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Twiter and the 2012 Election – Lessons Learned

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Facebook, Marketing

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Behavior, Best Practices, Community, Community Management, ebooks

The following is an excerpt from the new ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Win in winningin2016-cover2014: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Politics for Campaigns & Advocates”, available in the Amazon store for the Kindle e-reader and as a PDFn Epolitics.com.

The explosion of Twitter marks one of the biggest changes in the digital political landscape in the last few years — in 2008, Barack Obama had all of 100,000 followers by Election Day, a number that was well above 20 million on Election Day 2012. Though the Twitter and Faceook are often lumped together in the popular mind, Twitter isn’t quite a mass medium in the same way Facebook has become — it’s more of a channel to reach those“influentials” like bloggers, journalists and activists. Also different: you can pretty much post as often as you want on Twitter, while you’ll probably want to limit yourself on Facebook to keep from burning out your audience.

An example of Twitter’s ability to influence the political discussion? In 2012, Obama and Romney campaign staff regularly engaged in “Twitter duels” online, with reporters and activists the intended audience. Though these back-and-forth exchanges probably didn’t change any votes, they got plenty of media attention — mission accomplished.

Functionally, Twitter is the very short equivalent of blogging, with a dash of social networking thrown in: individual Twitter messages (“tweets”) are limited to 140 characters in length, and people generally have to choose to “follow” someone’s Twitter feed in order to see their updates. As with Facebook, essentially anyone or any organization can create a Twitter feed, but in some sense Twitter lacks the reciprocal nature of a true social network — plenty of feeds have thousands of followers but follow far fewer people in return themselves (do you think that Lady Gaga really pays attention to what you say?).

One important consideration — Twitter’s a useful tool for campaigns, but its real political power may lie in what campaigns CAN’T do on it, which is to dominate the conversation. Twitter is truly a democratic medium (with a small “d”), and content and opinions spread on Twitter often find their way onto blogs and cable news and into newspapers. Twitter helps create the sea of information in which modern campaigns swim, and whether or not they’re active on Twitter themselves, it’s likely to shape the political communications environment in which they operate.

What to Tweet?

A common perception of Twitter is that it’s an inherently trivial medium — it’s often spoken of as a way to tell the world what you had for breakfast. But in practice, normal people who fill Twitter’s “airwaves” with self-indulgent drivel generally don’t pick up much of a following (for celebrities, that’s unfortunately NOT so true). In fact, perhaps the most common single use of Twitter is to spread links to blog posts, videos, news articles and other pieces of in-depth content, making the 140-character limit less of an issue.

In general, as in so many other parts of the online advocacy space, readers aren’t likely to pay much attention to you unless you have something of value to offer them. People who tweet too much trivia too often can find their followers dropping off in droves, so be sure to pay attention to the KIND of information you distribute. Not every tweet needs to be a haiku-like gem of wisdom, but it rarely hurts to think for at least a minute or two about your ultimate communications goals before messaging the world. How often people Tweet varies immensely — I have friends who’ve sent out 10 or 20 times more messages over time than I have, for instance. It really depends on what you have to say.

Building a Following

Once you’ve established an initial base of content on Twitter, next start building your following. Unfortunately, short of being mentioned in the Twitter feed of someone famous, finding an audience typically takes time. Start by following the people you want to follow you — your staff, political activists in your state, district or area, local bloggers, journalists, etc., since at least some of them will follow you back right away. Once they do so, you have the opportunity to reach them — and potentially, their own audiences through them.

Supporters = Amabassadors

Of course, you’ll want as many of your supporters to follow you as well, particularly if their own following is large and/or active. So ask them! A “follow us on social media” email is a nice break from a string of fundraising asks, and your supporters may appreciate a chance to help the campaign without having to open their wallets.

@Replies and Hashtages: Engaging the Community and Connecting with Prominent Voices

The most effective way to build your following over time is to actively engage the Twitter community, a process that can take several forms. The most straightforward is to use an “@reply,” in which you reference another Twitterer in your own post (i.e., “@epolitics why don’t you just shut up about this crap”). You can use @replies to hold a back-and-forth conversation with someone, plus they’re a good way to get the attention of someone with whom you’d like to connect (Twitter.com and other Twitter-management tools — like Hootsuite — typically make it very easy to see who’s @replied you).

@replies also play a role in “retweeting,” which is the forwarding of someone else’s posts to your own followers. Retweets are one of the signature characteristics of the ongoing Twitter conversation, since they let people provide value to their readers without having to write new content themselves. Plus, retweeting someone more prominent than you can be a good way to come to his or her attention, particularly if you use the old-school “RT @reply” method rather than Twitter’s newer built-in retweet function (RT’ing a tweet as an @reply also lets you add a comment, another valuable feature).

Besides RT’s, the other common bit of Twitter shorthand you’ll commonly encounter is a “hashtag,” a word or abbreviation preceded by the “#” sign. Twitterers use hashtags to refer to a topic that’s being discussed by several people at once, for instance an issue, event or public figure, and people often use Twitter’s search function to follow the extended discussion around a particular tag. This tendency makes hashtags a valuable way to gain exposure to new followers and to find yourself retweeted, assuming of course that you have something interesting to say. Some websites attempt to keep track of common hashtags, but the easiest way to find the hashtags in general use is to use a Twitter search around a topic and look for the tags terms people are using when they talk about it.

Engaging the Twitter community is obviously time-consuming, since you have to pay attention to what many different people are saying — you can’t participate in the conversation unless you’re actually listening. Besides hashtags, dedicated Twitter-management tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck let you break the feeds you’re following down into various groups, for instance based on topics they cover or the kind of author they are (hint: track relevant journalists), and they also tend to speed up the process of posting content vs. going through Twitter.com itself. A good tool will typically allow you to pre-schedule Tweets for publishing, something that’s particularly handy if you have content that needs to go out over the weekend or while you’re traveling.

Besides public conversations, you can also “Direct Message” someone behind the scenes if you are following each other reciprocally, and I’ve known people who’ve been able to connect with a blogger or reporter via DM whom they’d never been able to reach via email.

Advanced Tactics

Twitter has given rise to an impressive array of different tactics and practices in its short time on Earth. “Live-Tweeting” an event involves covering it comprehensively as it happens, and social media-friendly conferences and seminars typically promote the use of certain hashtags to facilitate the process. Activists or groups can also pre-arrange TweetChats, which are public discussions at a particular time and around a particular hashtag. Many people pay attention to the hashtags that are “trending” on Twitter, i.e., becoming widely discussed, and the goal of a TweetChat or live-tweeting is often to either encourage a topic to trend or to ride the wave of a subject that’s moving up the popularity ladder. Finally, a Twitter interview can be an interesting way to run a one-on-one public conversation, though it practice it can feel like competitive poetry or a freestyle rap showdown — i.e., a public balancing act on a very narrow wire.

Twitter and Cell Phones

A common question about Twitter: why the 140-character limit? The answer is cell phones — Twitter is designed to be used like SMS text messages, making it one of the few online tools commonly and easily works on handheld devices. Some organizers have taken advantage of this fact to use Twitter to help rally communities in which cell phones are more common than access to the traditional internet. Others have used the Twitter/phone connection for on-the-spot coverage of rallies and other events, particularly as a means to distribute photos and videos shot with their phones. Finally, some campaigns in 2012 employed “protected” Twitter feeds — ones that can only be followed by people “approved” by the feed owner — to organize field staff and volunteers on the fly.

Advertising on Twitter

Update: this section has changed in the version 2.0 of this ebook, published in April of 2014! Please go toTwitter Advertising for Politics & Advocacy for the latest information.

