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Starting An E-Commerce Business: How To Make Your First Sale

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You’ve done it.

You’ve opened an e-commerce store!

You have carefully selected your products.

You’ve posted on your Facebook page that your store is open and then…. You wait.

via GIPHY

You refresh your Shopify app ten times waiting for the sales to come in. You check to make sure your website is actually working. You count the likes on your Facebook post and you want to reply back to everyone who has commented, “Thanks for the heart emoji, Aunt Susie, but can you just buy something?!”

But before you give up on your entire e-commerce business dreams, let’s back up and bit and make sure you have all your marketing in place so that you can make your first e-commerce sale.

There’s a little bit of a myth that starting an e-commerce business is a way to make instant cash. While it can be lucrative, building an e-commerce store takes some time so don’t be stressed if you’re not making six figures within two months!

But you can make your first sale relatively quickly so let’s talk about some ways you can increase your chances of a sale and start hearing that cash register sound.

Test Your Check Out Process

Testing your check out process is an essential first step to getting those sales. Abandoned shopping carts at check out are extremely normal in e-commerce. Online shoppers abandon their carts 68% of the time but there are some things that can be done to decrease this.

Is your check out mobile optimized? More people are shopping on their mobile phones and if your check out process is difficult to do on mobile, it could be costing you sales! Also, do you require people to create an account when checking out? You want the checkout process to be as painless as possible.

Review Your Product Descriptions

After you have looked at your check out page, take a look at your product pages. Do they accurately show off the product you are selling? 88% of consumers say detailed product content is extremely important to their purchasing decisions.

We know that you know your product is great but remember, online buyers are purchasing something without getting their hands on it or seeing it up close. Since your store is a new store and doesn’t have reviews, you’ll need to really sell the product through its product page.

Be sure you’ve provided enough information in the description, including material, sizing, care instructions and return policies. Check that your photos are professional and flattering. If you have a video of the product, you may want to add that to the page. This product page from e-commerce store Peak Design is a perfect example of a well-designed product page. They have plenty of descriptive text, multiple photos, a video, and relevant awards and press mentions.

 

Offer Discounts

If your check out and product pages look great and your still not seeing sales in your business, then you may want to offer a discount to get that first sale. You don’t want people always expecting discounts so the trick is to make it clear this is a limited time only offer.

You could offer a sale for the first 20 purchases or for the next 24 hours only. That sense of urgency really encourages people to start pulling out their wallets!

Additionally, you can offer free shipping for a limited time. 43% of shoppers will abandon their cart if shipping costs are too high so try discounting shipping to see if it entices more buyers.

Set Up Email Marketing

It’s also important to make sure your marketing tools are in place. Your personal Facebook page is fine, as is your personal email account, but there are more ways to market your products.

Let’s start with an email marketing platform. Email marketing has a 3,800% ROI. That means for every $1 you spend email marketing, you make $38 in return. So if you don’t have an email marketing platform set up, it’s time to get one!

The most popular platforms for beginners are MailChimp, Aweber, and GetResponse. These are relatively inexpensive when you are first getting started and most allow for free trials. If you are a Shopify user, you can search the app store for email marketing apps. Most of these are free to test.

What do you do with an email platform? Well first, you’ll want to collect emails. The easiest way to do this is to offer a discount code in exchange for an email address. It’s not required to offer a discount code but most people are private with their email addresses and if they are going to hand them over, there needs to be an exchange of value. Even if you don’t offer a discount code, you may want to offer something in return or at least the promise of future sales or promotions.

Once you have email addresses you can start sending new product emails, sale emails and new information about your store. This way you can stay in touch with your store visitors.

Use Social Media

After you have set up your email marketing, it’s time to look at your social media. It’s essential that you have branded professional social media channels. Sorry, but your personal page just won’t cut it!

Online stores that have a social media presence have 32% more sales on average than stores that don’t. We recommend starting with either a Facebook or Instagram page for your e-commerce store because they are highly visual mediums, which is ideal for e-commerce marketing. The stats prove it too! 60% of Instagram users learn about a product on Instagram and 75% percent take an action such as visiting a website after seeing an Instagram post. On Facebook, 19% of consumer purchases are influenced by Facebook posts.

The best way to use social media marketing is to create a community, not to directly sell. For your e-commerce business, you want to practice sharing content that is related to your products but does not directly sell to them. It’s important you understand who you’re selling to and focus on your ideal audience.

Look at how the beauty subscription box Ipsy mixes up their content. They share plenty of product photos and promotional posts but they also share content that their female millennial audience enjoys like inspirational quotes.

Use hashtags to find your target audience on Instagram. For example, if you sell handmade jewelry to moms and grandmothers, search hashtags such as #momliferocks or #legitmomstyle. If you sell athletic gear to sports fans, try searching professional team name hashtags or #sportsfan tag. The hashtagify app can help you find hashtags relevant to your products.

Reach Out To Influencers

After you are set up on social, you may want to try reaching out to influencers to get that first sale. Influencer marketing is a tactic where brands engage influencers including Instagrammers, YouTubers, bloggers, athletes or celebrities to promote their products through sponsored posts, videos or reviews. Influencer marketing delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional digital marketing because people tend to trust other individuals over brands and businesses.

Some influencers charge for these types of services but other, smaller or newer micro influencers will often trade promotion for free product. You don’t have to go after celebrities to see success. Focus on influencers who reach your target audience, whether that’s a blogger, Youtuber or Instagrammer. 

Below you can see how Silk Almond milk partnered with food blogger Emilie Eats to reach her audience of health and nutrition fans.

Experiment with Advertising

Finally, if you are really ready to make some sales, try testing Facebook or Instagram ads. These ads tend to be a little bit easier to get started with over Google Adwords and they can be incredibly effective. The average Facebook user clicks on 10 Facebook ads every month.

With Facebook and Instagram ads, you can target individuals with similar interests to your product or your existing followers. If you want to get advanced, you can use a Facebook pixel to target customers who have visited your store.  This is called “retargeting” and it’s a huge opportunity for new e-commerce stores. With retargeting, 26% of shoppers will return to complete their purchase.

 

There you have it! You are now truly ready for your first sale. The first sale often feels like the toughest one. As soon as it comes in, celebrate it and just remember that it is the first of many!

The post Starting An E-Commerce Business: How To Make Your First Sale appeared first on MeetEdgar.


How To Use Facebook Groups For Business (And Why You Should)

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Reaching customers on Facebook page is a constant battle.

You have your option of profile pages and business pages and Facebook ads. You watch your organic reach swing from low to high just as quickly as your ad costs do. It can absolutely feel overwhelming, especially over the last few months.

2018 has been a whirlwind for businesses on Facebook but luckily a few golden opportunities have emerged. One of those opportunities is Facebook groups.

If you’re not using Facebook groups for business, then there is no better time than right now to start learning how to use Facebook groups. If you have already jumped into the Facebook groups pool, then these tips will help make you an expert.

But first, let’s talk about why you should use Facebook groups for business.

Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages

For years businesses and entrepreneurs turned to Facebook pages to attract customers, and connect with their audience.

As Facebook grew and more businesses joined, the algorithms began to shift and pages began to experience a decrease in their organic reach.

Then in January 2018, Facebook announced a huge change in their algorithm.

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook wanted “people to stay together” and that the newsfeed would start showing “more from friends, family, and groups” and less from “businesses, brands, and media.”

Many marketers and businesses feared it would be the kiss of death for the Facebook business page. Business owners needed to get creative about how they could stay connected to their audience.

This is where Facebook groups come into play.

Facebook groups have long since been a part of the social media giant. But in the last year or so, Facebook has improved the group experience and offered new tools for individuals and businesses to build communities.

Those tools and features are definitely working because more than a billion people per month use Facebook groups. Every small business owner or entrepreneur should jump at the opportunity to learn how to use Facebook groups.

Facebook groups are public, private or secret communities where individuals can connect, communicate and share about a common topic.

On Facebook pages, page owners can share posts, videos, images and the audience can like and comment on the posts or leave a comment on the page.

In Facebook groups, the group owners and the group members can both share, posts, videos, and images on the group’s feed. It really opens up an opportunity for two-way conversations.

With Facebook groups, businesses can have real conversations with their audience, gaining customer insight and market research possibilities.

For solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, groups are a way to demonstrate thought leadership and provide value to potential customers.

While Facebook pages are still great tools for branding and for advertising, groups can be the best way to communicate with your audience.

The bottom line? Facebook pages are still an important piece of your social media marketing plan but Facebook groups can offer a whole new way to connect and communicate with your audience.

How to Use Facebook Groups For Business

There are two ways you can use Facebook groups for business. You can create your own group or you can join other groups.

Let’s start with talking about how to use your own Facebook group.

One of the first things you should do with your group is to determine its purpose.

facebook groups

Even if you’re creating this group as a marketing tool, it needs to be a community built around a core topic. No one wants to just talk about your product or service, they want to discuss their passions, problems or needs. Figure out how your product or service addresses a need and then make a group around it.

For example, if you run The Stylish Boutique in Atlanta, Georgia, you wouldn’t want your group to be The Stylish Boutique where all you do is share posts about your products. That’s more of a Facebook page strategy.

Instead, you would want to attract stylish women who are interested in your clothes, style trends and fashion tips. So your group could be “Style Tips and Fashion Finds for Stylish Atlanta Women.”

In one scenario, you’re talking to the audience and in the second scenario, you are engaging with a community.

Pro-Tip: Use a purpose-focused keyword in your group’s title. Much like Google, many people search for groups using keywords so think about the purpose of your group when you are coming up with the name.

After you’ve figured out your purpose, you should determine the mission and rules or your group.

Your Facebook group can be like your own little playground. You want everyone to play there but you also want them to play nice.

Use the about section of your group to clearly explain the topic of the group, how your members should interact and any special rules you might have. Consider if you’ll allow things like self-promotion, live videos, off-topic posts, etc. Remember to always connect your rules back to the mission of the group.

By being clear on the expectations, intentions, and boundaries of your Facebook group, you’ll set the culture of the group and you’ll attract the right audience.

Pro tip: You can “pin” a post to the top of the page that greets new members and outlines any important information about the group. Pinned posts stay at the top of the group newsfeed so they are the first thing your audience will see when they join the group.

Once your purpose is clear and your rules are made, then you are ready to start engaging in your group.

If you don’t want your group to be a ghost town, then don’t ghost it. We know, we know, you have a million things to do in your business and interacting in your Facebook group isn’t high on the list.

But, would you stay at a friend’s party if your friend had already left it? Probably not. And people won’t stay in a group if the owner isn’t active in it!

Become an active member of your group. Spend time in it daily. Share ideas, thoughtful content, ask questions, comment on other posts. Create exclusive content that you don’t share on your Facebook page. You want your members to feel like they’re gaining valuable knowledge by being part of your group. Because if you share all the same content that you do on your Facebook page, why would anyone join your group? Once you start doing sharing great content consistently, members will also start to share their posts, thoughts and ideas.

Pro-Tip: You can prompt engagement by creating “themed posts.” Themed posts are posts created with the intention of sparking member engagement. For example, if you’re a health coach, maybe on Mondays, you share meal planning tips and everyone shares a recipe. Or if you’re a business coach, you can have “Win Wednesdays” when your members can share their business wins. Or you can skip weekly “themed posts” and just create conversation starters to use throughout the month, such as “Share a photo of your office for the day!”

facebook groups

Finally, you can start inviting new members into your Facebook group and promote it!

This seems like a no-brainer. But many people forget this simple fact: if you want to really use Facebook groups for business, then you have to promote it.

A good way to start is by linking your Facebook business page with your Facebook group. You can do this by clicking the “More” button in your group and selecting “Edit Group Settings.” From there, you can select “Link Your Page” and choose the page you want to link to your group.

Your group will be shown at the top of that Facebook page’s feed, giving it prominent placement so that anyone who visits your page can see and join it. You can then create content on your Facebook page that promotes your group and invites fans to join it.

You can also link to other groups and recommend groups to your group members. You can do this by clicking the button with the three dots underneath the cover photo of your group and then selecting “Link Existing Group.”

You can link Facebook groups that you manage or that you’re a member of. After you’ve linked the group, you can write a post describing the group and why it’s valuable to your members. Once you have linked existing groups, they will appear at the top of your group page.

Now why would you want to link to other Facebook groups and how does it help promote your group? Because it’s connecting to other communities, which strengthens your community’s trust in you and helps promote goodwill among other group owners.

This is along the lines of “community over competition.” If you start recommending Facebook groups, then other group admins may do the same and return the favor by linking to your group. We’ll give more information on how to use other Facebook groups for business in just a moment!

You also should promote your group in places other than on Facebook. Add it to your email signature, add a link from your website, create a call to action in your next email newsletter, share about it on other social media platforms or mention in your blog post.

Pro-Tip: Never add people to your group without asking their permission first. This is so spammy and is a huge turn-off for your members.

Now we’ve talked a lot about how to create and build your own group but what about how to use Facebook groups that other people own?

A Facebook group that is owned by someone else can be a great marketing tool for any entrepreneur, solopreneur or business owner. There are millions of Facebook groups so there’s a good chance that there’s already a group around your topic. You can join these existing communities and begin connecting with potential customers and partners.

We recommend starting out by joining a few groups that are most directly related to your product or service. Being an active member of groups takes time so you don’t want to overwhelm yourself.

Once you’ve found your Facebook groups, take some time to get to know the lay of the land and the tone of the group before you strategize the types of content you want to write. It’s important you respect the mission of every group you join.

Read the rules of each group you join and respect them! If they ask you not to direct sell, then don’t post direct sales posts. If you can only promote on certain threads, then only promote in certain threads.

Breaking rules will not only get you kicked out of a group but it could lead to a bad reputation among your community, which could keep people from joining your group.

The trick to successfully promoting your business in someone else’s Facebook group is to provide value and not go for the straightforward sale. Ask questions, be friendly, answer questions helpfully and share valuable insights. Sure, it might feel like the long way to reach a sale but offering value provides a stronger foundation for building a brand. Your potential customers will remember you and like you more if you can offer them something that benefits them instead of just asking for a sale.

Once you know the rules, you’ll know what types of content or content categories you can share in each group. Then, you can start pulling from your existing library of content and start connecting with other group members.

How Will You Use Facebook Groups for Business?

While we never know what new announcement Facebook will make in the coming years, we do know that they are focusing on building communities on their platform. So you should do the same. Learning how to use Facebook groups for business can be a game-changer for your social media strategy.

Now we want to hear from you! Let us know how you use Facebook groups for business or some of your favorite Facebook group features.

The post How To Use Facebook Groups For Business (And Why You Should) appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Not So Scary Social Media Tips For Beginners

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A good horror story may keep you awake at night but social media nightmares shouldn’t! If you have a fear of social media, these not so scary social media tips for beginners will help you get over that fear.

Are you someone who is hiding out behind your computer screen? Are you scrolling through your newsfeed, liking Instagram pictures and retweeting tweets? Are you consuming so much content but not actually sharing much yourself? It’s time to get over the fear of social media and start using it to grow your business.

Getting started on social media can be scary. If there’s a tiny voice in your head telling you everyone else is already a perfect graphic designer, caption creator, and photographer and that their content is so much better than yours…

Tell it to stop, because it’s wrong!

Honestly, they’re not all experts and their content isn’t better than yours. The only difference between your social media pages and their social media pages is that they share content.

Getting over any fear is tricky but when you’re in business for yourself you have to learn to look terror in the eye and keep right on moving.

Social media can be intimidating when you’re starting out. We are going to ease you into it with some not-so-scary social media tips for beginners so you can start posting today.

Before we get to our social media tips, let’s talk about some common social media fears and why they are not as frightening as you think.

1. The fear of wasted time and money

Many entrepreneurs worry that they won’t see returns from their social efforts. Since most new business owners have tight budgets and very little free time, they don’t want to waste any of it on something that might not work.

via GIPHY

While this fear is valid, you can’t ignore social media’s opportunities. 67% of the world’s population is on at least one social media channel. Which means, that at least some of your audience uses social media. Also, your competitors are there too. 50 million businesses use Facebook business pages and over 2 million use Facebook ads.

Those aren’t just the big businesses with huge budgets either. A recent survey of small business owners showed that 92% of small businesses plan to invest more time and money in social media in 2018.

If millions of businesses and more than half the planet uses social media, then it’s a good indicator that something works!

2. The fear of having nothing to say (or worse saying the wrong thing)

Picture it, you’re standing on a stage, underneath the spotlight in front of thousands of people. You open your mouth to speak and… nothing. The idea of freezing is slightly scary. Or how about when you make a joke in a room and are met with blank stares! Cue all the embarrassment!

The fear of avoiding these two feelings often stops people from posting anything on social media.

However, if you are in the trenches working to build your business, then you know your business and your audience better than anyone else. And you’ll know how to talk about and how to talk to them. It’s time to trust your expertise!

Most entrepreneurs build this trust in themselves and their knowledge as they build their business. Learning to trust your expertise is a practice that comes when you share your expertise on a regular basis. It will feel scary at first but the more you share, the easier it becomes!

Is it possible you might say the wrong thing on social media? Of course! You’re human. You might make an error or have a typo. It happens to everyone. If you own your mistakes, then you will be able to course correct and improve along the way.

3. Fear of negative comments and reviews

Oh, the negative Nancy’s of the world! We all know they are out there and they always seem extra loud on social media, don’t they?

It’s impossible to avoid a negative comment so how will you handle them? First, it’s important to realize that everyone deals with negativity on their social media pages. You are far from alone in this.

We recommend creating a list of set responses for negative posts. You can edit and adapt these as necessary but it’s incredibly helpful to have a go-to response that you can use so you don’t respond in a negative way.

Second, look at negative comments as an opportunity. 67% of users now use social media channels to seek resolutions and 1 in 3 social media users prefer using social media customer care services over phone or email.

When you engage on social media, you have the opportunity to turn a negative experience for the customer into a positive one. This can help grow your business because customers spend 20%-40% more with companies who engage and respond to customers via social media.

Dealing with social media complaints is actually a huge opportunity for your business!

This example from DC Brau Brewery, a small independent brewery in DC is a great example of how small businesses can address customer service issues on Twitter.

They could have ignored the tweet or simply apologized but instead, they took it a step further and invited the customer to the brewery to resolve the issue. It doesn’t take much to offer a thoughtful response but it can make a huge difference!

4. Fear of sounding braggy or salesy or pushy

Self promotion is a non-negotiable part of starting a business. No matter what type of business you run, you have to be able to talk about it.

To avoid feeling salesy on your social media, focus on providing value to your audience. Your business provides value to your customers, no matter if you’re a health coach or if you are an e-commerce business. If you trust in that value, then you will trust your audience will want your content.

One of the best social media tips is to use a content mix of 80/20. In 80% of your content, you share value with your audience. This could be educational, inspirational or entertaining content. The remaining 20% of your content can be promotional or sales oriented. This way, your audience feels like they are getting value from your content and won’t feel like you are only pushing sales.

 

Now that we’ve covered the top fears about social media, we know it’s time for the next step: taking action. If you are ready to face your social media fears and get started on social media, here are some social media tips for beginners.

1. Recognize the possibility in social media.

We already talked a little bit about how many opportunities social media can bring to your business but we’re really going to hammer this point home!

Consumers are already using social media to make buying decisions. 64% of online shoppers say that a video on social media helped them decide on a product to buy and 86% of women will look at social media before deciding to make a purchase.

Your customers are already on social media and they are expecting you to use it. Additionally, customers do more than just follow brands. They engage with them. 48% of Americans have interacted on a company on at least one social media network. This goes for new customers and current customers.

Social media is the top choice for customer care channels and customers expect a response from a business in four hours.

Whether it’s attracting a new customer to click a link or solving a customer service problem for a current customer, you can use social media in a variety of ways to grow your business.

2. Take advantage of the learning opportunities

If you ever Google “social media guide,” you will find hundreds of thousands of resources that are designed to help you get started on social media. Study the experts and learn the best social media tips to give you an extra dose of confidence.

Just don’t overwhelm yourself with learning and then avoid action. We recommend reading one resource and then implementing one strategy or tactic from that resource before moving onto the next one.

Check out The Social Media Beginner’s Guide or any one of our free social media resources to get started.

3. Start small

A really common beginner social media mistake is trying to be everywhere at once. Start with joining one network and grow your audience on that network before you dive in everywhere.

Facebook is the most popular social media network if you are looking for a place to start but when in doubt, always turn to your audience and find out what social media platform they use.

Do audience research or use your audience personas to start with the right social media platform.

4. Create a strategy

Creating a strategy will help you ease the fear of wasted time and money. You can measure your efforts and you will know how social media is working for your business when you create a strategy that ties to your business goals.

Creating a social media strategy also helps to eliminate overwhelm and makes it easier to manage your content. If you’re a solopreneur without a huge team or big budget, then creating a social media strategy will save you time and stress in the long run.

Not sure where to start with your strategy? This blog post will get you started!

5. Batch, batch, batch!

Worried about knowing what to say or not being able to stay consistent with your social media? Say hello to your new best friend, batching!

Batching is doing a group of similar tasks together. For example, writing all your blog content in one afternoon or, creating all of your social media content in one hour. There’s a lot of science behind batching but the overall consensus is that when you batch your tasks, you can focus better, which helps you work faster.

When you batch your brain is able to focus on the task at hand, which means your creative juices will start flowing and you’ll be able to come up with more content.

This makes it much easier to write posts then when you’re trying to come up with something in a 10-minute window!

After you’ve written your posts, you can use a social media scheduling tool, like Edgar, to schedule your posts.

 

There’s no doubt that starting your own business is filled with scary tasks but social media doesn’t have to be one of them.

Put your game face on, move past your fears and follow these not so scary social media tips for beginners and you’ll be feeling like a pro in no time!

The post Not So Scary Social Media Tips For Beginners appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Instagram Marketing Made Easy

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Transcript for Instagram Marketing Made Easy

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

[00:00] Hey, hey there, Edgar Community. I am Megan coming at you here. We’re gonna get started with our Instagram Marketing Made Simple workshop in a few minutes. We do have our lovely head of the customer experience team, Kristina, who’s gonna pop in and help out with our chat on the right-hand side of your page. So pop on in there. Let us know who you are, where you’re coming from. Ask questions throughout this. We love being interactive. So make sure you’re connecting with each other and all letting us know where you’re coming from and who you are. And Kristina will be manning that and we get started here in a few minutes. Super excited to chat Instagram with you all. Thanks so, so much for taking a few minutes out of your day today.

[01:29] Alright, I see a few new popping on in here as we get a little bit closer to 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern time. I’m so excited to have you all here. Like I said we are gonna get ready to chat some really, hardcore, actionable Instagram tips today. So get ready with your pen and paper out to take these awesome tips and put them to use after the webinar. Because remember the best time to put anything to use, the best time to get motivated is right after you learn it. So we’d love you to go ahead and pop into the chat as well. Ask questions. Let us know what goals you’re working on, on any social network really. We love feedback about webinars too. Let us know where you’re coming from and chat with each on over there. Christina will be helping me out in the chat today.

[02:11] I am Megan. I’m one of the onboarding coaches at MeetEdgar. If you’ve been following along with our webinar series, you know we like to cover a ton of different topics. As small businesses, we are so, so lucky to have all of these platforms in order to get our message and get all of our value-added content out to our followers and Instagram is definitely one of them that we haven’t touched on in these webinars very often. So really excited to dive into some of these tips and tricks. Let us know what your favorite one is. Let us know how you’ve seen success on Instagram or what challenges you’re focusing on these days as well, over in the chat section. If you do have any questions as well that we don’t get to, please feel free to email support @meetedgar.com. We love chatting with the community there as well. Anytime throughout this webinar, you can ask questions over in the chat like we said. It is getting to that time to start now, so I’m gonna jump right on in.

[03:03] So Instagram Marketing Made Simple is our webinar today. Now if you haven’t followed us on Instagram yet, our handle is @meetedgar and you can see some of our awesome new content creation. We are going throughout this process of getting our Instagram up and running in a really full swing now with one of our newest team members, Maura Hughes, if you didn’t catch her on our Facebook Live the other day, be sure to pop on over to our Facebook page. She has so much valuable knowledge to offer to you all. So check her out there. Say hi to her over on Facebook as well. And she’s the one who is curating our awesome Instagram posts and we are going to dive right into some tips and tricks here.

[03:42] So why you should be on Instagram? I’m sure you guys realize that Instagram is one of the most popular networks these days. It has almost a billion monthly active users which is pretty insane when you think about that. So if you’re following the trends of social media, you know Instagram is definitely the place to be to catch people’s attention and to get all of your awesome value-added content out there. Since Instagram’s creation, it’s really grown into the ultimate platform for sharing visual content like photos, graphics that you create, anything like that. So if you guys are creating anything visual, Instagram is the place to be.

[04:19] So more than 60 million photos are actually posted each day on Instagram and 1.6 billion daily likes are given out on Instagram. These numbers are insane guys so if you’re not on Instagram, you’re definitely missing out on a lot of brand building and a lot of exposure there. So definitely not a network to ignore and miss out on these days. Instagram is a really great place to grow your brand awareness.

[04:44] One of the first things we want you to think about as you’re starting to set up your Instagram, is that you actually have two options of the type of account that can you use. The first option, I’m sure you all know, if you have your own Instagram, is a personal account. Personal accounts you can make them private or you can make them public. So you can use a personal account for your brand or business absolutely and still get that great public reach. It does have a higher organic reach and it has the ability to connect multiple Facebook pages and profiles, which is really nice.

[05:12] Also, however, Instagram does now offer business accounts. And I would love for you all to kinda consider what a business account could get for you. A business account has some really clear benefits. You know, for example, followers can click on your contact button to get in touch with you right from your Instagram page. Always making yourself available to your followers, to your community is gonna be a great way that you can differentiate your service and you can really show up for your followers. So that’s an awesome feature there. You can add your address and location if you’re a physical business, so definitely a plus if you have an actual, physical store.

[05:47] Analytics, guys. Analytics is huge for anything on social media. It’s kinda like we never want you to just be swinging a golf club in the dark and not getting that feedback and not ever improving on all the hard work you’re putting in there. So a business account can offer you some really awesome analytics right within Instagram as well. And ad capabilities. So this is similar to Facebook ads. It’s a paid way that you can get your content out and get a little bit more reach on Instagram. And you can do this in both the feed as well as the story section, but only if you do have a business account there.

[06:19] If you guys do have to follow up questions about if a business account or a personal account is right for your business, like I said, go ahead and email support at @meetedgar.com and we can chat through that a little bit more. So once you decide on if you want a business account or a personal account, your next step is gonna be as usual, what we talk about, coming up with your brand voice. Now your brand voice across all your social networks should be pretty consistent on what you want to convey, who your team is, asking those questions about what kinda content you put out there. What tone it’s in, so your followers know what to expect and you’re attracting your tribe and you’re attracting the right kind of people who really see themselves in your brand. And who connect with you in a way they become raving fans, they become what are called super fans who wanna get out there and essentially market your business with you because they care so much about and they care so much about your product. And Instagram is a great way to be able to do that consistently with visuals.

[07:16] So when we’ve talked about brand voice before, it’s been a lot around language, it’s a lot around the types of articles you share, stuff like that. On Instagram with the filters, with the ability to go ahead and mock up a lot of your photos and images, we really want you to take some time to sit down and create a style guide that goes along with your Instagram account. You wanna give your followers a place to know what they’re gonna expect. The types of photos that do well and the brands that are building the biggest followings really do have accounts that are really, really streamlined. So the one you can see here on the screen, you can see they go with a really clean style, super fresh bold images there. Other accounts that you see do well, you can see have really kind of a different vibe. If you go to Edgar’s Instagram you can see we do a little bit softer of a color, not as much of a harsh kind of black and white lines like that. But you know what to expect.

[08:05] So it’s not only knowing what to expect within Instagram, but this is also such a huge thing for brands who have consistent coloring. If you’re out in the world and you see that coloring or if you see something reminds you of that brand, it triggers that memory of like, “Oh yeah, that looks like XYZ.” In one of our past webinars we looked at Glossier, a make up company who does this so well that when people see their color pink out in the world, a lot of the time they’ll take a picture and they’ll hashtag it glossier pink on Instagram because they’ve done such a good job branding with colors.

[08:36] So I know it sounds a little bit like maybe this isn’t something you have to focus on but let me tell you it is so big for brand awareness. So definitely don’t waste time thinking too hard about what you’re going to actually create on Instagram until you come up with those consistent colors and with your game plan for your Instagram branding.

[08:57] Awesome. So as we go a little bit further here, we always want to start out knowing on each social network that it is all about keeping social and social and that means showing your personality and humanizing your brand. SO as we always say, people buy from people, not brands. And in order to get that purchasing power and in order to get that awesome value-added content to your followers, they wanna know you, they wanna like you and they wanna trust you. And that makes the buying process of being able to say, “You know what, I actually do believe in this product and this is what I need right now,” a lot easier of a decision for people to make. And it also makes the sale a lot more elegant for you.

[09:36] So you can see right here in this post, this is our founder, Laura, who does a lot of podcasts. And it’s a great way to pull back the curtain, get that behind the scenes as well as humanizing the branding, you know, showing we are real people, this is the amount of work that goes into creating this product and we do this because we care about our followers and we care about our community so much. And Instagram is an awesome way to get that personality added in a little bit more. So definitely don’t be afraid to share your face on Instagram every once in a while to get that awesome no like and trust factor going, so that people can really get to know you. And it works for any industry really. Not just a SaaS one, not just a product that might be only online. It’s also a really great way that you’re able to get your face out there without forcing people to buy your product. Again that no like and trust factor.

[10:25] So I also wanna touch here before we go into some Instagram posting examples, is if you have a lot of followers on your personal account, make sure you’re actually taking advantage of that and linking some of your posts, within your account to your business page, if you’re starting a new one. You know we always wanna be cross promoting on our platforms from Facebook to Twitter, stuff like that, to let our followers know that we exist in other places. But you can actually do that within Instagram as well. So make sure you’re tagging your actual business page or tagging your second brand page if you’re making one on your personal account to let people know it’s there and to build your following a little bit faster.

[11:03] Super simple to do, especially in your stories. Stories will disappear in 24 hours so it’s not anything that’ll be linked on your personal page for too long. This is a great place to it. Super simple. You’ll tap the camera in the top left of your screen. Go ahead and put that Insta-Story photo up there, tap the little AA letter icon and then you’ll just put the @ symbol followed immediately by your new brand’s username. And it’s a great way to drive people from your personal account to your new brand.

[11:32] Cool. So let’s talk a little about Instagram’s algorithm here. So each social network has its own algorithm, has its own way of what post they’re feeding up to make sure they’re showing you content that you care about. So Instagram’s here is going to have three main points. The first being interest. So Instagram’s gonna look at all the posts and say, “How much will this person like this piece of content?” And this is gonna be based on the past content that you’ve liked from brands, the past profiles you’ve clicked on. So it’s going to track your user’s behavior and it’s gonna be serving up posts from those people that you like more often or from those pages you visit more often.

[12:09] So this is also a really important thing to keep in mind when you’re creating your content, because if you create really diverse content or really share-worthy content where people might like a really funny quote or a meme that you post, that’s gonna say, “Hey Instagram, they like seeing post from me. Show my next post to them as well.” So that’s a really great way to diversify your content, make sure you’re getting people to like it, even if it’s not directly related to selling a product or driving traffic to your blog or anything, make sure you’re getting those nice, value-added posts out there to show Instagram’s algorithm. People like the content you’re putting out there.

[12:45] Recency is going to be the second thing that the algorithm looks at. So that’s gonna be how often or how recent a post has been shared. And it’s gonna prioritize those that are gonna be really timely over the older ones for people to see. And relationship, so how close you are to the person who shared it. So it’s gonna give higher ranking for people that you’ve interacted with a lot. So direct messages, commented, hearts, stuff like that, which is also why we really encourage you to get out there and do some community building of liking other photos, commenting on other people’s Instagram photos, DMing people. These are really great ways to also show the algorithm that you have relationships with your community and they want to see all of the posts you’re putting out there. So keep these things in mind as we go throughout these Instagram examples today.

[13:33] Some of these little tips on the bottom there are also things you can do again to build relationships. I always like to suggest, you know, going into Instagram, searching a certain hashtag that has to do with your community. So for us here at Edgar, for example, we could search hashtag small business or hashtag blogger and that’ll go ahead and populate all of the posts that other people have used that hashtag on and it’s a great way for you to then go in, start commenting, building relationships with these other people, to let them know you exist and your product might offer them value depending upon what you find in that hashtag related search you did.

[14:11] So you wanna make sure when you’re doing this that it’s not just you go through and tap, tap, tap, like, like, liking or copying and pasting the same comment on every photo. Because Instagram really does want, like most social networks these days, those authentic, real connections. So make sure you’re jumping in there, making those awesome connections and it’s a great way to start to build your following. Cool. The next thing I always recommend doing, especially if you’re getting starting out, is research bigger brands that are in your industry or in your niche. Cause if you think about it, it’s likely that they’re marketing department has spent a ton of money doing a lot of research on the types of posts that work really well, the times of day to send them out. They’ve probably done a ton of content relation testing about what type of content your followers like to see the most. And you gain insights from looking at other people in your industry to see what’s worked with their followers. And not exactly copying their strategy because you are the only you in your business, so you wanna make sure it is completely unique. But it’s a great way to start generating ideas of what works well. So pay attention to these bigger industries, pay attention to other people in your niche and see what’s been working for them, to start to know what kind of content your followers and your specific audience likes to see on Instagram.

[15:29] Awesome. So as we were talking about at the very beginning today, Instagram is so visual. So if you have a physical store or physical product, I really encourage you to try to look at the spaces or look at the packaging that you send it in and start to think about the experience that you can provide to people that they would wanna take a picture of. So this becomes really important because it’s essentially like free marketing. If someone’s taking a picture, tagging your business, tagging your industry in it and posting to their Instagram account, they have just opened up your brand to their entire followers as well, which is just.

[16:00] They have just opened up your brand to their entire followers as well which is just incredible free marketing, free brand awareness for you. You can see in these pictures you know you can see this really funny sign, I called shotgun infinity when I was 12, so many people can relate to that experience, really funny thing, super eye-catching, a lot of people taking pictures and posting it on Instagram, what great brand awareness for this restaurant. If you have a restaurant or a store think about the spaces that you can make a really creative wall people would love to take their picture in front of or a really creative sandwich board sign out in front of your store even and you’ll start to really see a lot more shares out there.

[16:38] With products you can see here this is an example from Glossier the way that they ship your product to you is in a really eye-catching, really good way that people like to take a picture of it and share it out on their own Instagram again. Start to think about these little things that you can do to really encourage other people really promoting your brand on Instagram.

[16:58] Cool so now that we’ve gone through a little bit of the set up we want to jump right on into what the heck else can I post on Instagram? It’s gonna be really, really similar to other networks but because it is visual we wanted to go and do a few of the sort of nitty grittiness of how Instagram works way better than other networks with photos.

[17:20] Similar to other networks like Facebook and Twitter we always want to be thinking about the posts of how we can teach people something and this goes along with that value-added concept that works so well on social media. You know people are following your brand because they want to know and they want to like and they want to trust what you’re sharing because they know your offering value in every post you serve up. Think about some hot tips or some fun facts that are around your industry that you can create and share out on Instagram, you can see here this is a post we did on Meet Edgar and you can go ahead ask a questions in it and let people know what to expect when they go ahead and click over and get all of your really great information.

[17:58] Teach something on Instagram and make sure you’re giving your followers a reason to come back, if you’re just promotion post after post after post that’s not gonna be a really compelling reason for people to want to go to your page and see your content or continue following you, you want to give them a reason and things to look forward to and teaching something and educating people is really one of the best ways to keep them coming back for more. You really also want to make sure that you’re staying consistent across any social network and this also goes along with the idea that you want to make sure people know what they’re gonna get from following you. Think about doing things like tip Tuesday or motivation Monday so people know, you know what? Every Monday when I log on to my Instagram this brand is gonna serve me up a motivation quote and get me ready for the week. A lot of creative ways to stay really consistent on Instagram but remember each post again should be value added to your followers.

[18:53] Next product updates, products updates are gonna be huge if you are a business or service who changes things or who upgrades their features a lot online or maybe you had a new shoe or a new dish at your restaurant these things are great to be announced right on Instagram because even if you send out emails announcing these everyone’s not gonna open every email you send and they might prefer to go to Instagram more often.

