A recent update to Instagram's feed sorting got marketers worried. A straight-forward chronological order will be replaced with Facebook-like algorithm that takes into account many social signals, including engagement and past likes to predict “relevancy” of posts.
While the move evoked different sentiments, the fact remains that the algorithm change is unenviable and marketers will have to adjust. To truly leverage the new algorithm to your own advantage, you will need to post content that consistently generates high levels of engagement.
The first step in identifying such content is making sure you know and understand your audience. Who are they? What do they like? What do they dislike? What are their aspirations and lifestyle? What about content preferences? You'll have answer all of these questions to truly figure out what content will rake in likes and comments.
The next step in crafting your Instagram strategy is to think about the value your content provides. (highlight to tweet) Sure, pretty pictures are dandy, but they have to evoke emotional responses and provide some sort of value. Let's examine some amazing examples of carefully crafted Instagram strategy that works.
1. Provide Inspiration
People love to be inspired. Inspiration lies behind all great things and inventions. Digital magazine Foundr understands this.
Foundr's audience consists of young entrepreneurs-movers and shakers. Naturally, it only makes sense that Foundr tries to provide inspiration through success stories, interviews, and great quotes that push their audience to keep going and pursuing their dreams.
This strategy has definitely worked for the publication. When it comes to Instagram marketing, they are a recognized authority. Their follower base of nearly 700,000 followers is the proof Foundr “gets” them.
One strategy anyone can borrow from Foundr is including a call to action on every single post they share. It can be something as simple as “double tap if you agree,” or “tag your friends,” or “let us know what you think.” This simple yet powerful strategy increases engagement because it straightforwardly asks for it.
2. Produce Stunning Visuals
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more visual network than Instagram. It comes as no surprise that your visuals have to be up to par. While the platform is predominantly mobile, grainy or dark images from your phone won't cut it anymore.
Take a look at National Geographic, a master of weaving together an incredible collection of photos with beautiful stories.
You probably don't have hundreds of National Geographic photographers on staff at your company, but with a little diligence, you too can create a beautiful visual story of your brand.
Thanks to technological advances, phoneography (smartphone photography) has made amazing gains. People create startling images with their smartphones and a little help from photo editing apps and smartphone lenses. If you are not a phoneographer, you can still create great visuals with a camera or a computer and download them to your phone for use on Instagram.
3. Make Content “Snackable”
Disclaimer: Skip this section if you haven't had lunch yet. Even then, the author is not responsible for drooling all over your computer.
On Instagram, you have an instant to impress. You have one image and one caption to catch your audience's attention before they move on. It's crucial, then, to ensure your content is “bite-sized” and fun.
It would be easy for any retailer to grab an image of their products, slap a huge sale sign on it, and upload the resulting graphic to their feed. However, Whole Foods Market has found a way to make their photo collection incredibly appealing both visually and contextually. Delicious imagery is paired up with quick and easy recipes (who doesn't love those?), making their content not only pretty but actionable as well.
4. Create a Sense of Immediacy
Instagram has a feeling of immediacy to it, of being in the moment with a content creator. Although pretty sunsets and shoe pictures do give the feeling of being right there, these might not work so well for businesses. What does work, however, is behind-the-scenes moments, sneak peeks, and everyday scenes.
One of the most prominent marketers, Gary Vaynerchuk, knows a thing or two about creating that sense of immediacy. Every day, Gary Vee shares little snippets of his life with his followers and, at times, it cannot get much more intimate. If a multimillionaire and one of the most recognized faces in the industry can get personal and create a sense of spontaneity in his updates, so can you.
5. Engage With Storytelling
Even though images are the main driving force behind Instagram, don't neglect to craft meaningful captions. Often, those captions will add substantial value, context, and power to your visual storytelling.
Take Humans of New York, for example. Images of regular people, not celebrities, achieve thousands of likes and comments because captions to these images tell powerful stories. I don't want to degrade the quality or skill of these powerful portraits, but I'd argue that it is the stories that accompany every single image that have such a profound effect on followers.