Warning: Ways to Stumble

The most important Twitter rule to remember? Don’t be an idiot, since something you post on Twitter will live forever, even if you try to delete it (just ask Anthony Weiner). Even if you’re smart enough not to send topless photos over the internet, a big mouth can still get you into trouble. As a friend of mine once said of a Democrat challenging Sen. Chuck Grassley, “as long as he has a Twitter feed, she has a chance.”

Another note of caution: electoral campaigns in particular need to be careful to distinguish between a candidate or officeholder’s Twitter feed and one updated by staff, since Twitter as a community tends to value authenticity. If Twitterers find out that a “candidate’s voice” is not actually his own, the campaign’s credibility can take a hit. Campaigns can use both approaches in a single feed if it’s clear whose voice is speaking at any given time, and can even turn a relatively rare candidate appearance on his or her own feed into an event to promote. Finally, don’t forget that once a campaign has a Twitter feed, people will expect to be able to follow it and interact with the author(s). Don’t start a feed and let it die of neglect.

For more from this chapter, please download your copy of “How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014″ today.

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Timeline Contests Break Facebook’s Rules!

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Facebook

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Behavior, Best Practices, Community Management, contests

I’ve been keeping an eye on my news feed (as you’ll recall, I’ve liked over 4000 pages & counting) in hopes of finding lots of good & bad examples of contests being run since the rule change.

Honestly speaking, I’m not seeing as many contests as I’d expected.

This is probably because most of the pages I’ve Liked are larger company pages — and not small local pages.

In my opinion, contests on Facebook tend to work best with smaller, local pages — and maybe also with personality type pages, like music bands.

In any case, here are 3 examples of Timeline contests that violate the new Facebook Promotion Guidelines.

1. Tag To Win

According to Facebook’s Promotion guidelines :

In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

  • It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
  • It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

But time & time again I see pages (even after Facebook made the new guidelines) clearly instructing their fans to tag themselves in a photo to enter a contest.

An example of this is on the Nature’s Bakery page:

natures bakery facebook tag contest

This is a clear violation of the Facebook Page Guidelines — but as you can see, 108 people Liked the post & there are 126 comments.

So you can see why doing this kind of contest is tempting.

2. Share To Win

I see this one much more often than the “Tag to Win” contest.

Our friends at Nature’s Bakery appear to be offenders on this type of contest as well:

share to win facebook contest

What do the Facebook Guidelines say?

Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).

Translation: Page owners can encourage users to share the contest & come vote — by Liking their comment on a contest — but sharing cannot be a form of entering the contest.

Looks like 144 people helped Nature’s Bakery violate the rules!

Just so you don’t think I’m picking on Nature’s Bakery, here’s another offender (Lake Tahoe North) that collected 176 shares:

share photo to win facebook contest

3. Upload Cover Photo to Win

This is an old trick I’ve seen many page owners use over the years:

  1. Load a great cover photo promoting your product or event
  2. Encourage fans to upload it as their cover photo for a chance to win something

Is this against the Facebook Guidelines?

Let’s see:

All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.

Yep, seems like it’s against the guidelines to me!

Even if you aren’t doing it as a contest, encouraging fans to load your cover as theirs for exposure is a no-no.

Here’s an example from a band, Fresh Bakin, who recently asked fans to load their cover photo to win tickets:

cover photo facebook contest

There is no way of knowing how many fans actually uploaded the cover — but it does appear 91 people Liked the image, which was part of the “rules” for their contest.

Legit Facebook Timeline Contests

Don’t get me wrong here — if you want to run a contest on your timeline, then go for it!

Just make sure you follow the Facebook Guidelines.

Promotions

1. If you use Facebook to communicate or administer a promotion (ex: a contest or sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, including:
a.   The official rules;
b.   Offer terms and eligibility requirements (ex: age and residency restrictions); and
c.   Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered (ex: registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals)
2. Promotions on Facebook must include the following:
a.   A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
b.   Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).
4. We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion, and you agree that if you use our service to administer your promotion, you do so at your own risk.

In other words, you can require fans to enter your Timeline contest by:

  • Liking a post
  • Commenting on a post
  • Liking & Commenting a post
  • Posting on the Page’s timeline
  • Sending a Message
  • Having the comment with the most Likes

It’s very tempting to run contests that involve sharing, tagging & uploading your cover photo — but don’t do it.

And obviously you can still use 3rd party apps to run your contest.

You’ll need to weigh the options of whether you run a Facebook Timeline contest or use a 3rd party app — that’s your call.

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Facebook Tips From The Trenches

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Facebook, Marketing

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Tags

algorithm, Best Practices, Business, Facebook

You know how to set up a Facebook account, you have even boosted posts so reallysocial media marketer how hard is Facebook marketing?

What sets a true social media marketer apart on Facebook? Quite a few things actually, but mostly it’s their holistic vision and appetite for information. Here are a couple of examples of things pro marketers do on Facebook that other page admins most likely don’t.

Natively Uploaded Videos

When you see a natively uploaded video from a brand page on Facebook, it’s a sign that the marketer who shared the video is a pro. Why? Pro Facebook marketers know that natively uploaded videos get more views than links to YouTube videos on Facebook — like 52 times more(!) according to a blog post from GetResponse.

To upload and share a video natively to Facebook, you will need your video’s raw file. Facebook accepts many different video file types (you can check out their list here), but .mov and .mp4 are the most commonly used. Once you have your video’s raw file, you can drag and drop it into your page’s status update box or upload it as you would a regular photo/video.

What a natively uploaded video looks like:

unnamed-1

What a YouTube video looks like:

unnamed-2

Videos with clear calls to actions often yield better results. So to take your natively uploaded video up a notch,  add a call to action button and fill out the optional video description fields.

unnamed

Staying on top of industry news — like knowing that natively uploaded content performs better on Facebook — allows pro Facebook marketers to be agile. They can quickly assess (often before the news has become widespread) whether or not they should research, test, prepare for, implement or disregard an update.

Using Graph Search to Learn More About Their Audience

When Facebook rolled out Graph Search in late September 2013, pro Facebook marketers immediately started investigating uses for the new tool. What pro marketers found was that they could use Graph Search in a lot of savvy ways to learn more about their Facebook fans and the types of people they wanted to target.

Since its release, Graph Search has been refined and updated to function as a semantic search engine, making it an even morevaluable tool for Facebook marketers. Now search results are indexed by Facebook (rather than Bing) and include people (both friends and people in a person’s extended network, i.e., friends of friends, people with similar interests and people nearby), posts, hashtags and locations, according to a post by Lior Degani on Social Media Examiner.

Pro Facebook marketers use Graph Search to research their audience, then use the insights they discover to more narrowly (and presumably more effectively) target their users via Facebook posts and/or ads. Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:

Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:

  • Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of your page]
  • Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of one of your biggest competitors]
  • Groups joined by people who like [insert the name of your page]
  • Pages liked by people who are older than [insert age] and like [insert the name of your page]

There are so many Graph Search searches you can try. Don’t believe me? Check out this post by Facebook guru Jon Loomer — he tests nearly 15 unique searches and shares his results.

Are Aware Of But Don’t Chase the Algorithm

Historically, when news breaks that a specific practice is working well on Facebook,  you’ll immediately notice a trend of everyone doing the same thing — it’s usually a trick that claims to help you boost your posts’ reach and/or increase engagement. But while everyone is busy changing their posting strategies to start doing “what’s working right now,” pro Facebook marketers are letting the bandwagon go on its merry way.

What’s most important to pro Facebook marketers is consistency regarding the tone, brand image, and the type of content they share on their page. If memes are the new “it” thing to post on Facebook to drive likes, you’re definitely not going to see a company like GoPro start posting lots of memes on their page. Why? Because they’re pros and are going to stick to sharing the content that represents their brand best.

This doesn’t mean that Facebook marketing pros are against testing. Testing is always smart, as long as it doesn’t compromise or confuse your brand’s current strategy.