[19:18] Think about ways that you might be educating your community on your new features and how to use them in your email sends and how you can then go into a site like Canva, create a graphic, to actually go ahead and alert people on Instagram too. A really great way to go ahead and do that is again going into a graphic design feature and making a feature alert like this so every time people see this on Instagram their brain is triggered to go, oh great I better check this out, I recognize that brand color, I recognize that it’s a new feature from Meet Edgar that I want to learn about. Think about keeping your feature alerts really consistent in color and branding as well so people know that they want to click and pay attention to that post. Next thought leadership, so we chatted about know, like, and trust at the beginning and we touched a lot about how you are the only you in your business when we were talking about researching other industries but I wanted to touch on that a little bit more as we go throughout thought leadership as well because really what differentiates you from anyone else in your industry is going to be the way that you value and the way that you have built your business and that’s gonna be something that we really encourage you to share on Instagram. You can see here this is a quote from our founder Laura and it’s super simple, again, just to make quotes like this really pop on Instagram in a design app like Canva, you don’t have to have a graphic designer to make it really poppy here. Just share some of these tips and tricks here that you have learned from your business and things that really inspire you to show your followers what you value and to show your followers who you are.

[20:57] If you’re not really comfortable in front of a camera like we were talking about with your face thought leadership is another way to really get your personality out there and humanize your brand. Think about the things that you can really do again to keep your followers coming back and wanting to learn more about you. When you think about this kind of behind the scenes pulling back the curtain, showing who you are, please also remember that it is so important for your followers to know you but they also like to know you. If you think about like celebrities who go out and they share about their lives on talk shows and stuff, why do they get so many viewers? Because people want to know the person behind that, it’s a really great way to get that human connection, we are all hardwired to want human connection in life and Instagram’s a great place to go ahead and show that off for your business.

21:45 Next is visuals on Instagram again can really help to show a story within one post. You can see here this from Refinery29 is a great way to be able to make numbers a little more interesting. I don’t know about you guys but I am so terrible with numbers and I am not someone who is really interested in getting into a spreadsheet and reading a bunch of numbers, my eyes will probably glaze over. If I see this, this is really really great information that I can quickly digest and I can quickly understand so if you have interesting facts or if you have any data is really really compelling for people to want to look at.

22:21 Again they want to bridge this gap in their mind about saying, “Huh, I don’t know this piece of information, I want to know this piece of information, this brand is helping me get there,” so again that goodwill of teaching people and offering value but also Instagram is a great way to make sure that you’re catching people who might not want to read all of the data that you have and make it in a really nice eye-catching way for your followers to see so think about the different types of numbers and data that you can turn into a mini infographic like they have here.

22:51 Next is humor relatability and tagging. Guys we cannot stress relatability enough on social media these days, if someone can see themselves in your story, if someone can see themselves in your brand that is gonna create this really awesome moment where they look at it and they say, “Huh, me too. That’s something I feel as well,” and it creates that bond with your brand that they’re gonna remember that the next time it comes up in their life. You can see on this post here that we’ve said anyone else feeling like this, everyone has had days where they feel like they need a couple more hours in the day or a couple more hands to get stuff done so it’s a really relatable post that also brings humor into it.

23:32 Social media in general anything humor, anything optimistic is gonna be really important to share as well because people want to go there to be uplifted and to kind of escape from either a stress of their day or just to relax and humor’s a great way to get that sort of relaxed feeling in your head. Never underestimate the power of a smile that can really create a great connection with your brand as well as anything that you can think your followers will see and say, “Huh, this brand gets me, this is a brand I want to hang out with,” because that’s what you really want to accomplish on social media is being a brand that people want to hang out with.

24:08 Again it all relates back to you don’t want people just to follow you and forget about you or buy from you and never want to follow you on social media so you have to give them a reason to keep following and that is gonna be making yourself a brand people want to hang out with and say this brand gets me, I see myself in this story. Think about any sort of humor, relatability post that you can get going there. The last thing on this that I wanted to touch on is tagging within Instagram whether it’s in a story or within a post itself you can actually tag similar on the way you do on Facebook and Twitter just with the at symbol and someone’s handle and another really great way to connect people and create community on Instagram.

24:48 Next behind the scenes, so we’ve touched on this a lot with the humanizing brand but I wanted here to chat a little bit about this idea that you want to give your followers something that other people can’t get. If someone’s following you they feel like maybe they’re a part of a little bit more of a secret group that they’re getting something that others who are not following you can’t see. Offer things up to your followers that really help show them that you want to bring them into the brand and you want to again be a brand they want to hang out with.

25:17 It’ll also compel people to share your Instagram account with their friends because they want to feel helpful to their friends, it’s one of the strongest drives in social media sharing is that people want to be helpful and people want to go ahead and be seen as someone who’s really great to their friends and they can say, “Hey I’ve been following this brand, they do a lot of great bring the scenes content like I see that you need a social media automation tool, I’d love for you to get to know them by following them too,” and again the behind the scenes content is gonna be what really compels people to get to know, like, and trust you as well as giving them that little feeling that other people don’t get to know your brand as well who aren’t following you so behind the scenes content huge, huge, huge.

26:04 Reviews, so reviews are great for social proof, we talk about them on every single social network. On Instagram I wanted just to chat a little bit here about the idea that if you have a really great testimonial or review from one of your members or from someone who bought your product again make it really visual and eye-catching by popping into Canva or popping it into whatever design tool you use and create a format that can be consistently shared. You can just swap in and out this as seen on with the other brand names, swap in and out the photo of the person who did it, and go ahead and put their quote right in there.

26:38 Again it creates that consistency that when one of your reviews or social proofs come up people get that awareness that they know what they’re looking at right away. It said it takes about six seconds to process any sort of image so it’s a great way there to take some of that down so people who are moving really quickly through their feed might see that and say, “Huh, I want to stop, I know I like content from this brand.” It’s also a really great way that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time so if you have these consistent templates saved somewhere definitely make use of them so that you can jump on and be recognized quickly.

27:12 Contest, contest, contest it’s a great way to motivate people to hop on your Instagram and want to go ahead and join in the fun. Think about ways that you can compel your followers to want to interact with you with a contest. Hashtags are a really great way that people do this so you can go ahead and hop on and say hashtag your picture with some custom branded hashtag that you have and then you can choose a winner from that. There’s also a lot of different websites that will go ahead and help you with Instagram related contests, if you’re interested in that go ahead and email support@meetedgar.com and we can offer you up some of those.

27:52 With contests I also wanted to mention that you can create custom landing pages for the contests where people can then go and enter their email addresses allowing you at the same time to build up your email list. Think about the ways that you can go ahead and compel people to follow you on Instagram to enter the contest, share a picture with a branded hashtag to then again open up your brand to their followers and then have a special landing page if you have a URL in there that people can be directed to.

28:24 Next is educating people again but also driving traffic. Instagram’s an interesting one because it’s really easy to grow your follower account on Instagram but not as easy to drive traffic and this is because you can’t actually put a link in the comment section if you don’t have more than 10,000 followers. What I suggest always doing is creating a short link here like you can see that ACLU did, all they did was create a custom short link with Rebrandly that says ACLU.org/blog, super simple to remember it’s not a long URL that they have to go to, super simple that someone could actually type that in since you can’t click on it in the comments. Think about if you can if you need a link right within that comment section making it a nice easy one that people can type in.

29:11 For your blog posts again as well when your sharing a blog post on Instagram make sure you’ve gone ahead and pulled out a great graphic from it, overlaid some text, because the same rule of headlines applies for Instagram as well. You know people really read a headline half the time and not a whole article before they share it and before they think it’s helpful so go ahead and brainstorm different headlines, put them on your images here so you can share out some awesome headlines in your Instagram posts and still get them really visual.

29:43 This goes along with the idea of Evergreen Promotion which we all know Meet Edgar is really great at but sometimes it’s really hard to Evergreen promote on Instagram in the way that it’s set up. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it and it’s an awesome platform to keep re-sharing your content just again in a really authentic way. Why it’s really important on any network really is because two million blog posts are released to WordPress daily which is an insane number so in order to get your blog post showing or in order to get your content out there you oftentimes need to share it multiple times and you never really know the type of headline or the type of image that might grab someone’s attention.

30:23 If you do have content that’s Evergreen, so that content that makes sense to send out no matter what time of year it is, I would really suggest you sit down and you create multiple images for that blog post or you create multiple headlines for that blog post so you can overlay on those images and then creating that schedule of being able to re-share them on Instagram is another great strategy to drive more traffic to your site. Do not count Instagram out for re-sharing multiple images in Evergreen content because you never know what images and you never know what headline is gonna trigger someone and make them say, “Yes I need to know this information.” Test it out creating multiple ones and don’t be afraid to re-share Evergreen content on Instagram, it’s a great strategy.

31:08 Another great strategy we want to talk about here is we saw in the ACLU post that you can put just a short link that people can type in but what you’ll see a lot people on Instagram also do is say to click the link in the bio. This is because the link in the bio is actually the only place you can have a clickable link right there. What we will do here at Edgar a lot of the time is when we share a blog post well say click the link in the bio for more.

31:33 What’s really cool is there’s also this website called Linktr.ee, L-I-N-K-T-R- dot E-E so when we do this we actually send people to this link you can see here and when you click on the link in our bio it actually has multiple things. The multiple things have been shared over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had posts that say click link in bio and when people are clicking the link in the bio it’s taking them to where you can choose from these different options and what this really-

32:00 … to where you can choose from these different options. What this really does is it allows your content to live on Instagram longer than it appears in people’s feeds. If you’re clicking that link the bio from a recent post that we posted you can see all of the other links that we’re trying to drive traffic to, and that we’re trying to offer our followers value from, from previously in there. So, you don’t have to have just one link in your bio and change it out all the time. I would really encourage you to look into this service. It’s a great way that we’ve seen a ton of more traffic come from Instagram because we’re allowing our users, and we’re allowing our followers to self-select what they’re interested in here. Also again, making sure these posts live longer than the feed.

32:42 See we also always want to know that you don’t have to again use Instagram just to drive your follower count, or just to drive traffic to your website. You can also take your relationship with your followers off of Instagram and right into their inbox to help build your email list. Catskill Animal Sanctuary does this really well. You can see here right within their bio that they actually mention that as a call out, and they put that link there because they know that email is one of the best direct ways that they’re going to reach people. If you’re trying to follow-up and you’re trying to build your email list right now I’d encourage the link in your bio to be direct to where people are going to have that place where they can signup and opt-in to subscribe.

33:53 … bio. It’s taking you to a place where you can put your email address in and you can get that free download email to you. It’s a great value to you because you’re getting that. She’s getting a really great way to build her email list and keep contacting you about all of her great value-added content. So again, think about these ways that Instagram can be used not only to grow your followers, or not only to drive traffic, but also to grow your email list and offer value to your followers. If you’re doing this think again about ways you’re not only leading people just where they’re putting their email address in a form to join your newsletter, but they’re taken to a landing page where they’re able to put in their email. You can put in any other fields that you’re interested in learning about, of course, and get that free download to help build your email list right from Instagram.

34:43 Cool, so talking a little bit more about some of the other features Instagram offers, it does have a Carousel feature, which is really awesome because this gives you the ability to share multiple images within one post. You can include up to 10 images and videos in a single post and it’s great if you have a brand, or you have a service that you need to demonstrate instructions from. When you’re demonstrating instructions, again, you can see here how Buzzfeed Tasty does this in multiple videos that people can scroll through and see. It’s great for you to be able to show and tell that.

35:22 All righty here, I am getting a little bit of feedback that maybe these slides aren’t showing up. So sorry guys, let me go ahead and reset this.

35:58 Thanks so much for your patience guys. We are almost there to reshare these slides.

36:25 All right, so we should be back up and running now. Thanks so much for your patience. So as we were talking about here, it’s a great way to also not overwhelm all of your followers. It’s a great way to be able to post multiple things without having to have multiple posts go out for the day. Think about the ways that you can use Instagram’s Carousel feature. One of the ways that I’ve seen use it really well to drive more engagement is to be able to share trivia questions as well. When you’re sharing trivia questions it’s a great way to drive people to want to participate and get that kind of Q&A thing. With the Carousel feature you can ask a question on one, and then reveal the answer on the other, which is awesome. Going further on the Carousel feature you can reward your followers with first looks at new images, or first looks at new products. You can go ahead and think about that as well as you’re using the carousel feature here.

37:20 Going further, social media one-on-one is all about getting people to reply to you, getting people to go on in and chat with you. This is going to be about asking questions, so I love this one here by MTV saying, “Hey, which one of these looks is your favorite from Emma Stone?” It’s again, a great way to get people to engage a little bit more with your content. It’s also a really awesome way that you’re able to go on in and caption multiple quotes. Think about the ways that if you’re in [inaudible 00:37:52] and you’re making multiple quotes out of it, and if you’re making multiple great images that you can go ahead and put that right on your Instagram here.

38:04 All righty … I’m hearing that the slides are not coming through. I’m so sorry guys, one second and let me go ahead and troubleshoot this here. Appreciate you staying with us we are almost there.

39:51 (Silence) All right guys, not sure why these slides aren’t going through. So, so sorry, so I am going to pop on in here. The slides are actually going to be available on SlideShare after the webinar today. We will go ahead and make sure that you have access to the slides. Super appreciate you sticking with us here today, and I’m just going to chat here a little bit more about Instagram as we do start to get these slides working again. Thanks for sticking around here. All right, so going a bit further on this Instagram feature, with the Carousel you want to make sure when you’re using the Carousel feed remember you can add up to 10 photos to it at a time. You can go ahead and get all of these awesome value added ideas out on your follower’s pages quite a bit more.

41:02 Going a little bit further, we also always have Instagram Stories available for us. Instagram Stories are really short formatted stories of 15 second videos that last 24 hours on your Instagram feed. Why this is really, really, cool is because it allows you to do a little bit more information that is going to be a little bit more out there and the ways that you can test different things on Instagram Stories. Testing things on Instagram Stories is really cool because you’re able to do these short videos if you’re not someone who’s comfortable in front of the camera you can hop on in and say, “Hey, this is an awesome place for me to go ahead and test out being on camera because it’s only going to live for 24 hours in my feed.” Super easy to consume, people are really highly addicted to Instagram Stories right now especially because they are right there on your feed. So right on your feed it’s going to be able to show you at the top little icons that you can click on, and it’s again, a great way for you to go on in and connect with your members that way. Going a little bit further with Instagram Stories …

42:10 I’m so sorry about the slides guys. Working on seeing why the screen share isn’t coming through. Those will be available for you afterwards though.

42:19 But going a little bit further with Instagram Stories, things that you can do with it is you can share limited time discount codes on stories. So, you know saying something like, “Hey we’re having a Labor Day flash sale, get 20% off,” or, “get free shipping from this.” It’s a really great way for you to compel people to check back in with your story quite often because checking back in with your story is a way that you’re able to get people to say, “Hey, I want this content. I want to be able to know when they’re running deals.” If you do it consistently it’s going to really drive behavior where your followers are excited to see your content.

42:54 Instagram Stories are really awesome for events as well. If you guys are going to a live event, or if you’re going to any sort of event where you have a presence there go ahead and offer your followers the ability to see that you are at that event in your stories, and it’s not something that’ll live in your timeline. You can also tag the event to get a little more reach out there, and to get a little bit more connected with the event itself, and to let your followers know where they can see you in real life. Remember, keeping that social in social is so, so important. It’s again, a really great way you can tag the event, let your followers know where you’re going to be.

43:36 Instagram Stories are also a really great place if you find something out there online that’s a really great deal, or if you find a product that’s a really cool product, but you don’t necessarily want it on your actual feed. Adding it to your stories is a great way to train your followers to know when they go to your story they’re going to get all of this awesome curated information from you, and they’re going to get to see that right in your Instagram Story. So, Instagram Stories is also a really great way to cross promote on your other pages. If you’re doing a Facebook Live, or if you’re doing a Twitter chat, make sure you hop in to your Instagram stories and let people know what your Twitter handle is, or when your Facebook Live is going to be. Show your face out there, get people excited right in your story, so you can start driving some of your Instagram followers to your other pages.

44:26 The last thing we’re going to talk about as a concept here is an Instagram takeover. Now an Instagram takeover is actually going to be where you are giving permission from other people in order to takeover your Instagram account and go ahead and share content that they create right on your Instagram account. Now one of the reasons this is so powerful is because it’s user generated content that might be a little bit more purple cow content about … people are not knowing what to expect from that content. It’s that idea that if you’re dragging past a field of brown cows, but there’s a purple cow in there you’re going to pay attention to it. It’s a great way to get that sort of vibe out there. So takeover again, is just a way that you’re inviting another brand to takeover your Instagram Stories so they can share what they’re up to with your followers, and you can do the same with theirs. You want to find someone whose stories align with your brand, and you want to make sure you’re giving that guest control of your account so that they can offer to your followers.

45:29 Now when you’re doing this we also want you to consider using something like Trello, or a Google Doc where people can go ahead and put in the actual stories that they want to share, the photos that they want to share so you don’t have to give out your password to your Instagram. You can create systems that you can share content with each other, but you don’t have to actually share your Instagram password. Another great thing to think about when you’re doing Instagram takeovers is letting people know that you do Instagram takeovers. That can be with a custom landing page, or a custom email form that can go ahead and show you, hey we do Instagram takeovers. This is the information we need if you’re interested in taking over our Instagram email it to this email address, stuff like that. Consider making a custom landing page for your site that has that, or posting on Instagram in a post itself letting people know.

46:23 So again, some of the tips and tricks that we’ve gone throughout today are really awesome to just start building your Instagram following and giving people an idea of what they can expect from you. It’s a really great platform right now for any visual content.

46:37 I am so, so sorry about the slides popping out today guys. You guys are rock stars for staying with me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Like I said the slides will be available on our SlideShare account after the webinar today, and we’ll go ahead and get that out. Email support@meetedgar.com if you do want them as well though, and we can always email them to you there.

46:59 If you are not a MeetEdgar user yet, and you are on this webinar and you want to test MeetEdgar out to help manage your social media we have a great deal going on for showing up live to this webinar. I’ll go ahead and put the signup link and coupon code in the comments of this video in a couple minutes, but you can go to our signup page and use the coupon code, Octopuswebinar18 to get yourself a free month of MeetEdgar. Like I said, I’ll go ahead and put that code in the comments of the video. Please let us know any feedback, please let us know what goals you’re working on in the comments below. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss one of our webinars, and email us what goals you’re working on so we can always make sure we’re providing the most up to date best information for you guys. Thanks again for joining. Super appreciate it, and we will go ahead and get those slides up on SlideShare, and please feel free to ask any other questions along the way. Thanks so much guys, and have a really awesome rest of your day.

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Deep Dive: 2018 Social media trends to save you time and improve your ROI

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Transcript for Deep Dive: 2018 Social media trends to save you time and improve your ROI

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

 

00:00:00 Know our Edgar community. My awesome colleague Kristina is actually gonna be in there chatting with you all today too. So if you have any questions throughout this at all, whether it’s about me, Edgar, or social media strategies, she is going to be a rockstar resource for this. So like I said, please make sure you’re going on in there and chatting with us, letting us know where you’re from, and letting us know what questions and goals as we do start to go throughout this webinar. Like I said, we’ll get started here in the next couple of minutes, and let us know if you have any questions in the meantime. All right, guys. Hey, hey. See a few more of you trickling on in. Like I said, go ahead and let us know where you’re from, what you guys are planning on learning in this webinar. Let us make sure that we’re focusing on things you guys are really interested to make sure that we’re getting all of these great social media marketing resources out to you in a way that you’re excited about.

00:01:21 I’m gonna go ahead and jump on in. Like I said, my colleague Kristina is gonna be managing the chat here today, so pop on in and ask questions throughout the webinar. Keep the discussion going, and make sure that you’re letting us know if you do have anything you wanna learn in future webinars. Make sure you’re subscribing to our YouTube channel here so that you don’t miss any of the videos we’re putting out. As well as again making sure that you’re emailing support@meetedgar.com with any feedback on future webinars that you’d like to see, or feedback on past webinars that we’ve done. We love to learn and improve right along with our community. So thanks so much for joining our webinar today about social media trends to improve the return on investment on your marketing strategies. So if you do follow along with our webinar series here, you know that we chat a ton about experimenting on social media, and the best way to stay ahead of your social media curve is to really start to get to know what posts your followers like to stay ahead of your competition.

00:02:19 As well as making sure you’re offering value to keep your followers around. But we know you don’t wanna waste time and money on something that’s fleeting and that’s not gonna stick, so today we’re gonna look at some things that in 2018 we are sure are gonna be proven strategies to make sure the money and time and investment you’re putting into all of your marketing is going towards an awesome place. So this really is a dear subject to us here at Edgar, especially me, because I think all too often as small business owners, as solopreneurs, as small marketing teams, there’s a common thought that you’re alone in this struggle of not knowing what to post. But really remember, social media marketing challenges everyone, not just you. So as we’re going throughout this today, make sure that you’re really letting us know what goals you’re working on. Big companies, small companies. We are all in this together, making sure our brand story is getting out there and we’re getting the most return for the effort we’re putting into our social strategy.

00:03:13 So hopefully we’ll arm you with some great tactics after this webinar. Get out your pen and paper to get ideas jotted down so you can put them into use right when we end. So the real goal with any sort of marketing strategy whether it’s on social media or not is really making sure you’re delivering the right message to the right people at the right time. And if you’re marketing a product or service to anyone, this really involves making sure it resonates with your audience, and everyone is gonna be on a different buying journey. Some people on social media are gonna be there ready to buy, and those are what marketers know as these buzz words, as you’re hot leads. And then there are gonna be some people who are just in that consideration phase, and maybe need a little bit more nurturing and time.

00:03:57 Social media is such a cool place that you’re able to speak to both to these user segments, but that also produces some challenges in making sure that you’re getting that content out there and you’re competing for a portion of the market share where you’re able to get people’s attention in all of these segments. Gaining their interest, making sure the time they’re spending following you has a lot of value for them as well. So it can really help to make sure that we understand what return on investment is so we can talk to all of these user segments, and at the right time delivering your message, each time ensuring that it is talking right to them. So let’s start really quickly with a definition of what ROI is. Simply put, you’re putting something in as the investment, and you’re getting something out which is the return.

00:04:46 The goal of the return is that it should be higher than the investment. This can mean a lot of different things for different people. ROI for a lot of marketers is a measure not necessarily in monetary value. Rather, it’s looked at whether the investment in your social media’s paying off in relation to the time you’re spending on these posts. So let’s say you’re spending of your time managing your communities and creating this content for your sites, then maybe half of your salary or half of your budget could be considered as an investment into your social media efforts. Or in money terms, this can be thought of the amount gained here can be seen as you run the campaign, and say it generates 10 sales. That’s gonna be the amount gained, so that’s gonna be the revenue from your sales. The amount spent is gonna be the total investment you put into that campaign, so the planning, the copy, the graphics. All of that stuff is the investment.

00:05:41 Then we’re gonna be able to track that a lot better to know what types of posts you should be really investing in with your community. Again, every single person is on a different buying journey, and it’s really said that it takes about seven touch points with a brand in order to establish to brand loyalty, and in order to really get someone to know, like, and trust you. So as you’re going throughout this too, think of the different funnels you can create with all of your value added content. You never really know where someone is gonna be in their buying journey on social media. So make sure every update and promotion that you’re sending out is leading to different pages. You can see this flow here might be for someone who is a warm lead, someone who is there and ready to buy. They’re aware of your brand, they know it’s gonna solve your pain point, you’ve done a great job letting them know you are the best choice in your industry.

00:06:31 But this flow could be changed, and you can still relate it back to the return on investment, even if it’s not gonna be related to a direct sale. So we’ll look at some strategies going throughout that, but I really wanted to just put this up here today so that you guys can really start to think about the fact that it’s not always gonna be converting to a sale when it comes to return on investment in social media. So let’s start a little bit about creating some community here as well. Simply Measured is an awesome site that does a lot of statistics around social media, and they found that 68% of companies surveyed actually have social media teams that are only one or two people. So that means if you’re a big company or a small company, oftentimes your social media teams are gonna be about the same size.

00:07:16 And this is really what I want you guys to focus on in getting motivated to get these stats going is that we’re all struggling to find the right stats to track for our own social media campaigns, so this webinar really is for everyone. It really is for big or small brands. We are all struggling in this together. You can see from this graph here a lot of people, 40% of us don’t really know the ROI of our social media assessments. So stick around and make sure that you’re getting these tips and tricks, asking questions throughout this, and we’ll go ahead and dive into some more stats here. So first and foremost, if you do follow along with our webinar series, you know that we do chat about goals at the beginning of most of them, and goals are really what is gonna help establish everything that goes, moving forward, motivating you to stay right on course. And know when you need to know the course or double-down on something working well.

00:08:11 If you need some ideas on goals when it comes to social media marketing and ROI, take it from these kind of primary uses that a lot of companies have said they use. The three biggest ones are gonna be brand awareness, lead generation, and thought leadership. And that’s gonna account for about 75% of what most social media brands are focusing on in 2018. Again, if this is something that we’re seeing a lot of brands focus on, it’s probably a trend you want to pay attention to. Think about how a lot of your posts are gonna lead from thought leadership and brand awareness and lead generation when you’re thinking about all of this. And this can really translate to asking questions about your company. Clarifying the goals with your entire team. Say you’re a new startup company trying to build brand awareness or establish yourself as thought leaders is gonna be a really great goal in order to get that great trust amongst your followers who might not know you that well already.

00:09:09 Or say you’re an already established brand, and you need to have a lot of customer service questions answered on social media. That’s gonna produce a little bit different of a strategy for you, so having your goals set out here is gonna be your number one place to start. Whatever your goals are, make sure you do note the existing levels and metrics as we’re going throughout this, too. For instance, if you set a goal to have 10,000 monthly visitors to your company webpage, by the end of the month you need to know where you’re starting. So hop into your Google Analytics, write down these numbers, and get your bench points marketing going so that we can see the efforts that you’re putting into your social media strategy, and where they’re taking you. On social media, you always want to keep the social in social media. Your updates really should focus around sparking conversations, answering questions, and creating a community as well. Customers who are there to love your product and love your business are gonna become a part of your marketing team if you’re doing this right.

00:10:10 So let’s dive in a little bit more here as we’re talking about ROI on some of the post examples that are coming up. I also want you to remember that of course we need to relate it back to your business’s revenue. That is the top thing that we need to make sure you guys are focusing on, but sometimes on social media you can also remember that value is all relative. Knowing how your goals fit into your overall marketing plan can really help you to start building your brand awareness, building that trust, and fostering those long-term connections with your audience. As you’re setting these goals and benchmarks that I was just chatting about, think about different things that you can track besides just money sometimes. Say you’re a blogger. You can set up goals to measure how many people have subscribed to your newsletter, or how many people take an action to read another blog post once they get through the first one. If you’re a software company, you can measure the sign-ups for a trial as you are starting to send more people to your features page.

00:11:09 Blog comments can even be something that’s a huge way to see hey, this is a really engaging blog post I shared on social media, and it compelled a discussion not only on my social media page, but also on the comments section of my blog. So again, there are so many different things you can track when it comes to the return on your investment. It’s not always about the money, so don’t get discouraged if maybe you’re not coming up with the right numbers. Think about other creative ways that you can really start to say, “Huh. This is an awesome, awesome way that I’m showing my followers value here.” So think again, clicks to links on your updates, online purchases, filled out your contact form, signed up for your newsletter, downloaded a PDF on your site, even. These are all great lead indicators that you are doing the right thing with your social media posts. Cool. Tracking engagement can be a lot more useful than tracking revenue as we were just chatting about.

00:12:05 Once you do start tracking these goals, we wanna make sure that you’re also always going back and aligning back with your entire marketing team, and making sure that your team and your strategy is right on point. This especially helps to establish a publishing schedule based on your content calendar. See what campaigns your entire team has coming up, or see what holidays and kind of promotions your store has coming up to make sure you’re syncing all of these things with your social media strategy. So talk with people, sync with people making sure that you’re really getting up to date with everyone. I also wanted to mention ROI and time-saving techniques is going to be really amplified when you do things like use a social media scheduler like MeetEdgar. So whether you use Edgar or whether you just have a content calendar right now, automating your posts and scheduling them out is really gonna be the best way you can save some time.

00:12:59 And really make sure that investment piece is getting a little bit smaller and that return piece is getting a little bit higher with every status update you’re putting out there. So we want you to schedule and plan your posts in advance, and this is gonna be so, so helpful that makes sure that if something disrupts your day, if your team is interrupted, you aren’t scrambling to write and upload posts. You know that you have them all there. MeetEdgar’s taken care of it. Plus you get your posts out on time when your followers are online, and not when you are online. Edgar also allows you to get the most out of your content by recycling it, so you get more return for each post you’re putting out there. So social media automation and recycling your evergreen content is going to make sure that you get the most out of the hard work you’re putting into those posts by re-sharing them, and making sure the majority of your followers get those great content tips you’re putting out there.

00:13:54 It’s also gonna help you free up time to do human tasks that can really help improve the return on any social media posts, and that’s gonna be engaging with your followers. Commenting on them when they ask you questions, thanking them if they retweet you. Stuff like that is gonna add huge amount of benefits for you, and if you have a scheduler like Edgar doing all of the posting for you, it frees up your time to go in and engage a little bit more which is really gonna boost your post awareness. A really cool thing about Edgar right now too, to make it really easy and quick for you, is we just released our Auto-Variations feature. So Auto- Variations in Edgar is gonna allow you to go ahead and stick one blog link into our composer, and Edgar here is gonna automatically generate some new headlines for that link allowing you to test out different subscriptions, allowing you to really make sure that you’re getting your posts and languages to the top notch AB testing networks so well on social media.

00:14:51 If you haven’t checked it out yet, MeetEdgar’s Auto-Variations is a huge time saver to cut back on that time investment piece when it does come to return on investment stuff. So now that we covered some of the goal setting and some of the motivation that we are all in this together, let us get into some example posts for how you’re actually gonna measure your social media ROI. Here we’re gonna focus on four main things. First of all, we’re gonna focus on audience reach and follower account. Next, engagement, then click-through rate and conversion rate. Let’s dive in here to audience reach and follower account. This is gonna go hand in hand with building your brand awareness. If your main focus in your business right now really is building your brand awareness, your audience reach is a great place to start. Some of the best content to post for getting your audience reach a little bit higher is what I like to refer to as the three P’s. You want your content to be focused around professional, personality, and passion-driven content.

00:15:56 This in 2018 is something you do not want to miss out on. It’s a place that you wanna make sure that your followers are getting to know that you’re an expert in your industry with the professional content you’re putting out there. That personality content, giving them that behind the scenes, who you are content. Humanizing your brand. Always remembering that people buy from people on social media is gonna really help to make your brand shine. And then passions. People want to really support your passions and be a part of what you’re excited about too. So make sure you’re not afraid to throw in your personality and passions in there to really increase people’s trust. Going a little bit further on setting your benchmarks when it comes to audience reach, some simple ones to start out with are just tracking your current followers and your current reach. Facebook Insights makes this incredibly easy to do. Twitter Analytics as well, so go ahead and mark those numbers down and create some goals month over month on how many new followers you wanna go ahead and attract to your sites.

00:16:55 Some great tracking can be done with Edgar’s history page as well. We do track the amount of followers and give you nice weekly reports on the changes there, too. If you’re not sure where to find that if you’re an Edgar user, go ahead and email supper@meetedgar.com, and we can guide you through that. As you’re starting out creating these three P contents that we were just talking about, I wanted to throw in some questions if you’re struggling to come up with the type of content and the types of status updates that are work well here. These are three questions that we really ask ourselves when we’re writing our status updates, and when we’re thinking about new content to create. What this really also helps us do is diversify our content. Here at Edgar, we are a social media automation tool, and we write a lot about social media trends and we write a lot about social media in general. However, we’re also a remote company, and we’re also a company who writes a lot on business practices.

00:17:49 This tangential content is gonna be something that opens up our brand a little bit more to people who might not necessarily be looking for social media automation tools, but are looking to get these business practices in. If you’re trying to think of tangential content and diversifying your content to reach new audience segments, these three questions will help you kind of think about what other things your brands can talk about on social media to increase your audience reach. So ask yourself, do you have a topic that you’re an expert in? And see if, will this topic be an interest to your audience? Audience personas are gonna be huge for knowing the answer to that. We’ve got a great blog post on that if you’re not sure how to create audience personas, go ahead and email us and we can get that to you. Do you have a unique perspective on a piece of content? This one is huge, guys. There’s so much noise out there on social media and the Internet, and you are the only person with your unique thoughts and your unique perspective on things.

00:18:45 So make sure you’re throwing in any sort of commentary or thought leadership that you have around that subject to make sure it stands out and adds something to your industry. Last but not least, make sure you’re coming off as an expert in this topic. So talking about things from a position of authority, making sure people when they think about anything in your industry, you are the voice that pops into their head. Let’s take a realtor here for example, and get into some nitty gritty posts and look at some actual examples. For a realtor, getting brand awareness out there, we’re looking at focusing on the long-term relationship. Think a little bit about the fact that if you’re a realtor and you’re just posting over and over again about actual brands and actual things about your posts and lists and stuff like that, you’re activity reports aren’t gonna be really speaking to people who aren’t ready to buy a house right away.

00:19:40 In 2018, the trend to do with any of your content whether you’re a realtor or whether you’re a different brand is really gonna make sure you’re diversifying your content. Making sure your marketing and your activity reports are done around diversifying and getting different content out there. Let’s look at an example here. I love this example of These 28 Terrible Real Estate Photos That Prove That Selling A House Is More Challenging Than You Think. This is not something that they are directly asking for a sale. It is something that is gonna work well on social media first and foremost, ’cause it is really centered around photos. Social media is such a photo-related topic there. It’s gonna really make sure that people are going in and saying, “Oh, great. Something visual to look at. I am so excited now.” If they’re sharing something really visual here which is a really great way to get people interested in your posts.

00:20:34 But he’s also playing the long game and saying, “You know what? I’m not asking you to buy anything, but look at these really funny photos,” and it produces this emotional connection where people are laughing about something you posted. And when they think of your brand, that really awesome emotion of laughter and happiness will be associated with you. So playing this long game, not doing a one-off sale is a great strategy to go to here. Next, going along with this long game, I love this post here. Getting 49 tips to make your organization a lot easier. One of the reasons I really like this is that you’re thinking of selling a lifestyle more than anything, and the way that you can really solve people’s pain points and speak convincingly to your followers is much more appealing than thinking about hey, this process of organizing, this is what you do. Rather sharing this lifestyle and what they get after they use your product, or after they use your tips here.

00:21:28 So think about how ways your business or how your service can really shine through with posts oriented at thinking about the after effects, and what they’re gonna get from all of the awesome tips you’re giving them. This last one about realtors here is one of my favorites. I just love it. It makes you laugh, it makes you smile, it doesn’t have anything to do with a direct traffic or sale. But the ability to get reactions and the ability to garner shareability with this post is incredible. So what I love especially here is that this company created a custom graphic along with their logo. They probably did this with

00:22:00 -created a custom graphic, along with their logo. They probably did this with a free content creator like Canva. So don’t worry, you don’t have to have a in-house graphic designer to do this. But they’ve attached their logo, very small, very tastefully, in the bottom right-hand corner here. This way, when someone maybe shares this with their friend who’s really obsessed with outer space, or just thinks this is really funny, their logo is going to travel along with it, increasing their brand awareness, increasing that generation there. So think of ways that if you are posting clever softer updates like this, that you can still increase your brand awareness when people share it and when people see it by having your logo and website attached to something like this. And that return on investment can be really awesome.

00:22:42 Going a bit further here, I wanted to talk a little bit about making sure that you’re cross posting and making sure you’re letting people find your brand and discover your brand where they want to. This post from Home Depot is great for that. You can see in their status update, they say, “Already thinking about the holidays? So are we. Catch a sneak peek of our holiday line by following the conversation on Twitter.” So this is a post they went ahead and posted on Facebook. However, they’ve already known that, hey, maybe I’m trying to build up my Twitter following. My goal right now is to get more people to follow me on Twitter. I have a great following on Facebook, let’s tell them that there’s this great discussion going on on Twitter that has some behind the scenes content, which is always really compelling for people on social media. So it’s going ahead and directing people there to content they know they want to see, and they’re really making sure that you’re knowing it’s a sneak peek, it’s something exclusive that you can see if you follow them on Twitter, so giving them a little bit of that brand and sort of mentality that they are getting something that others aren’t, and it’s a really great way to compel people to follow you on a different network.

00:23:53 All right. So trend watch 2018, one of the biggest ones I want to stress here is video. All of the platforms and all of the social media stats are really showing a trend towards all the algorithms loving video. So if your goals are to build brand awareness and lead generation, I don’t want you to skip out on this. It’s a great way for you to build authenticity with your followers right from the start. And going along with this a little bit more is, it’s such a non-intrusive way to produce brand awareness. You’re not asking anyone to leave the site, you’re not asking anyone to purchase anything. All you’re doing is asking them to go ahead and click on your video and watch it.

