My 2017 Digital Marketing Predictions

Everyone’s doing a 2017 Digital Marketing Prediction post!

Which is fine because none of us can see into the future, we can only make guesses as to where Digital Marketing will grow (and where it won’t) so we can try to focus our attention in the right places to maximise returns.

Here’s my big three Digital Marketing predictions:

BOTS

Bots are only going to get bigger. More and more businesses will engage bots to take some of the heavy lifting from their digital customer service. If you’re not sure what a bot is you can check out this article from CNET. Chances are you’ve spoken to a bot before, you might have known it wasn’t a human, or you may not have. Bots will continue to improve and will be used by more companies world-wide.

LIVE

People love live. I think partly because we’re so sick of the falseness of Social Media, lies of politicians, and stagedness of infomercials – and partly our FOMO and our desire to be the first to know. We want to see something NOW and we want to see it how it REALLY IS. Live video gives us both of these. The way people used to flock to their Twitter feed when a news story broke, will now be the way people rush to find someone live on Facebook or Instagram (or perhaps Twitter – who knows, they did announce a new live feature)

VIDEO

Video and live go together, but there’s also another aspect I wanted to touch on. Explainer video is going to get bigger. Businesses that couldn’t afford video production will bite the bullet and get animated or stop motion videos on their websites and social channels. I must say I’m not the hugest fan of my Facebook newsfeed being full of video. But I have a weakness for those stop motion recipe videos. You know the ones…you see them on pages like Thrillist, Tasty etc. like this handy cocktail recipe below.

You can see by the views I’m not the only one who loves these. As well as my top three Digital Marketing Predictions, here’s some other aspects of Digital Marketing that will stand the test of time:

Customer Journey Mapping

Basically this just means tracking your customers through their buying journey with you. Which pages of your website did they land on first? Next? How many visits before a purchase? What prompted them to buy that final time? The more of this type of data you have the more streamlined you can make this buyer journey, essentially increasing your conversions.

Email Marketing

I sometimes cop shit about my views on Email Marketing – but it works and I stand by that. There’s a reason it’s the only service I offer outside Social, and not only is it effective, but it’s Social’s best friend. Businesses would be smart to continue to capture emails, and to improve their automation and segmentation to make sure the right people are seeing the right messages at the right times.

Authenticity

As mentioned above, people are a bit sick of “fakeness” and want to see the ‘real you’ of your business. You’ll stand out of you embrace what makes you different, rather than try to be like the others. Go live, post behind the scenes, people will appreciate the glimpse into your real world.[/fusion_text][fusion_text]

Platforms I think worth the investment in 2017:

I think LinkedIn is getting better. The app works better, and although there’s some glaringly obvious problems with LinkedIn I do think it’s a worthwhile use of your Social Media time allowance.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram will go from strength to strength, regardless of what people think about its copycatting of Snap. It’s easy to use, it’s growing it’s user base rapidly and for the most part it’s a very positive platform in terms of overall sentiment. In short people just enjoy being on Instagram, so it will develop in 2017, and it completely worth your time invested.

FACEBOOK

Facebook cops a lot of flack, but when you think about where it came from, and how it found an untapped need and embedded itself into our lives it’s actually quite remarkable. Facebook is not going anywhere in 2017. Sure, it’ll make some moves to clean up the “fake news” stories (or at least appear to) and hopefully there won’t be anymore ‘metrics fails’ we have to endure, but in general we’ll get more and more features trying to keep us happily spending time on the platform so they can sell more ads. And the ads will get better too.

Instagram and Facebook appear to be moving together – great news for marketers, and I think this will continue. With the combined inbox feature now rolling out, the upkeep on two platforms gets easier removing the need for people to choose between them.

SNAP (But only if your target market are under 30)

Snap (formerly Snapchat) is already a HUGE platform and I think it’s a great place to showcase your products on the following 2 conditions.

1 – You GET it:

Don’t think that any normal ads you’ve done anywhere else are going to work here. They wont. Understand the platform and how it’s used. Make something that suits it, that speaks the language and it could be a great success.

2 – Your target demo are young people:

Don’t get me wrong, I know people who are older than the main Snap demo who use and love it, but they are an exception. If your brand is not appealing to young users don’t even bother.

Things I think (hope) will decrease in popularity:

Vanity Metrics

Seriously, stop it. Your likes don’t mean anything (past a certain couple of set-up stages) A post that gets a lot of comments but contradicts what your brand is about is still a shitpost. So stop shitposting!

Marketing like it’s 2012

See above and add in all the tricks used to make people interact with content. They don’t work anymore. The only thing that works is knowing your market, having a strategy, and working on it consistently.

Booma-bounce

I don’t know what you call these so I gave them a name that’s as stupid as they are. Please stop doing a bounce on Boomerang! Fine if it’s your personal account (not really – but you do you) but I personally can’t stand them. Boomerang is awesome for certain things, jumping into a pool for example, anything that flows one way can look cool in reverse, but your cutesy bounce does not look cool. Sorry – it just doesn’t, and I like to think I’m that type of friend who tells you if there’s something in your teeth.

What will improve:

Customer Service

Customer service on Social is going to get better. Small businesses are doing a great job these days at getting back to you with helpful information about their products and services. The big end of town also does ok, since they can afford a team to handle the bulk. But there’s a big middle here. Improved technology like bots will definitely help the customer service aspect of Digital Marketing.

Not only that, but user journeys should improve too, becoming more personalised (again due to improved technology) and therefore reduce the need for people to reach out via Social channels.

Corporates “getting it”

There’s a growing number of businesses that are getting it. They know their Digital Marketing needs a strategy, metrics, time, effort and money to achieve their business goals. The more this is understood the better the marketers servicing these needs can be at their job, as they get back to the business of doing, rather than arguing about how to make your post “go viral” or some other cool thing my cousin’s friends’ sister did that made her totally Insta-famous.

Overall?

The early adopters are going great. They may need a refresher on their strategy – but these guys knew digital was here to stay and they got to build audiences back when it was easier (and free) Businesses like this will continue to go from strength to strength whether they outsource or have in-house digital teams.

The middle gets bigger. Just like all of us, the middle is expanding! Some of the previously mentioned early adopters may have dropped behind, being hoodwinked by a smooth-talking salesman, or simply not found reward for their efforts. Similarly there’s small businesses working really hard on their digital marketing and not yet reaping the rewards. This middle level of digital success is where most businesses will find themselves.

The newbies are either new businesses competing for a share of the spoils; or businesses that thought investing in digital marketing was a fad, a waste of money, not ‘right’ for their business, or were just too risk averse to put themselves out there. I think the second group are the ones to watch. The reluctant. The begrudging. The haters of change…I think we might be in for some surprises from some of these tortoises. He did beat the hare after all!

So? What did you think of my 2017 Digital Marketing Predictions?

