An advanced guide to social media marketing - by Simply Zesty

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2. Introduction
Social media’s importance means that it’s now an integral part of any social media
strategy. Due to its cheapness, immediacy and allowing brands to develop a
relationship with their consumers, doing social media well can certainly help you out in
the long run. It’s no longer enough to say that you have a Twitter or LinkedIn account,
you must be able to back it up with consistency and customer service.
But while we’re all savvy enough to know what Facebook and Twitter are, the finer
points like customer service on Twitter, video editing and marketing on YouTube,
company pages on LinkedIn, using Foursquare as a marketing tool and the rise of
Pinterest may elude you. With so many platforms out there and compelling reasons
to use them, it can be difficult to know which ones to choose and in one or two cases,
which ones to drop.
Chances are you already two or three different platforms to focus your efforts on
(unless you’re a larger company and have the luxury of a community manager)
and that’s a good thing. Taking on too many platforms will only result in a diluted
experience that won’t help your company or brand in the long-term.
While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the obvious choices, it may be worth looking
into other depending on your industry. An app like Instagram can help show off your
wares or communicate far more than a simple status update, Foursquare can be useful
if you’re looking to drum up extra business by offering deals and offers and YouTube
can offer a unique way of engaging with your audience.
The amount of time you can dedicate to it and the type of marketing you want to
engage in will determine which tools you will use to promote your business so consider
your options first before you decide to embrace a new platform on top of your existing
ones.
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3. Essential Social Stats & Facts That Brand
Marketers Should Consider
I
f there’s one thing that marketers are constantly craving for, it’s new stats
and facts to sink their teeth into. Knowledge is indeed power and with new
developments, research and products happening regularly it can be difficult
to keep up with them. One good place to keep up with this is at the major
conferences and events held around the world, where agencies, brands and companies
will always provide stats and figures. The Dublin Web Summit last week was no
exception so here are the major points to take away from the digital marketing stage,
with key facts presented as images.
Mark Dewings – Brand Communications At Soundcloud
Talking about the importance of sound and how its under-utilised as a medium,
Dewings mentioned that there is a discrepancy between how we consume and create
mediums. While creating images was popular thanks to the popularity of Instagram
and Camera+, others like sound and video recording was much lower, sharing similar
levels of creation and consumption
His main reasons for embracing sound were that it’s everywhere, it’s inherently practical
as it requires less digital memory, it’s less intrusive in comparison to other mediums as
it requires less effort to process as video requires more than one sense.
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4. Alan Coleman – Founder & CEO of Wolfgang Digital
On a talk about at the three most important innovations for marketing – retargeting
(promoting what the user already likes), analytics (finding out how many times people
visit your site before a sale is made) and interest (developing interest in consumers
through advanced ad targeting) – Coleman spoke about the wealth of options that
brands have to help amplify their marketing efforts.
One of which looking at the process between first visiting a site and purchasing a good
or product. Using some of the status gathered from Wolfgang Digital’s work, Coleman
showed how you could get specific details to help your retargeting campaign such as
average site visits per purchase and the number of different sites visited per purchase.
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5. Jan Rezab – Founder Of SocialBakers
Considering that stats are SocialBaker’s bread and butter, Jan Rezab based his talk
on understanding fans and the importance of engagement and consumer feedback.
Elaborating on Socialbakers’ ‘Socially Devoted’ concept that it introduced at Le
Web London, Rezab showed that while more brands were beginning to respond to
consumer queries, they were still a long way from achieving satisfactory levels (less
than 50% of questions on social media were responded to). However, in comparison to
2011 where only 5% of questions were answered, it’s has improved immensely
Hubert Grealish – Global Head of Brand Communications At Diageo
Talking about how the relationship between brands and customers has reversed,
Grealish talked about how consumers want a greater input into how brands work and
the power of getting them involved. Mentioning that 2/3 of people are influenced by
personal recommendations, he revealed that in a recent survey, 55% wanted to have
ongoing conversations with brands and 89% would feel more loyal if they were invited
to take part in a group.
What was particularly interesting was that out of the 89%, 41% wanted companies to
seek feedback from them and 37% said that they would like newer ways to interact
with brands via social media.
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6. Dharmesh Shah – Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot
Concentrating on how Google’s search engine works, Dharmesh Shah talked about
how PPC ads aren’t as good an investment as you think saying “you’re not buying
attention, you’re renting it.” Instead, what you should focus on is creating useful
content, clean design and fast websites as that’s what Google is actually looking for.
What you want to focus on is results and not rankings, as measuring how many leads
you get for your site is more important. He also stressed the importance of Google+,
saying that the important part is the part before the ‘+’ and how it’s playing a major
part for writers and journalists, highlighting their Google+ profile, the number of circles
they’re in and allowing you to see articles they’ve written.
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7. Omid Ashtari – Director Of Business Development At Foursquare
Although the major status Ashtari provided aren’t anything new, they’re still
significant enough to be repeated again. With over 25 million users globally and one
million businesses registered, the service has registered over 2.5 billion check-ins at
40 million venues.
However, Ashtari’s talk focused on case studies where Foursquare was used in an
innovative manner such as the London 2012 olympics where Foursquare became an
unofficial events guide, showing visitors where to visit, where all the events were being
held and ran badge competitions to encourage checkins. Another example was the
weather channel where your first check-in of the day triggered a weather report filled
with images and global news.
Mobile – It’s 1999 All Over Again
Our very own Niall Harbison decided to speak about mobile for his presentation. He
showed how the transition from desktop and personal computers to mobile devices
is having an effect on the biggest companies like Google and Facebook as well as
hurting traditional media companies.
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8. It is no longer good enough just to have a mobile version of your website and big
companies like Nokia and Blackberry have been caught out and will probably die
because of the emergence of iOS and Android. The companies and brands who are
going to win big are those who bet big on mobile and who start embracing while
others are still asleep.
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9. Mobile Advertising – How The Big Social Networks
Are Adapting
M
obile advertising is experiencing an odd growth rate at the moment.
While smartphone penetration continues to rise worldwide, and even
across lower-spending markets, the rate at which companies are picking
up on this isn’t quite matching. Looking at recent figures, consumer
interest in mobile is far outweighing the spend made by brands in advertising:
So why the disparity? First, it is still an incredibly new medium. We don’t quite yet
know how consumers will react to advertising via mobile, or how much time we can
reasonably expect them to spend with an ad. Secondly, it is a much less open market
than say, social media advertising, where many sites now have open ad platforms
allowing brands to set up and manage their own campaigns.
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10. While Facebook is making some movement in this, for example by allowing brands to
target ads to mobile users, this is currently only available within Power Editor, which
is not something immediately open for all advertisers, but rather conserved for those
with larger budgets.
And just as we saw with social network marketing or advertising, mobile is currently at
the stage where it is still very much an afterthought. A case of ticking the box to allow
your ads to show on mobile, without really thinking about what type of ad will work,
which format it should be in, and what the overall strategy for a mobile ad campaign
should be. This is understandable, given how new the concept is.
Image via The Alantic
However, some brands are making real inroads with smart mobile ad campaigns
that are sympathetic of the medium they’re operating in. We’ve shared some of the
best ones below, along with some compelling stats to show why mobile advertising
deserves its place on your marketing campaign.
Types of Mobile Advertising
Banner Ads
The most common example of mobile advertising out there, if you’re a smartphone
user, the chances that you have already seen this type of ad is quite high, While
they served a purpose on desktop, banner ads are starting to fall out of favour with
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11. advertisers as users begin to ignore them and marketers are looking at different ways
to engage users. While they mostly feature on free apps, most of these apps have a
paid version which gets rid of these ads. The cheap nature of banner ads means that
they won’t be disappearing any time soon, but as smartphone users start expecting
more, marketing strategies will have to change to reflect this.
Augmented Reality
Definitely the area that will see a lot of growth over the next few years, Augmented
Reality (AR) is where computer-generated graphics or animations are added on top of
a view of your real-world environment. The rise of companies such as Blippar is paving
the way for how AR is used to market
and promote brands and products.
While AR is the most expensive
advertising format here, the potential
and the opportunities provided
are massive. Its functions could
range from providing additional
information about goods or services,
or superimposing items in your home
to see how they would fit in. Its use
is growing and the fact that it has yet
to hit mainstream use means that its
going to become more popular as
usage grows.