#4 Pros Admins Think Mobile First

The number of people logging onto Facebook via their mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, of Facebook’s 1.32 billion users, a whopping 30 percent of them use the social network only on their phone, according to The Verge.

As social mobile usage increases, so does the number of pro Facebook marketers who are implementing and testing mobile strategies. These marketers have mobile on the brain! Before they share content, they consider the experience of the users who will consume their content on a mobile device. When they invest in Facebook ads, they invest a portion of their budget into mobile ad buys and tools like ShortStack that allow them to create mobile-optimized landing pages.

Mass mobile consumption is the future, and pro-level Facebook marketers are the folks who know this best.

Facebook Is Not The Only Way They Promote Business

This is perhaps the most important point of all. Pro Facebook marketers, who are also likely pro Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, email, etc. marketers, know they can’t rely solely on Facebook to promote their business. So when Facebook decides to change their algorithm in a way that does not favor content from brands, pro Facebook marketers don’t panic. Why? Because they don’t have all their eggs in one basket, and they know that they can lean on the other social platforms and marketing channels they’ve developed.

Readers, what else do you think sets pro Facebook marketers apart from the rest? Let me know in the comment sections below.

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Social Media and Email Marketing – How To Leverage Them

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest

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Tags

Best Practices, Community Management, content marketing, Email Marketing

Want to know how to grow your email list?

Are you using social media to support your email list growth?

If you’re thinking of marketing tactics such as email and social media as two separate entities, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits.

In this article you’ll discover tips for using social media to improve your email marketing.

improve email marketing with social media

Discover how to improve your email marketing with social media.

What You Need to Get Started

There are two things you ideally need to make most of the tips in this article. In general, both will help you grow your email list.

A Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer people in exchange for their email address. The freebie can be an ebook, whitepaper, report, access to a tool, template, video, presentation, course, etc. You can see a lead magnet in action on the homepage of Social Media Examiner.

social media examiner lead magnet

Example of a lead magnet promotion at the top of Social Media Examiner.

You should create your lead magnet with your ideal email subscriber and customer in mind. For example, if you want CEOs interested in social media to subscribe to your email list, create lead magnets about social media geared towards CEOs instead of people who work for them.

If you decide to use more than one lead magnet, you may want to create a resources section, learning center or another similar area on your website to help people find all of your freebies.

Visual.ly, for example, offers several lead magnets in their content hub. When you download one of their lead magnets, you’re taken to a squeeze page—the next thing you need for your own email marketing.

A Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a landing page dedicated to converting visitors into email subscribers. Ideally, your squeeze page should include some information about your lead magnet and an opt-in form to capture your visitors’ information and email.

visually squeeze page

Example of a squeeze page for email subscriber opt-ins.

If you need to qualify leads for your products or services, you may want to include a couple of questions to find out who the subscriber is and what his or her needs are. But if your main goal is simply to grow your email list, fewer questions will lead to more subscribers.

Armed with the URL to your latest lead magnet squeeze page(s), here are some ways to use social media to grow your email list.

#1: Facebook Promotion Options

Facebook Page Short Description

You have the opportunity to share URLs in two places on your Facebook page. One of those is in the main website field for your page and the other is in your page’s short description. This is a great place to share the URL for your lead magnet.

The short description field is limited to 160 characters, so use them wisely to describe your business and get people to your lead magnet.

Facebook Page Custom Tabs

Custom tabs are applications you add to your Facebook page to create a specific functionality. For example, the Convince & Convert Facebook page uses a custom tab to house an opt-in form for their email newsletter.

convince & convert custom tab

Example of an opt-in form on a Facebook page custom tab.

Find out if your email marketing software provides a Facebook app to create an opt-in form on a Facebook page custom tab or you can use an app like Woobox Static HTML to display an opt-in form on your own website.

Facebook Page Call-to-Action Button

The Facebook call-to-action button can also be used to direct people to your squeeze page. Simply use the Sign Up text option and link it to your squeeze page.

call to action button set up

How to set up a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.

To encourage people to click on the call-to-action button, you can create a custom Facebook cover photo that promotes your lead magnet and points to the button.

Facebook Page Cover Photo

Speaking of the cover photo, you can also use the cover photo’s description to link to your squeeze page like Mari Smith does.

cover image with link in description

Example of a Facebook page cover photo promoting a lead magnet.

Even if you don’t use your cover photo to promote your lead magnet, you should at least update it to include a link to your website so people can click through to it.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads are a perfect way to promote your lead magnet and get your ideal subscribers signed up to your email list. Formstack‘s ad is a perfect example of promoting a free ebook, using a great image and a download button as the call to action.

formstack lead magnet in facebook ad

Example of a Facebook ad promoting a lead magnet.

Be sure to use the interests and demographics targeting options to go beyond age and location targeting to qualify the leads who see the invitation to your email list. The more qualified your leads, the better your email marketing will perform.

facebook ad targeting

How to use targeting options for a Facebook ad.

You can also upload your current email list as a custom audience and create a lookalike audience to target people similar to your current email subscribers.

facebook lookalike audience

How to create a lookalike audience from your email list.

Choose Lookalike Audience in your ad’s targeting options in the Custom Audiences field to promote your lead magnet to them.

Only use this option if you feel that your current email list is fully qualified for your business. Otherwise, you simply attract more unqualified email leads.

#2: Twitter Promotion Options

Twitter Bio

Similar to using the short description on your Facebook page, you can use your Twitter bio to promote your lead magnet and leave your website field for your main website URL.

link in twitter bio

Example of a link used in the Twitter bio.

Placing the URL of your squeeze page in your Twitter bio is particularly useful because only the link in your Twitter bio shows up in places like Twitter search results.

twitter bios in search results

Example of how a link in a Twitter bio appears in Twitter search results.

For maximum effectiveness, avoid including hashtags and other Twitter profile @username handles. That makes certain there’s only one clickable item in your Twitter bio for people to act on.

Twitter Lead Generation Card

The Twitter lead generation card is a feature that lets you collect email addresses directly from within Twitter. You’ll find it in the Twitter ads section and the setup will look like this.

twitter lead generation card

How to set up a Twitter lead generation card.

Additional configurations for specific CRM software (like Salesforce) can be found in the Twitter Help Center’s guide to setting up a lead generation card.

Otherwise, you download the list of email addresses from users who opt in from your card and upload it to your email marketing service. You can find your leads by going to your cards and clicking on the Download Leads icon (the one with the right arrow).

exporting leads

The location of your Twitter lead generation card submissions to export.

To get exposure for your Twitter lead generation card, simply tweet it to your audience or promote it using Twitter advertising.

Twitter Advertising

To promote your Twitter lead generation card or tweets with links to your latest lead magnets, you can use Twitter advertising. Just like Facebook ads, you can target qualified audiences. On Twitter, you do this with interests and followers of other Twitter accounts (like your competitors).

twitter ad targeting

How to target specific audiences for a Twitter ad campaign.

As with Facebook, you can market to custom audiences on Twitter. Start by uploading your current email list to Twitter’s audience manager. Choose your email list as a tailored audience, and then check the box for targeting users similar to your tailored audience. Then select your email list as a tailored audience again to exclude these users from ad targeting (since you don’t need them to sign up again).

You can also create a tailored audience from your customer list to ensure qualified subscribers by targeting your ad to a similar audience.

#3: LinkedIn Promotion Options

LinkedIn Publications & Projects

On your personal LinkedIn profile, you can add a Publications section that allows you to link directly to your ebooks, whitepapers, etc. You can also use this to link directly to your lead magnet squeeze pages.

linkedin publications

Example of the LinkedIn Publications section linking to a lead magnet.

If your lead magnet is a tool, like a free calculator, add a link to your tool in the Projects section of your profile.

linkedin profile editing

Where you can find the Publications and Projects sections to add them to your profile.

