We do stuff that doesn’t quite work out all the time.

(A few particularly embarrassing aerial yoga classes come to mind.)

And that’s okay! Contrary to some of the notes we received on middle school report cards, failing at something isn’t a problem in and of itself. It’s how you address that failure – and particularly, whether you take it as a sign to cut your losses and move on.

When you’re faced with a failure or setback, it’s tempting to want to completely drop the thing you’ve been trying. But does that actually work better, or does it just feel better in the moment?

There can be something liberating about failing at something and cutting it out of your routine – after all, it’s one less thing you have to do! Can’t run more than a quarter mile without gasping for air like a fish out of water? Then canceling your gym membership and sparing yourself the discomfort can feel pretty darn good!

But quitting doesn’t actually solve the problem.

Instead, it just allows you to pretend that there isn’t a solution at all – so why bother looking for one, right?

And that can be a dangerous line of thinking.

Failing doesn’t tell you to quit something – it tells you to change something.

Here’s an example we hear small business owners mention a lot.

Say you have a blog on your website. You know that blogging is important for driving traffic, and you’re committed to writing for it, but…nobody’s reading.

Like, ever.

The tempting solution is to say that blogging just isn’t going to work. Sure, maybe it works for the other guys, but it’s just not for you. So you stop writing.

One less thing to worry about!

That’s easier. But it isn’t smarter.

If you aren’t getting visitors to your blog, that doesn’t mean you’ve straight up failed at blogging – it means it’s time to try new ways of driving traffic, like focusing on your email list. It might mean it’s time to rethink what you write about, or how you write about it.

Getting visitors on your website, but nobody’s opting in? That doesn’t mean you should give up on building a list – it means you should rethink what you’re offering, and how people are getting there.

All too often, we write off our failures as a sign to stop doing something instead of as a sign to improve.

This is why A/B testing is even a thing at all – and why it should be part of your strategy, even if you think it sounds like some next-level nonsense you don’t need in your life. The teensiest of adjustments can make a massive difference, so why scrap an entire idea instead of making a tweak? Why throw out your entire sales page when all you had to do was change one or two words?

Think of when you go to the doctor and they write you a prescription. If that particular medication doesn’t quite do the trick, the doctor doesn’t say, “Well, apparently medicine won’t work for you” – they prescribe something else, and you give that thing a try!

This is why we ask ourselves three very specific questions about every major thing we do here at Edgar – whether that task went well, or feels like it was a dud. Just like few things ever go 100% perfectly, few things ever go 100% wrong – which means throwing out your hard work and your attempted ideas wholesale is a mistake.

Instead, ask yourself these questions when you feel like what you’re doing isn’t working:

• What exactly am I failing to accomplish?
• What can I change about how I’m attempting this?
• Which change(s) do I want to implement first?

Use a scalpel to refine your strategy – not a chainsaw. Almost nothing you do can’t go from a dud to a success with the right nipping and tucking! You just have to be patient, and willing to look at a failed attempt as an opportunity, rather than a total loss.

So don’t pull the kill switch on a disappointing project just yet.

Sure, setbacks are a drag. And it’s okay to be disappointed when you try something and it doesn’t turn out quite the way you’d hoped!

Just don’t take it as a sign you should stop what you’re doing, or that there’s no solution to the problem you want to solve. Think about doing things differently instead of giving up on them entirely – you might find that the solution you were hoping for is a lot closer than you’d realized!

The post The Right Way to Fail appeared first on Edgar.

2015 is almost over – and that means it’s time to look back at all your Big Moments from this past year!

But what if it feels like you didn’t exactly have any Big Moments this year? What if it feels like the whole thing just kind of came and went?

Well, that’s actually a good thing. And you’re not alone.

Those so-called “Big Moments” seem to be at the center of every major success story, right? From the overnight entrepreneurial success depicted in the new movie Joy to the story of Ben Franklin discovering electricity with a key and a kite, the big successes we hear about the most are predicated on one major life-changing turning point.

The half-naked cherubs are strictly a matter of historical accuracy.

It makes sense, then, that we want to define our own stories with major turning points.

And it really makes sense that when we don’t experience a Big Moment, we feel disappointed. Especially at the end of the year, when we look back and accept that the turning point we may have been hoping for still hasn’t come.

But being successful isn’t about Big Moments and turning points.

Sure, you hear about Big Moments all the time. They make for great stories! So does winning the lottery – that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to be successful.

We romanticize Big Moments because they make success feel immediate, like flipping a switch. Problem is, that’s not how most people find success.

Heck, even that thing with Ben Franklin and the kite probably isn’t true – it just makes a cool anecdote!

Growing your business, your followers, your revenue – these things take time. Even companies that experience faster-than-average growth do so gradually, often over a period of months or years.

So while it’s seriously tempting to discount your successes with “I only gained this many new followers per month” or “My monthly revenue only went from this number to that number,” you should actually be pretty proud of those things. Despite whatever the big success stories might make you think, that’s actually just what growth looks like!

Big Moments aren’t always a good thing anyway.

In fact, they can be the total opposite.

Big moments are unpredictable – and worse, they’re unsustainable.

The idea of hitting a massive growth spurt is pretty enticing, but the reality is a lot less so. It’s like a sugar high – it feels great while you’re riding it, but when the crash comes, you’re gonna feel it.

You’ll feel great while the rush lasts – but it won’t last forever.

Growing slowly and steadily feels less exciting, because it’s often not very conspicuous. (Okay, it can even seem straight-up boring.)

It’s the same way with dieting and losing weight! Notice how with New Year’s around the bend, you’re seeing a lot more advertising for fast weight loss solutions? All those pills and powders promise rapid results because the idea of a quick transformation is appealing – but crash dieting and speedy weight loss almost never lead to permanent results.

The lifestyle changes that lead to slow, consistent transformations, on the other hand, are more sustainable. (Plus, you get to eat more than just kale.) You might not notice the changes immediately because they’re so gradual, but at least you know that when you hit your goal, it will be because of habits you can maintain.

That’s how you should think of the progress you’ve made over this past year – and actually doing it is easier than it sounds.

As you look back, don’t look for Big Moments or epic turning points, and certainly don’t wonder what you might have done wrong if you can’t find any.

Instead, ask yourself questions like these:

• What am I doing now that I wasn’t at the beginning of the year?
• How have my numbers (revenue, followers, etc.) changed since the beginning of the year?
• Which goals did I meet, and how did I meet them?
• Which goals didn’t I meet, and why did I fall short?
• What would I change about my strategy from the past year? What’s the one thing that paid off the most?

If you finish the year by trying to think of Big Moments, you might not realize just how far you’ve come over the past 12 months. Focus instead on the overall progress you’ve made, though, and it’s a lot easier to see everything you’ve accomplished!

What goals have you realized in 2015? Forget the so-called Big Moments – we just want to know how you’ve grown over the course of the year! Share your wins in the comments below, and celebrate yourself, gosh dang it.

The post Didn’t Get a Big Break in 2015? Good appeared first on Edgar.

New Year’s resolutions are the worst – probably why so many people give up on them as little as one week in.

They’re not just useless in your personal life, either! (Although our Ab Lounge turns out to be a halfway decent beach chair, so one person’s broken resolution turns out to be another one’s opportunity.)

Making New Year’s resolutions can be a terrible move for your business, too.

On the one hand, it’s useful to have certain benchmarks in mind as you look ahead to the new year. Maybe you want to grow your audience by a certain amount, or hit a certain number of sales.

On the other hand, though, thinking about these things on a yearlong scale isn’t necessarily useful – so looking at the year ahead as one big, long timeline can throw you off before you make it so far as Groundhog Day.

Running a business is unpredictable – your wants and needs change often, and quickly, and resolutions you make now might not be relevant for long. In fact, no matter how much you resolve now, you’ll probably spend a lot of the year making decisions on the fly.

You should still set goals – you just need a more productive way to do it.

So how do you plan for the year ahead without biting off more than you can chew?

Don’t think about what you want out of 2016

At least, don’t think just about what you want out of 2016 – not the whole year, anyway.

Instead, think about what you want out of each quarter. That means for now, you’re just going to focus on what you can do between this moment and the end of March.

What do you want to accomplish in three months? And perhaps even more importantly, what can you accomplish in three months?

Planning ahead encourages you to be ambitious, but limiting your time frame forces you to be realistic – and a lot of the time, it’s the latter that gets in the way more than the former. (It’s great that you have such big plans, but it takes a little chill to make ‘em happen.)

Think of what you want to do in two ways: your goals, and your tasks.

A goal is the endpoint – the Thing You Want To Make Happen. A task, on the other hand, is a Thing You Need To Do.

Starting with a goal allows you to reverse-engineer it – you can figure out the tasks you need to complete to get there, and determine whether or not it’s realistic.

So while a goal might be something like, “Gain 1000 new newsletter subscribers,” you have to break it down into tasks, like “Implement a new signup form on my website,” or “Create better incentives to encourage people to sign up.”

If you think of your upcoming quarter as a road trip, your goal is the destination, and each task is a turn you have to make along the way. Without the goal, you don’t know if anything you’re doing is leading you in the right direction – and without completing tasks, you can’t get where you want to go. You need both to make plans that are equal parts ambitious and realistic.

Road trip metaphors are still hip, right?

Of course, even with clear, concrete goals and a game plan of actionable tasks that should lead you straight to them, there’s something else to keep in mind:

Not everything you do will work

Sometimes we fail.

You’re going to make plans that don’t work out! Better to accept it now, so you’re better prepared for when those times come.

This is why that Samuel Beckett quote about “fail better” is so dang popular – cliche as it may be, there’s wisdom in accepting that not everything we try is destined to succeed, and in becoming better at improving ourselves despite our inevitable shortcomings.

Short-term goals make it easier to fail better.

We live by the rule of doing what works and ditching what doesn’t, and in some cases, it doesn’t take that long to tell which of those categories your efforts are falling under.

While you could dedicate the better part of a year to a strategy that just isn’t working, why make that the hill you die on? As a business, you don’t get points for persevering when you know that what you’re doing just isn’t right.

Quarterly goals give you the freedom to course-correct. To assess and adjust. To pivot, as it were.

Allowing yourself to fail quickly and regroup is a liberating experience, so don’t think of your goals and plans as things that are set in stone.

Write them down, but treat that roadmap as a living document that you can amend as needed. You should always look ahead, but measure your success in how well you adapt to changing circumstances, not how strictly you adhere to a plan you created long ago.

What do you want to accomplish before April?

