Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part One of our series on Facebook Marketing, where we’ll give away some of the Facebook marketing tips we follow ourselves.

Believe it or not, this September will mark the 10th anniversary of Facebook being available to anyone with an email address (before that, you had to have a .edu email address). That’s a long stretch of time for a social media network remain relevant, and it’s easy to see Facebook has done far more than just that. After all, how many other social sites star in their own movies?

Facebook hasn’t just endured; it has thrived. It’s still the most widely used social network around, which is why it’s generally a great place to reach your audience. But there are so many people using the platform that you can waste a lot of marketing efforts if you don’t know just what you’re doing.

We’re going to assume that you’ve already got some sort of presence on Facebook, and focus these tips on expanding your reach and growing your audience. With that in mind, here are some of our top Facebook marketing tips regardless of your marketing budget!

Facebook Marketing Tip #1: Find your audience

There are over 1.5 billion-with-a-B people on Facebook. That’s about five times as many people as there are in the entire USA. Luckily, there are a lot of ways Facebook makes it easy for you to connect with the right audience, instead of just shouting into the darkness and hoping to be found.

Our best tip for reaching your audience is to use the Ad Manager to create a lookalike audience. A lookalike audience, according to Facebook’s mighty algorithms, has many things in common with a page’s regular audience, except the lookalikes don’t actually like that page themselves… yet. For example, maybe most people who likes your page also like surfing, classic jazz, and a certain fast food restaurant. Creating a lookalike audience will target people who also like those things (and many more), but who don’t like your page.

And that sounds like a pretty ideal group of people to introduce yourself to, doesn’t it?

To create a lookalike audience, enter the Ads Manager through Facebook’s left-hand nav, then use the dropdown menu to get to Audiences.

Lookalike audiences let you target people who have a lot in common with your current fans.

Facebook Marketing Tip #2: The Ad Manager is your friend

For a gargantuan company with an incredibly complex platform, Facebook’s advertising tools are surprisingly user friendly. Their support documents are even filled with tips on strategy, not just execution. That means that you can find out what you should be doing as well as how to do it. They’re a great place to learn, even (or especially) if you’ve never run a Facebook campaign before.

And what’s the Ad Manager good for? Ads, of course! There are two basic variations of ads in Facebook – the promoted post and the traditional ad. Here’s what you need to know about each:

Promoted posts

Promoting a post means injecting ad money into something you’ve already published in order to put it in front of more people. It’s the simplest way to start using paid ads on Facebook, and it has a lot of potential power.

Facebook recently changed the way promoted posts work, making them much more valuable to marketers. It used to be that your abilities were severely limited when it came to selecting who saw your promoted post. But that’s no longer the case, which is great news for you!

This means you can now promote a post, and target the super-useful lookalike audience we talked about above.

To promote a post, simply select the post you want to promote, and click “Boost post.” You’ll be taken to this easy-to-navigate window:

Promoted posts now have much more useful targeting!

Facebook Marketing Tip #3: Testing is your friend

As we mentioned above, A/B testing can be a crucial element of your Facebook marketing strategy. While you can’t A/B test promoted posts, you can certainly create ads via the Ad Manager and set up some good hardcore scientific testing!

Sound daunting? It shouldn’t be. Here’s all you need to know about A/B testing: know what result you’re testing for, make sure your tests variations are exactly the same except for one element, and run the test long enough to get a meaningful sample size.

Here’s an example:

You want to get people to click a link in your Facebook ad that drives to your webpage. You create two ads, each with an image and a headline. The image in each ad is different, but the headline’s the same. You run the ads until each one has been seen by around 1,000 people, and you see which one drove more traffic to your webpage.

Boom. You’re running a scientific A/B test. On Facebook. High five!

A note about sample size – to make sure your sample size is truly statistically meaningful, use a calculator like this one. If that’s too much science for you – no worries! We will usually consider a thousand views to be enough to see a winner in a test. If things are too close to call after a thousand people have viewed it, there’s probably not a big difference to be found.

Facebook Marketing Tip #4: None of this needs to be expensive!

A solid advertising plan doesn’t rely on a big budget. While the size of your audience will always affect how many people see your posts, we find that a $10 spend will usually get you about 1,000 new views. And if you’re targeting correctly, those thousand people will likely have a lot of reasons to be interested in what you’re promoting. It’s money well spent!

A solid advertising plan doesn’t rely on a big budget.
Click To Tweet

But you don’t need to spend at all! You know we’re big fans of repeating content here at MeetEdgar, because every time you post something it has a chance to be seen by new eyes. You should also keep a close eye on your Facebook traffic, and do more of the things that drive the most traffic. And most importantly, you should make sure to use Facebook to send traffic to your blog over other parts of your website.

These tips should help you get started on your way to becoming and expert Facebook marketer. Give them a try and let us know how it goes!

The post Facebook Marketing Tips for Any Budget appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Emoji got you like 🤔?

That’s ok – it would have been hard for anyone to predict just how popular these modern emoticons would get, especially in marketing!

In fact, the use of emoji by brands via email and mobile has gone up 777% since the beginning of 2015.

(If there were a “bandwagon” emoji, this is where we’d put it.)

So, there are a lot of these things out there, and brands love using ‘em.

Raises a big question:

Do emoji really belong in your marketing?

Should your brand be among the enormous, growing percentage of those embracing the likes of in their marketing? Should you be looking for creative ways to use or 🦄 in a sentence?

Sure, there are ways to market with emoji

Emoji are popular with consumers – like, really popular.

As of September 2015, 92% of online consumers use ‘em. In June 2016, Apple announced that emoji are going to display a whopping three times larger, and that AI will be able to predict times when you could use emoji instead of words.

(Turns out The Matrix may have overestimated just how scary the future of artificial intelligence would be.)

People love emoji so much that the people who make them keep on cranking out more, too! More than 70 new ones are being added to iOS and Android keyboards in 2016, not to mention the 1000+ that Facebook added to its own messenger app in June.

(Plus, new ones are always in the works. Google, for example, has proposed new additions to the emoji lexicon that would give women more options for representing their careers.)

A few of the new emoji proposed in 2016. Source: http://unicode.org/L2/L2016/16160-emoji-professions.pdf

So yeah, people love emoji – and that means brands have jumped on board.

Sometimes, just slipping an emoji or two into a message give it a little pop of personality, and keep it casual.

Back for another round of campfire tales… #SmoresFrappuccino
⛺️ pic.twitter.com/0wasbP4BOV

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 26, 2016

Heck, DiGiorno actually uses emoji so much that it tweets about how much it uses emoji:

#NeverTrustAnyoneWho doesn't have in the frequently used section. pic.twitter.com/AJm22rNuZK

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) May 13, 2016

So yes – there are creative ways you can use emoji in your marketing.

And yet…

Emoji aren’t always right for everyone

Yeah, consumers love using ‘em. And some brands do, too!

But does that mean it’s a bandwagon you should be jumping on?

Not necessarily.

(Remember – just because you can do something doesn’t mean you always should!)

Not every subject is a good candidate for an emoji-laden conversation – and that means not every brand is, either.

Just look at what happens when politicians try to get in the emoji game as a way of connecting with their online audiences! (Hint: it usually backfires.)

.@HillaryClinton is there a "condescended to" emoji

— Jennifer Schaffer (@jmschaff) August 12, 2015

The informality of emoji makes them a strong fit for brands that don’t have to take themselves too seriously, but also means they’re generally too glib for sensitive issues and heavy topics.

What works for one brand doesn’t necessarily work for another, and this is the perfect example. Consumers in general are receptive to emoji-speak, but if it isn’t appropriate for your specific brand, they’ll notice.

If you’re not sure whether this sort of thing is too casual for your business, take a hard look at your branding and identity. What’s your tone? Who’s in your audience? What sort of image do you want?

The question isn’t whether this can be done, or even if it can be done well. It can! The question is whether or not you should – and only you can answer that.

So think of yourself first

Emoji are just like any other big trend – they might be everywhere you look, but whether or not they belong in your marketing is less about the trend and more about you.

By thinking about emoji in the context of your brand – instead of just the context of popular culture – you’ll have a much easier time deciding whether they’re right for your business!

How do you feel about emoji in marketing? Casual and cute? A new harbinger of the collapse of language as we know it? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post What the Emoji Boom Means For Your Marketing appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part One of our series on Facebook Marketing, where we’ll give away some of the Facebook marketing tips we follow ourselves. Click here to read Part One!

There are a lot of metrics you can use to judge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts on Facebook. And while the amount of traffic being driven to your own website is probably your ultimate measure of success, it’s by no means the only one you should be monitoring. In fact, before you worry about conversions, you should become familiar with reach.

Facebook reach – that is, the number of people who are seeing your content – is perhaps the most basic measurement of posting success. After all, if no one is seeing your content in the first place, it’s going to be pretty hard to get them to interact with you in any way!

Facebook reach is also incredibly easy to boost – throwing even a few dollars into a post can put it in front of hundreds of new faces. This makes it a good place to start if you’re new to Facebook marketing, as it’s easy to see results. Of course, there’s also plenty you can do to boost your organic (unpaid) reach, and we’ll be sharing some pointers for that as well!

Understanding Facebook Reach

As we said above, your reach is simply the number of people who see what you’ve published. But there are some other important numbers you need to understand before you can really start making sense of whether or not your reach is effective.

The first thing to understand about reach is that it’s not a measurement of how many people actually read or otherwise interact with your content. Likes, shares, and other clicks are a much better indication of that. We’re going to lump those all together into a catch-all stat called engagement. And we’ll talk more about engagement in a future Edgar Learn post.

Reach means that your content appeared in someone’s News Feed and passed in front of their eyeballs. Maybe they stopped to read it, or maybe they scrolled right by and barely registered its existence. And that’s okay! Not everyone will read every one of your posts, and as long as you’re building your reach you’re building your potential pool for engagement and conversion.

The reach of a post about reach, in a post about reach…

The other main thing to keep in mind is that the typical Facebook post reaches a tiny sliver of your audience. In fact, the most recent numbers indicate that only around 11% of your followers will see a particular one of your posts (which is actually good news, because it used to be closer to 4%). So don’t get discouraged by seemingly low reach! Chances are you’re right in line with the norm.

Building your organic reach

Now that you understand the basics of what reach means, let’s talk about what you should be doing to reach a wider audience – without spending a dime!

Organic reach is determined by Facebook’s algorithms, which are shrouded in mystery and constantly changing. In general, it’s best not to worry about the particulars of the algorithms, and to just focus on creating quality content that people will want to read (because that’s what the algorithms are trying to promote anyway), but there are a few exceptions.

It’s best not to worry about the particulars of the algorithms, and to just focus on creating…
Click To Tweet

Facebook’s newest fascination is live video. So your live video content is going to get a bump over traditional, non-live content. But running a Facebook feed consisting purely of live video would be wildly impractical (although probably in a fun, semi-insane sort of way). Instead, just be aware that live video should be an important part of your toolkit, and use it as needed.