You can add both of these sections to your profile by using the guided profile editing option.

For more visibility, add your best lead magnet to the website links in your Contact Info. This adds it to the top of your public profile so visitors who aren’t logged into LinkedIn can still see it.

LinkedIn Advertising

For businesses looking to target specific professionals as email subscribers,LinkedIn advertising offers the best professional ad audience targeting options to help you get the ideal email subscribers on your list.

linkedin targeting options

How to target specific audiences with LinkedIn advertising.

Additional Opportunities on Social Media

Additional ways to promote your lead magnets and grow your email list with social media include the following.

  • Pin a great image of your lead magnet to your Pinterest profile and link that image to your lead magnet squeeze page.
  • Share a great image of your lead magnet to your Instagram profile andtell people to click the link in your bio. Temporarily (or permanently) change the link in your Instagram profile to point to your lead magnet squeeze page. Be sure that your squeeze page is responsive, since most people from Instagram will be viewing it on their mobile device.
  • Create videos on Vine and Snapchat telling your fans to download your latest lead magnet. Make sure your URL is short, easy to say, and easy to remember, like yourdomain.com/freereport.

#4: Make Sharing Easy

You don’t have to rely solely on your own promotion tactics to get more people to your squeeze pages. You can enlist the help of people who’ve already downloaded your free ebook or report.

Let’s say you offered a free ebook as a lead magnet. Simply create a landing page that thanks people for reading your latest ebook and add social sharing buttonsthat allow them to share the squeeze page for your lead magnet with their own audiences.

To get people to share on Twitter, pre-populate a Twitter Share button with custom text and the URL of your squeeze page. Make sure the URL being shared is the squeeze page of your lead magnet. Otherwise, you’ll end up with people sharing your thank-you page.

tweet button set up

How to set up a Twitter Share button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Now, the tweet automatically points to your squeeze page!

sample tweet

Sample tweet configured in Twitter Share button setup.

You can configure a Facebook Like button in much the same way.

facebook like button set up

How to set up a Facebook Like button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Add a LinkedIn Share button.

linkedin share button set up

How to set up a LinkedIn Share button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Include a Pinterest Pin It button.

pinterest button set up

How to set up a Pinterest Pin It button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Put It All Together

Once you’ve begun collecting your high-quality leads, there are a number of ways you can use social media to impact your email marketing campaigns.

For example, you can use your Twitter audience to split test email subject lines. If you send your experimental tweets through Buffer, you’ll get the following analytics for each tweet.

buffer metrics

Buffer analytics for a tweet.

The tweet with the most engagement can be considered the best headline, and the best headline should be used as the best email subject line.

Or you can get more traction for current email campaigns by targeting your email subscribers with social ads on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure the campaign and your social ads use the same images, call to action, etc., so your subscribers are presented with a similar message no matter where they see it.

What do you think? Have you learned a few ways social media can help grow your email list and reach your email subscribers? Do you have additional tips?Please share them in the comments!

Shared with permission via SM Examiner

By Kristi Hines

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What the heck is a “dark post” ?

13 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Content Marketing, Facebook

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Tags

20% Rule, Dark Posts, Facebook Tips, social media tools

Why should you use Facebook Dark Posts?

If you have a fan page, you can use dark posts to optimize posts for better results before going “live” on your fan page, improve the quality of your fan page and avoid spamming your existing audience.

What is a Facebook Dark Post (Unpublished Post)?

When you have a facebook fan page, you can use the power editor to create a “dark post.” A dark post is a post that exists but doesn’t show up/go live on your fan page wall, but acts just like a post; people can like it, share it and comment on it.

You then promote the dark post via ads.

Why would you want a post that doesn’t show up on your fan page?

  1. Better User Experience for People Who Have Liked Your Page:

    You can promote the same product over and over again via a newsfeed ad, without annoying the people who have liked your page by constantly posting about the same thing over and over and filling their newsfeed with the same offer (looking like a spammer). You just exclude the people who are connected to your page in your targeting and promote away.

  2. Better User Experience for People Who Visit Your Page:

    You can avoid having your fan page be filled with posts about the same offer over and over (looking like a spammer), and instead have a high quality fan page that people will want to visit again.

  3. Optimization:

    Now, you can now split test your post promoting that product (or any other kind of post) for social engagement, conversion rates etc and then “publish” the best version of the post on your fan page once or once in awhile.

A tutorial on creating dark posts – a technique many big brands are now doing newsfeed advertising.

Facebook has become quite the place of the dark arts in recent years as brands seek to outdo each other in the advertising wars.

One of the features available to those in the know is the art of the “dark” or “unpublished” post. What this actually means is that the post will not appear on your timeline but can be accessed by anyone with a direct link (or by clicking through from an ad). They are used extensively by advertisers to create copy that then appears as a “Sponsored” piece of content.

A few months back, dark Image posts were the only way advertisers had of getting results into the newsfeed with images that took up a decent amount of real estate. In recent months, links with appropriately sized images have also been rewarded with a decent chunk of screen space on newsfeed.

Dark link posts are, in my opinion, a better bet partly because nowadays you still get a nice big image but crucially users clicking anywhere on the ad go to the post itself rather than a photo (with photo posts they have to actually click on the url you have pasted into the caption to go anywhere other than to the image in your photo albums). You also have significantly more options for copy in the link post option and likes and comments will show up on the post rather than on the photo. I reckon you also stand a higher likelihood of users liking your Page from a link rather than an image post.

Creating a dark or unpublished post

You’ll need to be using Power Editor, an essential Chrome app for anyone doing regular advertising on Facebook. Power Editor gives you way more control and functionality than Facebook’s Self Serve ad platform.

This article is not intended as an introduction to Power Editor so if you’re not yet using it you will possibly need a basic tutorial in that first but see how you get on. If you are fairly IT savvy you can probably pick it up from here.

Having loaded the Chrome Power Editor app and synchronised with your Page and account, first of all you need to go to Manage Pages in Power Editor (left of the top nav)

3

Select your Page and hit “Create Post”. I’m creating a Link Post here. Ensure the photo you upload is 1200×627 pixels. And make sure any text it contains is within Facebook’s 20% rule (My ad is over that but we got away with it!).

Here’s a useful tool for you to use to check that your ads are within the 20% rule. You’ll see the obvious problems with my initial ad where the text occupied more than the allowed 5 boxes (copy in pack shots doesn’t count but logo copy is included in the 20%). The tool has split the screen into 25 boxes (rather unhelpfully here they are orange on top of my orange background but if you look carefully you will see I actually have text in at least 7 (if not 9) boxes so am over the 20% rule. Of course I went back and changed my ad to comply.

20 rule

The 1200×627 size will surface nicely both on desktop and mobile devices. The screen clip below is an explanation of where all the elements show up. You may need to test a few to work out maximum line lengths. Unfortunately once created you can’t edit an unpublished post so you need to start again from scratch.

5

I would leave the targeting options blank – you can then select targeting by country when you come to create your ads.

So here is my finished unpublished post:

mp1

You can see what your post looks like by hitting the “View Post” option a the bottom of the ad. Take note of the url as you may want to go back to it later. Here’s the post I created: https://www.facebook.com/222807424432/posts/10152078177919433

If you click through you’ll see you are taken to a page on our website which has some clever coding designed to datacapture email addresses and then present the free gift. We’ve done this in conjunction with our Mailchimp database.

Once you are happy that the post looks good you can create an ad.

Creating a Facebook ad using a dark post

Go to Power Editor and create a new campaign and then create a new ad within the campaign. Having created the campaign upload it by pressing the green button (note you have to upload any changes in Power Editor otherwise your work will be in vain).

mp1

You can see what your post looks like by hitting the “View Post” option a the bottom of the ad. Take note of the url as you may want to go back to it later. Here’s the post I created: https://www.facebook.com/222807424432/posts/10152078177919433

If you click through you’ll see you are taken to a page on our website which has some clever coding designed to datacapture email addresses and then present the free gift. We’ve done this in conjunction with our Mailchimp database.