These are some of the best, most effective strategies when it comes to Instagram engagement. Engagement is always the key to social media success, but with the roll-out of Instagram's latest algorithm, now is the time to focus on building an outstanding brand experience.
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5 Strategies for Boosting Engagement on Instagram
from Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting http://ift.tt/1rf73XA
For the last few years, automation has been a buzzword in content marketing circles.
If you've been under the impression that it's just another fad that'll fizzle out eventually, this recent report from Markets and Markets will probably lead you to think otherwise.
The reason why businesses are increasingly adopting marketing automation software is because it reduces manual effort while simultaneously improving effectiveness.
It also enables sound decision-making, allowing marketers to make better use of the limited resources at their disposal. Through automation, marketers are able to achieve greater levels of customization, thereby enhancing customer experiences.
Here's how you can use marketing automation at different stages of your social media and content marketing campaigns to drive engagement and improve ROI.
1. Automation in content creation
It's true. You can have all your content written entirely by a computer program. While the technology itself is rather sophisticated, automated content often lacks depth and insight.
“Set-it-and-forget-it” applications definitely make content generation a whole lot easier, but they do little to establish your thought-leadership in the industry. Automating content generation entirely may not be the best idea, but there are several parts of the content creation process you could automate for better results.
The most critical and challenging aspect of content creation is ideation.
The content you create should not only be relevant to your business or industry, but should also interest your audience. However, you may often find yourself hitting a dead end when you're looking for topics or themes to address through your content.
Content explorers help simplify the brainstorming process by recommending topics and ideas for your content. You can also use these tools to look for posts on similar topics and take inspiration from them.
For example, BuzzSumo lets you identify blog topics that have received the highest engagement based on specific keyword searches. As a result it helps you align your blogs with trending topics, increasing their appeal to your audience.
Other tools like Headline Analyzer score your headlines to tell you how effective they are in attracting readers' attention.
Not only does it give your headline a score and a grade, but it also gives you a break up of the types of words you've used. Based on the word usage pattern it suggests a tip to help improve your score too.
In this example you'll see that I've used 0% Emotional words, and trying to use some could better my score.
It also classifies your headline by type – generic, list post, how-to, and question headlines. Another important factor based on which it scores headlines is their length. The ideal headline length recommended by the tool is 6 words (56 characters).
Automating lead management processes could have a significant impact on your sales numbers. Although these processes may not always involve content creation, in some cases they do.
Lets assume you own an eCommerce website. Several prospects may have visited your virtual store and left without making a purchase. Using marketing automation tools will help you generate custom messages and ads for every person that visits your e-store.
These tools typically take into account the visitor's purchase history and current location, and tailor a message that will nudge the prospect to make a purchase. You can also use automation in your email marketing campaigns to send more targeted messages to your prospects.
In a less direct manner, it is also useful in content creation since it lets you customize your message based on the buying stage that the prospect is in. Here's an example:
Social media has caused an unprecedented rise in content consumption and relying solely on content creation to meet the growing demand will simply not suffice. Content curation helps you stay visible and relevant in the transient social world.
However, curating content manually is a dreadfully time-consuming process, particularly if you maintain multiple social accounts.
Automating content curation will help you save a significant amount of time and effort, while also achieving consistency in your social media activities.
In most cases, content discovery engines recommend content based on a keyword search. The argument against such tools is that they affect the quality of content being shared. But that argument holds water only if you've set your tool on auto-pilot and are running posts without reviewing them.
In such a situation, you stand the risk of sharing content that may not reflect your business' values, or worse – may promote your competitors.
It's important to note that automating content curation is meant to reduce your effort, and not eliminate it entirely.
As long as you review all posts before you schedule them out, automating content curation will only work to the benefit of your business. In fact, more and more businesses are now using tools to automate content curation given their value proposition.
Content discovery and scheduling tools like DrumUp help you streamline your social media activities and significantly reduce the time and effort you invest in social media management. All you have to do is go through the recommended content for each account you add to the tool and pick the ones that you'd like to share.
You can also edit the post, schedule the same post to all/multiple accounts, add recommended hashtags, add images, choose a custom time of publishing and set posts on repeat schedules.