Remember when we said that your reach helps drive engagement? Well your engagement also helps drive reach. That is to say, the more people you have clicking and liking and sharing your post, the more people your post will reach. It’s a built-in snowball effect, but again it’s all aimed at giving Facebook users content that is interesting and useful to them, instead of just cat memes and pictures of babies.

Not a great way to get Facebook reach.

Knowing that, here are two key ways to boost your organic reach (without getting too bogged down in the details):

1. Repeat content. We talk about this a lot here, but repeating content should be a key part of your strategy. Simply put – you know that the average reach of a post is now around 11% of your audience. That means roughly nine out of ten followers will miss what you post. Why not give them another chance to see it?
2. Do more of what works. Think of your posts in categories, and keep an eye on what categories reach more people. You’ll probably find that your audience responds well to posts from a certain category, so just give them more of what they like!

We can get into more specifics (and indeed already have), but for this post we still need to talk about…

Paying for a bigger reach

Let’s get this out of the way first: spending money on Facebook is always completely optional! In fact, at Edgar we recommend that promoting posts and paying for reach be the exception, not the rule.

So in general, while it’s easy to spend a few bucks to increase your reach, it should only be used in a few specific cases. Those cases are:

1. You’re promoting a contest or event. Especially on a relatively short timeline, where repeated posts would become annoying or tedious for your audience.
2. You have a particularly successful organic post. If one of your organic posts has really taken off, it’s probably pretty good content! It makes sense to throw a couple dollars into it to reach more people can make sense.

In each case, the most important part of boosting your post is to stay within your budget! Spending just $5 to $10 per post is a great way to get the hang of things, and Facebook’s Ads Manager is full of helpful guides to get you started.

Speaking of getting started – this post should give you what you need to know to understand the basics of Facebook reach. Follow the links from this article to learn more, and stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll get into more specific strategies for crafting catchy posts!

The post Facebook Reach: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

How do you tell if your blog is working?

(And what does that even mean, exactly?)

You know that it can make a massive difference to maintain a blog, even if you don’t necessarily want one.

But how do you make sure that it’s actually moving the needle for your business in a real, measurable way?

If you want your blog to actually be worth your time, you need to do more than just research, write, and promote amazing posts. (Which you can learn how to do right here, BTW.)

You need to know how successful marketers measure their success, and how they use that information to make their blogs more and more effective!

(If you don’t, you’re just kind of doing something because you can – and that’s a good way to waste time.)

You want your blog to become a seriously powerful part of your marketing plan?

Here’s what you should check on a regular basis to see how you’re doing – and what you can improve.

Traffic patterns

The first thing to ask yourself is probably the most obvious:

How much traffic does my blog get?

Once you set up a solution for monitoring traffic – like Google Analytics, which is free – you have a lot of data at your fingertips.

(In fact, it might feel like a little too much.)

Wanna make sense of it all?

Here are three definitions to remember.

The visitors to your blog are users. Every time a user comes to your blog, that’s a session – they might read one blog post in a session, or they might read more. Every time they click to a different page, though, that’s a pageview.

(So if your blog gets 1000 sessions in a day but 5000 pageviews, that means the users visiting your blog are looking at multiple pages! Go you!)

When you look at those stats, see how they change over time. This can help you determine which posts perform better than others.

For example, take a look at this chart tracking sessions across a period of a few weeks:

Each of those dots represents a day – clearly that day in the middle was a good one!

In this case, we might ask ourselves what we posted on that day, because it’s clearly something our audience is super interested in. (It was this post, in case you’re curious.)

We’ll look at that chart again in a second, but for now, there’s more to see in your traffic patterns.

For example, how are people accessing your blog?

When we look at our Google Analytics, we see that the most popular operating systems people use when accessing our blog are:

1. iOS (32%)
2. Windows (31%)
3. Macintosh (24%)
4. Android (11%)
5. Other (2%)

We can see that on average, almost a third of our users are accessing our blog via iPhone – it’s the most popular way to get there! If we didn’t already make it a priority for our blog to be comfortably readable on a small screen, this would definitely give us a hard push in that direction.

One of the best things about developing a content strategy is that once you’ve started blogging, you don’t have to make up your plan out of thin air. Your site’s visitors are already telling you what they want – all you have to do is listen.

Here’s another way to do just that!

Post popularity

Like we saw in that chart above, your analytics can tell you a lot about whether a blog post piques the interest of your readers – and over time, that information adds up.

The more you blog, the more easily you can identify patterns in what people want to read the most.

For example, our most popular blog post in February 2016 was about recently-announced Facebook algorithm changes. Our most popular post the next month was about new Facebook features, and how they might affect algorithms in the future. Our most popular post the month after that explained in detail how Facebook algorithms work.

(Notice a pattern?)

Posting consistently allows you to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Not everything you write will be a hit – but it takes the occasional flop to make your successes stand out. (Here’s where you can learn more about pivoting a strategy.)

You might find that your audience loves instructional how-to articles. You might find that they love behind-the-scenes posts, or posts that talk about recent news in your field. The only way to find out what your audience responds to the best is to try different things and measure your results!

Your blog doesn’t exist in a vacuum, though – traffic has to come from somewhere. And that’s why the last set of statistics you should monitor might be the most important of all.

Content delivery

Sometimes, people find your blog posts all on their own. That’s what search engines are for!

But relying on that kind of traffic alone isn’t always, well, reliable. Getting the most out of your blog means finding a way to actively drive traffic there.

Social sharing is one way to do it – and while there are a number of ways you can encourage readers to share on social, you should also keep track of which posts end up being shared the most. (And whether those shares translate to higher traffic!)

Same goes for your newsletter, which can actually end up being one of the most important aspects of your entire content strategy!

For example, here’s a look at our blog traffic over a period of almost three months, with the days that our weekly newsletter went out marked by a red dot:

Our newsletter alerts our readers that a new blog post is available, and every single week, we get the most traffic to our blog on the day we send that newsletter! (Over the period shown in that chart, the newsletter was our second-biggest source of traffic, bringing in more than a quarter of all our readers.)

This is why optimizing your content delivery is as important as the content itself.

In the case of a newsletter, that means keeping track of things like your open and clickthrough rates. How many of the people who receive an email open it? How many of the people who open it decide to click the link you put inside?

By answering these questions every time, you can determine patterns that make it easier to improve over time. (We actually test two different subject lines for every newsletter, so we can find patterns in what people are more likely to open!)

Building out your content delivery plan happens right on your blog, too.

The people reading your blog are probably already interested in what you have to say – in addition to making it easier to share it via social, you can encourage those readers to sign up for your newsletter, so they never miss a new post. (Just make sure it isn’t too aggressive.)

The more people visit your blog on a regular basis, the more shares you can get on social – and that means your users’ audiences become your audience. This is how your blog actually grows.

(Just remember to track your signups, too! Changing just a word or two in an opt-in box can make a huge difference.)

The best blogging strategies go beyond the blog itself – by actively creating ways to get people to your blog, you make it easier to build an exponentially larger audience!

There’s more to see

Optimizing your blog’s performance doesn’t end here. Monitoring stats like your bounce rate, for example, can help you identify even more places with room for improvement.

When you’re focused on the standard everyday stuff, though, remember to ask yourself these questions on a regular basis – and don’t leave the value of your blog up to chance!

The post How You Can Tell If Your Blog Is Actually Working appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part Three of our series on Facebook Marketing, where we’ll give away some of the Facebook marketing tips we follow ourselves. Click here to read Part Two!

No matter what the overall strategy of your Facebook presence is, a big part of its success will depend on the strength of your individual posts.

So how do you write that elusive clickworthy status update? What’s the secret? The simple truth is that the easiest way to promote a business on Facebook is to stop writing as a business, and start writing as a person talking about a business.

Because that’s what you are! (Unless you actually are a sentient business, in which case… well, carry on!) Letting your audience know that there’s a real, live human behind the screen gives them someone to connect with. Remember: people don’t connect with brands. People connect with people.

People don’t connect with brands. People connect with people.
Click To Tweet

How to Promote a Business Like a Person

Think of your social posting as relationship-building on a large scale – a free way of interacting with hundreds or thousands of people at once. At the same time, when a follower responds to an update that was seen by thousands of people, you can quickly, easily, and seamlessly respond directly to that one person.

We’ve talked about the value of Know, Like, Trust before – and it definitely comes into play here. When you post, no matter what you post, you are giving your audience a chance to know you better and a chance to like you more – and that adds up to a level of trust that makes their purchasing decisions easier.

Keep that in mind, particularly if you’re hesitant to post about things that don’t relate directly to your business. It’s sort of like going to a business convention. You know everyone has something to promote, but do you only talk business while you’re there? Probably not! Social media is no different – look to engage in conversations and actually connect with people on a personal level. Be a person, not just a brand!

It’s all about making those personal connections.

Find Balance in What You Post

Statistically, audiences tend to gravitate toward the inspirational and the funny. While you may feel like sharing a goofy video, a funny article, or an inspirational quote is irrelevant to your business, it can get a ton of shares — the trick is just to not overdo it. Because if you only ever share the funny stuff, for example, the people in your audience who care about your business may stop paying attention — and the people who do pay attention may not care about your business. While you can make it part of the mix, don’t get carried away.

If you’re going to post something funny and irreverent, your next post should always be a link back to your blog. This ensures that you get back on message after you get yourself in front of that bigger audience. It also helps weed out the followers who aren’t going to benefit your business — you’ll drive relevant traffic to your site, and any followers you lose probably wouldn’t have benefited you that much anyhow.

Too many companies are either all business or no business when it comes to their social media — do you know which one you might be, or which one you risk becoming? Some businesses are overwhelmingly self-promotional — if a company only ever posted about itself, you’d have to be a pretty devoted fan to want to follow it on social. On the other hand, if you’re so afraid of sounding salesy that you rarely or never self-promote, your audience isn’t getting the info about your company that it needs — or the links that lead them back to your website!

The trick is to find the balance that works best with your audience, and drives them to share your content with their own friends. And why do you want to post things that get shared? Well, remember that rad Death Star-looking diagram in our guide to blogging? The one that showed how social traffic funnels through your blog into your website? This one right here:

That’s no moon… it’s your website!

Well, here’s what it looks like when your posts start getting shared:

The more your posts are shared, the more traffic you drive.

Look at all that sweet, sweet traffic! Just remember: posting about your business and nothing but your business is a recipe for bored followers, but it’s obviously important to do it once in a while! Linking to new blogs shouldn’t be your only reason for updating on social. Depending on your business, status updates could also mean linking to new product pages, or announcements. Maybe you’re telling your audience about a sale, or a new team member, or a new location for your business. This is where you can share anything you want with the people who will care the most, and create more variety in the ways you talk about your business!