Apps
Quickly becoming a very crowded market, apps have become the lifeblood of
smartphones with a platform’s success or failure depending upon it. It’s no longer
enough to just release an app and expect it to perform well, to get people to
download it, you need to produce something special.
Also, while people are spending more and more time on apps – sometimes more than
they would spend surfing the Web – the majority of this time is spent on gaming apps,
which would take up more time.
Currently, having an
app is the same thing
as having a Facebook
or Twitter page, so if
you decide to release
one, you need to
make sure the quality
is and have a decent
marketing campaign
behind it so that
people will download
it.
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12. NFC
Near Field Communications (NFC) is another
emerging area in mobile marketing. The best way
to understand it is that it functions like a ‘mobile
wallet’ and a large number of smartphones come
with this technology pre-installed.
Its most popular use is paying for goods by
simply taking out your phone and tapping/
swiping it at the checkout, for contactless payment. Services like Google Wallet are
leading the charge with numerous other competitors releasing their own versions over
the coming months.
QR Codes
Although they’ve gotten a bad
rep as of late, quick response
(QR) codes are a great way of
providing content to smartphone
users in a direct manner. Basically,
QR codes work in the same way
as bar codes, except these can
be scanned on your smartphone
through a specialised app.
The QR code acts as a visual URL
which takes the use to a particular address when they scan it. While the majority tend
to direct people towards a webpage, those with a little more imagination would use it
to provide special offers or link to different videos which show off their new products.
Also, other apps like Kuapay generate QR codes which you use to pay for goods, so
there are other uses for it beyond linking to different URLs.
There is a large number of QR code generators out there, but remember that for most
generators, you’re not able to change the URL once you create one.
Tagging
Working on the same principal as QR
codes, tagging is slowly becoming
more popular with marketers as it
provides a more seamless process.
Instead of scanning a code or
typing in a URL, tagging apps like
Kooaba work by holding your
smartphone’s camera over an icon,
like in a newspaper or magazine, and
you’ll be automatically directed to
whatever content is linked.
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13. Social Media & Mobile Advertising
The problem that all of the social networks face at the moment is that an increasing
amount of their users are using their services on mobile devices rather than on the
desktop where it is easier to show more ads. This is one of the main reasons why
Facebook’s share price has been struggling whereas Twitter, which is more of a mobile
play, seems to be having great early success with its mobile ads. Here are some of the
formats that are being used by the big guys.
Facebook
Facebook’s problem is complicated. Its mobile
sites and apps are starting to see huge amount
of usage, but they simply can’t serve as many
ads on small screens as they can on larger
devices. Last week’s overhaul of the Facebook
app does mean that more sponsored stories
are starting to appear in the newsfeed and the
design is done in such a way that you would
hardly know they are even ads.
There is also no doubt that Facebook’s
next revenue stream will involve pushing
app distribution through its new app store.
They are promoting it heavily through the
log in screen on the desktop and they
have 150 million people using it already.
If you think about it, people are most
likely to download apps when on their
phone so Facebook will no doubt be
offering developers and publishers a way
of securing downloads through ads in the
newsfeed.
Mobile app developers have the chance to
run their ads on prime real estate on devices
and given that six of the top ten apps in the
iOS app store use Facebook login, you can
see the huge potential here.
The beauty of these ads is that given how
much information Facebook has about its
users, apps developers can target their ads
based on demographics and user interests.
This is still very much in a test phase, but
these ads will continue to grow and become
the default way to distribute apps soon.
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14. Twitter
Twitter has a huge advantage over other social networks because most people
primarily use the service on their phone or on tablet devices. It will also make a lot of
money on the desktop, but it doesn’t have the same challenges that Facebook has in
terms of moving their revenues over to mobile. Over the past year, it has been busy
shutting down their API to other developers because it knows that it needs to control
everything in their ecosystem in order to increase revenue from ads. Word on the
street is that Twitter ads are massively
engaging and are seeing massive click
through rates. The first type of ads are
pretty harmless because they just allow
you to pay to be suggested users.
Where it
starts to get
a little more
interesting
is when
Twitter puts
in sponsored
tweets into the main feed. These are still being tested on a
very small level as it essentially changes the entire Twitter
experience and puts paid content into your feed. That is a
big step and one that Twitter is taking slowly. One or two
ads a day are fine, but what happens when they open it
up to a much bigger and wider market with a self-service
option? Chaos?
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15. You can also target ads
at people based on the
mobile device they are
accessing Twitter via and
that makes for some
interesting marketing
options especially when it
comes to app downloads.
Foursquare
Considering the data Foursquare has at its disposal, it was inevitable that it would
introduce its own ads. Similar to Facebook, these ads are coming in the form of
“promoted updates,” messages that are presented to users who are within the vicinity
of a business, store or restaurant. These updates will be found in the ‘explore’ tab and
are tailored towards the likes and interests of each user. Currently, the new format is
being tested with a small number of companies, but when it’s released for general use,
businesses and brands will pay Foursquare on a ‘cost per action’ model.
The other method Foursquare used to advertise goods is ‘local updates,’ which is free
and only appears to those users who have either ‘liked’ a venue or have checked-
in a number of times. This is more to reward loyal customers and only appear when
somebody checks-in to a business or looks at the app’s ‘Friends’ tab.
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16. Mobile Campaigns
KFC
Earlier this year, KFC utilised a variety of mobile
apps and channels to promote its chunky chicken
pot pie. The campaign had a 1970s funk flavour to
it and a Pandora radio station dedicated to only the
grooviest hits was created to entice customers. QR
codes were also displayed on the side of KFC cups;
they led customers on to additional content and
gave them the opportunity to enter a sweepstakes
giveaway.This campaign had a winning humour
at its centre that’s easy-going and helpful when
engaging with potential customers. It was multi-
faceted and takes advantage of many platforms so
as not to be one-dimensional or easily discarded.
Uber
This amazing campaign for limousine
rental app Uber ingeniously incorporated
a great product, with mobile savvy
and, of course, ice-cream. Instead of
using the app to arrange a limousine
pickup, users in seven North American
cities used the app to call an ice-cream
truck to a location of their choosing
and were encouraged to use the
#OMGUBERICECREAM hashtag. A
really novel way to advertise a great if
impractical app that spread like wildfire because of how unique it was. It stands out because
it offered something different and fun, while requiring very little from excited users.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures and the movie
industry have been keen to use mobile
advertising to hit key demographics.
Famously, cinemas are populated with
mobiles and social media-inclined
teenagers who would be susceptible
to such advertising. Universal were
more than happy to promote the
Kristen Stewart-starring Snow White &
the Huntsmanthrough mobile devices
and across a number of social media
platforms, incorporating Facebook,
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17. Twitter and Pinterest into their marketing strategy. Quite simply, upon tapping the
ad, interested users would be redirected to the Snow White page, where they could
view trailers and browse photo galleries and buy tickets to screenings of the film,
among other things. It obviously worked, as the film was one of the surprise hits of the
summer, outstripping the likes of Prometheus and Battleship at the box-office.
Target
For Christmas 2010, American megastore chain Target
introduced its iAd, which functioned as both an ad and an
inset ad, featuring on large apps such as that of the New
York Times. If users didn’t engage, it would still function
as a static ad, promoting the chain to discerning users of
popular apps, but they also had the option to click and be
taken to the “Merrymaker” gifting app.Essentially a full-
page interactive ad, the Merrymaker presented users with
gift ideas for the holiday season and general tips to help
them cope with the demands of Christmas or on how to
make their Christmas a little more festive. A clever and
malleable campaign.
Coca-Cola
The soft drinks giant is no stranger to
expense and innovation in advertising,
and the Freestyle app and corresponding
vending machines, launched in 2009,
prove as such. The freestyle app is laded
with games and tasks that encourage
socialisation and sharing on social media,
but the app also works as a remote control
for vending machines spread around major
American cities.
Big whoop, right? Wrong. These weren’t any
old vending machines. These vending machines contained over 100 drinks and allowed
users the chance to create their own cocktail of said drinks if they so pleased. Over the
top, fresh and, with 41,000 interactions to its credit, clearly doing something right.
Glamour Magazine
Last September’s print issue of Glamour
magazine had digital content and
interactive competitions, thanks to the
work of the fine folks at SpyderLink. The
magazine captured over 100,000 users
for its app by using mobile barcodes.
