2 of my all-time favourites: Social Media & Learning!

Engage Bali 2016 Social Media Summit

Engage Bali is a Social Media Summit by Socialbakers, who are a Social Media Management tool. I don’t currently use their tool for my client work, but I have often read their reports, especially to get Australian specific data!

One of their features that really interests me is their performance optimisation tool, that uses “predictive analytics” to determine how your content will perform! Thier announcement post has a detailed explanation of how it works.

One of the other things Socialbakers do that’s pretty rad is put on a summit for Social Media Marketers. Normally the big Social media Summits are either in Europe and the US, so it’s a big undertaking to make it when you’re from Perth.

Since the announcement of Engage Bali, I knew this time would be different! Being only 4 hours from Bali, with frequent and cheap(ish) flights this was much more realistic for me – and the idea to go along to my first Social Media Summit was hatched.

It’s very exciting! If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts, you’d know that I love my stats! I truly believe that good Social Media Marketers are equal parts creative and analytical. Also with my love for learning (I’m currently completing an Advanced Diploma of Business and the Digital Marketer courses, among others) this really appeals to me.

I can’t wait to see how the world’s top Social Media minds are using Social Media to reach, inform and delight their audiences! If you want to see them it’s all on the Engage Bali website.As a freelancer, I’m privileged to work with some very diverse people – but I am aware that we can easily become stale in our own little bubbles.

As a freelancer, I’m privileged to work with some very diverse people – but I am aware that we can easily become stale in our own bubbles. We are all occasionally guilty of doing things the way we think is right and not investigating new functionality or features. Sometimes we think that’s just the way things are, then you find out someone else has tackled the issue completely differently to you did!

I’m even more excited for Engage Bali because the amazing people at Socialbakers have allowed me to attend free of charge (bonus!) and also asked me if I would host one of their panel discussions – how terrifyingly wonderful!

I can’t wait to bring you updates of what I learn during the day of workshops on the Friday, and the full day event on Saturday. I’m going to be a busy girl!

Have you ever been to an industry conference? Do you have any tips for me – a conference noob? I’d love to hear them! You can leave a comment here of hit me up on my Socials.

September 6, 2016June 2, 2019

LinkedIn: Now More Than A Digital Resume

LinkedIn has moved on from being thought of as a ‘digital resume’ where people only log in to update their skills when searching for a new role.

These days it’s a great place to publish your original content! It’s a must if you’re trying to build your personal brand and position yourself as a thought leader in your field.

Most of you would have a LinkedIn profile, and have probably at one time or another posted a status update. If you do it regularly, that’s awesome! You’re already half way there. You know who’s who in your sector. You already have connections and followers.

Use LinkedIn Published Posts to extend this to building influence beyond your connections. Published posts go to LinkedIn’s Pulse platform. Here they can be swept up and read and shared by anyone, whether they follow you or not! And not only that, each time you publish a post your own connections will receive a notification that you did so, encouraging them to come and check it out.

Top Tip: Use tagging. People on Pulse don’t follow you necessarily – they follow subjects that interest them. Think about your tags carefully, you are only allowed 3.

LinkedIn also has a product called Slideshare where you can post publications. These are similar in essence to the old PowerPoint Publications but more image-focused. You can publish your own LinkedIn Slideshare content and depending on the quality and category can be seen by tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Pretty cool huh?

Top Tip: Use content that has performed well as a blog post and re-create as a Slideshare. It’s a bit of work to make them look good and you don’t want to risk it on un-tested content.

LinkedIn Groups can be a great place to publish valuable content to your industry peers. Just make sure it’s a group in which you contribute to the discussion, dropping in to post a link to your latest post is considered a bit rude if that’s all you ever do.

Top Tip: Seriously, don’t be that guy who drops in once a week to post a link to their latest article – the rest of the group secretly hates you.

LinkedIn Pages are a good way for your company to have a business profile on LinkedIn, and your content can be shared there. LinkedIn Pages have a post max of 400 characters, so not really any good for articles – just a blurb and a link with an eye-catching image is all you need. If it’s not your company you’ll need to submit your article to the page admin/s to post for you should they deem it appropriate to come from their corporate voice.

Top Tip: You can advertise from LinkedIn Pages. Targeting examples that work well include roles within industries, i.e. Assistant Manager in Human Resources.

Whether you choose LinkedIn as a place to publish original content or not, you can add your links under publications on your profile. This way people will be able to find them if they are LinkedIn stalking you; which they will if you start getting some attention.

Top Tip: You can set your LinkedIn to private so when you stalk people your name is not listed, however this might not be the best idea. The first thing you do when someone checks out your profile – is look at theirs in return!