Publish Often

When you draft a social media update, do you hesitate to click on that “publish” button? Don’t be afraid! Just remember, the worst update is no update. This is the number one reason that people struggle to make social media work for their businesses! They don’t update enough, or even not at all, and that’s one of the worst sins you can commit with your social profiles. The average Facebook post reaches 11% of your audience, so you really don’t have to worry about overly saturating your followers!

Plus, not every single status update that you send has to reveal some profound new truth about the universe. It’s okay to make small talk. In fact, that’s often what works the best — sometimes a simple question like “What city do you live in” can get a big response. And, depending on your brand and your audience, it could be a wise move to skew a little light, instead of asking things like “What are your feelings about religion?” Overall, don’t fret about making it too light or too deep — just make it you.

And keep experimenting. Write and use different status updates for a single blog post, and see which one gets the best reaction. Embed images and video in your posts — all it takes is a little copy/paste! And check those statistics on the reg, so you know how people are responding. Does your audience love video embeds, or ignore them? Do you get more shares when you include an image? It’s virtually impossible to predict, so don’t stress out now about what may or may not work, or what might be best for the ever-changing algorithms used by sites like Facebook — just try different things and record your results, because you and your audience are one of a kind.

The post How to Promote a Business on Facebook by Writing Great Posts appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

You’ve been hearing it since elementary school:

Keep your eyes on your own paper.

(Some people may have needed to be reminded more than others. No judgement.)

When it comes to your business, keeping your eyes on your own paper is usually a good idea – after all, the things that work really well for someone else might not work so well for you.

There is, however, something to be said about having a little context – about knowing that the challenges you’re facing are the same as those faced by others.

Want a peek at what other businesses think about social media marketing?

In its 2016 State of Social Marketing report, Simply Measured reveals a whopping 46 pages of insights into the struggles, successes, and secrets of social media marketers around the world.

And that means it’s time to take your eyes off your own paper – just for a second.

You can read the entire report here, but for right now, here’s some encouraging intel we picked up on our own deep dive into the data.

It ain’t the size of the team in the fight

There’s an old saying that goes, “It isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.”

While this phrase surely rings true for anyone who’s had a rough encounter with a Chihuahua, it also speaks volumes about the state of social media marketing.

Most social teams are small – really, really small.

Of the hundreds of major worldwide brands surveyed for this report, 68% have social media teams that are only one or two people.

In fact, nearly half of the brands surveyed have just one person on their social team!

It’s easy to feel like you’re at a disadvantage when competing with huge businesses, because they theoretically have way more resources. In reality, though, your social team is probably the same size as most others.

(And that’s pretty good news!)

This is where that whole “size of the dog” thing comes in. You don’t need an enormous social team to make a splash online – you just need a good strategy that you can implement all on your own. If you can do that, you can be competitive!

Basically nobody knows how “valuable” social media marketing is

How much money did you make from your social media marketing last year?

Any guesses?

That’s okay – you’re not alone.

In fact, you’re not even close to being alone on that one!

Measuring ROI is the number one challenge for social media marketers. More than three out of five say that it’s their top problem!

It’s because your social media marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it’s a part of a larger plan. A plan that includes blogging, building brand recognition and trust, and fostering long-term connections with an audience.

You don’t have to be able to assign a dollar value to a tweet. Most social marketers can’t – fewer than 1 out of 10 says they can actually quantify their revenue from social media!

Fewer than 1 in 10 marketers can actually quantify their revenue driven from social media.
Click To Tweet

So don’t feel bad if you can’t put a dollar sign on how much the time and energy you spend on social media marketing is worth.

Instead, define success with this in mind:

Value is all relative

If so many marketers can’t figure out how much money their social media efforts are worth, how do they know whether they’re successful?

By understanding that value is relative, and that success is defined by more than just money.

Only about 1 in 5 marketers measures the success of their social media in terms of revenue – which makes sense, considering that so few people know how to solve that equation.

About 56% of marketers, however, measure their social media success based on social media metrics – likes, comments, retweets, and so on.

Source: http://simplymeasured.com/blog/introducing-the-2016-state-of-social-marketing-report

In social media marketing, tracking engagement can be easier and more useful than tracking revenue.

It helps you ensure that you’re posting the right stuff at the right times, building your audience (and learning more about them), and sharing things that will expand your reach over time.

The ways that social media provides value to your overall marketing may not be as tangible as money in your pocket, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important – or trackable! If you define social media success by your engagement instead of your revenue, you’re in the majority.

Take your eyes off your own paper

Ultimately, this report has an important lesson to teach: social media marketing challenges affect everyone – not just you.

A big company’s social media team probably isn’t that much different from a small company’s. Tracking ROI is difficult. Social success is about engagement, not revenue.

Because these challenges affect everyone the same way, your social marketing efforts might actually be a lot more competitive than you think!

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, though, so remember – taking your eyes off your own paper can actually be a pretty enlightening experience.

The post Why Social Media Marketers Don’t Even Care About Revenue appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part One of our series on Email Marketing, and focuses on a neat little trick we’ve been using with MailChimp.

We absolutely adore MailChimp over here at MeetEdgar. It is without a doubt one of the most important tools for our business.

But when we started really digging into A/B testing our email campaigns, we ran into a little problem.

MailChimp doesn’t allow for A/B testing of automated campaigns. Which makes sense – the cardinal rule of A/B testing is that you only want to change one variable at a time, and the very nature of automated campaigns (sending several emails in a row, automatically) makes that very difficult to do.

For example, if you had a series of three emails, and you wanted to test changes to all three, you’d need to set up a test that looked something like…

Where “Control” is the standard version of the email, and “Test” is the email.

That’s nine different variations, which means you’re splitting traffic nine different ways, which means it’ll take a while to get a meaningful sample size. And since each one these series already takes several days to complete, it means we’d be looking at a very long time to run each test properly.

So we decided to fudge things a little bit, and to make our tests simply look like this:

Please don’t call the Testing Police on us.

Our justification, other than general simplicity and speed of testing, is that we’re also looking for big changes to our conversion rates. When you’re looking for big change, it becomes a little less important to isolate exactly what element you’re changing in the test.

It’s likely that down the road, as these early rough tests get us in the general ballpark of where we want to be, that we’ll refine our testing process and be more scientific about our numbers. But for now, this is letting us see enough results to make some really big changes to our email campaigns!

But the important part – here’s how we did it!

How We Tricked MailChimp Into Running These Tests

Because MailChimp wasn’t set up to allow us to run tests at all on automated emails, we had to come up with a workaround. So here’s what we did…

Our testing has focused primarily on our invite series. When someone visits MeetEdgar.com, they’re invited to sign up for an invitation to use Edgar. You may even have a popup invite appear on this very blog! Anyhoo, when you sign up for an invite, our resident WordPress expert built in a little behind-the-scenes magic that assigns you a number we call the Test Variation.

When we create the segments for the test campaigns in MailChimp, we use this Test Variation number to split you into either a test group or the control group. Then we send you the appropriate drip campaign.

Moments before inventing the Test Variation number.

To reference our examples above once more, if we were running a by-the-books scientific study, we’d need nine such groups to test the nine different variations of our testing flow. But in our simplified version, we only need two Test Variations to get the results we want.

So we could have just assigned everyone either a one or a two. But that’s not what Hackerman would do! Instead, we assigned everyone a number between one and six. This helps ensure a more even (and random) split between groups, and allows for three-way split testing as well if we’re feeling particularly… testy. Ones, twos, and threes went into our control group and received the same emails we usually sent. Fours, fives, and sixes went into the experimental group and received our all-new flow.

Here’s what MailChimp’s Segment tool looks like:

We used a Test Variation to split our audience.

Note that you only need to do this for the first email in the automated series! All of the other emails are connected to this email, making it a little easier to split up your flows for testing. Thanks, MailChimp!

How We Measure Success

The trickiest part of our hacked-together testing process is measuring the results.

We’re looking at two main things: Open Rate and Click Rate. Open Rate is how many people open each email, and Click Rate is how many people click on a link within each email. These are pretty obviously vital stats, right?

The reason it’s tricky to measure success is because we need concrete numbers to work with, but MailChimp gives these numbers as percentages. So we’ve built a spreadsheet that takes the percentage rates and total number of emails sent, and spits out actual numbers for clicks and opens. It looks like this:

Don’t worry, we’ll explain the columns in a second!

So why do we need the actual number of opens and clicks? Because we then take those numbers and feed them into VWO’s A/B Split Test Significance Calculator to see if our results are statistically significant.

Here’s what that looks like:

Without getting to mathtastic, this calculator basically figures out if your sample sizes are big enough to show a real change. In the above example, they are not – which is why our “Significant?” column in the spreadsheet also shows a “No.”

We keep running a test and hand-feeding the numbers into the spreadsheet and calculator until it shows significance, or we decide that it’s gone on long enough to show that there’s no real impact from the change. And sometimes, that can be a pretty valuable lesson as well!

Our Biggest Lesson So Far

We’ve gleaned a lot of useful information from our hacked together testing, including swapping out some subject lines and changing around the content of specific emails. But in the overall scheme of things, our most valuable learnings so far have come from a test that showed no significant change in performance – that very same test we’ve been using as an example in the above images.

In this test, the only thing that was different between our two campaigns was the amount of time between each email. In our control, we had three emails spread out over roughly the course of a month. In our test, we condensed that schedule down to 10 days.

And guess what? The results were pretty much the same.

Essentially, we learned that we could reduce the timeframe of our intro email campaign to roughly one-third of its original length with no negative effects. So of course that became our new standard! Not only will this help bring in new customers more quickly, but it’ll make all of our future tests run more quickly as well. And that’s the sort of thing that will pay dividends well down the road.

We’ll be back with more information from these tests, as well as from our general adventures in email marketing, down the road. For now – well, if you’re feeling like having a little fun with MailChimp, give this automated campaign testing trick a shot!

The post How We Hacked MailChimp to A/B Test Automated Campaigns appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Facebook has a new update to tell you about – and an exciting prediction about the future of your Page!

Want to hear it?

It goes a little something like this:

“We anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages.”

Great!

Okay.

That doesn’t…sound all that great.

But let’s back up, because there’s more to this algorithm update than there seems.

What’s Facebook changing this time?

Why do they expect Page reach to drop?

And why might this actually be good news? (Seriously!)

Let’s break down what’s happening.

Friends and family are taking priority

The short version of this update?

Facebook is bumping updates from your friends and family members higher up in the News Feed – and updates from Pages are going to be pushed further down.

Facebook weighs a bunch of different factors when deciding which updates to show in a person’s News Feed, and in which order. Now, updates posted by your friends and family have a big advantage over the ones posted by Pages.

(If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, remember – Facebook users don’t tend to scroll very far.)

Basically, showing the stuff that Pages post just became even less of a priority for Facebook.

They say it’s so that they can make the News Feed better for individual users, and while you have to admit that it does make sense to show people more content from personal connections than from publishers, that doesn’t mean it feels good when you are one of those publishers.