The scans allowed advertisers to gather
data from smartphone users and led the
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18. users to exclusive content; the move led to an 18% increase in Glamour ‘s Facebook fans.
By taking pictures of the links and sharing them, users could also unlock gift coupons
and other discounts online. A smart way of incorporating mobile users and guiding
them to both online content and to advertisers. This isn’t the first time Glamour has
incorporated SpyderLink into their campaigns. They also used it for its Taxi Shops
campaign to help promote their Fashion Week back in February 2012.
American Express
American Express teamed with mobile
developers Zumobi in a bid to bolster,
diversify and prove their mobile advertising.
Its aim was to create a more personalised
experience for their users, while also
incorporating video, social media and user-
generated content. Users sync their cards with
social media apps to learn the latest offers
on products that they would find intriguing
or essential and have the ability to view other people’s profiles as well as share their
purchases and what not. It’s an app that uses the social aspect to power consumer
demand and sustain spending.
Heineken
Heineken developed the StarPlayer
gaming app in time for the 2010-
2011 Champions League final. Fans,
of course, access their mobiles to
interact and chat with absent friends
and followers about the game they’re
watching, so Heineken were aiming
to tap into this in-built audience as
one of the competitions main, most
visible sponsors. The app would ask
in-game questions about statistics
and ask users to give their opinions on the game as it progressed, and it certainly paid of
for the famed lager company.
Axe (Lynx)
The deodorant kingpins created a fun little game for its
users, that played to its male demographic and gave
them a little puzzle to solve. Supplemented by a print ad
that sent users to this mobile app, Axe beckoned its fans
to complete a picture of a young woman who wasn’t
wearing much of anything. It’s a clever and titillating ad
that played directly to the core demographic in a cheeky
manner and promoted the brand extremely well.
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19. Starbucks
Finally, coffee giants Starbucks created a very
useful, everyday app for its customers that both
promoted their product and made it easier for
customers to acquire it. 6,800 Starbucks outlets
were equipped to handle mobile payments from
customers using the Starbucks app; it allowed
user to pay via PayPal/credit card and rewarded
them with offers. They simply scan their phone
at the register and avoid any hassle, fiddling for change in their wallets etc. The app made
payment more efficient and increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty with over
three million users as of June 2011. Google, for once, had been caught napping and are now
looking to implement the innovative 2-D code scanner that Starbucks used to power this
great time-saver. The company has expanded its mobile payment services by teaming up
with Square, which will see its services featuring in 7,000 U.S. stores along with investing $25
million in the company.
Future Trends
Despite the rapid advancements made in the mobile sector, there is still a long way
to go before it becomes the core of any marketing strategy. While it’s safe to say that
mobile advertising is the future, here are a few areas which will be improved over the
coming years.
Improved relevance, behavioural targeting
One of the benefits of mobile is that it’s portable and with location services growing
in popularity, it’s easier than ever to know where your audience is. More importantly,
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20. you can find out when they’re in the vicinity and will be handy for fixed business and
brands like cafes and restaurants.
But alongside that, marketers will be able to target ads based on location, time and
their behaviour. Apps like Foursquare has already done the latter by using the data
from check-ins to display relevant ads and updates that would interest specific users.
The next few years will see a substantial improvement in these services and what
results they can generate.
Increased focus on interactivity
Currently, the majority of ads are either banner or text, presentable but give you little
reason to click on them. As consumers become more accustomed to the capabilities
provided by smartphones, the hunger for more interactive means of advertising will
increase. Further down the line, users will have grown accustomed to AR, interactive
ads that encourage you to participate and media rich ads that incorporate video and
audio into their message.
There are some examples of interactive ads out there, but the majority require you to
download an app to experience them. Future advertising campaigns will bypass this
requirement, allowing users to jump into the experience immediately.
Mobile search
Tying into the concept of geo-location services, mobile search will continue to be a
major source of revenue for Google and with the possible inclusion of social and other
services like Google Now and Siri, these ads could be even more focused than before.
Measuring ad performance
Currently, we measure the success of ads on a CPM or cost per click basis, but the
terms we use to measure the success of desktop ads doesn’t necessarily mean a
perfect fit for measuring mobile ads. Analysing the success of mobile campaigns is
currently a problem as not everyone has access to the necessary tools to successfully
measure these ads. In future, companies and brands will have developed a much better
idea about measuring mobile ads and the analytic tools available will have improved to
reflect this.
Infographic Sources
- http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1009228
- http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/170935/mobile-growth-influenced-
by-clicks-on-paid-search.html
- http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1726614
- http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3077792/apple-wwdc-2012-stats-ios-mac-
growth
- http://yourstory.in/2012/06/google-play-quick-stats-key-takeaways-google-io-2012/
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21. The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Advertising
W
ith advertising budgets for more expensive media being gradually
reduced, we’re consistently seeing positive figures for the rise in online
advertising, with some reporting a 17.2% increase from 2011 to 2012.
Increasingly, the trend is to allocate this ad spend on a niche basis by
focusing on the relevant social network. Facebook set the trend here by making a self-
serve ad system available to marketers, with no minimum spend required – similar to
the way in which Google Adwords functions.
Other sites have now followed suit like LinkedIn, and Twitter is ultimately heading
that way, albeit whilst dragging their feet towards making it completely open for
advertisers. For brands and marketers, this represents a whole new approach to
advertising: Ultimately it’s more trackable, has improved targeting options and has
improved analytics. There are also many untapped opportunities, most notable in
mobile advertising. Facebook’s problems with this are well documented, with Twitter
more capable of adapting their existing ad system for mobile users.
As more advertisers turn towards social advertising, costs are evidently rising, but by
looking outside of the big player of Facebook, you can run targeted ad campaigns that
get you in front of the right audience as a part of their social experience as opposed to
interrupting it.
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22. Facebook Advertising
When it comes to social advertising, Facebook is obviously the biggest platform to
use. It has an incredible amount of information on how to use the platform as well as
case studies and tips that you can avail of. The fact that they collect so much personal
data allows you to target ads precisely, which can help drive excellent results if used
correctly. Here are some of their excellent resources.
Facebook Marketing Page
As you would expect, there is a Facebook page dedicated
to tips, tricks and info about the Facebook marketing
platform. It is a good place to stay on top of all the latest
trends on pages and advertising.
Facebook Offers
A brand new offering from Facebook and only in the
process of being rolled out at the moment. Offers are seen as one of the main ways
in which brands and small businesses will be able to generate real revenue through
Facebook.
Learning Lab
This is the hub from Facebook that has tons of tips, tricks, case studies and other
information about the advertising platform. You can also find some of the best creative
campaigns and practical learning tools here to help you get the most out of the
platform.
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23. Twitter Advertising
Although it doesn’t generate the same amounts of revenue as Facebook, Twitter is
quietly emerging with its own business model that is perfectly suited to mobile. While
Facebook has had problems with this area, Twitter’s core function means that it’s
perfectly suited for mobile advertising. That said, the company is experimenting with a
number of different advertising models, the main ones listed here.
Promoted Tweets, Accounts and Hashtags
Brands use promoted tweets to spread awareness among Twitter users. They are
suggested to tweeters when they search specific terms on Twitter; the tweet in
question will then appear at the top of the page. Targeted users may also be the
friends of a brand’s Twitter followers; such people are targeted in the hopes that the
promoted tweet will spark conversation between the friends and thus influence their
friends and followers, further spreading the brand’s message.
There is a purpose to this method of stealth advertisement, however. Advertisers can
choose to make their tweets specific to a particular device (iOS, Blackberry etc.) or
a particular geographic area, depending on where are whom they want to promote
to. The promoted accounts feature is now also being exploited by advertisers in their
attempts to gain followers and online popularity.
Twitter’s accounts recommendation engine, ‘Who to Follow,’ will promote brand
accounts to users they believe are most likely to follow said account, on the basis of
their similar interests and Twitter activity.
It is much the same deal with promoted hashtags, which will be shown at the top of
a users trends list. Hashtags are, of course, more liable to spread and be picked up
on by other users, though there is less of a guarantee that influenced users will follow
the brand that is promoting the hashtag. The success of these methods can be easily
followed and charted with the use of Twitter analytics. The analytics feature will monitor
user trends and timeline activity that has been inspired by promotional efforts.