00:24:34 This example here from Allstate is prime. They already hook you into their video, so they get you excited by producing a little bit of meme text there on the video that you can see that peaks your interests a little bit, and they get you excited, because you know you’re going to be entertained if a little child is talking about insurance rates. So think about ways that you can make your videos look and hook your followers right away, and posting it natively absolutely is the way to go right now. You get about a ten times higher reach than if you post YouTube videos right now, so make sure that you’re utilizing native posting on each network. You can even schedule native posts right within Edgar, we have a little video icon right underneath that text box when you click to add content. So take advantage of scheduling some of that to really get your brand awareness out there.

00:25:26 And one of the best ways to really measure the return on your investment for videos is not necessarily going to be the reach your video gets, but how much viewership it receives and how many people are watching it all the way to the end. Facebook makes this really easy by doing things like giving you unique views on the video, so pop into your Facebook insights or pop into your Twitter analytics and start kind of seeing the viewership of the video to measure that return on investment.

00:25:52 And remember, guys, you really don’t need to be a professional videographer or have a ton of content to get video as a part of your strategy. Think of it this way, we talk about evergreen content and repurposing content here on our webinars a lot, so if you write a blog post that doesn’t exactly live up to your expectations, why not try repurposing it into a quick video? Jumping in front of the camera, even just using your iPhone and going ahead and showing your face describing some of the concepts in there. If you share some tips in that video and it doesn’t find that audience really well, you can go ahead and then repurpose that video into a blog post. So thinking about creative ways you can do it, it doesn’t have to take a ton more time. Repurposing content really is going to be the way that brands can keep up the speed of social media. You know how quickly social media goes these days.

00:26:44 So using the work you’ve already done to get a head start on creating different types of content from one piece is really going to make the biggest difference on getting that return on investment. So really making sure, again, that you’re focusing on video in 2018, so you’re not missing out on any of that.

00:27:01 And livestream.com is an awesome site who went ahead and aggregated a lot of video statistics recently, and they actually found one that I wanted to share with you guys today. That’s that 87% of people that they surveyed said they would prefer to watch an advertisement online versus a traditional commercial if it had behind the scenes content in it. So make sure you’re showing off your office, make sure you’re showing off anything that gets people in that behind the scenes content if you’re doing more of a promotional video.

00:27:33 All right. [inaudible 00:27:35] here, we know we talk a lot about value, value, value as the number one thing you want to be focusing on when you’re producing social media content, but sometimes you do have to be a little bit more promotional, even when your goal here is talking about brand awareness. So we’ve been talking a lot about these softer posts here, but I wanted to jump in and do one of these last posts that has to do with brand awareness around the fact that you need to make sure your followers know your product can give them a better life. It’s really going to have the biggest return on investment when you focus on the emotional appeal here.

00:28:07 So this right here rotating on your screen was taken from Marie Forleo, and she does a great job of getting this emotional appeal through testimonials and social proofs. So your reader really needs a reason to take the plunge when you’re putting promotional posts out there. An emotional connection is going to be the biggest reason, especially here in 2018, everyone is focusing on that emotional driven sales strategy.

00:28:35 So your followers might not really even realize that their life could be better, or that your product or service exists. When you’re building brand awareness, you want to make sure that you’re telling the reader what problems you are going to fix and being really clear about it. When you show that you can identify and you can understand their problem and speak directly to them, you’re going to easily demonstrate that your product is the best fix for their pain points, and they have these desires and ambitions and that you understand them directly and you’re making that connection that your product can take them to where they want to be, and that they deserve to be there.

00:29:12 So make sure that you’re speaking and so, you know, “Hey, what’s preventing you from being there? My product can help you get there.” And that they deserve a product like yours to achieve that. So show the reader that you’re on their side and that you’re there to help, and social proof and testimonials are a great way to make sure that they understand that you care and you have been there in the past for your followers.

00:29:35 All right, discoverability, relatability, and shareability. So this right here is going to be really great for brand awareness because in 2018, consistency and making sure that you’re showing up for your followers, again, is going to be huge on each network. The unique benefit of sharing quotes, like this one here from Kim, is that they are so universally understood. People can relate to them no matter what. And they get likes, and they get shares like crazy on social media. Inspiration and optimism is really popular right now. For example, say you share this post as an inspirational quote, and you’re like, “You know what? I don’t know how to measure the return on this investment.”

00:30:14 Know that on Instagram, especially, you should be hashtagging your quotes here, because you can get more reach with this. Say someone is searching for an inspirational hashtag on Instagram and your brand comes up. It increases the likelihood that they see that quote, because they were just looking for some Monday inspiration, and they see that you do that every Monday, and that’s what they need every Monday, they’re more likely to then go in and follow you. So get creative with ways that you think can really help boost that follower count and that brand awareness when we’re looking at things to see that all-important follower count go up.

00:30:50 All right, so let’s head into the next section here, engagement. This is one of my favorite topics, because it really is taking and keeping social in social media. You’re making sure you’re not just having a monologue and broadcasting all of your posts out there, rather you’re creating chances to talk to your followers and have a dialogue and offer the benefits of them. Engagement is really what’s going to come out of this quality content that’s going to resonate with your readers, compelling them to talk, and compelling them get excited, to interact with you.

00:31:23 So remember, real people do run real businesses, so as you’re writing on social media, keeping it conversational, keeping and making sure people know about your brand. So content creation, conversational, really using numbers and asking questions to peak that curiosity behind any sort of statistics or any sort of things that you’re sharing is a great way to get people to talk back to you. Post it forward is what we like to say when you’re saying, “You know what? This post is so valuable,” or “Hey, we’re going to go ahead and donate some proceeds from this post to charity.” Things like that can really show and produce engagement that people get excited about and want to share with their friends.

00:32:04 Be real, and don’t be afraid to be flawsome. Flawsome is a term that I just actually learned the other day that I love. It actually came out of this tweet that someone at the Red Cross accidentally accidentally posted on the Red Cross’s Twitter account thinking that it was their personal account, not realizing it. They were then able to turn the situation around so well, making a joke out of it, going ahead and admitting to their audience that everything was safe and sound at the Red Cross. So if you make a mistake on social media, go ahead and own up to it. That produced some of the biggest shares on that post that they admitted to. So don’t be afraid to admit your flaws. It gets huge engagement, and it gets that real kind of person-to-person connection on social media.

00:32:48 So tracking for engagement, easy tracking on comments, shares, likes, stuff like that. And don’t forget about engagement as a way to get a huge return on investment when it comes to things like thinking about how much money a lot of companies pay towards focus groups. Social media is a free platform where you are essentially able to ask questions and go ahead and produce polls to get to know your audience in a free way. How awesome is that? You don’t have to go ahead and pay a marketing agency to do a lot of user research for you. So engagement can also help get that return going, as you’re getting to learn a lot more about your audience.

00:33:27 Cool. So, let’s jump into some examples here. For engagement in 2018, you’re going to see a lot of brands starting to run contests and starting to run ads like this one that Edible Arrangement does. I love this here because it really gets people excited with consistency in their hashtag, #triviathursdays, and it gives followers a reason to participate. It’s going to increase your page engagement, and it’s going to get people excited to share this post with others as well, because they’re giving them something that they can win. So enticing people a little bit more there, but also really making sure that people are aware that this happens every Thursday, so that they are ready and excited to produce and engage with the community here who’s all thinking about trivia.

00:34:13 So think about these custom images that you can throw onto these fun posts, and start watching what other brands are doing to get ideas for how you guys can start to produce more engagement on your social media posts.

00:34:26 Right here, for Ford, I love this post. As you can see, there is no link here, there is nothing directly selling anything that has to do with Ford. All this content says is, “Oh, the places you’ll go. Where have you traveled with your Focus?” You might say, “Huh, that’s interesting, Ford. No one is going to get to your website or produce any sort of return on this post.”

00:34:49 But posting questions like this is going to be huge, you guys. Again, making sure that you are giving people the time and the space to tell their story. People love talking about themselves, people love connecting with each other, so giving people a space to do that with your brand will keep your follower count going and keep people engaging with you. You know, I love this post especially, because in 2018, people expect more of a personal touch with social media and advertising and branding than ever before. If you’re creating a space where people can talk to you on your post, it then gives you the opportunity to hop on in and talk back right to that one follower.

00:35:28 If your brand is not doing this right now, you’re going to be missing out on so much. If people are replying to you on social media, even if they’re not asking questions, you want to make sure you’re responding to every single follower. This one-on-one interaction is really the way that marketing and social media is going in order to stand apart.

00:35:47 So create opportunities with every post that you post to ask questions and get people talking, so that you can then go back and set aside 15 minutes at the end of your day and engage personally with each follower who does respond to posts like this.

00:36:02 All right. Next, lifestyle photos. This one here, I just love so much. This is a company, Madewell, that’s actually a clothing company. They produced this Instagram photo that got over 15,000 likes, and they are a clothing company. So think about ways that you can, again, diversify your content and really make sure that you’re investing in a way that your audience sees themselves. So Madewell obviously did a ton of research with their Twitter analytics and Facebook insights that let them know, “Okay, wow, my audience is really looking for things that have to do with this millennial clothing, this millennial kind of lifestyle going on, and avocados that are something that is so trending right now.” So it doesn’t fit with their brand, but this photo is aesthetically pleasing and it’s appealing to their target audience who loves that lifestyle. And look at the engagement it got. So get to know the interests of your followers, the age ranges, and research what those age ranges and what that kind of personality and persona is really excited about seeing.

00:37:06 Cool. 2018 is all about influencer marketing, especially on Instagram, but other networks as well. Over 90% of marketers who employ an influencer marketing strategy really do see success from it. So if you guys are really starting to get to this point where you want to experiment with some things, I would encourage you to go ahead and research some stronger influencers in your market. You know, you don’t want to just get anyone with just the hugest amount of followers. You do want to make sure that you’re going in there and asking questions, saying, “Which of their posts get a lot of reactions from their followers? Does my brand fit in with those types of posts that get a lot of reaction?” And these are the types of clues that you should be looking for, if that influencer is really going to be a great one for you.

00:37:53 For example, this is another Madewell post. They went out and found a fashion influencer here to celebrate a bag that they had an anniversary with. She is talking about how excited she is about this bag, and then they give her a special link to put in this post to direct them to their site to see how effective it is, so you can know if you want to work with this influencer again in the future. Again, thinking about the relevancy to your industry, audience product match, and looking at some of their past posts in order to see if they’re a great match for you guys. But definitely do not miss out on influencer marketing if you’re looking for new ways to promote your businesses. In 2018, it’s going to be something that most brands are going to be seeing great success from.

00:38:36 Awesome. So here’s one of my favorite posts for engagement that comes all the way back from 2011 from Coca-Cola. It says, “At this moment, billions of people are smiling. Are you one of them?” This post is so simple, short, and sweet. They’re sharing a witty, nice little statistic here, and the shareability on this post is huge. Why you want to create content that doesn’t have direct things to do with your business or any direct links that drive traffic to your site, really comes from this statistic on Facebook. When they crunched their data, they found that every person on Facebook is connected to every other person on Facebook by an average of three and a half friends. So that means if one of those three people share this post out, it’s going to be able to reach so many more people. So engagement is really going to be huge for people sharing posts.

00:39:28 Go ahead and look at brands in your industry, in your niche, and what their posts are doing that are really getting shared most often. And that’s probably a signal that it’s going to be a similar audience segment to you. So see if you can focus on getting that inspirational and entertaining audience responses out there, to make sure you’re not missing out on these great shares that social media is so good for.

00:39:55 So this is a great segue really quickly here into social listening. Again, I was talking about that one-on-one connection being the biggest thing in 2018 that brands and audiences are looking for. This is a great way to set up what we call Google Alerts. It’s completely free, super simple to go to, google.com/alerts. And it’s a really great way that you’re then able to quickly set up e-mail notifications for the words and phrases you want to monitor. You can do this by entering them into that search bar you see there at the top. You can set the preferences and frequency on when you want to be reminded that you’re being talked about, the sources you want them to come from, even things like the region that you’d like it to come from. You can then hit that little “create alert” button, and this is a great way, again, to know when you’re being talked about, who’s talking about you, and to jump in and engage back with the followers who are talking about you.

00:40:50 So get that chatter and engagement rate up. I would definitely, it’s such a low [inaudible 00:40:55]. Google Alerts does not cost anything at all, so if you’re not doing this yet, definitely jump in there. Super simple, again, google.com/alerts.

00:41:05 Going a little bit further here, Google has an awesome website called trends.google.com, and this is a great way to start to get posts that are going to produce a lot more engagement and talk around stuff that’s going on right now. When you think about something that’s trending, or when you think about a news article or a topic that’s really popular, and a lot of people are already talking about it, it’s a great way for you to then think, “As a marketer, maybe I want to join in on this conversation, because people are already so excited about talking about it.”

00:41:34 So if the tone of what you’re talking about is really matching your brand, and it’s trending, you want to make sure that you’re not missing out on that segment to produce more engagement. So I definitely recommend going to trends.google.com, poking around in there and really making sure that if there’s something that matches your brand that’s trending, you don’t miss out to produce more engagement there.

00:41:57 Cool. So with engagement, I wanted to bring up stories on Instagram. This is mostly because it’s going to be something huge in 2018. If you haven’t used them yet, they’re really short-lived, lasting up for 24 hours before disappearing content. Instagram stories have over 250 million daily active users. So this means that brands trying to connect with their customers on Instagram really need to get on board with stories. They’re a great way to share your company culture and a lot of behind the scenes stuff as well. One of the biggest benefits of this is that they are going to be discoverable, meaning that Instagram users can see your stories even if they’re not your followers. So people who watch your stories all the way through is also going to be a really great indicator that you’re producing content people like. If they watch one section of your story and then abandon it, perhaps that first section wasn’t a good enough hook. And it allows you then to kind of strategize next time on what will help people watch all the way through.

00:43:01 I also love stories as a way to measure your followers’ engagement, because not everyone is going to click that little heart icon on every post you put on Instagram, or that like button on Facebook. But if they watch your story, Instagram’s automatically going to tell you and show you how many people and which people are watching the story, so it’s another number you can really get to track that engagement. So you can open up your story to see this number. All you have to do is swipe up. You’ll see the number as well as the usernames of people who have seen each video and how many videos from that story they went all the way through. So definitely take some time to go on in and get your Instagram stories set up in 2018 not to miss out.

00:43:42 All right, so jumping into number three, click through rate. I put this little content quote up here, “The world does not need more content, it needs more purpose,” to really remind you that click through rate is a sign that you’re producing quality content. And this is really, again, what we want you to focus on the most, is producing value. And click through rate is going to show-

00:44:00 …Focus on the most is producing value, and click through rate is gonna show you a lot of things that have to do with the quality of your content. If people are continuously clicking, it means every time they’re seeing that benefit. So for click through rate, things like blog posts obviously work really well, other people’s content, we talk a lot about the importance of curating content on social media these days. Anything that has to do with product releases, leading people to that features page, stuff like that is really important. And to get your click through rate numbers, making a lot of sense, I want you to also focus on making sure each post you’re putting on social media has one job. So one post, one job, looking at that click through rate, and it’s gonna make your deliverability on your ROI a lot easier to track.

00:44:46 So let’s go right here and start out with headers. So click through rate is really gonna be influenced by the headline of your article. You wanna make sure that you’re keeping your audience’s attention, you’re educating them, and you’re convincing them to part with their money because you’re such an expert and you have proven your value that much. So if you haven’t heard us say it before, headline generation is something that you can test on social media as well. Here at Edgar we write about ten to 20 headlines for each blog article we have, and we’ll test those as utilizing them as different status updates, as utilizing them on the blog post differently to know what’s gonna hook and what’s going to really make sure that people know what they get from a post they’re clicking on. So the first step here on increasing that click through rate and increasing the return on your investment is making sure you’re testing your headlines and not being afraid to go on in there and produce different headlines for each article you’re doing. Tracking the effectiveness right here in MeetEdgar is really awesome. As I mentioned we do have this new view report section, that you can go ahead and bump on into and pick on week on which you’d like to see those statistics from and from there, when you click that date range, you can see here we’ll go ahead and let you know the clicks as well as the follower count that you’ve received for that week. And this is gonna be a a great place, again, for you guys to set that benchmark and watch week over week if the efforts and changes you’re making in your social strategy are really producing great benefits.

00:46:16 Beyond that, in Edgar, if you haven’t set up a link shortener yet, this is gonna be the best way to track clicks. So if you’re utilizing Edgar, you can see we do connect with Rebrand.ly, Bit,ly, and Ed.gar, our own. And setting this up, you can do it in your settings, from the drop-down menu in that upper right-hand corner in your account. And this’ll help you track the amount of times someone clicks on a link that you’re sharing. Again, super simple metric to engage the return on your investment.

00:46:45 Going a little bit further, outside of Edgar, how you can track links here is gonna be in your Facebook insights. They make it incredibly easy for people to see their page’s marketing analytics. So if you log on into Facebook, you can go to your at a glance section even, and chances are you’ll be able to see some awesome updates on which posts have reached the most people as well as which have produced the most clicks. So you probably already use your page insights and your audience insights a lot to create better content, but make sure you’re popping in here every month or so to make sure you’re on track with your goals.

00:47:19 Facebook actually even allows you to download your entire Facebook history and insights here, so again you can track week over week the effectiveness, and know when you need to change things within your strategy. So from your insights, if you do ever wanna do that, it’s super simple. Insights, and then over on the overview tab, you can click a button that says export data, and just select that date range you wanna go ahead and export, there.

00:47:44 So beyond Facebook insights, I wanted to touch quickly here on something called Facebook IQ. This is a little bit that goes into the trends we were talking about with Google trends as well. So Facebook IQ is a site, they offer it for free, and it’s access to research by industry, holidays, events that are trending, demographic research, and people insights that include some really great global and hyper-local trends that are going on. So Facebook IQ, if you haven’t check that out yet, you can get a really great look at consumer trends and make sure that you’re getting a deeper dive into what people are talking about on Facebook and it’s really aimed at helping marketers uncover the next big thing that’s about to explode, so you can join that conversation and really start to write hyper-targeted content by digging into your audience insights, really increasing that click through rate. If those headlines, if that topic is trending and really producing a lot of excitement. So I’d check it out if you haven’t yet, again, just Facebook IQ, go ahead and Google it. Super free, go ahead and log in to make sure you’re able to join those discussions.

00:48:49 Cool, so one other thing I wanted to touch on here is building custom audiences. When you’re doing this, the reason it can really help increase your click through rate is because custom audiences will allow you to talk right to a certain age group, right to a certain demographic, or a location, or interests, even. So you can take a list of your current fans and customers, and tell Facebook to find everyone else on Facebook that match these same segments. And before you spend the time and money doing this, make sure, again, you have that audience persona, so you know who your lookalike audience here should be. We do have a really great article on how to set this up as well, so again, email support@meetedgar.com if you have questions about setting this up at all.

00:49:32 Alright, so let’s jump in here to some great examples for link shortening and click through rate tracking. So this, from JetBlue, I love, love, love. Again, it has a great visual on it. This is a Twitter post. Anything you can do to get visual content on Twitter will help your post stand out for sure. Another great tactic here is making sure you see that they have the link shortener, they do it with Google here. So they can track who clicked on this link and how this campaign is doing. And they can know the traffic from Twitter over the traffic from Facebook is producing more people to go ahead and get in on this sale. This post especially I love because they put an actual deadline here, so you have to make that decision really quickly, and it creates that great sense of urgency, but it’s also not gonna be super intrusive because they come up with a really clever, really conversational, and really cute status update with this tick tock, it’s escape o’clock part. So think again, promotional posts that are visual, promotional posts that are playful, and then tracking how well they do here.

00:50:33 Next here, I wanted to touch again on headlines, and this testing that we’ve been talking about. So a great tactic is to make sure that you’re testing different combinations in line with your headlines and status updates. It’s super easy to do with Edgar’s new auto-variation feature that we were talking about at the beginning, or if you’re doing this on your own you can see someone like Andy here, goes ahead and introduces a blog article in a lot of different ways. Tracking this in Edgar then becomes really easy because you can go ahead and see, if you go to the posts history, which link and which version was the one that produced the most clicks. And this can have to do with the time that you posted it, or the language that you posted it. So make sure you’re taking all of those things into consideration.

00:51:18 But it’s a really great place to go ahead, in Edgar, and see the amount of clicks, allowing you to see, wow, version three, not as compelling for people to click on as version four. And you can look, you know, what time did I send version four out? Oh, maybe my followers are consuming social media at night more. Or oh, my gosh, it doesn’t look like when I asked a question along with a link, it compelled people to click on it. So don’t get too overwhelmed, even testing just two different messages for this AB testing can be a huge benefit for you.

00:51:48 Alright, jumping in here, guys. Thanks so much for staying along this whole time, it’s been so fun chatting and we’ve gotten to our last one. And that is gonna be conversion rate. So conversion is really a significant metric, obviously, for all of us marketers. Making sure that the number of visitors who are going to our site are converting and actually taking the steps we want them to produce that desired action of becoming a part of our community. So conversion can have different meaning to different companies and businesses. For example, an eCommerce store or business is gonna define conversion as people making a purchase and buying something. Whereas like a website or a SAS business is gonna focus much more on lead generation, people signing up for a newsletter, that kind of fun stuff.

00:52:35 But with conversion rate, again, it’s all about telling your story in a way that’s connecting and resonating with your readers. So with your social posts, you wanna really make sure that you’re speaking right to one, getting that brand awareness out there, and keeping people’s attention to build up your trust with them.

00:52:53 Cool, so again, it’s not always gonna be that direct sale, it’s not always gonna be that direct number related to your revenue that you wanna track with conversion rate. So we’ll go in here and look a little bit at some example posts, but I wanted to start here with … This is our blog at MeetEdgar, and we share a lot of blog posts on social media because we have an awesome content team who loves to discuss social media, again, and we think leading people here is going to to not necessarily convert them into MeetEdgar users, but some of the things we can track with this are the actions they take once they finish reading the blog posts that they got from social media.

00:53:29 So here, taking a look at the stars that I’ve gone ahead and sat down and added here, you can see we’ve given them an option to comment below. That’s gonna be a really great indicator that you’ve done a great job converting someone to become a part of your community, taking the time to comment on your blog. So it’s not always just social media comments, check out those blog comments as well. Another thing you can track is the social share buttons over here on the left. If you have social share buttons up, and someone is compelled to share that article on your blog, that is another great way you can think of that you’ve converted someone to be a really great part of your community here. Obviously this newsletter signup here, right in the middle in teal, you can see this is a great thing to track as a desired behavior. Someone entering their email address, showing you know what, you’ve proven your value, I wanna learn more form you.

00:54:17 And then one more action that we track here at Edgar as a great conversion rate is seeing, once they finish this blog post, do they go ahead and click on a new one? Do they go ahead and research more about our blog? And that, again, is another great indicator that you’re converted someone to knowing that you produce valuable content.

00:54:34 So think about all these different things you can track to get a holistic view on if your posts are compelling people to convert.

00:54:42 Alright, so going a little bit further into audience targeting here. We wanna make sure that if you’re on social media that you’re speaking to each segment of your followers. And each segment is gonna be a little bit different. Here we have this graph, and this is a little bit of the behind the scenes content from MeetEdgar, which I [inaudible 00:55:01] from as seeing to share a little bit more on on these webinars. But this goes along with everything we’ve been talking about here. You have this discoverability and awareness phase. And relating it to Edgar, it’s gonna be us speaking to people who aren’t aware they even need a social media tool yet. So think about people who aren’t aware they even need your tool or product yet.

00:55:20 Then we’re gonna move into that consideration phase, people who are considering what tool they need, and your tool can be something that shows up there. And then this decision part, this is gonna be the conversion part. So when you’re targeting your audience here, they are the people who are gonna be most likely to really help with that conversion number.

00:55:40 So going a little bit further here, this can also really help you think of what types of content can go along with a conversion section here. So we like to really sense people to our pricing page so they can make sure that they know the features, the prices that come along with it. Make sure that we’re going ahead and sending out some coupon offers that we can track to make sure that our conversion rate is really staying on track with our social posts. And your promotional deals. And these are all really great things to track along with your conversions.

00:56:10 And when we go ahead and do this as well, it allows you to kind of get a great budget distribution so you can get a little more number oriented on this return on investment section here. So number orientation, when it comes to this, is really great to have a percentage here. And you can see, if your percentage around maybe, let’s say, brand awareness, is at 50 percent, you wanna convert about 25 percent and you wanna have posts that are going to that consideration bucket as 25 percent.

00:56:37 You can split out your budget, then, in a really meaningful way, and break it down to numbers that matter. So here, we can go ahead and see, these numbers are going ahead and producing. Say we have a 1500 budget for our ads. We can go ahead and spend 450 of it on brand awareness, 450 of it on consideration, and 600 on conversion. And knowing these numbers are adjusting them is a great way to start if you need that sort of more number ROI to report back to your team with. So think about different ways you can get these different buckets in there.

00:57:14 So let’s finish this webinar out today with a few examples on how you can track conversions here. So here, going a little bit further on this idea of speaking to the trending topics that are going on right now, is State Bicycle Company. They went ahead and did a playful little post about National Donut Day, this bike is called a donut, but as well as obviously the food here. And they’ve gone ahead and put a great discount related to social media here. And you can use this coupon code that we were just talking about to go ahead and set up a coupon code that they can use to get the discount, you can track how many coupon redemptions they were, and know if the return on this specific post was worth it or not. So coupon codes are great to add in on social media, it’s a great way to get it out to people who might not be subscribed to your newsletter or your emails, but they still wanna get in on these great, great sales.

00:58:05 This one here, I also wanna point out the shop now and link button. Don’t be afraid to make your call to action so super clear here. Sometimes followers are going through social media so quickly that they forget that they need to do something and take action to get all of the value you’re offering. So one post, one job that we were talking about before, as well as making sure they know that they should shop now by clicking that link. So really make sure that you’re going on in there, and speaking in a clear way to what this post is gonna accomplish for them.

00:58:39 Next post here, I love as a promotional storytelling post. So this here is from a Maine lobster company, and you can see, he goes ahead and shares a ton of his backstory. And it is a great way that he’s kinda pulling at people’s heartstrings about this company that he’s built up, it’s pretty relatable, and he wants to celebrate his success, and that is gonna be hugely compelling for people on social media to get excited about. This is an especially effective way, I think, to go ahead and measure a social media campaign’s success, is say that you run this ad campaign only on social media. There’s no other way that people can find out about this ad campaign. That’s a great way for you, then, to track the effectiveness of it. So think about not necessarily needing to promote posts, excuse me, to promote advertising and promotions that you’re doing on your site and in your newsletters, but ones that are really unique just to social media can be a great way for you to pop on in there and get some awesome traffic, and get some awesome numbers to see how well a campaign does. So again, alter your kind of strategy a little bit to get some social media only promos out there.

00:59:53 So this goes along with what we were talking about a little bit before, the posting it forward. People love to do good in the world, and they love to know that brands want to do good in the world as well. So this post form Arby’s, here, you can see it says every little bit counts. Visit your local Arby’s to donate $1 to the Arby’s foundation and help us fight childhood hunger. This is huge, guys, to make sure that people know the values of your company, as well as making sure that people are compelled to go in an donate. So give people a way to post it forward, and you can see a really great return on investment and sharing out these types of posts.

01:00:33 Alright, so it can be a little bit trickier, I know, for more brick and mortar stores to kind of think about the way you can track conversions when you’re not selling something online. So I love this post from Starbucks as an example here. They go ahead and give specific time frame that they’re promoting their frappuchinos being at half off. So think about maybe doing this only on social media for a specific time frame, and then you can track the amount of people who come into your store around that time frame, and know that they learned about it on social media, to kind of see the effectiveness of that and consider that as a conversion to that post. So think about creative ways, if you’re not an online store I know it can be a little bit trickier but there’s still some great ways that you can track this and adjust your posting schedule there.

01:01:18 Cool. So lastly here, again, I just wanna stress, especially for conversion metrics, that you wanna make sure you’re selling benefits way more than you’re selling features. So you can see Slack here goes ahead and talks a lot about the benefits that you can get from their tool, rather than talking about just the straight up features that they are. And again, this is really going to speak to followers an tell them, hey, this is gonna be so much easier, your life can be so much better after you start using our product. So remember that you really wanna make sure that people are interested in the features and not necessarily gonna be focused on just that kind of dry, this is what we offer. So think about ways people use it, to go ahead and make sure people are compelled to look and see that post.

01:02:07 Oh, my gosh, guys. Thank you so much for sticking with us today as we chatted and looked at some examples on how to track return on investment and some social media trends in 2018. Again, please go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss future webinars. Tweet us, go ahead and let us know how you like our webinars and what you wanna learn in the future, at MeetEdgar is our Twitter handle, we’d love to hear from you. And as well, if you’re not using Edgar yet and you wanted to go ahead and test him out or see a demo, feel free to go ahead and email support@meetedgar.com or if you wanna snag a free month, to make sure he’s the right tool for you and really increase that social media awareness, snag this great coupon, OctopusWebinar18 to get that, or again, always email support@meetedgar.com.

01:02:54 Guys, thank you so much for joining, so grateful, so much fun getting to know the Edgar community, and keep in touch. Comment on the video below with any other feedback, too, and we will see you next time. Have an awesome Tuesday.

The post Deep Dive: 2018 Social media trends to save you time and improve your ROI appeared first on MeetEdgar.

How Future Proof Your Social Media with Megan McMullin

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Transcript for How Future Proof Your Social Media with Megan McMullin

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

 

00:00 I’m so excited. kind of a little back history of how Megan ended up here. I’ve been a MeetEdgar user now for years, a customer of theirs, and I knew social media is an important topic. If you are not using social media to build your business you’re missing out, right? But I didn’t want the typical, “Here’s how you Tweet. Here’s how you use Facebook,” the stuff that everybody seems to talk about. I really wanted a different twist on it. So as a customer I literally reached out, I don’t know if you know this story, I reached out to their customer support. I’m like, “This is kind of a random question. I don’t need support but would you guys want to speak at my event?”

00:37 If you don’t know what MeetEdgar is, it is basically a service where you line up your content and library and set it out at certain times. It really helps you with the automation perspective. But you can’t just automate and walk away because if people are talking to you are going to miss it. But you also can’t just plan on being there for social media all the time because then you won’t be able to run a business and you won’t get anything done because you are just going to be on social media.

01:05 When I talked to them I said, “Can we please put something together where you figure this fine line out?” How can you automate so you can be seen all the time, but you are still engaging with your customers so you are not just running your business and people are responding to you and you are walking away. Luckily, Customer Support answered me and they brought Megan out here to be part of this event and I couldn’t be more excited. So, if you could, this is going to be an amazing presentation. Thank you so much for coming, from Colorado, right? Yes. So Megan, if we can give here a big round of applause, we have Megan McMullin from MeetEdgar.

01:40 Thanks so much, Sarah.

01:46 Hey guys, I am Megan McMullin and as she said I work for this little octopus guy. He is my boss, Edgar. what Edgar is really great for is making sure that the time you are spending on social media is time well spent.

02:01 Let’s talk about why you guys are here. You guys are entrepreneurs. You guys are looking for ways to really drive traffic in meaningful ways to your website. So whether it’s your e-commerce site, your product site or whether you guys are a SAS company, social media is going to be so important in order to get those leads in meaningful ways in order for them to self-select into your business and know that they are right for you.

02:24 You guys want to increase your impact on social media but the thing is, there is so much time in your day that is being pulled to these other areas of your business. You have to handle the finances, you have to put out fires in other marketing places. Social media is sometimes lost a little bit in that. What we are going to talk about a little bit today is this world, some of these brands are producing really huge amounts of noise and garnering so much attention on social media, what they do and how small businesses, solopreneur, smaller companies can also achieve this using things like an automation tool. Some of the reasons that automation tools like Edgar exist is because life gets in the way. If you guys are not planning your social media strategy out, it goes tried and true with that saying that you are going to plan to fail in this way. There are so many other competing businesses that you are not going to take that time when you are out and about to post that blog post that just got released or to post that photo you took. Having a place that you are able to upload this content to a library, set a weekly, consistent weekly posting schedule will make sure that the social media is not something that is not just left willy-nilly, but you are able to strategize with it, learn about your followers and create feedback loops that are creating meaningful experiences for people on social.

03:46 You guys are not alone. In survey after survey, the number one thing that people say is so hard for them is finding and posting content on social media. Rather than just interacting with this soulless, faceless platform of Twitter and Facebook and just kind of logging in and posting things, we want Edgar to be able to take care of that for you so that you guys, when you are utilizing your time on social media can talk to your customers, can actually make sure that you are engaging with them to create that person-to-person experience which is going to bring them into your brand, is going to make them advocates of your brand and is really going to bring them into a part of your marketing team.

04:24 What I kind of want you guys to think about here is you are, regardless of what your business is, in this talk you are a media company. You are a content creating machine and that is what we kind of want you to filter this talk through as we kind of get going here.

04:41 After Edgar takes care of posting things for you, what we also want to make sure is that engagement piece that we are going into is not getting lost either. We don’t want you to have to turn off the comments on your Facebook post. We don’t want you to have to just let all of these DMs on Twitter go unanswered because you don’t have time for them. And we know that customer support these days is not only something that is done through email or through automation chat systems but people are reaching out online, on Facebook and Twitter, to either compliment your brand or complain about your brand and this can be seen as a time suck sometimes if you are spending so much time on social media already posting your links.

05:19 But I want you to shift that mindset, that if people are reaching out for support on social media this is such a good thing. This is your opportunity to get them to the first win with your product, to get them over that hump so, again, they can champion your brand. This idea of customer support on social media can be really frustrating for small businesses too, when people are reaching out and complaining in a public space, but also shift your mindset to think that when people are doing that and you have the time and go in and flip them around, to create that raving fan, that content lives on social media for other people to see and they are able to say, “Wow, this company has a human behind it that are actually coming on, responding, nurturing them.” It’s going to bring other followers who are going to your page to get that kind of social proof going on and really, again, make sure that you are humanizing your brand and putting that personality into it and not just spending all your time on social media posting and ignoring your followers.

06:16 Imagine this, as we are going throughout this, again, you guys are media people right now and what we are going to talk about is saying goodbye to that social media wasteland and really turning it into a major profit center and a brand-awareness machine. We are going to cover a few of the things that some of the top leaders in your industry do, but I also want to make sure you guys are taking risks on social media. There’s so much noise out there on the Internet today and we want to make sure that you are experimenting and learning from what’s going on on your own channels to really make sure your followers are getting the content that they crave and if you are listening to them, you are showing them that respect and you are able to create more content and you are able to say, “Hey, these people are following us because we are adding value to their day.”

07:01 So, focusing on this a little more, this idea of how you add value to someone’s day is making sure that every post you are putting out there, you are looking at which people are actually engaging with it. What is your demographic actually latching on to and really wanting to learn more about? This can be accomplished with so many different insights in Facebook and Twitter and we’ll go over a little bit of that as we go about here too.

07:28 I don’t want to lose any of you now to thinking that social media is this nurturing, kind of willy-nilly thing. MeetEdgar was actually before developed into a SAS product for companies, an educational system. Our founder Laura Roeder ran a social media education business and she essentially had this problem herself, that she was spending so much time marketing it and trying to find customers that she couldn’t create the courses and the content that she wanted to. She developed MeetEdgar to be able to go ahead and handle that social media automation side so she could develop more and more content. Then it came that she was telling people about this and other small businesses had this problem too.

08:10 MeetEdgar got itself off the ground on social media alone. We’ve estimated that we’ve attracted $600,000 from social media itself, so this stuff is really, really important for business to be a part of and it’s only going to get harder to get a piece of this revenue. You know, when some of the other bigger kind of media sources like TV commercials and stuff like that do start to realize that, “Hey, no one is watching my commercial on TV, when that comes on they are going to their phone scrolling through social media.” Facebook and Twitter are going to get smart to that too soon also and start to raise the prices of the ads you are able to produce there. They are going to make it a little bit harder and there’s going to be more noise when some of the bigger brands get on social media. I want you guys to really make sure you are jumping in there now when it is a free market space for you guys to get a piece of. Let’s start first. Language matters when we are thinking about social media. This matters internally too. I want you guys to think about what you are calling your social media team. Do you call them something sterile like a Social Media Manager, where they are thinking they are just managing the content you are putting out there? Or are you really making sure that people feel that need and feel that engagement that they want to build a community on social media?

09:27 For example, at MeetEdgar we call our marketing person a “Marketing Advocate.” This really makes sure that they are not only advocating for what’s best for our business, but what’s best for our customers, too. If our customers are getting what’s best for them, those returns are going to become so, so huge and so visible on social media. So whether it’s just you and you are a solopreneur, make sure you are thinking of yourself more as a community manager, or excuse me, a community engagement sort of vibe rather than someone who is just a marketer out there on social media.