3. Automation in content distribution
Content distribution is an important aspect of your content marketing strategy. Ensuring that your content reaches the right people, at the right times is more important than simply creating content.
Without a holistic content distribution plan even the most exquisite piece of content could be left undiscovered.
You may have very well optimized your content for search engines, but with the amount of content being published online and the ease of access to all of it, your content distribution strategy needs to step up and move beyond those plain, old SEO tactics.
When you're devising a content distribution plan, you should consider paid media, owned media as well as earned media.
Ads, newsletters, email subscriptions, and social media all hold tremendous potential in amplifying your content. And if you'd like to reach out to thousands of people through content distribution, automation is imperative.
Tools like MailChimp help ensure that your content reaches all the right eyes and ears, all at once.
Ask Katie Cross, and she'll tell you just how good the little monkey postman in the blue hat is. The independent writer recommends the tool highly, particularly for its awesome analytics. Who wouldn't like to know how many people are actually opening those emails?
Given the challenges of a highly competitive market, the question really isn't whether you should use automation in content marketing; it's how well you use it that makes all the difference.
So, what tools will you be using today?
Author Bio: Vasudha is a blogger at Godot Media, a leading blog writing services firm. She writes extensively about social media marketing and content marketing. Her other areas of interest include travel and business.
Following up on last week's post covering my most important lessons for attracting your webinar audience, let's now pivot and focus on how to keep them engaged once they show up live as an attendee at your webinar. Next week, my final post will cover how to convert your audiences to become your customers.
For attracting your audience, I covered how to:
Choose a Relevant Topic.
Use Industry Disruptions to Your Advantage.
Develop and Audience Profile That Aligns With Your Topic and Value Proposition.
Consider External Thought Leaders as Speakers vs. Internal Company Experts.
Gather and Mine Actionable Live Cycle Intelligence.
In my previous post, I also mentioned that two of the five topics below each led to a million dollar sale, and asked you to guess which ones. The answers are 4 and 5.
Case Study: How Merck is Using Virtual Team Building to Increase Performance
How Active Rehab Protocols Reduce Post-Operative Recovery Time
Smarter Streets: Case Studies for Cities and Utilities – Learn How the City of Baltimore and Washington Gas Reduced Costs
Separating the Contenders from the Pretenders in the World of Oil Water Separation
Culture Shock: Shake-Up Your Company, Your Store, Your People and Sales Increases Will Follow
Now let's get into more specifics on how you can keep your audience engaged once they show up for your webinar.
1. Deliver on What You Promised in the Webinar Invitation
While this might sound obvious, it's not too many. The webinar invitation is your contract with your audience, and keeping it will go a long way to establish your credibility and convey that you respect your audience and their time. Audiences can be very forgiving about many things, but they will quickly bail from your webinar if you don't hold up your end of the bargain, and if they sense a sales pitch, they will start to drop off like flies.
Here's an example of how a recent webinar sponsored by a software provider serving automotive dealerships was able to engage their audience by delivering on their invitation's promise.
The webinar, titled Conquest Case Study: How Performance Toyota Increased new Vehicle Gross Profits and Sales, promised to address a real pain point for automobile dealers by sharing a case study delivered by the customer who was also the dealer principal. On the webinar, the dealer principal shared how he was able to increase their average gross profits, reduce price discounts as the sales desk by more than 50%, and find the pricing “sweet spot” in his market for every new vehicle to maximize gross profit.
The dealer principal did such a credible and authentic job of covering these points, it inspired many in the audience to want to learn more and resulted in the webinar sponsor collecting over 180 leads and closing 30 new deals, with over $400,000 in annual incremental revenue.
2. Use the Invitation to Architect the Content Structure, Timing, and Flow
Start shaping the content and flow of the webinar based on the webinar invitation. First, determine the following:
Which of your speakers will address the problem statement? In the above webinar example there were two speakers. One was an internal executive, and the other was an external speaker (dealer principal). In this case, it made sense for the internal executive to set the stage and discuss the challenges dealerships are facing for new vehicle margins, market based pricing, and minimizing discounts.
