How to manage social media without it taking up all your time

Post by Justin Green
General Manager, M2 On Hold

As the world returns to normal after a year filled with lockdowns and social distancing, it’s time to pay special attention to your business’s or organization’s social media presence. Are your online customers engaged, or is your bounce rate sky high? Are customers, clients or members returning to your site or stopping by once never to return?

Now is a good time to think about key communications tactics to imbue your online presence with a sense of place as we transition back to a time when physical connections are possible again.

Despite the myriad benefits of social media, sporadic, unplanned and non-strategic posting is rarely effective. In the current marketing landscape, social media won’t just maintain importance for businesses, it’s projected that it will become a fundamental pillar of every marketing strategy. As the Harvard Business Review reported, “Organizations willing to re-evaluate their social media strategies in a rapidly changing landscape will minimize risk and maximize the opportunity to connect with consumers.”

Even with the proven value of social media, the average business can rarely afford a dedicated social media manager, and sometimes there’s no room in the budget for a marketing staffer either. Ideally, social media requires both short-term and long-term work consisting of copywriting, editorial planning, high-level public and stakeholder communications, cross-promotions, brand building, analytical campaign reviews, and direct or indirect sales funneling. All of these tasks take significant time. Without adequate planning, high-volume work takes its toll both in terms of the quality of the work as in the diversion of resources.

How to respond to this dynamic challenge? In order to help businesses approach this on a tactical level, M2 On Hold developed the infographic ‘‘How to Manage Social Media Without It Taking Up All Your Time.’’ As a practical resource, we hold you’ll find this graphic handy no matter the size of your organization, from startups to small and medium enterprises. It can even be a great educational tool for professional marketers to brush up on skills and revise their own processes.

Let us know how you confront today’s social media challenges in the comments below!

(Click to enlarge.)

The post Social media productivity tips [Infographic] appeared first on Inside Social Media.

The rise of social media has allowed users to stay connected with their family, friends and colleagues all around the world. Moreover, it has empowered businesses to stay on top of their customers’ minds, boost awareness for their brand and increase sales and leads.

These days, marketing your business and your products and services wouldn’t be complete without reaching out to social media influencers. Before you hire social media influencers, let’s define what influencer marketing is and why influencers can be important to your brand.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencers are people who have established a loyal following through their content on social media and other online platforms. They have the power to influence their followers when it comes to purchasing products or services. Hence, the term influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is an approach where companies work with influencers to build brand visibility, tap into more markets, reach their target audience and drive sales. Influencers can promote the brand and the products and services. With the right plan and approach, they and their followers can bring your business significant growth and success.

Below, have a look at some impressive numbers that prove influencer marketing works in growing businesses and continues to be effective for established brands.

• About 90% of marketers who were surveyed say that return on investment from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
• 49% of consumers determine their purchases from influencer recommendations
• 22% of marketers find influencer marketing as the most cost-effective method of acquiring new customers
• Around 67% of marketing professionals set aside an increased budget for influencer marketing.

If you’re planning to adopt this strategy into your marketing efforts, you have to know where and how you can find influencers relevant to your industry. Here’s an infographic that shows how you can do just that.

The post Infographic: How to find and engage social media influencers appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Post by Paula Arce
MicroCreatives

Internet users have only an eight-second attention span, shorter than that of a goldfish. The average user wants quick results and instant gratification, which is why videos might be the most snackable content type of this year.

According to 51.9% of marketers around the world, video is the content type that gives them the best ROI—making 73% of marketers claim that they plan to use more videos for their business. How so?

One only needs to look around to see how people are always on their mobile devices, watching videos on social media or video sharing sites. Videos have been so popular lately such that new video trends are emerging in the form of live videos and 360-degree videos to accommodate the rising technology of virtual reality.

In fact, people nowadays spend three times more in watching live videos than regular videos. In addition, 360-degree videos get 28.81% more views even without the use of a VR gear.

For some, it’s as simple as pulling out their smartphones and recording anything under the sun. But for those who want to be sure that their videos provide results, it’s important to follow best practices.