Do you agree? Disagree? Have your own Digital Marketing predictions I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a comment 🙂

November 15, 2016October 31, 2018

Engage Bali by Socialbakers: Part Two – The Main Event

Engage Bali Day Two

If you just want a “feel” for what Engage Bali was like I recommend you watch the video above.

In the below sections I’m summarising what I thought the main points of each speaker was, and it’s quite long, since there were so many. I have included as many links to videos and slideshows if you want to drill down into any of the speakers content. And I’ll update as more becomes available.

Strap yourself in – we’re going to Bali![/fusion_text][fusion_text]Day Two of Engage Bali started pretty much the same as the previous day, waking up in paradise and having a quick breakfast. I wish now I had’ve taken photos of the breakfast options! I’ve been to a lot of different countries around the world but never before seen a breakfast spread like this one. I was missing normal coffee though…

Day Two of Engage Bali was to be made up of 17 speakers and 4 panel discussions, followed by networking and dinner. On a humid Saturday, when your body clock is telling you you can take it easy (not saying I don’t work Saturdays – I freelance after all, which includes regular weekend work) this was going to be a long day!

I chose a seat in the second row and got prepared to get down to business! First up was Jan Rezab, founder of Socialbakers. The crowd loved him – and so did I![/fusion_text][fusion_text]

Jan Rezab – Founder, Socialbakers

Jan had a treasure trove of stats, tips and tricks for a Social Media nerd like me! Here’s my key takeaways from Jan’s wonderful presentation:

The state of Social:

Brands are growing on Social Media – but Media companies are killing it!

Media companies know how to create great content, but you also need to be an ad specialist to get your content seen.
Monitor the top 5 Media companies in your market for content trends.

Photos are still the dominant content type.

Even with the rise of video, it hasn’t taken over – yet.

Frequency is important:

Impressions – Reach = Frequency.

Make sure you stay informed about changes to the Facebook algorithm

Tips, Tricks and Facts:

Make beautiful content

Instagram has regional scale and can kill Snapchat

Video,Video, Video – but don’t measure it but the views!

A view is not a good metric. Measure Viewthrough rate (VTR). Organic Vs Paid video have around the same viewthrough rate.
Average Snap 1-2 secs. Average FB Video 3-5 secs. Unlink YouTube video no waiting for the ad to finish.
85% of video is played without sound and 95% are autoplays. Not putting captions on your video is a missed opportunity.
Brands are beating Media at video VTR

There’s no such thing as a yearly marketing plan anymore.

Accept changes/new features and adjust as you go.
You can’t fail if you are looking after Customer Care and Engagement. People want help with their issues and problems, they want information.

Jan sees an opportunity for Twitter to become THE customer service channel.

Only 16% of questions asked by consumers on Facebook pages are public!

2016 is the year of Bots!

No-one wants new apps!

65% of people did not open the app store/Google Play store in 2015. That means NO NEW APPS were downloaded.

Can we please stop using fan counts as a metric! It’s 2016 FFS!

Define your goals

Look for the big moments in your Social journey and analyse why they worked.

Watch the video of Jan’s keynote below, or you can also see the slideshare HERE.

Robert Lang – SEO, Socialbakers

Next was Robert Lang, CEO of Socialbakers. Here are my takeaways from Robert’s presentation:

Is the term “Social Media” outdated?

I think so, although I’ve been thinking about it for ages and I haven’t come up with an alternative I think covers the whole scope of what Social Media means to us.

Did you know Facebook’s 2015 revenue was $80 BILLION?

Whoa.

AND they have 60% of the market share! Measuring “time in platform” Facebook is leading the game.

Is Tinder a Social Media platform?

I don’t consider it one – but I haven’t used it so I’m open to feedback from others.

Will 2016 see the end of free Social Media?

I mean, it’s already happening…but I think we’ve got a little bit longer to go on some platforms.

Facebook judges the quality of your content every time you post or advertise.

How RELEVANT is your content to the target market? We know ds have relevancy scores, but we can assume ALL content have this same hierachy to reach the newsfeed. Content is rated by Facebook (and perhaps also Instagram) uy the first 100 impressions. Has anyone interacted with it? Clicked, reacted, commented, shared…? If not it’s not likely to be shown to any more people as your content is deemed to be of low quality.

Don’t boost bad content! EVER.

If you think you’ll get more engagement by boosting awful posts or making terrible ads – you’re incorrect. You will actually damage your pages overall relevancy score. Maybe it’s time to spring clean your history?

Connect Social Media to your business objectives

Period. Otherwise what is the point?

Focus on producing quality content and posting it at the correct times (Socialbakers can help you with that)

Be Bold and invest in things that work with your audience.

You can see the slideshare of Roberts presentation HERE

Sabeen Ahmad, Director of Digital Strategy – Publicis

Sabeen Ahmad was next. Sabeen is the Director of Digital Strategy at Publicis, and she had a lot to share. This is probably why she had to talk so fast to fit it all in!

I really enjoyed Sabeen’s presentation and meeting her afterwards! She was one of the wonderful examples of women smashing it in the digital marketing field, which is an inspiration to me personally.

Think Social, Act Global.

Sabeen took as through the AT&T campaign #catchjeremy as an example of how you can stage a stunt, with Social Media as the hub, and use it as advertising that’s global, relatable and effective.

Here are my main takeaways, but as I said there was a LOT of content covered – so please check out the slideshare which I’ll link to at the bottom of this section.

Everything is a business problem.

What is my brand trying to achieve?

The 5 Questions make an appearance again:

Why are you doing this?
Who is your audience?
Where are they?
What do they like?
How do you reach them?

Make a plan – use all the tools at your disposal.

Step into your customers life. The more you understand the better you can market.
Track the customer journey
Use influencers
Decide on the metrics you’ll measure
Create content that achieves your goals

Keep your efforts Efficient and effective.

Check out the slideshare HERE.

Daniel Morel, Chairman & Global CEO – Wunderman (retired)

Daniel Morel, retired Chairman & Global CEO of Wunderman was next up – and although his presentation wasn’t strictly about Social Media it was definitely one of my favourites! He’s a veteran of business strategy, and had some awesome insights!

Daniel’s favourite number is nine and so he made nine points in his speech.

Do you want to be RIGHT or do you want to be ELECTED?

1- Aim low and say yes to everything

2- The formula – don’t make (too many) enemies!

S = 100 – (Nb year x P)

P < 1%

S > 80%

For those of us not mathematically inclined – For every year of business you can piss off 1% of your colleagues and still work with 80% of them.

3- If you aren’t the lead dog, the view is always the same (bums of the lead dogs)

4- Out of many – one

E pluribus unum. “we must hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately.” Ben Franklin on signing the declaration of independence. Build consensus, otherwise you can’t win.

5- Don’t be a Lady Mary

This is a Downton Abbey reference that was a bit lost on me, but the meaning is business MUST be predictable.

6- Amateurs discuss strategy. Professionals study logistics.