Will the content be based on a case study, such as the example above by Performance Toyota, or will it be more of a tutorial on “how to” accomplish and overcome a vexing challenge, or will it be an update on changes around compliance or standards that will impact those in the audience?
Then it's time to create a production script to lay out the flow of the webinar. Most B2B webinars are usually scheduled for an hour, but that doesn't mean your speaker will have that entire time to present. Make sure you factor in time for the following:
Welcome the audience to tell them what you want them to get out of the webinar, and also provide basic housekeeping information. – 3 minutes
Administer an online poll to “break the ice” at the start of the webinar. – 2 minutes
Administer an online poll to close the webinar. – 2 minutes
Hold a Q&A or “Ask the Experts” session, and end with a Call To Action. – 15–20 minutes
Once you factor in the above, you have 30–35 minutes of talk time to be divided by your speakers. If you have two speakers, that's about 15 minutes each.
3. Coach Your Speakers to Connect With and Inspire Your Audience
The operative word is having your speaker(s) “connect” with your audience, which motivates attendees to lean in and want to learn more about your webinar topic. Keep in mind that folks who register and attend your webinar live are already interested in hearing what you have to offer. Remember they are on a journey to become better educated on how they can overcome a pain point or achieve better outcomes.
Your speakers are experts, and the best way for them to share their expertise is not to create slides and visuals that are text-heavy with a lot of facts, but to have an authentic conversation with the audience that allows them to be more conversational than simply reading bullets on a slide allows.
It's perfectly fine to be enthusiastic, but don't sell. The audience wants to hear how you overcame a vexing challenge, what your options were, what was implemented, and what the demonstrable outcomes were.
In the Performance Toyota webinar example, the dealer principal established his authenticity out of the gate by explaining his background: before getting into the car business, he was a trained engineer, which helped him realize that there had to be a better way than his current approach of developing homegrown pricing. His “pain” was exacerbated by having to use a time consuming spreadsheet which he called a “beast.” He then did his research and came upon an off-the-shelf software solution that he sensed would help get better business outcomes. Finally, he discussed how by implementing this solution, he achieved more pricing clarity, improved his gross margins by an average of $300 per car, and created greater customer satisfaction.
The takeaway is that he focused on outcomes, not product features. He was able to weave in the commercial name of the solution into the discussion and have it be a logical part of his case study.
None of these outcomes above happened in a vacuum. Read on for the other webinar components that were also critical to being able to deliver such a compelling case study.
4. Optimize Audio to Connect With Your Audience
It's as important to coach your speakers to inspire their audience as it is to ensure they connect and are clearly heard. Audio is the Achilles heel of all events, and this is even more true in a virtual event such as a webinar. (highlight to tweet) If the audience can't clearly hear what is being said, they will drift and start to multitask, and if it gets really bad, they will drop off.
Good webinar audio is a function of being able to:
Optimize the audio input choices for your favorite webinar platform.
Know which devices work best and which devices to avoid.
Perform sound checks with each speaker to make sure that the audience is treated to great sound on webinar day.
You must know where your speakers will be on webinar day. If at all possible, make sure that you've done a sound check on that location beforehand. Many webinar speakers travel often. Whether they are in Beijing or Baltimore, it's important to know their environment in advance so you can have a Plan B in case they run into last minute issues, such as a slow internet connection.
Not all audio devices are created equally. Most audio input devices are telephone landline handsets or headsets, but if your webinar hosting platform provides VoIP, and you have a strong internet connection with minimum upload/download speeds of 5 Megabits/second, using a USB headset or a standalone microphone mounted on a scissor boom can really make your speakers sound like a broadcaster.
We do not recommend using speaker phones, since they create a distance between the speaker and the audience. Mobile phones or any devices that are wireless can also be spotty and run the risk of running out of battery.
To illustrate this point, listen to a brief demo of using the above devices, and make your own determination:
5. Optimize Audience Engagement With Table Reads and Dress Rehearsals
If you really want to make your webinar a great and memorable audience event, it's imperative that you budget time to get all of the speakers together to attend practice sessions, which we at WebAttract call table reads and dress rehearsals. Plan and schedule these meetings two to three weeks before you go live, preferably, either in person or virtually. Be sure to allocate at least an hour or more to each session.