These are my top no-fuss tips to using LinkedIn for your personal branding. Do you have any to add? I’d love to hear your feedback!

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!

April 26, 2016October 31, 2018

Professional Social Media?

Is there such thing as Professional Social Media?

Is it all cat memes and photos of food?

Recently I had the privilege of writing a guest blog post for Scope Vision, a wonderful local RTO I’m currently completing an Advanced Diploma of Business with. It’s run by a fabulously creative and quirky lady I just adore, MJ Satterthwaite. Her brain (and business blog) is bursting full of ways to improve your leadership skills to develop yourself; and business planning tips to rock your career!

I had to find common ground between what I’m passionate about, Social Media (obvs) and what subjects her audience is interested in reading about, and have come to expect from her posts – leadership and career development.

Can you see where we’re going here?

You guessed it, LinkedIn is going to feature heavily! But it’s not the only way you can use Social Media to showcase your skills an experience. I discuss the features of LinkedIn you might not be using, and also explore Medium and Quora as other places to publish content to boost your professional authority.

The best thing about these methods is they can be applied by anyone. You don’t have to wait until you’ve entered the workforce, publishing your own content will certainly help you stand out from the rest of your graduating class, especially now there’s a LinkedIn for Students app! Conversely you are also never too old to start!

I shared my top tips for helping you become an authority in your field using Social Media. If you’d like to read it on the Scope blog I’ve linked it HERE for you!

Anther thing I’m often asked is how connected your personal and professional Social Media should be.

Can you use your personal profiles to share your business content, and should you post personal updates on your business or professional Social Media accounts?

Well – the answer is a big IT DEPENDS.

I know that’s not what you were hoping to find, but before we explore the subject together – see what it depends ON.

I would break it down into 2 main categories: The type of person you are, and the type of business you have.

They type of person you are would be more to do with your beliefs around privacy etc., and the type of business you have speaks more about the level of appropriateness to sharing personal content on your professional Social Media platforms.

To elaborate: the level of comfort you feel about sharing certain personal details of your life to your colleagues, customers, suppliers etc. is very personal and no-one can tell you how to feel about this. No one view is right – or wrong. You can be guided by a professional advice, and should solicit some if you are unsure.
Take this example of parents posting pictures of their children on Social media! Some parents go snap-mad posting photo after photo, and other parents never post pictures of their children due to privacy and safety concerns. There’s a whole spectrum in between, but everyone is doing what feels comfortable for them.

The type of business you have makes a big difference to the appropriateness of posting personal content! It also makes a big difference whether it’s your own business or you are an employee. If you are an employee who wants to post something personal on the company Social Media channels and you’re not sure, you can always check with your boss, or your marketing team – so we’re more speaking to you about your own business.

One of the things you’ll need to take into account when deciding whether you need professional Social Media accounts is “Social Media Friendliness” of the business. Is your business in one of the categories that tend to perform well on Social Media; like food, fitness, animals, etc. Is it a SOCIAL industry?

I would expect someone who owns a patisserie to post photos of them baking, but I would not expect to hear their political views. I would not expect an accountant to post photos of them using a calculator (or whatever it is they do…) but an accountant could do well from sharing a personal update like a photo of them on the golf course as it shows their human side. (I have really stereotyped accountants and for that I apologise, I needed an example…) See what I’m saying? Clear as mud.

If your job requires you to get to know people and quickly develop a rapport, sharing personal updates can be an advantage. Think industries like hospitality and retail to name a couple. If your followers have seen your updates they could feel like they know you better – increasing their likelihood of being a customer. In marketing this is referred to as Brand Humanisation.

If you do decide to share personal updates on your professional Social Media accounts there’s definitely some guidelines to bear in mind! Here are a few:

Avoid alienating your potential/current customers – re-think statements that are overly political, controversial or could be offensive. You don’t want someone who loves your product to not love you and therefore stop buying.
Everyone’s sense of humour is different – what you might think is a harmless joke, your business contacts may not. Carefully think about who the target of the joke is. Industry humour can be ok.
Don’t over-share – Your professional contacts don’t need a 1,000 photo album of your recent holiday.
Don’t vent about work – This is a no-brainer. That difficult customer, by all means tell your significant other but do not vent about them seeking sympathy from other customers. This will make you look unprofessional.
Keep security details to yourself – Which days you carry cash to the bank, your work vehicle’s rego number etc. do not need to be on your professional Social Media accounts.

Let’s look at some other people’s thoughts on this subject!