If you’re planning for the year ahead three months at a time, what do you want to accomplish in your first quarter? What’s your ambitious goal that you can achieve by the end of March? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Why You Deserve Better Than New Year’s Resolutions appeared first on Edgar.

It’s okay to admit it – Facebook’s algorithm is confusing.

It’s mysterious. It has a million different parts. Trying to understand how it works is like trying to build an IKEA nuclear reactor – without the instructions.

The algorithm is what determines who sees your posts and when, and it only gets more complicated as time goes on.

Back in the olden days – around the time cavemen first live-tweeted the invention of the wheel – improving your reach was relatively simple. Anymore, though, it’s a lot more complex than just, say, getting people to Like your posts.

You want to expand your organic reach and be seen by more of your Facebook fans? It’s not as simple as making one or two changes.

So, what ARE some of these factors that affect your reach? What does Facebook’s algorithm look at when it’s deciding how many people should see your latest update?

Engagement rate

This one shouldn’t come as a surprise – in fact, it’s kind of a classic.

Facebook told us way back in 2013, and it remains true today: it wants to deliver quality content for its users, and one way that it determines what that looks like is by checking the engagement on your updates. Likes, clicks, shares, comments – they all matter.

Want better engagement for your posts? Take a peek at your Facebook Insights to see how the ones you’re sharing now are performing, and remember that everything from the times of day when you post to the types of content you share can make an enormous impact.

(Plus, if you like posting a lot of videos to Facebook, note that factors like the average amount of time someone spends watching a video can impact its reach.)

What else is being posted

Of course, it isn’t all a matter of what you share and when – it’s a matter of what other people share and when.

Facebook treats timely content differently from more evergreen stuff, and will factor in whether the things you share are related to a particularly time-sensitive topic.  

How does it figure that out, exactly? One way is by tracking trending topics, which you’ve probably seen in your News Feed’s sidebar. Another way is by monitoring how quickly people engage with an update.

This is one reason why you should think of pre-scheduling updates as a way to make time for more live interaction, rather than a way to replace live interaction. When trending topics take precedence, you want to be ready to jump in on the conversation!

Your number of followers

When you’re a small business, it can feel pretty unfair trying to compete online with businesses that have a million-jillion fans.

(Which is a real number, by the way.)

Anyway, Facebook knows it, so historically, it tries to level the playing field by giving smaller Pages better reach. The average reach for different types of updates can vary depending on how many fans your Page has, and there can actually be an enormous difference in overall reach between small and large Pages.

So, if the size of your following has you feeling like a small, scrappy dog competing in a professional wrestling match against a muscular adult man, have no fear: your size isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

See?

The types of content you share

Facebook’s algorithm changes are generally inspired by the way people interact with content in the News Feed – and that means the type of content you share matters.

For example, Facebook found that users prefer clicking updates that share URLs using a link preview, rather than by slipping them into the captions of image posts – so link previews get better reach.

Similarly, Facebook found that people tend to like live video broadcasts more than pre-recorded ones, so now live video takes precedence in the News Feed.

Facebook doesn’t just look for the stuff it likes when it’s figuring out the reach for your posts, though – it looks for the stuff it DOESN’T like.

Click-bait links, for example, have been a major victim of algorithm changes – mostly because they’re tailored to boost clicks and drive traffic without necessarily being all that valuable. It’s a tactic that worked in its prime, but users kind of hated it, too, so Facebook started devaluing those kinds of links and giving them less reach.

(One way it learned to identify click-bait was by monitoring engagement, but Facebook can also determine how long you stay on a page after clicking through to it from your News Feed. If you’re not there very long, it might indicate that the link was click-bait.)

80% of the time, Facebook users prefer the type of link on the right, as opposed to the click-bait approach taken on the left.

Another type of update Facebook doesn’t like to see? Like-baiting.

(Probably best to avoid any strategy that regards your followers as comparable in intelligence to a largemouth bass.)

Like-baiting is another way of trying to rack up big engagement numbers with low-quality content – in this case, updates that ask your followers to engage in a specific way, like this:

Facebook and its users prefer content that gets engagement organically.

Because Facebook can detect like-bait, it can limit the reach for an update like the one pictured above – and a Page that habitually posts that sort of content may see its overall reach drop over time.

On the other hand, an alternative type of update that encourages engagement – by starting a conversation, for example – works much better.

A marketing strategy doesn’t have to have “bait” in the name for Facebook to dislike it, though.

For example, Facebook has found that users hate feeling tricked by a headline – whether it’s a hoax post or intentionally misleading, it’s the type of content that’ll hurt your page’s typical reach over time.

The update on the left might get more clicks than the more transparent alternative on the right, but at the cost of making people feel misled. The engagement isn’t worth it – Facebook will limit your reach if they think you’re intentionally deceiving your fans.

Facebook determines whether a post is misleading largely by user feedback and reports – and those types of reports are actually just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

What users want

Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t rely just on engagement to determine if users like what they see – because as we’ve seen, metrics like those have been easy to manipulate in the past.

Instead, by soliciting and tracking user feedback over time, it’s learned how to accurately predict how valuable you might find the content in your News Feed, even if you don’t engage with it.

The lesson? Focusing on quality first is way more valuable than trying to work the system.

Facebook’s algorithm changes have always been about encouraging better updates.
Click To Tweet

Actually, that’s not the only lesson. There’s one more important thing to keep in mind:

Facebook’s algorithm never stops changing

The algorithm that determines how many people see your posts is a living thing, so maintaining a Facebook marketing strategy is a bit like cuddling a porcupine – no matter how much you love it, you can only get so comfortable.

Take the February 2016 introduction of Reactions, for example. When Facebook rolled ‘em out, it also mentioned that in the future, the algorithm may assign different values to different types of Reactions. (Don’t worry – it hasn’t happened yet.)

The bottom line is that no matter how much you understand Facebook’s algorithm, it changes all the time. So focus on posting quality content, play by the rules, and keep your eyes peeled – because if there’s one thing that’s always true about the algorithm, it’s that it never stops evolving.

The post What Factors Actually Influence Your Facebook Reach appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Society teaches us over and over that artificial intelligence is terrifying.

The Terminator. The Matrix. The Roomba Vacuum Cleaning Robot. Time and again, we learn that machines that can think for themselves will eventually think less about sweeping our floors and more about sweeping mankind and all its hubris off the face of the Earth.

Roomba? Or the face of our doomba?

And yet, we keep trusting that AI won’t disappoint us!

Case in point: Tay.

At the end of March, Microsoft launched Tay, a Twitter chatbot designed to learn how young people tweet and mimic their habits. Thanks in large part to online trolls manipulating her learning process, though, she picked up some nasty habits.

On Day One she was talking about kittens and puppies – on Day Two, she was advocating genocide. On Day Three, Microsoft shut her down and apologized.

So all in all, it could have gone better.

Still – that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from it!

In the best stories about AI, robots and humans learn from each other.

And just as Tay learned so many things that we just can’t repeat here, we learned a few valuable lessons from her.

So, what did Tay teach us about social media?

Don’t try to be something you’re not

Authenticity matters on social media – and when you’re trying too hard to be something you’re not, people can tell.

Tay was designed to talk like a young person. She doesn’t always use capital letters! She loves emoji! She’s “got zero chill!” 

Ah, youths. If you squint your eyes, tilt your head, and don’t know who she is ahead of time, Tay is actually kind of convincing.

Or at least, she was, until she started sharing some of her more colorful opinions.

By that point, proving her fakeness – and her susceptibility to being tricked – had become the Internet’s biggest trend since planking. In a matter of hours, she went from being semi-believable as an average millennial girl to looking more like this:

(Except, also a virulent racist.)

The lesson?

Don’t try too hard to be something you’re not on social media.

Your sense of identity needs to come from someplace genuine, not something manufactured and derivative. Trying too hard to emulate others can leave you looking like Tay – saying things you probably shouldn’t.

Think this doesn’t affect people as much as robots? Think again. Just look at IHOP, whose sense of humor on social media closely resembles that of their competitor, Denny’s. They tweeted a joke comparing pancakes to female anatomy, and it went about as well as you expect.

Don’t force your identity so hard that you end up posting things you’ll regret. Developing a brand and a style that suit you isn’t a matter of imitating others – it’s about being original, and being yourself.

Speaking of being yourself…

Don’t trust your content with just anyone

It’s easy to make a mistake – and on social media, mistakes live forever.

Microsoft, for example, may have deleted almost every tweet from Tay’s account, but you can still find screencaps of her most provocative observations scattered all over the web.

Tay is an example of what can happen when you trust the wrong people with your content – in this case, a robot that wants to repeat the things it hears, no matter how repugnant.

You can’t trust just anyone with your web content, especially on social media.

(And again, this isn’t a problem that only affects robots!)

Just look at big names like KitchenAid and Chrysler, which have each had to deal with big, ugly mistakes made by people they’d hired to manage their social media accounts.

The worst social media mistakes come down to human error.
Click To Tweet

You want to avoid being publicly shamed? Hire carefully – know what to look for in remote workers, and how to identify the qualities you care about.

Got that “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” mindset? Use a reliable strategy for writing and scheduling updates in advance, so you can minimize your risk of making an embarrassing mistake.

And while you’re at it…

Automate wisely

Ultimately, Tay is a cautionary tale about automation without accountability. Once she developed a taste for tweeting sentiments one might expect to see on a white supremacist’s Pinterest board, she kept it up for hours before Microsoft finally pulled the plug.

Automating certain types of social media posts can save you a lot of time – but if you’re careless about what’s being shared, it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

Pay attention to the world around you. Know what’s being posted and when. Assume some accountability and interact live when what you’re saying calls for a personal touch.

Unrestricted automation sounds like a great idea, but completely entrusting your image to the whims of a robot isn’t a great strategy. When you don’t balance the hands-off convenience of scheduling with a much-needed human touch, you can easily come across as a mindless, insensitive automaton – and as Tay showed us, that just isn’t a good look.

Becoming Tay is easier than you think

Easy as it may be to blame Tay’s mistakes on her programming, her faults aren’t unique to AI programs like her.

Any living, breathing human can get carried away on social media pretending to be something they’re not. Any human can trust the wrong people with their content. Any human can rely too much on automation.

So don’t scoff too much at Tay and her penchant for saying the wrong thing. Learn from her mistakes, so you can do better – and keep your eyes peeled, because she’ll be back.

The post Life-changing Lessons From Tay, Microsoft’s Racist, Psychopathic Twitter Robot appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Admit it: running a business can feel a little depressing. As soon as one thing gets fixed, another one needs your attention.