But even though Facebook is saying that your Page’s posts are going to be less competitive, there is good news hidden in this announcement.

If you have the right priorities, this algorithm change doesn’t have to be a bad thing at all – in fact, it might be the opposite.

And why is that, exactly?

Shareability matters more than ever

Facebook did mention that certain Pages aren’t going to be affected by this algorithm change as much as others – so, who’s getting off easy?

Pages whose content gets share and engagement.

You already knew that higher engagement rates can improve your reach, and now, it’s more important than ever to post things that people will want to interact with. Facebook came right out and said that Pages that get their content shared more often won’t take as big a hit in their referral traffic.

What does that mean for you? Posting not just the type of content you think your audience will appreciate, but the type of content you think your audience will share. Getting your posts shared by the people in your audience is your secret weapon!

And what types of content do people like to share, exactly?

A consumer research division of The New York Times conducted a study to determine that very thing!

You can read the 46-page report here, but here’s what “The Psychology of Sharing” says are the five reasons people share content online:

• They think it’s interesting, entertaining, or otherwise valuable content. 94% of people “carefully consider” how the things they share will be useful for others.

• Sharing helps us define ourselves to others. When you share something, it reflects your values, interests, and identity. (What does your favorite cat video say about your personality?

• We create, build, and enrich personal relationships by sharing. Sharing content gives us a reason to talk to people with similar interests, and to strengthen our existing relationships. 78% of people actually share content online because it gives them a reason to maintain personal connections that otherwise might not be as strong!

• Sharing creates a sense of self-fulfillment. It feels good to share things! Because it satisfies different personal desires, there’s a sense of fulfillment that comes with sharing something with other people.

• We want to get the word out about things that matter to us. From a totally practical point of view, sharing is how we educate others and, ideally, get them interested in the things that interest us!

When you have a Facebook page, you shouldn’t just think about your audience – you should also think about your audience’s audience. The more your followers share your content with their personal network of family, friends, coworkers, and guys-from-high-school-they-kinda-sorta-remember, the better off you’ll be!

Before you hit that “Post” button, then, don’t stop at asking yourself whether the people in your audience will be interested – ask yourself if it’s something they’ll want to share!

Are your readers sharing?

While Facebook’s emphasis on posting content your readers will share is encouraging, it might also be frustratingly easier-said-than-done.

What’s your experience – and what’s your preference? Are you glad to see more friends and family in your News Feed, and fewer posts from Pages? Or do these algorithm changes feel a little unfair? Sound off in the comments below!

The post How Facebook’s New Algorithm Change Will Affect Your Page appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Welcome to Edgar Learn, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! This is Part Two of our series on Email Marketing, where we’ll talk about how to promote a blog or website using your email list. To read Part One, click here!

We’re big believers in the power of a good email list here at MeetEdgar.

A lot of our love for email comes from an underlying philosophy that your audience is paying less attention than you think it is. It’s one of the reasons we preach repeating content on social media, and it’s why we think you should email your fans to let them know when you post something new on your blog.

You shouldn’t count on your audience to always come looking for your newest content. After all, they have a literally infinite number of other websites they can go to for content. Why should they come to yours?

Emailing your list whenever there’s something new on your site means you’re actively putting your content in front of your audience. You’re bringing it to them, reducing the amount of work they have to do t reach your content. 

And that’s what effective email promotion is all about – offering your audience the easiest possible way to keep up with your content!

We’re going to look at the three steps of effectively promoting your blog through email. They are building your email list, managing an email schedule, and optimizing your email content.

Always offer your audience the easiest possible way to keep up with your content!
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Building Your Email List

An effective email strategy is nothing without a healthy list of recipients! A valid email address is a valuable commodity in the world of online marketing, so you should be ready to put in some work when it comes to building your list. It’s well worth it.

Take a look at your site and count the number of opportunities someone has to enter their email address. If there isn’t at least one, you’re in trouble! Our homepage has five email capture fields, plus there’s a popup on our blog (you may have seen it) that asks for readers to enter their email as well. While this might be overkill for your own site, let it at least serve as an example that it’s okay to ask for email addresses. A lot.

Go ahead and poke around some of your other favorite sites as well, and you’ll see that they too probably have ample opportunities for capturing your email. All of this should point to the value of email addresses and a strong mailing list.

Of course, you shouldn’t expect everyone to just hand over their email for free! That’s why we love premium content. This is the good stuff that you don’t just give away – you only offer it in exchange for an email address.

What sort of premium content could you put on your site? If you run a blog, think about collecting some of your best expertise into an ebook, then offering that up in exchange for an email address. Manage an e-commerce site? Offer exclusive discounts to members of your mailing list. Whatever your particular site, come up with a way to incentivize visitors into giving you their email addresses. It’s well worth it in the long run!

Managing an Email Schedule to Promote a Blog

Getting people to give you their email addresses is a big part of the equation, but it doesn’t do anything if you don’t find a good schedule for reaching that audience. Email them too frequently, and you’ll lose subscribers or simply be ignored. But if you don’t email enough, you’re just wasting all of those valuable email addresses.

Over here at Team Edgar, we send out a weekly email newsletter (which is seriously awesome and packed with information), plus the occasional promotional email. But in general, it’s very rare that we’ll contact our email list more than once a week. And that works for us!

But other sites might find their audiences prefer an email whenever there’s new content to be seen, even if that email comes daily. And still other sites – particularly e-commerce sites – might be better off reaching out only once or twice a month, if that.

The only way to find the right schedule for contacting your audience is to experiment. Start with once a week (assuming you have new content at least that often) and establish a baseline for your numbers, paying particular attention to the Open Rate and Click Rate of your emails (more on those in a second). Try increasing or reducing the frequency of emails and see what happens to your email stats and web traffic when you do.

That feeling when you find the right email schedule.

It’s a little trial and error, and you will feel a bit like Goldilocks as you search for a schedule that is juusssst right for promoting your site.

Optimizing Your Email Content

The experimentation doesn’t end with your schedule. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that we are big believers in testing and refining. With email, we look at Open Rate (how many people open the email) and Click Rate (how many people click the link in the email) as the numbers that tell us the most about how an email is performing.

While there are a million ways you can test email content, we like to think of it in three main sections: subject line, content, and CTA (call to action). Each test should only change one piece of the email. So if you’re testing subject lines, for example, that should be the only difference between your testing variations. Change one thing and one thing only, and see how it affects your Open Rate and Click Rate.

Subject lines may seem like a minor thing, but they can have a tremendous impact on your email performance. After all, a subject line is the only thing a recipient will see without opening the email, and if they never open the email they’ll never click your link! Subject lines should be clear and concise, letting the reader know why they should take the time to read the rest of the email.

The email content is the body copy of the email, what you say between the subject line and the CTA. Its job is to explain your message, and to help convince the reader to click the CTA. It should generally be benefit-driven, meaning it tells the reader all the wonderful things they’ll get in life from clicking that CTA.

And speaking of the CTA – it should let the reader know exactly what will happen when they click it! There’s no room for ambiguity here! A person will only click a CTA when they know what to expect from it, so be sure to be as clear as possible when writing yours!

Promoting a blog through email is hard work. It requires building an email list, figuring out a good schedule, and constantly working to optimize your emails. But the payoff is well worth it – our weekly newsletter drives about a third of our blog traffic here at MeetEdgar, which is a huge portion! And your newsletter can do the same for you.

The post How to Promote a Blog Through Email appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Why aren’t you getting more traffic from Twitter?

It feels like no matter how many followers you get on there, it doesn’t translate to nearly as many clicks as it should, right?

So…why?

Why can it feel like you’re just kind of talking to yourself?

It’s not your fault – but you can still do something about it.

There have been some serious studies into how people use Twitter, and they explain a lot about how and why it works – including what percentage of links never get clicked on at all! (We’ll share that number in a second.)

So, what’s the math say? What makes Twitter such a numbers game – and how do you make it easier to win?

Twitter users actually don’t check Twitter that much

Twitter has about 310 million monthly active users.

How many of those users check their timeline even once per day?

60 percent?

50 percent?

Actually, fewer than half – only about 44% of Twitter users check the site on a daily basis.

Only about 44% of Twitter users check the site every day.
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So, say you have 1000 followers on Twitter. When you share something, your audience for that tweet on that day is more like 440 people – which is kind of a lot smaller!

And you have no idea when that one time per day is going to be.

When you tweet something, it gets pushed down the timeline pretty fast! (After all, about 6000 tweets are posted every second of the day.) The odds that someone is going to log on at just the right moment to see your tweet aren’t amazing.

So what about the people who check more than once per day? It makes your odds a little better if someone checks Twitter more than once, right?

Only about 27% of Twitter users check the site more than once per day.

(Again, not a particularly inspiring number.)

And while Twitter has started experimenting with algorithms that influence what users see in their timelines, it’s still predominantly a live feed that shows you things in the order in which they were shared. (Unlike Facebook, which has a more complicated method.)

Don’t believe it? Here’s how to see for yourself inside your own Twitter account.

Head over to your Twitter analytics dashboard and click “Tweets” in the top menu. It’ll show you your most recent updates – along with how many people saw them.

Here’s one of ours:

This tweet scored 277 impressions and 10 engagements, for an engagement rate of 3.6 percent.

On the day we posted that, we had 5,110 Twitter followers – so this update was seen by about 5.4% of them.

(Note: Twitter counts impressions by non-followers, as well – if a tweet is retweeted and seen by people who don’t follow you, they still count. This example tweet was never retweeted, but it’s possible that a few non-followers wandered into the MeetEdgar Twitter profile while looking for the profile for American rock legend Meat Loaf. Probably.)

Point is, most of your followers just don’t see any given tweet.

And what about the ones that do – why aren’t they clicking?

The link in that tweet above was only clicked by five out of 277 people. What gives?

Well, here’s the thing about that…

Twitter users don’t really click links, either

Not as much as you’d hope, anyway.

According to a 2016 study, the majority of links that get posted on Twitter – about 59% of them – never get clicked on at all.

Ever.

That’s a lot of lonely links out there!

Does it mean that sharing links is a big ol’ waste of time, though?

Absolutely not – you just have to keep the numbers in mind when you do it!

59% of the links shared on Twitter never get clicked.
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Between how hard it is to get your tweets seen and how reluctant Twitter users are to click on the links they actually see, driving blog traffic from Twitter is tricky business.

What do these numbers mean for the way you write tweets? What do they mean for how you share tweets?

Sharing better links on Twitter

According to the math, there are two big problems with sharing links on Twitter: not enough people see them, and the people who do see them don’t want to click on them.

What do you do about that?

First, make people curious.

A little curiosity gap goes a long way when you’re trying to get clicks! (Emphasis on a little. Click-bait isn’t the answer.)