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24. Age Filter
Twitter recently introduced a new feature called Age Screening. This filter will aid more
age-discerning brands (specifically companies promoting alcoholic brands) to target
a specific age group as well as to weed out Twitter users who are too young to be
buying their products and such.
Age Screening determines whether any new follower is old enough to be compliant
relevant industry or legal age guidelines. However, the technology is far from foolproof.
Upon following such a brand, a user will be sent a direct message linking them to age.
twitter.com, where they will be asked to give their birth date. The age is not shared
with the brand, but it is surely very simple to lie about your age on the internet.
While this isn’t necessarily an advertising related development, the possibility of it
being included with targeted advertising, which Twitter recently introduced, could give
it more data to work from and provide users with more targeted ads.
Self-Service Advertising
Twitter introduced new methods for small businesses to amplify their Tweeters and
exponentially increase their reach in February. When it first began, Twitter teamed up
with American Express – and all businesses using American Express – where the first
10,000 cardholders were allowed $100 of free advertising on Twitter.
Twitter also offers promoted tweets and accounts to small business owners. They do not
pay to have their accounts/tweet advertised, instead it’s when users engage (i.e. follow,
reply retweet etc) do they pay a fee to Twitter, but it’s good value for money. Twitter
will, of course, target users who are likely to have an interest in their business and will
promote the business in question at the right time of day so as to engage as many
people as possible.
Business owners can put a cap on how much they are willing to spend, so they do
not end up with a nasty shock once they become overwhelmingly popular, and they
can also direct Twitter to promote them in certain geographic areas, much as a larger
business can, as well as across the web and mobile devices.
Such self-service advertising is very helpful and allows small businesses using Twitter to
get off the ground without having to incur a large expense to begin with.
24

25. LinkedIn Advertising
Compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn doesn’t focus as much on ads nor does
it offer any major differences in how you advertise. However, despite this limitation,
the site does offer greater opportunities for B2B companies due to its focus on
professionals and is, therefore, a much better suit.
The reason it works so well is because, like Facebook, LinkedIn lets you target specific
demographics like a particular industry, location and seniority and age. Therefore,
it’s perfect for any companies or people focusing on B2B. While Facebook does have
GlassDoor, it targets demographics based on their likes and interests.
When you log in, you will find that ads appear in two different places. The main ads
appear at the side of the page, consisting of a 25 character heading, a 75 character
description, the company name, an image and a URL. The second place ads appear
is just underneath the main toolbar where it is a text only ad. Depending on your ad’s
performance, it may be shown here.You can choose to pay LinkedIn either by CPM
(cost per 1,000 impressions) or by CPC (cost per click), the latter is more expensive, but
better if you’re more focused on generating leads. If you’re in any way familiar with
Google AdWords, you will know what to expect here. Each click will cost between $2
(the minimum CPC) and your bid.
The main thing you need to focus on is creating a strong ad that will appeal to those
demographics you’re targeting. First, make sure your heading and description are
eye-catching and effective. As you only have 25 and 75 characters to work from, every
word counts. Be specific in what you’re advertising as people won’t respond to general
statements and include a strong call to action that’s tailored towards your company3
like “get a free quote”, “download now” or “free trial.” LinkedIn itself provides a number
of tips and guides to improve the success rate of your ads on its site.
Also, remember that you can promote LinkedIn company pages and groups through
ads if you want to direct users towards them instead. Amassing extra followers can be
beneficial if you have a company page as you are able to send out targeted updates.
25

26. Foursquare
Advertising
Foursquare is a bit of an oddity
as while there’s a number
of ways for a business to
advertise, it recently started
rolling out paid ads for brands.
Since it’s a location based app,
most of your audience is going
to be local and so your deals
and offers should reflect this.
We covered Foursquare as a
marketing tool recently (which
you can read here) so we won’t
waste too much time covering this topic. To give a brief summary, the two main ways
to advertise is through local updates and promoted updates. The former are available
to those who liked your venue or have checked-in a number of times, while the latter
are paid ads, allowing users to discover new places and deals to those near the vicinity.
Also, merchant pages and brand pages come into play when advertising any deals or
offers, which has primarily been the way merchants advertised their deals on the app.
Infographic Sources
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577408481688851336.html
- http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/03/stats-facebook-made-9-51-in-ad-revenue-per-
user-last-year-in-the-u-s-and-canada/
- http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-mobile-ad-revenue-500k-per-day-2012-7
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-01/twitter-said-to-expect-1-billion-in-
sales-in-2014-on-ad-growth.html
- http://marketingland.com/twitter-60-percent-of-users-access-via-mobile-13626
- http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-q2-ad-revenue-hits-63-million-2012-8
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/twitter-ad-sales-to-rise-to-540-million-
in-2014-emarketer-says.html
26

27. 10 Innovative Ways To Get More Out Of Facebook
For Your Business
F
acebook pages are a crucial part of the marketing mix for businesses these
days but with the platform and features changing on a near weekly basis it
can be hard to get the best out of them and many people are surprised at
their options available to them. We decided to put together 10 simple tips
that can help you to manage your page more effectively. Some are simple 2 minute
changes that you can work in to your schedule while others will take some learning
and getting used to but they’ll drastically improve how you use the platform. We
have a decent focus on mobile given how much importance Facebook themselves are
putting on that channel. Get used to these 10 tips and you won’t be saying Facebook
pages are as restrictive as you thought they once were…
Drive Revenue Through Facebook Offers
This is still a pretty new feature but one that is starting to drive very real revenues for
businesses who are using Facebook effectively. The idea is that you can post any type
of offer that can be used either online or in the real world and the fact that the offers
can spread virally via the news feed can give you great distribution. If you have a large
enough community of people who like your page that can be enough to get your offer
kick started but you may also need to lean on Facebook’s advertising platform to help
get the word out about the offer. This is one of the first ways that Facebook business
page owners have had of driving physical sales in the real world and the early word on
the street is very good.
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28. Use Advanced Targeting For Updates
Until recently you could only send out status updates to people based on their
location or language but Facebook have improved that targeting and now give you
nearly as many options when sending out a regular update as they do when you are
using their advertising tool. You might not want to target every single update but
we have seen a huge improvement in engagement levels when you start targeting
updates at specific groups of people based on their interests. This tool is going to be
most useful for people with much larger fan bases that can be segmented down in to
specific niche groups without annoying all likes with one generic update.
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29. Use Facebook Groups For Internal Communication
Facebook groups are one of the most underused items on Facebook and they offer a
great way of improving information flow within a company. Given that most of your
employees are probably already on Facebook and they are increasingly spending a
large portion of their day there it is a great way to get your company talking to each
other using the tools that they already know. If the group is set up correctly you can
lock the group down so as only people within the company see updates and other
content. Use groups for feedback, questions, social events and anything else company
related. Internal communication is just as important these days as anything else so
groups are a great way of improving that on an existing platform that people know
rather than getting them all to embrace something new.
Use The Facebook Pages App
The Facebook pages app is a wonderful addition that
allows you to manage multiple pages through the one
app rather than having to fire up the main Facebook
app which is designed for personal use. The app will
allow you to publish updates, share photos and engage
with your community while on the go. You can also drill
down in to your analytics to see what your fan base
growth and engagement levels are like while out and
about. You’ll probably still want to do most of your
updates, scheduling and engagement on the main site
on a desktop as it is quicker but you have a very real
alternative on mobile devices now.
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30. Reposition Photos After Posting
You’ll often post a photo update to your business page only to realize afterwards when
you see it in the newsfeed that you have it totally wrong. The good news is that you
can actually go in and edit the photo again and reposition it after you have posted
without disrupting the original update.
Block Competitors Names With Moderation Blacklist
Large brands and businesses probably don’t want people talking about their
competitors or other specific terms on their Facebook business page and the good
news is that you can set up a moderation blacklist to block certain words. All you have
to do is head in to the backend of the page and you can type all the words that you
don’t want to see appear on the page. This could be competitors, rude words, specific
products or anything else that you don’t want to have appearing on the site.
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31. Turn Off The Ability For People To Message
The Page
While it is great to give people the opportunity to
send the page private messages we find that with
large pages the volume of private messages can get
pretty high and some business pages simply don’t have
the resources to manage all the replies. Now private
messages might be a great way for some large brands
to manage customer service in a more discrete way
but some pages might just be happy to turn them
off altogether and not deal with the extra volume of
queries. You can head in to Edit Page >> Manage
Permissions >> untick “Show “Message”
Comment On Third Party Websites Using Your Business Page
Identity
Facebook comments are starting to pop up all over the web on websites who are using
them as a way of improving their current commenting system and avoiding spam.