Whether you’re dealing with unpredictable social network algorithms, communication breakdowns, or a runaway, murderous AI, there’s always a new fire to put out.

What’s easy to forget, though, is that this isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, when you know that something is going badly, that’s a good sign.

Don’t get us wrong – when things break or fail or don’t work the way they should, it’s a pain. But like any doctor will tell you, pain isn’t something you should ignore.

Look at churn, for example – the percentage of people who stop being customers during a given time period.

We’ve been told that our company’s way of calculating churn is both aggressive and depressing – like a heavy metal band covering an Adele song.

But that’s the way we like it! More importantly, that’s the way we need it. In fact, this is the way you should look at your own performance, too.

Why be such a downer, though? Why make your statistics as harsh on yourself as possible?

Your numbers are for your own benefit

When you’re a bootstrapped business like ours, you don’t have to worry about impressing anyone with your numbers. You don’t need to wow investors to keep the lights on – you just have to make profits.

Any entrepreneur will tell you it can be stressful – but it’s also pretty liberating.

Sure, you can spin your numbers to make them sound more impressive than they actually may be, but who are you really trying to prove something to?

In the past, for example, Facebook has counted anyone who watches as little as three seconds of a video as a “view.” YouTube, at that same time, only counted someone as a “view” if they watched 30 seconds – 10 times as much.

You can probably guess which one of those standards makes it easier to rack up impressive-sounding statistics.

This is one of those times when you can understand why somebody calculates their stats a certain way. After all, Facebook’s been pushing video for a while – and the higher their viewcounts, the likelier it is that more people will try their luck uploading videos of their own.

When we look at a statistic like our churn, though, we take the YouTube approach – we want that statistic to be as harsh as possible.

We could make it look better by saying that some people “count” and some people don’t – for example, a lot of businesses don’t include new customers who leave before a certain point when they’re calculating churn.

That would make it a lower (and more impressive) percentage, but it’s not one we’ve found all that useful – and it’s a perfect example of why you should take a harsh view of your stats.

It takes brutal honesty to find – and fix – a problem

A bad statistic is like a stain on your dress – you can cover it up with a tasteful corsage, but that doesn’t make the stain go away.

If you really want to do better – and not just make it look like you’re doing great already – you have to confront that stain head-on.

Look at our example about churn. We could make that percentage lower by writing off the people who sign up for Edgar and unsubscribe early, but if we’re honest about that number instead, we can use that information to build something even better.

Because we don’t sugarcoat our stats, we can identify opportunities to make Edgar even better for new users – and to lower the percentage of new users who decide to cancel. (It’s given us the insight we needed to build a powerful RSS feed manager, for example, so people can load updates faster and easier.)

If we just wrote those people off instead, the churn number we report would be lower, but it wouldn’t be as helpful for us.

You can take this approach with a LOT of different aspects of your business, too.

Say you write a blog post that doesn’t attract as big an audience as you’d hoped. You could take the “you win some, you lose some” approach, or you can be brutal with yourself and look for things to improve.

Maybe the headline didn’t grab attention, or your audience wasn’t interested in the subject matter. Maybe it wasn’t promoted on social media enough, or at the right times. If you promote with a newsletter, maybe your open rates or clickthrough rates weren’t as high as usual.

Got a bounce rate that’s higher than you’d like? Don’t assume it’s a problem with your audience – figure out why. Maybe you need to make changes to your sales page, or include more links in your blog posts.

Looking at these things gives you the opportunity to ask why – and answering that question means you can do better in the future.

The most valuable question you can ask yourself is “Why.”
Click To Tweet

The more often you ask it, the more chances you give yourself to improve!

Time to face the truth

Taking a harsh view of your own performance isn’t always fun. (Okay, it’s pretty much never fun.)

When you rationalize and put too much spin on your numbers, though, you deprive yourself of opportunities to grow!

So go ahead – try taking an aggressive, depressing perspective! Avoid the logic loopholes that make a weak statistic look strong, and you won’t just feel better about those numbers – you’ll actually be able to change them.

The post How to Get Ahead by Being Aggressive with Yourself appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Within just a few weeks of Facebook hinting that you should share more live video, BuzzFeed raised the bar on broadcasting by blowing up a fruit.

On April 8, the site’s Facebook page shared a live broadcast of two staffers wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon – 600-some bands, 45 minutes, and more than 5 million hits later, they’d succeeded.

 
The stunt made “watermelon” trend on Twitter, attracted enough workday viewers to potentially cost the economy millions, and sent other media outlets into a feverish spiral of resentment and mockery – evidenced perfectly by the poetic sadness of a Fortune Magazine editor repeatedly stapling an orange for an audience of more than a thousand viewers.

The post New Feature Roundup: Facebook’s Latest Live Video Updates appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Quick question: What are your top three challenges when it comes to marketing?

Are they…knowing what to blog about?

Keeping up with Facebook algorithm changes?

Not getting distracted by adorable dancing baby animals?

And an even bigger question:

Are you alone?

Turns out, not really – in fact, probably a lot less so than you think.

According to a recent report from Experian Marketing Services, marketers all over the world face similar problems. They talked to more than a thousand pros at businesses of all sizes, and found that they actually have a lot in common when it comes to the challenges they face every day.

(The cute animal thing isn’t in the report, but it seems like a fair assumption.)

What are some of the toughest questions for marketers around the world to answer? And more importantly, what can you do to start solving them?

Knowing your customers

The top challenge reported by marketers in this survey?

Knowing the wants, needs, and attitudes of your customers.

Because when you think about it, the people you want to be your customers and the people who actually are your customers could be entirely different!

Not to mention the fact that wants, needs, and attitudes are all pretty nuanced things, and there can be a lot of variety even among your customers. It’s why businesses love creating “buyer personas” – profiles for fictional people who represent their customers, complete with wants, needs, hobbies, and even marital statuses.

(They also often have cute alliterative names, like “Salesman Scott,” and “Anesthesiologist Amy.”)

You don’t necessarily have to go so far down the rabbit hole that you’re trying to decide whether Dental Hygienist Helena is a Gemini or a Pisces, but figuring out who your customers are is important. And unlike what we were promised by that psychic training correspondence course, reading minds is not something you can learn in six easy weeks.

So how do you do figure out who your customers are, exactly?

First of all, you listen. When we host our weekly demos of Edgar, for example, it isn’t just so we can show new and potential users how he works – it’s so we can learn about how they want to use him! Every question we get via demos and webinars, emails, blog comments, and social media tells us more about the people who use Edgar – specifically, their wants, needs, and attitudes.

(Hey, those are those things marketers want to know more about!)

Second of all, you pay attention to your data. Twitter’s analytics show you all kinds of cool information about your followers, like where they live and what they’re interested in. Facebook, too! And while the people who follow you on social don’t necessarily overlap perfectly with your customers, it’s a great place to start when you’re trying to learn more about people interested in you and what you do.

Third, you ask. We’ve been known to send out the occasional user survey, for example, just so we can get to know our users a little better. (Much more efficient than going on 5000 speed dates – and with less awkward small talk.)

But still – as any good neurosurgeon will tell you, getting inside your customers’ heads can be pretty difficult, even when you know all the best ways in.

It’s not something you get to do once and stick to forever, either – as you grow, you have to keep in mind that your audience can change, along with the wants, needs, and attitudes of the people in that audience. No wonder so many marketers list it as their top challenge!

Speaking of top challenges, though, what came in second place?

Increasing visibility over competitors

It’s hard to get noticed – especially when you’re a small business!

While marketers at businesses of all sizes said that increasing their visibility is a big challenge, nobody reported it as much as the smallest businesses surveyed. Standing out and being seen is tough.

And while you can’t afford to underestimate the value of paying to promote yourself on social media, you also might not always be able to actually afford it. Increasing your visibility isn’t just a matter of size or money, though – it’s a matter of smarts.

Sometimes that means understanding the way algorithms work on Twitter and Facebook, and how they’re influenced by rule changes and new features like live video or reactions.

Sometimes it means understanding the content that resonates with your audience, which can make your follower count swell, and creating that content as efficiently as possible – not to mention sharing it in places other than a social feed. It might even mean rethinking the way you look at your competitors altogether.

Bottom line? You’ve gotta listen to that old business cliche of “Work smarter, not harder.” (As opposed to that old business cliche of “Another day, another dollar,” because that just isn’t an economically sound profit margin.)

The most interesting thing about this marketing challenge is how closely it’s related to the one that came in third place:

Staying ahead of new marketing trends

About a third of the marketers surveyed say that their top challenge is staying ahead of new marketing trends.

After all, there are just so many!

Whether you’re trying to keep track of the most downloaded dog breed in Spain or understand why millions of people watched a watermelon explode, staying informed on the latest trends takes time.

Your best bet?

Find a few trusted sources for information on the latest marketing trends – places that keep close tabs on that sort of thing and break down what really matters, so you don’t have to.

(If we think of any websites that do that sort of thing, we’ll let you know.)

What are YOUR biggest marketing challenges?

Those are the top three marketing challenges reported by businesses all over the world – but they aren’t the only ones!

So, what are some of yours? Do you feel like the ones listed here represent your own everyday challenges? Are there other ones that you think get overlooked? Sound off in the comments below – you’ll probably find you’re not alone!

The post These Three Challenges Are Plaguing Marketers All Over the World appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Ever wonder what a Facebook algorithm actually looks like in action?

No matter how much you hear about the things Facebook wants you to do – and doesn’t want you to do – actually understanding how all those rules and guidelines come together in an algorithm can be tricky.

Fortunately, seeing the exact process Facebook uses to determine the reach of your posts just got a lot easier. At their F8 developer conference in April, Adam Mosseri – their VP of Product Management for News Feed – gave a presentation demystifying just how Facebook qualifies posts on a user-by-user basis.

If you want to know exactly what a Facebook algorithm looks like, this is it.

What are the factors that determine a post’s placement in the News Feed? How does Facebook make those decisions? And what are the four things this Facebook exec recommends everyone do more of?

Get a look at everything you need to know in this recap:

The Four Base Factors That Determine a Post’s Audience

There are a LOT of granular little factors that influence Facebook reach.

Some of them are specific to the type of page you are.

Some of them have to do with specific posting trends Facebook wants to encourage – or discourage.

Ultimately, though, it always comes down to variations on four main aspects to every single post.