The Harvard Business Review suggests that you can make 2 lists; one for colleagues and one for friends and post different updates to each list. This would avoid most potentially awkward situations – but can you remember to do this? Especially after a couple of drinks?

This article by Sprout Social offers advice in choosing whether you need business accounts and has a pretty good list of pros and cons. Be Inbound also offers some ‘what not to do’ advice for professional Social Media accounts on their post.

If you are still deciding if you need professional Social Media accounts, consider this: What is your goal? What would be the purpose of starting these accounts?

If the goal can be achieved by your personal profiles then I would suggest keeping it simple and hold off running multiple accounts.

If you need to create specific professional Social Media accounts to achieve your goals and maintain boundaries in your personal and professional life then that’s the best course of action for you.

Consider what sharing personal posting might add to your business account, and vice versa – what posting business-related updates will add to your personal profile. If it’s not going to add something or help you achieve your goals (either personal or professional) then re-think it altogether.

As I said – it depends!

If you would like to get in touch I would be happy to discuss your individual circumstances with you.

April 3, 2016October 31, 2018

What Are Hashtags and Why Should I Care?

What is a Hashtag for anyway?

A hashtag is used to group information by topic. They make searching easier and can elevate your reach on Social Media, making your content more easily found by people outside of your current followers!

Hashtags join your content (posts, tweets & grams) to a wider conversation! You could find fans, enthusiasts, influencers and more – but even better, they can find you. So the more the merrier, right? Not exactly.

Let’s look at how hashtags are used on different Social Media platforms.

Twitter

Hashtags are at home on Twitter. They belong there. Tweets without hashtags are pretty much ignored. There are some conventions you will need to keep in mind though.

Twitter is a busy place. You have 140 characters to make your point so you have to do it without any anything unnecessary – no frills! It can be tough to get your point across in such a brief manner, so it’s common for people to use Twitter to link to longer-form content. That link takes up some of your characters.

Tweets with photos perform better as they stand out in the newsfeed. But that photo is also going to eat away at your character limit too!

Mentioning people you think will like and respond to your content is a good way to get your tweets seen, but there’s even more characters used. Suddenly your message needs to fit into a smaller and smaller space. How can you let people know what your tweet is about?

Hashtags!

If your tweet refers to an industry, sector, or topic use those as a hashtag. This means people looking for information about that topic (who may have never heard of you) can still discover your tweet. If that tweet links to your blog or website – they can click through and read your content! You have gained a web visitor and potentially a new customer.

Some other things you can do with hashtags on Twitter:

Consider using your brand or product name – that way all your tweets are linked
Create unique event hashtags & promote these for people who like to ‘live tweet’
Be funny or convey tone

There are 3rd party tools to help you make better use of hashtags.

You can monitor a hashtag to see tweets that contain it, this can be used to keep tabs on your brand reputation, your competitors, your industry trends etc. Examples of free programs you can set up hashtag feeds are Tweetdeck & Hootsuite.

You can check for the popularity of hashtags, letting you see how likely your tweet will be found. You’ll need to find a hashtag popular enough but not saturated; try RiteTag or Hashtagify.me for this.

Chameleon’s top tips:

Use an image in your tweets and 3 hashtags max. This will help extend reach without people ignoring it for looking spammy.
Use third-party tools to help your understanding of hashtags and monitor those relevant to your niche

Instagram

Another place hashtags are at home is on Instagram!

Instagram has a much meatier character limit of 2200, but it’s a visual platform – so just because they are available to be used doesn’t mean you need to use them all. Your image selection matters much more than your caption, as after all that’s all it is, a caption to give context to your image.

Hashtags on Instagram have the same purpose as they do on Twitter, for the ease of search as they group posts by topic. Many Instagram users spend the majority of their time on the platform searching hashtags to see the latest and greatest in whatever they’re interested in.

So you can express yourself more freely on Instagram – plus you can use up to 30 hashtags! Again, don’t feel the need to use 30 just because you can, make them relevant to the photo and your niche. Brands will tend to post their hashtags in a comment under their caption to keep them a bit more ‘out of the way’ of users.

You can also use popular for sharing – say you’re in Perth, WA and you post a great photo of Perth, you could tag #soperth or #perthisok as they are large accounts that re-post tagged content. Getting your post re-posted (called a regram) can really raise your profile on he platform. There are plenty of accounts that share curated content and you should look into this as part of your hashtag homework.

Similar tools exist for Instagram hashtags, but there’s not as much choice as with Twitter. Hashtagify.me is good for looking up Instagram hashtags and seeing which ones have been used in conjunction with the ones you are using.