Make sure that your tweets are piquing interesting – not telling the whole story. Here’s an example of how Career Contessa has mastered the art of the curiosity gap:

The 4 reasons why you really *don’t* want that work bonus https://t.co/SIQ5xlUFxMpic.twitter.com/ipIM1dMCSy

— Career Contessa (@CareerContessa) July 11, 2016

Makes you want to learn more, right?

When you write a promotional tweet, give people a clear idea of what to expect – but leave ‘em wanting a little more, too.

Second, don’t be afraid to share something more than once.

The likely audience for any given tweet on any given day is teeny-tiny. You share something, and fewer than half your followers are even going to log on to Twitter that day – and who knows if it’ll be at the exact moment you tweet.

On the one hand, that’s a little frustrating – but on the other hand, it means you have the freedom to share something more than once, so more people can see it!

Everyone does this – even big businesses with professional social media teams.

Here’s an example from the MTV News Twitter account, which shared the same tweet three times in one day:

See what happened? People kept on liking and retweeting this story every time it was shared – because every time it was shared, different people were seeing it.

If you want to improve a tweet’s odds of being seen, don’t settle for sharing it once. If you do, you’re limiting yourself to a tiny slice of your audience!

And remember…

Strategy makes a big difference on Twitter – but no matter how good you are at promoting yourself in 140 characters, you should never rely solely on one channel for driving traffic!

Want to learn more about how Facebook algorithms work, so you can get your posts seen more over there? Check out this behind-the-scenes breakdown. Want to see all the ingredients of an effective newsletter, which you can use to drive huge traffic numbers? Boom – here’s a guide. Every aspect of your content strategy deserves equal attention!

In the meantime, what’s your experience with Twitter traffic been like? Hard to get people from the timeline to your website? Think you’ve got a good handle on this whole thing? Share your take in the comments below!

The post Driving Traffic From Twitter to Your Website, According to Math appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Dwindling organic reach is a sore subject for a lot of Facebook Pages, and it turns out that it’s a problem more and more are solving with their wallets.

Facebook has a method for determining who sees your updates, and it’s a method that isn’t necessarily very kind to Pages – which means that while promoting yourself on Facebook is technically free, shelling out a few bucks here and there for better visibility is quickly going from luxury to necessity.

According to Locowise, about 42% of Facebook pages used paid advertising in May 2016 – and overall, Pages actually paid for nearly 32% of their overall reach.

In May 2016, Facebook Pages paid for nearly 32% of their overall reach.
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So why treat Facebook like a free ride? Why keep your strategy stuck in 2011 when Facebook’s advertising options are so easy, so cheap, and so popular?

Facebook advertising doesn’t need to replace your current strategy – in fact, it shouldn’t.

If you juice your reach here and there, though, it can seriously complement your existing social marketing efforts!

(You just have to know where to start.)

There’s more than one way to advertise on Facebook

Part of the reason that paying for reach on Facebook is so popular is that it’s pretty easy – and it hasn’t always been!

Paying for reach on Facebook is only as complicated as you make it.

If you’re a numbers genie, the Ads Manager is ready and waiting for you. And while it’s a useful tool, it’s not the most user-friendly way to get your feet wet when this is all brand new – its massive set of tools can make the advertising process a little complicated.

A significantly easier solution is to stick with promoted posts – that’s when you just slide Facebook a little money to increase the reach of an update you’ve already posted.

(You use the little “Boost Post” button, like in the bottom-right of the picture below.)

When you click that button, Facebook makes it easy to choose who you want to see that post. If you want, they can show it only to people who have liked your page, or to those people and their friends, or to an audience you choose based on factors like age, gender, location, and interests.

(If we really want our post to be seen by more people who love Taco Bell’s layers of beefy flavor, for example, we can make that happen. Technology, everybody!)

Caliente!

This is how you end up seeing a lot of the ads you see on Facebook, too! Pages out there find people like you based on your interests, and show you ads based on those interests.

This is a less in-depth way of doing things – but user-friendliness doesn’t mean it isn’t effective.

Facebook will even tell you how many more people you can expect to see your post based on how much you’re thinking about spending! If we spent just $10 on that update above, for example, we could more than triple its reach.

(Makes a lot of sense that 32% of reach on Facebook is paid for, doesn’t it?)

Still, ten bucks is ten bucks – and if you’re going to join the ever-growing contingent of Pages that pay for a little extra reach, you want your money to count!

That’s why it’s so important to keep this next thing in mind.

You’re not JUST paying for reach

You post a wide variety of stuff on social media. (Or at least, you should.)

How do you know what to boost – and how do you make sure you get your money’s worth?

Focus on what happens after someone sees an update.

When you pay to increase a Facebook post’s reach, your ultimate goal shouldn’t be for that post to be seen – it should be for something to happen after that, and something with long-term benefits.

For example, if you boost a post linking to your blog, you don’t necessarily just want people to see that update, or even to click through and read the post! Those are short-term gains.

If they read the post and then sign up for your newsletter, though, you’ve spent your money wisely – and you might have gained a pretty valuable lead. (Even if they so much as like your Facebook page, it’ll be easier to reach that person again and again over time – this is how you build an audience!)

Paying for Facebook reach is like paying the doorman at the club – it’ll get you in the door, but the rest is up to you!

If you’re going to pay to increase your reach, it should be to promote something you feel confident in, and something that could continue to pay off for you not just by being seen, but by eliciting actions in your audience. That’s the difference between it being about vanity and being an actual investment!

How to get started

Curious about how effective all this actually is?

Once you have a goal in mind and know what you want to share, head over to your Facebook Page and try boosting a post’s reach – it’s an experiment that only has to cost a few dollars.

Start small and try increasing your reach for one or two posts a week, and see how it goes. You might find that it’s really worth investing in every now and then!

What’s your experience been like with boosted posts and Facebook advertising? Crucial part of your strategy? Refuse to give in? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post Is It Time to Pay For Better Facebook Reach? appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

We’re big believers in the power of blogging for your business – our blog is one of our biggest sources of web traffic, and your blog should be too! Having a successful blog relies just as much on promoting your posts as it does on creating great content. Our last Edgar Learn post showed how to use your email list to bring readers to your blog, which is one part of an effective strategy. Today we’re going to look at how to promote your blog (and your site in general) by upping your podcast game.

We’ll tell you why you should get into podcasts, how to start scheduling appearances, and how you can promote your podcast appearances. Sound good? Let’s dig in.

Why Podcasts Matter

There are a TON of benefits to establishing a podcast presence. It’s a growing medium, with almost 21% of all people over the age of 12 listening to podcasts on a monthly basis. For some perspective, that happens to be the same size as the portion of the population using Twitter, and we all know how important it is to be on Twitter.

There are as many people listening to podcasts as there are using Twitter.
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So the audience is there, and it’s ready to connect with you. If you’ve been reading these Edgar Learn posts, you know how much we value the formula “Know, Like, Trust” (KLT for short). If you’re new to Edgar Learn, here’s the gist: before someone makes a purchase from your site, they want to know, like, and trust you. The more important the purchase decision – the higher the price, the longer the contract, the more sensitive the work, etc – the more KLT you need to earn with them first.

Well guess what? The candid, conversational nature of podcasts are the perfect medium to help your audience know, like, and trust you. They even get to hear your voice, which goes a long way in reminding them that you are a living, breathing human being, not just a webpage or a brand.

Along the same line, podcasts are also a great place to tie your personal story to your company. Spend some time talking about yourself and your journey – tell the tale of how you got to where you are – and you’ll not only build upon the KLT factor with existing fans, but draw in a new audience who identifies with what you have to say.

Best of all, podcasts let you do all of this with a relatively small investment of your time. Filling up a few minutes of airtime on a podcast hardly takes any time at all when compared to writing guest posts, managing email campaigns, and other ways to promote your blog! And once a podcast is released, it doesn’t go away! It will remain out there online, perpetually generating traffic for you. And you know how much we love perpetually generated traffic!

As if you’re still not convinced about the value of podcasts, here’s the cherry on top: there’s an SEO benefit to the links they generate to your site! So not only are podcasts effective and relatively easy, but they’re good for you too, which is why many internet marketers refer to podcasts as the tasty vegetables of the online world. (Note that nobody refers to podcasts, or anything else, as the tasty vegetables of the online world – but you get the point.)

How to Promote Your Blog On a Podcast

Now that you know why you should be doing them, here’s how to start your podcasting strategy. It’s a simple, three-step process:

Find relevant podcasts, pitch your appearances, start booking!

You may already follow some podcasts that are relevant to your particular area of expertise… and if not, you should start! Of course iTunes is the go-to source for all things podcast, but they’re not the only game in town. Here are a few favorites of Team Edgar:

• Stitcher
• Overcast
• BeyondPod

Start listening to as many relevant podcasts as you can, and pick a few favorites. Put together a list of a half dozen or so that you’d like to appear on, and start reaching out to them.

When pitching a podcast appearance, explain why you’d be a good guest and what you’d bring to the conversation; establish yourself as an expert. After all, you’re guaranteed to have a unique perspective to share, right? It’s also a good idea to remind the host of the podcast why you’ll help them reach a new and relevant audience – remember that you’re helping them as much as they’re helping you!

And, as with all things that involve getting your content to appear on someone else’s site, don’t get discouraged by rejection! Just keep at it, and you’ll find yourself appearing on podcasts sooner rather than later. And the more appearances you rack up, the easier it becomes to get even more.

Promoting your podcast appearances

After you’ve had your superstar moment and appeared in a podcast, it’s vital that you let your audience know about it! Not only do they intrinsically want to share in your success, but chances are that they’ll want to share it with friends who might not already know who you are. Sharing your podcast appearance also helps drive traffic to the podcast page, which in turn helps you get invited back.

Tag the podcast host and any other guests who were on the show with you. They’ll likely respond to you or rebroadcast your post, which helps put your name in front of their audience.  

Similarly, it’s important to engage with anyone mentioning your appearance. The more you interact online, the more likely you are to bring in traffic both to your podcast appearance and your site.

And the more your podcast appearance is listened to, the more traffic you’ll end up sending back to your own site!

This post is part of our Edgar Learn series, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! For more from Edgar Learn, click here!

The post How to Promote Your Blog with Podcasts appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Facebook has been pushing live video for most of 2016 – from giving broadcasts preferential placement in the News Feed to paying media companies to experiment with the new feature, they’ve made it clear that it’s a big priority.

But Facebook isn’t stopping there!

Now the social network is introducing even more updates to its live video feature – ones that will give you more incentive than ever to fire up your camera and get ready for your closeup.  

So – what’s new and different in Facebook live video?

You can control your audience

Ever have an idea for a live video broadcast that isn’t necessarily relevant for your entire audience?

Maybe it’s an idea that would only be interesting for people of a certain age, or living in a certain place. If you’re a travel blogger, for example, a live video of tourism tips for Americans visiting the UK is only going to be interesting to a certain segment of your audience.

What do you do? If you keep doing live broadcasts that only matter to some of your followers, you could alienate or annoy the rest of them – how do you make sure your live video is being seen by the right people?