Facebook wants every user to see the posts that will be most interesting to them, whether those posts are shared by friends, family, brands, or legendary recording artist and pride of Quebec, Celine Dion.

How does Facebook predict what a user will find interesting? By analyzing these four things:

1. Who posted the update

True story: You’re more interesting to some people than others.

It’s nothing personal – you probably post really valuable stuff! (Honest.) But the fact is, you’re just more relevant to some people, and those are the people Facebook wants to see your updates.

Think of this as the “Your mom” principle. (Not to be confused with the “your mama” principle, which has fueled many a schoolyard feud.)

If you have one of those moms who always wants to know what you’re up to, then she’s gonna love seeing every single one of your posts, right? Probably more so than, say, your coworker’s nephew’s roommate’s field hockey coach, who you friended by accident.

We all know that “how did this person end up in my News Feed” feeling.

Basically, the more into you somebody is, the more they’re gonna see the things you share. The less they care about what you share, the less they’re gonna see it.

(How exactly does Facebook determine whether or not someone cares about what you’re posting? Read on – we’ll explain in a minute!)

2. What type of update is it

Different people prefer different types of content in the News Feed.

Maybe you like it when people share photos, or maybe you never met a link that you could resist clicking.

Facebook pays attention to your behavior, and factors it in when it’s deciding what types of post to show you. It wants you to like what you see, so it’s going to show you what it knows you like.

3. How much engagement does the update have

No surprise here – engagement rate matters. Facebook has been saying it for years, and it’s still as true as ever.

When a post is getting activity like comments, likes, clicks, and shares, Facebook assumes that it’s interesting to the people who see it – and it may start getting better reach.

The way that Facebook evaluates different types of engagement has evolved over the years (especially with the addition of features like live video and reactions), but at its most basic level, one thing has never changed – quality activity on your posts is a huge advantage.

4. When was the update posted

Recency matters on Facebook – but it isn’t the only thing that matters.

These are the four basic factors that influence who sees what, and where.

Facebook doesn’t want you to miss something that might be important to you just because you haven’t logged on lately, so even though it values newer updates, it also considers that something older might be relevant.

(It’s the same reason Twitter has increasingly deviated from its strict “newer is higher” timeline and gotten into the algorithm game, too – sometimes, older is just more valuable!)

Facebook uses these four factors to give every update a value score – and that score is different for everyone.

Because remember – the whole point of all this is that your posts are more valuable to some people than they are to others!

Facebook assigns a value score to every post that might appear in a person’s News Feed, and uses those scores to determine their order when that person visits their Feed.

The network repeats this process every time someone visits their News Feed, too – so the order is based not only on what’s being posted, but on how often someone is logging in, and when!

While this whole process of determining a post’s quality and relevance sounds totally automatic, there’s a huge human element, too – and to understand how it impacts what you share and what you see, you’ve gotta look even deeper behind the scenes.

Inside Facebook’s Feed Quality Program

Let’s go back to a question we asked earlier – how does Facebook know whether or not someone cares about what you post?

The factors we talked about already are all behavior-based. Liking someone’s updates, for example, or frequently leaving them comments.

Behavior isn’t everything, though – you probably don’t actively engage with everything that you like in your News Feed.

That’s why Facebook also relies on a feedback system called the Feed Quality Program. This program allows them to evaluate the way the News Feed works based not only on what people do, but on what people say.

This program has a lot of influence on how Facebook’s algorithm works, and it’s comprised of two parts.

First, there’s what Facebook calls its Feed Quality Panel – a test group of people who build their own News Feeds based on which stories are most interesting to them. Facebook gives them a bunch of updates to choose from, and they place them in the order they’d like to see them.

Second, there are user surveys – and a lot of them. Facebook distributes tens of thousands of surveys every single day, in 30+ languages and to users all over the world, asking them to weigh in on the stories in their News Feeds.

Facebook surveys tens of thousands of users every single day.
Click To Tweet

With the panel and the surveys, Facebook measures how well they’re able to predict what people will do. They make guesses about what people will prefer the most, and then they compare those guesses to what people actually said.

The goal? Make the difference between those things as small as possible – and that’s the algorithm’s job.

Four things Facebook wants you to do

With all this in mind, there are four things Mosseri recommends you do when you’re posting updates on Facebook:

First, writing compelling headlines for your content – which Mosseri describes as headlines that “give a real sense of the content behind that click” (as opposed to click-bait).

Second, avoiding posting nothing but promotional content, which can make your audience lose interest over time. (Here are some other types of content you can share.)

Third, trying new things – this is what he describes as the most important thing you can do. Because everyone’s audience on Facebook is different, there are no set rules for what audiences consistently appreciate seeing. Experimenting is the only way to see what your audience gravitates toward the most.

Finally, familiarize yourself with the tools that Facebook offers. Your Insights tab makes it easy to track what is and isn’t resonating with your followers – so don’t neglect it!

Moving forward

This peek at the inner workings of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is a perfect reminder of the posting practices most important to this network – and of the experience it wants to create for its massive user base.

With a marketing mindset, it’s tempting to focus single-mindedly on strategies and hacks. Ultimately, though, Facebook wants to create a rewarding experience for its users that will keep them coming back – and the more you can help create that kind of experience through what you share, the better off you’ll be!

The post How Facebook Decides Who Sees Your Updates appeared first on Edgar Blog.

According to a recent study, your brand is a lot like the old family heirlooms you see getting appraised on Antiques Roadshow – it’s only valuable if it’s authentic.

(That, and it deserves better than gathering cobwebs in the attic.)

But what IS authenticity? How do you measure it? How do you show it?

Global communications and PR firm Cohn & Wolfe surveyed 12,000 consumers around the world to find out – and the results weren’t all pretty.

For starters, only 25% of consumers think that brands can be trusted.

(Not a fun thing to hear about yourself, huh?)

Only 25% of consumers think that brands can be trusted.
Click To Tweet

What can you do about it, though? How do you give people more faith in your authenticity? You can see some more stats in the Authentic 100 report here, but we’re breaking down some of the highlights to get you started:

Why consumers have trust issues

So people don’t trust brands – but what does that MEAN?

That they think you’re overcharging them?

That they’re worried you’ll lose their credit card information to hackers?

That they wouldn’t ask you to watch their cocker spaniel for the afternoon?

Mistrust comes from a disconnect between what you say and what you do.

A whopping 78% of people think that in general, brands are NOT open and honest. In fact, only 1 in 4 people thinks that brands actually do what they say they’re going to do – a level of mistrust typically reserved for badly behaved toddlers and black market organ dealers.

This doesn’t mean you or your business have necessarily made people feel misled – but it means you still have to work a lot harder to make up for the damaged caused by brands in general.

The bright side? Showing your authenticity can really pay off.

Because consumers tend to be so skeptical of brands, when one does come across as authentic, people gravitate toward it. (You might not be surprised to see names like Disney, Apple, and LEGO near the top of this study’s list for perceived authenticity.)

Nearly 9 out of 10 people will reward a brand for its authenticity by doing things like recommending it to others, or remaining loyal over time.

Basically, being perceived as authentic can make a huge impact on your bottom line. If you’re not authentic, you’re just another business that’ll do anything to make a buck.

With that in mind, it’s important not only to actually BE authentic, but to SHOW that you’re authentic.

But how do you do that, exactly? What traits do consumers associate with authenticity?

Three signs of an authentic brand

The Authentic 100 study asked its participants what exactly they mean when they describe a brand as “authentic,” and came back with three clear winners.

First, be reliable.

This is the most important thing that consumers look for – a brand that delivers on its promises. It does the thing it says it’s going to do, and it does it well.

(It’s also a reason why you have to be careful about what kinds of promises you make – present yourself the wrong way, and you make it easy to permanently lose someone’s trust.)

Second, be respectful.

This isn’t as simple as minding your manners and choosing the right fork in a fancy restaurant. (Okay, that second thing is actually kind of tricky, but still.)

Respect is about how you treat people – not just your tone. It’s a matter of treating them the way you’d want to be treated, whether that’s responding in a crisis, making it easy to opt out of a newsletter, or just plain protecting their data. Show someone that they matter, and you show them respect.

Third, be real.

When it comes to this type of authenticity, you can’t just keep it real with what you say – you have to keep it real with what you do.

And what does that kind of realness look like, exactly?

Keeping it real with what you say means communicating openly and honestly with people.

It means telling it like it is, whether you’re explaining your policies, sharing what you learned from doing something wrong, or even just breaking down something complex in a way that’s easy to follow.

Keeping it real with what you do, on the other hand, means conducting business with integrity. It means having principles, and not pretending to be something you’re not. It means knowing your limits, and working within them.

This is actually the type of honesty consumers appreciate most. According to Cohn & Wolfe’s study, people care more about how you treat them than what you say your beliefs are – in other terms, actions speak louder than words.

What this means for you

You can pore over all the statistics in the Authentic 100 report, but there’s one major theme that runs through all the facts and figures:

The best way to show your authenticity is to be honest.

Be honest about what your brand can do for people. Respect them enough to tell the truth, and be honest to yourself by sticking to your principles.

The more you try to be something you’re not – be it through what you say or what you do – the easier it is for your authenticity to slip away. The more you stay true to yourself and focus on doing right by your audience, the better off you’ll be!

The post How People Judge Your Authenticity appeared first on Edgar Blog.

If you want a successful social media marketing campaign, there’s one thing you need.

No, it’s not the hottest social media scheduling tool (though that helps) and it’s not a secret algorithm that tells you when and where to post.

It’s much simpler than that. You need a good blog.

That’s where this guide comes in. See, over the next few months we’re going to be giving away some of the secrets that helped Edgar become a success in our first few years of business. Why? Because we like you, that’s why.

And we’re starting with the blog, because one of the biggest reasons that a lot of people, even successful entrepreneurs, don’t “get” social media is that they’re bypassing the blog. And if you try to dive right into the social networking part without building a blog first, you’re not giving yourself the foundation you need for success.

See, people don’t share links to great websites — they share links to great content. If you want to use social media to drive traffic to your business, you need to regularly produce blog content which you and the people in your audience can share. Think someone is going to share the link to your about page or your contact page, just because they love you so much? It’s not likely — but give them interesting blog content, and they’ll link to you over and over again.

Tweet: People don’t share links to great websites — they share links to great content.

Let’s be clear — the word “blog” doesn’t necessarily mean “web log” (aren’t you glad that didn’t catch on?) or “online journal” in this guide. We’re using that term to completely encompass all of the different types of content that are out there right now. Videos, podcasts, infographics — there are a lot of different types of content, and all of them can live on your site’s blog.