While the vast majority of people leave comments using their personal profiles you do
have the ability to leave comments as your business page as well. This is a great way of
signposting your own page and getting people to click on your logo to find out more
about you. The key here is to leave high quality comments that rise to the top (The
comments with the most likes go to the top of the pile) rather than just spamming lots
of pages to create links. If somebody sees what you are writing, thinks you know what
you are talking about and generally likes what you are saying there is a very good
chance they will then go on and like your page.
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32. Install Facebook’s Power Editor – Match Your Existing Database
With Facebook Users
Power editor is a relatively new tool that completely changes the way people use
Facebook’s advertising tools and although it has been mainly used by large tech
advertisers, agencies and brands to date it is something that anybody can get their
hands on. You can now do really smart things like import your existing email marketing
lists and telephone numbers and match them up to people who are on Facebook
who like your page. You can also run much more advanced mobile ads and generally
customize your ads in a way that you never could on the traditional Facebook
advertising interface. Everybody we talk to is seeing huge success through this tool
and the good news is that it is getting better all the time.
Export Your Insights For Deeper Stats Analysis
Lets be brutally honest about things and say that Facebook insights just don’t offer the
way to slice and digest the data as effectively as we all would like. It feels like a work
in progress and not the finished article like say a Google Analytics. Although they are
clearly improving it all the time you can actually go in and download all the data from
your various pages and export it in to Excel with a couple of simple clicks. We find that
when using the data in something like Excel (or the other program of your choosing)
you can manipulate the data and engage with it in a much more meaningful way to
start to spot trends on your page. It will take a good bit more time but if you want
better results across the board download your data and start playing with it.
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33. How To Make $10,000 From Adsense In 20 Days
Using A Single Blog Post And Facebook
S
o we write this blog to share the latest marketing trends and social media news
from around the world. It is in no way our core business although because the
levels of traffic that it starting delivering last year were so high we decided to
start adding some simple ads around the content. They don’t bring in much
revenue but they do allow us to hire a full time writer and pay all the hosting charges
etc. We do write some posts that get tons of traffic though and I wanted to highlight one
such post that brought in over €10,000 in revenue in less than 20 days.
It happened last November and this post is a mini case study on some of the things that
made it spread and why it was able to bring in so much revenue in a short period of
time.This won’t work for you every time but there are lessons in here that you can use to
help grow individual posts and start creating new revenue streams from your blog.
The 20 Day Revenue
I wanted to focus on one piece of content that really took off. It was one single blog
post that contained a viral video and which was made for sharing. People would watch
it and find it so good that they would instantly share it with their friends. As you can
see the revenue took off immediately (from a base of about €150 a day at the time)
and accelerated as the sharing on Facebook picked up.
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34. The following chart shows the revenue broken down by day with most days bringing in
€300 and the top day driving €1000 in revenue. The average revenue per day was €500
and the €10,000 mark was hit in less than 20 days.
Platforms
Although the vast majority of the revenue is coming from the desktop you can see that
people are still starting to click on the ads on both mobile and tablets. This pace has
also been accelerated over the last year and the percentage accessing via mobile and
tablets has already increased more since then.
Countries
As always the big 6 or 7 English speaking countries were the most effective when it
came to driving large volumes of clicks and a higher cost per click. The vast majority of
the traffic came from the USA with nearly 6 times more revenue than the next revenue
source.
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35. Find Content That People Are Already Sharing
If you want people to share your content
the best bet is to find content that people
already like. Why rely on your own
judgement when you can look at the
popular sites out there that let users vote
on the best videos or content. You could
start by looking here, here, or here. Find a
piece of content that is about to break in to
the big time but that not many people have
seen yet. People won’t share something
that has been covered in loads of places but they will share something amazing that
they don’t think anybody has seen yet. Look for little things like the amount of thumbs
up people are giving a video on Youtube as indications of how much they will share it
from your blog.
Facebook Sharing
The vast majority of the traffic to this post
came via Facebook. As you can see from
the image below the post has been shared
over 20,000 times already and the sharing
from other social networks is also strong.
All of these shares are starting to count in
search results now as well (especially +1s
from Google) so they are telling Google
that this is an “important” piece of content.
The post itself was viewed over a million
times because of the amount of shares it
had. If you think that everybody has a few hundred friends on Facebook and you times
that by 20,000 shares you can see where the volume of traffic is mostly coming from.
Advertise
If Facebook and other social networks can help you grow
your traffic and revenue organically why not give them a
little push to get it all started. Facebook have some great
ad tools that can help your content start to spread and
grow it’s own legs. You won’t want to do this every single
time but as soon as you have a piece of content that looks
like it is going to get shared a lot why not push it with
some ads. The first type of ad is an ad that is targeted at
the people who already like your page. They won’t all see
your content by default (because of Facebook’s edgerank
formula) but you can pay for them all to see it. The logic
here is that if they already like your page there is a good
chance they will share or like your content.
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36. After you have targeted your own Facebook page and the
people who like it you will want to create some precise
targeting ads to go after the wider population. The key here
is that you are driving people to the URL in question. Using
the precise targeting on Facebook I’ve shown the example
here of people who have indicated that they like beer and
targeted them with a picture of an ice cold bottle of beer
and some copy prompting them to click on the image.
You’ll also notice that I have
gone after the countries that
are performing best in terms
of clicks on Adsense and
delivering the best resturn on budget. There will be a
number of campaigns that you can run depending on
the content of your post but here is another example of
a target market that would be very likely to share the
content about the bikers in the cinema…
What is really important to realize here is that one person
clicking on your ad and looking at the content is never
going to be enough. You need that person to find the
content so relevant and funny that they want to share it
with all their friends and drive them to your blog. This stage will take a lot of refining to
figure out what works and what is the cheapest way of getting them there. You might
also be able to use ads on other networks but I always stick to Facebook given their
precise interest targeting.
Flick The Ads On Aggressively
Once you have the critical mass of people coming to the post it is then time to start
placing the ads more aggressively on the post. Bear in mind that this post only took
off about 2 weeks after it was actually posted so this doesn’t happen overnight. We
don’t want to annoy
our regular readers
with aggressive ads
(they are normally
tucked away in the
sidebar far away from
the content) but when
a post is getting this
much traction you are
leaving money on the
table by not placing
ads within the content.
The chances are that
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37. 99% of your regular readers will already have seen this on the day that it was posted
and most of the people coming from all over the world are not our normal readers. We
placed 4 sets of ads all around the content as soon as we started to see the spike in
traffic. People were there to see the video but many would have clicked on the ads.
Ongoing Revenue
These posts won’t come along every single day but when you get one you should
make the most out of it. Leave the ads on the post and add any social media buttons
or plugins that you want to push. With 10s of thousands of people visiting the page the
post jumps up the rankings and people now searching for terms like “Carlsberg video”
will arrive on our blog and possibly click on the ads.
It becomes a bit of a virtual circle with more people liking the page, sharing it,
commenting and pushing it up the rankings. It will never continue to drive the same
revenues as it did during the peak but there will always be a certain amount of sharing
and people finding it through the search engines. Create 10-12 of these posts and you
have a nice little long term revenue stream there for the future.
Summary
Find a piece of content that is amazing and that nobody has shared that much.
Something like the video above before it has actually hit the big time. Embed it in to
your blog and give it a push using social ads to some targeted people who are likely
to share it. Make sure the social buttons are visible for people to push it to their friends
and then when it does take off place ads on to the post. It isn’t always going to work
but you give yourself a good chance by doing all the things above. I will say that when
it does work there is no better feeling as all the hard work is done for you and the
people sharing it drive all the revenue for you. Try it out, see how you get on and share
any tips here that you might have.
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38. 50 Innovative Ways To Use Twitter More Effectively
W
ith over 170 million active users and playing a significant role in media
consumption, Twitter has turned into the go-to site for real-time
updates and gathering snippets of info from those we’re interested in.
Pretty much everyone knows how to put a tweet together and how to
reply to users, but what about more advanced features such as shortcuts, apps and
SEO. If you want to improve your knowledge or want to pick up a few tips and tricks to
help you get more out of the service, then read on.