I know some of you are thinking it would be hard to get your speakers to attend these sessions, but I've found that speakers really want to do a great job, no matter how busy or experienced they are. If they feel you really have their best interests in mind to make their portion the best it can be, they will gladly attend and participate with enough notice.
Even the most experienced presenters who speak for a living benefit from practicing their portions, especially during a timed read while the other speakers are on the line. A side benefit if having the speakers participate in table reads and dress rehearsals is that they create a bond and a level of comfort. All speakers are on the same page for delivering their messages. Your audience will appreciate this, too.
During these practice sessions, you can:
Make adjustments and tweaks, such as making sure you use multiple voices between speakers or adding a skilled moderator. This ensures your webinar is more conversational by creating a dialogue as opposed to a monologue.
Perform sound checks to test and optimize webinar audio.
Ensure the slides are visually appealing and not too busy, trying to communicate too many points.
Create online polls that encourage the attendees to weigh in.
Check if the pacing is comfortable.
Determine if the timing leaves enough time for a healthy amount of Q&A.
Ask yourself: Are we telling a great story? Would this webinar grab my attention and make me want to learn more?
Dress rehearsals help you make sure you've covered all of your bases, and the investment of everyone's time will pay off handsomely in helping to meet your commercial outcomes while adding value to your audience.
The most important thing to remember is to have fun and not worry about sounding scripted, as this is about connection, not perfection.
One way of knowing how well you've engaged your audience is how well you retained your audience. After delivering hundreds of webinars, our benchmark for audience retention says that you should retain 80% of the peak audience through the start of the Q&A portion. If your peak audience is 150, then 120 should be online during the last 15–20 minutes of the webinar when the Ask the Experts section begins
In my final post, we'll complete the arc from Attracting and Engaging to, finally, Converting. We'll discuss what to do after the webinar is over, so you can begin to convert your audience into becoming your customers.
Here's to your webinar success!
WebAttract has provided our Convince & Convert readers a 10% discount off any of their Master Webinar Training Courses, which you can learn more about here. During enrollment use promo code VIPHUGJAY. This offer is good until May 31, 2016.
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5 Expert Tips for Engaging Your Webinar Audience
from Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting http://ift.tt/26p1JkK
While I was in Geneva for the Lift Conference, I spent quite a bit of time with Manuel Diaz,Arnaud Grobet, Karim Chouikri and Brice Le Blévennec of Emakina. I gotta say, I like how they roll because everything we did was recorded by a video crew. It was then assembled into this special montage as part of a series called “Nonstop.” I have to admit, I felt a bit like a celebrity.
The episode in a collection of moments that include and revolve around my main stage presentation at Lift, a special talk with European brands and also a presentation at CREA University, where I had the opportunity to speak with students of Bachelor's and Master's degrees in digital marketing. I might have to change my name to “Professor X.”
The video is strung together with conversations over coffee and also commutes in between book signings and interviews.
What an experience…
There are parts in French, but all of my parts are in English.
A release of a compelling series designed for jaded audiences. And its captured a global audience of tens of millions. It can't be viewed on traditional channels but pay per view.
TV addicts that were fed a diet of mass media television are leaving free to air television and are discovering something new. On demand video that doesn't have advertising.
It's the “Game of Thrones Premiere Day” (which I'm sure is a public holiday somewhere). It is upon us, and what does that mean?
Thrones. Themed. Everything.
It is unavoidable, so much so that it feels like the machine that is Game of Thrones (GoT) has become a living, breathing social beast.
But this level of cultural saturation comes with its own set of rules, and there are some great lessons we can take from those rules in social media marketing and communications. It's not quite Valar morghulis (“all men must die”), but helpful all the same…
So before we look at the lessons, let's look at the social and digital trends this phenomenon illustrates for us:
Borderless communication
We are now well and truly a global society – and this comes with an equal number of risks as it does advantages.