I love this one! It’s all well and good to have a grand plan – but it has to be able to work.

7- Leadership is not about being liked

Leadership is defined by results, not attributes. People follow results.

8- Leading from the front

Leadership doesn’t kill you. Engage – give your pound of flesh.

9- Data Monster

Be aware of the amount of data, and who’s feeding the data monster.

Lars Silberbauer – Global Director of Social Media & Search, LEGO

Everyone knows of LEGO. We all know the pleasure of creating with it, and the pain of stepping on one. Their Social Media is amazing, and a fantastic case study for marketers who are looking to entertain and delight their audience, and encourage fans to share photos and become brand advocates.

Lars Silberbauer was definitely a big drawcard for me to attend EngageBali. I wanted to know more about LEGO’s Social strategy, and the man who was behind it. You can watch the video below – his slides are really good, and well worth the watch!

LEGO, Lars explained, produce a lot of content, they’d want to- they’re the world’s most watched brand (on YouTube)! The aim of this content is to engage the creativity of people, and prompt them to share it. LEGO are a 24/7 operation who have diversified their team around the globe to make sure they are always available to their fans. Lars also explained that one of the reasons this works so well is that global brand need diversity. We are a mixed bunch, us humans – and you’ve heard the saying “takes one to know one” right? When building teams make sure you have diversity in mind. They also don’t let people loose on their Social channels without them first gaining their Social Media Drivers License.

Lars explained that having a connection to your customers was like a relationship. LEGO wants to hold you! They aren’t here for a fling. They want to be in your life. He has an interesting definition of Social Media: “Social media is nothing…but a set of technologies that enhances our social nature” It’s all about PEOPLE.

When people build with LEGO, they want to share their pride in their creations. Lucky LEGO, having an awesome, long standing brand people just love to love.

But what are their goals? LEGO has a two-pronged approach, Monetisation & Brand Strategy, and Lowering Cost & Minimising Risk.

Lars then took us through his $100 marketing campaign. He decided to spend $100 to prove that even as a market leader you need paid Social as part of your strategy. I won’t go into the strategy of this campaign, you can see the video if you’re interested in finding out what happened to George.

Then he went on the explain the Kronkiwongi. What an excellent example of getting people to change the way they think of and use your product! I loved hearing about this campaign!

Parents were thinking of LEGO as a set you buy, with instructions of how to build the bricks inside the package, into the picture on the outside of the package. Because, as Lars explained, once you’re 3 years old, your creativity levels only decrease. Our imagination gets stale, because we stop using it as much. But kids know better! LEGO asked children to build a Kronkiwongi. And they did. You have to see the video, even if it’s just for this part (it starts at 17.49) LEGO worked closely with Facebook on this campaign, and sent Kronkiwongi kits to influencers in the space. This was a very successful campaign, but at the end of the day, it’s not all about metrics, or money. It’s about PEOPLE.

Lars’ top tips on Social Media:

It’s about creating relationships – no one night stands!
There’s no trick or short cuts
It’s a lot of hard work that needs to be:

Timely

Relevant

Brave

Personal

Don’t just invest your money – invest yourself.

I’d thoroughly recommend following LEGO’s Social accounts, and seeing how they engage their fans. This was truly one of my favourite parts of the day, and indeed of the whole conference!

You can also see him appear on the Panel Discussion too.

Nina Spannari – Head of Digital, Canon (Australia)

Firstly – Nina is just like the rest of us (a LEGO fan) and presented Lars with a Canon camera made from LEGO! Marketing genius.

I really enjoyed Nina’s presentation. Another wonderful woman in the digital field, doing inspiration work for a global brand!

Whether you are aware of Canon Australia’s Social accounts, one look will show you there’s a lot of success there. They have an engaged fan base, who love the product and love to interact with the brand. But its more than that. If you are a bit of a photog, you’ll know camera brands are very important to people. If your Australian think Holden V Ford, people have a favourite and they’ll defend their choice – and I don’t think this has waned much with the rise of smartphone cameras. Nina addressed people’s constant access to photo taking technology (I’m not calling your phone’s camera a camera, it just isn’t) by saying “the best camera is the one that’s on you” Fair enough!

So since mobile technology is stealing our “quiet times” what a great strategy to position your SLR camera as a way of getting them back! Switch off, disconnect, and let your lense follow a rabbit into wonderland. Canon is your companion in this, nurturing the creative process.

They focus (lol!) on the post purchase experience, develop (another lol) love, skills and the relationship you have with your camera – and the brand! The 3 key pillars of Social Media according to Nina are:

Inspire
Enable
Celebrate

She then discussed some of their campaigns. The first was about content Curation.

“No one sees it like you” doubled their Instagram following in 12 months, adding around 8k each month during the campaign, eliciting an average of 9k interactions per day on Instagram alone, and 1k views on YouTube every hour (With Jan’s advice from earlier in the day it would be interesting to see the VTR for this) so I’d say that was pretty effective! If you haven’t seen it you should check out their Instagram, it’s pretty bloody good!

Nina showed us some video I have been unable to locate about Canon’s collaboration with Perth prominent photographer Jarrad Seng, and a beautiful campaign where photographers are briefed to create a scene from either a child’s imagination or a dream (I cant quite remember which)

I also had the pleasure of meeting Nina, who’s a lovely lady that was also missing “proper” coffee 🙂

See the slides here, and if the video goes up I’ll update to include that too!

Veronica McGregor – News and Social Media, NASA

Veronica McGregor is the brains behind the Social of NASA. Let’s just stop and think about what that means. Do you follow NASA on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or elsewhere? If the answer is no then you should definitely open another tab and check them out, right now! Unless amazing photos from the depths of space aren’t your thing.

NASA is obviously in a world of its own as far a content goes. No-one else has images of Jupiter’s moons, and their content is never going to be stale either, it’s always advances in their technology, or their missions so their content team is probably spoilt for choice!

There’s so much great information in this presentation, and I’m sure you’ll want to watch it for yourself, so I’m going to keep my wrap-up brief. I’m just going to tell you the two things that really stood out to me about what Veronica shared with us, and that is:

100% of NASA’s Social is Organic.

One. Hundered. Percent. Now even with what I said earlier about their unique content that’s still pretty amazing. Their Social is ALL in-house and none of it is sponsored. The sheer scale of their accounts are amazing, and to have not ever paid a dollar – well, that’s awesome.

People Power took over during the Government Shutdown

During the Government shutdown NASA was one of the departments that had to stop working. So they were unable to update their Social channels, so what happened? Their fans took over, and posted on their behalf! You know you’ve got an engaged audience when they’re willing to step up and fill the void!

You can find out more about how this happened in the video. It’s pretty amazing.

On a personal note Veronica was a lovely lady, another fantastic example of women in our field being awesome. She stood for selfies, (a LOT of them, including one with me) gave out stickers, (yep! I got one) and made herself available to everyone. I invited her to Perth and have said I’ll drive her to GinGin Observatory, (which she knew of, apparently they had helped out from time to time when they need someone in the Southern Hemisphere) if she takes up my offer.