Twitter
Keyboard Shortcuts
With many of us spending large amounts of time on
Twitter every day, there has to be a quicker way to
use the desktop interface and that comes in the form
of keyboard shortcuts. As you can see from the list
below, there is a shortcut for pretty much every one
of the actions you carry out on a daily basis.
App Security
Over the time that you’ve been using Twitter, there is a very
good chance that you have given some apps permission to
access your account. While most of the apps are fine, it is worth
checking in here to see what apps you have given access to
recently and purging some of the ones you no longer use.
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39. Schedule Tweets
Sometimes you can come up with a good tweet, but feel that it’s not ready to be posted
for the world to see. If that’s the case, there’s a vast number of apps and tools that will
allow you to schedule tweets for later. Tweetdeck is one example and if you’re looking for
something a little more advanced, then Buffer is a great tool to use.
Sensitive Content
If, for whatever reason, you’re tweeting content that isn’t suitable for general consumption,
activating this option in settings will either display sensitive content (those that users have
marked as such) or mark yours. The latter will
mean that users will be warned about your
content before they proceed.
Embedding Tweets
Instead of taking screenshots of a tweet, you
can now embed it into your blog post and
allow visitors to interact with it if they were
viewing it on Twitter. To do this, find the tweet
you want, expand it and click details. You will
see the option “Embed this tweet” appear in a
new screen.
Deleting Location Information
While you can turn geotagging on, sometimes you might not want people to know where
you’re are or have tweeted from. If this is the case, head to settings and you will find the
option under ‘Tweet location.’
#hashtag searching
If you’re looking for particular topics or searching for updates to an event, using a hashtag
to search can bring you more accurate results. Provided you know what the main hashtag
is (eg: #London2012), you can find out more real-time info.
Linking to Facebook account
The majority of social media sites allow cross-posting and Twitter is no exception. In your
profile settings, you will find this option at the bottom of the page underneath your bio.
Discovery
Twitter Search
Twitter recently redesigned its search feature so it’s a good
place to start when discussing features. Behaving more like
Google and Facebook by suggesting users, searching terms can
be filtered by top, all or best yet, ‘People You Know.’ The latter
allows you to see what those users you follow are saying so you
can jump into the conversation or add your own comment.
39

40. Advanced Search
However, if that isn’t enough for you,
you can take things a step further and
increase your search capabilities. When
you’ve viewing a search result, clicking
the cog icon up in the top right-hand
corner to bring advanced search. Here,
you can filter by words, accounts,
location and even moods to find what
you want. Alternatively, you can access
advanced search here.
Save Search
Similar to how you find advanced search. On the
search results page, this is the second option
offered in settings alongside advanced search.
Discover
A section some users tend to ignore, but more
valuable then most people give credit for.
Discover’s main function is to expose you to
content and users you mightn’t have found through
your normal feed. Alongside presenting the major
stories appearing on Twitter, the activity section shows
you everything that’s been happening with those you
follow, such as retweets, follows and favourites so you
could find new content and users to follow.
Follow by
Category
Not content with
presenting news, the Discover section also gives
users the chance to find new people to follow
based on interest. Just click on browse category
and Twitter will present a list of topics that might
interest you.
Finding Friends
Search and categories aren’t the only ways of finding friends on Twitter. In discover, you can click
the ‘Find Friends’ section and find users through your Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL account.
Follow Buttons
The majority of people have a blog so it’s a good idea to include a follow button so
that people can find you on Twitter. Simply visit Twitter’s button page and select the
share content or follow button, fill out the details and embed it into your site.
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41. Hashtag & Mention Buttons
If you’ve created an event or covering one,
installing a hashtag button is an effective
way of getting the message across. The
process is the same as installing the share
and follow buttons and is handy if you want
to get your content out there.
General Tweeting
Less is More
You may post interesting content or say witty things, but when you’re doing so, you
want to give people the opportunity to retweet your stuff. As a rule, you should leave
leave 20 characters worth of spare to allow this. If it’s possible leave 40 since that way,
the person retweeting should be able to fit in a quick comment.
Modified Tweet
For those cases where you’re retweeting something that’s too big, modified tweets
come into play. Marked as MT, this lets people know that this tweet has been edited so
you can cut down the least essential parts or reword it so you can tweet it.
Shorten URL
Yes, Twitter and every other third-party app automatically shortens apps, but using a
URL shortener has its benefits. For one, all URL shorteners include analytics so you can
see how effective and popular your links are. Handy if you’re a business or blog and
want to see how many clicks a link got.
Twitter lists
Chances are you’re following far
more people then you can keep
up with. Lists are a handy way of
counteracting this. By creating
different lists for different categories,
you can easily follow the same
number of people without being
overwhelmed.
Pace Yourself
The last thing you want to do is spam
your followers and if you’re one of
those people who tweets everything they can think of in the one go, you’re not doing
yourself any favours. Try to space out when you tweet so that you’re more consistent
throughout the day. If that isn’t possible, use one of the scheduling tools mentioned earlier
to space them out.
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42. Images & Video
If you want better engagement or responses,
sometimes an image or video is the way to
go. It’s good to mix up your tweets with a
mixture of the two. If you’re not used to taking
photos or need an excuse to take some snaps,
then things like the ‘photo a day challenge‘ on
Instagram is a great way of getting practice.
Just be sure to choose only the best photos
to tweet if you don’t want to overwhelm your
followers with abstract photos.
Learn the Best Times to Tweet
Tweeting is one thing, but knowing the best times to tweet is another thing entirely. If
you’re being strategic and want to make sure your tweets are seen by as many people
as possible, then this report from bit.ly could help you. Essentially, the best times to
tweet is any time between 1pm-3pm from Monday to Thursday. Bit.ly also recommend
that you should avoid posting after 8pm on any day as well as after 3pm on Fridays.
Hashtag tweets
Most users add hashtags onto their tweets without actually thinking about why they
do it. Hashtags are supposed to signify that you’re talking about a particular topic or
event so in that case, only one hashtag is necessary in a tweet, and two at most. Any
more than that and it’s overkill.
Favourites
The best way to look at favourites is
not to view them as things you like, but
instead things that you would bookmark
for later use. Most of the time, you would
favourite things that you don’t have time
to read, or a comment that you would like
to save for future reference. So treat it as
a resource that you can come back to and
you will find that its value will go up.
Public replies
Sometimes when you’re having a discussion, you want everyone to see it instead of
just the person. It might be to strengthen a point you made with a previous tweet or
to help followers keep up to speed with a discussion. To do this, simply place a full
stop (really you could place any symbol, but this is tidier) and it will appear as a public
tweet.This rule also applies to any tweet that begins with a username.
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43. Twitter Mobile
SMS Twitter
Just because smartphones have
grown in popularity doesn’t mean that
feature phones aren’t still being used.
A section for traditional SMS still exists
in settings, allowing you to receive text
notifications, how many notifications
you want to receive is really up to
you, but bear in mind that you have
to enable certain followers for mobile
notifications first before you can start
using it.
SMS Sleep settings
Because you don’t want to be woken up at 3am by a Twitter user on the other side of
the world, you can choose to switch off updates during certain times. Simply turn on
the settings and choose the times you don’t want to receive notifications.
Tweet alerts
One of the new features for Twitter’s new app update is the ability to receive
notifications every time someone tweets. To activate this, go to the account you want
to keep up to date with and hit the options button (person symbol). Select “Turn on
notifications” and now you will now be alerted to any updates from that account.
Read Articles Later
If you have an Instapaper account and you want to save articles, just go into settings
(found under ‘me’ at the bottom right-hand corner), and go into advanced. Here you
can activate your Instapaper or Pocket account so you can save articles you find in
your news feed.
Image Quality & Size
Under the advanced option, you can adjust other settings such as font size (if the
smallest font is too hard to read) and image quality. The latter is incredibly handy if
you’re having problems loading up images; setting it to ‘low’ will mean a lower quality
image that will load up faster.
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44. Apps
Nurph
Nurph is smart in that it correlates hashtags to create an ongoing conversation
between Twitter users, making it easier for them to respond to one another and chat
through tweeting and creating hashtag chatrooms. You can also create Twitterbots to
guide users to a chatroom and funnel all your replies into the one space. Nurph is the
ultimate in Twitter community curation.
dlvr.it
dlvr.it (‘deliver it’ ) schedules blog
posts to be delivered onto Twitter and
across other social media platforms,
allowing you to keep up with all social
media and projecting your content to
as many people and in as many ways
as possible at one time or many. It’s
fairly by-the-numbers and simple to
use, so as to be effective as possible.