10:01 So, getting that internal language, making sure your whole team is buying into it, is going to be huge on social media. And when I say your whole team, if you work with multiple people as well, utilize your team in this. Make sure they are warm leads who are able to do things like share the content your brand is posting on social media, really signaling to that algorithm that, “Hey, this is content that’s really great to see.” So, making sure your whole company really buys into is really going to be the first step there. Every single social media post then has the opportunity not only to get traffic to your website, grow your followers, making sure you are attracting the right customers to your brand, but we also want to make sure it is inspiring you to buy.

10:45 Now, notice that last word there, that inspire word. What we want this to really communicate to you guys is that it is no longer about B2B. It’s not a business-to-business connection. We want you to think of this as a human-to-human connection. You know, people really buy from people not businesses. They want to see your personality in your posts and that is how you are really going to get that trust. Think about things when you are just walking by, when you are walking by and thinking about these bigger brands like Apple. What do they do to humanize it? They tell that story of starting in a garage. They bring in all of that sort of behind the scenes content that you get to know the person and the personality behind it and that is going to build so much trust with your audience and really make sure that it is going along with this human connection and not just a sterile business that is much easier to forget for your followers.

11:40 So going along with this, I’ve been talking about trust a lot here. So I’m sure some of you have read a lot of social media blogs, you’ve heard this term, “Know, Like and Trust.” So this is what we also want the lens for you to filter every social media update you are adding through, is that it is this ability to get people to know your brand first and foremost. Of course they have to know you in order to purchase from you.

12:01 Second it’s going to be for them to like your brand. So they have to like your personality, they have to think of you in an emotional way. Think about it, guys. We as humans buy things on an emotional appeal more than anything. You want to get happy and buy something. You might be sad and buy something. Every social media update you put out there should also have this emotional appeal behind it.

12:22 It’s said that it takes about 5 touch points in order for someone to really make that decision to purchase something and social media is the best place to get those 5 different touch points because you are not going to be harping on the same thing over and over again. It’s not just going to be promotion, a logical reason why you should buy this. It is going to be you putting things out there. That is making someone smile every morning when you show with that motivational post. Making someone laugh, making someone nostalgic for the good old days. These emotions are going to move people to purchase so much more than logic. When they then think of this funny quote and your brand is associated with that humor that you posted on social media, your brand then becomes a happy memory in their mindset. So it’s all about creating these emotional experiences to really make sure you are increasing this “Know, Like and Trust” factor so that you stay on the top of your mind of your followers.

13:17 I just want you to think of this word influence. I know we all hear it all the time, “Influence in marketing is where it’s at.” But every follower you have is actually going to be an influencer for you. It is there for you to be able to give them content that they want to share with their community, again becoming a brand advocate for you, championing your brand and really they are going to be the people who their network trusts more than anything. Learn about your community through Facebook Insights, through Twitter Analytics. If you guys haven’t checked it out yet, it is insane how much data is in there. You can figure out not only things like the medium income of your community, you can figure out what their favorite TV shows are from Twitter Analytics demographics, and this can also help to really inform and grow that “Know, Like and Trust” factor.

14:06 Say you go on to your Twitter Analytics and you are saying, “Hey, it looks like the majority of my followers like comedy and not sports.” Maybe you should start to add a lot more humor into your updates and become a really uplifting brand in that way. Or maybe they like sports and not as much comedy TV. Utilize these things that you might not think are directly related to your business, but again are going to increase that “Know, Like and Trust” factor and make sure you are relating to your community in a really cool way.

14:37 Social media, again we want to make sure you that you are paying attention to both words in this and that is social and media. So make sure you are being social and talk with people. Behind the scenes content and showing up for your followers is some of the strongest stuff that you have to give on social media marketing.

14:55 What this is is showing behind the scenes content makes people feel like they are part of a group and they are getting something that maybe the general public isn’t necessarily getting. They get into that tribe mentality, that they really want to make sure they are bringing in the people they care about it their lives.

15:11 Show up for the followers you have and stop paying attention to some of these vanity metrics of, “Oh my gosh, I need to get ten thousand followers in order to get my Instagram unlocked, my Instagram page unlocked, or my YouTube analytics unlocked” and stuff like that. We definitely want to make sure that you are showing up for the followers you have and trust that they are going to bring along the people who matter and that smaller audience whose really going to engage with your brand is going to be so much more important that just gaining all of these followers and again all of these likes that are way more meaningless.

15:47 Cool. So next, relatability is the future of marketing. What I like to say here is that relating to someone is going to get that human-to-human connection the most. This can be kind of tricky to achieve on social media sometimes. Questions you can ask yourself when you are trying to think of updates to put out there that are going to relate to people is something even as simple as, “Hey, what’s the nerdiest thing that I like?” Or, “What’s the funniest thing that I saw today?”

16:13 If you can craft a social media update around that, you have no idea who in your audience is also thinking that same thing and they want to jump in and they want to talk to you about that. Again, that engagement, those comments, those shares, that is what the algorithms are looking for these days.

16:31 You know whether it’s Twitter’s Terms of Service change that just happened, or the Facebook apocalypse that happened a few months ago with what they are doing on decreasing your organic reach, everything, every change that is going on is the social media network telling you, “You need to have engagement and not just create noise here.” So relatability is really where it’s all at.

16:56 Cool. So, going along with this idea is that you really want to make sure that you are not only being relatable to your followers but you are also adding value to your followers to earn the right to promote. Kind of something I like to think about this is if you listen to any sort of radio, like NPR or any sort of podcast that does advertising, they create so much value for you during your day that they earn the right to have that fundraising week, or they earn the right to interrupt that podcast in order to go ahead and get that sponsor content out there. This is really going to be helpful on social media too. What this is is say you have 4 updates going out to your Facebook page every day. What you want is those first 3 updates to add so much value that you earn the right to then ask for that sale or then to promote your product to them. This can be anything from, again, that inspirational post that gives someone that warm feeling associated with your brand. It can be asking a question to get to know your audience a little bit better. Bonus, you get to create that feedback loop into your product and make sure you are creating it for the space that they want. It can be a blog post.

18:07 You know, this term of infotainment, so making sure that everything you are putting out there is going to provide information, but also entertainment to people. People are on social media to escape their day, to connect with friends and family and the language that you use for these updates should really go along with this too. Make it conversational, make it something that’s really going to look into the person and make them relate to it and make them really, really connect with your brand. If you get those first 3 updates out that had so much value to their day, you’ve then earned the right to ask for that sale and to promote your brand a little bit.

18:48 Cool. So along with this idea, I’ve been saying you are asking for the sale and not just selling it. So social media, what it is really great for is it is making this elegant sale and it’s making people self-select. So if you are educating people on social media, if you are showing them the inside of your product…

19:00 … If you’re educating people on social media, if you’re showing them the inside of your product, you’re showing them the behind the scenes, the values that your company holds even, all of these things can go into making someone say, “Hey, this brand seems really great. This brand is something that I respect and I follow.” And people are then able to self-select in and say, “Yes, this product would be right for my business.” or, “No, this product doesn’t exactly seem right.” And that’s okay too. So don’t be afraid to put out there who you are for and who you are not for, because no one really wants, again, these meaningless followers with their brand. You want followers who are bought in 100%.

19:37 One of the most elegant sales ways that we like to do at Meet Edgar is asking people when their ideal time to start. We work with a ton of small businesses, a ton of startups, and we’re not going to be pushing and saying, “You need this right away.” We’re going to tell you why, and we’re going to add value to you. We have a ton of content writers, we have a ton of people who are diversifying our content and telling people how we run our business, being transparent in that way. And asking people, “When’s the ideal time for you to start to get into this social media automation?” And remember, also, I know it can be so hard, especially if you are a solopreneur to feel like you have that right to promote things. But remember, if you have a solution to someone’s problem, if you’re presenting someone’s problem to them in a way that they’re like, “Yeah, that is my problem. Yes, you do seem like a good solution.” It is almost your responsibility to give that to them. Don’t be shy about letting people know why you matter and why they should care about your product and really like you.

20:40 Along with this is that you really want to make sure that you are speaking right into your clients’ story. Humans latch onto stories more than anything. So, social media is a great way to create that story. What we like to kind of think of here is creating a hero’s journey narrative on social media. What this sometimes can get tricky about is making sure that this hero’s journey isn’t speaking about your product being the hero, it’s speaking about the customer being a hero of their own journey. So if you have something like a social media automation tool here, I’m not going to say, “Hey, Edgar is going to be the hero and save you all this time and make sure that you no longer have to kind of engage on social media in this way.”

21:26 I’m going to say, “Hey, you guys should be the hero and champion all of this hard work that you’re doing and get it out there and put yourself in there, so that people can really see themselves in the story.” It’s almost like they’re starting to try the product on, and you’re able to kind of get them over their objections and get them through that friction that they might be playing around in their own head. So, try to think of ways that you can really create a story on how your brand or how your business or product can really help their business succeed in the long run.

21:59 This last point here that there’s riches in the niches. What I like to really talk about with this is that every social media update doesn’t have to speak directly to each one of your followers. So, don’t be afraid to get a little bit more specific in the updates that you’re sending out. Think about the things that are going along in your industry right now, and think about what’s missing in your industry. What voice is missing? What sort of spin can you put on it that’s different? Go out there and look at your competitors and see what they’re talking about, and see how your opinion differs from it.

22:33 Don’t be afraid to kind of get super specific. Say one social media update really sparked some 10 of your followers and they share that. Again, they’re now part of your brand, they’re now part of your marketing strategy, and they’ve shared that out to their networks, bringing all of their networks in line making sure they know about your brand. And it’s okay if you miss the other 200 followers that you have. Your next few updates will be able to speak to them directly. So, think about how you can get really specific with your updates in order to really compel people to share that content.

23:09 Cool. Next thing on social media is marketing experiences. I’m sure you’ve all heard the term the experience economy. It is a buzzword right now, especially among millennials, but it is so true. People want to buy experiences, they don’t want to buy the process or the product. An example of that I think is really easy to relate to this is the idea of like a travel service like Orbits or like Kayak. It’s something that what you’re doing there is you’re buying a ticket. But what they want to market is the experience of that vacation. So, try to take it a little bit further and really make sure that you’re thinking about the experience people are going to have before, during and after you’re actually putting the product in there.

23:56 Orbits doesn’t want to market to you, “Hey, you’re logging online and searching through flights to find the cheapest one, then you’re taking a taxi to the airport and giving someone your ticket.” They want to market towards, “They, this is your vacation laying on the beach. This is your vacation connecting with your family.” Again, getting to that emotional appeal and really making sure that people are able to see themselves in the experience rather than just what they’re responsible for, which is your plane ticket.

24:24 Cool. So we want you to also think about relationships first and business second. You have to open up and give your followers a reason to care about you. We all want our community to engage with us more on social media. But a lot of the time, we’re not doing things like asking simple questions. Some ways that we like to do it Edgar is you want to ask simple questions that are going to be easy and not time consuming for people to answer. This could be something as easy as thinking about like a Would you rather question. Or saying, “What’s your favorite online newsletter to follow?”

25:01 People love to talk about themselves, they love to open up. So give them that opportunity to. It not only allows your posts to be seen by more people, because the algorithm’s going to favor that, but it also allows you to get to know your followers. Again, glean that information and not having to sort of spend the time on the analytic side if you’re asking those questions. And is your story strong enough to make people care about the story themselves? If you are not opening up on social media about your wins, about your failures, about everything that’s happening, you’re not going to get your followers to open up either, so you guys have to do it first.

25:38 We are really lucky at Meet Edgar to have our little octopus as our little mascot, because we’re able to personify him. If you’re afraid to kind of put your face out there and to humanize it in that way, if there’s a way that you can get something like a little Meet Edgar onto your brand, it’s going to be a huge way that you’re able to connect with your members and make sure that people are having fun with your social media at the same time.

26:04 We, of course, want to make sure that everything we’re doing, especially utilizing a automation tool is going to be scalable. Again, we know we’re all so busy being a small business and having a ton of different things stealing our attention throughout the day. But we also want you to make sure you’re doing unscalable things. And that means again, engaging with your followers, replying to comments, and this really goes along to tell them that you care about them, and they can then expect that from you throughout their entire customer journey.

26:33 As you’re sort of making these things, I want you to think about that first slide and how we were talking about future proofing your social media. This is going to be the best way to do that. The market is going to change constantly. Who knows is Facebook and Twitter are going to change things hugely for business pages? All of this stuff is not up to you. It’s not in our control a lot of the time. What is in our control, and something that is never going to change is that human connection. Is those relationships that you’re building. And it is so hard to build that through normal marketing with your email funnels and stuff. But it is so easy and so available for you to do on social media.

27:12 This, again, is really the easiest way. And the main point that I want you guys to kind of take home from this is that if you’re showing your followers you care about them, and you’re building those human connections and relationships, your social media strategy, no matter what the networks do, no matter which new network comes up, your followers will follow you to that network if you’ve cared about them, and created that bond.

27:36 Cool. Going along with this caring and creating that bond, let’s not just kind of make all of that hard work that you’ve done here go to waste. Let’s actually get some of that back from your followers too. What this goes on is, excuse me, is getting testimonial. So, social proof for your social media. People again, are going to buy from people they trust. And if they’re seeing that other people have written great reviews and have really kind of gotten your brand in their heart space and really kind of shared it with others, this is going to be huge for you to be able to gain new followers’ trust easily.

28:14 What we want you to kind of think about here is when you’re asking your customers for reviews and testimonials in order to turn into social media updates, is you want this to go along with how it makes people feel more than anything. They can also go along with this idea of storytelling that we are talking about. We want you to say, “Hey, how did you feel before you purchased this product?” That’s going to speak to your leads who are following you on social media who might not be ready to buy yet. And if they can relate to that and say, “Oh, wow, this other person who now used this product felt the same way,” that’s going to build a really great bond. What did it feel like when you pulled out your credit card to buy that or just sign up for this service?

28:55 Again, that emotional appeal, what did it feel like when you did that? Maybe they were a little bit nervous it wasn’t going to work out for them, creating that relatable experience and creating that, “Oh, okay, we’re all in this together vibe. And then what did it feel like once that product was in your life?” And this is where it’s going to be that great, great punch of saying, “Hey, this is what my life is like now, there’s that storyline,” and really make sure that those are going out on your social media channels and not just getting lost. When people are telling you good things, make sure that you’re getting their permission and adding this into your social media strategy. It’s an awesome, awesome way to make sure that your followers feel like they’re part of your brand as well.

29:37 Cool. So, all of this is also going to be kind of hard for you to manage across all the social media platforms. We want to make sure that the time you’re spending is where your followers are. The great thing about automation with Meet Edgar is that you’re able to send these updates out to Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn all at the same time. And you don’t have to log in to all three of those networks in order to post it. Again, it’s just this idea that task switching is so hard in a small business. It takes about 12 minutes to on board and off board into tasks.

30:10 Say you’re kind of sitting there doing a financial plan and you’re like, “Oh, wait, I’ve got this social media update I need to get out there.” It’s going to take you about 12 minutes to get in that headspace of writing that update, sharing that link, then going back to your financial plan and getting back onboarded with that task. So, having an automation tool just to do this for you can not only save you a ton of time, it can also make sure that you’re really experimenting on all three networks. For example here, another reason why it’s so hard for people to kind of take the time and really realize that social media is so important are statistics like this.

30:49 The majority of your Twitter users don’t even log in once per day. So, this can be frustrating when you’re like, “Oh, I’m spending all this time logging in and no one’s reading my updates.” And it gets even worse. Most people won’t even see your tweet, because over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. If you break that math down, it’s over 5000 tweets a second. So again, there’s so much noise on social media. And sometimes it can be a little bit frustrating thinking, “Hey, is this channel even where my followers are?” So, utilizing automation can help give you that experimental mindset of saying, “Okay, let’s try this. Let’s try sending this update to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and seeing the engagement we get on each of them.” So then you can fine-tune and hone in on who should be seeing those updates, where you should be spending your time, and where your audience really is.

31:39 Let’s stay on Twitter a little bit more here. So Twitter, if you guys aren’t on it, very often, it is a place that is really community bonding. Twitter’s Terms of Service did just change actually, that they are no longer allowing the same tweet to be sent to the same Twitter account more than once, or the same tweet to be sent to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. What is that telling us? That is telling us that Twitter wants people to engage and be authentic on social media. Make sure that you’re going on to social media and Twitter and listening to what’s going on in the space. And not just posting links without any status along with it, and not just kind of being there to be there. But be there to listen to community and really add to the vibe that’s going on.

32:26 Partnerships on Twitter are huge. Retweeting as a way that you can not only get noticed by other brands, but also a way that you can kind of get your followers to figure out about what’s going on in your industry and really be seen as an expert there. And adding value. Again, it all goes back to adding value. You want to make sure that you’re answering questions, sharing information, and again, really being a force for good in that community to create those human to human connections.

32:54 Twitter’s other challenge is that it’s really going to make sure that the algorithm is favoring live updates. So, you need to post regularly on Twitter, especially when your audiences online. Again, utilized your Twitter analytics to see when your audience is online to inform when you add in those time slots in your automation tool, so that you don’t have to post when you’re online. Rather, the automation tool is posting when your followers are online, making it more likely your status updates will show up in their feed.

33:26 Along with this though, we don’t want you just to post 15 times a day on Twitter just to get that quantity out there, make sure you’re staying relevant. The algorithm is also going to really, really look at who your followers are, what posts your followers are engaging with. And if they engage with your brand more, Twitter will show them more of your brand. So, make sure it’s not only timely when your followers are online, but it’s also something that’s going to provide relevance to them.

33:54 This retweet thing that we talked about on the last slide as well. We want to make sure that you’re also compelling people to retweet. This can be something as simple as, again, getting something relatable. Like, “Hey, I like pancakes. Retweet if you like pancakes.” Maybe someone’s just kind of in between a meeting. Maybe someone’s walking around and they’re like, “Yeah, I like pancakes.” And they hit that Retweet. It’s a simple thing that you can ask for. But if you’re not asking for it, it’s not going to be likely to pop into their head. So, make sure you’re utilizing retweets asking people for what you want on social media.

34:29 Twitter’s other challenge is that it is 280 characters. If that’s too short to kind of get that inspirational content out there, think of creative ways to engage with your community and get that authenticity out there. Video is one of the strongest ways to do that. This is me Eggers founder Laura, actually, and what she does is we create blog posts and she’ll make a video kind of outlining some of the main points of those blog posts. This is going to help not only create more content from one blog post, but also it’s the only and best way we can think of to get that behind the scenes content and that eye connection to really make sure that you’re creating that authentic experience. It is so hard to hide who your company is if you’re in front of the camera. So, make sure you guys are getting someone who’s comfortable in front of the camera and really creating that content where maybe some people don’t have time to click through that blog post, but they do have time to watch a quick video.

35:25 And guys, if you’re not thinking that, “Hey, I don’t have a lot of blog post content. I don’t know what I would do on social media with video.” Think about your support team tickets you get, or your phone calls you get, or any comments you get. Answer those on a video to really show people how you care about them. Feature request updates. Anything like that really shows you listen if you’re updating people what you’re working on. For example, Meet Edgar works with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter right now, but we’re adding an Instagram and Pinterest in the next couple of months. And we go live all the time on face Facebook and on Twitter in order to really ask our community, “What are your biggest struggles with these networks now, how can a tool help with that?” It really lets our community know how much we care about them. And again, helps them really feel like they have a piece in our company, and like they’re going to want to champion our brand.

36:20 Cool. If you guys are still just starting out, another great source of content that you can think about is other people’s content. If you’re sharing other people’s content on social media, it creates the space that’s kind of a really not only positioning you as an expert in your industry, but also provides value because your followers can then know, “Hey, I don’t have to go out in Google all of the what’s going on in my industry. I’m following the Meet Edgar Twitter account, and they’re going to share everything that’s really relevant to what I need to know for social media marketing.”

36:52 This goes two-fold as well. This is one of our updates here and we share things from like ProBlogger and Copy Hackers all the time, because we know it will provide value to our followers. It’s not our original content and we might be champion another brand, but this will come back to us as well when ProBlogger and Copy Hackers are going to be thinking, doing the same thing. And if they’ve seen us do it, it creates that partnership with us. And it creates that goodwill that then they’ll be more likely to share a blog post that will help their community out in the future.

37:22 So, really think about what other brands in your industry, what other articles are out there that you can then add into your social media strategy to make sure people are saying, “Hey, this is the account to follow so that I can really make sure I’m staying up to date with everything that’s going on.”

37:41 So, Facebook next here. So, suppose that sparked conversation and meaningful interactions between people, posts that you might want to share and react to and posts from friends and family. These three sentences are from Facebook’s most recent algorithm update on what they’re going to favor and what they’re going to show to your audience. And it’s not only going to be the content there, it’s also going to make sure that the interaction and-

38:00 Be content there. It’s also going to make sure that the interaction between people is going to be favoring longer comments, so you guys really need to make sure that you’re sparking conversation and asking people questions in your updates in order for them to really reach out and talk to you there. I don’t know if you guys are super familiar with her, but Mari Smith is actually a Facebook expert and she has this saying that content is king, but engagement is queen and she rules the house. This is really so true on social media. This content that you’re putting out there. No one is going to follow your brand if that content isn’t adding value to them, but no network is going to actually show that value added content unless it’s getting engagement.

38:41 First and foremost make sure that your content is adding value and second that those updates you’re attaching with your content is going to spark engagement. Here’s an example from our own Facebook here. This was one of our more popular posts recently and it says “There are five types of engagement bait that’ll hurt your reach on Facebook if you post them.” We broke down each one. How many do you recognize? Here, we’re really asking our community to reach out to us? But, this update also does something cool that it sparks curiosity in people saying “Hey, how many of these do I know?” It creates that kind of fun interaction. This post got 120 shares and over 50 comments when it was posted right away.

39:28 Another thing you can do with posts that this happens to is think about how the automation of this organic post went out to social media and you said “Well, this is something that my audience values.” Next thing for you to do is maybe to go in and think about boosting this post. If this post received a ton of engagement, but it didn’t reach a lot of people, this is where you’re going to want to then think about that pay to play space. When I say that, it is not a lot of money. You can put as little as $5 behind your Facebook posts here that are doing well and reach a whole new network of look-alike audiences of the people who have already responded here and really get a ton of value out of this post as advertising as well.

40:12 Another example here for asking questions is Facebook is making a lot of changes to the newsfeed in 2018, what are your thoughts on what’s new? Do you think it’ll impact your post? Looking at this post not only again as sparking conversation and really reaching out to our community saying “Hey, we want to hear from you.” But, also look at the language here. It’s conversational. It’s going to fit in with the status updates that they’re seeing from their friends and family on social media, so your brand isn’t intruding on their experience of social media connecting with friends and family. It’s fitting in with that. When you’re crafting these updates, really make sure that the language you’re using is going to be in that conversational tone.

40:53 Cool. Going along here, one of the best ways to feed your social media machine is with existing content that you have like your blog posts, your videos, and stuff like that. How can you do this easily? This is a concept that we like to call upcycling. Say you have a blog post, that blog post has so, so much value in it that you can turn it into 10 different social media updates. What we like to think of when you’re talking to your content team is telling that every piece of content they’re writing should be evergreen content. It should provide value no matter what time of year it is sent out at. This is going to not only allow you to share those status updates over and over again, but it’s going to also allow you to make sure that when people are searching for your content online that it’s always valuable for them.

41:41 How a tool like MeetEdgar can help with your evergreen content is this first graph here is typically what happens when you release a blog post and you post it on social media. It’ll go out once. People will read it. You’ll have that great spike to your website and then it’ll kind of go down from there. MeetEdgar’s difference is you’re able to load this into your library and set that schedule. We have a tool that works on a repeating basis. Once Edgar works through all of your status updates in your library, he’s then going to start from the top again resurfacing that content not only to your new followers, but also to those who might not have seen it the first time. The second graph is the real graph that we’ve seen happen with some of our blog posts that have resurfaced.

42:22 You’ll see this big spike when it’s first posted. It’ll go down a little bit. When it’s resurfaced again and Edgar is recycling content, you’re going to get that big spike again leading people to your site and driving more and more traffic. This idea of repeating your evergreen blog post is going to be huge, huge value to saving not only time, but to make sure that all your followers are able to see that content. Some other things you can start to think about when you’re like I don’t know what evergreen content I can write about in my industry is what’s something you guys do differently from other people in your industry? What’s a big change that happened recently? People love to know about different things that are going on.

43:04 What’s a recent experience you learned something from? This not only goes on the behind the scends content, but it also lets people learn from your successes and failures so they don’t have to spend the time of actually going through that. They will thank you for that, so they can learn from it a little bit more. Lastly here, what advice do you have the reader? Advice is something that people are seeking out for mentor programs, for stuff like that. You can provide that to them directly on social media with your blog posts and with status updates. Once you get these blog posts written or once you get this content created, what else you’re going to do is start to ask so what when you’re turning these into social media updates.

43:48 Why should your audience actually care about this content? For example, we actually have our own style guide that answers this so what question and I would really encourage you to create one as well. Not only so that you’re consistent across your tone and your voice and your brand awareness on social media, but also so that you can make sure if you have a virtual assistant doing this that she is right on point with your brand, she is talking right into your audience’s story and making them that hero. Think about that so what. Who is this speaking to? Why should they care about it? Again, a lot of things go into this blog post and we started talking about it before, but it’s this idea of upcycling your content. This blog post here is showing you-you’ve got words, you’ve pictures, you’ve got subheadings, you’ve got links. All of this can be pulled out from this one blog post to make maybe 10 or 15 social media updates from it. Maybe try posting this link with a photo, posting this link with a question, pulling out some tips from as just text only to really learn what type of content your social media followers really want to see. Cool. The next time when you’re starting to think about sharing content on social media is the headline. At MeetEdgar, we actually generate 20 headlines for every blog post that we write and every piece content that we have. This is because social media is so fast paced that we know not everyone is going to click through, but they’re going to share content based on that headline still.

45:18 So many people just click that share button because they like what that headline says. I don’t want you to think that this is a waste of time to create 20 different headlines because these can also be used as status updates in the future, so really encourage your team to start to think what other words, what other things can really not only spark curiosity so people want to click through, but can also prevent that information in a way that compels people to share it out to their networks. Here is some of our content mix that we do at MeetEdgar. Everyone’s audience is different, so definitely experiment, learn about your audience, but we wanted to share a little bit about what’s working for us these days.

45:57 20% of the time, we post evergreen blog posts so that information value-added posts. 20% of the time, we share links to reviews. Again, that’s social proof that you’d want to get from other people talking about your company in a positive light. Job opening announcements, 20% of the time, we would go ahead and post that. A lot of people want to make sure they’re showing up and being helpful for their community. What this means is if you’re sharing a blog or if you’re sharing a job opportunity and they know someone is perfect for that job opportunity, they’ll share that post. This is great share-worthy content as well. 12% of the time we get that promotional post. Again going along with that post value, value, value, and earn the right to ask for that promotion.

46:41 Inspirational and tips are 10% of the time. Other people’s content, 2% of the time, but still getting that awesome curation for people to know that you’re providing them with that value. Questions for engagement, so questions are a really great way again to get people to actually talk back to your brand. Lastly, opt in to our newsletter 2% of the time. This here is a spreadsheet of doom as we like to call it and this is how if you’re not using an automation service like MeetEdgar, you can still automate and systemize your social media to get the great benefits of it. Make sure you’re keeping track of these status updates so that you can utilize them in the future. If you do have the means or if you’re interested in trying out Edgar, this spreadsheet can actually be turned into what we have here in our library. Our library over here on the left are going to be all the categories you can create in MeetEdgar. Then, the library is your status update here. What this is awesome for is not only creating a place where all of your hard work on your status updates are able to live and be repurposed, but it’s also showing you if you need to create more content in each category so you’re able to really distribute your team’s time a little bit more and say it looks like we’re a little low on blog posts or it looks like we’re a little low on quotes and really keep it in a systemized way there. This categorized base system of posting is also so important because you can do things like hit someone every Monday morning with a motivational quote and know that you’re consistently showing up for them when they need you.

48:13 You can hit someone with that behind the scenes content on a Throwback Thursday quote and know that you’re joining in that conversation and you’re showing up in the space that’s already been proven as something that works. Think about categories that already exist or categories that your followers like to see and their consumption habits are able to be seen on a consistent basis when you’re putting content out there and really making sure you’re connecting with them where they need to be. This is a kind of inside look at the MeetEdgar schedule and this goes along with the fact that you can send out different categories to different social networks throughout the day again allowing you to really test and allowing you to really optimize where and when your content is doing best.

48:58 It’s a weekly schedule, but that schedule repeats over and over again, so you do only have to set it up once and Edgar will kind of get that set it and forget it post going allowing to then go out and engage a little bit more on social media. A little bit more about categorization here. When you categorize, I also want you to think about that idea we talked about upcycling your content, where we’re able to gain more and more out of that one blog post. When you’re doing this, you can put them into the categories in Edgar and know they won’t all go out back to back to back, but they’re then able to be rotated through and you’re able to get a robust posting schedule where you’re getting a quote, a blog post, an infographic, and that promotional post all going out throughout the day and changing those categories at different times of the day.

49:45 People’s consumption habits are so different. Some people are going to check it in the morning. Others are going to check it after work. If you’re able to get categories going out at different times during the week, you’re then able to make sure your updates are showing up for people who might be online at different times. If you guys are running into some trouble thinking about what categories might work for your business, these top six ones are actually what Edgar started out with. If you do have an account, they come predetermined. You can always change them to match your brand a little bit better, but these six seem to work well for most businesses. Again, that inspirational and emotional posts, promotional tips, blog posts, questions, and other people’s blog posts.

50:26 Thinking about this is if you add 10 updates to each of these categories, you’ve got about a fresh month’s worth of content. If you send out two updates from these categories every day, think about how much simpler this is. If you’re able to sit down and add 10 updates to each of these categories every month, you’ve got fresh content and you’re not just kind of running around being haphazard about your social media and it really allows you again to kind of time box out and get in that creative head space, so all your status updates are matching your brand style guideline and really having that emotional connection with your community. This kind of idea I’ve been talking about of Edgar recycling your content and getting it out there.

51:13 I know there’s a lot of objection sometimes saying “I don’t want people to see the same thing over and over again.” But, I also want you guys to think about if you have a three months block of content in there, that is only re-sharing a status update four times a year. Who remembers a status update they saw three months ago? Not very many people. If someone sees that same status update more than once, it’s really not a big deal. Maybe, they weren’t in the head space to read it the first time and they are now. Getting behind this idea that repeating your content and resurfacing it really is going to add value to your followers. Thinking about brands who do this really well too, like you’re Buzzfeed.

51:52 They repeat content all the time and you’re probably never really that upset when you see the same thing go out. Or thinking about people actually go and seek out re-watching commercials from the Super Bowl on YouTube and this kind of idea that people want to hear from you and if you’re showing up, it’s really going to create that appeal that they know that you care about them and your social media strategy is there to support them. Cool. To end up here, we want to go over this idea of automating for engagement. I know again that automation word is a little bit scary and it kind of goes along with spam a lot of the time in social media. The more systemized you are, the more you’re going to really be able to create a natural experience for your followers on social media and have that conversation that actually matters and humanize your brand and have your personality show up a little bit more.

52:49 Our goal here at Edgar is to make sure that you guys are able to create what we call raving fans who are going to stick with you no matter what. Going back to this idea of what I said Laura’s story was. She started out as an educational business and moved into a software as a service business and she gained so many followers going with her because she shared her personal story about what she was going through and other people saw the need for this product as well. Not only are we at mercy to the Facebook algorithms and Twitter terms of service changing, but also your product might change over time and social media is really the best place to fall in love with your customers, create that human to human experience and emotional appeal and really make sure that you’re engaging with the right people for your brand.

53:32 That wraps it up. Thanks for coming today, guys. Cool. It appears we have time for one question.

53:50 Do you find that there’s a certain number of times that you should or should not post over post or under post?

54:01 Yeah. Okay. Cool. The question was do we find there is kind of that perfect number of postings per day or per week. You would say you don’t want to over post or under post. First thing’s first, everyone’s networks and everyone’s audience is different. Go into your Facebook insights and your Twitter analytics to kind of figure this stuff out. Some guidelines that we like to start out with when we’re working with clients is four times a day on Facebook is really good and that goes along with this value, value, value, sell proposition there. If you are kind of showing up too much in people’s feeds, it’s definitely something that they’re going to get annoyed with, of course.

54:38 On Twitter, again that fast-paced moving network we post about 15 times a day on Twitter to make sure we’re showing up for our followers when they’re online. Then on LinkedIn, we post about once a day. It is going to be a little bit more of a direct business to business. People actually seeking you out in your industry and we find that it is going to be kind of that blog post that works best on LinkedIn. But, if you’re creating those experiences and those value-added posts for your followers, a lot of the time the networks are going to not be showing them every update you’re posting. You may feel like you’re posting a little too much sometimes, but it’s really about going into your insights and seeing are my followers liking pictures, are they liking links, what’s going on here to see how many updates are best for your business.

55:24 I’d say four on Facebook, 10 to 15 on Twitter, and one on LinkedIn is probably a good place to start and then maybe every few months going into those insights and seeing if your audience is changing and liking that.

The post How Future Proof Your Social Media with Megan McMullin appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Social Media Scheduling Tips To Make Your Life Easier and Your Content Better

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If you have been around these parts long enough, you know that we love to talk all about social media scheduling. Edgar is a social media scheduling tool, after all.

We love social media scheduling because it makes it much easier and less time consuming to manage your social media content. But let’s face it, even though you’re scheduling your content, you still need to take the time to come up with it, create it, design it, publish it, promote it and measure it. Exhausted yet?

There is no denying the fact that social media content can be a solopreneur’s biggest headache.

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If you ever get yourself stuck in content management overwhelm, we have some tips to make all that content easier to manage. These five super simple social media scheduling tips will make your life easier and your content better.

1. Optimize for the best posting time.

If you want your content to go farther and actually drive results, you need to pay attention to the timing. Back in the dark ages when Facebook first began, you could add a post to your page and still be seeing engagement two days later. Those were such nice times, weren’t they?

Sadly, things have changed and today, timing really matters on social media. Social media is a fast-paced and if you post even just a few minutes later than planned, you could miss your audience!

Consider this, a tweet has an average lifespan of 18 minutes and Facebook posts receive the majority of their impressions in the first hour and 50 minutes. With such small windows to reach your audience, timing your posts correctly is crucial!

So when should you post? Well, that all depends on your audience and when they are most active online. You can check each platform’s analytics to determine when your audience is online. In the photo below, you can see that our audience is most active on Facebook around 4 pm so we make sure we schedule recurring content to post around that time.

If your audience is still small or you are just getting started with social media and don’t know when your audience will be active, we’ve got you covered.

There have been numerous studies done on the best time to post on each social media platform.

The best time to post on Facebook is Wednesday between 1pm and 3pm.

The best time to post on Twitter is between 12 pm and 3 pm.

The best days to post on Instagram are Mondays and Thursdays with no specific time. Overall, the best times to post on Instagram is between 8 am – 9 am, 2 am and 5 pm.

The best time to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday between 3 pm and 5 pm.

You can use this as the basis for your social media scheduling but we recommend measuring your analytics as you go so you can make any adjustments when necessary.

2. Find your posting frequency

So you know timing is important because social media moves at a fast pace but now you need to figure out how often you need to post. Logic says that if social media content has short lifespans then it makes the most sense to post as often as possible, right?

Well not exactly. Posting too much can actually annoy your followers and cause them to unfollow you. Your post frequency should encourage more people to follow you, not the opposite so you need to master the post frequency on each social channel.

Most people expect brands to post 1-2 times per day on social media platforms with the exception of Twitter. Since Twitter is the fastest moving medium, it’s recommended to post around 15 times a day with seven of those tweets being curated content.

Like most things with social media, it’s essential you test your posting frequency and find the sweet spot for your audience.

The recurring schedule in Edgar will help you manage your posting frequency so that your content is going out at the right times and at the right rhythm.

 

3. Find a content balance

The fastest way to run out of social media post ideas is to post the same type of content over and over. We hate to break it to you, but people will get sick of your steady stream of sales pitches just as they will get sick of your non-stop memes.

You need a balance of content or a content ratio. If you’ve already guessed that your content ratio depends on your audience, then you get a digital high five because you’ve been following along!

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But your content ratio also depends on your goals, your industry and your overall messaging. What’s most important is that you are mixing up your content so your audience doesn’t get bored and your feed isn’t repetitive.

Here are a couple of popular content ratios that you can test out in your social media scheduling.

1.The 5-3-1 Ratio

  • Five curated content posts
  • Three educational/informative content from your company
  • Two personal or just for fun messages

2. The 80/20 Ratio

  • 80% of your content is educational/informative content, including both curated and your content
  • 20% of your content is promotional content

3. The 30/60/10 Ratio

  • 30% of your content is owned content including blog posts, videos and images
  • 60% of your content is curated content
  • 10% of your content is promotional content

This is just a starting basis! You can get more complex and split up your content however you choose. Edgar offers categories so you can organize and balance your content for the right ratio.