The you can see the slides here!

Piotr Jakubowski – Chief Marketing Ojek, GO-JEK

Piotr Was fantastic! I don’t know that much about Indonesia, but the examples of the campaigns his business was running really touched me. They were emotional, but not in a sickly sweet way. They showed what seemed to be a very real side of life in Indonesia, and told the story of GO-JEK, a service similar to Uber.

There’s not a lot of relevant facts and figures for you to take away from this one. It more cuts to the heart of what good marketing is – and that’s real. They develop a real connection, to real people. They know their market so they aren’t afraid to be open and honest about who they are.

You can check out the slides here.

Beverly Jackson – VP, Social Media Marketing and Content Strategy, MGM Resorts International

Beverley Jackson is another fine example of females leading the way in the business of Social Media. She explained through her presentation the logistics of one of MGM’s current marketing challenges. Shifting demographics. She told us about a hotel that MGM is redeveloping, that has an older market – but the refurbishment will attract a much younger one with different interests. The challenge of keeping both groups engaged while the build is complete so they can continue to trade during the transformation is a tough one!

She explained a campaign they had done where they made a group of young Scottish lads enjoying a birthday trip, where they completely made the trip with free concert tickets, and other surprises to make the birthday a trip to remember, and gain customer advocacy for life!

There’s some amazing nuggets of wisdom in Beverly’s speech. Including that you can die from lack of entertainment, and her content mixologist recipe is pretty awesome too! But the main takeaways from her presentation are to define your goals, purpose and objective – and create your campaigns around them.

Be true to your brand, and over-communicate to your fans.

And finally – credibility silences noise.

Dennis Owen – Group Manage Social Media, Cathay Pacific

Time to get serious for a minute, do you have a Social Media Crisis Management Plan? Well, you’re going to wish you did, and probably make it an agenda item in your next marketing meeting after reading about the presentation from Dennis Owen from Cathay Pacific.

Dennis explained to us an issue that happened on board a Cathay Pacific plan. All ended well, but it doesn’t always – which is why you need your plans in place to kick in the minute a crisis starts.

He explained how Social Media has changed the game when it come to crisis management, where you used to issue a press release, or hold a press conference – now you must be social-first. The reason for this is that people involved in the crisis will most likely be publicising the event live. Your crisis or communications team might not even know about the issue until your Social Media monitoring picks it up! So you start already on the back foot.

So here’s some things to know from Dennis:

The crisis will pass – but the Social proof that it happened never will. What’s on the internet stays on the internet.

Be social-first with your responses.

Know who was first to “break” the story and try to get to them. That’s where the media will be heading – so get there first and control the narrative as best you can.

Communicate, communicate, communicate! The comms are more important than the crisis itself (from a brand point of view, obviously not to the victims…)

Have a plan in place and implement it quickly.

Find an expert to advocate. They have more credibility than your brand in a crisis. Shut down speculation, it’s the enemy!

He also had some tips for building up your Social Media Crisis Toolbox:

Check how other businesses in your industry have dealt with crises.

Make a checklist. You will be busy and distracted at the time. You need to have a list!

Don’t create a second crisis with the handling of your crisis.

Hit Social first!

Monitor and respond in real time is appropriate

Test and learn!

Unfortunately there aren’t any slides or a video of Dennis’ presentation. But it got me thinking. How many of you have a crisis management plan?

Michael Bouda – Senior Brand Manager, Jägermeister

I’m not really going to go into this one in much detail as I found the content a bit too ‘dude-bro’ for me, which is not a reflection on the campaign, more than the fact that I am so far removed from this demographic.

The one thing I will state though is that I really liked the way this brand invented it’s own influencers. It’s a tough ask, advertising alcohol in Australia (compared with many other countries, and especially in WA) and I thought the invention of the cartoon “pack” and the positioning of them as influential was quite genius if intentional, and incredibly well handled if it happened by accident.

It would be interesting to see if this sort of campaign could work for other brands, and how it might have differed had it have been a female demographic with similar content.

Tanbir Rahman – Head of Digital, Huawei Technologies

Tanbir Rahman spoke to us about launching a product, the P9 Huawei smartphone – using Social Media. He had some excellent insights and the slides are also available here.

Paul Moore – Head Content Producer, Tennis Australia

Paul Moore talked about producing content for one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

Roy Simangunsong – Country Business Head, Twitter

Roy Simangunsong talks about how companies can use Twitter, and gives examples from the local Indonesian market. See the slides here.

Wrap up…

I hope you’ve enjoyed my wrap-up of the days speakers! There was so much going on that I haven’t covered absolutely everything – I just hope I’ve done the event justice. It really was an amazing few days in an amazing setting!

If you want to get some more info leave me a comment, or better yet – stay tuned to Socialbakers and make sure you go to their next conference, whether that’s #EngageBali (I would DEFINITELY go back if they do another Bali event) or one of their others.

I also wanted to say a quick thank you to the Socialbakers team for looking after me. Sometimes events can be a bit awkward when you’re by yourself, especially in between the formal schedule! The Socialbakers team made sure I was included in everything, and they were so nice and helpful that I really felt like we’d known each other for ages!

I also met some wonderful people, not just the speakers mentioned in this epically long blog post – but regular folks slogging it out in the Social realm for various agencies and businesses in different parts of the Asian Pacific region.

My next mission is to get some feedback from some of them to add to my own, so stay tuned!

I hope to see you in Bali 2017!

August 31, 2016October 31, 2018

Facebook interests examined | Have you lost interest?

What on earth does Facebook know about me?

Why am I seeing these ads?

If you want to see what Facebook thinks your “interests” are you can have a look and edit them. You’ll have a good laugh at the things you apparently like!

Go to Settings > Ads > Ads based on my preferences > edit > visit ad preferences. Then they will all be neatly displayed in little boxes. You can hover and close the ones you aren’t actually interested in.

It can be a lengthy process – but very eye-opening! This is a great experiment to do on your profile to show you why interest targeting on Facebook can be so hit and miss. You’re must better off using custom audiences based on your website traffic or email databases!

This won’t mean you’ll see fewer FB ads, but it might mean the ones you do see are relevant to you! And let’s face it, we’ve all come to terms with the fact that there’s ads on Facebook. PLUS occasionally you’ll see an ad for a flight, concert, or something that you ARE interested in and you didn’t already know about. Ok, it’s infrequent – but it does happen.

What do you think? Did you find this useful? Is it time to update your interests on Facebook, I mean it’s more than 12 years old now – and if you’ve been on it since the beginning you might have changed a bit since then!

August 24, 2016October 31, 2018

The WA Digital Marketing Report 2016 – Stats the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it

What’s the state of WA Digital Marketing?

Are you interested in how WA businesses approach their Digital Marketing?