TweetBoard
TweetBoard pulls your Twitter stream into real-time and reformats them into threaded
conversations. So instead of clicking ‘view conversation’ a viewing a feed between
you and few users, TweetBoard will enable you to view the conversation, other similar
conversations and any tangential tweets as well, forming one giant conversation
among you and your friends and followers.
Who ReTweeted Me
Who Retweeted Me enables you to congregate all your Retweeters on one page and
thank them one by one, if you so please. It will tell you how many retweets a certain
tweet has had as well as the average amount of followers the Retweet-ers have and
the potential reach the tweet had with their help. To top it all off, it puts the chronology
of retweeting in a simple graph for you to analyse at your pleasure.
MentionMap
MentionMap displays all your mentions
and replies in a spider diagram, which,
though undeniably nice to look at,
can be awkward to navigate. Type
in your username and the diagram
will appear with legs dedicated to
users you have tweeted, hashtags
you have used as well as tributary
users and conversations. It is a great
way to visualise your tweets and the
connections you’ve made on Twitter.
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45. The Archivist
The Archivist is one of the premier Twitter analytic apps, allowing you to archive tweets
and analyse the biggest trends. Whether you’re searching for stats on keywords,
hashtags or certain users, the Archivist will provide an extensive and aesthetically crisp
analysis of whatever you want.
TwitLonger
Twitter is a hard task-master where TwitLonger is merciful and sympathetic. Sometimes
140 characters isn’t enough and TwitLonger understands as such. You don’t want to
write an entire blog or a novel, but you just need a few more words to convey your
point. TwitLonger will cut you some slack and then post a link to your extended tweet
on Twitter just so everyone won’t miss out on it.
TweetAdder
TweetAdder is a management tool that is designed to get you get more Twitter
followers, but more importantly, it helps bring in engaged followers suited to you and
whatever you are pedaling rather then just pure numbers. It is a good tool for those
that are new to Twitter or want to exploit social media to their business’ advantage.
Fast and easy to use, TweetAdder will get you up and on your feet in no time, helping
you add users and get properly involved with Twitter.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is quite a behemoth.
You can unfollow users and bots
en masse, copy and follow lists of
users from other accounts, and the
in-built analytics are comprehensive
and allow you to pick the best
time to make your most important
tweets. There’s even a search tool
tailored to your account unlike any
offered by Twitter itself; very helpful
and essential for popular accounts/
businesses.
Qwitter
Qwitter is an email service that keeps you up to date on your followers and those
who have unfollowed you and the fluctuation in each. For people with a great deal of
followers, Qwitter would be very useful with its daily updates, telling you how many
people you have gained and lost and putting it in a statistical context as well. It has a
clean design that is similar to Twitter itself and is perfectly effective if you really need to
know these details.
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46. TweetDeck by Twitter
Perhaps the most well known Twitter app out there,TweetDeck is great and quickly
becoming the preferred way to use Twitter among dedicated users as it is far more
expansive and comprehensive than a
standard Twitter news feed. Instead of
merely viewing your ‘following’ feed,
you can view multiple feeds at any
one time, and they can be customised
to your choosing. Most likely, one
would use it to view replies, mentions,
interactions and search hashtags
simultaneously, but there are plenty of
possibilities.
Miscellaneous
Twitter SEO
Social media and SEO has a close relationship. One complements the other and
it shouldn’t be any surprise that you can optimise your Twitter account to take
advantage of this. There are many ways you can do this:
- The first is to pick a name and username that has the main keyword you want (if it’s
marketing then @ABCmarketing etc.). If you already have a Twitter account, then you
can change your actual name, but don’t change your username.
- Include your website address. it’s an obvious statement, but you want to make sure
people can find your site. Don’t use a URL shortener and whatever you do, don’t make
your address direct to your Twitter account, that’s just silly.
- Your bio is also important.
Above all, you want your personality to shine through, but you should include some
main keywords in it. You only have 160 characters so make sure the words in question
are high value.
- Your profile photo is also handy for this. Make sure you rename it before you upload it.
If you’re happy with your profile photo, then just upload it again, but under a new name.
Google Analytics
If you have a blog or site, it’s important to know how much of your traffic originates
from social media. Google analytics has made this easier with the addition of a flow
visualisations, which illustrates how many visits you get from Twitter and other social
media sites. Important if you want an idea of how much traffic you can generate from
the site.
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47. Create a cartoon
This is cheating a little, but it
does show just how effective
the medium can be if you
apply a little bit of creative
thinking. Electric car brand,
Smart in Argentina created
this brilliant cartoon using just
tweets to highlight their point;
that their car can fit into the
tightest spaces.
Twitter For…
Twitter itself has a vast range of guides and blogs for different sections, which is
bound to come in useful at some point. Some of them include advertising & business,
developers and newsroom just to name a few.
Twitter Stories
Considering that Facebook has just released its own version there, it’s a good time to
go back to Twitter’s version, which is a year old by the way. Simply showcasing the best
stories involving Twitter, the site’s aim is to get you to think of the site differently and
see the creative ways the service has been used.
Know Your Followers
It helps to know who exactly you’re communicating to and with more people stating
their location in their bio, its easier than ever to find out. There are two ways of
going about this, the first way is to go though your followers and make a note of the
countries and locations they’re from. If you have a significant number of followers this
will be quite time-consuming. The second way is to use a third-party tool like SocialBro
to do all the hard work for you, giving you data which you can use to communicate
more effectively.
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48. Everything You Need To Know About Twitter For
Customer Service + 10 Brands Doing It Well
T
witter is a wonderful tool, but one way in which brands are using it and adding
great value to their social media activity is by using it as a customer service tool.
Customers will often turn to the medium first to vent about their frustrations
around customer service or a new product, and the shrewd brands are there in
place with a team of people to answer all queries and to help create brand loyalty. In some
cases, companies are able to use it as a cost-cutting exercise with queries handled faster
online and calls deflected from customer service numbers and other costly channels.
Beyond the basic functionality it offers, Twitter is still limited in terms of the premium
features it offers brands, but there are a number of hacks and third party tools that you
can use to help improve your customer service and Twitter themselves will be rolling
out additional features over time. Until Twitter does that, however, you will need to work
with what you have so here are a number of ways and examples you can use to improve
customer service.
Tips For Using Twitter For Customer Service
While Twitter’s functionality is rather limited in comparison to other sites, there are a
number of ways you can improve interaction and ensure that customers leave with a
positive experience. Here’s what you should keep in mind.
Using Apps like Tweetdeck
If you’re going to understand your customers, you will need to see what they’re saying.
Not everyone is going to mention your twitter handle so to get a clear picture of what
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49. people are saying, you will need monitoring tools to help you out. The most popular one
would be Tweetdeck which lets you view numerous streams at once. By typing in your
company name, you can see what mentions, links and comments people are making
about your business. There are many other third-party apps and analytics out there so
try them out and see what fits best.
Respond At Speed
A simple but effective way to build trust and provide a positive experience. If you see
somebody asking a question, don’t leave it until tomorrow. Respond as soon as possible.
Even if you don’t have an immediate answer to their question, it’s much better to show
that you’ve seen their tweet and are working to solve their problem.
Never Let Customers Reveal Their Private Details
Relating to the last point, never let a customer reveal private or potentially private
information publicly. The obvious examples are bank account details, passwords and
addresses, but also things like phone numbers, account names (if it’s about an online
platform) and email would also apply. Put yourself in their shoes: If you don’t feel
comfortable sharing something, chances are your customers feel the same way.
Be Polite And Courteous
A basic TIP but always make sure that the tone you use is polite, even when somebody
,
is criticising your company. It can take one bad tweet to tarnish your reputation so make
sure you’re taking the moral high ground when dealing with complaints. Also, if you’re
getting heated up, remember that you’re not expected to reply straight away so use
those minutes to regroup and get your thoughts together before replying.
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50. Place Your Twitter Handle In Prominent Locations
Twitter’s a fast and snappy way of responding to queries so if you use it for customer
service ,direct people to it. Your own site is an obvious place to highlight this, but also
use your other social media channels and emails to show this as well. For people to use
it, they need to be aware of it so don’t neglect promoting it.