Once you are happy that the post looks good you can create an ad.

Creating a Facebook ad using a dark post

Go to Power Editor and create a new campaign and then create a new ad within the campaign. Having created the campaign upload it by pressing the green button (note you have to upload any changes in Power Editor otherwise your work will be in vain).

MP campaign

Now with that campaign selected in the left hand nav, create an ad. I tend give it the same title as the campaign (and it’s not good practice to have more than one ad in a campaign – I know, it’s very annoying). As you start to create a lot of ads you will want to create a naming system that enables you to easily sort and compare them.

Use the wizard going from Creative through to Audience to Optimization and Pricing. You can see the settings I used in the screen clips below (note that I have conversion pixels set up – it’s good practice to do this).

Creative

You’ll need to select your unpublished post from the Page Post drop down. It will be the one with the half moon symbol.

I am selecting News Feed (Desktop and Mobile). Having tested Right-Hand column ads I’ve not found them cost effective for my audience. And even if I was using them I’d want to create different ads for them to the News Feed ads.

Now progress to Audience

mp3

You’ll see that I am selecting various countries to target, adding in age and gender as well as targeting people with different interest categories. For this example I’m using a broad category of people who like Christian and Gospel Music. And I don’t want to advertise to people who are already fans so these are excluded.

Optimization & Pricing

Now progress to Optimization & Pricing. You have lots of options here. I’ve tested extensively and for this kind of ad, with my audience I find CPC to be the most cost effective. I wouldn’t always go for the lowest option either. I have often gone for say 20c (my account is set in USD) and found my average CPC to be a lot lower.

9b

Now press the green Upload Changes button. Facebook will take anything from minutes to days to check and approve your ad. You may also find that it is initially approved and then unapproved (often due to violation of the 20% rule).

Results – checking effectiveness

Measurement of ad spend has improved a lot in recent years on Facebook. As well as using conversion pixels you can also use custom utm tracking codes in the links you create in your ad. For this ad I used both a mailing list sign up pixel (see below for where to create these in Power Editor) as well as a checkout conversion pixel.

conversion pixel

I tend to use the self serve ad manager rather than Power Editor to look at the results of my Facebook ads but with the right utm codes set up you can get quite sophisticated with tracking in Google Analytics too. Crucially with the tracking pixels set up you are not only seeing resulting clicks, Post Likes, Page Likes etc but also conversions to (in this case) mailing list and sales.

Other types of dark posts

I’ve shown you how to create an unpublished link post. Of course you can also do the same for creating photo posts, video posts, plain status updates and offers. Have a play with them. They are all pretty simple once you’ve got the first one sorted.

One word of warning, whilst I have found CPC to be best for my audience, I would probably look to use CPM or Optimised CPM for video posts. Reason being that I’ve found video gets a much higher click rate but often a poor conversion. You therefore want to be paying for eyeballs rather than clicks. But test and see what works for you.

Facebook Ads Tip: How to Create a Dark or Unpublished Facebook Post – Jon Loomer Digital
http://www.warriorforum.com/social-m…book-post.html

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03 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LInkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube

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Best Practices, Community Management, Engagement, Facebook, facebook page insights bug, LinkedIn Insights, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Twitter

How long should my tweet be? Or my blogpost? Or my headline?social-media-length-infographic

I ask this question a lot. It seems that others do, too. Our first take on coming up with the ideal length of all online content proved quite useful for a lot of people.

I’d love to see if I can help make it even more useful.

Along with all the best tips on optimal lengths for tweets, blogposts, headlines, and more, I’ve added a few additional lengths to the list—the ones that came up most often in the comments of the last post, like SlideShare length, Pinterestlength, and more.

And to make it just as easy as possible to consume all this information quickly and easily, we partnered with our friends at SumAll to place the data and insights into a fun infographic. Check it all out below.

If you enjoy the snazzy look and helpful info in this infographic, SumAll published a companion infographic (in a super cool, printable pdf format) over on their blog.

For the free, print-ready infographic, visit the SumAll blog.

SumAll is one of our favorite social media tools. They do social media tracking better than anyone we’ve found—all your data, all in one place, for free.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll find in the downloadable, printable version of the infographic.

SumAll-printable-animals-final

The data-backed findings for the optimal length

It seems like people love to be told what works best. They love to have a starting point.

And that’s what these ideal lengths represent: starting points. We wrote a bit on the topic of how to implement data into your social media strategy. Do you take best practices like these ideal lengths as gospel truth? Not quite.

Take these as best practices, as jumping off points, as ideas to iterate on.

Put them to the test, and see what is right for you.

The optimal length of a tweet — 71 to 100 characters

Not only does this length give you enough room to share your message, it also provides room for someone who retweets you to add a message of their own.

retweet example

If you’d like to get ultra-specific with exactly the optimal length of a tweet for your specific Twitter account, you can find this by running the numbers on your Twitter analytics. We wrote up instructions on how to find your ideal tweet length by graphing it vs. engagement.

For the Buffer account, our sweet spot is between 80 and 120 characters.

Until you test and discover the right length for you, stick to the 71-to-100 character guideline.

What makes this length optimal? Tweets at this length get more retweets. They also have higher reply rate, retweet rate, and combined reply/retweet rate (these latter of which shows engagement per followers).

Where’d this data come from? A pair of studies have found the 100-character mark to be the sweet spot for tweet length. Track Social studied 100 major brands (Oreo, Zappos, ESPN, etc.) for a 30-day period in the fall of 2012. Buddy Media studied 320 Twitter handles from major brands for two-and-a-half months at the beginning of 2012.

The optimal length of a Facebook post – 40 characters

Shorter seems to be better on Facebook.

Maximum engagement happens at 40 characters (so, too, does minimum quantity, meaning that a vast minority of Facebook posts hit this 40-character mark). And engagement slowly wanes the longer you go.

An 80-character post is better than 100-character post.

A 40-character post is better than 80.

The upside to such a small window is that sharing a Facebook links lets you fudge a little on the amount of text in your update. Links show the title and description of a post, along with the update you type.

And how much can you fit in a 40-character window?

Here’s a post that landed under 40 characters (26 to be exact).

moz facebook screenshot

What makes this length optimal? Posts at this length tend to receive higher like rate, comment rate, and combined like/comment rate (stats that include a comparison of total engagement to number of Facebook fans.)

Where’d this data come from? A pair of studies have each found that shorter is better on Facebook. A Buddy Media study of the top 100 retailers Facebook pages during a six-month period in 2011 is one of the most-cited sources. Also in 2011, BlitzLocal studied 11,000 Facebook pages over a seven-month period.

The optimal length of a Google+ headline – 60 characters maximum

Google+ updates often take on the appearance of blogposts with bold headings up top and a body of text below. These top headings are the ones you’re best off optimizing. And 60 characters is as long as you should go.

google plus example

What makes this length optimal? It’s the maximum length for a Google+ headline to span one row before breaking to a second line.

Where’d this data come from? Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger tested out the length with posts on the Copyblogger page. He found that bold headlines could reach 60 characters before additional words would be bumped to the second line.

The optimal width of a paragraph – 40 to 55 characters

Before researching this one, I seldom thought about the width of my paragraphs. Readers might not think much of it either, but usability studies and psychology suggest that they notice it nevertheless.

What makes this width optimal? At this width, the content appears simple to understand, and readers feel they can comprehend the subject matter.

Where’d this data come from? Derek Halpern of Social Triggers synthesized a pair of research studies to arrive at the 40-to-55 character recommendation. The studies he cited include a 2004 meta-analysis by Mary C. Dyson of the University of Reading and a 1992 study from a team of Netherlands researchers.