When GoT first hit our screens as a little known HBO book-to-TV series about kings and dragons, no one paid it much mind, and there was little scrutiny over the timing of the premiere. Fast forward 5 years, 26 Emmy awards and a global cult following, and something as simple as setting the time of the premiere becomes a very serious issue.
Nobody cares that HBO is an American cable channel producing content for predominantly American paying viewers – they want Thrones now. So much so, last year a petition kicked off in the UK trying to force Sky Atlantic to air the GoT premiere at the same time (or at least, directly after) it did in the US. The petition was successful, and the mandatory GoT simulcast was born. Global audiences have completely disregarded traditional borders in favour of consuming content…NOW.
Borderless, but not timeless
Of course, one of the biggest drivers behind the simulcast is to avoid spoilers – because the other side of the coin to being able to communicate with anyone in the world, is that you can do so at any time. And really, who needs sleep when you could be watching GoT live and arguing with someone from London on Twitter at 3am. #Whatatimetobealive
The “Fear of missing out” (or FOMO for lovers of acronyms) is real – and now companies are getting on board, with the UK creative technology firm +rehabstudios actually giving their employees the morning off on GoT Premiere day… Seriously, it's in their employment contracts:
However, there is still a certain level of etiquette that comes with potentially “spoiler” content. Any related trend related should carry a #SpoilerAlert warning. That's if you don't want to lose followers over a pop culture reference.
The common courtesy is to use a warning on content within the first 24 hours. After that it's a judgement call on how big the spoiler is. Then it's how adversely your target market would react to the reveal if they're not up to speed.
We are not Lannisters
That is to say, very few of us are willing to pay our debts. The GoT Season 5 premiere episode holds the title for the second most concurrent downloads for users sharing a single file, and the second fastest TV episode to be illegally pirated more than 10 million times.
The outright winner? The Season 5 Finale of course.
Unfortunately for many media or content companies, the moral to this story is that it's very difficult convincing people they should be paying for content, no matter how “premium” that content may be.
Can you blame audiences?
Even the journalists don't want to wait around or have to pay for the good stuff?
In the US last week, a journalist filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a DVD screener (something GoT refused to distribute this year after last years' press screener leaked), after showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed that President Obama will receive the advance copies, because, hey, if it's good enough for Obama…(At the time of writing this, the request has actuallyprogressed.)
This is obviously a serious issue, but the conundrum is the same – how do we convince audiences, consumers and clients alike that our content is worth something, whilst still competing with the myriad of free sources providing similar material?
The simple answer.
It is a balance of trust, quality and relevance. But finding and maintaining that balance is harder than surviving a wedding in Westeros…
3 lessons on social media marketing
Ok, I swear I have a point to all of this… So what can we learn from Game of Thrones?
1. Keep abreast of current trends
Use these to your advantage, but you MUST do your research – there's no point jumping onto a trend that is so irrelevant you look foolish, or so serious you come across as insensitive and uninformed. I could list a number of social media faux pas made by companies that didn't double check what they were talking about when they chimed in on a trending topic, but we've all seen it happen. It takes as much time to check the origin and tone of the trend as it does to draft the apology post – if you have to choose to do one, go with the former.
2. Timing isn't everything
But it's probably the most impactful tool you have in social. Because in social, it's the quick and the dead. Social media is constantly moving, and often – depending on your platform of choice – an algorithm will quickly decide whether or not you've hit the mark with your audience, and if you haven't, you fade into irrelevance.
Before you hit publish, ask yourself three simple questions:
Is my target audience likely to be using this platform right now?
Is this content relevant to what my target audience would be looking for or willing to read at the moment?
Is this content evergreen, or do I have one shot to get this right?
3. You can't own the best social media conversations
No one can control them and you cannot buy them – so don't expect your audiences to pay. Not today.
That being said, by being part of the conversation authentically, you build trust and you remain relevant – what you do with that relationship is then up to your product or service!
Valar dohaeris
Author: Kate Prince – Based in Sydney, Australia, Kate is a Communications Adviser and TV addict. Start a conversation with her on Twitter, @kate_prince