Now, Facebook is introducing tools that limit the audience of your live broadcasts. You’ll be able to choose who sees your videos based on demographic details like age, gender, and location, so you can share them with the people they’ll matter to most – and avoid bothering anyone who wouldn’t be as likely to tune in.

You can also control how people interact with your live broadcasts.

Sometimes, seeing live comments and reactions from viewers alongside a broadcast makes the whole thing feel more interactive and exciting – but other times, it might feel inappropriate.

(If you’re sharing a live video that deals with a sensitive subject, for example, it might be distracting to see cartoon faces and commentary from the peanut gallery all over the screen.)

That’s why Facebook is now giving broadcasters the ability to hide comments and reactions on live video, de-cluttering the screen for your viewers (and making it easier to ignore the occasional troll).

Facebook isn’t just giving you new tools for managing your audience, though – they’re also giving you more options for what you broadcast in the first place!

Facebook live videos are getting a LOT longer

Live videos on Facebook used to be limited to just a few hours, but now they’re getting longer…a LOT longer.

As in, your live broadcast can go on FOREVER.

Seriously!

Facebook is making it so that your live broadcast technically never has to end.

What kind of video would last that long?

Maybe you want to throw up a live feed of the world around you, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s jellyfish cam.

Maybe you want to set up a camera in your home office and turn your life into a 24/7 online reality show starring you and your pet parakeet! Point is, now you can do it.

(With a few lil’ restrictions, anyway.)

While a continuous live video doesn’t have to end, Facebook won’t send notifications to your followers about it like they would for a normal-length one. Plus, when you eventually DO end the broadcast, it won’t be published to your timeline for people to watch at a later date – another feature limited to shorter live broadcasts.

If you want those features, you’ll have to keep your live broadcast within a certain time limit – fortunately, Facebook is making that easier, too.

Facebook is doubling the length of live videos from 2 hours to 4 hours.

Now you can broadcast live for a whole lot longer, and still reap benefits like sending notifications to your followers and saving the video on your page after you finish.

(So you can go ahead and resume planning your one-person dramatic live read of the entire Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers script.)

What you do with all these hours is up to you – but you’re a lot less limited by time constraints on Facebook live than you used to be!

But what should you broadcast, anyway?

Facebook has already started rolling out these new live video features, which may leave you wondering: what the heck should I be broadcasting in the first place?

To get started, take a look at our beginner’s guide to webcasting, so you can see how marketers have used other broadcasting tools like Periscope to get their messages out.

Then, check out Facebook’s tips for setting up your first live broadcast – this page also has plenty of examples you can watch, too, so you can get a feel for it!

Got any experiences of your own to share? How’s your luck been hosting live video on Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post New Feature Alert: Facebook’s Latest Live Video Upgrades appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

A strong social media planning game relies on a solid social media calendar.

Your calendar is the backbone of your social strategy, the frame upon which everything else is built. It lets you stay organized, plan ahead, and keep a steady stream of content flowing on your social pages.

In this post, we’ll break down an example of a typical social calendar and take a detailed look at the calendar we use to run our social strategy here at MeetEdgar. By the end, you should be armed with a few new tricks for improving your own social media planning.

The Traditional Social Media Planning Routine

It doesn’t take anything more complicated than a spreadsheet to start planning a successful social media strategy. Templates are readily available online and easy to adapt to your individual preferences.

Traditional social planning basically boils down to deciding what you’ll post, when you’ll post it, and on what platform it’ll appear. We suggest writing your posts ahead of time in batches, so they’re ready to go, but you could also just pencil in what type of post you’ll be making and do the actual wordsmithing down the road.

Here’s a sample calendar page to let you see what this looks like:

Sample social media calendar courtesy of Constant Contact.

Notice that the types of posts are color coded, which makes it easy to ensure variety at a glance. Holidays and other promotions are also marked on the calendar, which is an important part of planning ahead!

The above example shows how you can mix word-for-word posts, like the Facebook Question on the 16th, with more generic post descriptions (like the reminder on the 18th). Again, while we much prefer to write our posts in batches and schedule them ahead of time, the true mark of success for a social media plan is that it works for you.

You can get really granular with this, but we suggest that you don’t – especially if you won’t be writing content in batches. It’s very easy for a little writer’s block to lay waste to your carefully crafted schedule if you’re not writing everything in advance.

Traditional social content calendars are great for planning ahead, but we like to do things a little differently here at MeetEdgar. Here’s what our calendar is like…

How We Do It at MeetEdgar

Before we get into our method, it’s important to reiterate that when it comes to social planning – if it works for you, it works! As long as your calendar lets you stay organized and helps ensure that your social feeds don’t run out of content, it’s doing its job.

When it comes to social planning – if it works for you, it works!
Click To Tweet

That being said, here’s what has worked well for us.

The key to our calendar is that everything we plan on posting is assigned a category. We then use these categories to create our posting schedule, rather than relying on slotting individual posts into our calendar.

A snippet from the actual Edgar content calendar!

Using categories, we’re also able to create a 1-week-long repeating schedule, rather than a traditional calendar that is constantly in need of updating.

That’s right – all of our social content is posted on the same schedule, week after week, which saves us hours and hours of planning time each year.

But what about seasonal promos and other special events? With our categories system, it’s easy. Each promotion gets its own category, which we can simply switch on or off when the time comes. We set up tasks in our project management system to keep tabs on these special events, rather than making a separate editorial calendar.

Of course, we use Edgar to manage our posting schedule, and let him decide which content to post for each category when the time comes, which makes the whole thing even easier. Essentially, once our content library is filled and organized by category, and our repeating weekly schedule has been created, Edgar takes it from there, running our posts without requiring a second thought.

We’d say Edgar is set it and forget it, but that phrase is probably trademarked.

Repeating Content & Other Important Details

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention repeating content as part of our social media planning routine! As you know by now, only a teensy fraction of your social audience is paying attention at any given time. Every time you repeat a post, you’re putting it in front of a new portion of your followers. So don’t be afraid to repeat yourself – just don’t do it too often (reposting something once every few months is a fine routine to follow).

We should also point out that live interactions aren’t something you should schedule – unless you need to block out time on your personal calendar to dedicate to social interactions. We prefer to think of detailed calendars and automations ways to free up social media time that you can spend interacting with your audience, and to let the interactions happen organically.

Do you follow one of the social media planning routines we discussed in this post? Or do you have your own system? Either way, we’d love to hear about it in the comments!

This post is part of our Edgar Learn series, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! For more from Edgar Learn, click here!

The post Our Social Media Planning Routine appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Whether it’s live or recorded, Facebook loves video – but what effect is that having on all the other stuff people post on Facebook?

What effect is it having on the other stuff you post?

Well, now we have some pretty big clues – and it looks like Facebook’s love affair with video is having a ripple effect on the other types of content people post.

The data geniuses over at BuzzSumo reviewed 25 million Facebook posts from 10,000 different publishers, and the data they uncovered reveals a LOT about Facebook’s priorities – and how video has impacted the algorithm that determines who sees your updates.

What exactly does the data say?

Let’s take a closer look!

Shares are up (only they’re not)

Good news – Facebook shares are up!

Worse news – Facebook shares are also down!

Okay, let’s back up.

Turns out that yes, on average, the number of shares for Facebook posts has gone up over the past year.

For certain types of posts, though, the number of shares has actually gone down.

Take a look at what’s happened to shares for link posts over the past year.

Source: http://buzzsumo.com/blog/facebook-share-data-every-publisher-needs-know/

The number of shares on link posts has been declining pretty steadily – and it’s been happening since long before Facebook announced a July 2016 algorithm change that would limit reach for Pages! (Here are the details on that little doozy.)

So, shares on Facebook are up, but shares for link posts are down – what gives?

Video shares are skyrocketing

If activity on your link posts is slowing down, you might have video to thank.

Over the past year, the average number of shares for Facebook videos has more than doubled – a pretty significant leap, and not just because people love watching fruit explode.

Over the past year, the average number of shares for Facebook videos has more than doubled.
Click To Tweet

Why the huge popularity boost?

First, Facebook started giving live video priority placement in the News Feed during this period. (That’s not an educated guess – they literally said they were doing that.)

If video gets better placement, something else is getting worse placement – and you can’t share something you never even see!

Second, Facebook plays videos automatically – a decision that has been the subject of some controversy, considering that they also count a “view” as someone who’s watched as little as three seconds of a video.

That autoplay feature makes it considerably easier to grab a user’s attention, because it requires zero effort to view a video. (Whereas clicking a link takes enough effort that the majority of the ones shared on Twitter never get clicked at all.)

In fact, video viewing on Facebook is so effortless and casual that 85% of Facebook video is viewed with the sound turned off! (This is the default setting – to watch a video with sound, you have to click to turn it on. Creators like BuzzFeed often share videos that can be fully enjoyed without sound.)

The easier it is to get noticed, the easier it is to get shared – and Facebook is doing everything it can to get video noticed.

The numbers don’t lie

When you think you notice your reach, referrals, or shares going down for your Facebook posts, it isn’t all in your head – and it isn’t even necessarily something you did!

Facebook loves video, and is making a concerted, algorithmic effort to promote it – an effort that might be undermining some of your other marketing strategies.

So – what can you do about it?

If you’ve never experimented with Facebook video, live or otherwise, this is the time to start. We’ve written before about how to get started with webcasting – it’s always been a good idea to incorporate it into your marketing strategy, and Facebook just makes it easier to actually do it!

Video is getting a lot of love from Facebook lately, but that doesn’t mean it should be your only focus.

When you see something like video boom in popularity, it’s tempting to want to make it your sole priority and throw out everything you were doing before.

While Facebook is giving video such a strong push now, though, that might not always be the case! They change their content distribution algorithms all the time, and what works today might not be such a slam-dunk strategy tomorrow.

Make video part of your repertoire, but don’t allow it to eclipse the other types of content you create and share.

Sharing video on Facebook may make it easier to improve the performance of your non-video posts, too. Facebook factors in your overall popularity when determining who should see your updates, which means a video that does really well could actually benefit your other posts in the future.

(Still not sure where to get started with Facebook video? This page in their Help Center should point you in the right direction!)

Have you experimented with video on Facebook? What kinds of results have you seen? Do you prefer going live, or prerecorded? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The post New Stats: Facebook Video Is Dominating Other Types of Content appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Facebook announced a huge change to its News Feed algorithm – and you won’t believe what happened next!

(Okay, actually, you probably will.)

Because headlines and links that sound like that – like clickbait – have been around for a long, long time. You’ve probably seen a whole lot of them in your day!

Facebook has literally spent YEARS fighting clickbait.

And why wouldn’t they? Users hate it! They think it’s manipulative and misleading – and they’re right.

In fact, Facebook’s higher-ups have even come right out and said that you should be writing headlines that give people a clear idea of what to expect from your link – NOT ones designed to trick them into clicking!