The optimal length of a domain name – 8 characters

What characteristics do some of the best domain names have in common?

  1. is short
  2. is easy to remember
  3. is easy to spell
  4. is descriptive or brandable
  5. does not contain hyphens and numbers
  6. has a .com extension

Length, in particular, can be a tough one to nail down as dot-coms get snatched up so quickly. If you can’t secure the dot-com of your dreams, there are more and more websites going the route of .co and .io.

What makes this length optimal? This is the most common domain name length for the Internet’s most popular websites.

Where’d this data come from? In 2009, Daily Blog Tips conducted an analysisof the top 250 websites in Alexa site rankings, counting words and characters that appeared in each domain name.

The optimal length of a hashtag – 6 characters

What makes this length optimal? The 6-character hashtag recommendation comes from a handful of Twitter experts and is cited by Hashtags.org, one of the leading sites on the data and usage of hashtags.

The optimal length of an email subject line – 28 to 39 characters

How does an optimal subject line look in the inbox? Here’s a sample from my Gmail.

inbox

Clearly, there are a ton of different ways to approach writing a subject line, and length is equally as important to test as the rest of the elements. If you’re looking for a place to start your tests, the optimal length of 28 to 39 characters is a good bet.

What makes this length optimal? You may see a slight uptick in open rate and click rate at this length.

Where’d this data come from? A 2012 study by Mailer Mailer looked at 1.2 billion email messages to identify subject line trends.

The optimal length of an SEO title tag – 55 characters

SEO titles are the titles of your webpages and blogposts that show up in search results.

If you want this …

seo 1

… instead of this …

seo 2

… stick with the optimal SEO title length.

What makes this length optimal? Google search results tend to truncate titles with an ellipsis (…) if they go beyond the 55-character mark.

Where’d this data come from? In March 2014, Moz analyzed 89,787 titles in search results pages.

The optimal length of a blog headline – 6 words

I absolutely love good headline advice, which is why this bit is such a fascinating learning. On the Buffer blog, we tend toward the biggest, boldest headlines we can come up with. Could it be that the smaller, six-word headlines do best?

headline 1

vs.

headline 2

What makes this length optimal? Our eyes tend to pick up on the first three words of a headline and the last three words.

Where’d this data come from? KISSmetrics author Bnonn cites usability research that confirms scanning of headlines. Also, Jakob Nielsen ran usability testing in 2009 based on the idea that readers typically consume only the first 11 characters of a headline.

The optimal length of a LinkedIn post – 25 words

The results on optimal LinkedIn length depend on whom you’re targeting. Are you trying to reach out to businesses or consumers?

One of the few studies on LinkedIn length—a 2012 report from Compendium—pulled statistics for each type of business: B2B and B2C. Here’s what they found.

linkedin-optimal-length

What makes this length optimal? The results in the Compendium study tend to focus on clickthroughs as the basis for recommending best practices. It’s safe to assume an ideal length of a LinkedIn post would be based on clicks, too.

Where’d this data come from? In 2012, Compendium released its findings on a study of 200 companies on social media, looking at business-to-business and business-to-consumer best practices.

The optimal length of a blogpost – 1,600 words

We recently ran a blog content audit, and one of the results of the audit was some insight into the ideal length of Buffer blog posts.

1,600 words makes for a good guideline to get started.

We’ve found that 2,500-word posts tend to do best for us.

word-count-social-shares-1024x668

This reinforces the need to check these lengths against your own data. And if you’re just starting out, it might be smart to start off with 1,600 words per post and adjust from there.

What makes this length optimal? At this length, you can expect readers to spend the maximum amount of time reading your content. Total time on page is highest at the 1,600-word length than any other length.

From the Medium study:

7-minute posts capture the most total reading time on average.

Where’d this data come from? In December 2013, Medium published the results of its time on page analysis for blogposts on its network.

The optimal length of a YouTube video – 3 minutes

How much time do you get to tell your story in a video? How long until someone loses interest and clicks over to the next link? These are big questions for video marketers who compile their content with timestamps in mind the same way bloggers compose with word count.

What makes this length optimal? This is the average video length of the top videos on YouTube.

Where’d this data come from? In 2012, ReelSEO counted the length of the top 50 YouTube videos and found the average duration to be 2 minutes, 54 seconds. Google researchers from the YouTube team confirmed the ideal length to be three minutes as well, according to an interview with Clinton Stark.

The optimal length of a podcast – 22 minutes

Podcasting has become more and more a part of content marketing strategies for brands big and small. There are sure to be additional studies that come out on best practices for publication and promotion. In the meantime, optimal length is a good place to start. Keep things 22 minutes or shorter.

What makes this length optimal? The 22-minute mark is when an average user disconnects from a podcast.

Where’d this data come from? The data is reported from Stitcher, an online podcast streaming service.

The optimal length of a presentation – 18 minutes

Famously, the 18-minute mark is where TED Talks max out their presenters. Anyone who shares must stay under 18 minutes. Here’s why.

What makes this length optimal? This seems to be the upper limit for how long a person can pay attention before losing focus.

Where’d this data come from? Author Carmine Gallo, who has written on the history of TED Talks, cites scientific research from Dr. Paul King of Texas Christian University as well as insight into how the brain processes new information (and expends energy while doing so).

The optimal length of a SlideShare – 61 slides

You’d think that SlideShare best practices would be cut-and-dry. My research wasn’t quite so clear.

The 61-slide recommendation comes from HubSpot’s Dan Zarella who is well-known for his in-depth and accurate research on social media. From a data-backed perspective, 61 slides seems like a safe way to go.

Per HubSpot:

We can only speculate about why this is true, but it may be owed to the fact that SlideShare is a site mostly used by professionals who are likely seeking data-focused, meaty presentations with a lot of depth. Don’t be afraid to get detailed in your SlideShare content, and load your presentations with lots of data. Unlike YouTube, where shorter content tends to be more successful, SlideShare users welcome comprehensive content.

Here’s the breakdown of number of slides per presentation and SlideShare views, courtesy of Dan.

slide_share_views

Beyond the data, there is a bit of opposite advice that many hold as a best practice: Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule.

  • 10 Slides
  • 20 Minutes
  • 30 Point Font

It’s a system that a lot of people swear by. Is it right for you? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by testing.

What makes this length optimal? Slide decks of this length get more views on average.

Where’d this data come from? In 2010, HubSpot’s Dan Zarella shared results from his social media research, pointing to this optimal length.

The optimal size of a Pinterest image – 735px by 1102px

pinterest_height

Curalate found that vertical images, featuring an aspect ratio between 2:3 and 4:5, receive 60 percent more repins than images with a more vertically-skewed aspect ratio.

Combine this with the best practices from the folks at Canva who recommend a starting point for Pinterest image templates at 735 pixels wide by 1102 pixels tall and—bang!—you’ve got your ideal size, backed by data.

What makes this size optimal? At this size, you can expect more likes, repins, and comments.

Where’d this data come from? In June, Curalate analyzed over 500,000 Pinterest images posted by brands. Their findings also included recommendations for faces, hue, texture, brightness, color, and more.

Bonus Pinterest tips:

As for the optimal length of a Pinterest description (maximum is 500 characters), Dan Zarrella found that 200-character descriptions are the most repinnable.

A great use for the description is a call-to-action. Brandon Gaille found that pins with CTAs receive an 80 percent increase in engagement over those without.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve found some good  insights from this experiment. Definitely use data like this as a starting point for your own testing and iterating. What’s right for many others in terms of best practices might not be exactly what your specific audience needs.

It sure is nice to know where to start, though.

How do these optimal lengths feel to you? How long are the social media updates that you send?