Create A Separate Customer Service Twitter Account
If you’re a bigger company and you’re getting a lot of mentions and comments, it might
be best to create two separate accounts to make things more manageable. This way,
you’ll be able to have one platform for dealing with queries and questions, and another
to help promote the site.
Be Consistent
Another simple but effective tip, always make sure you’re responding to people when
they tweet and do it regularly. Nobody will comment or respond to a dormant account
or one that is only active when it feels like it.
Personalise The Experience
Most companies tend to be faceless corporate identities, but if you make things a little
more human, it can have a positive effect. A good way is to put the first name at the
end of said tweets so people know there’s a person behind the response. If you wanted
to take things a step further, you could include your twitter handle instead. One good
example is Triberr who place the twitter handles of their two co-founders on its bio so
people know who’s responding.
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51. Create An FAQ From Common Questions
If you’re receiving a number of queries and questions, you will probably notice a few
appearing regularly. If that’s the case, instead of answering the same question over and
over again, create an FAQ that answers this. Most people will look through your site first
when looking for information so an FAQ will free up more time for you to focus on the
less common questions.
Use Direct Messages (DM)
Chances are somebody will have a complaint or problem that you need to sort out.
Most of the time, this can be resolved within one or two tweets, but if it gets particularly
heated or involves personal information, it’s best to make it a private conversation
between yourself and the other party. Remember that to send DMs, both parties need
to be following each other so make sure this is the case before doing anything.
Know When To Move Problems On
Sometimes it isn’t always possible to solve a problem on Twitter and when that happens,
be sure to direct them to an email account or phone number to rectify the problem. You
can use Twitter as a way to direct people to other help services so don’t try to solve a
problem in 140 characters if it requires far more than that.
Follow Up
Something brands tend to forget is that when the problem
is solved, there’s still opportunity to interact with people. If
you’ve solved a problem or redirected someone to another
area, make a note of their username and a week later, send
them a tweet to see how things are going. It’s the little
things that will endear you to your fan base and will get
you good publicity sooner or later.
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52. State When You’re Open
Unless you’re a massive company with offices in different parts of the world, chances
are you’re only going to be monitoring your Twitter account during working hours. If so,
place said times on your Twitter bio to avoid confusion. Also, make sure you include the
time zone too as you could very easily have customers from abroad trying to reach you.
Ten Brands Doing Customer Service Right
There are many examples of brands doing customer service on Twitter, but fewer are
getting it right. Since people learn a lot more from example than through theory, here
are some brands that are getting customer service on Twitter right:
Zappos Customer Service
The shoe company makes sure that its customer service team says who they are as
they address all queries and comments. As well as placing their team in the background
image, it also injects some personality into its tweets by asking users to tweet in pirate
talk and talking about the latest sport events.
Hertz
Hertz makes sure that it responds to all questions from its customers, always stating who
the message is from by placing their initials at the end of each tweet. Each member has
their initials on the background image so you know exactly who you’re talking to.
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53. UPS Customer Support
UPS state what times their customer support account is open for so that customers
know when to expect a response. It also follows the same principal as Hertz and Zappos
by placing their team’s names and photos in the background image.
Best Buy (twelpforce)
Best Buy’s Twelpforce does its best to answer any tech-related queries and brings all the
different services together. While it tweets in different languages, it makes sure that its
answers are as comprehensive as possible.
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54. Uber
Since Uber is a mobile service, it follows up on customer queries by asking how their
experience was, getting feedback and interacting with their customers to create a
welcoming service.
Xbox Support
The Guinness world record holder for most responsive brand on Twitter certainly lives
up to its name by making sure everyone gets a response, even going as far to respond
to people who mention Xbox in passing.
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55. Southern Electric
Southern Electric not only provides help on its Twitter page, but also provides alternatives
for contacting them on its background image. It also states times for contacting them
clearly so there is no confusion.
Royal Mail
Not only does Royal Mail personalise its tweets and respond to queries, but the account
is incredibly funny. It’s also a massive fan of (bad) puns, which is always a good sign.
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56. Citi
The financial brand has its own customer service account, which it updates quite regularly.
With 18 different people servicing its account, it ensures that everybody gets a response,
no matter how trivial it may seem.
Samsung
One of the biggest technology companies in the world has its own support service.
While it does use it to promote its services, it always finds the time to help customers out
with their devices.
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57. Stuck With B2B Marketing? The Complete In-
Depth Guide To Linkedin
L
inkedIn is a stalwart of the social networking scene, yet it often suffers from a
lack of limelight around younger, sexier upstarts. Pretty much everyone you
meet in the ‘professional’ world will have a LinkedIn profile. The only problem
is that many don’t actually know how to use it or make the most of different
features available. Of course, you will only get out of it what you put in and there are some
great examples of how LinkedIn can be used for business in ways you might not imagine.
How about raising investment for your new business, purely through LinkedIn?
Also, businesses are just starting to take more notice of LinkedIn, as it opens the
platform to allow for campaigns and apps to run more effectively. Add to that the fact
that LinkedIn has an ad marketplace that runs in the same way as Facebook’s and that
it’s working more on strategic partnerships,
such as their recent addition to the new
Microsoft Office and already you have
numerous reasons to start using it to your
advantage, if you aren’t already.
Why It Matters
It’s easy to forget about LinkedIn and just
use it to respond to the odd contact or post
a link to something you want to promote.
However, if you consider how many
connections you’re likely to have in there,
it can actually be an important part of your
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58. professional life, if you want it to be. The benefits of an active LinkedIn profile, whether
it’s personal or for your business, extend way beyond the immediate connections you
have with benefits such as SEO also being incredibly important.
And, of course, with a public network like LinkedIn, it is almost guaranteed to feature
on employer’s background checks when researching potential candidates. While it may
not be the case that securing a job will be wholly dependent on your LinkedIn profile
and activity, having a professional looking profile that has been properly filled with
your background and work experience will ultimately make it easier for prospective
employers to see what you’re all about.
10 Ways To Help Make Your Profile Stand Out
1. Get Your Profile Picture Right
Profile pictures are a relatively small part of any user’s LinkedIn profile, but it’s
usually the first thing potential employers will see and are of great importance. It is
recommended that users get a respectable head shot taken, but it doesn’t have to be
professionally done (although that would, of course, be preferable).
It can be as simple as standing in front of a neutral background and asking a friend to
take a photo of you with a digital camera of smartphone; as long as you are looking
into the camera and your head and shoulders are visible, it will make for a sufficient
profile pic.
2. Include a professional headline.
Headlines are important as they give user’s a basic idea
of who you are and what you do in a concise form. It’s
important that your headline is crisp and comprehensive
so that it conveys everything you want to potential
employers in 100 characters or less. Think of it as an
initial pitch to users to read further and learn more.
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59. 3. Provide a summary
A good summary is a must and allows you to put your experience in a wider context
beyond your CV/resumé. Ultimately, a summary will, of course, condense your profile’s
content into a few hundred words so it is important that it presents you at your best
and makes the most of a reader’s attention span. After all, there are plenty of others
out there, and you have to show why they should prioritise yours.
4. Make sure your profile
is ’100%’ complete
LinkedIn is keen to assist first-
time users in building their profile
with helpful tips and step-by-step
guides, so much so that your
profile should be up to standard
level in no time, especially if you
import your CV or resumé on to
the site early. Professionalism is
key, so it is important that your
profile is well presented and up-
to-date at all times.
5. List all previous experience, no matter how small
You may find a previous job insignificant or even embarrassing, but readers will use
your resumé to form a better idea of you, both as a person and as a professional, in
their heads. A comprehensive listing of your complete working experience, complete
with descriptions, responsibilities and searchable key words and attributes will leave
you in good stead.
6. Make Connections
It is important that new users try and make at least 50 connections. Put the
foundations in place by searching for people you know well, such as friends, family,
employers/employees and colleagues, or import contacts using your email address.
7. Use applications
If you have a blog or website that could be appealing
to potential employers, then you can link on your
profile. WordPress makes this especially easy; there’s an
application to put an RSS feed on your LinkedIn profile.
It’s an easy way to of displaying your work to users and
on a consistent basis. We’ve included a list of plug-ins and
apps that are compatible with LinkedIn; be sure to use
SlideShare to improve your presentations, or Rapportive,
to help you acquire connections outside LinkedIn.
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