Still, not all publishers have gotten the message – and Facebook is putting its foot down in a big way.

They’ve poured a lot of time and resources into targeting and banishing clickbait for good, and now their secret weapon is ready for action.

So, what’s Facebook doing about clickbait – and why does it mean everyone (including you!) should be extra careful in the future?

Facebook’s big plan

In the past, Facebook’s methods for identifying clickbait have been based on a lot of guessing. (They generally stuck to looking at stats that could indicate that something was clickbait, but could also mean other things, too. It wasn’t a perfect system.)

After years of studying, though, they’ve developed a way to automatically identify clickbait more effectively than ever before.

How’d they do it?

First, they studied headlines – a LOT of headlines.

Tens of thousands of them, one-by-one, each inspected by actual human people who looked for patterns and kept track of the tell-tale signs of clickbait.

(We’ll share what they found in a second. It’s important.)

Then, they used that information to build a GIANT CLICKBAIT-DESTROYING ROBOT.

Well, not exactly.

But they DID develop a system that will automatically scan headlines and links for the classic signs of clickbait, and flag the ones that don’t meet Facebook’s standards. Posts that get flagged will appear lower in the feed – if they appear at all.

(They describe it as working kind of like the spam filter in your email – it looks for certain traits in your content, and gives it a pass/fail ranking.)

This isn’t just a post-by-post thing, either – it has a cumulative effect.

If you regularly get flagged for posting links that Facebook’s system identifies as clickbait, that can lower the reach for all your posts.

(On the flipside, though, if you stop posting clickbait, Facebook will lift the restrictions on your content’s visibility.)

All this leaves one big, slightly scary question, though:

What is Facebook looking for when it’s flagging clickbait?

After all, they studied tens of thousands of headlines and figured out what signs to look for – it’s probably a good idea to know what exactly those signs are!

The two tell-tale signs of clickbait

Turns out, there are two big things Facebook’s clickbait detection system is looking for in the content of your headlines.

The first thing it looks for is signs of withholding vital information from readers.

You know the type – headlines like:

• He Said The Wrong Name During His Wedding Vows – And Her Reaction Was Priceless
• My Heart Broke 13 Seconds Into This Video
• This Little Girl’s Birthday Wish Will Redeem Your Faith In Humanity

Headlines like these became popular for a reason – they work! The curiosity gap they create tickles some well-documented psychological triggers in your brain, compelling you to click so you can learn answers to the questions the headline implicitly asks.

Still, almost as well-documented as their effectiveness is the fact that people are sick and tired of these things – so if you’ve been leaning a little too hard on the ol’ curiosity gap and withholding information that a reader would want to know before they click, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

But that’s not the only thing Facebook’s looking for – it’s also targeting headlines that mislead readers.

For example, this is a headline that’s sure to grab someone’s attention:

But what if it’s not telling the whole story? A provocative headline is great for driving shares and clicks, but it shouldn’t deliberately mislead readers. What if the more accurate headline looked a little more like this?

See? A totally different angle! Other types of misleading headlines might look something like these:

• Are The Trees In Your Backyard Actually Slowly Killing You?
• Why Chocolate Chip Cookies Are Better For You Than Celery
• Yes, Your Cat Is Reading Your Mind At This Very Moment

Facebook’s investigation into headline trends has revealed that a lot of publishers rely on clever misdirection for grabbing their audience’s attention – and they want to put a stop to it. Don’t rely on misleading readers with headlines that are more shocking than they are accurate – grab their attention with actual, straight-to-the-point facts!

So, these are the types of headlines Facebook is targeting as clickbait – and if you’re writing them, your reach could seriously suffer.

Which means you may be wondering…

How is Facebook identifying these types of headlines?

While Facebook says they’re “using a system that identifies phrases that are commonly used in clickbait headlines,” they haven’t come out and said what exactly any of those phrases are – and frankly, they shouldn’t!

(If everyone had a list of phrases that had been red-flagged, it would be pretty easy to game the system, don’t you think?)

Instead, Facebook wants to make this an opportunity for publishers to work on their good judgment – to understand the actual methodology of writing headlines that are effective while still respecting their readers.

Facebook’s latest algorithm change is sending a message: write better headlines.
Click To Tweet

That means you should be more mindful of the headlines you write in the future (and the content you share from OTHER people), but it also means there’s something you can do right now.

Go back and revisit the headlines for anything you share on a regular basis, or anything you’ve written in the past and still promote.

If any of it fits the criteria described above – if it’s either withholding or misleading – give it a little polish so that it isn’t! (Hey, no judgment. It was a popular trend!)

Once you do, you can go back to sharing those updates with confidence – and in the future, your headline writing skills will be stronger than ever!

What do you think of Facebook’s plan to automatically target clickbait headlines? Think it’ll work? Think it’s fair? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below – you won’t BELIEVE what happens next!

The post Facebook’s New Weapon In The War On Clickbait appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Quality content is one of the most sought-after resources on the internet. At the same time, there’s a general misunderstanding about what “quality” actually means in this context.

A lot of people think that the quality of a post is measured by the amount of traffic it drives to a site. This could not be further from the truth.

While good content should draw lots of traffic, it’s by no means a guarantee – especially if it isn’t being properly marketed. At the same time, crafty marketers make it all too easy for poor content to pull in a lot of traffic. It’s called clickbait (or worse), and it’s something the online companies are actively fighting against.

So why is good content so hard to come by? And what can you do to make sure your content isn’t part of the mess? Read on, dear reader…

The Rise of Bad Content

To understand why quality content is so important, let’s take a quick look at the history of the internet.

A long, long time ago, the internet was created in a flash of light somewhere in Al Gore’s basement. Or at least that’s close enough for our purposes here. In the early days, there were very few people using this internet, and it was generally seen as a nerdy collection of nerds doing nerdy things, via modems (fun tip: click that link in front of a dog and in front of a person under the age of 20 and see which one looks more confused).

A prehistoric website, perfectly preserved in amber.

Then, like most things created by nerds, the internet started to become popular. By the mid 90s, the “Information Super Highway” had really taken off. Major motion pictures even realized the importance of having an online presence. Advertisers started seeing clicks as dollar signs… and the race was officially underway.

Blame Early SEO Strategies

These early days of the web were a gleefully lawless scramble with everyone trying to figure out just exactly what this internet thing was all about. And with the wild west approach came things like illegal downloading, suspicious websites, and wildly hacky SEO strategies.

Search Engine Optimization has come a long way, and at its core it has become the very basis of how we use the internet. (Imagine a world in which there was no Google-like way to search online – would there even be an online?) And as SEO algorithms continue to get better, the internet is going to continue to become smarter and more natural to use. Heck, the guy behind Google’s AI has flat-out said he wants it to work like the computers on Star Trek, where a single question will get you exactly what you need to know.

But back then, in the bad ol’ days, using transparent font and loading up you page with invisible words was a legitimate SEO strategy. While this particular technique thankfully no longer works, there are still an alarming number of marketing “experts” who think that SEO is a matter of tricking algorithms, not creating meaningful content.

These “experts” are wrong.

SEO Will Set You Free

Early search AI was easy to trick. But it’s obviously in a search engine’s best interest to identify and avoid content that doesn’t actually deliver value to the reader.

The smarter search engine AI becomes, the easier it becomes for quality content to rise to the top. Here’s a pretty cool article (if you don’t mind it being a little tech heavy) from a few years ago, when Google released a major change to the way their algorithms work. Essentially, Google learned how to understand the gist of a page without relying on seeing the same keyword over and over. This system is still in use today, and has been refined even further. Here’s how it works…

Instead of looking for particular keywords, Google now understands you well enough to get the general message of what you’re talking about. Keywords still play a role, but you don’t have to worry about repeating the same exact phrase enough to hit some sort of magic SEO score. In fact, using variations of your keyword is better for you, because Google takes that to mean you’re writing genuinely valuable content and not just farming for clicks.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article on “great marketing writing.” Instead of just repeating that verbatim to achieve keyword density, just write naturally! You’ll end up using related terms, maybe something like “great writers” or “good marketers”, and Google will know that you’re still talking about “great marketing writing.” You’re just doing it like a human writing for smart humans, instead of one writing for dumb robots.

(Apologies to any robots reading this post.)

What We Ask Ourselves When Creating Content

So now that you know why bad content is everywhere, and that the best thing you can do for your SEO score is to create quality content that aims to actually impart something of value to your reader, how do you go about creating that content? Here are the questions we ask ourselves at MeetEdgar before we start writing:

1. Will this topic be of interest to our audience?
2. Do we have a unique perspective or new piece of information to share?
3. Can we talk about this topic from a position of authority?

If the answer to any of the above questions is “no,” the post isn’t created.

We suggest you start asking yourself these questions as well. In our next Edgar Learn post, we’ll dig deeper into what you should actually write once each of these questions is answered with a gleeful “yes.”

This post is part of our Edgar Learn series, where we share the strategies that helped us find success! For more from Edgar Learn, click here!

The post How Bad SEO Strategies Lead to the Rise of Bad Content, and What You Can Do About It appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

There’s a huge fight happening in your Facebook News Feed right now – and we’re not talking about all those guys from your high school arguing about political memes.

We’re talking about the ongoing feud between Facebook and ad-blocking plugins like Adblock Plus, which has recently escalated into a good old-fashioned turf war with you at the center!

On the surface, this might seem like it doesn’t have much to do with you – like it’s just another behind-the-scenes disagreement that’ll come and go without affecting your day-to-day life.

But this dispute has already started affecting how Facebook works – both for users and for anyone who uses ads.

Whether you’re one of Adblock’s 300 million users, you’re an advertiser, or you’re just minding your own business like a fruit cart in a car chase, this is already changing the way you experience Facebook.

So much spilled citrus.

The question is, how? And why?

Facebook’s beef with ad blockers

Ad blockers work by identifying and hiding all kinds of ads within a page – banners, pop-ups, videos, and so on.

For the average user, that probably sounds pretty great!

For businesses like Facebook, though, not so much. After all, websites that are free for users and visitors have to make money somehow – and if ads aren’t showing, why would advertisers pay for them?

Facebook isn’t the only content provider struggling with the popularity of ad blockers.

In May 2016, 42% of Facebook Pages used paid ads – and that’s a lot of businesses to try to make happy!

Then there’s the matter of fairness.

While different ad blocking plugins give users varying degrees of control over whether or not they see certain ads on certain sites, there’s also some question about what role those sites may play, as well.

Adblock Plus, for example, has made money by charging major companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to have their ads unblocked by the service. (Users can still manually choose to block them from their individual settings.)

Facebook has made a point about refusing to shell out for similar privileges, citing the practice as confusing and against their ideals. (They also say that ad blockers may erroneously block posts from friends and family, too.)

Like a lot of websites, Facebook doesn’t like ad blocking.

So they decided to do something about it.