4. Identify your evergreen content

We know that you are a busy person and you might not be a professional writer or content creator. And if you are a writer or content creator, well then you’re probably not only creating content for just your brand. Most people just don’t have the time to constantly be creating new content.

Luckily, you don’t have to! This is where evergreen content comes to the rescue. Evergreen content is content that is not time-sensitive and provides value over a long period of time.

Evergreen can be blog posts, webinars, videos, infographics, or live streams. All that matters is that your evergreen content is still relevant to your audience.

For example, our post about Facebook’s algorithm change was incredibly valuable in January 2018 but by now, most people are already aware of the change and Facebook has made different changes so it’s not an evergreen piece of content. But our post about how to write insanely smart content every time you sit down to write a blog post is more likely to stay relevant and valuable to our audience.

Some entrepreneurs worry that evergreen content doesn’t stay valuable once it’s already been posted but there are two important things to remember about social media content.

The first is that there is no guarantee that your whole audience sees every single one of your posts. In fact, it’s more likely that most of your audience doesn’t see every single one of your posts. Resharing evergreen increases the opportunity for your audience to see your content.

The second important thing to note is that your audience is growing every day and you’re attracting new followers who have not yet seen your content. Your evergreen content will be brand new to these followers!

You can find your evergreen content by doing a quick audit of your content.

Adding evergreen content to your social media scheduling efforts makes it easier to provide consistent valuable content.

5. Keep your content ideas handy

Have you ever needed to find a piece of curated content to schedule but it was a slow news day and you end up spending way too long trying to find something interesting to share? Been there!

Content curation is an important part of any successful social media strategy but sometimes just simply finding someone else’s content can take up a lot of valuable time.

And scrolling through articles for hours searching for the perfect piece of content isn’t thrilling or productive.

We recommend making a list of your favorite industry publications or websites. You can follow your favorite publications in an aggregator like Feedly so you can simply scroll through these on a regular basis to find content ideas.

If you are an Edgar user, you can upload your favorite websites into the RSS feed. Edgar will automatically add these to your pending content queue and all you need to do is go in and approve them.

Bonus Tip for Edgar Users!

6. Create variations and use auto-variations

In Edgar, variations allow you to add more variety to your library quickly. By creating variations of each post, you can keep your social feeds fresh and increase your social media engagement. Variations keep your content work for you and decreases the amount of time spent on social media scheduling.

But we know that you are human and your brain can get fried some days and you might not be able to come up with any variations for your content. That’s when you can rely on auto-variations. When you click the auto-variation button, Edgar pulls quotes from the link you are posting to create different variations for you. You can use the auto-variation for your post or it may spark some inspiration and you can edit it to be the exact message you want to share.

Social media scheduling is the smartest way to manage your content and grow your audience. While you are already saving a ton of time by scheduling, these tips will hopefully make it that much easier and faster to share great social media content.

Want to see how easy it is to use Edgar to schedule your social media content? Give us a try!

The post Social Media Scheduling Tips To Make Your Life Easier and Your Content Better appeared first on MeetEdgar.

How To Automate Facebook Posts (And Why You Should)

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You wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. You are sure you’ve forgotten something but you can’t remember what it is. You rack your brain and then it hits you. You were supposed to send out a Facebook post and you have completely forgotten about it.

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Sound familiar? Ok, maybe you’re not waking up in the middle of the night in sheer panic but every entrepreneur has forgotten to add a post that they meant to post.

Social media is a must-have marketing tool for almost every business these days but let’s face it, social media content creation and management takes time.

When you are building a business, you have one million things you are accomplishing and social media can slip through the cracks. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Social media automation is more than just a fad. It’s a tool that enables businesses of large and small to create, manage and publish social media content on a regular basis. We’ll show you how to automate Facebook posts so you can rest easy without any social media nightmares.

Why Should You Automate Facebook posts?

Keeps you consistent
Being a business owner means you are busy. We get it. Even though you know that social media is incredibly important, it can easily end up at the end of your to-do list. Unfortunately, one post a week just doesn’t cut it in the digital age. You need consistent posts. Social media automation is your ticket to consistency without spending all your time logged onto Facebook.

Reach multiple time zones
If you’re a digital business, such as an e-commerce business, course creator, or blogger, then there’s a good chance you have audiences across the United States or you have the potential to reach audiences across the world. If you only posted in the Eastern Time Zone, you could be missing your ideal customer who lives in Australia. Luckily, you can automate posts so that they reach your entire audience, even if the audience is awake while you are asleep!

Gives you more free time to actually engage with your audience
Social media is all about being social. It’s a balance of sharing content and engaging with content. However, it’s tough for any small business owner to find time to create excellent content and engage with followers. Automating Facebook posts and scheduling social media content frees up your time so you can focus on engaging with your growing community.

You can automate Facebook posts on the Facebook platform or you can use a social media scheduling tool like Edgar to do it for you.

Using Edgar makes it much easier to schedule your posts than posting directly to Facebook for a few reasons.

Edgar recycles your content so it will automatically repost your content to your page so you never run out of posts. This will end up saving you so much time in the long run because when you automate Facebook posts on the platform, you post it and it’s gone. But in Edgar, your posts stay in your library. This means that if you’re busy or can’t find time to post on a specific week, Edgar will pull from your library and automatically reshare your content.

You can also create different variations of your post so you can test content to see what works best with your audience, keep your feeds fresh and increase engagement. Edgar will even create auto variations of your content for you! Just add in a link and Edgar will pull up to four quotes from the content of the link you’ve shared. Watch a video of auto-variations in action here.

If you’ve ever sat staring at the screen trying to think up the absolute best post but end up just daydreaming about anything else, then you are going to love this feature! Seriously, some of our customers are saying it’s just like magic!

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You can also categorize your content in Edgar which will help you to provide a much better experience on your social media page. If you only post using Facebook, you probably won’t be able to see or understand any strategy when you look back at what you’ve created. But with categories, your content will be balanced and strategic.

Also, when you post using Edgar, you can schedule all your social media content from the same place. This will save you lots of time from hopping to one social site to the next!

Here’s a quick how-to for automating Facebook posts on Facebook and in Edgar.

How To Automate Facebook Posts On Facebook

  1. Write your post in the “Create Post” box
  2. Below your post, click the “Share Now” dropdown
  3. Select the second option “Schedule”
  4. Select the date and time you want your post to publish
  5. Select “Schedule”

If you want to see your scheduled Facebook posts on Facebook, you can click over to the “Publishing Tools” tab and from there you can select “Scheduled Posts” to see your scheduled posts. In the scheduled posts tab, you have the ability to edit or delete your scheduled content.

How To Automate Facebook Posts in Edgar

If you are looking for a social media scheduling tool to automate your posts on social media, then Edgar has you covered. Our simple to use platform makes it easy to automate Facebook posts and get more from your content.

Follow these steps to automate Facebook posts in Edgar.

  1. Click the Add New Content button
  2. Select your Facebook account from the accounts menu
  3. You have the option choose your category or you can leave your update as “General”.
    Read more on how categories help organize your content
  4. Type your update, add links, images or video. Select “Preview” if you would like to preview how your post will look on Facebook
  5. Click advanced settings to choose your scheduling option
  6. If you only want this content to be used once, you can select the “Use Once” option and Edgar will send out your content when it comes up in your schedule
  7. Or if you want your post to automatically publish once at a specific time, you can select “Use Once” option and then set a specific time and date below

If you want to see your automated Facebook post in Edgar, you can click over to your Queue where you can see all your scheduled social media content, including your Facebook posts. You can edit a post inside your Queue by selecting the edit icon on the right side of the scheduled post.

MeetEdgar offers a few other scheduling features that will allow your content to be recycled and last longer so you can be more consistent with less work. You can learn about these features here!

Before we send you out to start scheduling your social media content, we want to make a quick but important note about social media automation. You don’t want to automate everything about your social media strategy.

Social media requires you to be human, which means there should be an actual human behind the computer at some point in time.

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Using social media scheduling tools like Edgar will make your content go farther and it will save you time and energy but it doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything on social media.

Even if you automate Facebook posts or schedule social media content, you’ll still need a person to interact with your audience, engage with other community members and create meaningful dialogue on your social media pages.

The best way to use social media automation and scheduling tools is to use them to decrease the amount of time it takes you to create, manage and post your content. With that extra time, you can then turn around and invest it into creating real connections and having an authentic dialogue with your audience. In other words, be social!

With that being said, social media scheduling can save you hours of time and will keep your social media working for you while you work on other parts of your business, or maybe, just enjoy some well-deserved free time!

The post How To Automate Facebook Posts (And Why You Should) appeared first on MeetEdgar.


Getting Started On Social Media: 4 Social Media Templates To Save You Time

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Remember when social media used to be a new thing and companies would either ignore it completely or let the intern handle it?

Well, times have changed. Social media marketing has grown at a quick rate and no company can afford to skip out on this marketing channel. In fact, there are now entire departments dedicated to managing social media marketing activities.

Of course, not everyone has the capital or man-power to create a social media team. For entrepreneurs and small businesses, it pays to get organized with your social media.

These four social media templates will help get your social media plan organized, help make it more effective and keep you sane while you try to manage a growing business and still find time to tweet.

Social Media Strategy

If you are only going to use one social media template, then start with this one. A social media strategy is the first step to taking control of your social media marketing.

A strategy will keep you focused on your goals, message and audience. They will make clear what you need to be doing and sharing on social media.

When you have a set strategy, you can avoid campaigns and tactics that won’t work for your audience or for your business.

Essentially, a strategy will stop you from just “winging it” and being unable to grow or see any results.

There are four steps to setting your social media strategy.

1. Establish your goals
If you don’t have goals for a marketing channel, then you probably aren’t going to get very much out of that channel. You need to set social media goals that can relate back to your business. A goal of reaching 10 million Instagram followers is great but it won’t really help your business if none of those followers are in your ideal market or are interested in your content. Your goals should be relevant to your business goals

Also, your goals should be measurable. We’ll talk more about this soon but just remember that broad or vague goals are extremely difficult to achieve. For example, the goal “Go viral” would be nearly impossible to measure because it means different things for everyone. It’s best to choose a goal that you can clearly measure.

2. Identify your target audience
Imagine going on a blind date where you know absolutely nothing about the other person. It would probably take some stumbling around in the date before you found some in common to talk about.

Well going on to social media without knowing your audience is like walking into a blind date knowing nothing about the other person. And guess what? Your audience isn’t going to hang around while you find something interested to talk about. You need to know who you are selling to, what they want, how they operate and what interests them before you try to create any content.

Surveys or interviews with your existing customers is the best way to start collecting audience research. If you have yet to launch, then consider who you want your audience to be and then go look for places they might hang out or spend their time.

For example, if you are starting a health coaching business targeted at moms, try to find Mommy Facebook groups or forums or search relevant hashtags on Instagram or Twitter.

3. Gets clear on your message and your content categories
Social media would be incredibly boring if businesses only pushed sales on their followers all day long. Luckily, everyone has picked up on a better way to use social media.

Social media gives you the opportunity to showcase your brand and build deeper connections with your customer. It is not about selling!

That means you need to figure out some content that shares your brand and resonates with your audience. If you’ve done your audience research, then you should already know what interests your followers but it can be extremely helpful to determine the different types of content you want to share.

Content categories prevent you from posting the same thing over and over or from sharing content that isn’t relevant to your audience.

Your categories should relate to your business or service and also interest your audience, as well. It’s important that your categories hit both of these requirements.

For instance, we would love to share funny cat videos all day long because we like it and we know our audience likes it. However, funny cat videos have very little to do with our service so it wouldn’t make sense for us to share them. If you are a pet store or veterinarian, then a funny cat video may be the perfect fit for you!

4. Pick your metrics
Finally, the last piece of your strategy is choosing your metrics. How will you measure your growth every week, month or quarter?

Your metrics will connect back to your goals and they will act as a guiding light for whether your strategy is working.

Click here to access the social media strategy template.

2. Social Media Calendar

The next social media template is your social media calendar. Having a social media calendar will save you tons of hours and massive headaches!

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Consistency is one of the biggest contributors to success on social media but it’s also one of the biggest struggles for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Now you might be thinking, “But I’m most creative on the fly and I create my best posts in the moment.”

That might be true, but in life, and in business, distractions pop up all of the time and when they do, social media posts often get pushed off until later. Later can become never or later can become an end-of-the-day task where your left thinking “Ugh, I HAVE to post something but I just don’t know what to post.” This leads to low quality content and a poor social media presence.

Even if you create a calendar, you can still post in the moment when you feel inspired and those posts will be stronger because they’re backed by consistent and strategic posts.

When you have a social media calendar you:

  • Stay consistent with your posts
  • Never miss important dates
  • Ensure your messages are balanced
  • Keep your efforts in line with your strategy
  • Save yourself time

A social media calendar, allows you to create campaigns in advance, plan around specific holidays or important events and align every post with your business goals.

It’s also incredibly helpful for just getting a “bird’s eye view” of your social efforts and seeing what’s working and what’s not.

A social media calendar keeps you feeling a little bit ahead of the game and let’s face it, that feeling is a rarity when you work for yourself!

When it comes to creating a calendar, we recommend carving out a few hours once a month, sitting down with an actual calendar and your business goals and mapping it all out. Once you are done, you will feel so much clearer about what content you need and what to plan for in the coming month.

Click here to access the social media calendar template.

3. Social Media Audit

In marketing, there are going to be things that work and things that don’t work. The smartest business owners know this and prepare for it so that they can make adjustments as they go. That’s what a social media audit will do for your business.

A social media audit is a review of your current social media presence. It’s a simple and effective exercise that can give you insights into your social media efforts.

Whether you’ve had dormant social media pages for years or you are regularly active on social, anyone can benefit from an audit. There’s no need to do them every month but a quarterly or yearly audit can bring big benefits to your business.

During a social media audit, you will review your social media presence including your posts, graphics, messaging, profiles, imagery, followers, engagement and conversions.

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On a surface level, an audit will show you if you are presenting a consistent brand presence across all channels.

Once you dive deeper, you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t work in your strategy so that you can start making changes. You may be able to see why you don’t see conversions or which channels present untapped opportunities for your brand.

An audit serves as a way for you to evaluate your social media strategy. If you’ve set your social media goals, you can use an audit to measure them and to set new goals.

Click here to access the social media audit.

 

4. Social Media Analytics

Our last template may end up being the social media template that you use most often. We have found that one of the biggest reasons businesses can’t identify social media’s results is because they don’t bother to measure their progress or track their results.

You can measure almost anything with social media but you don’t need to keep track of every insight your Facebook page gives you. Instead, match your analytics to your metrics in your social media strategy. That way, you can be sure your efforts are moving towards your specific goals.

Tracking your analytics helps to inform your social media calendar. If you are able to match your analytics with your calendar then you can see which content is best-performing or which channel is underperforming. Use your analytics to adjust your calendar as necessary.

Also, if you save your social media analytics, then your social media audit will be much easier to do. You can simply review your analytics reports and you’ll get a perfect picture of how you performed on social.

Click here to access the social media analytics template.

Social media can be extremely overwhelming for entrepreneurs but these social media templates will help empower you to manage your social media like a pro!

The post Getting Started On Social Media: 4 Social Media Templates To Save You Time appeared first on MeetEdgar.

7 Ways to Make the Most of Small Business Saturday

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Tis the season for holiday shopping! It’s that blink-and-you-miss-it time of year when calendars fill up with holiday parties and shopping carts are filled with gifts.

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For businesses, this is one of the busiest times of years and while it may seem like the whole world does their holiday shopping on Amazon Prime, there’s a movement aimed at giving small businesses a piece of that holiday shopping pie.

Small Business Saturday is the perfect opportunity for every small business owner who is looking to make bank this holiday season.

What is Small Business Saturday?

Small Business Saturday is a campaign created by American Express that encourages people to Shop Small and support local businesses every holiday season.

It’s strategically placed on the Saturday after Thanksgiving so that it falls during one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year.

small business saturday shoppers

There’s nothing small about Small Business Saturday. (Sorry, we couldn’t let that pun go to waste!) In 2017, 108 million shoppers spent $12.9 billion on Small Business Saturday and 70% of shoppers report being aware of Small Business Saturday.

With millions of shoppers and strong awareness, Small Business Saturday is a no-brainer for small business owners.

Who can benefit from Small Business Saturday?

We’re firm believers that when you shop small, everyone wins so if you ask us, then everyone benefits from Small Business Saturday. But truly, any small business can take advantage of the Small Business Saturday!

Small Business Saturday isn’t limited to brick and mortar stores or traditional mom and pop shops. If you are a solopreneur who sells courses, then you are a small business! If you are a two-person e-commerce Etsy shop selling handmade bracelets, then you are a small business!

Online or off, a small team or riding solo, there’s a chance for everyone to win customers and sales this Small Business Saturday.

It’s not only businesses who benefit from Small Business Saturday. Shopping small can have a tremendous impact on the local community has a whole. Studies show that if you spend $100 in a local business, $68 of it goes back into the local community. If you spent the same amount at a large business, only $43 of it would stay in the community.

So let’s make the most of it! Here are 7 tips you need to make the most of Small Business Saturday this year.

small business saturday logo

1. Start now

Here’s a crazy thing to consider: 45% of consumers plan to start their holiday shopping before November 1st. That means almost half of shoppers have already shopped for or purchased a gift for the holiday!

It’s hard to be too early for holiday marketing but it’s clear that November 1st isn’t early at all. It might even be a little late!

So you want to prepare and get the word out soon about your holiday specials and sales. If you haven’t figured out the details of your holiday offers, then we want to make the tiny suggestion to think about those details as soon as possible, like yesterday.

2. Be specific in your marketing

These days, you can’t even look at your phone without being shown some type of ad for something. And during this time of year, ads seem to be everywhere.

Which means you have to be super specific in your marketing and your offer if you want your customers to take notice and, more importantly, remember your offer.

Vague messages like “Shop our Black Friday sale” is going to get lost in the content tornado that is holiday sale ads. Instead, tell your customers exactly what to expect and when to expect it.

So “Shop Our Black Friday Sale” could become “Enjoy free gift wrapping and shipping on all orders over $50 on Small Business Saturday!”

This offer tells the customer exactly what they’ll receive and what they have to do to get the deal. Your customer isn’t going to investigate what your offer is because they have too many options available to them. If it’s unclear, they’ll simply go to the next message on their newsfeed.

3. Use American Express Marketing Materials

American Express wants small business to earn big on Small Business Saturday so they offer resources to help small businesses get the word out about their offers.

There’s no graphic designer needed with these tools! American Express provides email templates, social media graphics, signage and more, all for free!

You can download the free “Shop Small” kit, which gives you everything you need to promote your Small Business Saturday offers.

Don’t forget social media too! Increase the reach of your posts using Small Business Saturday hashtags including #ShopSmall, #SmallBusinessSaturday, #DineSmall and #SmallBizSat.

4. Be consistent this month

Consistency is key year-round in social media but it’s even more important during the holidays. There are thousands of messages flying around the internet during this time of year. So your customers might not always see your posts or open your emails so it pays to be consistent.

Plan your content in advance so that it doesn’t slip through the cracks and remind customers of your offers often throughout the month. If you are only offering specials on Small Business Saturday, then try posting countdown posts or highlight products to keep your audience engaged with your offers because everyone loves a good sneak peek!

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If you are an Edgar user, you can set up a Small Business Saturday category in Edgar and schedule it to fit in with rest of your content. Once Small Business Saturday is over you can delete the category so the content won’t remain in your queue.

5. Share YOU as a small business

Small Business Saturday was built to reminder shoppers why small businesses are important and how shopping small supports individuals and communities. Do you know what makes your business special? You!

You are the secret sauce behind your business and when someone shops from your business, they are not just getting a product, they are supporting you.

Use social media to get a little personal with your audience this month. Share behind the scenes content of your business, introduce your team and remind your customers that there are humans behind the business.

Washington DC-based bakery Whisked! uses their Instagram account to share personal messages from their founder Julia. These posts offer a behind the scenes look at the business.

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6. Engage your communities

Leveraging your communities and groups is a smart strategy all year round but they can make a huge difference for your Small Business Saturday sales.

small business saturday groups

One of the most popular reasons people shop small is to support the local community. American Express rallies the community for Small Business Saturday with Neighborhood Champions. These neighborhood champions can be any involved community members but are often associations, chambers of commerce and community leaders who work to organize events and engage the community with Small Business Saturday.

Offline, you can leverage communities such as Facebook groups or Twitter chats to help spread the word and share your Small Business Saturday offers. You can start a campaign to cross-promote other community members offers or create complementary offers with community members.

Online and offline communities often benefit most from shopping small as small businesses are more likely to put their money and time back into the community.

7. Prepare customer service

Lots of sales and promotions usually lead to a high number of customer service inquiries and missing a customer service inquiry can cost you a sale. Shoppers care about their shopping experience and they expect fast responses. 54% of consumers expect an instant response to inquiries.

One way that small businesses can differentiate themselves from the competition is by offering stellar customer service. You may want to organize your time so that you can be more present answering questions on social media or in emails or you may want to implement Facebook messenger bots for frequent questions.

There are many ways to make the most of Small Business Saturday but the most important thing is that you as a small business owner take advantage of the opportunity it gives your business.

We want to hear from you! How are you going to make the most of Small Business Saturday?

We support Small Business all year long but we’re so proud to be able to do so this month! If you are a small business, you can enjoy your first month of Edgar free with the code smallbusiness18

The post 7 Ways to Make the Most of Small Business Saturday appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Beginner’s Guide To Using Facebook Ads Manager

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Facebook ads can be a hard thing to master. You receive a notification from Facebook that a certain post is doing better than others so you hit the “Boost” button and you notice a few extra likes on the posts. So you try it again on another few posts. But other than a little bit more engagement you don’t notice any other benefits of Facebook ads and you start to wonder, “Why does anyone suggest using Facebook ads?”

If you’ve felt like this then we have two pieces of very good news. The first is that you are not alone. Many businesses struggle with seeing returns from their Facebook ads when they first start using them.

The second piece of good news is that just casually boosting posts using the “Boost” button is probably the worst way to run your Facebook ad campaigns and you can see massive improvements by using one helpful tool.

The real place to go is the Facebook Ads Manager.

You may be wondering what exactly is the Facebook ads manager?

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The Facebook Ads Manager is the tool that Facebook provides every single Facebook page to plan, create, manage, review and improve their ad campaigns. Why should you use it over booting posts? So glad you asked!

The Facebook Ads Manager:

  • Gives you more options for your advertising
  • Provides you with the ability to optimize your ads
  • Makes it easier for you to manage your Facebook ads

The bottom line is that when Facebook gives you a tool, they want you to use it. And when Facebook wants you to use something, they are going to make it much better and more capable than any other options out there (i.e, the boost button!).

How to Use the Facebook Ads Manager?

If you’re a Facebook ads newbie, the ads manager can be a confusing place so we’re going to walk you through the features of it so that you can get started using it.

The first thing to know is how to get to the ads manager on Facebook. There are a few ways to access the ads manager. From the Facebook screen, click the down arrow in the right-hand corner and navigate down to “Manage Ads.”

facebook advertising manager

Once you click on that it will take you to the ads manager screen. Alternatively, you can use this link to get there.

In the Facebook Ads Manager, you can navigate to the main menu by selecting the menu icon in the upper left-hand corner. This will give you a pretty sweet overview of everything you can do with an audience manager.

ads manager

 

It may look a little overwhelming at first, but it’s actually organized really well and fairly straightforward once you get into it. It’s broken down into four different sections, each to help you with a specific part of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Plan

It seems pretty obvious what to do with these options right? You can use these tools before you launch your campaign.

The Audience Insights tool provides you a detailed look at your audience and everything you’d want to know about them including their demographics, location, other Facebook pages they like and how they engage with your page. If you’ve never looked at this tool, then prepared to be amazed because it will provide you with many valuable insights about your audience!

facebook ads manager

 

The Campaign Planner is mainly for media planners and agencies who are creating advertising campaigns for clients. It’s not something you need to experiment with unless you are creating Facebook ad campaigns for clients.

In the Creative Hub, you can mock up ads and share them with team members or clients before you start creating the campaign. If you work a designer, then this tool can come in handy!

Create + Manage

This is the real meat and potatoes of the ads manager and where you will most likely spend the majority of your time. After you’ve planned your campaign, this is where you will come to create and launch it.

The first section is the Business Manager section. This is really useful if you manage multiple pages or have a team who helps manage your page. It allows you to organize your account for multiple team members. You have to sign up for Business Manager to be able to use it.

The Ads Manager section is where the magic happens! Could you tell that already from the name? In the Ads Manager section, you will set up and launch your campaigns. It’s right here that you can create campaigns, and ads and just in general, manage your Facebook ad campaigns. You can review campaigns that are currently running or find campaigns that are already completed. If the entirety of Ads Manager feels overwhelming to you, then don’t worry about the rest, of it and just focus here.

guide to facebook ads manager

 

In the Page Posts section, you will find all of your page posts and their metrics. You can use this area to determine which of your best performing posts would make a great ad or you can use this area to create a page post to use as an ad.facebook ads

The App Dashboard and App Ads Helper are only applicable if you manage an app. You can manage your app, view downloads and manage ads for your app.

The Automated Rules section is a little-known tool in the ads manager that everyone should really be using, especially if you can’t commit a ton of time to manage your ads. In this section, you can set a rule so that your ads automatically shut off or adjust budget if they hit a certain point. For example, you can set a rule if your Cost Per Result goes over a specific number or you can set it so your budget increases if your spend reaches a certain number or it’s been a certain period of time. There are dozens of options but they all help you do one thing: manage your ads better! If the idea of manually watching all of your ads makes you break into a sweat, then you will love using the automated rule tool.

ads manager guide

Measuring & Reporting

After you’ve launched a campaign, what’s the next step? Measuring and reporting, of course! Because you need to actually make sure that your ads are working for you and this is the place you can do that. Everything in this section will help you to review your campaigns so you can improve them over the time.

The Ads Reporting allows you to set up automated reports on your campaigns to be sent to you, your client or your CEO. You can set your reports to be delivered daily, weekly or monthly and it’s an incredibly easy way for everyone to stay up to date on your campaigns.

The Test and Learn section is a great tool if you’re an intermediate Facebook ads user and you want to see better results from your campaigns. In this section, you can set up tests to measure how much impact your Facebook ads are having on your business, which campaign causes the lowest cost conversions, if your campaigns impact your brand perception and if setting a campaign budget improves performance. Facebook automatically sets up and runs these tests for you, depending on your goals.

If you use the Facebook Pixel (which everyone really should use because it’s absolutely invaluable to business owners), the Analytics section is going to be extremely helpful. This section analyzes data from your pixel and gives you information on your Facebook page and your pixel.

In here, you’ll learn when your audience is active, your page engagement and much, much more!

facebook ads

In the Events Manager, you will be able to manage the events that occur through your Facebook pixels, whether that is your pixel offline events, custom conversions or app events.

The Facebook ad pixel is a piece of code that you ad to your website that helps you track conversions from your ads, capture data for custom and lookalike audience and improve your ads. If you have a website and don’t have the Facebook pixel, then stop reading this article and go set it up following these instructions. We’ll wait!

Back? Alright, moving on to Offline Events. Offline events will be important to you if you operate a brick and mortar store. Remember before when you had no idea if Facebook ads actually contributed to people coming into your store? Well, those days are long gone! When you set up offline events, you can evaluate results such as event attendance, foot traffic, and sales so you can see just how much you’re earning from your Facebook ads.

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The last section is App Events, which is for app creators to manage and monitor what actions users take on their apps.

Assets

The last section is assets and this is where Facebook stores all of the assets that you use in your Facebook ads.

In Audiences, you can view your custom, lookalike or saved audiences. A custom audience is an audience that you already have connected with in some way, such as your website traffic or your email list. A custom audience could also be made up of people who engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page. A lookalike audience is an audience Facebook creates based on a custom audience. This helps you reach more people with similar attributes to the individuals who already engage with your content.

For example, you can create a lookalike audience of individuals similar to your email list or your Facebook fans. A saved audience is an audience that you may use frequently and want to save it for easy access. For example, if you’re consistently creating audiences around a specific set of zip codes, you can save that audience so you don’t have to manually enter it every time.

ads manager guide

The Images section gives you easy access to every image you have ever used in one of your Facebook ads. This will save you a lot of time from having to search for that perfect image that you know you used in an ad campaign but cannot find!

The Catalogs option is for businesses with an e-commerce website with products. Catalogs allow you to upload a list of your products, including their image and description, and create ads using these product images and descriptions targeted at individuals who have already visited your website or viewed the product.

The Business Locations section is for brick and mortar businesses with multiple locations. So if you are a gym or nail salon with multiple locations and want to run ads tailored to each location, you can do this by creating business locations for each of your brick and mortar stores.

The Block List section helps you prevent your ads from running on specific websites and apps in the Audience Network or in Instant Articles. This is for advertisers who want to ensure that their content does not deliver alongside content that is not good for their brand, such as specific political or religious websites.

Finally, you’ll have a Video section. Just like the image section, this collects any and all videos you have ever used videos in your Facebook ads so you can quickly and easily find them the next time you want to use them.

There you have it! This is a quick beginner’s guide to using Facebook Ads Manager and all its many capabilities. Now you might be feeling a little stressed at all options we just laid out.

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But guess what? You only have to use the tools that work for you and your business.

Now that you’ve read the guide to Facebook Ads Manager, you know which sections to focus on and learn and you can ignore the rest! We recommend starting with Audience Insights and Ads Manager. These two tools will get you started planning and creating your campaigns.

Just one more friendly reminder before you dive into Facebook marketing with the Facebook ads manager. Using ads is not a substitute for creating and sharing organic posts. Ads should be one part of your Facebook strategy but if you want to grow an authentic audience that is really committed to your brand, keep creating organic posts.

Your turn! Do you love Facebook ads? Share with us your Facebook Ads Manager tips below!

The post Beginner’s Guide To Using Facebook Ads Manager appeared first on MeetEdgar.

How To Create The Best Social Media Posting Schedule

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There are two types of people in this world: those who love schedules and those who hate them.

No matter which bracket you fall into, there’s one thing to keep in mind: everyone should love a social media posting schedule.

We know, we can hear your objections already!

But I’m creative, I can’t stick to a schedule!
But I need inspiration and I get that in the spur of the moment.
But I am way too busy to come up with a whole bunch of social media content by myself.

Well, we have some news for you:
We’ll show you how to create a social media posting schedule that fits with your creativity and doesn’t make you feel like your hands are tied.

A social media posting schedule actually doesn’t stop you from posting when you feel inspired. In fact, it makes those posts better because they’ll reach an engaged audience. Creating a social media posting schedule will actually save you time in the long run.

A social media schedule is the framework that guides all your social media postings. It gives you a solid foundation so that you are always consistent, on message and on brand; all of which truly matter when it comes to social media.

Still not convinced that a social media posting schedule is for you? Here are just a few more reasons that schedule is your path to social media success.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2018 and it’s very, very clear that social media is not going anywhere. There are now billions of people and millions of businesses on social media. Across the world, consumers are discovering new brands, becoming more loyal to their favorite one, and engaging with and buying from businesses all thanks to social media. You can’t afford to not be on social media.

And yes, that applies to you, no matter how busy you are. Social media management can feel like a full-time job and with the 10,000 other things going on in your day, it can drop to the bottom of the list.

But we have to ask if you had a brick and mortar store and a potential customer was wondering around right outside of it, wouldn’t you make sure that you had an open sign out, lights on and a pretty window display, even if you were the only person who worked there? If you ignore social media, it’s the equivalent of keeping your store dark and closed up.

Here’s the real reason that we always suggest a social media posting schedule, especially if you are a solopreneur. Consistent posts make your content even stronger. If you have consistency in your posts, your audience will be trained to expect your content and your message. It will have become familiar to them. So when you do have a big announcement to make or post to share that isn’t part of the schedule, your audience will be excited to hear it, instead of wondering “Who is this person and why am I seeing their post?”

Now that we have won you over, you may be wondering how you can create the best social media posting schedule? So glad you asked! Let’s walk you through it.

1. Research Your Audience

We could talk a lot about the best platforms or how often to post to each one but the only thing that should ever really matter to you as a business owner is your audience. Specifically, how they act on social media and when they are active on social media.

Every audience’s habits are different. If you are a B2B company who sells to marketing executives, then your audience will have different social media habits than if you are a late night food truck who targets college kids. One audience is probably more active on LinkedIn during weekdays. The other is probably more prone to SnapChat or Instagram on weekends and in the evenings. These would lead to two very different social media posting schedules!

Luckily you don’t have to be a mind reader to figure out how your audience acts on social media. Every social media platform provides some type of info on your audience and when they are active online. You just have to know where to look for the data.

On Facebook:
Nearly everything you need to know about your Facebook page is located in the “Insights” section. From there, click the “Posts” option in the left-hand menu. Facebook makes it very clear when your audience is online to give you an idea of when you should post.

 

On Twitter:
It’s important to note on Twitter that most of your audience doesn’t actually see your tweets but that doesn’t mean you should optimize your Twitter page as much as possible!

Twitter analytics are not quite as fully functional as Facebook analytics but you can get some insights, like which days your tweets have the highest impressions.

 

You can also us a free tool you can use to learn when your audience is online called Tweriod.

Tweriod analyzes your audiences and your tweets to determine when your audience is online and when your tweets get the most exposure. Simply sign in with your Twitter ID and Tweriod will analyze your stats and then just like magic, your Twitter posting schedule will become clear!

Where to find on LinkedIn:
On LinkedIn, it’s a little bit trickier to find out when your audience is online but with some experimentation, you can piece this together.

  • The first is to head to your analytics and select “Visitors”
  • Scroll down to the “Traffic” section and you’ll see a graph that measures your traffic.
  • Select “Unique Visitors” as the metric so you are viewing the number of people who view your page
  • We like to choose one month as our overview because it helps give a clearer picture
  • On the right side, toggle the button that says “Aggregate mobile and desktop metrics” so that you see the total number, instead of the separate numbers for mobile and desktop
  • From here, you can see which days are most popular with your audience
  • Scroll over the graph to see specific dates

On our chart below, we can see that our page is most active on Mondays and Tuesdays before dipping the rest of the week.

It’s not a perfect science but it gives us enough a place to start testing when is the best time.

On Instagram:
Instagram is owned by Facebook so they have very similar analytics and it’s easy to find when your audience is online. Make sure you have a business profile and click the “Insights” button at the top of your profile. In the “Audience” tab, at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a graph that shows the average times your followers are on Instagram.

Figuring out the days and times your audience hangs out online will create the basis of a posting schedule. You’ll eliminate wasting great posts that are scheduled on days and times when your audience is offline.

But timing is just one piece of a posting schedule puzzle. The next up is finding the content.

2. Learn what content keeps your audience engaged.

You can’t just type 280 characters into the post box and expect anyone to respond to it. No, now social media is a place of videos, lives, photos, boomerangs and more.

The right type of content depends on two main things: the platform and…

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Yes, your audience!

Each platform has its own unique niche when it comes to types of content. Here are some general guidelines as to what to post on each platform:

Facebook: photos, videos, live streams
Twitter: links including blog posts, curated content, GIFs
Instagram: quality photos, videos, boomerangs and stories
LinkedIn: links, industry news, videos

This is a good starting point for understanding what content to post but if you really want to create the best social media posting schedule (and why wouldn’t you?!), then you should dive a little bit more into your analytics on each platform.

Facebook:
Facebook Insights just might become your new best friend after this blog post! In the insights section under “Posts,” click the “Post Types.” This breaks down the different types of posts and how well they do with your audience.

Now you may look at that and think, “Well I know the type of content does well but not what actual content I should post.” Did you think Facebook would leave you hanging like that? Of course not!

If you switch back over to “When Your Fans Are Online” and scroll down, you’ll see a list of all your posts published, along with the type of post, reach and engagement rates. Here is where you can the actual content that does well. There’s no easy way to sort this so you just have to manually scroll through and review the posts with the highest reach or engagement rate to see what trends exist.

Twitter:
Similar to Facebook, Twitter breaks down your tweets for you and shows you how they rank based on impressions, engagement and engagement rate.

You can click on any of the posts to learn more detailed information about the tweet and the engagement on it.

We recommend reviewing your top posts for any similarities. Take note on if images improve your tweets if there are any topics that consistently receive high engagement or the types of content that receives clicks and the types that receive retweets.

LinkedIn:
LinkedIn also breaks down posts and engagement rates in their “Analytics” section under “Updates.” Once you get to the page, then you repeat the steps above of reviewing your top posts.

If you want a faster way to review these posts so you can save yourself time, LinkedIn allows for this information to be exported into an excel doc. From there, you can sort by highest impressions or clicks to get a quick look at what content is the most engaging.