I asked Freddy Hollow from Bang Digital some questions about their annual WA Digital Marketing Report to find out more!

What do you think is significant about the move from top place to third position for Search Marketing?

Well SEO and SM were the old faithful’s and they still have a very important place in the mix, but it indicates a broader acceptance and recognition of Social Media and Email marketing as viable channels. The updates in the FB advertising platform and email automation have likely had a big hand in the jump.

Will Search continue to drop?

I don’t think so, Search, Social, and Email are the core 3 channels that should be the basis of a marketing campaign.

Do you think Video will continue to rise as a content strategy?

Yes, the cost of entry is lowering and it’s such a good method of delivering messages. Like anything, people will need to be creative with it and use it in the right way.

Do you think “Content Marketing” is widely understood in the Business world as a term? Would more people have had that as a response if they were more familiar with the term?

As a general concept it is definitely well known, but I’m not sure if it’s understood correctly. The marketing trends page (7) gives an indication to how Content Marketing is understood by businesses as 52% were planning to utilise content marketing this year so businesses obviously understand that Content Marketing is important.

Generally people think content marketing is social or blogs or videos (which are all great) but really content marketing could be the way you design or format instruction sheets or FAQ’s or a pricing comparison on a product page. These aren’t the exciting things people think of when discussing content marketing, but good content marketing is about providing the right information at the right time during your customer’s (or customer segment/avatar) particular customer journey.

Next year we will definitely add Content Marketing as its own answer to the list on the Marketing Priorities section of the survey.

We’ve seen some of the “Main benefits of digital marketing” responses in the report – what would your response have been?

Trackability – the accuracy in which you can track your results vs spend.
Targeting – the amount of targeting options available through digital channels.
Segmentation & Customization – the ability to segment your audience and then customise the messaging for those specific audience segments
Automation – all of the cool new marketing automation techniques/platforms that can help you do all of the above

All of the “Digital presence” stats for the individual social platforms are up on last year – do you think any will drop next year? Will a new player be introduced in 2017?

I don’t think any will drop and we will add Snapchat into the survey for 2017.

The stats for “Digital marketing spend” are all increasing. Do you think this will continue into 2017? Are some businesses being priced out of the market?

Yes, it will only continue to increase year on year for the foreseeable future. I don’t think businesses are necessarily getting priced out – there are plenty of activities that businesses can utilise themselves and marketing professionals are only getting stronger in this area.

We’ve seen some of the responses to the “Digital challenges facing business” question – what do you think the biggest challenge is as a marketer? What’s the one you hear from clients or your team most often?

Time and understanding seem to be the biggest challenges. The amount of time it takes be across or implement the relevant channels and the understanding of the digital marketing mix. People understand what a tv, print or radio advert is but don’t understand some of the newer digital techniques and channels.

Are WA businesses becoming better at analysing their data from digital marketing?

Yes – we have seen a big jump in the understanding of digital as a whole but definitely an increase in the understanding of Google analytics and key digital marketing metrics.

Do you infer anything else from the survey results about the state of digital marketing in WA in 2016?

Not as something that jumps out – working with clients constantly I’m pretty in tune with how people view digital marketing in WA.

As an agency, how do these stats help you? And how do they benefit your clients?

From us as an agency it’s really positive to see an increased understanding in digital and it also highlights areas that people are interested in, so we can tailor or own content accordingly but really as an agency we are always educating our clients or providing them with recommendations that help their specific business – so although the stats may say that everyone is interested in Video it really depends on each businesses individual situation.

For clients it hopefully it acts as a reference or education piece that helps them plan out their marketing activities or acts as a verification of sorts for their own strategy recommendations.

Freddy Hollow — This is Freddy, Operations Manager at Bang Digital

So there we have it folks! We got a bit of insight beyond what’s available in the report itself, which if you haven’t read in full and would like to make sure you check it out! Thanks so much to Bang Digital for putting together this report every year, it’s so interesting for a stat nerd like myself – and for businesses to see how the rest of the industry is travelling! And a big thanks to Freddy for fitting me into his busy schedule and answering my quesitons!

For those who have read the report – did you have any other questions I didn’t ask? I’d love to read them in the comments!

June 3, 2016October 31, 2018

Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report

Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report [TL;DR]

Sensis release a Social Media report annually, and the reason Aussie Social Media stat nerds like me care is because there’s not a lot of social media reports that analyse purely Australian data. We can be a bit different down here on our island, and real data is real valuable to all Social Media players, the businesses who use it, the people employed by those businesses and the outsourced agency and freelancer folk.

Ultimately, the more you know about the audience demographics, their use, expectations…the things they care about and respond to AND the things that piss them off – the better job you will do at trying to gain attention in an increasingly crowded market.

So here’s the stuff I pulled from their 71 page report that I think will be of value so you don’t have to read the whole thing yourself!

Facebook is not dead!

Australians are now spending more than half a day per week (12.5 hours) on Facebook alone, up four hours from last year.

Facebook has maintained its almost ubiquitous appeal – 95% of users. The average number of times people access Facebook has remained relatively steady at 32 times a week, but the amount of time spent on each occasion has increased from 17 to 24 minutes.

My takeaway from this: Anyone who tells you their customers “aren’t on Facebook” could be misinformed. Facebook is by no means dead, and continues its dominance of the Social Media platforms.

Social Media use is increasing!

Instagram (31%) is on a growth trend, almost doubling its reach since 2013. This platform has really captured the younger demographic, used by 58% of 18-29 year olds.

Business Social Media Presence is increasing!

There’s been an upsurge in the number with a social media presence for all business sizes

31% to 48% for small to medium businesses and 56% to 79% for large businesses.

Forty eight percent of small and medium businesses have a social media presence compared with 31% last year, while 79% of large businesses do, which compares with 56% last year.

Over four in 10 medium sized businesses use Twitter (43%), while this figure increases to 61% for large businesses.

Instagram is also reasonably popular among medium (28%) and large (42%) sized businesses.

YouTube (41%) has a similar penetration in large businesses.

Instagram is also now used by over a quarter of medium sized businesses (28%) but its penetration in the small business segment remains much lower (12%).

More businesses now have a social media presence than has previously been recorded. Forty eight percent of small businesses, 54% of medium businesses and 79% of large businesses are now on social media.

Why is this significant?

The businesses that were dragging their feet are realising they are being left behind and launching their Social Media channels.

Social isn’t going away. There are many businesses doing a good job of their Social and brands want this competitive edge for themselves.

The other aspect of this is the longer you wait to get your business on Social Media the harder it’s going to be to find your place in the newsfeed. It’s already a much tougher environment for organic growth than it was when I started using Social Media to drive business 5+ years ago.

You use Social Media differently according to your age group!

No big surprise here.

Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are more popular for 18 to 29 year olds, and LinkedIn and Google+ for 40 to 49 year olds.