And that’s where it gets really interesting…

Facebook’s alternative (and Adblock fights back)

In August 2016, Facebook started by deploying a site change that would block Adblock from working.

Then Adblock released a workaround so that users could keep hiding ads on Facebook.

Then Facebook released another update blocking Adblock’s workaround.

(And so on, and so on.)

While the two companies are locked in a back-and-forth battle over the right to show (or block) ads, Facebook is also working on updates that make it easier to block ads natively.

Basically, Facebook figures that if people don’t like the ads they’re seeing, then those people should be able to make them go away. It won’t get rid of ads altogether, but users will at least be able to control the types of ads they see!

That’s why Facebook is so transparent about why you see certain ads.

They figure you have the right to know why you’ve been targeted for something – and you can get that information from any ad that shows up in your News Feed.

If you’ve ever created an ad on Facebook, you know how important it is to target the right audience. Advertisers choose who sees their ads based not only on demographic information like age and location, but on interests.

Facebook makes it easy to see which of your interests are influencing ads – and which ones can’t.

From your ad preferences page, you can take a look at your interests, and even preview the types of ads you might see based on each one:

If you don’t like the types of ads that are influenced by that interest, you can tell Facebook right then and there to quit factoring it in, so you’ll see ads that are relevant to other interests, instead!

Facebook is giving users more and more control over what they see in their News Feeds – and that means advertisers have to do a better job than ever before!

Doing a better job means doing things like studying your fans’ demographics and interests, so you can target people more accurately.

It means sticking to messaging that’ll make you stand out to people who have never heard of you (but have heard of your competitors).

It means knowing what Facebook considers a good ad – because they know that there are a lot of bad ads out there!

Empowering users to control the ads in their feeds is a big move in Facebook’s war on Adblock – and it’s raising the standards for anyone who has ever paid for reach in the News Feed.

Permanently banishing an advertiser from the News Feed is easier than ever, so if your ads aren’t up to snuff, users might start giving ‘em the boot!

Are you on Team Facebook, or Team Adblock?

It could be a while before Facebook and Adblock call a ceasefire – heck, it could be never.

In the meantime, what do you think of Facebook’s alternative solution to blocking ads?

Does it seem effective to you as a user? Does it concern you as an advertiser? If you’re using an ad-blocking program, could Facebook convince you not to?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post What Facebook’s Adblock Battle Is Doing To Your Page appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Twitter recently announced some big changes to how it works – and the types of content you should expect to see!

(Dun-dun-duuuun!)

One of those changes?

A little something they’re calling the “quality filter” – which promises to limit the visibility of different types of tweets, including “content that appears to be automated.”

For the millions of people automating their updates using scheduling tools, that might seem…a little alarming.

But don’t worry!

Twitter’s quality filter is actually a good thing – like, a REALLY good thing.

(Even if you automate your tweets. Even if you share the same tweets more than once!)

To understand why, let’s take a look at what exactly this thing even is – and what it isn’t.

It’s all about the notifications

One of the great things about Twitter is that you can reach out to literally anyone you want. All it takes is an @-mention in your tweet, and they’ll be notified that you’re talking about them – they might even reply!

Ima send u a blender dm me your address https://t.co/gVE4B2paJa

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) June 28, 2016

One of the WORST things about Twitter, though, is that you can be reached by literally anyone. All it takes is an @-mention in their tweet, and you’ll be notified that they’re talking about you – even if they’re not saying something particularly nice.

In the past, this has made Twitter a convenient tool for harassing public figures – a place where anyone could easily and anonymously flood someone’s notifications tab with whatever brand of hate speech they so desired. It’s a problem that’s affected everyone from comedians and cartoonists to Olympic athletes, and with little intervention from Twitter itself.

Until now, anyway.

Twitter is finally addressing its ongoing issues with accessibility and abuse, and it’s doing so in two parts.

First, Twitter introduced new notifications settings.

These settings allow you to decide who you see notifications from – specifically, it allows you to restrict your notifications to users who you follow.

(That way, if people you don’t follow @-mention you, it won’t show up in your notifications.)

This is a relatively strict guideline, though – after all, you might not want to suspend notifications from every single person you don’t already follow on Twitter.

That’s where the quality filter comes in.

The quality filter also limits what you see in your notifications, but it isn’t quite as ruthless. You’ll still be able to see notifications from people you don’t already follow – just with a few restrictions thrown in.

If a marketing bot tweets the same automated message at you over and over, for example, it might get filtered out of your notifications. Same with the randos who send the same trolling comments every day – or the ones who seem to like you just a little too much.

“Arriving In Her Mentions Column” by Berthold Woltze, 1874 pic.twitter.com/aF492p6MVw

— Frank Swain (@SciencePunk) August 19, 2016

Basically, the quality filter is a way to keep low-quality and/or automated mentions out of your notifications tab.

The quality filter does NOT, however, affect content from any of the accounts you follow.

It also doesn’t filter content from accounts you’ve recently interacted with, either, so it essentially doesn’t prevent you from seeing any of the content it knows you actually care about.

What this means for what you post

That’s what all this means for someone using the quality filter – but what does it mean for you and the tweets you share?

Probably nothing.

Unless you’re an actual social media harassment enthusiast – and we’re gonna go ahead and assume that you aren’t – this shouldn’t affect you or your visibility very much at all.

Remember, your visibility won’t be affected at all for people who follow you – and aside from the occasional tailored suggestion, a person’s Twitter timeline is pretty much only people they follow.

If someone doesn’t follow you, and they have the quality filter turned on, and you frequently @-mention them in the same automated post over and over, then that specific post might not show in their notifications tab every time.

(It’s not exactly a huge loss.)

These tools are designed to curb harassment by limiting the number of notifications people receive under very specific circumstances – NOT to stop your tweets from showing up for the people who follow you.

So what are your thoughts? Does this sound like a sensible solution to Twitter’s harassment problem? (Did the way Twitter initially announced it make it sound kind of scary and confusing? Because that’s been a thing in the past, too.)

Share your thoughts on the new features in the comments below!

The post What Twitter’s New “Quality Filter” Actually Does appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.

Wonder what the million most-shared articles on social media have in common?

They’re all doing something right, obviously – and if you know a little about what’s in their secret formula, then you can whip up some of your own!

Recently, Fractl and BuzzSumo teamed up on a massive project: a study of the million most-shared articles on social media.

They investigated a million articles between December 2015 and June 2016, and reached some seriously interesting conclusions about where the most sharing happens, what people share the most, and how it’s determining the most successful publishers on the web!

You can read the full study here when you have time, but for now, let’s check out what social media’s most shareable content has in common.

Where people are sharing

Before you keep reading, take a guess at which social network people share the most content on.

Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn?

(Think about it. We’ll wait.)

The answer is Facebook – and by a HUGE margin.

In this sample of the million most-shared articles on social media, 90.2% of the sharing took place on Facebook.

For perspective, Twitter had the second highest number of shares with 6.1% – which is kind of a lot less.

In the first half of 2016, 90% of social shares happened on Facebook.
Click To Tweet

Not only is Facebook the network where most of the sharing happens, but it’s actually growing, too! In a similar study in 2014 (conducted by the same people), Facebook only claimed about 82% of all shares.

People are sharing on Facebook more than ever – so don’t count it out!

Sure, keeping up with the algorithm that determines who sees your updates can feel like a lot of work – but understanding it can really pay off!

In just a second, we’ll look at one business in particular that’s a powerful example of this, but first, let’s talk about why you’re more competitive right now than you might realize.

Whose stuff actually gets shared

Feel like it’s hard to stand out on social media when there are so many bigger fish out there?

(Like, who cares if Buzzfeed got a gajillion views or whatever – of course they did, they have so many followers!)

Actually, you’re more competitive on social media than you used to be.

According to this study, overall shares on social have gone up since 2014 – but the average number of shares for the top publishers are all down.

Basically, it means there’s more variety in who’s getting shared! Instead of a few bigger publishers hogging all the spotlight, more small and niche creators are getting shared, too.

If you’re a small business or a niche publisher, that’s pretty exciting news.

Not only are creators like you getting a bigger slice of the pie, but the pie itself is getting bigger, too!

Speaking of big publishers getting fewer shares, though…

Facebook’s algorithm changes matter – a lot

Remember when we said that one business in particular is a really good example of how much impact Facebook’s algorithm has?

That business is Upworthy – the company that kind of made clickbait famous.

(You know, that method of writing headlines that used to be positively everywhere?)

Back in 2014, Upworthy was averaging an astonishing 60,000 shares per article.

At the end of that year, though, Facebook declared war on clickbait, introducing an algorithm change that gives those types of headlines a lot less reach. (Its commitment to ridding social media of this trend has only gotten stronger since then.)

What effect did it have, exactly?

According to this study, Upworthy now averages just over 15,000 shares per article – about a fourth as many as it used to.

The point?

Keeping up with Facebook’s algorithm changes matters, and it matters big time!

Those changes determine who’s going to see your post, so it’s up to you to maintain the right kinds of posting habits.

And speaking of what people want to see…

Your tone makes a big difference

What kinds of stories do you like seeing the most on social media?

Happy?

Sad?

Those weird political conspiracy theories that guy from your high school keeps posting?

Because it turns out, the tone of a social media update is a major influence on whether or not it gets shared!

Of the top 1,000 articles shared on social, more than two-thirds had a positive tone. (Only about 7.7% had a negative one.)

Social users generally prefer positivity – and it’s actually more important on some networks than on others! On LinkedIn, for example, 88% of the top 100 articles shared had a positive sentiment. On Pinterest, 97.8 percent.

Here’s where Upworthy comes back in.

Remember how they dropped down to about 15,000 shares per article?

They still get the most shares per article online – and 100% of their top 100 articles have a positive vibe.

Upworthy has branded itself as the go-to place for inspirational, uplifting content that emphasizes unity and empathy – and it works.

And while Upworthy has mastered the art of human interest storytelling, everyone is impacted by how emotion influences shareability.

For example, this study found that news publishers like The New York Times and BBC published the highest percentages of positive content, and also had the best sharing numbers across a variety of networks.

(In contrast, Fox News published the highest volume of negative content, and wasn’t in the top five publishers for any social network.)

This doesn’t mean that you can only post touchy-feely content – just that there are scientific reasons why people share certain things on social, and the better you understand them, the more strategic you can be with what you post!

The three major lessons

Okay, let’s recap!

There are three major takeaways from the results of this study.

1. People share on Facebook more than ever
2. When Facebook’s algorithm changes, you need to adapt
3. Your tone can influence whether or not you get shares

Of course, that’s what their research found – and you can get an up-close look at their data right here, but we want to know what you think, first!

Do these findings jibe with your own experiences on social? Does it feel like the sentiment of what you post inspires sharing? Have you felt the impact of dramatic algorithm changes over the years?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post What the Million Most-Shared Articles On Social Media Have In Common appeared first on MeetEdgar Blog.