Instagram:
Instagram is the platform that lacks the most when it comes to content insights. Since it’s a newer platform, this is expected but it’s not exactly devoid of all analytics so you can still get a good idea of the content that works on your feed!

In the Insights section under “Content,” you can review your posts and the various metrics associated with them. You can sort your posts by photo, video, carousel post or all to get an idea of which format works better or what types of content work in each particular format. Instagram gives you plenty of measurement options. We like to view engagement and profile visits for our content to determine what posts our audience loves and what drives them back to our profile for more info.

3. Categorize your content in a way that makes sense to your audience

Hopefully, going through all your content gave you a really strong idea of what formats and types of content your audience loves and you have a laundry list of ideas of things you can create and post on social media. You are a creative, after all!

But hang on a second before you start creating all types of great content, let’s talk about something.

You can have great content. You can know when to post it. But there’s one final step that will make your social media posting schedule really strong.

It’s time to organize your content so that it makes sense and is balanced.

You may have realized from reviewing your content that different content does different stuff.

For us, videos have the highest reach but it’s blog links that drive traffic back to our website. On Instagram, quote posts receive the most comments but educational posts attract more followers.

You probably have several different goals for your social media and different types of content focus on different goals. No one wants one million fans but no engagement. Just like no one wants the highest engagement rates but no clicks to their website.

There are quite a few moving parts in any good social media strategy so you need to mix up your content to keep all of those parts moving.

This why we suggest categorizing your content.

Creating categories keeps your content balanced and ensures you are posting everything you need to meet all of your social media goals.

If you have already reviewed your content in the step above, then your categories should already be becoming clear to you based on what types of content your audience loves and engages.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of our different categories.

Your categories can grow and change as your social media profiles grow and your business grows.

4. Put it all together

Let’s run through to make sure you have everything you need for your social media posting schedule.

Do you know when is your audience online and active? Check.
Do you know what formats work well on each platform? Check.
Do you know what types of content does your audience love? Check.
Do you know your content categories? Check.

You have all your ingredients now to make a beautiful and effective social media posting schedule.
Now you just need to put it all together:

  • Choose the days and times you want to post on each platform
  • Decide which category will be posted at which time and date
  • Create different content and multiple formats of that content for each category

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Of course, if you want to make this process even easier, try Edgar! In just a few steps, you can have your social media posting schedule set and then, once you get your schedule all set up and start creating content, Edgar will recycle and repost content from your library so that your schedule stays consistent. Give Edgar a try here. We have a risk-free 30-day guarantee!

The post How To Create The Best Social Media Posting Schedule appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Small Business Saturday Spotlight: 4 Businesses Crushing It On Social Media

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This month is Small Business Saturday and many small businesses are using social media to prepare for the holiday. But not everyone is tweeting their way through the holiday season. We often hear from small business owners that social media is extremely time-consuming and can be difficult for small businesses to actually see success from it.

But quality is always more important than quantity in social media and what matters most is the strategy. If you can find the right strategy and be consistent with it, you can see just as much success on social media as big businesses do!

In honor of Small Business Saturday, we want to spotlight some of our small business customers who are using social media to grow their business and what you can learn from them for your own business!

Hoot Design Co.

Facebook | TwitterInstagram

Hoot Design Co. is a women-led branding and design agency who creates memorable brand experiences.

Hoot Design Co. uses social media to share their brand by sharing bright visuals that reflect their work, behind the scenes moments and highlighting their clients and client work.

 

Hoot Design Co. is a brilliant example of how to showcase a brand on social media through visuals and messaging. Their color scheme is consistently bright and bold and makes you look twice as you are scrolling through your feed. They also share their personality through their posts with relatable language and a conversational tone.

The lesson to learn from Hoot Design Co. is to get extremely clear on your audience and who you are as a brand.

Before you start posting on social media, research your audience, create personas and get clear on your brand. When you are creating content, consider your tone, message, and visual graphics and ask yourself if they are in line and consistent with your brand.

Upswing Poker

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Upswing Poker shares resources, courses, and training for online poker players of all levels. Upswing Poker uses their social media to drive traffic back to their website by sharing high-quality content and then leveraging that content to attract paying customers.

Upswing Poker is the perfect example of how websites can leverage all of their content to create consistent social media posts. Upswing’s social media feeds share a mix of podcast episodes, blog posts, free quizzes, sneak peeks of premium content and promotional content.

By sharing several high quality but varied pieces of content, they are able to engage every member of their audience, from advanced players to newer players, paid members and casual readers. Every segment of their audience can engage with something on their feeds.

The lesson to learn from Upswing Poker is to vary your content. In a recent survey, 21% of social media users said they would unfollow a brand for posting repetitive content.

Share a combination of photos, videos, blogs and sales promotions to reach every member of their audience. Edgar users can use Edgar’s categories to balance your content mix.

Mod Girl Marketing

Facebook | Facebook Group | TwitterLinkedIn

Mod Girl Marketing is an inbound marketing agency who helps businesses reach their business goals through digital marketing strategies.

Mod Girl Marketing uses social media to spotlight their owner, Mandy McEwen and share her expertise through masterclasses, videos, and webinars.

They also use social media to build a community through their Facebook group, Mod Agency Insiders. Inside the Facebook group, Mod Girl Marketing shares exclusive content, engages their audience with questions, advice, and solutions. Group members are encouraged to share their marketing questions and seek advice.

By prominently featuring Mandy and creating a strong community, Mod Girl Marketing instills trust and loyalty with their followers.

The lesson from Mod Girl Marketing is to create a community with social media. Whether it’s a Facebook group, Twitter chat or a branded social hashtag, find a way to engage your followers as a community.

Mod Girl also shows how important it is to share you and your team on your social. Don’t hide behind a brand name. Get in front of the camera and showcase you! Share behind the scenes photos, host Q&A sessions on live streams or post video tutorials or new product demonstrations. There are plenty of ways that you can get in front of the camera and in front of your audience.

ShootDotEdit

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

ShootDotEdit is a professional photography editing service for professional wedding and portrait photographers.

ShootDotEdit uses social media to engage their followers by sharing valuable content that educates and entertains their audience. They share tutorial blog posts, funny memes and photography quotes.

ShootDotEdit knows the importance of great content and how to use social media to be helpful and not salesy. Messages that scream “Buy, buy, buy!” won’t connect with an audience. When you create content, consider how if it is valuable to your audience.

There are four general goals of any content marketing. Content should educate, inform, entertain or inspire. If your content doesn’t fit into one of these four boxes, then you might want to reevaluate why you’re sharing it!

Social media is all about connecting with your audience and discussing shared interests and topics is what builds that connection. Selling isn’t the right tactic.

If you feel like your audience isn’t connecting with your content, check to see if you’re mostly sharing content about you and your business. If you are, then you’re probably boring your audience. Try adding in content that is more focused on your audience and their needs.

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These are just a few small businesses who are using social media to grow their business. It can be easy to feel like the only way to succeed is to have a huge budget but the great thing about social media is that it really did level the playing field for everyone.

Try these tactics and get creative with some of your own and above all, be consistent with social media and you’ll start seeing success!

Edgar can help your small business succeed on social media! In honor of Small Business Saturday, we’re offering a free month of Edgar! Give us a try for free for one month with the code SMALLBIZ18 at check out.

The post Small Business Saturday Spotlight: 4 Businesses Crushing It On Social Media appeared first on MeetEdgar.

10 Tips Series: 10 Social Media Tips for 2019 Success

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Transcript for 10 Tips Series: 10 Social Media Tips for 2019 Success

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

 

Megan: Hey there, MeetEdgar community. It is Megan, excited to get [00:00:30] started today with our webinar on 10 Social Media Tips. We’re going to get started in a couple of minutes here. Thanks for your patience as we wait for the last few people to trickle in.

As we wait one more minute here, definitely pop into the chat on the right-hand side of your screen and let us know what’s going on in your life these days,

[00:01:00] where you are tuning in from. We’d love to hear all the MeetEdgar users as well as just you social media marketing savvy people out there joining in. We’re going to get started in a minute here. We’re going to have my colleague, Kristina, over, chatting with you guys on the right. Ask questions throughout, let us know any feedback that you like, anything like that. As I said, we’ll get started in one minute here.

[00:01:30]All right. It is 10:00 AM mountain time where I am here in Denver, Colorado, which means that it’s noon out the East Coast and 9:00 AM for you, early morning risers, in the Pacific time zone. Like I said, thanks for joining. We’re really excited just to go over a few tips here to get your week started out right and to get you really starting to think and plan for the

[00:02:00] 2019 social media campaigns that you guys are going to get out there and rock this coming year.

Like I said, let us know if you have any questions at all as we go through these tips. I know you’re so busy with your businesses being a small business owner wearing so many hats. Social media can sometimes be pushed to the wayside, but that’s something we definitely don’t want to happen with your brands in 2019, because social media is a free platform where you’re able to get your message out there and connect with your followers and really create a community, so that [00:02:30] your brand can stand out from all the noise happening on social media.

Let’s jump right in here with tip number one, which is more social, less media. You may be thinking, “Megan, this is crazy. We are starting out. The first tip of a social media success webinar with a more social, less media tip, this doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t those two should be together?” Think about how authenticity is key these days. Personal branding is now a part of company branding. That

[00:03:00] means you being social and putting your personality out there when it comes to marketing your brand. You can do things like using your Instagram stories to start to talk to your followers in a less curated way than some of your other posts might be.

You can see here. This example is from our founder, Laura, who does a lot of founder chats with our community. One of the reasons she does this is she likes to put our values and she likes to put her personality in with our brand, so you know you are buying from a human. Humanizing your brand, because remember, people buy from people, [00:03:30] not businesses.

One of the things we like to do when we’re really starting to be more social and producing less media on social media is to ask questions before one of these founder chats in our Instagram stories to collect true, authentic questions from our community to think what they are going to want to know so we can talk right to you in these founder chats. The reason this is so important is because relatability is so huge on social media marketing these days. You want to be able to look at a post and

[00:04:00] say, “Yes, I relate to that,” in order to get that brand affinity going. Your marketing is really going to get so much stronger if you’re attracting people who your story relates to and talks with.

To be successful on social media, whether you’re a service or a product, you really want to know what drives the people in your community and know how each and every one of your posts can serve them so that it can elevate their lifestyle. One of the ways to do this, again, is to collect questions. Ask in your

[00:04:30] Instagram and Facebook stories what people want to know and let people know when you’ll be chatting with them. Bonus, if you do start to brainstorm these things and get to know your followers better through this question asking technique, you can keep a running Google Doc of everything they ask to really start to develop your brand persona of who the people in your audience are so much better.

This doc can also serve for a few other things like being able to know that you have something to fall back on when you’re looking to get a little creative in your posts. [00:05:00] It can be a great way to use the language that your followers already use to talk about your product or to talk about their pain points. If you can incorporate this language in with your own posts, it’s again going to make your social media marketing that much stronger. This is what true authenticity is about. A brand connection is one of the most important things that authenticity can lend itself to on social media.

Think of these things that Google has now termed something called identity loyalty when it [00:05:30] speaks a lot about social media. What identity loyalty is, is its people are taking actions and people are being loyal towards brands based on that brand’s personality and identity. The easiest way for you to develop your brand’s personality and identity is to put your own personality and identity into your posts. Go ahead and brainstorm some ways that you can get really personal with your posts to make your brand shine in social media in 2019.
Next, moving on. This is going to go

[00:06:00] hand in hand. As you can see, we start to get some patterns coming throughout these tips. More listening, less broadcasting. Guys, listen to your customers and find their real ask on social media, find their real pain points. Ask your customers who their role models are, so you can start to learn who their ideal image of their future self is and build a story around how they can achieve this goal with your product or service.

One of the greatest things for social media [00:06:30] is to be able to one-on-one connection with your followers. Social media is such a crowded landscape. There’s more content on social media than anyone can consume in a lifetime. How are you going to make sure that your content is something your followers want to keep looking at and keep engaging with. One of the best ways to do this is to listen and reply and engage with your followers, not just broadcast out your promotions all the time.

I love this example from Starbucks here. Think about the hours and tons of [00:07:00] money that big brands like Starbucks spend on doing things like having focus groups around what their next drink should be or something to the liking, when really all of this exists on social media a lot of the time. Encourage your customers to reach out with feedback and make sure you’re replying to them. Who would think you would get such a lovely message from a huge brand like Starbucks, if you give them an idea on social media? How great would that make you feel and how connected to that brand would that make you feel? Replying to your customers is a great way to get that engagement [00:07:30] and to really uplevel your social media marketing.

One of the ways you can start to really listen on social media without just paying attention to app mentions, because I know you guys are already doing that, is to set up things like Google Alerts as well. This is a great thing to do, because it will catch anything that’s going out about your brand and send your emails about it. I suggest setting Google Alerts up not only for your brand, but also keyword terms within industry and niche.

This [00:08:00] lets you keep on top of what’s going on and add your own voice to that conversation. Adding your own voice in will differentiate your brand so much and it also allows you to do things like share breaking news in your industry and really join the stories that are going around in a timely manner. This is especially important on networks like Twitter since timeliness is baked into their algorithm so strongly.

The other thing that goes along with listening, not only paying attention to your app mentions and not only paying attention to your [00:08:30] Google Alerts, is paying attention to what’s going on within the world. For example, a lot of brands do things like have contests or have specific hashtags for holidays. One of my favorite examples of this is an e-commerce brand called Red Lighter. They have a hashtag called #momsdayoff. This is where users can share stories about why their mom is amazing and why she deserves a day off today.

It’s a great way for then you to go in, search your specific and unique hashtag and look at all the posts that your [00:09:00] followers have generated off of this. It’s a way you can, again, get to personally connect with your followers, get to know what their true values are, because when it comes to family, a lot of people will share more personal stories in that way. You can go a level further even with this personal hashtag and turn it into a giveaway or contest.
In 2019, we predict we’re going to see giveaways and contests on social media, drive so much traffic and engagement. Think of the ways that you can really start to get your followers to use your hashtags, [00:09:30] tag your brands, become a part of your marketing team and how you can give back to them with either a shoutout on your own social media page or a shoutout on something like a free month for your service or product, stuff like that, to really generate and encourage your followers to become a part of your team. More listening, less broadcasting and get that great ratio of your value-added posts that are going to connect personally with people on social media.

Next, more video, less text. [00:10:00] Guys, I know that we can sound like a broken record when we talk about video on webinar after webinar but truly everything we read, every trend we’re seeing, every analytics that we’re looking at goes to this idea that video is where it’s at on social media. It helps people experience something in real time that you get to feel like you’re a part of something going on with the world. If you’re afraid to start out with live video, of course, you can do scheduled videos, but live video truly is getting the most engagement so get brave and hop [00:10:30] on screen to increase your authenticity and really connect with your followers.

I love this example here from ABC News. It is so simple. They’re just sharing a video of a blizzard going on in Times Square so everywhere around the world can tune in and feel like they’re a part of this. It was a great way that they added more followers so people could keep up in real time with what’s going on. Think about the ways you can incorporate this kind of activity into your own feed. Go out and look at people like- musicians do this really well. For example, [00:11:00] John Mayer uses live videos a lot to give sneak peeks of his new albums. Now this exclusive content that he does on social media on his Facebook page, that’s just a video produced to release something that’s people haven’t seen before and only his followers get that first look.

How encouraging is that, and how enticing is that to continue to follow him. You stay up to date and get something that someone who doesn’t follow him doesn’t get to see. Think of the ways you can produce that exclusive video content [00:11:30] for your followers to really get them to want to watch and tune in every time they see you’re going to broadcast a video. Now when you’re making live stream specifically, remember, I’m saying live streams are getting the most views but of course you can do native scheduled videos as well, but when you’re making live streams, we recommend actually making an event for them ahead of time so you’re letting your followers know when, what and why they should attend.

In this live stream events go ahead and prompt your followers to actually [00:12:00] comment on what they what they want to learn. This goes along when we were chatting about how we use our Instagram stories to collect questions for our founder chats. We use these events for our live streams to collect questions to know and how we’re going to inform the content in that live to speak to our customer pain points, to speak to our followers interests, so it entices them to keep coming back and tuning in for more.

When you’re making your videos and your events one last thing I want to touch on here is that you actually want to take the time [00:12:30] to brainstorm 10 different headlines or 10 different unique ways you can introduce this video in the same way we recommend we do this for your blog posts. Now, the reason we always recommend doing this is of course because if you sit there and do just one, you’re not going to get that creative way of enticing people with emotional words or enticing people with the best headline possible and a lot of people think this is a waste of time but really, guys, I encourage you to think of these 10 extra headlines you don’t use as ways you can repurpose those into [00:13:00] social media updates later on.
Investing the time and coming up with the strongest headline possible for your video is truly going to get you more views and more clickthroughs on it. If you’re having struggles coming up with headlines, some effective approaches you can take is start to think of ways you can promise a specific benefit to someone if they attend your video or use numbers to clearly outline what and how much they’re going to learn on that video. Ask questions even in the title so it gets people [00:13:30] really curious about why they should attend and what they’re going to learn and do something to create a little bit of urgency, especially with live, if they tune in if you’re live, you get this exclusive benefit of XYZ to really again, create that urgency and get people excited about attention.

Last but not least, we touched on this but I cannot stress it enough, take the time to go out and search for curiosity words, go out and search for emotional words to really drive more engagement. Of course, we all want to pretend like we’re the most logical [00:14:00] people when it comes to allocating how we spend our time, but when it goes back to it in the long run, our time is allocated towards emotions mostly in life. Get those headlines really emotionally triggered, and you’ll see the increase in your viewership.

Next, more new experience, less old status quo. I cannot stress enough what a changing landscape social media is. This will continue into 2019, and as marketers, if we’re not experimenting, we are not going to see the benefits [00:14:30] of the full social media experience. You want to invest in new technologies that are popping up. What’s coming up next in social media? What’s the hottest network that’s out there right now? You want to invest your time to get to learn it. One thing we’re doing here at MeetEdgar is adding in Instagram and Pinterest services in the next couple of months in order to really make sure that these new platforms that are seeing so much more engagement can be beneficial to you.
Again, it’s keeping up with the trends, it’s seeing which platforms are winning and going out and experimenting on [00:15:00] those. If the platform falls through, or if your social media posts that you’re working on don’t work, it’s really not a waste of time. Think about all of the valuable information that you’re going to learn by experimenting on these other platforms to bring it back to your tried and true networks that you know drive the most traffic. I’m not saying I want you guys to spread yourself too thin in 2019. Again, you want to really focus on getting those networks that help you connect with your audience and drive the most traffic but we need you [00:15:30] to make sure you’re continuing to experiment with your posts on those networks as well.

You can see in this example here, this is the same post that Falcon.io posted with two different headlines. Why are they doing this you may ask? Because A/B testing your post is so important to stay experimental. You don’t want to do too much at once when you do this, when you’re trying to ascertain what language your followers are really responding to, as well as what images they are responding to, so what I’m going to ask you to do as you’re A/B [00:16:00] testing this is to really make sure that the colors or the photo stays the same while you’re changing the text or that the text stays the same as you’re changing the graphic.
Don’t go and change everything at once because that way you can’t tell which one is driving more and which one enticed your customers and followers more. Change one thing at a time. Experiment slowly but never stop experimenting on social media. The great thing about utilizing a tool like MeetEdgar to do your A/B testing and experimenting is you can actually go [00:16:30] into your history tab in Edgar and if you click to view the performance history of a post we will show you the clickthrough rate of it.

You can even do something like change the variation of the text that you’re adding in there, and if it shares two separate times with a different text variation, you can see the click through differences in the first variation versus the second right in your MeetEdgar app and triangulating this and utilizing his with your Facebook Insights and with your Twitter analytics it is a foolproof way that you’re able to know if you’re experiments are [00:17:00] working so you can keep on iterating and keep your feeds fresh.

Next, kind of going right along with keeping those feeds fresh and iterating is we want you to focus on more content creation and less analytics and 2019. Now, I know this is a little bit contradictory to what we were just talking about but let me explain here real quick. Long term success and commitment to your marketing goals is going to depend upon you setting aside time and allocating your time properly [00:17:30].

Again, as a small business, I want you to really make sure that you are prioritizing what matters to keep your business thriving in 2019. It can get really addictive to log into your analytics, to your Google Analytics, to your Facebook Insights constantly every day and check these statistics but I want you to take a step back in 2019 and set aside maybe one week to go in and do this.

Compare posts from week to week. Compare traffic from week to week, not day to day so you can start seeing trends and [00:18:00] patterns and really connect the dots on where things are going in your marketing strategy. If you’re logging in every day, and just looking at your analytics and not doing anything with it, it’s a waste of time that you could be spending on creating more valuable content for your followers.

Every time you do log into your analytics, I want you to go in with a goal to come out with at least one action item that you are going to do with the information that you’re gaining. Whether that’s, hey, this post needs a little boost behind it because it gets great engagement [00:18:30] but not a lot of people have seen it. Go out, find the money to boost that post and do it right then and there. Take action on what you’re learning.

Another thing guys, a watched pot never boils is an overused expression but so true here. If you are waiting to see changes happen in a day that’s not going to happen with social media marketing. Brands have been working for months and years in order to gain followers and in order to speak to their story and you have to be patient in order to gain your followers trust on social [00:19:00] media but if you are, you’ll see such great benefits in the free marketing that social media can provide to you.

It can be so much more helpful for you again, to prioritize what is most important for your business, time block yourself some time throughout the day so that you’re able to create your content in a really dedicated brainstorming creative space. You’re able to go into your analytics at a time that your brain is focused on those numbers and ready to make an action plan, [00:19:30] and go into it with a lens no matter what you’re doing that your business there is to help your followers.

I suggest going along with analytics is to also have a dedicated dashboard. What a dashboard will help you do is focus on the numbers that matter. Again, it’s so easy to get bogged down in numbers when it comes to analytics on social media but I want you to really go in with few core numbers that you’re looking to change the needle, whether it’s brand awareness, traffic to your site, sales and conversions, have those numbers ready and go into your analytics with a goal [00:20:00] and to come out with an action plan in mind.

Next, we have more education and emotion and less selling, and this goes along with making sure you have the right ratio post going out to make sure your followers want to keep following with you. This is really helpful if you do have a marketing team or other people to really walk through what the buyer’s journey is for your ideal customer type, so you can know when and how to teach them the skills they need to use your product to the fullest or when and how they [00:20:30] might need that little emotional boost, whether it’s getting them to their first win with your product, with a great how-to video or whether it’s just emotionally giving them a little high five on social media to get them through a busy Monday morning.
You can see here, this post on the left is an amazing nostalgic photo. Nostalgia is one of the strongest emotions I want you to try to take into your 2019 strategy, because if you’re sitting there scrolling through your social media feed and something reminds you of a nostalgic [00:21:00] great memory that you used to have or a conversation that you had way back in the day, this is going to make you stop and think and notice the brand. I know it sounds simple, but try it out. You’ll see great engagement on anything you can do to join that Throwback Thursday or any nostalgia. It can be related to your company, telling a story when your company first started out or it can be unrelated to your company just to get a great conversation going.

This post over on the right here is from BuzzFeed Tasty. [00:21:30] It is such a simple how-to post that doesn’t even make use of videos. It’s just saying you can make banana splits on a stick for a healthier summer treat. How simple. Think of the way you can simplify your product down to just putting a banana on a stick is how I like to describe it here with this post. It’s so simple, but with this photo, you can get a great marriage where your followers can actually learn something and take it into their own life. More education and more emotion [00:22:00] to get your social media branding out there and the selling will come if you’re adding this value and teaching people how to use your product.

Now this one more values, less guessing goes along with this fact that you have to know your company and your brand values before you can convey that to your social media followers. Have a goal to be committed and consistent with your product in every social media you post out there and have that social media post match up with your [00:22:30] values 100%. People can smell inauthentic posts on social media so strongly, and if you’re not consistent with everything you’re putting out there, matching your values and matching your brand voice, your followers are not going to get that consistent story. Do things like think about what does my brand stand for? Or what opinions do I have? Don’t be afraid to share those on social media.

These values can change over time too, for example, here at MeetEdgar we’re going through a lot of [00:23:00] different value conversations internally. That’s because we want to make sure our internal values are really serving our customers. For example, one of our values here at MeetEdgar is always choose kindness, and that is important not only for our business, making sure we are always coming at request from our customers in a kind way, speaking to each other in a kind way, but it also doesn’t mean that kindness is something that we’re just going to always be nice sunshine and rainbows. We are a business that wants to get stuff done [00:23:30] and have productive conversations.

We’re going throughout these this values remaking and thinking how kindness can actually help to spark conversations that might be a little bit harder when giving feedback to each other. This can be something that is a little tricky to bring into your social media marketing but think of the ways that this can actually help your followers as well. If we are a team who is pushing to make the best product possible for our followers, we want to share that with you. It might not seem something that [00:24:00] is simply just a social media post, but it really can be. Think of the ways you can share your internal values here.

Thinking of other ways that you can share values on social media is think about things like how Lululemon joins in the International Women’s Day conversation. They are a brand who knows their values is centered around making women stronger and making women’s worth equal and making women feel really empowered. They sought out for International Women’s Day, a hashtag [00:24:30] that was #worth100 and it was supporting the idea that every woman deserves to feel 100% of their worth.

This is a part of their internal values and they’re sharing it externally on their social media. You can do this in a simple one-off post or you can do what you see Lululemon here doing is actually utilizing their cover photo on Twitter to get that word out there and encourage more and more people to use this hashtag, join this conversation and get more brand reach. Commit to consistency in every [00:25:00] post you’re putting out there, filter it through your internal values to make sure it matches, and remember the details of really making sure that people are joining the conversation and you’re attracting the right people who are going to be really great at using your product or service.

Moving on here, more customers hero or less product hero. This is a little bit tricky to understand, and I’m sure if you keep up with social media marketing, you hear a lot of the time that you want to speak to a storytelling vibe. You want to have a hero’s journey that’s tried and true [00:25:30] process, where people are going throughout something, they come to a struggle, they overcome it and they are better off for it at the end. This is a structure that has been around for ages and works on social media marketing even.

This here is an example post, that’s one of our own Instagram stories, excuse me, Instagram posts and it says no more winging it. The best way to get ahead of social media is to plan for it. Planning, strategizing and measuring saves you hours of wasted time and pays off in the end. [00:26:00]

In our latest blog, we have four free templates that will help you strategize, plan and create your social media content. You can see here how we’re not making MeetEdgar. We’re not making our software tool. The winner of the story here, we are adding value and making your hard work as the content creator, what is actually going to make you successful in your social media strategy, and that’s truly what we believe, but taking a step back we could have written this in this way of, “Hey, add content to your MeetEdgar software. Woohoo. [00:26:30] We’re the hero of your social media now.” That’s not true at all, speaking directly to the fact that your hard work with the assistance of our product is really what makes you the winner.
You can see how social storytelling can really be a way that you can describe your product and you can take that information and make it feel a lot more exciting and important and then impassioned and relevant to your followers. Campaigns really want to make sure you’re perfectly fitting in to what users [00:27:00] are already using your platform for, and spark conversations, and encourage sharing of those hero’s journey stories back on your social media. Get that user-generated content and those success stories and share them out again, to give people that reassurance and that social proof that your product can get them to where they want to be in their business, or get them to a better lifestyle that they are imagining it might.

Now you know you’re not just helping your followers navigate this crowded space of social media, but you’re actually guiding people [00:27:30] to buy your product at the right time, at the right site and decide whether it is right for them at that time. Remember, everyone’s in a different, excuse me, everyone’s in a different place in the buyers’ journey. The more you can build story around each and every one of your segments of followers, the more likely it is, it’s going to hit someone at the right time. This really helps build brand trust again, which takes a while on social media so be patient with it, and let’s your [00:28:00] followers see how the product can help them achieve their ideal life.

This next one here, more answers, less questions. There are many questions being thrown around in social media, in your company’s inbox, in your messenger apps, and in public forums these days about your company or service. Everyone goes to the internet to get that idea of if that product is right for them. Have some fun with how you use this in 2019. Use [00:28:30] that social listening tip we talked about before to actually see what questions are being asked. Ask your support people what are some of the most frequently asked questions and find a way to answer them in a really unique way on social media.

I love this example from Harvard Book Store over here, where they have a template written out in a casual way by one of their employees to really make sure they are answering the questions that are burning on their followers’ mind. Again, you can do things like use your Instagram stories [00:29:00] to ask your followers to submit questions or use what’s already out there to know what’s being asked about your brand so you can answer these frequently questions. As a bonus here, as a bonus tip, I want you to make sure you’re thinking of ways you can make this a consistent fun thing to do every week on your social media to get more and more of those questions answered to your followers, and to show them you are there to help serve them and to help them have your best experience with their product or service.

This really goes along with one of the trends that we’re [00:29:30] seeing in social media a lot too, which is that messenger apps are on the rise. Actually, in 2015, the number of people using private messenger apps exceeded the number of people on social media’s public forums. You can see people want to ask more and more questions directly to brands. Do this and really start to connect with your followers on these messenger apps, too, so that it’ll make it more likely in the public forums when you’re posting these that they’ll want to join in the conversation there. Don’t neglect that at all. [00:30:00]

Guys, we have made it to number 10. Thanks for sticking with us here. Our last tip is going to be more traffic, less work. Now, this is one of the tried and true things that we like to talk about here at MeetEdgar is that you don’t always have to do more work to get more traffic to your site and to get more traffic from social media.

It’s about working smarter and it’s about systemizing your social media strategy, so that you know when you should be sending your posts out. You’re setting a schedule that it’s going to get a variety of different [00:30:30] types of posts out to your followers to keep your feed nice and robust and to really focus on the traffic and the numbers that matter.

Having a systemized plan is really going to make sure that your social media strategy is set in stone in 2019. If you need any help with this at all, we have a lot of templates in our Help Center. If you email support@meetedgar.com, I’m more than happy to send you some of the best ones depending on your goal. Please don’t be afraid to reach out. We love giving these extra resources.

Speaking of, [00:31:00] I want to end this with a challenge to you guys. We’ve gone through 10 tips today and I want to break these down really quickly into actionable items that you guys can try in 2019. If you put it all together, you will truly see the benefits of social media marketing and what a few tweaks here and there can do for your business. It can help give you leaps and bounds of effective ideas to connect with your community.

Today, here we go, paying attention one more time to these 10 actionable tips and tricks. Wait for the very last [00:31:30] slide here guys to get your bonus challenge. Number one, I want you to go in and add two authentic posts to your social media library that has to do with you. Don’t be shy. Share your personality. Pop into your MeetEdgar library and add two posts that have your personality in it to authentically connect with your community.

Number two, set a goal to reply back to every app mention you get on social media this week. Set up a Google Alert to listen to your [00:32:00] brand name. The Google Alert takes two seconds to set up. If you run into trouble, go ahead and email us. Block out some time to go to your Facebook, to go to your Twitter, to go to your Instagram and reply back to every single app mention you get this week. Set yourself that goal.

Number three, guys, make one video this week. Get brave with it, hop on camera, go ahead and talk. It can be as simple as a 20-second video for your Instagram story that is gone within 24 hours, so don’t be shy with it.

Make one video this week and [00:32:30] we’ll crawl, walk, run up to the fact that you can then do some Facebook lives and you can then start to create those events to get your video even more effective. Start small, make one video this week.

Number four, split test your headlines on your least traffic blog post. Go in and look at what one of your blog posts is getting the least traffic. Go ahead and try switching up the headline in it. Guys, remember, don’t get stagnant, keep experimenting on social media.

Number [00:33:00] five, block time for your analytics versus content creation and stick to it. Pull out your Google Calendar, pull out whatever you used to keep track of your time and block out once a week to check your analytics. No more, don’t tempt to get more, and block out at least double of that for content creation. Content creation and adding value to your followers is going to gain way more respect from them, from you just knowing the numbers. Of course, use those two together but I want you to try this week just [00:33:30] checking your analytics once and doing double content creation for that.

Number six, audit your current posts. Add one emotional word to at least 10 posts this week. Now, social media content strategy is tricky because we always talk about having your evergreen content repeat, but I want you to think about this evergreen content can always be audited to really optimize it. This is what this goal is for here. Jump into your Edgar library and go through 10 posts today. Think of one emotional word you can [00:34:00] pop in there to create a little more connection with your community and do it. Keeping it nice and fresh.
Number seven, come up with your core values and share them with your followers. Think about ways that you can get your core values out to your followers in every single post you’re sending. If you don’t have it written down please take some time to pull up a Google Doc. Write out the storyline of who your company and brand is, so that it comes across that much better to your followers. Remember this can be an involving document as [00:34:30] your brand changes, as you get to know your followers better. Your core values can change and you can stick to them in your marketing strategy as well.

Number eight, write a story on what your follower’s life will look like when they have your product in their life. Make that story into a series of five social media posts. Why this is important again is to have that persona in mind and to write that story up so you know exactly what it is and take some time to add as much detail as possible names, ages, all [00:35:00] of that fun stuff. Write it out in a Google Doc and then think of a way you can splice it down into a series of five posts and add those to your Edgar library to get that hero’s journey going and to get more connection in a storytelling way on social media.

Number nine, don’t leave your followers hanging. See what they are asking and answer them on social media.

As a bonus make a weekly post that your followers look forward to, like that Harvard Book Store one about the best tips and tricks around [00:35:30] the holiday season of books to buy, stuff like that. Make it a weekly theme post that your followers know they’re going to get answers from you every week at that specific time.

Last but not least, get your systems in place with a tool like MeetEdgar so that you never let your business or your followers down. Having a systemized strategy isn’t only you respecting your followers and staying consistent and speaking to them on social media. Having a consistent strategy is also making sure you’re not letting your business [unintelligible 00:35:59].

You don’t [00:36:00] want to have marketing just left to the wayside in 2019 because you’re spending so much time actually creating such a great value adding product or service, that if it’s not getting out to the world, it’s not getting used to its full benefits, and that time you’re putting out there to actually create it isn’t getting seen by the majority of the people it should. Take some time to get these systems in place and stick to them.

All right, guys, you’ve done amazing sticking with us today. Thank you so much for joining. I am so grateful to get this time and opportunity to share what I [00:36:30] love doing which is social media marketing. I want you guys to join our tribe and I want this to be a call to action that you do this week as well.

Complete one of these items on the list we just went through and I want you to tweet @MeetEdgar when you do to let us know. I want you to start to create a community and let us know how it’s going. We’d love to have a conversation on Twitter to help you optimize whichever goal here you’re choosing.

Now, we can go throughout this. You can tweet at us. If you do all 10 of them, we would love it, but let us know what you’re working on on Twitter. Let us know when you create [00:37:00] that goal. Let’s be other’s accountability partners in 2019. Again, that handle us @MeetEdgar.com. Pick a goal. Tweet us when you do it and we would love to chat back.
These slides will be available on our SlideShare account on LinkedIn after the webinar today.

If you don’t know where that is, email support@meetedgar.com and I’m more than happy to send them to you so you can get that list and you can get these action items going. Again, thank you so much for joining. We will see you again in a couple weeks.

Tune in to our Facebook [00:37:30] lives. We’re starting to do a lot more smaller Facebook lives throughout the week too. It’s typically on a Wednesday and a Friday. Our founder’s starting to do them, so check out our Facebook live events if you’re looking for smaller ways that you can get this information if you don’t have time for a full webinar in the week and these are always available on our webinar and replay page as well. Thanks for joining. Have an awesome Tuesday and happy posting out there. [00:38:00]

 

The post 10 Tips Series: 10 Social Media Tips for 2019 Success appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Best Practices on Social Media

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Transcript for Best Practices on Social Media

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

 

[00:00:00] Megan: Hey, Edgar community. My name is Megan and I am your trusted onboarding coach here. I’m really excited to get this webinar going about how to use video effectively for your social media strategies. This is going to be a webinar I’m going to switch over to a presentation mode here in a minute, but I wanted to pop in here and say hey. My colleague Kristina is going to be running the chat, it’ll be over on the left-hand side of your screen. [00:00:30] Super-duper excited for her to be able to answer all your questions.

Now, we love love love engagement on these. Of course, you know social media is all about keeping the social in social. Pop on over there and let us know where you are tuning in from, who you are, all that fun kind of stuff. We would love for you to ask questions throughout. Share your own practices on what you’ve seen work well for your video, everything that you’re really excited about in your upcoming projects you’re working on so we can all create a [00:01:00] community and help each other out here.

We do have a couple minutes here until the webinar starts. Like I said, introduce yourself. Kristina’s in the chat over there. My name is Megan and I’m going to now share my screen with you here so that we can hop on into the good stuff and start chatting video and social media. Let me do that now. I’ll have a second here where it looks a little funky, so thanks for your patience there. [00:01:30] Then we’ll go into presentation mode here.

Cool. Like I said, please go ahead, pop in, ask your questions, we are going to get started today talking and focusing on a really fun topic and that is going to be video marketing on social media. As you guys know, authenticity with social media is one of the biggest things that we like to focus on at MeetEdgar when we talk about creating really effective social campaigns. [00:02:00] I feel like whenever you talk to people about video and talk to people about all of this great traffic you can gain from it, we hear a lot of excuses that can come out of it.