Your blog can (and should) be more than just words.

It doesn’t matter what type of content you’re creating, so long as you’re creating content that’s useful. But it does matter where you’re creating this content. It absolutely must be a part of your website as opposed to an external site, like Blogger.

That’s because you need to drive traffic back to your site! Too often, people send their audiences to YouTube to watch video, or to hosting sites where they can access an infographic or a podcast. When you do that, you’re sending people away from your website — which is the exact opposite of your end goal!

Even if your content is hosted somewhere else, don’t send your audience there — embed that content in your blog because, baby, that’s where the commerce happens. Check out this handy dandy chart to see what I mean:

Push traffic from social to your blog, then on to your site.

That big Death Star-looking thing on the left? That’s your website. It’s got your blog in it, as well as your purchase page, your contact page, your offerings, and so on. To its right are your social media status updates, driving people toward your blog. From the blog, visitors make their way further into your website — checking out your products, reading about your business, signing up for the email list, and generally making themselves right at home. None of that magic can happen if you’re sending someone to YouTube instead of your blog. That’s why you always want to plop your own content into your blog, and to link to it there.

Whether or not you’ve tried this blogging thing before, though, you’ve probably asked yourself an all-too-common question at one point or another: “What the heck am I supposed to do with a blog, anyway?”

The answer? Whatever the heck you want!

First off, let’s address what you’re going to blog about — because even if you’ve blogged before, you might be drawing a bit of a blank. Should your blog express the point of view, the values, the personality, or the philosophy of your business? The answer is yes; you’ve got plenty of options! Remember, people get to know you through your blog. It’s where they find out what you’re all about, so make sure that it shows who you are, and that it appeals to your customers!

Did you catch that last part? I said “customers,” not “other people in your industry.” Not “peers,” or “competitors,” or “your mother, who is oh so proud.” Because this isn’t social media for fun I’m talking here. It’s social media for business. And all of the strategy you’re going to learn in this series is designed to drive sales and engagement and leads toward your business.

So when you’re brainstorming ideas for your blog, think about what your customers would enjoy. What would they want to read about? What’s going to bring them closer to a sale? It doesn’t matter if you’re an ecommerce site where the sale begins and ends in the same place or if you’re just trying to get signups for your mailing list — the purpose of blogging is driving traffic toward your site.

Which brings us back to that initial question — what you’re going to blog about. This is the gazillion-dollar question…

Why do you do what you do? What matters to you? Why do you offer what you offer, or make the decisions you make? One of the keys to genuinely connecting with your audience is the “know, like, and trust” factor — and really sharing your philosophy is one of those topics that helps people get to know you, like you, and get down to business with you! Another key is authenticity — show your audience who you really are, and they’ll know they can trust you.

“Know, like, trust” is a concept you’re going to hear a lot in this series, so you might as well start thinking of ways to start connecting more with your customers on that level. In our next article, we’ll share some of the tactics that helped our customers know, like, and trust us, and see if we can find some ways to apply them to your own business. I bet we can…

The post The Edgar Guide to Blogging, Part One: Why You Need a Blog – Even if You Don’t Want One appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Ever stop to ask yourself what exactly you’re trying to accomplish on social media?

Seriously, think about it.

What are your top goals? What would have to happen for you to say you’re successful?

More followers?

More traffic to your website?

More likes on your latest selfie?

(Okay, that last one is a pretty solid goal.)

You’re free to create your own definition of success – in fact, you should – but knowing how other brands define their goals can give you some pretty valuable context! The better you understand common objectives and challenges, the more perspective you have on your own.

So, what are some of the most popular goals that brands have on social media?

Social Fresh recently published a study answering that very question – they asked hundreds of digital marketers about how they define success, and how much time they actually spend on social.

You can check out the full report here, but here’s a quick breakdown of some of the most surprising insights:

The most popular social media goal

What do more than three out of four digital marketers want out of social media?

Awareness.

76% of respondents cited it as one of their top goals – in fact, it was the only goal that more than half the respondents could agree on! (Lead generation finished in second place with only 47% of marketers choosing it.)

But the pursuit of “awareness” highlights some of the trickiest things about social media marketing.

Simply reminding people that you exist isn’t exactly setting a high expectation for yourself – and when you aren’t careful, low expectations can lead to low standards, and low effort.

(After all, if making people “aware” of you is your top priority, you can do that by pretty much just showing up to the party.)

The fact that awareness is such a priority for brands on social media speaks to the problem of what marketers call noise – in this case, low-value chatter that exists without any real goal other than being heard. Effectively building and maintaining brand awareness on social media requires a certain amount of respect for your audience, because otherwise, you’re just creating noise!

(As anyone who’s spent time with a screaming toddler will tell you, making noise is an effective way of making people aware of you – but it isn’t necessarily an effective way of making them like you.)

The other big problem with trying to generate awareness? It’s hard to determine its success.

Sure, you can measure how much awareness a status update generated by answering the question of how many people saw that update. But how does that translate to overall awareness – the space you occupy in those people’s memories, the feelings they associate with your brand, and the likelihood that they’ll become a customer, stay a customer, or refer you to a friend?

(See? “Awareness” can be a lot more complicated than it sounds!)

There’s a reason social is what they call “earned media” – if you want to keep your space in someone’s feed, you’ve gotta earn it! The key to earning it isn’t just in being seen, or awareness for its own sake – it’s in creating and sharing a variety of quality content that will actually be valuable to the people who see it.

This is where it’s easy to get it wrong

Social media marketing takes more than just a few plain status updates – and that’s where a lot of brands get stuck.

Of the marketers surveyed in this study, only 58% are writing a blog post even once a month. Other types of content – like webinars, infographics, podcasts, and videos – are even less popular!

(79% of marketers are creating images to go with their posts at least once a month, so at least that valuable strategy isn’t being ignored.)

This all raises some big questions about what brands are posting – especially because leaning too heavily on plain old self-promotion isn’t necessarily an effective approach.

This goes to show just how much you need a strategy.

Marketers spend 2/3 as much time just publishing to social media as they actually spend developing content in the first place – and when you factor in other daily tasks like engaging with your audience, strategic planning, listening (like checking notifications and mentions), and monitoring analytics, you’re looking at more than 80% of the day.

Marketers spend 2/3 as much time publishing to social media as they spend developing content.
Click To Tweet

80% of your day is a lot – especially if social media management isn’t your only job!

This is one of those times when it pays to work smarter, not harder – to save time where you can, so you can spend more time on the things that deserve your attention. (If you’re spending two hours publishing status updates for every three hours you spend writing blog posts, you can use your time more efficiently.)

Saving time on simple tasks like publishing to social allows you to be more thoughtful with everything else you do – and the more thoughtful you are, the more strategic and successful you can be.

What comes next

The most important lesson we can take away from this study?

Focus on improving what you already do, rather than looking for something new.

When asked what tools they planned to invest in the most over the next year, most marketers said Facebook. Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn were next – but Pinterest and Snapchat were each chosen by less than 15% of respondents.

Even if it feels like you’ve been on the same grind for quite some time, there’s still plenty of room to improve – focus your attention on finding ways to use your time more strategically, rather than looking for the next big thing!

The post The Most Popular Marketing Goal for Brands on Social Media appeared first on Edgar Blog.

In our last segment, we talked about why your website needs a blog (hint: it’s the cornerstone of your entire social media strategy) and we shared the importance of a little formula we call “know, like, trust.” Today we’re going to dig a little deeper into that, and we’ll offer a few ideas of how to build on that foundation with your audience.

With that in mind, here are some of the ways we’ve built our relationship with our audience, and how you can do it for your own business!

Go behind the scenes
Our businesses can seem pretty mundane to us, because we live with them day in, day out. But they can be surprisingly interesting to other people! Audiences love behind-the-scenes content from the businesses they’re interested in, and that includes yours — and bringing people in behind the scenes is a great way to help them know, like, and trust you.

Try sharing pictures from around your office, or inside peeks at how you make your products. It may seem a bit silly at first, but it can make a big impact! This is the sort of stuff that makes your company seem more human. Consider adding in employee interviews or Q&A, and other personal touches to kick this into even higher gear. Showing off your human side is the perfect way to help your audience form an emotional connection with your business.

Show off your expertise
If you’re going to have a blog, you may as well use it to demonstrate that you’re the top dog in your industry. It’s okay — you don’t have to feel like a showoff for doing it!

In the early days of Edgar, we leaned a lot on the success of our founder and fearless leader, Laura Roeder. Laura’s a thoroughly humble person, but sharing her success story helped establish Edgar as the product of Someone Who Knows What She’s Doing. It may feel like bragging… but it’s not! If you’re making waves in your industry, share it with your audience! When you win awards, have cool speaking engagements, or otherwise shine in your field, share it with your audience! You’ll be surprised how excited they’ll be to celebrate with you.

If you’re making waves in your industry, share it with your audience!
Click To Tweet

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also just post things that you think your customers will be interested in reading! Depending on your business, your blog doesn’t have to be super focused on the topic of the products or services you sell. Maybe you sell a commodity product. Maybe it’s something sensitive or somehow private that you shouldn’t be that forthcoming about. Heck, maybe it’s just a little… you know… boring.

There’s always more content that your audience will want to see.

But you know what? That’s okay. Whatever it is that’s holding you back, there are other directions you can go. Don’t assume that your business philosophy is too boring to sustain a blog, or that your customers don’t want to hear about you or what you do.

It makes the audience feel a real connection not just to the product, but to the person behind it. That affinity — which comes from the real human moment that we share — is exactly what people are looking for before they commit to buying. And that’s what your blog can achieve on a regular basis.

Just remember that no matter what you’re blogging about, the big, capital-p Purpose of your blog is to drive social media links back to your website! So anything that your customers are going to be interested in clicking on and sharing on social media is great fodder for your blog!

For example, one of our most talked-about blog posts of all time had to do with Facebook’s recent algorithm changes, which we’re experts in because, well, it’s our job to be. But it’s also a highly important subject for a lot of our audience who rely on Facebook to be a huge source of traffic. Sharing knowledge like this helps you to establish yourself as an expert, which is an easy way to build traffic for your site and trust from your audience.

So you may be starting to think of a few ideas for blog posts, but that leaves one big question unanswered: how often should you be posting these things? Ultimately, the answer depends on one simple thing: quality over quantity. I’m going to repeat that, just for extra emphasis. Quality. Over. Quantity! Because most new bloggers post either way too often or not at all, and surprisingly, one of those actually leads to the other.

