plug-ins like WordPress and Ninja Forms
• Access real-time statistics

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is definitely the best email marketing service for small businesses. They allow you to purchase email credits instead of investing in a monthly charge.

The free plan allows you to access their domain and website builder. Their creative assistant tool helps with creating designs that align with your brand.

Key features:

• A mobile application to manage your account
• Advanced Segmentation and Targeting tools
• Integrating social media calendar
• Sign-up forms and printed postcards
• Create Facebook and Instagram Ads
• Design with Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant
• The paid plans get priority support

4. Netcore Cloud

Netcore Cloud is one of the top Email marketing service providers handling millions of emails on a daily basis. It also provides AMP to give you a website/app-like experience within your email.

This Martech product company helps B2C/B2B brands create amazing digital experiences by providing a range of products that help in acquisition, engagement, and retention.

Key features:

• Automate workflows with an intuitive builder
• Access real-time statistics for quick analysis.
• Auto-resend email option.
• Advanced Segmentation and Targeting tools.
• Responsive and HTML-friendly templates.
• Actionable insights for better decisions.
• Simple integration on any platform.

5. GetResponse

This is a marketing service that allows you to do much more than email marketing. Along with the usual paid plans, GetResponse currently offers a 30-day free trial period.

They offer a lot of advanced features like a sales funnel, smart automation, and webinar creation. If you’re looking for a robust alternative to GetResponse, there are other platforms available that provide similar functionalities and options.

Key features:

• Create automated emails and blog digest
• Email creator with a quick drag-and-drop
• Free templates and stock photos
• Perfect Timing Tool to deliver timely messages
• Access an AI-driven website builder
• A sleek webinar builder
• Track campaign results through easy-to-read graphs

6. Snov.io

Snov.io is a web-based platform that offers a range of tools for email marketing and lead generation. Snov.io offers a forever free plan according to which you can send emails to up to 100 unique recipients.

If you need more, you can choose among five Snov.io. paid plans, the basic plan starting from $39/month. Recently, the service has added a new feature, Email Warmup, to help you prepare your account for sending targeted emails and keeping your email deliverability high.

Key features:

• Create automated emails and blog digest
• Email creator with a quick drag-and-drop
• Free templates and stock photos
• Perfect Timing Tool to deliver timely messages
• Access an AI-driven website builder
• A sleek webinar builder
• Track campaign results through easy-to-read graphs

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign stands out with its powerful automation tools. By incorporating advanced machine learning on their platform, this service helps you funnel your sales.

With multi-user editing, editing revision, and geotracking, ActiveCampaign has become a popular choice for small businesses.

Key features:

• Multi-purpose email and campaign templates
• Efficient warm-up strategies to cover individual needs
• AI-powered same-thread conversations for best warm-up results
• Best coverage in the email verifier game
• Extremely precise verification
• Zero downtime policy (thanks to ping monitoring) – Easy to use
• Provides contact data with up to 95% accuracy
• More than 50 filters for targeted searches
• Real-time email verification

8. Moosend

Moosend is a dynamic marketing platform with hyper-personalization tools that fine-tune your campaign. You can access real-time metrics and incorporate CRM and CMS tools. They offer free, paid, and custom plans and allow you to pay with email credits.

Key features:

• Advanced Segmentation and Personalization
• Customize subscription forms
• Simple integration on any platform
• A/B testing and behavior analytics
• Protection from spambots
• Pixel tracking and free SSL
• Access to video tutorials and live support

We hope that our list helps you determine which service would align with your business needs.

Are You Ready to Invest in Email Marketing?

Besides checking your budget and the marketing service’s cost, certain features could help you figure out which email marketing service would fit your business requirements.

Opt for services that provide you with detailed tracking reports along with email customization, automation, and CRM tools.

Be it free or paid plans, a template library is always helpful. And if the service provides plug-in integration, that’s a plus too.

Go one step further and incorporate a social media tool in your marketing arsenal. Try SocialPilot for free and see how we can help you excel in your marketing efforts.

The post Email Marketing for Small Business – How to make most out of it appeared first on Social Media Marketing.