What does this mean for your business? It’s incredibly important to know who your customers are. You won’t get your messages out to them if you’re not using the right channels. Snapchat might be a huge growth platform right now – but if you sell to people 40+ it’s probably not for you (at least at the moment, doesn’t hurt to reserve your business name though…)

Mobile phones are king!

Smartphones are now the most popular device, overtaking laptops which have lost some appeal.

Why does this matter? Due to the varying functionality and display sizes across desktop and mobile Social Media, make sure your content and Call To Action (CTA) are “mobile-first” meaning, optimised for viewing and use on a phone. It’s important to make your images look appealing on mobile, as this will determine whether people will consume your content.

Australians own an average of three Internet-enabled devices, which underlines our strong appetite for online activity.

People are still researching businesses on Social Media!

Online blogs and reviews remain a fairly widespread influence on purchasing decisions with 60% of social media users claiming to read them before making a purchase.

Fifty eight percent will look at up to five reviews before making a decision.

Social Media advertising is increasing!

Over eight in 10 of all businesses who advertise on social media have placed an ad on Facebook.

Here’s some WA stats for my local folks!

We don’t take ourselves too seriously!

And we’re a bit gross…

If you want to view the full report here’s a link for you!

March 4, 2016October 31, 2018

NEW – Local Insights: Find out about the people nearby your business!

I have a new client page that just got access to insights (the tab at the top of your page where you can look at your stats, you need 30 likes to gain access) and noticed something new!

Local Insights!

How many people walk or drive past your business every day? What if you could find out more about who they are?

Well, now you can – thanks to Facebook!

New Local Insights

Here’s where you can find it what it looks like:

We posted recently that insights had been upgraded. But this is new again. Insights into the Facebook users in a radius of your page!

It’s been broken down into sections; Activity & Peak Hours, Demographic Info and Ad Performance so I’ll go through the information available set by step with some screen shots.

Firstly let’s get a closer look at the map! You can choose a radium of 50 or 150 meters from the address of your business page, so the data is hyper-local. You can choose data from a week, month or quarter to look at.

You can see who is the most popular demographic nearby and the busiest time for Facebook foot traffic to the area.

Activity & Peak Hours

With the People Nearby section you can look at hourly, weekly, and historical data plus view your page check-ins. And there’s no surprise there’s a prompt to create a Local Awareness ad here too.

Demographic Info

Learn more about the demographics of the people (on Facebook) who are in your local area. See their gender, age bracket and whether they are “local” or not to the area. Local is defined as living less than 200km away.

Ad Performance

As this feature was found on a new page, there’s not much here to really delve into. It can be assumed that this data will allow you to benchmark your Local Awareness campaigns by percentage and improve them with time and testing.

Why is this exciting?

Knowing more about the people in your business’ local area can help you make better results from your Social Media efforts. If you know which people are nearby and at what times you can create tailored hyper-local content to attract their attention. You would be able to promote a lunch special, a sale item or a happy hour, for example, to people already in the area at the time.

And if this didn’t get enough traction organically, you could use some advertising budget on expanding your local reach.

Not only can you create hyper-local time sensitive content for your markets, you may be able to make wider business decisions too! Say you are a local pizza store thinking about expanding to open for lunch, you could find out how many people are nearby during that period that fit your diner demographic. Very cool!

With the population becoming more mobile, as marketers we need ways tap into that. It’s less effective to target ads to people who live in the vicinity when you’re only open business hours, as most of them will be at work – being able to target people nearby as they walk past your door with a snappy sales message, a promotion or something that grabs their attention could be a game changer for your business.

Facebook understands this and has started adding features such as this one, which I’m sure will be expanded in the future!

What do you think about this addition to your insights? Would you be more likely to use Local Awareness ads on Facebook now?

Feel free to leave us a comment, or swing by our socials – and as always, if you would like help with setting up your own Local Awareness campaign don’t hesitate to get in touch.

March 2, 2016August 17, 2019

Social Media Marketing loves your Email Database (and vice versa) – How & Why you should let them be together

I like to say Email Database Marketing and Social Media Marketing are best friends. Let’s explore why your business benefits from the combined power of these 2 digital marketing methods – especially if you have a small marketing budget!

I’ve collected some awesome articles from some digital marketing heavyweights to help convince you that you can’t have ultimate success in one without the other, and how to go about setting up this integrated approach!

Neil Patel describes Social Media as “the new kid” and explains why and how to integrate your email and social marketing, he even includes a downloadable cheat sheet in his article “How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts” it’s a long read but includes many step-by-step instructions, screen shots and stats to get you started.

Neil starts by demonstrating that Email Marketing is one of the easiest and most effective digital tactics, and is far from “dead”

Top Takeaways from Neils’ Article

Social Media and Email Marketing work together because they serve different contexts to different sections of your target audience.

Email is a closer relationship with your customer because they have given you permission to enter their inbox. Social Media is public and therefore less close; but a great way to collect those valuable email subscribers, and re-target them.

Email has a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than social media platforms.

You can increase your email content exposure by including social share icons inside your emails. As per Get Response, social sharing boosts email CTR by 158%.

His Step-by-Step guides to uploading your email database to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Then his subsequent Step-by-Step guide to using these lists to target specific advertising messages or paid advertising – RETARGETING.

Social Media tips:

Use contests to collect email addresses
Use your cover page ‘call to action’ buttons to collect subscribers
Use Facebook Groups for subscriber-only interaction
Retargeting

Email Marketing Tips:

Use photos to ‘put a face to the name’ in your emails
Use unsubscribe prompts to try not to lose subscribers
Add an email sign-up to your website and social media channels
Use social media sharing buttons/links in your emails and prompt your subscribers to follow/like you

Read the whole original article:

How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts

Next is Buffer. Buffer is a Social Media Scheduling tool, helping you post content across multiple channels easily – a handy tool indeed!

They also write a very informative blog, which has just been named Social Media Examiner’s Top Ten Social Media Blogs.

In this post titled “6 Creative ways to integrate Social Media and Email Marketing” they give away some little-known tactics to getting more traffic and engagement by combining the power of Social Media and Email – and again this article is packed with practical how to’s!

Top Takeaways from Buffer’s Article

Few people make buying decisions anymore based on information from a single medium. So when marketers focus all their energy on one channel, they could be missing out on other opportunities and the natural rhythms of the buying cycle.

You need Email and Social Media to cross-promote your products and services, it re-enforces your messaging and makes sure you remain top of mind when your audience are ready to purchase.

They outline 6 top tips – which are:

Upload Email Database to Social Media Channels (as we discussed – but they add Google+)
Retargeting (we’ll leave this one here too)
Let Social Send Emails For You – this one is new, let’s discuss below
Automation – we have covered this, but Buffer suggest a different tactic which we’ll explore further in a moment
Collect Emails from Social Media – via lead magnet or subscription app/Facebook call to action in the cover photo
Create a Facebook Group for Subscribers – covered

So, we’ve already discussed some of these points above – let’s move straight on to number 3 in our list, Let Social Send Emails For You, how does this work? They’re talking about LinkedIn Groups!