As with Twitter it makes sense to use a hashtag for your company or product. Do a search first to make sure it’s unique.

[bctt tweet=”Research & use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo & your niche. Steer away from spammy ones like ‘instagood’ or ‘followme’ #instagram #hashtags” username=”carmalevene”]

Chameleon’s Top Tip: Research and use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo and your niche, and steer away from the spammy ones like #instagood #followme etc.

Facebook

Facebook was slow to embrace hashtags, it was never really considered a place where you would do a lot of searching. More commonly people use Facebook’s newsfeed to connect with their friends and family – not to research brands or topics.

You can use hashtags on Facebook and they do still serve the same purpose as the other platforms, however people are not as receptive to seeing them and studies show Facebook posts with hashtags receive lower engagement from users.

If you are going to use hashtags in your digital marketing you can use them on Facebook to keep consistency. I use them from time to time but always leave a line break between the copy of the post to make them more ‘ignore-able’ to users.

Chameleon’s Top Tip: If you are going to use hashtags on Facebook, limit it to 3 max and try to put them at the end of your post, not littered throughout as this will put hashtag haters off your post altogether.

Things to remember about hashtags

You can use hashtags on Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr as well. We’re not going to go into further details on those channels in this post – but if you do want to know more about them, leave us a comment, we’d be happy to help you!

Do some research on the channels you want to use for your business, find out if they are hashtag friendly and what the individual conventions are; one tag doesn’t fit all.

Here are some hashtag facts you might like to know:

Most platforms don’t allow spaces in hashtags (Tumblr is an exception)
Hashtags can’t contain punctuation
Spaces must be left between hashtags
Hashtags can be tracked for reach using third-party software
There are popular hashtags like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) you can search for ones that might apply to your niche

#FAIL

An article on hashtags would be negligent if it didn’t warn you about possible issues with choosing a hashtag. There have been many bad examples!

We’re just going to leave you with probably our favourite – which involved a well-intentioned but badly thought out launch party tweet for a Susan Boyle album.

The hashtag that was chosen made it sound like an entirely different party altogether!

Susan Album Party became:

#susanalbumparty

Which (if you are a little slower on the uptake, or have a very clean mind) became:

Sus Anal Bum Party

The Venn diagram intersection of people who would attend both these parties would be interesting!

If you’re keen on reading more of these fails, there are loads! You can check some of them out in this article. It’s important to learn from other’s mistakes!

Wrapping Up

Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! So with some quick research and a bit of care you can use hashtags to increase the reach of your content on Social Media and be found by more people looking for information about your industry.

[bctt tweet=”Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! #hashtags #socialmedia” username=”carmalevene”]

We’d love to hear from you!

Did this article help you understand more about what hashtags do and how to use them? Leave us a comment or swing by our socials.

March 17, 2016October 31, 2018

Instagram switches to an algorithmic newsfeed: why this is good news!

Instagram announced Tuesday that they would be introducing an algorithmic newsfeed. Sounds complicated. It probably is – for them; but for us users it’s not going to change how you use the platform much, if at all.

What it means is you’ll be going from a newsfeed of every post everyone you follow makes, to one more similar to Facebook’s – curated for you based on your activity.

Cue the complaining.

This has been an unpopular among users. Articles like this one from Pedestrian TV are everywhere! The #RIPinstagram hashtag was born – and widely used. But look at it from another perspective, this could be good news for the platform!

I think this is a great move, showing the platform’s ability to adapt and stay relevant in a fiercely competitive market. But let’s get to why people will THINK this is a bad idea, and it’s no mystery – they hate their Facebook newsfeed.

A friend of mine said to me recently “you get the newsfeed you deserve” and I completely agree! In fact, I couldn’t have said it better. If your Facebook newsfeed sucks – fix it! It’s easy. And before you go to close this article muttering that I must be delusional (or worse) let me tell you about my Facebook newsfeed.

Firstly: I have an advantage – I use Facebook for work; so it was really easy for me to justify cleaning up my newsfeed and training Facebook to show me things I’m interested in. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret before we get any further…

Facebook is the only Social Media platform that is so personal about how you use it, and by that I mean – on other platforms you are not obliged to be friends or follow people just because you know them! On all other platforms what you post is judged on its merit by (often) the general public. Unfollowing people is a regular thing, and no offence is (usually) meant by it.

But Facebook’s thought of differently. I must be friends with the people I know. I must not unfriend people. If I do HAVE to unfriend someone it’s going to be messy….only on this ONE platform. The others (Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram…) you follow people you are interested in seeing updates from!