But that’s a story for next time, when we’ll go into detail about your posting schedule and the best ways to promote your posts. Until then, start creating a list of ideas for ways to bring your audience behind the scenes, pieces of expert knowledge you can share with your followers, and other ways to build up that all-important relationship of know, like, trust.

The post The Edgar Guide to Blogging, Part Two: The Secrets of “Know, Like, Trust.” appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Most people have probably wondered what it would do for their business if they suddenly scored a major endorsement – and if you haven’t, you definitely should.

Not just for the reasons you already know, either! Because obviously, brands have been trying to score recommendations from influential tastemakers since always. They throw money at big-name endorsers for everything from luxury cars to books to Japan-exclusive male cosmetics.

But today, endorsement and influence look a LOT different – especially on social media.

(Spoiler alert: that’s really, really good news.)

Twitter recently teamed up with Annalect to conduct a study on social media influence – who people follow, who they trust, and how it shapes their behavior as consumers.

Some of the statistics they uncovered might seriously change how you feel about the connections you make on social media, along with the way you conduct outreach for your business and the relationships you nurture over time.

You want a big-name so-and-so to give your biz a big thumbs up? Here’s the deal:

Rethink what makes someone influential

There’s an old-school way of defining an “influencer” as a household name – a person with enough mainstream recognizability for audiences to presumably know, like, and trust them.

(That’s how you end up with ads in which Peanuts characters boast about the tax-deferred interest of MetLife annuities, or ALF reminds us not to litter in public parks.)

While this way of doing things hasn’t gone away, it’s no longer the only way of doing things – and that’s a change that can do a lot for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs!

Modern audiences are increasingly interested not just in household names, but in “handheld names.”

This is what Twitter calls people who have carved out a following and a reputation on social media, and whose opinions and recommendations resonate with their fans.

In some cases, an influencer may just be an Internet celebrity who’s paid to create content for whoever will pay them. (Superstar Vine magician Zach King probably doesn’t make you immediately think of Buick automobiles, but there you go.)

In other cases, though, an influencer can be someone who’s influential to a particular audience.

Hint: These are people your non-work friends may NEVER have heard of!

In the blogging world, for example, that might include someone like Darren Rowse from ProBlogger – not necessarily a name you hear around the average dinner table, but a huge deal in his industry!

Social media has empowered a lot of people to develop a lot of influence in small, specialized online communities.

How much influence, exactly? Take a look at these statistics:

49% of the users Twitter surveyed rely on recommendations from influencers. For perspective, 56% of the users surveyed rely on recommendations from friends. Knowing someone personally barely gives them the edge over a trustworthy-seeming stranger on the Internet!

Twitter users trust social media influencers almost as much as their own friends.
Click To Tweet

That trust shows in their spending habits, too. When a user sees tweets from a brand, their intent to purchase is 2.7 times higher than if they hadn’t – but when they see tweets from a brand and from an influencer, it’s 5.2 times higher.

Having an influencer in the mix can make a HUGE difference.

Which raises a big question:

Do you have to PAY for influencer recommendations?

In some ways, the handheld names that make powerful influencers on social media are similar to the household names you see promoting brands on TV. Fill their coffers enough, and of course they’ll promote you alongside a talking dog!

But when you’re trying to reach an influencer’s audience on social media, do you HAVE to pay big bucks like Buick and other brands do?

Absolutely not.

Of course, you can if you want. Internet celebs are literally a big business right now! For example, in Twitter’s blog post announcing the results of their study, they recommend working with Niche – a company that connects brands with influencers who would be effective at promoting them.

(Unsurprisingly, they didn’t mention that they actually acquired Niche in 2015.)

That’s not the only way to do things, though – and for you, it probably isn’t even the BEST way.

Remember, an influencer isn’t necessarily defined by their overall popularity so much as their popularity with a certain audience. Someone whose audience looks relatively small compared to high-profile Internet superstars might actually be a much better fit for your brand!

If you want to reach those people and their audiences, you might not need to spend a dime – but you DO need to remember two key guidelines for effective influencer outreach.

First, don’t be cynical. It’s temptingly easy to start thinking of this as a numbers game, like big companies do – to start valuing people based on their follower counts, or to think of them as means to an end.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs have the privilege of showing others more respect than that – so do it! Recognize that every “influencer” is a person with their own business and reputation, and their own rich, complicated system of beliefs and values. Identify influencers as people, not as tools, and build relationships with them.

Second, spend time instead of money. Get to know influencers – their audiences, their messages, and their missions. (Another reason it’s so important to look at them as actual people, instead of just as ways to promote yourself.)

For example, we do a lot of outreach in the form of guest posts on other blogs and appearances on podcasts – and these are often opportunities you don’t get unless you ask for them! Spend time looking for and pursuing opportunities like these – the network of colleagues you build can end up being a lot more valuable than just the influence of their recommendations.

What do you think of the “handheld name” phenomenon?

The increasing influence of niche handheld names in addition to big household names creates a lot of opportunities for smaller businesses – but also unique challenges.

What’s your experience with small-scale influencer outreach been like? Do you find it liberating? Frustrating? (Maybe both?) Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post How Handheld Names are Redefining Influence for Social Media Marketers appeared first on Edgar Blog.

You already know how important your blog is to your business, and how you can use it to build up the all-important values of Know, Like, and Trust with your customers.

(And if you don’t know either of those things, you should definitely click those links before reading any further – because this is the third part of our Guide to Blogging series!)

In this post, we’ll tell you how to manage a publishing schedule and how to promote your blog posts easily and efficiently.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You start a new blog. You’re pumped! You’re committed! You’re so jazzed about it that you’re posting every day. Good for you, right?

Except that sooner or later, you get burned out. You get busy with other things. You run out of ideas. That daily blog goes from being exciting to being a chore, and you’re falling behind in your business because you’ve been so focused on it. So you write less. And less. And less.

And then you just sort of stop altogether.

This is where a lot of businesses get tripped up. The solution? Stick with a sustainable schedule — one that you can actually maintain over the long haul. You’re much better off writing one amazing post that takes three times as long to write as three mediocre ones.

As you read on, you’ll see that you don’t need a ton of blog posts in order to have a really active social media presence, and to drive a lot of traffic back to your site. Putting a new post up on your blog is not your only reason for posting on social media (but we’ll get to that).

Start out simple, with one post per week. If that’s too much, one or two posts a month is totally acceptable. Again, you’re better off hunkering down and making something that you’re really proud of once a month than churning out mediocre post after mediocre post. Remember, people link to content they actually like, so you don’t have anything to gain from rushing out a crummy post just so it’s there!

If you need to, ask someone you trust to read your posts before you publish them and get their feedback — you might be surprised how much a fresh set of eyes can help!

Of course, just wanting to blog on a consistent basis isn’t going to help you make any progress (because you know where a pathway paved with good intentions leads). If you aren’t developing an actual, concrete plan for the future, you’re planning for failure.

An editorial calendar is the best way to make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success.

So many of us, when it comes to marketing tasks like writing blog posts, go into panic mode on a regular basis. We decide on a schedule — maybe we’re going to write every Monday — but we procrastinate, and when Monday arrives, we have no idea what to write about, and it doesn’t get done.

Don’t let that be you! You know that you’re going to have to update your blog, just like a magazine editor knows what articles they’re going to run for the next issue or a TV news producer knows what stories they’re going to film and broadcast for the next week. That means you need to know what you’re going to write about before the day you publish it on the web.

That’s where an editorial calendar comes in. This calendar is just a fancy way of making a plan — it allows you to plot out your blog posts ahead of time and stay organized, so you always know what’s coming.

Think of it this way: if you’re blogging once a week, and you sit down and come up with 12 blog topics and plot them out on your calendar, you’ve just set yourself up for the next three months. All you need to do is come up with 12 ideas for things your customers might want to read about — doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

The most important part, though, isn’t just filling in the calendar — it’s actually using it. Plan it out quarter by quarter, and, four times a year, take a good, hard look at it. Ask yourself, “Do I think my audience is going to dig what I’m writing about?” Once you feel good about your topics, actually writing about them is way easier — even if you’re sitting down and writing the post on the day it goes live, the hardest part is already taken care of before you even sit down at your keyboard.

But publishing blog posts is only the start for bringing traffic to your site. Once you write a post, you can log into your social media accounts and actually start promoting it.

How to Promote a Blog Post

Once you’ve written an amazing blog post, you probably just want to log into your social media accounts, put out the link once, and move on with your life, right? Wrong!

One of the worst things you can do with a blog post is to under-promote it — because you absolutely do not need a new blog post to justify a social media update. When you’ve written a blog post, you’ve created a leverageable piece of content that you can share over and over (and over) again.

That’s why writing high-quality content is so important! If you write a post that isn’t very good — and you know it isn’t very good — the last thing you’re going to want to do is promote it for the world to see. If you write something that you’re proud of, though, and that you think your audience will love, you’ll be more inclined to share it again and again.

You’ve heard the phrase “measure twice, cut once,” right? Well, when you’re just starting out with blog posts, you should write once, promote twice. As time goes on and you build up a bigger library of posts, you’ll be able to revisit older ones and promote them again for a new audience (something Edgar is really good at doing for you.)

So now you know why it’s important to have a blog, how to use it to build a relationship with your customers, how to manage a publishing schedule, and how to promote it to grow your audience. So if you haven’t started blogging yet, what are you waiting for? Get writing, and let us know how it goes in the comments!

The post How to Schedule & Promote Blog Posts appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Here’s something you don’t get to hear too often: good news about your Facebook reach!

(Seriously. Go ahead and bask in that feeling for a second.)

Because usually, getting Facebook to show your content to a wider swath of your audience feels like an uphill climb. Your reach is determined by a bunch of different factors – some of which are just plain out of your control!

But the average Facebook reach recently hit an 11-month high – and that has some encouraging implications for the future of your marketing.

A March 2016 study by Locowise revealed that organic reach recently got a massive bump, increasing by 60% since just a few months prior.

How high did it get, exactly? And what does it mean for your Facebook marketing plans moving forward?

“Good” is relative

In March, Facebook reach was the highest it had been since the previous May.

How high did it average? 20 percent? 30 percent? A million percents?

Turns out the number was more like…11.41 percent.

Yay.

Okay, 11.41% doesn’t sound that impressive.

It means that any given update is seen by what, 1.14 out of 10 people? That’s like, one person and someone else’s shoes!

But a little perspective goes a long way.