Today we are here to bust through those silly excuses and to really get you guys feeling comfortable about getting on camera and connecting with your audience in a super authentic way, and know that you’re not alone, everyone has those fears. Like I said, go ahead and share your struggles and help each other out with what you’re working [00:02:30] on. It really is great to create a community here and to be able to know that we are all in this together.

It is coming up here to the time where we are going to start our webinar. Like I said, ask your questions, pop on over there and we will go ahead and get on started. Our first topic here is going ahead and busting through those excuses. I get it. Cameras do really weird things to people; [00:03:00] when you get in front of them, you forget what is going on and you’re not alone in this thought. Remember, there is nothing more uncomfortable when you’re watching a video then seeing someone on screen feeling uncomfortable, feeling nervous.

All of that jazz that makes you kind of scrunch up and say, “Oh gosh, this person’s so nervous. I want to hear their message, but I just feel that emotion coming over.” No one and the biggest things you can do is just have that confidence on [00:03:30] the screen. Your viewers want your message so smile and relax. These sort of things that you can do to send signals to your body saying, “Hey, body we are here to have some fun.” Will come across in your actual speech patterns.

For example, right now I’m trying to keep a real big smile on my face as we’re doing this. It’s hopefully conveying that upbeat message that we want to connect with you and we want to have this relaxed conversation with you when we are doing these webinars. Just breathe, [00:04:00] and get your trustworthy vibes out there on camera. I know it sounds a little bit silly but you can even do some things like take a picture of your best friend or a family member on to your computer screen when you’re talking to it, so it comes across as just a conversation.

Again, social media people are here to have conversations and connect with each other. The more that you can just get comfortable on camera, the better and better you’re going to see your progression with your videos [00:04:30] that are just for you and watch yourself back. It’s going to be a little bit weird at first. Everyone hates how they sound, how they look on camera, but please know and please remember that the more you watch yourself, the more likely it’s going to be you’ll get comfortable with this mindset.

You can go as far as I mentioned as doing this with your family, standing in front of a mirror, sending it to people you trust at first to get their feedback because a lot of the time we’re in our heads and the things we say to ourselves are not really [00:05:00] what is being convinced here. Remember, it is just like a real-life conversation when you’re doing anything on video with social media and everyone started somewhere so find someone who you really like their vibe on their videos, on YouTube, on Twitter, on Facebook and study what they do. Learn from the experts out there, take some classes on it. Know that people aren’t just born for on screen, it’s something that takes a lot of work.

Jumping a little bit further, I want to go on this [00:05:30] idea of work and discipline. Well, I love this quote here. This is related to writing, but I think it really translates well into it when you’re just getting started with video. That is this quote saying, “I wanted to be a writer for a decade before I became one. All it took was a decision. At some point, you have to look at yourself and say, ‘I am a writer or a video creator.’ Then start doing it by just doing it every single day. When you create a video every single day, you’re going to strengthen that discipline. [00:06:00] You can use that better self-discipline to basically achieve anything in life.”‘

The bottom line when we’re thinking about this is to just start making videos. It will become easier and easier the more you do this and the only way to get comfortable is to see yourself on camera like we said before. The real reason you don’t like it is because you don’t have that discipline of doing it more and more. Find your natural voice, find your natural tone, have it in your style guide, take some time to develop [00:06:30] who you’re speaking to, your core audience slowly and every day just build up that comfort level.

If you don’t want to do it on camera to start, practice just the discipline like I said in front of the mirror or take some videos, start editing them and just get comfortable with the medium and concept in this discipline practice. As you are going throughout your day too, remember the conversations that you’ve had with people that have really inspired [00:07:00] you or really taught you something. When you’re creating your videos, have these same conversations with your audience.

I do a lot of things where I have a note on my phone where I essentially just in my daily life, if I have a great conversation or a spark comes to mind that I’m like, “Oh, I really want to talk about that.” I jot it down in that note. This is a really great way that you can keep it fresh and keep things and ideas flowing throughout the day, so you’re not sitting down and that kind of writer’s block mode going, “Oh my gosh, I have [00:07:30] nothing to post about. No video content is going to be great for this.”

Go [inaudible 00:07:36], think about these ways that you connect with people in your real life and use those same concepts to create a discipline and consistent habit of just getting comfortable creating video. Why one of the biggest reasons that I really want to hone in on video with your social media marketing is because it is the best way to build authenticity. [00:08:00] Authenticity, what it is kind of referred to– I heard this on a podcast and I really loved it and that is authenticity is saying something how other people are thinking but are afraid to say.

Video is a great way to get that message across to your followers and have them as that kind of, “Oh my gosh, me too, I’m thinking that too” moment, which is going to create a really really great bond with your audience. It really just takes practice of doing this in real life [00:08:30] and on video. It’s going to be a really awesome thing to up-level your entire marketing strategy with your author. To be authentic, you really need to share and tell who you are. This is going to be huge in social media because social media is going to be for humanizing your brand; so think about what channel you’re on, and think about what we’re doing right now.

We are on a channel called YouTube, the word ‘you’ in the name so it is kind of inspiring imploring you to put yourself in [00:09:00] your videos and to put your unique voice, style and personality in there so your brand becomes something that people associate with actual humans behind it. Remember, people know like and trust humans and they buy from brands that are really have that humanistic vibe that they know they can trust, that you’re there for them if something goes wrong or if they have a question. Another thing that this authenticity is really awesome for is really speaking directly to your audience.

You don’t want to create videos [00:09:30] that you think will be really great for everyone on the internet. It’s kind of this idea that you want to create video or any content directly to your audience. If you make a video focused for everyone, not everyone is going to love you but if you can make a video focused for your specific tribe, your specific community, those people are going to love it and that’s how you build a really strong following on social media.

Find your voice, talk straight to your

[00:10:00] audience and forget about the rest of the people who aren’t going to connect with your content and your message. It is all about using things like your Facebook demographics, like your Twitter insights to get to know what your audience is interested in. These things guys are such powerful tools where you can find out things like people’s favorite TV shows, other brands your followers follow, stuff like that that gives you this holistic idea of who you’re speaking to.

The more specific language you can speak directly to them with, the more likely it is [00:10:30] you’ll be able to connect in a way that they know, like and trust you.

When you are starting to develop video, and especially when you are doing it live, take that minute, and know that if you screw up, if something goes wrong, no biggie. Just admit it to your audience, admit if you’re nervous, and remember, perfect is so boring. People relate and find uniqueness and know, like and trust people who are real. Don’t just default to needing to be perfect all the time. Everyone knows [00:11:00] that those imperfections in life make people way more interesting.

Relate to humans on that real level and have that confidence that it is okay to start slowly and build up your skills. Video, really guys, is an awesome way to get another touchpoint with your audience. We talk about this a lot. This concept that it takes about seven touchpoints to create brand loyalty on social media, and video is going to be huge so that people remember, when it comes time to that they need your product, [00:11:30] in their buying journey, this video is one of those strongest touchpoints, where your face will actually come to mind or when they’re trying to recommend the product to a friend, your face will come to mind.

That human connection is going to make it so much more likely they are going to choose your brand, your product, your service over someone else’s. It’s going to really help make sure that you’re really making sure people are following you first on Facebook, or really excited about seeing when your content pops into their feed because you’re a brand people want to hang out [00:12:00] with. They know there’s a human behind it. A lot of the times of social media, people are there to connect with their friends and family. The more that your posts can ease into their feed with the same friends and family feel to it, the more likely it is they’re going to continue following you.

People aren’t on social media just to follow brands and get a lot of product announcements all the time. Think about how you can diversify your video content and be a brand, again, that people want to hang out with as a friend. [00:12:30] Why can people consume your content on social media when it comes to video when you’re sharing all these other text contents maybe like your blog posts and all that fun stuff? Well, you want or producing content for people to watch it in their preferred medium, so producing a video is a great way to do what we call, ‘avoiding content fatigue’.

You have so much great content out there, guys are creating all this evergreen content that can be shared out over and over on your feeds to [00:13:00] really connect with your followers and give them that value, but let’s be real. Sometimes that old content might get a little bit stale. You can do things like take your old blog posts and think about how you can now maybe turn that into a video, commenting about how you created it in the past or why you still love it now or what you feel about it. How you still use the concepts that are in that blog post.

This will remind people that going back into the archives of your old, evergreen content is a stellar thing for them [00:13:30] to do because you have all of that information, right there ready to be consumed at their fingertips. I don’t know about you guys but I retain information when I hear it, and I watch it far better than when I read it. People are different when they’re like, “No. If I’m learning, I need to read and write. Listening doesn’t do it.” Think about, you want to produce content that your followers can consume in their preferred method.

If someone doesn’t like reading necessarily, you can still give them [00:14:00] all of your awesome, value added content in a form that they’re going to connect with better. Give all your followers a way to consume your content, the means in which they prefer, online, on video, or in your blog post. Last but not least here, remember, where we are human beings and our brains are wired to crave eye-contact, especially when we are making this choice around if we trust someone or not.

This can extend to brands too. It’s evolutionarily built into us [00:14:30] that when you are looking at someone’s eyes, it creates a really good bond. Remember to look at that camera, look at your followers, have them have that eye-contact with you. You can communicate so much through your eyes. Even think about when you’re looking at a picture of someone smiling, picture of someone frowning, you can probably see it even in their eyes, even if you don’t see that bottom half of your face, so video here can help people really trust you when you get that eye contact going.

Think about ways again that you can up-cycle your content [00:15:00] and really get a lot more out of maybe that great blog post you wrote by turning it into a video or little snippets from your day by turning those into your video content so people can get to know, like and trust you in the medium they prefer. Stories, stories, stories. Speaking about how our brains are wired, another thing to keep in mind is our brains crave stories, taking it back again to the evolutionary perspective. Think about how information has been passed down throughout the ages [00:15:30].

We have things like fables. We have things like novels and stories, because our brains are wired to retain that information so much better. When you’re making your video content, think about things like telling a personal story in there. It will work wonders to make and remember that information. One of our MeetEdgar colleagues, Tanya, actually went to this conference recently and she brought back this little gem of information here that I thought [00:16:00] was so relatable to me. This is the idea that when we are producing video or if we’re in a nervous state like this, a lot of the time our default will be to fall back on this idea of just go-go-go-go. Information mode. Blah, blah, blah.

Stories on sharing personal stuff, that doesn’t matter. I’m going to really just stick to this information. If you’ve been following along on our webinars a lot, you’ve probably seen a transformation in the way that I’m trying to put a lot more of my own stories in here because I default into this idea of [00:16:30], “Oh gosh, information only.” That information isn’t going to be retained unless you have some stories behind it.

It’s not a waste of time to share a little bit about yourself even if it’s not related to your marketing strategy because that information you’ll give people after that story, well, does it have a real human to connect with, and they have that sort of grasping mode, where they are able to be like, “Yes, that person is the one who taught me this.” Think about the [00:17:00] ways you can actually tell your story within every video you’re making. For example, the founder of MeetEdgar, Laura Roeder, is really great at this about sharing our own creation around why the tool was built.

This works really well because it fits right in line with who our audience is. Edgar is a small business, and Laura started out as a content creator. She had an educational business and she shares it out in this idea that, “I was in the same boat that all of you are in. I was producing so much [00:17:30] content and I was realizing I was spending so much time getting it out on social media, logging into my Twitter, my Facebook, my LinkedIn to distribute it, when that content could have been spent time actually working on my business and creating more value for my followers rather than just posting for them.”

She created Edgar out of her own need for it. Then as the tool started to evolve, she was hearing from people, “Hey, we could use a tool like this too. This is a great idea.” That’s how [00:18:00] Edgar became from an educational business into a Saas company and a tool that you can use. Having that story relates to our followers because so many of you out there are small businesses who are like, “Yes, I create so much content but I find that I have to spend so much time distributing get.”

You can kind of latch on to her own story and know that this product was built with your specific needs in mind. That’s just a really great example about creating a positive sentiment around your product and around your service [00:18:30] by sharing your voice and sharing your story. Think about things like how you could share how your Facebook account went from zero to a hundred followers or something. Maybe it doesn’t sound super interesting to you, but your story matters and it should be heard by your followers. Think about how you can create that heroes journey, add your personal story in there to really connect and relate with your community.

All right. The last half of this webinar here, I want to shift [00:19:00] modes a little bit and dive right into some content creation ideas when it goes into creating videos. No excuses. At the end of the seminar, I want you all to get ready to start making some videos. Remember, practice, practice. The more you get comfortable with this, the easier these ideas are going to become, and now you’ll have no excuses in this idea that you don’t have anything to post because we’re going to go through a bunch right now.

Think about how your brand can start incorporating some of these concepts into your overall strategy. First and foremost, [00:19:30] educating your audience. People love to be entertained as well as educated on social media. Provide them with that value of what your product or service does or how-to videos are really great for this too. You can do screen-shares. You probably have a lot of this how-to videos in your help center already. Think about how you can re-purpose them and share them out on Facebook and Twitter, just to make sure your followers are getting most out of your product.

If there’s some

[00:20:00] little known way that your product can be utilized a little bit better, your followers deserve to know that. You’re able to control the narrative on who and what your product is good for, when you create these educational and how-to videos. Think about some things that you can really get in there and start sharing that has to do with educating your audience on product and service use.

Next, this is going to lead into talking about a product launch. If you guys are adding features or creating a new [00:20:30] product or if you’re a restaurant with a new menu item, let your followers know in a video. Hop on camera, tell them all the hardwork that went behind into building that feature and ask for their feedback. Video interaction is great and there’s so much money spent on product development these days. When you could hop on a quick Facebook live and ask people how they’re using your product and share with them what you guys are getting ready to launch, and build up that anticipation so your followers can get excited right [00:21:00] along with you.

Next, how you move through your day. These day-in-a-life videos are awesome. I’m sure if you all have seen them on YouTube, on Facebook, it’s a great way to get to know someone and we are created getting to know people. We are humans. That human-to-human connection is still huge. Think about a lifestyle video and some hacks you can share with your followers about, “Hey, this is my morning routine,” or, “Hey, this is how I save time and make a bunch more money for my business using [00:21:30] this tool or going throughout my meetings like this.” Take someone through your day. Film stuff. Remember, it doesn’t have to be anything that is hugely groundbreaking.

You can just document staff that’s unique to how you deal with specific task. That will really help your followers not only get to know you, but get some value out of your day-in-a-life videos. Inspirational content. Diversifying your content with inspirational quote is a really great thing to do on social media. We chat about it a [00:22:00] lot. Everyone is really wired to love being happy and inspirational and getting that emotional contact. It really is the fastest way to grow your business online when you’re providing these array of content that’s not just blog post after blog post, but you get a little bit more of those social happy, inspirational post out there.

You can still do this using video and you can read out some of your favorite quotes or even use a tool. Like, there’s a great one out there called Ripple. It’s really awesome because you can actually create overlays [00:22:30] on your videos. You can have some background B-Roll video of maybe you going and walking down the street and then have this inspirational quote over it. That gets a vibe out, “This is who I am, this is how I think,” and inspire your community to get going on the rest of their day.

Next is going to be industry trends. Trends are huge in social media. If there’s something going on in your business and industry, you want to show that you are [unintelligible 00:22:58] and you [00:23:00] keep up. You are a boss who knows your niche, who is so excited about getting out there and adding your voice to the conversation. Research what news is going on, talk about everything that you see going on on other, your competitors’ pages, stuff like that, and what questions you have about the industry, so you can have a conversation with your followers about it.

Really think how you can capitalize on what people might be searching for now. Remember, YouTube is actually a [00:23:30] search channel at the end of the day too. If you can add a discussion item to your YouTube channel that someone might be googling or someone might be researching on YouTube for, it’s going to help your content show up in those results, gain more followers. Diversifying your content like this is really cool because we’ve seen really great success with it.

This idea that, we, of course, are a social media company, but we talk a lot about a remote work culture as well, because we’re a remote team. This can bring in some followers [00:24:00] who might be more interested in learning about running a remote company when they’re not maybe as interested in our social media strategies, but they know the content we put out there is still going to be really helpful for them. They might follow along for that different content that we produce. It doesn’t have to be always directly related to your product as well.

Focus on industry trends, focus on diversifying it, focus on what people are talking about now, because people are most likely searching that online and you can add your own unique voice, your own [00:24:30] spin and really get your thought leadership out there. Next is book reviews. Guys, people are always asking for recommendations on what to read. You can add in some of your favorite books in a quick video. Share the tactics you’ve learned from them, how you’ve actually used them in your life and give your own spin on the book and what you think about it.

Again, adding in your opinion will help people get to know you as a person. This is a cool concept if you think about it, because you could do it on a [00:25:00] monthly basis even and have an online book club. People to engage with it, tell them what you’re going to be reading that month and that at the end of the month, you’re going to do a quick video shot and you would love for people to read along with you and share their own thoughts. Again, getting that meaningful engagement back and forth is really awesome with your audience.

Successes, failures and tactics to get through them. This, guys, is going be great for that behind-the-scenes content. Pull the curtain back, don’t make your followers [00:25:30] make the same mistakes you did, share what you learned from your failures. Be a real human, we are all not perfect. Share your successes as well, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you already have something that works so well that you know will help them. Again, behind-the-scenes content is huge on social media because people and your followers are thinking, “Hey, I’m getting something that the entire rest of the world isn’t by following this page.” It will really help them continue to follow along with you.

Blog [00:26:00] post intros. Our founder Laura does this very cool thing called Live with Laura, where she will go on Instagram, she will go on Facebook Live and she’ll chat about our most recent blog post that’s been released. This, again, not only helps people consume the medium in the way they want, but it gets that facetime and it gets that really great traffic bump when you can put the link in the comments of the actual blog post and drive more traffic to your site, but utilizing videos so your content isn’t always just shared with link preview after link preview. Think about all the [00:26:30] content you already have and how you can share that through a video.

User generated testimonials. When we are choosing a brand or a service or product, we like social proof as humans. We like to see that our friends have used it, we like to see that a lot of people who are successful have used it. We like to hear not only from the company itself, but from people who aren’t necessarily going to benefit from us buying that. That’s going to be other users of the product. Think about some of your power users or people who [00:27:00] are really great brand advocates and ask them to maybe make a video with you or hop on a Facebook Live with you, to talk about why and how your product has helped them in life.

If you get these awesome user generated testimonials, you can get that really great positivity going with someone outside of your company, which is just going to make people feel that much more comfortable of handing over those credit card details of purchasing your product, knowing that it’s worked for people in the past. Company Culture [00:27:30] videos. This is awesome, kind of related to what we were talking about with our remote work style.

It’s a great way to share your company values because especially as we go into this saturated markets, a lot of the time how people differentiate which brand they’re going to buy from and be really loyal to you, is related to if it’s a good company. Share the values that your team uses to create this really great internal company structure. People want to buy from really awesome great brands who have good values [00:28:00] behind them.

Collaborations. This is really cool guys, because you cannot only get eyes from your followers, but if you do collabs in your industry with someone who has a similar message to share, they’re going to probably share that video with their followers too. This is doubling the reach and the traffic that your content is going to get. If you do a nice interview that you’re sharing on social media, ask that person you’re collaborating with to share it on their own social media as well, so your [00:28:30] brand can then get their audiences’ eyes on it and people can get to know you from a different perspective.

Reach out, do some research on people you would love to talk to, so you can get, again, even more of that traffic going. Episodic content. When you guys are thinking about creating videos, an awesome thing to deal is to create ones that go back-to-back, leading one day into the next. This is going to be really great because it gives people a reason to come back and watch your next video. After you’re [00:29:00] ending a certain video, if you can then say, “Hey, tune in tomorrow, we’re going to be chatting about XYZ.” It’s a natural progression that people are like, “Yes, I do want to learn that.”

It breaks it down if someone doesn’t have an entire hour to sit there and watch your webinar or something, that they can actually just get it on short 15-minute bursts throughout the week and get that really great episodic, tune in to your TV show kind of vibe to it. All right, last slide here on content [00:29:30] creation ideas. We already know that you guys probably get a lot of questions from your followers, from people who use your product or service. You already know their pain points and product questions because they’re coming into your support inbox, people are calling and asking questions.

Get your team involved and have your support team answer some of those most commonly asked questions on a quick video. Give people a reason to know that, “Hey, this is how much we care about people

[00:30:00] who are writing into us, and we want to make sure that your pain points are always solved. It’s going to be a really valuable piece of content as well, because it gets the rest of your team really excited about getting on key behind the awesome product or service that you are making.

Next is going to be really relating and speaking to your audience on what their pain points are. Again, this is going to go back to knowing who your followers are. Jump into those analytics, find out about what your support team deals with every day [00:30:30] and bring these core concepts into your speaking. We’re SaaS business here at Edgar, so we get a lot of questions about, “Is this tool right for me?” Hop on a video and help people what your tool is really great for.

Don’t be afraid of saying, “My tool is really great for this segment of people, maybe not so great for this other segment of people.” Because you want people to come to your product trusting and knowing it is right for them and jumping in there, getting their first win and getting really excited [00:31:00] to use your product or service. Another idea is to cut webinars into smaller bite sized pieces. This goes along with that episodic content idea I was chatting about in that, hey, if you have some webinars that you can splice into maybe five-minute videos, it might make it more likely that people are going to watch those as well as just repurposing your content to drive more and more traffic to it.

Again, sharing something once is totally fine but you’re probably not going to get a ton of eyes on it, so resurfacing it, resharing it, [00:31:30] thinking about ways you can repurpose it, is going to be the way you can get the most out of all the hard work and all the hard time you spent creating it. Brainstorm with your team, get people involved and get excited about creating some of these content ideas. Last one here is actually something I like to talk about because we are a social media automation tool at Edgar.

We are all about planning, automating your social media strategy so you can show up your followers consistently and get the best [00:32:00] message out there, but there’s another thing that you can do and that’s kind of this, you’d only believe it if you saw it real time posting. Video is really great for this because automation and live posting together create the kind of marriage that is social media strategy.

Even if you’re automating your content, don’t forget about jumping on there and doing some real time posts as well. Even if it has nothing to do with your brand, like, “Hey, I see a cow crossing the street,” or “Did you guys hear [00:32:30] there was just a sea lion that was walking through downtown San Diego recently?” If you were there and you could snap a video of that, share that with your followers. They are going to appreciate you keeping them up-to-date and they’re going to appreciate knowing that in real time, you’re thinking about them and they need to see this.

Even if it doesn’t have to do with your brand, it’s a great way to diversify content. This content is really huge for people getting to like it and share it which is just a signal to the algorithm that people like your page’s content, [00:33:00] making it more likely your next post will be served up to them in their feed. Bonus points here, going a little bit further, think about again this idea of doing unscalable thing.

With an automation tool you might be saying, “Megan, you are talking about making sure social media [unintelligible 00:33:18] scale your business better.” Sometimes we have to step aside and think about how can your brand stand out from others, and that’s typically doing unscalable things to stand out from your competitors. Some kind of [00:33:30] ideas around this is maybe post a video response to one of your followers who asked you a question, it’s so much better to see that personal touch and say, “Oh, wow, that’s really cool.

They took the time to answer me and the time to talk directly to me.” Where if you guys are participating like in a Twitter chat, ask your question or give your response in a video not everyone’s going to do that. It’s a medium that is typically strictly related to just typing, just text there [00:34:00] but if your video pops up, it stops people in that moment being like, “Oh, what’s this? something new. I’d like to click on this and watch it.”

Think about what no one else is doing and every so often do you something unscalable that’ll really set you apart and keep that human connection with your followers. Jumping into a little bit of mix here, one of the biggest things that I’d love for you guys to try to do is hop on some Facebook Lives. It might sound a little bit scary to do live video but the thing is, [00:34:30] Facebook Live is a great way to get the most reach on your posts. It is consistently what the algorithm is serving up to the majority of your followers.

Something I heard recently from Social Media Examiner that I also loved is this idea that Facebook is a highway platform and YouTube is maybe more of a destination platform. When you’re creating Facebook Lives, what this means is people are typically scrolling through their feed. They are not stopping a lot, they are just kind of scroll, scroll [00:35:00] scrolling through, just on their way to a destination. Facebook Live should be utilized as short two-minute videos that people can stop, watch for a minute and keep going on their highway journey.

If you are going to create a longer video, maybe like a webinar like this one, it’s cool to jump on a Facebook Live, do a short two-minute promo on how you’re going to use this. Creating these shorter Facebook Lives can then lead people to more of a destination platform like YouTube, or they have that time to sit down where they’re searching for stuff [00:35:30] and actually going to engage with it on a longer form content. Think about the ways that your actual strategy can incorporate some of these shorter videos into Facebook Live and it’s great to get that content out there as well because think about the amount of time that goes into creating a blog post or a long webinar like this.

Facebook Lives are short, sweet, you don’t have to prepare any edits for them afterwards because it was done live. It’s just a great way for you just to get that content out there [00:36:00] and get people noticing you on Facebook. It really has shown that it’s 53% more likely for your video to show up in someone’s feed if it’s live versus not live. Doing a combination of pre-plan videos as well as live is really going to help boost your reach. You can even start simply. I know a lot of the time we get scared about live videos, but if it’s a simple webcam, some natural lighting works really well and even just some iPod headphones work [00:36:30] fine.

You don’t have to get all caught up in these excuses of, “Oh, I don’t have the right equipment. I can’t do this.” Think and start simple and you’ll see really great success from it. Facebook Live is also really great for getting to know your followers in real time. You can ask questions, you can prompt people to start chatting with you and it’s amazing to see that value when a community comes together and starts talking together live. Spend some time asking questions, getting to know your followers and it really is that engagement [00:37:00] on Facebook Live that makes it such a special medium and such a fun medium to play around on.

You can really drive a lot of people from your video to your website as well by including links in the comments, in the description of what your life is going to be about but I would consider maybe realizing your Facebook Live, of course, will get views after it’s been live but really implore people to come live so they can join that conversation. A great way to do this is think about a free gift you can give if people show up live, [00:37:30] and this is for live participants only. You can advertise it as whether it’s a free month of software.

If you guys have an eBook, it’s great to share that eBook link or some tool goody bag that you’ve created for them. You can do this in a landing page where you can say, “Hey, thanks for showing up live. Click this link here and be directed to download my guide on XYZ.” That can then lead to a landing page where you can collect people’s e-mail addresses, so it’s kind of that one-two punch of getting to really build up [00:38:00] your newsletter list as well as getting that great reach on Facebook itself. Think about that value added gift you can give someone online to really implore your community to show up and participate in the live version of the video.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Twitter is really cool because Twitter itself on his blog says video posts actually receive 2.5 times more replies than text posts, hence more retweets than just text and 1.9 [00:38:30] times more favorites. This engagement is huge and this is something that you can simply do also to improve the responses and then to improve the amount of content you can share within a tweet. On Twitter, it’s going to be a 30-second time limit but think how much more you can say in 30 seconds to really help increase that amount of value you can share when you only have 280 characters to share it with.

Video is huge on Twitter. It really forces you to stay nice and concise. We’re all busy these days, [00:39:00] the longer the video is, oftentimes the less people are going to watch it all the way through. Twitter is a great place to practice being concise, getting that punchy content right out there, hooking people from the beginning, not wasting any time, introducing these different concepts, but getting right to your point on the video. Tweets, again, it is a text platform. The consistencies with video are on Twitter a lot. It’s a great way to get out by sharing video either in your responses [00:39:30] to your followers, or just video content, kind of introducing the concepts you’re talking about.

Instagram. This is great to get started on guys because Instagram is actually a place where you can use your stories to share videos. Now, stories on Instagram are awesome because they only live for 24 hours. If you’re someone who’s nervous about starting with a video, think how awesome it is that you have a platform where you can say, “I don’t want this to live on my perfectly beautiful curated feed, but

[00:40:00] I want to practice my video techniques.” Jump on a Instagram Live and do a quick 15-second video.

You don’t have to memorize a lot for 15 seconds, so you don’t have to worry about messing up your script too much there and you’ll know that will be gone in 24 hours. You don’t have to worry if you are someone who’s getting a little bit nervous about creating video. In the main feed, your videos can be a little bit longer on Instagram about 60 seconds. If you do have a message that you can share, and you can beautifully crafted it out, [00:40:30] take some time to edit it afterwards. Instagram videos are great.

Going a little further with tools here. When we’re talking about editing, and when talking about all these tools, I don’t want you guys to [unintelligible 00:40:42] now and get really nervous because it’s not something you have to use. You can do it directly on Facebook, directly on Instagram, directly on Twitter and that’s a pretty simple process that these networks have. However, if you do have video that you want to edit, there’s some great tools out there that you can collaborate [00:41:00] and edit with that don’t cost a lot of money.

When we are talking about content creation ideas, one of the things we touched on with doing interviews or collaborating with people on your team or outside your company. Things like Belive.tv or Ecamm live are really cool tools you can use because they actually allow you to create a link that you can just send to people and say, “Hey, join me on this live, click this link.” It’ll create this screen share where you can both be on screen at the same time, really cool things. If your company already uses [00:41:30] zoom, Ecamm Lives and video content right on zoom, it’s cool to do because you can get that back and forth speaker voice recognition on zoom as well as sharing your screen a lot on zoom as well.

If you’re scared of live to start, Facebook does have a new feature called Facebook Premiere and this actually lets you schedule and pre-plan your lives. Now of course, you want to make sure that we’re never lying to our followers about what we’re doing online but Premier is cool [00:42:00] because it lets you record the video, have your message already set, and then it’s played as if it’s a live video.

This is great too if you’re a one-person solo opener because you can then focus on answering the chat questions. If you don’t have an awesome colleague like Kristina here who’s taking care of that in this webinar, you can then do it where you’re the one who’s monitoring the chat, you’re prompting people to ask questions and replying to them while you’re live is playing through Facebook Premiere.

Other things are looking for apps that help [00:42:30] you go ahead and edit your content. There’s some great out there like Inshot or Storeo. These really can create some videos from just your iPhone and make them look gorgeous for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. They’re not expensive at all, a lot of them have free versions. Just maybe go on to the App Store and start looking around at the different offerings and the ones that will work right for you. Cool.

Jumping into the last couple of slides here, we want to talk real quick about adding your video content to [00:43:00] Edgar. If you work with a video team or anything like that, or if you’re solopreneur yourself, learning the way is to edit your video is really time well spent and you’re investing in yourself to learn these concepts because video is always going to be important in marketing. It’s valuable to know how to edit these longer videos into bite sized clip for Instagram posts or stories or into these shorter videos that will be perfectly curate a bunch of different concepts into one video. Then you can schedule [00:43:30] these to go out to your community through MeetEdgar.

If you haven’t tried scheduling Edgar yet, you’re just going to click to ‘add content’. Now, you can do this in the category that already exists or a lot of our community members will create their own video category where you control when and where those go out on your schedule and dial in when you know people have the time to actually watch your video. When you’re creating this, you can create your own category or add video to any existing categories you have in Edgar.

[00:44:00] All you’re going to do when you click to add new content is look to the lower left hand corner beneath the text box and click on that little video camera icon. This video camera icon will allow you to upload video. We have all the handy dandy nifty specs right there, so you know what you have to go ahead and keep the video length and max size 4 for each network there. Once the video is uploaded to Edgar, there’ll be a little preview that will appear so you’ll know it’s been uploaded properly. You can even click on that preview in order to play the video. A really nice way [00:44:30] that you can make sure it’s looking well and decide which networks you want to share it out on.

Scheduling makes sure that it is going out to your followers at the time where they have time to watch it and you don’t have to stop your day if you’re in the middle of a meeting, but you’re like, “I know my video gets best engagement at this time.” Schedule your videos guys, again, doing automation and real time posts it’s where social media strategy is really going these days. Those stats on videos, they’re here for you, take a quick look. These slides [00:45:00] will be available on our skill share account on LinkedIn after the webinar today, you can always pop in and get these but I want to share them here real quick.

If you do have any questions when you’re uploading video to your Edgar account, support@meetedgar.com let us know we can make sure everything’s formatted properly for you. Guys, I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for you tuning in today because getting started with video is something that was really scary for me at the beginning as well. I grew up pretty shy, so hopping on camera [00:45:30] was not something I felt a million percent comfortable with.

Let me tell you, it’s been an awesome journey not only to get to know our product, to create these videos for you guys but also to offer this value added content makes you feel really great being a part of a company producing this tribe, these followers, and I know that your followers will appreciate it as well. Leaving you guys here today with that confidence that video can be done by anyone and you should really just give it a try. [00:46:00] If you have any questions again, support@meetedgar.com is where you can always reach us. The replays for this if you want to share it out to anyone will be at the same link.

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @meetedgar and subscribe here so you don’t miss any of our videos upcoming. If you guys aren’t Edgar users yet, if this is your first experience with us, we are also happy to offer you a free month of Edgar with this coupon octopus webinar 18. When you’re signing up, go ahead and grab this, [00:46:30] get your free month so you can start scheduling those videos and adding value to your followers.

Thanks so much for joining today guys. Let us know, comment in the comment. If you have any feedback about this webinar, about past webinars, or what you’d like to see from Edgar in the future, we would love to hear from you. Have a great rest of your day and happy posting out there. Bye guys.

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The post Best Practices on Social Media appeared first on MeetEdgar.


FinCon 2018: Future Proof Your Social Media Strategy

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Transcript for FinCon 2018: Future Proof Your Social Media Strategy

To learn more about MeetEdgar’s webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.

 

Megan McMullin: All right, so I think we’re going to go ahead and get started today. Thanks for coming. My name is Megan and I work for a social media automation tool called Meet Edgar. Now, I know that when people hear social media automation, a lot of the time they’re going to start to tune out a little bit and say, “It’s a little bit spammy. Automation doesn’t work with social media”, et cetera, et cetera. But in these next 20 minutes today, I’m going to focus a little bit more on why automation is actually going to produce a way that you can future-proof your social media to have [00:00:30] really authentic connections with your community.

We’ll jump right in here and address that first part we were just talking about now. When you have these systems in place, whether you’re using an automation tool or whether you’re using your own system, it’s going to be one of the strongest ways that you can actually authentically connect with your followers because it’ll free up your time to actually engage with them. If you listen to the social networks today and what they’re telling us, everything that they’re gearing their algorithms towards and everything that they’re gearing [00:01:00] their terms of service towards is focused on authentic engagement and communication with your followers.

Going about the systemized process, you want to kind of have this lens and think about posting conversation topics and posting these topics that are going to get your followers really excited to engage and connect with your brand and your service.

Going along a little bit further here, when you’re starting to systemize your social media to future-proof it, we want you to start thinking about how you can do something called social batching, [00:01:30] and how you can do something that’s called scheduling your updates in a process that you’re able to know your updates are going out when your followers are online, not when you are taking the time out of your day and saying- driving along and having to say, “Oh my gosh, I know my community is so much more active right now. I should be posting,” If you have these systems in place, it’s going to then free up your time to authentically engage with your followers a little bit more.

As we’re going through all this, don’t you now [00:02:00] automation, whether it’s using a tool or your own sort of spreadsheet system, is really going to be the best way to get these authentic connections going.

Jumping in here a little bit further, when we listen to the brands’ algorithms right now, what is Facebook telling us? They’re telling us they want meaningful connections with our communities. They’re telling us from Twitter that you can no longer send the same tweet to one Twitter account more than once. LinkedIn is prioritizing videos so much more these days. If you put all of these rules together, [00:02:30] and you start looking at them, the future of social media becomes something that is keeping social in social. It’s keeping your followers wanting to talk to you. It’s keeping the relationship first and your business second in order to really rally your followers to want to have something to be excited about and continue following you.

Thinking about this a little bit more, social media is a really crowded space. The internet is a really crowded space, obviously. The longer you can have someone’s attention, and the more you [00:03:00] can hook them in and grab them, the more likely it is you can then get your brand message out in a way that they’re going to really be excited about. This comes from the idea that it takes about seven touch points for someone to get a brand affinity and to get that purchasing excitement going on. Social media is going to be your best way that you can get those seven touch points in a really authentic way.

We’re going to go through this systemized process now. Again, no tuning out because it’s not something [00:03:30] that automation is going to take away from that authentic connection. It’s going to give you more time to focus on creating that content and really developing a strong relationship with your followers.

Your first step to future-proof your social media and to really make sure you’re connecting with your followers, is to develop your brand voice and it’s to develop your audience personas. When you think about what really gets you excited when you’re on someone’s Facebook page or on someone’s Twitter account, is when you can relate to them, and when it’s you [00:04:00] can see yourself in their updates and their story talks directly to you. The only way that you can really do this is if you understand your audience and if you have those personas developed. It’s taking some time to sit down and deciding now, “Are we a brand that’s really funny on social media? Are we a brand that’s really more serious on social media?” And, knowing your followers and how you can speak to them so they can see that and say, “Yes, me too. I feel that too”, it’s going to keep them wanting to come back for more, and keep them really excited [00:04:30] to continue to follow your pages and have that really strong raving fan as a part of your community on social media.