If you are on LinekdIn and you haven’t taken the time to manually unsubscribe from every group you have joined you are probably drowning under a sea of LinekdIn emails…

LinkedIn send email updates of group discussions, so all you need to do to reach someone’s inbox (rather than the folder or burner email we all use for email sign-ups) is to contribute your content to these group discussions.

Now obviously you can’t just post your content and run, and it has to be of value to the group members. But what a novel idea! I hadn’t thought of trying this tactic but I’ll definitely be giving it a go myself. I’ll let you know how it turns out 🙂

On point number 4, Automation Buffer use a tactic I also haven’t tried before.

It goes like this; post a social media update, send it to your email database prompting them to share it (they call it “seed it with shares”) and once the share count is up nice and high, send an email to influencers to share it.

The influencers will see the value of the content due to the “seeded” shares and will be more likely to share it to their own audiences. Buffer describe a tool called Send Bloom which integrates with Gmail and allows you to send these influencer emails automatically.

Not only a total time-saver, but coming from your Gmail makes it so much more personal!

Just quickly we’ll discuss a Lead Magnet as mentioned in number 5 of our list, it’ll be discussed at length in the final article and is an integral part of Digital Marketing!

A Lead Magnet is something people will be prepared to give up their email address for – thus making them a lead. An example of this could be a downloadable how-to guide or indeed Neil Patel’s Cheat Sheet discussed in the first section of this article!

kh-facebook-ad-lead-magnet — Example of a Lead Magent turned into a Facebook Ad

Most people won’t subscribe to your emails without being offered something of value, so think about what you could use as a lead magnet for your business!

If you want to dig in deeper the full article link is below.

6 Creative ways to integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

One of my favourite Social Media Marketing resources – Social Media Examiner has many, many articles regarding Social Media and Email Marketing integration. Here is one of their most recent publications on the subject, written by Kristi Hines.

This one’s called “How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media” and covers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter again, with helpful screen shots and how to’s.

It’s focus is on improving the strength of your email database using social media.

Top Takeaways from Social Media Examiner’s Article

Promote your Lead Magnet, or Resources section of your website on your social media channels – so people land on your “squeeze page” (the landing page you make to collect their email in exchange for your Lead Magnet/Resource) resulting in subscriber growth.

Also use your Social Media channels to test headlines to use in your Email Marketing. As you re-post your content (not everyone saw it the first time, right?) you can change-up the titles and images.

You can infer that the one with the most engagement is the “best” one and use these headlines when creating your emails.

Here’s some more tips, broken down by channel.

Facebook

Include your subscribe link in your Short Description
Make an app to collect email addresses (try WooBox or ShortStack for this)
Use your Call To Action button on your Cover Photo
Set up Facebook Ads to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page
Use a Lookalike Audience to target people who “Look Like” your email database subscribers

Twitter

Use your bio to promote your Lead Magnet
Use Twitter Lead Cards – explained below
Use Promoted Tweets to increase the reach of your Lead Cards

A Lead Card is a way for people to leave you with their details without leaving Twitter. Think of it as a mini-squeeze page.

LinkedIn

Promote your Lead Magnet in the Projects and Publications sections of your LinkedIn profile

Pinterest

Pin your Lead Magnet – this can be done multiple times with varying images.

Instagram

Use the link in your bio to send people to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page

General

Make sharing easy! Include Social Media sharing buttons and links on your Squeeze Page and your Lead Magnet.

Read the full article, explaining exactly how to set up your Twitter Lead Cards below.

How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media

So here you have it – the world’s top Digital Marketers agree that Social Media and Email Marketing are best friends! Time to dig out that excel spreadsheet and pass it on to your social media team!

We’d love to hear your feedback! What are your thoughts on Email Marketing and Social Media integration? Leave us a comment here or stop by any of our Social Media channels.

The Social Chameleons can be contacted to help you with your Social Media and Email Database Marketing. Feel free to email by clicking here, or fill out the form on the contact page.

June 21, 2015April 10, 2016

Social Media: What Does it all MEAN?

So you have decided to “do” social media for your business. Great! Why? What are you hoping it will help you achieve? It’s knowing the answer to this question that will determine whether your efforts will bear fruit, and the reason so many businesses fail, or simply give up on their social media (or indeed any online or offline) marketing.

The Chameleons hear all the time about how “Facebook doesn’t work” and “Facebook advertising is a waste of money” and “Social Media can’t help my business sell our products” These statements are mostly wrong, but it all depends on what you want out of it as to how you need to go about executing your strategy.

[bctt tweet=”It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it.”]

It’s pretty simple when you think about it, but because we all use social media profiles we are often blinded to the realities of using it from a business perspective. Let’s take something that’s been around for a bit longer as an example of what we mean, like Television for instance.

If you were a brand that sold kids toys – would you make a TV ad with lots of dark, gloomy colours? Would you use formal language? Would you show those ads late at night? Of course not! Why? Because it’s not going to [marketing cliché alert] speak to the desired demographic.

It’s the same with social media. You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to [another cliché alert] speak their language.

Ok, we get it – but how?

Well, we don’t think there’s one magical recipe for working this out. In the old days there were focus groups, surveys and buyer personas – and yeah, they’re still around, but what it all boils down to is finding out what your customers and potential customers want and need.

[bctt tweet=”You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to speak their language.”]

Big brands spend loads of money doing this, often tracking your spending habits with fancy reward programs to give them insight into your spending behaviour. But what can you do as a small business or a brand just starting out?

Ask your customers. Network with other people in your industry who understand your specific industry challenges. Ask people who use your competitors why they chose them and not you. Use what it is that makes your business different and work this into your strategy. And when we say strategy we don’t mean write a 60 page university-style marketing document.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vPNAUYJsc]

It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it. Your social media success will not just happen. It needs to be built, crafted, nurtured…do we sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But we’re crazy about doing a great job at social media marketing, and that’s what you become when you promote your brand on social media, social media marketers! It’s probably one of the many hats you wear as someone with a small business!

So back to your goals; here are a couple of quick examples of social media goals your business may have and how you might go about achieving them:

Say you are a new brand, at first you may just want some likes on your Facebook page to give you a little credibility. As social media marketers we can tell you likes don’t matter – but we know that there’s a certain gravity to a page that has fans – the same way you don’t trust eating at an empty restaurant. If this is a short-term goal for your brand you will need to harness the power of your networks.

Ask you friends and family to help by liking and sharing your page.
Set up your email signature and your website with social buttons so people know that you’re a social brand.
Always use the social media icons utilised by your brand on all your printed materials like flyers and menus.

But mostly, and you’re probably not going to like this – you’re going to have to run some like ads. Remember, just like with the TV ad example – make sure they will resonate with your desired audience. Use imagery and language they relate to at the times they are watching and you’ll receive the best return.