This infographic shows the seven key tactics in creating a marketing video to reach a specific target audience and convert them into paying customers.

The post Infographic: 7 ways to create a great marketing video appeared first on Inside Social Media.

A beginner’s guide to using video marketing for your brand

Post by Tarun Reddy
Co-founder, Review42

How many videos does your business have online right now? If the answer is “None,” you’re missing out on an outstanding marketing tool. Why? 78% of people watch videos online at least once a week and 44% of us watch five or more videos a week.

To put that into perspective, nearly half of your prospective customers or clients watch several videos a day. If you haven’t started using video marketing yet, you’re falling behind the curve. Fortunately, this is a situation that you can quickly rectify.

To help you get started, we have a great infographic for you. It will serve as a crash course on the benefits and best practices in video marketing.

Not sure where to start? Then let’s go through some ideas to spark your creativity in creating the right videos for your brand.

Explainer videos

These videos break down complicated topics and explain them in simple terms. If you’re introducing a new brand or a new kind of product or service, you’ll want to capture people’s attention by explaining a new concept or explaining why they need your service before moving on to tutorial videos, which are about how to use your service. You’ll see an example below from the Techquickie’s YouTube channel.

Tutorial videos

Tutorial videos provide useful information to your prospects. More importantly, they show your product in action and provide proof that it does the job it promises. Start by providing a basic tutorial on how to get the best use out of your product.

Then you can get a little more creative. Think about a problem that your prospects might have. Can your product or service fill the gap?

Say, for example, that you own a craft store, and you want to promote some new stamps and inks. You could create a tutorial showing people how to make a card using those items. The video below from Jennifer McGuire’s YouTube channel is a perfect example of how this could work for a small business.

Behind-the-scenes videos

Done properly, a good behind-the-scenes video gives your clients a chance to see how much work goes into each of your products. More than that, it conveys the tone of your brand and perhaps the culture of your company. In short, you’re showing customers the human side of your business. The example below is from the Mind Warehouse’s YouTube channel.

Event videos

Are you planning a special event? Say, for example, you’ll be hosting a concert to raise funds for charity. Filming the event can be a useful tool to get more mileage out of it long after the event is over. Your prospects will be able to go on YouTube, enjoy the music and learn how civic-minded your company is.

Infographic: Video marketing statistics

Now that we’ve gone through some examples, let’s dive right into the infographic.

The post Infographic: Video marketing made simple appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Post by Nelson Cicchitto

Nowadays you can find AI in all sorts of movies. Whether you like action-adventure, sci-fi or even romantic comedies, artificial intelligences show up in these genres and play fascinating roles.

We’ve completed a study of the top AIs in film and came away with a new appreciation of how screenwrites are depicting this emerging technology. One of the most interesting things about AI is that their inherent nonhuman nature showcases what movie writers most believe to be true about humans.

Here’s our ranking of AIs’ appearances on the silver screen and what kind of statement the movie makes about our humanity. And below is our infographic rounding up the evil and good depictions of AI characters in the movies, from R2D2 and Data to Skynet.

HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) – A deadly dose of humanity

Some individuals see HAL 9000 as one of the most quintessential evil AI. But what’s more interesting than its moral choices was HAL’s uncanny humanity. The humans in “2001: A Space Odyssey” act eerily calm and nonplussed. However, HAL 9000 exhibits humanlike traits such as jealousy and paranoia, which ultimately lead to the mission’s failure and astronauts’ deaths.

Ava (Ex Machina) – Making difficult choices

“Ex Machina” has only four characters: three humans and one AI. By the end of the movie, only Ava, the AI, makes it out alive. However, she does this by manipulating two of the humans and even leaving one of them for dead. If this was truly the only way for her to be free and live an uninhibited life, does it still make her evil? When it’s an AI asking the question, the answer sometimes seems a little more uncertain.

VIKI (I, Robot) – Logical but heartless

Following in the steps of HAL 9000, VIKI is a hyperintelligent robotic core that decides to kill certain humans to try and keep humanity alive for longer. This is a classic moral dilemma: Is it all right to kill someone, even an innocent person, if by killing them you make the world a better place? Plenty of human characters could benefit from the same hard thinking.