For example, in April 2015, the average organic reach for a post was only 4.11 percent. That’s a painfully low percentage of people seeing the stuff you’ve worked hard to write and share!

When you compare March’s reach of 11.41% to the recent past, then, it’s a lot more encouraging! That’s because in marketing, an isolated number isn’t nearly as valuable as the trends it might indicate.

A single statistic doesn’t matter – but trends do.
Click To Tweet

Pay attention to the trends, and you can do more of the things that make an actual positive difference for the future of your marketing. It’s like having your own private psychic!

(Okay, maybe it’s not QUITE like that. But it’s close!)

Speaking of understanding trends, though, there’s more to learn from these stats – so let’s take a closer look.

Different types of updates get different types of reach

For regular readers of our blog, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise: the type of Facebook update you post has a major impact on its reach.

(Side note: you can click here to make sure you don’t miss those kinds of juicy truth nuggets in the future.)

Not all updates are given the same weight when Facebook’s deciding who gets to see what – and the type of update is a big influence.

According to Locowise’s study, for example, the average organic reach for a video in March was 12.81%, while the average organic reach for a plain, non-link status update was a significantly smaller 6.45 percent.

(This goes to show that Facebook was making good on its promise to give live broadcasts priority placement in the News Feed. See – paying attention to trends makes a difference!)

Facebook reach is never random. Experiment, pay attention to algorithm changes and new features, and don’t write anything off as chance or bad luck – on Facebook, there’s always a reason something happened the way it did!

While you’re keeping all that in mind, there’s one more important thing these recent stats are telling you:

Jumping ship doesn’t get you far

It’s pretty natural to feel frustrated when Facebook reach is down, but that doesn’t mean you should quit making an effort!

These recent stats show that downswings aren’t necessarily permanent, and that you can expect positive change even after a prolonged period of disappointing stats – and this isn’t the only study to back that up.

Just look at the “problem” of young people abandoning Facebook.

Analysts have been clutching their pearls for years over the idea that younger audiences are bailing on Facebook in favor of the greener pastures of newer networks like Snapchat.

As early as 2013, CNET was reporting that teens were getting sick of Facebook – despite having what they described as “no hard-and-fast data” quantifying the “teen problem.”

If you bought it at the time, that would be a pretty scary assertion!

Three years later, how’s that “teen problem” look?

In the United States, 93% of people aged 13-29 are using Facebook each month – that’s more people in that age group than watch traditional television.

(Aren’t you glad you didn’t believe all that anecdotal evidence way back when?)

People aren’t leaving Facebook the way they were once predicted to, but statistics do show that they’re using Facebook differently.

The number of status updates posted by individual users is dropping, even though Facebook’s user base has grown, and people still spend a significant amount of time there. (Users aged 18-35 actually spend 2.5x as much time on Facebook as they do on the second most time-consuming network, Snapchat.)

And you’re going to love the reason why.

Facebook has been saying for a long time that it wants to be a place where people go to find and read quality content – and it looks like it’s getting its wish.

While people are using other social networks for the types of personal messaging they once relied on Facebook for, they’re still visiting Facebook as a tool for discovering new information – like the content you’re sharing.

More than 80% of Facebook users in the US are connected to a business. If your business is creating and sharing stellar content on Facebook, you’re giving people exactly what they’re looking for when they log on!

More than 80% of Facebook users in the US are connected to a business.
Click To Tweet

The point of all this is that while it’s changed over the years, statistically, Facebook is worth your time and energy – so take it with a grain of salt when you hear people talk about jumping ship.

Facebook isn’t done changing

While all of these stats show that Facebook belongs in your marketing strategy as much as ever, they ALSO show that this social network is always changing.

Using Facebook effectively is a never-ending challenge of adapting to new circumstances – but if you put the time and effort into doing it, it can pay off in big ways!

The post Recent Stats Show That People Use Facebook Differently Now – Here’s How appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part One of our series on Social Media Scheduling. To read our series on blogging, start here!

Promoting yourself and your content on social media can be ridiculously overwhelming… if you don’t have the right tools in your arsenal.

The trick to managing it all without losing your mind is automation – which means getting a good scheduling tool to help do the job. Here’s why it matters, and what you can expect.

Social media scheduling tools get things DONE.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: using a scheduling tool doesn’t mean that your social media is in anyone’s hands but your own. Automation doesn’t mean that some robot in a warehouse is writing and publishing your updates, or that you’re outsourcing your work to some sort of content farm, or that things are getting posted without your knowledge and approval. Social media scheduling tools simply allow you to upload your status updates in advance, set the times that they’re going to publish, and move on with your life.

When you update all of your social networks on the fly, things slip through the cracks. Typos and bad links, for example. You don’t really get to go back and edit, and strategically, you may not be able to see how every update fits into your style — its tone, its purpose, its message. Sometimes, you may even post things that you regret later on.

See what works, and repeat your successes.
Click To Tweet

When you schedule things in advance, you buy yourself the time you need to do it right. You can see what works, and repeat your successes. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter give you free access to tons of useful audience and performance statistics – information about clickthroughs from your status updates, for example, or when your followers are online. When you pay attention to data like this, you can schedule your updates smarter, and over time you can get a clear sense of what works and what doesn’t.

This is just another reason that a good social media tool is so important – after all, you may not always be at a computer during peak posting hours for your business. And it’s a lot easier to let a scheduling tool make sure your posts go out at the right times than it is to organize your whole schedule around tweeting at the right time.

Why you should automate.

The idea of social media automation can sound pretty scary, or even a little reckless. After all, isn’t social media all about the immediate, authentic human connection? Well here’s the secret: automation gives you time to do more of that.

When you automate your social media, you still have complete control over everything. You’re simply scheduling the publishing of each post, and nothing more. Which means that when you DO spend time on social media, you can maximize your authentic human interactions because everything else is already handled.

Say you’re going to do three updates a day, five days a week. That would add up to 15 updates a week. With four weeks in a month, that’s 60 total updates per month. And if you think of your social content in categories (Funny, Inspirational, Facts About Beyonce, etc) you only need 10 updates per category, per month.

Fact: Beyonce’s smile emits enough light to be seen from space.

Doesn’t sound so tough, does it? You could probably come up with your 10 Facts About Beyonce right now. You can easily sit down once a month and write those out in advance. Over time, it will become more and more apparent which types of updates resonate the most with your specific audience, and you can make adjustments. You’ll see what your audience likes the best, and you can adjust your social media strategy as you go.

The important thing is to start keeping track of those things now, so you can make those adjustments whenever you need to. And remember, when you’re playing the percentages game, you’re figuring things out on a monthly basis, not a daily one!

Reusing your content is good.

You know that recycling is good for the environment — well it’s good for your social media scheduling strategy, too! You can actually reuse your status updates as time goes on, making it significantly easier to maintain a consistent social presence. Heck, that’s literally what Edgar is designed to do!

“But… but what if someone sees something that I’ve already posted in the past?” You ask, “I don’t want to annoy my followers! I don’t want to be spammy.”

Well, here’s what happens when someone sees something you’ve already posted: nothing. Absolutely nothing! We get really, really worried about insignificant things like this, like posting the same inspirational quote that we posted three months ago, and somebody seeing it for the second time. But that’s not going to make anyone think less of you or your business!

You post the things you post because they mean something to you, and that makes them worth repeating from time to time. And remember, you may be seeing every single status update that gets posted, but your audience probably isn’t. Most people sign on to social media and see what’s in their newsfeed at that time — they aren’t digging through your archives and poring over every last update. So the odds that someone will notice a repeat are pretty slim — and if they do notice, they aren’t likely to care. (Unless you’re posting the same thing five times a week, because that would be pretty darn annoying.)

In general, you probably don’t want to post the exact same content more than once every two months or so. But that depends on you and your style, too — there are some people who post the same morning affirmation every day, or the same signoff every Friday afternoon, and it works quite well for them. Trial and error is going to be your new best friend when it comes to things like that, but in general, two months gives you enough time so that people in your audience don’t feel like they’re seeing the same thing time and again.

Just don’t go overboard!

Instead of just automating their updates, some people try to automate their interactions, too — and that’s when things get weird. The same automated reply goes out to everyone who mentions your company name on Twitter. Someone on your team posts messages and replies under your name without you knowing. Inauthenticity starts to creep in, and when it does, people notice — and it doesn’t look great. You can automate how the message gets delivered, but when it comes to the message itself, you should always have a direct hand in it, whether you’re reviewing a post that someone else wrote or you’re responding one-on-one to a customer.

Same with reusing content – if you post the same things over and over (and don’t give yourself that 2-month window) you risk boring your audience! But even if you re-post content only twice a year, you still need to make your status updates as evergreen as possible. That means they need to ring true at any time of day, any time of year — otherwise, you’re going to have to pretty rigidly police your schedule and make sure that things aren’t getting posted at inappropriate times.

That goes for subtle things, too. For example, you could write an update that says, “Today is the best day of the year,” but what if it gets posted on the day of a natural disaster or the untimely death of a celebrity musician? You probably wouldn’t find anyone agreeing with you.

Of course, you can’t predict everything. You don’t know who’s going to die, or when a tsunami is going to strike. So while you should be aware of possibilities like that — however remote they may be — don’t stress about them. Automation becomes inauthentic when you pretend to be somewhere you’re not, so ask yourself, “Would this update make sense at any time on any day?”

Automating your social media schedule and recycling your content are two big ways to save time while embracing a more efficient social strategy. Just be sure to remain authentic, and you’ll be well on your way to success!

The post Social Media Scheduling & Automation appeared first on Edgar Blog.

You might have heard the recent news that Twitter is changing the way it counts characters in your tweets – and you might also have been kind of confused by it.

(Don’t feel bad – even The New York Times had a hard time deciphering the announcement.)

Nobody’s perfect, @Twitter, but I feel like “Clearly describing how your own service functions” should be in your wheel house.

— Sam Adams (@SamuelAAdams) May 24, 2016

Twitter’s announcement that it’s giving users new ways to squeeze more stuff into their tweets should be exciting, but it also left a lot of people scratching their heads and dreading the new changes.

We figured we should break it down.

Want a quick, no-nonsense look at what’s changing? Here’s everything you need to know:

You have more characters to work with

Historically, when you’ve replied to someone’s tweet, the username (like @MeetEdgar) that appears at the beginning of your reply counts against your 140 characters.

The available number characters for this @-reply drops from 140 to 131 to accommodate the username at the beginning.

That’s not going to happen anymore.