Say your social media goal is to use it to get more people to your website – you could:

Run some web click ads!
Post relevant content from your website as links on your social platforms
Start a blog to share your original content
Have your developer embed some tracking pixels on your website to help you measure your social traffic
Set up Google analytics and monitor your social media refferals

Before you do this we suggest you make sure that your site is truly reflective of your brand and has strong messaging. We all know we skim read and make very quick decisions as to whether we stay on a website for more than a few seconds. You need to make sure those seconds count or all the advertising in the world won’t help.

There’s too many different goals you may have as a business to go through them all here – but we did want to touch on one more just quickly.

[bctt tweet=”Social Media is a conversation, and a huge part of conversation is listening!”]

Social Customer Service

Whatever your short terms goals for social media are – always bear in mind the customer service opportunities social media will present you. If you haven’t yet you will at some point have a customer reach out to you on your social media platforms for help with your brands product/s (or service/s) and you need to LISTEN to them.

Social is a conversation.

And a huge part of conversation is listening – and not just to the words but also the tone. If someone reaches out to you about your brand, positive or negative they want to be heard. Obviously positive feedback is much easier to handle, but negative comments are just as important, if not more so.

Someone has taken the time to tell you that something was wrong. Whether it was with the service, the product, the expectation wasn’t met, the delivery, the colour, size, fit – could be anything, but you have the advantage because they came to you so you can fix it. You know why someone is unhappy. That’s infinitely more helpful to your business than your product just not selling, right? Because odds are if one person says it, there are others thinking it too that weren’t “brave” enough to speak out.

Acknowledge!

This is why you must always take the time to acknowledge their concerns and not pass them of as an isolated incident, even if you’re sure they are. Other users can be waiting to see how you respond, judging whether they too should speak out based on how you handle the situation.

Flip it!

Anyone who has run a business knows that an unhappy client can often be won over into your most loyal fan if they are listened to, acknowledged and have their issues resolved to the best of your ability. And with social media you have the opportunity to do this publicly where you can turn around the opinions of more than the one upset customer, but the others following the progress of the interaction.

Seems a bit scary. Obviously we are referring to regular types of grievances, not major meltdowns or crises, which need to be dealt with in a more cautious way we may cover in a future post.

The last type of interaction with your social media following we want to cover is the neutral post. They aren’t happy clients or disgruntled (love that word – so fun to say) customers, they just have a need for further information about your brand. Embrace them, love them, be excited about the potential of doing business with them in the future! If someone wants to know more about your offerings they want you to talk them into using your business, so don’t leave them waiting and try to share as much friendly detail as you can. They’ll appreciate the effort and you’ll at least get some social media brownie points – and at most a nice fat sale.

So to finish here’s our top tips for what it’s all about:

Work out what you want out of your social media presence and plan for that outcome step by step (it won’t happen overnight)
Use your target demographics preferences to present your brands images, profile pictures, tone etc that appeal to THEM
Always answer ALL your comments as quickly and helpfully as you can
Don’t forget it’s SOCIAL – so listen to what your market is telling you

We hope this helps you to make a plan for your social media marketing and set you up for success! As always we’d love your feedback either as comments here or on our social platforms 🙂

April 5, 2015October 18, 2019

Audience Participation

Hello! The Chameleons are back with another update designed to help you in the world of social media for your business! Today we would like to talk about Facebook advertising.

Now we’re probably going to speak about Facebook advertising from time to time, because (in our opinion) it currently has the cheapest targeting available to businesses. In general in our experience – and remember – all pages/accounts/industries can differ; it’s CPC (cost per click) is significantly lower than Google advertising. Now before the SEO and Adwords guys get all upset – there are many ways to interpret this and we’re not saying don’t pay for search, the more expensive clicks are probably better quality, after all we all know you get what you pay for…

But that is a discussion for another time! We want to tell you about some ways you might not know of to save time on your Facebook ad targeting and also unlock parts of the ad manager platform you might not know about!

We assume that MOST Facebook page admins have at some point paid to have their content seen so we didn’t want to start at the very beginning (if you haven’t and you do need to get back to basics drop us a comment, we’d be happy to help) but wanted to talk about Audiences.

When you go into your Ads Manager on Facebook this will be the menu down the left hand side.

The forth selection from the bottom is Audiences. Once you hit this you will see the different types of audiences you can create and how Facebook advertising can become faster and an integral part of your overall digital strategy.

CUSTOM AUDIENCES

The first option is Custom Audience. This is probably our favourite type of audience! Here you can upload your email database from Mailchimp or whichever eDM software you use straight to Facebook. This audience can be useful because Facebook will find anyone on that database who uses that email and you can target ads straight to them!

Imagine you sent a special offer via eDM, then followed it up with a “Did you get your special offer in your inbox” message? Creepy? Slightly, maybe – but being able to speak directly to your current VIP mailing list on Facebook – very powerful, especially if you have a large database.

You can track specific pages and specific time frames of their visits, cross promoting your messages. An example would be you had a sale on a particular product for a week – the people who visited your site in that week on that page may or may not have purchased anything, but you know they had at least a passing interest in the product. Follow up with messaging about the sale being extended or a new product in this line being added and you can have a repeat visit with no guesswork or wasted money. You already know they were interested in that product so you didn’t have to try and target your ads to people who might like it!

The App Activity Custom Audience is specific to those who have an app – so we will leave this one for now.

LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES

Next on the list is the Lookalike Audience. We love this function!

You can ask Facebook to make you a list of people who closely resemble your current page likes, and because they share characteristics with your current fans – they could be fans of yours, right? Right!

It’s really easy to set this up. Choose your previously added database that you made your Custom Audience from, a tracking pixel from your website (you may need a web-guy to help you with this) or select your page. Then choose a location that’s relevant to your needs.

For example if we wanted to do this for our Social Chameleons Facebook page we would use the name of the page as the source and Australia as the country.

Then you can use the slider to say how “alike” or “dis-alike” you want your audience to be, depending on your needs. If you want the most alike you will get a smaller audience. The less alike the larger the audience and potential reach but the less effective this is. You can mix and match to suit your target.

SAVED TARGET GROUPS

A lot of the time you may be searching for the same types of people to share your messages with. Sometimes you are really switched on – thinking of heaps of great ways to match interests or locations or behaviours, and other times you can draw a blank, OR you just need to shave some time off what can be a laborious task, plugging in all the required fields. Either way the Saved Target Group is for you!

[bctt tweet=”You can save your favourite (read: most effective) target groups so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of targeting every time!”] Super handy.

Once you have harnessed the power of these Audiences you can add them into your ad creation and see how this affects your target size, and often removes the need to use interest targeting all together!

Remember – ad targeting on Facebook is all about trial and error, using a blend of different images, different copy (text) and mixing up your targeting until you hit that sweet spot where your hard earned dollars stretch the furthest and your content find homes with people who value it.

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