Shared via By Kevan Lee @Buffer Social

Image sources: Track Social, Compendium, PlaceIt, Hubspot, Dan Zarrella

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BREAKING: Changes Coming to Facebook Pages’ News Feeds

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Best Practices, Engagement, Facebook, facebook page insights bug, Metrics

Posted by Sara on 19 Nov 2014 /



In case you missed it, Facebook announced another change to the News Feed, but this time it’s Pages that will be affected.

According to a statement posted in Facebook’s newsroom, “A lot of the content people see as too promotional is posts from Pages they like, rather than ads.”

The post went on to state that, “News Feed has controls for the number of ads a person sees and for the quality of those ads (based on engagement, hiding ads, etc.), but those same controls haven’t been as closely monitored for promotional Page posts. Now we’re bringing new volume and content controls for promotional posts, so people see more of what they want from Pages.”

So what qualifies as a post that is “too promotional?”

According to Facebook, it’s one of the following three things:

  1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
  2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
  3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Businesses can expect these changes to go into effect starting January 2015.

One way Facebook’s change could affect marketers is they will have limited ability to promote their marketing campaigns. In the past, Facebook was not only a great place to host a campaign but also a great place to promote a campaign.

In January, Pages will need to rethink how they host and promote campaigns.  You’ve probably heard us talk about the benefits of hosting your campaign on your website or on a landing page. 

Since Facebook has also removed the ability to like-gate and made enoughalgorithm changes that it can no longer be relied on for driving traffic to campaigns, it’s time to come up with new tactics.

If Facebook’s latest changes have you feeling down, don’t worry! We’re here to share five ways you can still see success and interaction from your online audience, without Facebook.

Ready? Here goes!

#1. Use email marketing instead of Facebook to promote your latest products and milestones. 

Email marketing remains the most successful form of organic marketing for businesses. According to SalesForce, 70 percent of people say they always open emails from their favorite companies! 

When we first heard about the like-gate ban we knew it was an important topic of conversation for our audience. Below is an example of the email we sent out about the changes.


Facebook Like-Gate Ban

#2. Host promotions, sweepstakes and other campaigns on your website instead of on Facebook. 

Your website is the one thing that no one can take away from you! It’s hosted by you, run by you, updated by you and its content is all determined by you. You can’t say that about any social networks, especially not Facebook. It makes sense that businesses would use their website as a “hub” for all of their online marketing.

You can do this using a simple embed feature.

ZipCar UK, a car rental service, recently pulled all of their campaigns off of Facebook and began embedding them into their website. After doing a direct comparison of the same campaign on Facebook versus their website, they saw a 717 percent increase in entries into their web-based competition and a 204 percent increase in page visits to their promotion. Those are extraordinary numbers! Did we mention that their overall website visits went up as well? If you send everyone to your website, they’re more likely to click around to other parts of your site once they’ve entered your promotion. If you’re hosting a promotion on Facebook once someone’s entered they’re most likely abandoning your page.


ZipCar UK


#3. Place ads on your website and blog — for free! — instead of relying on Facebook ads.

We’re not going to lie, we are fans of Facebook ads. They work for us, and we believe that if you test them out you’ll discover that they probably work for you too. However, you shouldn’t stop there!

You can run all sorts of free ads on your website and blog, including hello bars, display ads, pop-up notifications, calls-to-action in the footers of blog posts, or graphic announcements on your website.

None of these options cost any advertising dollars to run. You just need your designer to make some ads and your web team to upload them to your website. If you don’t have a designer, there are plenty of tools you can use to create your own graphics;  Canva is one of our favorites but there are many other options.

We’re currently in the process of promoting our 2014 Holiday eBook and here’s a look at a few ways we’ve used our website and blog to do so.

Hello Bars


ShortStack Hello Bar


Socially Stacked HelloBar

Sidebar ads on our blog


Side Bar Ads

Call-to-Action ads at the end of blog posts


more-leads

 

#4. If you’ve been asking your Facebook fans to share your content, marketing campaigns, promotions or other materials, try using share features instead.

Share features give visitors to your marketing campaigns up to six different ways they can share a campaign: via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ LinkedIn or manually.

Did you know that 43 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when they learn about it from their friends or family?

This makes sense. In today’s world, if we need to find a practitioner or buy something we usually ask for our friends’ opinions or read through review sites like Yelp.

Share features are easy to add to any campaign and encourage your entrants and campaign visitors to tell their friends about the cool things you have going on.

Here’s an example from Cambria Inns, a hotel in California. At the bottom of each of their promotions they include links to their other profiles and encourage their audience to “join us.”


Share Widgets

#5. Explore other social networks instead of relying too much on your Facebook Page. 

There’s a great big social world out there and many businesses have pigeonholed themselves in Facebook.

Even if they have a presence other places, all of their efforts may be focused on that one place.

The easiest way to expand your social network horizons is to start where your fans already are.

There’s a good chance your audience is talking about you somewhere besides Facebook. Do a #hashtag search or simple name search on some of the other networks and join the conversation.

A good thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to blanket post across all of your networks. Pick a strategy for each network, and provide a different value for each network. Your audience will be more likely to follow you in different places if your strategy changes!

#6. If you’re using Facebook to make promotional announcements, use traditional media sources as well.

The press release is dead?! We think not!

Each time we have a new feature or resource release we of course let our Facebook fans know about it but we also put out a press release and personally reach out to bloggers and media contacts we’ve built relationships with.

Back in the day we could rely on Facebook to reach enough people to bring enough attention to these sort of announcements, but that’s not the case anymore. Plus, with the latest algorithm changes I would assume that an organic post that says “Try our latest feature!” isn’t going to be liked by Facebook.

When we announced the launch of our Campaign Builder we combined both traditional and non-traditional approaches and it worked perfectly. We were able to attract new people and alert existing users of the exciting news using a variety of platforms including social networks, PR Web, social blogs and our website! Here’s a look at some of our efforts.

Blog Post


Campaign Builder Blog Post

Email 


Campaign Manager Email

Social Posts


Campaign Builder Post


Pinterest Campaign Builder

Landing Page


Campaign Builder Landing Page

Press Release


Campaign Builder Press Release

Media Coverage


Screen Shot 2014-11-17 at 3.30.07 PM

 

As you’ve probably put together, the more places in the online universe you talk about what’s happening in your business the more people you’ll reach!

While Facebook remains a valuable communication channel for businesses, this latest announcement further supports the idea that it should not be used as a sales platform, unless you’re willing to pay.

To learn more about Facebook’s latest announcement, read about it on theFacebook Newsroom Blog.

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What is Action-Gating? And How Can I Use it to Drive Results on Facebook?

04 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

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Best Practices, Engagement, facebook page insights bug, Social Media, social media tools

Did you hear, Facebook is dropping like-gating, or more to the point they will no longer allow companies to practice like-gating. If you have not heard, about Facebook’s decision to prohibit the practice of like-gating on its site, read on.

like gatewhat you need to know:

On August 7, Facebook announced an update to its Platform Policy to prohibit the practice of like-gating — or requiring someone to like your Facebook Page in order to receive an incentive.

Facebook’s decision to ban like-gating is based on a simple but an important idea — “to ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them.”

Facebook has given businesses 90 days (until November 5, 2014) to comply with this policy change.

Why is this important?

If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you won’t be surprised to hear that Facebook has undergone a lot of changes in recent years.

As Facebook grows, the social media company has come to understand how important ensuring quality connections between users — and the businesses and organizations they follow — is to their own long-term success.

One of the ways that they have done that is with the News Feed algorithm, which controls the content users see in their feed. Facebook uses a series of factors to determine which content users will find interesting, and as a result, only show your content to a portion of your Facebook audience.

The removal of like-gating takes that a step further.

Facebook believes that if people like your page only to receive an incentive, then they may not be engaged or interested in what you’re sharing after the promotion is over. Instead, Facebook wants businesses to encourage customers and potential customers to like their page without requiring them to do so.