Now that we have that revelation out of the way let’s proceed. My newsfeed; I AM HOOKED. Even as someone who is on Facebook 8+ hours a day I can not get enough! How is that possible?

I trained Facebook to show me things I’m interested in and they deliver me that content.

Let me explain.

Unfollow

You can unfollow people you still want to have as “friends” so that you don’t see their updates. If you have friends that post things that are of no interest to you, but you want to remain friends – unfollow them. Also that overly political friend during elections, or the person who’s updates throw you into a rage. UNFOLLOW, they’ll never know. You can still stalk their profile when you’re in the mood but you’ll be in control.

Unlike/See First

Facebook has been around for 12 years. Some of the stuff you liked, you might not like anymore. Unlike them. While you are doing a little page audit, the ones you do want to see more of – ask Facebook to show you their posts first. Hover over the like button and choose “see first” rather than default. These pages posts will be bumped into your newsfeed as they happen.

Maybe this feature will eventually roll out on Instagram too?

Interact

Facebook assumes you like the things you like. Seems simple. If you like the status of a girl you went to high school with – you’ll see more of her statuses. Choose to interact with the people you want to hear from on your newsfeed more frequently. And the ones you don’t want to see unfollow (as above) or just stop interacting with them.

If you ‘like’ pages and you actually like them, not felt obliged to like (your friends electrical business page) or a band you liked 10 years ago, interact with their content. Like their posts, comment, share, tag people, the more you perform these actions on their content the more likely you’ll see more from them in your newsfeed.

We can assume this same theory will apply to the Instagram algorithm.

Use Lists

I’m not sure this feature will come to Instagram, but it can be helpful on Facebook. You can list people and pages to give you a separate newsfeed of just the interest/people. For example, I have listed people I have met via work and not kept in touch with by the name of the workplace. If I wanted to see their updates, I would navigate to the list and there they would be. No need to have them in my main newsfeed.

With pages I have lists of client pages, and industries. I make industry lists of the clients I work with to keep track of current news in their niche – without it hitting my main newsfeed.

Groups

I’m part of some groups on Facebook, as many of you would be too. Some of them are very active, and to reduce notifications and newsfeed placements you can control what activities within the group Facebook will alert you to.

SO?

So – I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that my Facebook newsfeed has been carefully curated and shaped over time to give me the best experience from it. I recognise that this is not the case for most people, but why would you put up with something you don’t like when you can change it?

You can have the newsfeed you deserve!

Back to Instagram…

Anyhow – back to Instagram’s announcement.

They claim you currently only see 30% of posts – wouldn’t you want to make this count?

“You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”

Quintly did a study of 10,000 Instagram profile to discover that engagement rates and follower growth were in decline. Yep, already.

There are more users, meaning more competition in the newsfeed (many of them brands) plus the paid appearances that were opened up to the public last year, resulting in a crowded experience; and not everyone’s content is created equal.

Which brings me to my main point, you don’t need to see everything in chronological order!

Say your cousin posts 7 photos of their cat. Do you need to see all 7 of those photos in a row? Of course not. And yes, you could unfollow your cousin…I probably would.

What about interruptive brand messages or people who post terrible photos, or spam accounts? Should their content be ‘worth’ the same newsfeed space as people spending hours crafting the perfect post with the perfect image every time?

Are 7 photos of your cousin’s cat of more interest to you as say, one awesome National Geographic post?

Why would they be considered equal? And incidentally if you don’t follow National Geographic on Instagram, check them out.

Look at Twitter – without lists the newsfeed became so crowded and yet so devoid of value. Eventually Twitter adapted, but many say too late (I’m not convinced it’s completely irrelevant – yet) and they lost traction as a Social Media powerhouse. It’s too early to tell how or if the algorithmic newsfeed is going to work for them long-term, and to be fair they have some other challenges too.

A non-chronological, algorithmic newsfeed is the only way to go for Instagram. It’s full!

You can’t and won’t scroll for days. The great posts will be too few and far between. Something has to go, and it will be the stuff you don’t care about. And if it isn’t you can easily fix it by training it like I have done with my Facebook newsfeed.

Remember how much outrage there always was any time Facebook changed a major feature? The tantrums, the vows to quit Facebook flung about, and then: we got over it.

I can only remember one of the features we got upset about (changing to “timeline”) and there were loads more, they just aren’t memorable.

If we looked back at what Facebook was like when it came out we’d hardly recognise it! But we keep using it. The same will be true for Instagram. You never know, you might even like the changes…

What do you think? We’d love to hear your feedback! Is it #RIPinstagram or will we all get get used to the change?

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.