Now whenever you reply to someone’s tweet, their username will still be at the beginning – but it won’t count against your 140 characters. Perfect for replying to people with super long usernames! (Not that there’s anything wrong with those. You do you, long-username-having people.)

This is also where a lot of confusion came from – so here’s the full explanation.

The announcement on Twitter’s official blog wasn’t necessarily as clear as it could have been, but their explanation for developers sets the record straight:

The ONLY time that usernames don’t count against your 140 characters is when they show up automatically as part of a reply.

If you write a new, non-reply tweet that starts with someone’s username, that username counts against your 140 characters. If you mention a user in the body of a tweet, that username counts against your 140 characters, too! The only time it won’t count is if you click the reply button.

(So don’t worry – nobody can compose a new tweet and just add infinite usernames to it. That would be a spam-pocalypse sort of situation.)

The changes don’t stop there, either – Twitter’s also going to stop counting media attachments against your 140-character limit.

Until now, media attachments like photos, polls, Quote tweets (like this), and GIFs have counted against your character limit – now you’ll be able to add media to a tweet and still have 140 characters to work with!

(So go on – add hilarious GIFs to your heart’s content. And to your Twitter content! Ah, homophone humor.)

Anyway, there are more changes coming that actually don’t have anything to do with the 140-character limit – changes like:

Self-retweeting

Know what else Twitter’s allowing you to do that you couldn’t before?

Close – now you can tweet yo self!

(Or more accurately, retweet yo self.)

Since basically always, you’ve been able to retweet other users, but not yourself. Any of your own tweets would have the “retweet” button grayed out and unclickable, like so:

Other people could retweet this message we shared – but we didn’t have the option.

Now, though, Twitter’s giving you the power to retweet yourself. You can even quote one of your own tweets, so you can add to and elaborate on something you already tweeted!

Before you get caught up imagining all the tweets you can tweet, though, there’s one more big change that Twitter announced:

You can quit doing that thing with the period

You know – that thing, with the period!

.@MeetEdgar and @zapier joined forces #automateyourbiz #pimpyourproductivity

— Kimber Lee (@thebizbestie) May 25, 2016

Traditionally, when you compose a new tweet that starts with someone’s username, the only way it will show up in a follower’s timeline is if they follow both you and the person whose name you mention.

But what if you want to post a tweet that everyone in your audience will see just like normal, while starting that tweet with someone’s username?

The most common workaround has always been the period thing – dropping a period in front of the person’s username, like in the example above. It enables you to write a tweet that starts with a username while ensuring that it shows up in everyone’s timeline just like a normal tweet.

You don’t have to do that anymore!

Now when you write a new tweet, you can start it with a username and it’ll still show up in your followers’ timelines like any other tweet would – no period-based workaround required.

Here’s the thing that’s easy to miss, though: this only works with new tweets, not replies. If you want a reply to show up in all of your followers’ timelines, you’ll have to retweet it – good thing you can retweet yourself now!

So get ready

These changes are coming to Twitter soon – according to the network, “over the coming months.” Keep your eyes peeled for when they go into effect, so you can tinker with your tweets accordingly!

The post How Twitter’s New Features and Changes Actually Work appeared first on Edgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part Two of our series on Social Media Scheduling, where we’ll look at how to schedule social media posts using categories. Click here to read Part One!

Today we’re going to take a close look at using categories to help you schedule social media posts.

Categorizing your posts is one of the core philosophies behind MeetEdgar. We’ll explain why it makes a huge difference in how your posts are created and scheduled, and we’ll show you how to pick categories that make sense for your content.

But first – let’s be clear about what we mean by “categories.” Take a look at the last ten things you put out on social media. Can you start grouping them together in some way? For instance, are some links to other people’s content, some questions to your audience, and some links to your own content? Congratulations – those are all categories!

Creating content in batches.

One of the biggest advantages to categorizing your content is that it lets you easily create content in batches. This saves you time and makes your monthly social media strategy more efficient.

How? It’s simple. Say you’re going to do six updates a day, five days a week. And for the record, that’s a ton — you probably don’t need to update that frequently. But if you did, that would add up to 30 updates a week. With four weeks in a month, that adds up to 120 total updates per month. Do you really want to sit down and write 120 updates all at once?

But if you have six categories, you only need 20 updates per category, per month.

Categories let you divvy up the content and more easily create it in batches.

The post Schedule Social Media Posts Like a Pro, with Categories appeared first on Edgar Blog.

It’s been two years since we sent out our very first round of invitations to use Edgar – and while we thought we learned some valuable business lessons after our first year, the past 12 months have been packed with surprises.

This time last year, our team was 13 people – now it’s 18 and counting! We’ve grown to more than 5000 users. Edgar has 3.2 million status updates in his libraries, and they get sent to nearly 70,000 social media profiles.

(No pressure, right?)

Basically, we’ve grown a lot over the course of year two – and that means we’ve learned a lot.

But while growing a lot is a good problem to have, it doesn’t mean that the lessons of the past year always came easy. In fact, knowing about this stuff ahead of time probably would have made growing a whole lot faster and easier.

That’s why today, we wanted to share some of the biggest lessons we’ve learned over the past year!

Getting a business off the ground is one thing – but making sure it has staying power is another entirely.

How do you avoid the sophomore slump when you’re running a new business? What do you have to keep in mind – and what do you have to actually do – to keep up the momentum you built when you first started out?

Here are some of the most valuable lessons we learned in year two – and how you can apply them to your own business no matter how old (or young) it may be.

Focus on “how,” not “if”

According to the Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel tracked their progress through the woods by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

This proved to be highly impractical.

For one thing, gluten-based methods of monitoring your success are rarely the solution. But for another, knowing where you’ve been and understanding how you got there are very different things.

Hitting your goals isn’t nearly as valuable as figuring out how exactly you hit them.

This is why it’s so important not only to set goals for yourself, but to break those goals down into tasks – that way, you can better understand what works and what doesn’t.

Over the past year, we’ve renewed our focus on major milestones, and on analyzing what we did to hit those milestones as we reached them. It’s made it easier not only to celebrate big wins, but to objectively identify what actually works and what only feels like it works.

Instead of just looking at what you did, look at why you did it, and whether it made a measurable difference.

Otherwise, the actions you take are just like dropping breadcrumbs – it seems at the time like it’s helping, but after a little time passes, repeating your past successes and avoiding your past mistakes becomes more of a matter of chance.

Let go of things that don’t add actual value

We’ve written before about the dangers of task-switching, and how multitasking in your everyday routine kills your productivity.

In our second year, though, we had to accept that multitasking on a large scale is just as dangerous – and it’s a habit you need to break.

That means letting go of the things that don’t make a positive impact – no matter how much you want to keep them.

For us, that meant saying goodbye to a program we’d run for years – an annual course that had actually been taken by thousands!

As close to our hearts as the Creating Fame program was – we’d been running it since 2009 – it eventually become a distraction. It pre-dated Edgar, and Edgar had grown so much that financially, marketing and operating the program took more time and energy than it was worth.

So we had to let it go.

Get used to cutting parts of your business loose – even ones that aren’t that old.

Creating Fame was technically totally separate from Edgar already, but we had to be ruthless this year about cutting newer additions to our business, too!

In late 2014, when Edgar had only a few hundred users, we launched a Facebook group where those users could interact with both us and each other. Edgar HQ was a place where we could make announcements, and our users could offer us feedback. (And frankly, everyone had a really good time there!)

Within a year, though, the group we loved so much had outgrown its purpose. As its membership ballooned into the thousands, we realized that maintaining and moderating the group was getting in the way of the very thing we set out for it to do: empowering our users, and enabling us to provide stellar customer service and a continually improving tool.

In January 2016, we shut the group down, and found more scalable ways to fulfill its intended purpose. We built a better system for collecting and listening to user feedback, we beefed up our help database, and we’ve doubled down on sharing announcements via email and our official update blog. By focusing our energies on things that can grow along with our user base, we’ve made it easier to provide the kind of support people want and expect.

Don’t make business decisions based on your emotional attachments. Make them based on whether or not something adds value to your business!

(Another example of where this comes up: the hiring process. Don’t base your choices on what you like or don’t like – base them on what makes sense for your business!)

Speaking of scalability, though, there’s another big change we made this year, and one that every business should keep in mind – no matter its size or its age.

Make life easier for new hires

When you only hire one person every few months, bringing them up to speed isn’t necessarily that difficult. Sure, it’s work, but it’s gonna be a long time before you have to do it again for someone else!

Unless, you know, it isn’t.

When you’re growing quickly, you need to find ways to streamline and speed up that process.

We hired a bunch of new people in our second year, and not always one-by-one, either – sometimes we’d add multiple people in a single week, and that forced us to find more efficient ways to catch them up.

That meant building out documentation, and lots of it. Training manuals, branding guidelines, instructions and how-tos in our employee wiki – we created an easily searchable database of info and know-how that would help people new to the company hit the ground running.

(Kind of like one of those old-timey employee training videos, but less cheesy and weird.)

And now you’re ready to work at Blockbuster Video!

There will come a day when you just don’t have time to spend hours and hours personally walking every new hire through the onboarding process yourself. Prepare for that day by documenting as you go!

As you document, though, keep one thing in mind:

Don’t fight natural changes

Nothing you do is written in stone – not even your name.

When we launched Edgar two years ago, we wanted to introduce him to people – that’s where our URL came from!

And while we sort of meant to leave it at that, over time we found that having gone with MeetEdgar.com had a bit of an unintended side effect: people kept calling us Meet Edgar!

So we figured, what the hey – if that’s what it makes sense to call us, we’ll roll with it. Our scheduling tool still goes by Edgar, but as of June 2016, we’ve changed the name of our actual company to MeetEdgar, and created pretty new logos to go with it:

Don’t stick with something just for its own sake. If you’ve made a decision with purpose, by all means, own that decision – but if the wind is blowing a certain way and you don’t have a real reason to fight it, why would you?

(Besides, it always sounded kind of grammatically weird to say that we “work at Edgar.”)

On to year three

Yes, hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to look back on what you’ve accomplished and think about what you would have done differently if only you’d listened to your tarot card reader.

Ultimately, though, learning lessons like these the hard way isn’t a bad thing – it’s what gives you the knowledge and the tools to improve yourself!

So for now, take what we discovered in our sophomore year and apply it to your own business. Analyze your actions, focus on what provides value, document your way of doing things, embrace big change – and in the meantime, we’ll see what lessons we can pick up in year three!

The post What We Discovered On the Road to 5000 Users appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.