They believe that this will allow you to build a fan base that is more engaged, and as a result, more likely to interact with your business and act on the content you share on Facebook.

How does the change impact  your business on Facebook?

Well you will want to take steps to update both your Social Campaigns product and your Facebook Fan Promotion campaigns prepare for the November 5 deadline.

This change in particular will affect those people who like me use Constant Contact to collect an email address from new fans after liking my Page. The belief being that the best way to build a meaningful relationship with fans on Facebook is to move them beyond liking your page and onto your email list.

This allows you to take ownership of your contacts. It also keeps you from having to worry about further Facebook changes that make it difficult to reach your audience.

So while we they will be removing the ability to like gate a piece of content, coupon, or sweepstakes; You can still continue to make it easy to grow your email list on Facebook with our email action gate.

What is an action gate?

With an action gate, you can still require users take some specific action before redeeming a coupon or entering a Facebook contest, without forcing them to like your Page.

There are a number of benefits of using an action gate on Facebook.

One of the biggest benefits is that you’re able to engage your current fans beyond the traditional like, comment, or share. This means that you’ll not only have the opportunity to grow your email list, but you’ll also be able to strengthen relationships with the people who like your page and even turn them into new or repeat customers with an exclusive offer.

In addition, action gates allow you to think differently about the campaigns you decide to run. While like-gated offers limit your ability to extend your reach beyond Facebook, action gates allow you to easily promote your offer across different channels and drive people to an offer, hosted on your Facebook Page.

This is a great opportunity to encourage your connections on different social channels to like your Page, without requiring them to do so. Even if they don’t choose to like your Page at first, you can still use email to continue the conversation and potentially include links back to your page in future messages.

Here are a few examples of action-gated campaigns you can run:

  • Capture leads on Facebook with an exclusive download: While a like gate only allowed you to add new fans, an action gate allows you to capture new leads on Facebook and nurture them with email. One of the best ways to capture a new lead on Facebook is to offer an exclusive download with helpful information. After adding a new contact to your email list, you can easily send a follow up email with more information, or even create an autoresponder email series to help introduce them to your business.
  • Turn current fans into paying customers with a special offer: Because you’re not just focused on adding new fans, an action gate is a perfect way to reward current fans with an exclusive offer. We all know how difficult it can be to turn all those likes, comments, and shares into actual business results. Think of a special discount your fans would love and promote it to your fan base. After providing their email address, they will receive a coupon in their inbox.
  • Run a sweepstakes and keep the conversation going: With an action gate, you can run a sweepstakes on your Facebook Page that people can enter by providing their email address. When the winner is chosen, you can contact them via email and even reach out to non-winners after the contest is over. You can create a separate list within Constant Contact, and send targeted emails to introduce new subscribers to your business. You can also reward non-winners with a separate offer, and encourage them to visit your store, restaurant, or office.

Ready to get started?

There are a number of ways you can use action-gating to drive real results on your Facebook Page.

The use of like-gating will end on November 5, but you can start planning your action-gated campaign today.

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Three Social Media Rules Your Business Needs to Break

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, community manager, Facebook, LInkedIn, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Yelp, YouTube

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Best Practices, Community Management, Facebook, Google Analytics, LINKEDIN FOR BUSINESS, Pinterest, SEM, Social Media, social media tools, Strategy


social media rules to break

If you stay up to date on social media trends and advice, you have likely heard that you need to post a lot of content, get as many fans/followers as you can, and post when most of your fans are online. Rules are meant to be broken, and I’ll explain why it is necessary to break each of these rules. 


1. Post a lot of content

Yes, you need to post content. A lot of it. But this stress on always posting can result in substandard content. On Facebook, you should never post more than twice a day, and even twice a day can be too much. Instead, aim for 5-7 times a week. When you post too much content, you increase your chance that you are just adding to the social media “noise”. Instead focus your effort on creating smaller amounts of high quality content. Quality over quantity.

Why to break this rule
The Facebook algorithm works in a way that it tries to guess what you want to see. One way this is accomplished is that if you normally click on a business’ Facebook page, it is more likely to show you their content. If your business is posting too much low quality content, people will stop clicking. And when you actually do post good content, less fans will see it.

Real world example
There is a restaurant I frequent that I “like” on Facebook. They post any and everything on their Facebook page (they post about 5-10 times a day), whether it is related to the restaurant or not. The result is that I NEVER see their content in my news feed because I first ignored their nonsense posts. What good is my like if they never get their message to me?

2. Get as many fans as you can

We all want more fans. But if these fans are never going to purchase your product or service, what good are they? Social media can easily become a popularity contest: “we have more fans than you.” But worthless fans are, well, worthless. Actually, they can be much worse than worthless….

Why to break this rule
Remember that Facebook algorithm? Another way it works is that when you post content, it shows it to a handful of your fans. If these fans interact with your content, Facebook then shows it to more of your fans. If you have fans that don’t actually like your product/service, they won’t interact with your posts. This means that it will be more difficult to reach your fans who actually are actually interested in your business.

Real world example
While doing consulting work with an Italian restaurant, we quickly learned that if we focused our Facebook advertising to the local area, we received two-three “likes” for every dollar we spent. When we just aimed for total likes, we doubled that number. We could have spent a relatively small amount of money and gotten hundreds of likes. The problem was that the likes all came from Italy, a demographic that was unlikely to ever visit the restaurant or interact with the content. Aim for quality fans over a large quantity of fans.

3. Always post when the most fans are online

You want to get your message out to fans, and you want that message to reach the most screens as possible. Knowing when your fans are online is essential. The Facebook newsfeed works in a way that rewards current content, and makes older content unlikely to show in a person’s newsfeed.

Why to break this commandment
You certainly need to post when most of your fans are online, but you do not need to do it religiously. Focus most of your posting at peak hours, but switch up your timing once or twice a week. This is important because certain fans have different Facebook use habits. This means that if you always post at the same time, you are likely missing fans that have different schedules.

Real world example
We found that a sports rehabilitation physician had more success with his posts after he varied up his posting schedule. He often included exercise tips, and saw his engagement increase after he started posting later in the day. By posting later in the day, he was able to reach fans that otherwise had been missing his posts. Now, these fans are more likely to see all of his posts, no matter the time of day he posts.

 

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Audience Insights: Facebook’s New Feature

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

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Tags

Best Practices, Facebook, facebook page insights bug, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, social media tools

Audience Insights - Facebook

Marketing is all about delivering the right messages to the right audience at the right time.  Facebook For Business has just announced yet another enhancement to their platform that will deliver even more granular customer information to anyone advertising on this platform.

Audience Insights makes it possible to view an audience by age, gender, lifestyle, education, relationship status, job role and household size, and also by where they live and what language they speak.  Audience Insights will also track Facebook usage – how often people log into Facebook and what devices they use to do it, along with which categories of Pages they like (restaurants, sports, etc.)  Even more impressive is the feature that allows marketers to track purchase behavior, what and how they buy (For Example: online or in-store).

Facebook addresses privacy issues by offering only aggregated information that people are already sharing on Facebook, along with data from “trusted third-party partners.” They do not share information on specific individuals.  This aggregate anonymous information can be accessed three different ways:  People on Facebook; people connected to certain Pages or events; and custom audience of brands (current customers).

This new targeting strategy differs from the present Page Insights in that Page Insights gave only information about interactions with a Business Page.  Audience Insights looks at people across Facebook.

Facebook believes that these targeting enhancements will not only help marketers speak to the people they want to reach, but will also help consumers by displaying ads that will be of interest them.

For example, retailers can now find out not only how many people live near their store, but also information about what types of products they tend to buy (high end vs. economy) and whether they prefer to buy in the store or online.  This will give business owners a window into their potential customers that they have never had before.

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