So you can see here, this is one of the updates that we do for our Twitter account. We automate our social media, so it frees up time for us to then go into Twitter, go into Facebook and actually reply to people who are @mentioning us and actually reply to people who are commenting; signaling again to the algorithms that these are updates. People want to see we are a really active community on Facebook [00:05:00] and that’s going to make sure that your posts are seen higher in people’s feeds.

Having your brand voice established is also going to be a way that you can say, “Hey, when we’re replying to people, we’re always doing it in the same tone.” If you have a virtual assistant helping you and you have these brand guidelines established of who you are, it makes it consistent across every network so you’re recognizable right away and people on Twitter can find you and people on Facebook can find you and know your brand and you’re going to stay top of mind, while they’re going throughout [00:05:30] their social media feeds. When you think about people’s consumption habits, they are scrolling, scrolling, abandoning the site going through things so quickly, that if your brand colors, your brand tone can make someone see that really quickly, it’s going to make it that much stronger and easier for you to connect with people on social media.

Your first step, definitely sit down, take some time to develop those personas; you’re talking to people’s stories and they can see themselves as a part of your brand and have that relatability to make sure they really understand who you are because you understand who they are. [00:06:00]

Going along, after you’ve developed your brand personality and your personas for your social media accounts, your next step is going to be to start developing your content. So kind of how we were mentioning before, every single social network these days is really focused on this idea that they want to make sure it is a place that is social. Facebook wants those comments, those longer comments. Those comments between people. They want those shares. They’re deprioritizing posts are just getting likes. They want those kind of more engaged [00:06:30] statistics to show through. Twitter, again, the same tweet can no longer be sent to the same Twitter account more than once. LinkedIn, prioritizing video, which is one of the most authentic mediums you can produce.

However, you guys as bloggers, or you guys as content creators, also want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your content. When you’re developing your content, we want you to really focus to future-proof it in a way that it’s going to provide value to your followers no matter when it’s sent out, that’s known as evergreen content. [00:07:00] As bloggers, I’m sure you’ve heard this concept quite event. We want to make sure you can still send that content out to your followers more than once, based on this idea that only about 10% of your followers ever see anything you post on social media and you never know where someone is in the purchase process or in the decision-making process of wanting to sign up for your newsletter, or wanting to purchase your product.

Thinking about handing over your email address online, or putting in your credit card details online these days, it’s a big ask [00:07:30] for people because they do have so many different choices on who they’re giving their money to, or who they’re giving their email address out to. If you develop this content, that’s going to be more evergreen and that’s going to provide value, it’s going to provide you a little bit more time and a little bit more of an authentic way to get it out to someone’s message. Say they’re just in the decision-making process, they’re may be more of a cold lead, your social media can get that blog content out or can get your ask out to them, [00:08:00] in a way that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and produce more and more blog content, you can start recycling this through.

But again, we want you to do it authentically, especially thinking about the way you can reintroduce an evergreen piece of content on Twitter. Twitter’s rules, you can’t share that same post more than once anymore, but only 10% of your followers are seeing it and you want to offer that value to them more and more, creates kind of a catch-22 there. Thinking about ways you can future-proof your Twitter account, especially, you want to make sure you’re thinking about ways you can introduce that article [00:08:30] with a question or introduce that article with a new poll quote from it, or a new spin on it. It will really make sure you can continue to share that evergreen content out, but stay in line with those terms and service.

Thinking about these platform changes can be infuriating sometimes, being like, “I have to play to these platforms rules and stuff like that.” But thinking about why the platforms create these rules, you really want to think and say, “You know what, they want to keep more people in their application. They want to keep and do what’s best for the end user of Facebook, [00:09:00] of Twitter, of LinkedIn.” If you follow these rules, it’s going to make sure that you are also keeping more and more people engaged within your communities on these platforms. Rather than seeing it as this terrible thing we have to follow, make sure we’re looking at it as this way that is really exciting because people want to be on there more and your content is going to get engaged with by a more authentic community.

This is what evergreen content is really awesome for, when you share a blog post, typically this top graph here, [00:09:30] is going to be what happens. You put it out on social, everyone’s really excited to click that link, to go to your website, to go to your blog post, to subscribe to your newsletter. You share that once, you get all that traffic and then all the hard work you’ve put into that blog post is then lost in the ethers of the internet in that way.

If you’re able to re-share your content on these social networks, this bottom graph here, is actually what we’ve seen happen to our blog posts when we’re able to create them in this way that’s evergreen and re-share them out on [00:10:00] each social network. Every time they’re shared, people get excited to see it.

Now, your old followers who might not have seen it the first time can then start to develop this way of getting to know your past successes, and your past failures, and develop their way of knowing your story throughout their whole journey. Storytelling is one of the best ways to really hook your followers in and to get that really awesome content out. Sharing your past blog posts is one of the best ways, again, to really make sure you’re connecting with your community so they know who you are [00:10:30] from the start as well as introducing yourself to your new followers in that way.

Re-sharing your content isn’t something that’s going to bore your followers at all. Again, you never know when that message is going to hit someone at the right time in their journey. Not being afraid to re-share your evergreen content. As you’re doing it, we’ve seen awesome from this, whether you’re a broad product or whether you’re a blog, it’s a really great strategy to take.

Going along with this idea that you need to encourage people to actually click those links when you’re re-sharing them, [00:11:00] and one of the biggest things about social media these days, if you actually look at your own habits, you probably have seen this as well, is that headlines are the thing that hook people in the most. If someone sees a really strong headline, they’re going to say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to learn this information.” Oftentimes, you’ll see people share an article to their Facebook page or to their Twitter account before they’ve even read the article. It’s just that headline that they want to produce on their page to say, “You know what? This headline describes who I am. [00:11:30] This headline is something that I want to share with my followers because it seems helpful to them.” People want to share things that are helpful or share things that are really important to them.

As you are developing your evergreen content, your blog posts, what we love to suggest you do is to create a headline generating machine. For every poster writing, take some time to sit down and write 10 to 20 headlines for it. This isn’t only going to get you the best headline and the best brainstorming session in order to introduce that post, it’s also going to get you [00:12:00] a way to pull those past headlines that you didn’t use and use them in your status updates for Twitter, for Facebook, introducing it in a different way. Again, you never know when your followers are going to have that language in that headline that really hits them and really hooks them strongly.

Generating multiple headlines for one article not only gets you that best headline for the article but it also takes care of the work of producing a lot of your status updates. Again, so you can then spend more time actually engaging and creating real relationships on these social networks [00:12:30] rather than just posting all the time. Sitting down, getting that headline out is going to be the best ways you can entice people to really click on those links.

Some of the things you can do to really increase your chances of people clicking on them is to make your headline really emotional. As humans, we like to think we’re really logical and that we subscribe and buy things in the logical way but the truth is we also do it in an emotional way, way more often. So if you can put emotional tone into your headline, you’ll see your click-through rates increase so much. [00:13:00]

Another thing you can start to think of of generating more and more headlines is that curiosity aspect. Curiosity is really funny for humans especially in this way that we have this need to fill an information gap. What that means is if you produced something that someone’s like, “Ha, I don’t know about that”, your brain almost is hardwired to force you to click on that because your brain wants to fill that gap of knowledge that you have. Anything that can produce some sort of curiosity or some sort of emotion in someone, [00:13:30] it’s going to be your strongest headline that you can produce.

If you are struggling to come up with the type of content that’s going to do well or a headline, start asking yourself some of these questions that will really help to increase that click-through rate, is, what’s something you’ve done or something you do that is different from everyone else in your industry? Niche is these things, anything that you can do that’s going to create a sort of a more unique spin on a concept that already exists or adding your own voice to it, it’s going to be a really strong way you can [00:14:00] start out generating those headlines.

What’s a big change that happened recently? Thinking about the fact that you know people want to stay up to date with everything that’s going on anything new or changeable is going to be really strong to share and increase your traffic to your site on social media. A recent experience that you’ve learned something from, again, this concept that people don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel every time. If you’ve learned a business lesson, if you’ve learned from money or failures, share that out there. Be authentic about it and you’ll see your community [00:14:30] appreciate that so much because they don’t have to go through that same learning process. Those sort of sharing past experiences, whether they’re wins or failures, do so, so well on social media.

Lastly, what advice do you have for the reader? Again, the Internet is such a loud place right now that if you can offer this valuable advice to them, it’s going to really show through in the way that they’re appreciative and continuing to follow you because they know when they do, it creates some really valuable content for them to consume.

If you’re struggling [00:15:00] a little bit beyond just wanting to share your social media updates, other things that you can do is share behind-the-scene stuff with your community.

People want to feel like they’re part of a tribe. They’re getting something that’s different than everyone else is getting, and social media is the best place to pull that curtain back and say, “This is who my business is. This is who we are.” People love to feel like they’re getting something different than everyone else out there, so that behind-the-scenes content is a great way to humanize your brand. Remember, people buy from people. People subscribe who [00:15:30] newsletters that are really human. Not from businesses or not from brands, so the more of yourself you can put in there on social media, the better results you’re going to start seeing.

Things that inspire you. If you look at social media these days, the most shared stuff is inspirational and humorous stuff. Things that inspire you, again, produce that emotional connection as well, and when emotions are involved that emotion is then attached to your brand. If you’re diversifying your content and starting to share quotes or starting to share memes, which might not [00:16:00] exactly have to do with the financial blog you’re doing or the product you’re serving, when someone sees that and they laugh about it or if they get really excited and inspired by it, that emotion is now attached to your brand.

Start thinking about things that can really get people excited and inspired by the content you’re producing out there. Sharing this sort of other content is also a signal to the social networks that you’re then going to want to see more of their content. If someone likes a funny meme you post, that doesn’t really have anything to do with your blog, it’s then a signal [00:16:30] to the social networks saying, “You know what, these people like to see this information they’re posting.” It makes it more likely that your other content will show up in their feed.

Going along, a little bit more, testimonials are one of the other ways that you can really produce a lot of purchase power and a lot of trust with your community because you want to increase that know, like and trust factor in order for people to want to keep following you and to keep following through with reading your blog or purchasing your product. We don’t want you to just create a testimonial for a testimonial sake, [00:17:00] we want to make sure that your testimonials are leading to something that your other followers are able to build that trust with you. What that comes down to again is that emotional aspect.

When you’re asking your community for social proof, and when you’re asking for testimonials, you really want to focus on the emotional side of saying, “Hey, what did it feel like before you subscribed or before you purchased my product?” That again is going to let your followers see themselves in that story and say, “Yes. I’m feeling that right now too.” Then, what did [00:17:30] it feel like when you pulled out your credit card or when you started typing in that email address, and then, those other people on your social networks that are going to say, “My gosh. I’m feeling that now too.”

Lastly, that hook part is going to be, “What did it feel like now that you have this product in your life or now that you subscribe to that newsletter?” That sort of a-ha moment is going to get people who may be on the fence a little bit to get over that jump and be that trusting authority of saying, “You know what, yes, look at these other people who had the same feeling of kind of doubting me and [00:18:00] what I’m excited about doing now.” So, if you’re asking your community for testimonial, make sure you’re not just asking right out for a testimonial but you’re guiding them towards leading you to getting testimonials that produce that purchase power for your future customers.

Social media is so visual these days, so if you are getting testimonials, make sure you’re using something to design them like a product like Canva. It’s also going to go back to that brand voice idea. So if you have a product like Canva, you can create a testimonial here[00:18:30] that has a layout that you can have your brand colors in it and that’s really recognizable when people are scrolling really quickly through their feed. They can see those colors. They can see then be like, “I like what this brand produces. Let me stop. Let me pay attention to this post a little bit more.”

Step three, developing your schedule. Once you get all your content out there, you want to make sure that it’s shared out to each of your networks. That is what a blog and that is what social media is so, so great for. When we’re going throughout this, we want to make sure that you realize that social media is a valuable [00:19:00] platform. That you want to be offering more value to your followers. A great rule to follow here is that 80-20 rule that is so, so powerful so 80% of your content should be value-adding content. Then that last piece, you’ve earned, the right to promote your blog, you’ve earned the right to promote your product a little bit more.

Coming up with this, say, you post four times a day on Facebook, you want to make sure that you’re educating in one of them. Sharing a blog post, sharing someone else’s content, getting that educational information out there, informing them [00:19:30] about the industry stuff that’s going or something that has a tip to them that’s going to be really great and valuable in the information sense. Entertaining people goes back to that way that social media is a form of entertainment. Keeping people’s attention on social media these days is imperative that you’re in this entertainment aspect as well.

Then that last piece to promote that promotion piece is going to be so, so much more well-received if they’ve seen you offer them value in those other senses that they’re like, “Yes, you know what, you have informed me [00:20:00] you’ve provided me all this value, so yes, I will take the time to then see what you’re asking for in return.” You’ll see it makes a much more elegant sale or a much more elegant ask for that email address as well if you’ve produced this sort of 80/20 rule in your content.

Going along with this a little bit more, when you’re producing your content, you want to make sure you’re categorizing it so that you can produce this 80/20 rule a little bit better. Coming up with categories like your blog posts, your inspirational posts, your tips, your promotional posts and [00:20:30] putting all of your content into these buckets also is a way that you can develop your social media strategy a little bit stronger because you’re able to say, “You know what, it looks like I don’t have a lot of tips right now, let me focus my time more in producing them.” Think about the types of updates and the buckets of updates you want to share in order to put that into these different categories.

This then makes your posting schedule on your system that much stronger in the way that you have the system set up that you’re able to produce that 80/20 rule so easy. [00:21:00] This is saying you know if you want to send six updates a day, five days a week, that’s going to be a month’s worth of fresh content. This is where that social batching aspect comes in that if you’re using categories like this, it only means you have to add 20 new updates per category, per month, which makes your time on spending social media so much more manageable when you’re able to sit down and say, “I only have to write 20 quotes or 20 tips to get some fresh content on social media.” Rather than thinking, “Oh my god, every day I have to [00:21:30] log into my networks and post all of this information.”

Categorizing it and having the system really allows you to free up time again to go and engage with your followers and create those authentic connections. Think about the times of the day and stuff that work well for your community so you can create systems like this and really produce a strong social media strategy.

The last step here is to analyze and adjust. If we’re not learning from what our communities want to see and the signals they’re giving us, then we’re never going to improve and gain those new followers. [00:22:00] Don’t neglect your insights and don’t neglect things that your followers are telling you, what posts they like, what posts they comment on, stuff like that. Twitter analytics, Facebook insights guys are so strong in telling us so much and the fact that they have demographic information telling you things like the favorite TV shows of your followers. If your followers are showing you they like comedy more than sports, maybe produce a more funny content for them, so you’re then again relating to them and having that stronger connection.

You don’t want to just be playing golf in the dark. [00:22:30] In this way, you’re swinging, not seeing where the ball is going and never making adjustments. As the system goes out, it really allows you to adjust and analyze your updates that much better as well.

Thanks for coming today and really make sure that you are again, making sure you’re producing these really valuable connections with your followers so you’re having customers who want to follow you and who want to follow your brand because they love you and you’re putting yourself into it so much and they believe in you and you’re producing that awesome know, like, [00:23:00] and trust factor that works so, so well in social media marketing.

Cool. Thanks for coming. I know that went on a little long, so appreciate your patience there. If you guys do have any other questions, we’re at the booth in the back over there so you can definitely come and stop on by.

[applause]

[00:23:22] [END OF AUDIO]

The post FinCon 2018: Future Proof Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Small Business Saturday Spotlight: Team Edgar’s Favorites

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The big businesses of the world tend to monopolize the headlines and TV ads but small businesses are a huge part of most people’s daily lives. According to the United States Small Business Administration, more than 50% of Americans either own or work for a small business.

From the deli where you buy your coffee to the Etsy shop where you shop for holiday gifts to the solo photographer who shot your holiday card photos, you probably shop from small businesses on a regular basis.

We love small businesses here at MeetEdgar because, well, we help them market themselves on social media every day but we’re also a small business ourselves!

As part of our Small Business Saturday celebration this, we wanted to share our favorite small businesses. Team Edgar is a remote team and we love our small businesses in our respective communities. Here are some of our favorites and what you can learn for your small business!

East Pole Coffee Co.

Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Website

East Pole was built by coffee lover, Jared Karr. East Pole started as a roasting company in 2014 but open opened a beautiful coffee bar in 2017, which is quickly becoming one of Atlanta’s favorite coffee shops.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
East Pole is run by a few folks who really love coffee and love Atlanta. I love when people’s passion comes through their business
– Nancy, Marketing Advocate

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Passion can take you places. Don’t be afraid to start something that you are truly passionate about, even if you don’t know the ins and outs of the business yet!

TurF

Location: Vancouver, BC
Website

TurF is a community space where members can work out, dine on delicious food and connect with others. Co-founded by sisters Deanne and Delaney Schweitzer, TurF inspires people to live full, healthy lives within their community-driven space.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
TurF is all about creating community, kindness, and value for everyone they come into contact with.
– Tyra, People Ops Manager

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Build a business with strong values. A value-driven company will attract customers who will stay with your business and promote it for you.

 

Powder7

Location: Golden, CO
Website

Powder7 was born in their owner, Jordan’s, mother’s basement where they sold their first pair of skis and used the profits to buy two more pairs. In ten years, Powder7 have built an e-commerce website and a retail store where they aim to match skiers to their perfect gear for the mountain.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
They are so helpful and knowledgeable and kind. they have one store here but are mostly online, but if you go to their in-person store, they are so friendly and tell you EVERYTHING you need to know.
– Megan, Customer Onboarding Specialist

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Find a problem to solve with your product or service. Powder7 wanted a place that would perfectly match skis to each skier and when they couldn’t find it, they decided to create it themselves!

Posh Totty Designs

Location: Brighton, UK
Website

Posh Totty began when Alice River Cripps learned how to make unique jewelry from a group of Mayan jewelers while traveling in Mexico. Posh Totty creates unique and personal jewelry that is of deep significance to each of their customers.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
It’s a female-founded business that creates beautiful personalized jewelry right here in Brighton. I’ve bought really cute rings with my children’s initials on it.
-Laura, Founder

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Find the bigger reason or story behind your product or service. People don’t often buy because of features or price. They buy because of the story behind a product or service and how they connect to it.

The Goulet Pen Company

Location: Online
Website

The Goulet Pen Company began as a hobby in 2007 when owner Brian Goulet expanded his lifelong interest in woodworking into pen making. They focus on providing a personal level of service through an online format by providing fantastic customer experience and unique knowledge of their products.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
They include small touches like a nice note and some candy in your package. I also really appreciate the videos and blog posts they create to demo their products and share general care instructions. It would have been easy for Goulet to be “just an online pen shop” but they have gone above and beyond to enrich their audience and also to make a big rippling impact in their hometown and for their employees and employees’ families.
-Sarah, Operations Advocate

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Personal touches and care matter to customers. Your customers will notice all the little extras you do to take care of them!

Omaha Dog Bar

Location: Omaha, NE
Website

Leah Thrasher wanted to make Omaha a more dog-friendly place and create fun and safe spaces for dogs and humans to exist. She created a web-based community, Omaha.dog, to connect dog owners with dog-friendly businesses, services and events and will be opening Nebraska’s first indoor/outdoor off-leash dog park and bar soon!

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
Leah is creating a community for dog owners! It’s starting as “Pup-Ups” at different locations and parks but is growing it into a permanent, full-fledged space soon!
-Tanya, Finance Director

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Create a community around something you love. Great businesses are built by strong, passionate communities. Find your community and they will help you drive the business forward.

Goat Milk Stuff

Location: Scottsburg, IN
Website

Goat Milk Stuff is a family owned business that sells, you guessed it, products made out of goat milk! Their main product is Goat Milk Soap, which they originally created because they wanted to find a safe, chemical-free soap for their own children. Their experiment in soap making soon showed them that natural goat milk soap is a perfect product for people with dry or sensitive skin and their business was born.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
This is a family-owned company who provides a fantastic product that you can order from the comfort of your own home! The entire family is involved in the operation and they have strong values behind their brand.
-Sarah B, QA Lead

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Niche down. Your product doesn’t have to be for everyone, in fact, it shouldn’t be for everyone. Creating something niche will make it easier to find the right audience and wow them!

Mikko Nordic Fine Food

Location: Washington, DC
Website

Mikko Nordic Fine Food is owned by Chef Mikko Kosonenr, who opened his charming cafe after spending 15 years as the Executive Chef for the Finnish Ambassador to the United States. He wanted to bring fantastic Nordic food to everyone in DC and is frequently seen greeting guests and chatting with them about Nordic delicacies in the cafe.

Why Team Edgar Loves It:
I love Mikko because everyone is so personable and Chef Mikko is a delight! Even though he is head chef and owner, he always comes to chat with tables and it has a community feel.
-Maura, Digital Content Manager

The Lesson for Other Entrepreneurs:
Your business is you so don’t hide behind it! Share your passion with your customers and fans by being open and available to them.

The small businesses we love differ in their products, locations, marketing, and goals but they each were built by hardworking, innovative individuals who found something they loved and worked hard to build a business around it.

 

No matter your industry or your unique passion, if you’re interested in starting a business or taking yours to the next level, then we hope you are a little bit more inspired to take action after reading about our favorite local small businesses!

We support small businesses all year long but we’re so proud to be able to do so this month! We’re celebrating Small Business Saturday with a special offer! If you are a small business, you can enjoy your first month of Edgar free with the code smallbiz18. Sign up here!

The post Small Business Saturday Spotlight: Team Edgar’s Favorites appeared first on MeetEdgar.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media

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The famous saying is that timing is everything and you know what… it’s right, especially when it comes to the best times to post on social media

It’s 2018 and social media isn’t exactly a new marketing resource for businesses and while it still is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, it’s not as easy as it once was to reach your audience.

Now that more brands and businesses have discovered the power of social and now that the platforms have grown and made changes to their algorithms, social media often feels like you’re just screaming in the middle of a crowded room but no one is listening. Talk about frustrating!

 

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Of course, there are a few options every business owner has when it comes to their social media.
Option A. Invest money into paid advertising
Option B. Complain about how the algorithms have changed and declare social media a worthless endeavor
Option C. Create a better social media strategy.

Option C is the cheapest and more effective, so let’s go in that direction! Creating a better social media strategy is something you have complete control over.

Social media can bring every business traffic and sales, just like it always has but only if you have a smart strategy behind your social media.

One component of a smart social media strategy is the timing of it. While there are many different factors to your success, finding the best times to post on social media is a great way to start seeing improvements in your social media.

Now, finding the best times to post isn’t a guarantee that your social engagement will skyrocket. However, it is a more strategic way to begin managing your social media that can lead to more insights and a better social media presence overall.

And while we know we don’t need to say this, we just want to make it crystal clear: a great social media presence really matters these days!

Instead of speculating about algorithms or just posting and hoping that someone will see your post and engage with it, build on existing knowledge about social media users activity and improve your timing so you can increase your engagement and your feed.

Social media timing is a hot topic and there have been many studies done on this subject and their results all vary. So we gathered data from some of the latest studies to give an overall look at the best times to post on social media and share a few tips on how you can use this information to become a social media maven!

Facebook

Let’s start with the juggernaut: Facebook! Facebook has made more than a few people angry by decreasing organic reach for businesses over the years which has led many businesses to wonder if there’s even a point to being on Facebook.

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However, Facebook is still the biggest social media platform with over 2 billion users and it’s a platform that users visit while at work and at home. The average user spends 50 minutes on Facebook every day so it still has amazing potential for your business.

Based on several studies and sources, Neil Patel found that the best time to post on Facebook for engagement is in the early afternoon. Posts around 1pm received the most shares and posts around 3pm usually receive the most clicks. That time period also works well for photos and videos with photos receiving a high number of comments between 1-2pm and videos receiving the most comments between 12-1pm.

On Facebook, it pays to follow a less is more philosophy with your content. So Trender found that organic reach of brand Facebook pages drops with every update. If you don’t post daily and are looking for the best day to reach users, go for Wednesday. That middle of the week spot is prime time.

Twitter

Twitter is a little different because quantity counts on Twitter. Unlike Facebook, you could never get away with just posting one tweet every few days.

So while you want to be sharing on Twitter often, you can narrow it down as to when you post your newest or most valuable content so that it posts during busy times.

Data from various sources compiled by Hubspot found that the optimal time to post on Twitter is 12pm-3pm, Monday to Friday. This correlates with many people taking their lunch break from work and checking their Twitter while on break.

Link clicks follow that pattern as they seem to peak throughout the afternoon, between 12pm and 6pm. This is also likely because people are taking lunch breaks or leaving work and are looking for something to read.

Also, just like Facebook, Wednesdays are a busy day, specifically between 5pm-6pm. It makes you wonder if those middle of the week blues start to get to people and drives them to social media!

 

via GIPHY

LinkedIn

The business networking platform, Linkedin, is perfect for B2B businesses looking to target professionals. As you might have guessed, since it’s a professional networking website, the data shows that LinkedIn is most engaging during the week with engagement decreasing over the weekend.

Continuing the middle of the week pattern, data shows that Tuesday-Thursday are the best days to post on LinkedIn. Two studies point to Tuesday and Wednesdays as the best days for LinkedIn sharing. A TrackMaven study of 17.5 million social media posts from over 17,000 brands found that 9am on Wednesdays is the best time to post on LinkedIn. Also, AddThis analyzed data from 14 million users and found that the most clicks and shares occur on Tuesday between 10am and 11am

Instagram

If you were placing bets that the middle of the week, especially Wednesdays is a great time to post on Instagram, we have news for you! Unlike our other platforms, Instagram doesn’t quite follow that pattern. In fact, there isn’t a very clear pattern because the data on the best time to post on Instagram skews across the board.

There’s actually a really good reason for this! Instagram has its own algorithm. They reorder the posts in their user feeds based on timelines and previous engagement with the brand, among other factors. So the results of best times to post will also vary based on each brand’s individual audience and content.

It’s best to experiment on Instagram and find your own sweet spot using your data. However, it never hurts to have some data to start your posting schedule.

One thing the data shows is that users spend time on Instagram. 35% of instagram users access the site multiple times a day! Far from a ghost town, Instagram is one of the most engaged social media platforms.

For timing, engagement tends to be higher during the week. Some studies recommend anytime between 9am and 6pm, Monday through Thursday. TrackMaven found that engagement tended to remain consistent throughout the week but that there is usually a dip on Sundays.

Also, multiple studies found that peak engagement is often found in the early morning, starting at 5am to 6am. This makes sense if it follows the pattern that most people log into their social platforms when they first wake up or are getting ready for work.

Some experts recommend posting on Instagram outside of peak hours. This can help you beat the competition from big budget companies. Fortune 500 companies mostly post photos during business hours, so posting at non-peak times could offer you a better opportunity to reach your audience.

Does timing really matter?

All of this data might seem a little overwhelming and well, scattered. And that’s because it is. Every page is going to have a different experience because every audience is different. However, timing actually does matter in social media. Even with unpredictable algorithms, it still pays to understand how your users interact and when they engage.

If you are just getting started on a channel or with social media, posting at peak times can give you an opportunity to see quick wins from your social media and it makes it easier to get organized and set up so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Above all use peak times to schedule your posts is the best way to stay consistent and keep your feeds engaging and your fans expecting your content. We recommend getting your schedule set up with some popular times and then analyzing your own data and your metrics and measuring what works for your unique audience.

There are metrics and analytics on every social media channel that will give you insight into what works for your business. We walk you through how to find them and how to use your metrics to create your schedule in this blog post.

Once you’ve measured your analytics, you can create your schedule around your own peak times.

In Edgar, once you’ve determined the best time for your brand, you can set your posts to always post at that time so you don’t have to think about it!

By combining your own analytics data and an organized schedule, your social media strategy will be consistent and effective and you’ll be able to see much better returns for it (with less work) in the long run!

Over to you, what times do you post on social media? Do you use a set posting schedule for your social media channels?

The post The Best Times to Post on Social Media appeared first on MeetEdgar.

The Holiday Survival Guide for Solopreneurs

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The holidays can be a tough season for freelancers and solopreneurs. There’s no paid time off when you work for yourself. Adding the extra holiday expenses and additional social obligations to your already long to-do list might have you a little bit stressed.

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We know that some things are a little tougher when you’re the one calling the shots in the business and the holiday season is just one of them. Before you go reminiscing about paid vacations and office potlucks, we want to remind you that you are in charge of your business! You get to call the shots which means that you really can make it through this crazy season with your sanity intact!

You need to get a few things in order first before you dive into holiday fun.

1. Be clear your boundaries

Setting clear boundaries with your family, friends, clients, team members and yourself is one of the most important things you can do this time of year!

One of the best perks of being self-employed is that you get to make the rules on how you and your business operate. Get clear on how much you want to work this holiday season, when you want time off and when you need to work and then communicate it to those around you!

We asked some of our Twitter friends during our Twitter chat, the #SoloBizChat a few weeks ago how they set boundaries during the holiday season and here are some ideas we heard:

  • Add your holiday hours into your email signature
  • Email or communicate with your clients about your holiday hours. Give them plenty of lead time about your hours so they are able to plan in advance for their needs
  • Create an out of office email autoresponder that informs individuals of your hours and when you’ll return
  • Designate “business hours” if you’re feeling stressed about completely disconnecting. For example, commit to only checking your email and social feeds twice a day. Be sure to reflect that in all communication
  • Don’t worry so much about making your clients angry when you take time off. Most will understand that you are a human and you need time to recharge. Also, many of your clients will be taking time off as well!

2. Plan your content in advance

Even though you might be taking some free time from your business, your business still needs to run even while you shop, travel and relax. You deserve time off but you don’t want to lose any momentum.

It’s important to try to keep marketing and customer communications as normal as possible. If you have been regularly posting on social media, publishing blogs and sending out email newsletters, then you have set an expectation around your content. Whether or not they realize it, your audience has been trained to expect regular communication with your business. Don’t disrupt the pattern.

Luckily, you have automation to come and save the day! Things like emails, blogs, and social media updates can be scheduled in advance. This may take a little prep work on your end but it will save you plenty of last-minute stress.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what content to share over the holidays when you are taking it easy, here are some recommendations:

  • Curate content from other sources.
  • Reshare older blog posts. The end of the year is a great time to do a “Best Of” social media.
  • Share personal or behind the scenes posts. Remember that your business is you and that your fans and followers want to see a more personal side of you. The holiday season provides a great opportunity for you to share more personality, behind the scenes or personal posts.

3. Use your time wisely

Taking time away from your business can actually grow your business in the long run. When you’re relaxed and not trying to force brilliant ideas, they are more likely to come to your organically. You might be surprised at how much inspiration shows up when you aren’t hunched over your computer.

via GIPHY

It’s also important to note that this time of year can be a goldmine for new clients and connections. You can still market your business when you’re not at your computer. During the holidays, you are frequently spending time with people you don’t see very often. Whether it’s a cousin at your grandmother’s Thanksgiving dinner or a friend of a friend at a holiday party, these are people who could know potential customers for your business. So get that elevator pitch down and remember there are opportunities everywhere!

4. Reflect Back

The holidays can give you a little breathing room to reflect on 2018 and get a jumpstart on your 2019 goals.

Take a look back at your metrics to find common themes, popular topics or peak posting times. Data like your most popular blog content, the month with the highest website traffic, your most popular social media channel and your biggest month of sales can help you to better plan your 2019.

You can also use the holiday season to check in on past clients. A solopreneur’s business can depend heavily on their past clients and keeping in touch is an excellent way to keep your business connections strong. This is also a helpful practice if you’re looking to rev up referrals or gather testimonials for 2019.

Once you have a clearer picture of 2018, you’ll be in the right place to start planning big things for 2019… once you get back to work post-holidays, of course!

Here’s the thing: you created this business for you. And while there may be many reasons that you started it, we’re willing to bet that one of them wasn’t so you could work all the time. You deserve to relax and enjoy some freedoms of self-employment.

via GIPHY

Empower yourself to own this holiday season just like you own your business. Take control of your time and energy, plan ahead and communicate clearly and be grateful. Because not only will you be able to enjoy the holiday season, you’ll be energized and excited to return to the business you love!

The post The Holiday Survival Guide for Solopreneurs appeared first on MeetEdgar.

Social Media Trends To Watch Out For In 2019

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If there’s one thing you can count on for social media is that it will always be changing and evolving. And unlike fashion trends, you might want to pay attention to social media trends because trends can give you more opportunities to reach your audience with your message.

And you never know which of these trends would stay around. Many people though Instagram stories would fade away and clearly, that was wrong and now those people are trying to catch up.

Once you fall behind in social, you could be constantly trying to catch up so do yourself a favor and keep an eye on social media trends for 2019.

What social media trends should you look out for in 2019? Here are four that you should know.

Video

Now some may say that video is not really a trend anymore and they are probably right. Video is here to stay and yet, it’s still surprising how many entrepreneurs and businesses have not started using video in their social media.

It’s predicted that video will account for 80% of all internet traffic by 2020. Yes, 2020, and since we’re headed into 2019… well, that means that video already accounts for a huge percent of internet traffic!

People tend to be more visually focused and in today’s world, they are looking for the easiest way to consume content, which is video. 68% of consumers have said they would prefer watching a video to learn about a product than reading a blog post or article.

Videos also build trust between you and your audience. 57% of consumers say that videos give them more confidence to purchase online. Videos give you as the business owner a chance to stand out and get noticed in the crowded marketplace.

In 2019, we’re predicting that more social platforms will provide more opportunities for videos, especially for mobile users. This year, Instagram introduce IGTV which is specifically for vertical videos, i.e, videos that are being watched on your phone. 90% of consumers watch videos on their phone so businesses should look to create videos that consumers can watch while on their mobile or on the go.

social media trend

While we’re chatting about videos, it’s a good time to mention that live video will likely continue to grow in 2019. Live video is perfect for authentic and timely content. Both Facebook and Instagram notify users when another user goes live so it’s a great way to encourage real-time engagement with your audience.

2. Micro Influencers

Influencer marketing has been a hot social media trend for a few years but lately, we have been seeing the rise of micro-influencers.

What are micro-influencers? Micro-influencers have a defined, niche audience that is usually between 1,000 and 10,000 people. Micro-influencers are becoming more valuable because consumers see them as real people. They are usually viewed as more relatable and authentic because they can engage with their audience.

As opposed to influencers with millions of followers, micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates because they have the ability to connect and communicate with their followers. This increases trust among their audience.

The rise of micro-influencers is particularly great for small businesses and solopreneurs because micro-influencers are more affordable and easier to access than celebrities or major influencers. So you don’t need to worry about having a Kardashian-sized budget to work with a micro-influencer on Instagram or YouTube!

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If you want to make use of micro-influencers in 2019, then the best way to get started is by honing in and understanding your audience. The power of micro-influencers is that they have niche audiences and if you understand your audience and are able to identify a micro-influencer with the same audience, then you could have a major marketing opportunity on your hands!

3. Stories/Ephemeral content

There are 300 million daily users on Instagram stories every day and we’re predicting that even more people and businesses will start using stories and we’ll begin to see more ephemeral content opportunities as we move into 2019.

instagram stories trends

Stories work for many reasons

  • They are short and easy to consume
  • They are time-bound as most disappear after 24 hours, which creates a sense of urgency in your users. The FOMO is real these days and social media users hate missing out!
  • With new features like Q&As, polls and resharing, stories are extremely engaging

In 2019, we expect to see more story features and more users preferring stories to feed-based posts. In fact, Facebook chief product officer, Chris Cox shared that Stories are predicted to surpass content in the feed as the primary way people share with their friends within the next year!

So if you don’t have a story strategy yet, it may be time to create one! Oh and, if you want to be really cutting edge, you can share vertical videos in Instagram stories and combine two social media trends in one!

4. Chatbots

Automation and AI, including chatbots, are interesting topics for social media marketers. Some people love it while others hate it but everyone seems to agree that we are going to see more chatbots and AI in the future.

Like many of these trends, chatbots are already here but in 2019, more people will start to see chatbots as normal and more importantly, people will start to expect chatbots.

Which means… fewer people will want to wait for responses from a customer service team on social media.

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Most brands fear poor customer experience from chatbots but only 19% of people in a recent survey reported a poor experience with chatbots and 48% were indifferent to chatbots as long as they solve the problem.

Since chatbots are still a fairly new technology, it’s safe to say that their functionality will only improve.

So, as functionality improves and consumer adoption and comfort level with chatbots increases, more brands will start using them in their social media.

As always, you can never predict what will happen in social media. After all, no one saw this change coming at this time last year! But it never hurts to keep an eye on certain social media trends especially the ones that have been growing in popularity over the last few years!

What trends are you most excited about in 2019?

The post Social Media Trends To Watch Out For In 2019 appeared first on MeetEdgar.

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