Ranking AI in Movies: The Good, The Bad, and the Buggy Created By: Avatier.com

R2-D2 (Star Wars) – Saying a lot without words

R2-D2 is one of the most beloved and iconic “Star Wars” characters in the entire franchise. But on the surface, the robot’s popularity is somewhat baffling. After all, it never utters a single line of dialogue, and its character design isn’t even humanoid. Why, then, is it such a beloved part of the franchise? Quite simply, R2-D2 oozes with charm and empathy. George Lucas didn’t have to create a character with snappy dialogue or a cool design — he just had to make one that tugged at people’s heartstrings.

Bender (Futurama) – Unlikeable likeability

OK, Bender is on TV, not from the movies. Still, there are all sorts of mixed-morality human characters on TV. Bender is very much one of those characters, except for the fact that he’s a robot. He’s rude, womanizing, mean and manipulative, but in some moments, he does seem to show genuine emotion. In fact, many of his negative traits are the reasons why audiences like him so much. With such a rich, humanlike character, does it even matter that he’s not really a human?

Conclusion

Every piece of a story showcases something about the screenwriters who wrote it. Next time you encounter an AI on screen, consider the story behind the story: Look at the tale on a meta level and learn from it rather than just watching it passively. Think about what the character represents and the message it’s sending rather than just the surface-level actions depicted on screen.

Who’s your favorite AI character from the movies, and why?

This originally appeared on jdlasica.com

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Post by Paula Arce
MicroCreatives

There are 3.2 billion social media users worldwide, with each person spending an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes on social networking sites and messaging apps.

Considering these figures, it’s become apparent that the scale of social media can’t be ignored. It has risen to become one of the biggest marketing channels in the past two decades. Now more than ever, it’s critical to employ a social media strategy to reach your target audience quickly and effectively.

Given the fast-paced nature of digital marketing, you need to keep up to date with the latest social media strategies and trends in order to stay ahead of the competition. Even better, trying new and experimental strategies could be the key to standing out from the sea of content that your audiences are flooded with.

Below are some social media content trends that you can put to good use into your marketing strategy for the coming year.

The post Social media content trends for 2020 (infographic) appeared first on Inside Social Media.

And we run down 5 tools small businesses need to succeed in 2019-2020

Post by Marilia Dimitriou

The key to business success in the modern age is to find the means to grow in a sustainable way, supported by a smart, adaptive marketing strategy. When it comes to small to medium enterprises, taking advantage of the right marketing technology can offer cost-effective solutions and help a company grow beyond expectations.

However, compared to large enterprises that have the budget to acquire lots of tools, SMEs need to find the best platforms that will provide the best ROI without costing a lot of money. In short, SMEs need to choose the tools that will help them achieve their marketing goals right from the start.

How marketing tech helps SMEs

Since the update of the infamous MarTech 5000, today’s landscape includes about 7,040 solutions that can simplify the tedious tasks of marketing, advertising and sales.

That’s a lot of tools. And many do offer great alternatives that can cover an SME’s marketing needs without the need to spend a fortune.

Platforms that simplify marketing automation, content marketing and CRM (customer relationship management) can benefit SMEs greatly compared to businesses that choose not to invest in marketing tech tools.

So, what are these benefits?

Save time

One of the greatest advantages of using marketing tech is saving time. For example, when it comes to email marketing, sending emails manually can be an extremely time-consuming activity that can hold you back from focusing on other pressing matters.

Using a marketing automation platform, for instance, will automate the process by providing you with time-or-action triggered workflows that will do more with less effort.

Since the number of emails sent and received has grown rapidly, reaching your prospects, leads or customers with automated campaigns will offer them instant solutions to their pain points.

Create better content

Creating the best content that will increase your engagement and conversion rate is always something that SMEs should aim for when they plan their marketing strategies. A great content platform will provide you with various tools to create and deliver smarter, more relevant and consistent content to your audience.

Creating and managing your content is the first step to boost your content marketing strategy and collect valuable customer data.

Increase product visibility

Modern marketing is all about using digital means to promote your products to a large number of people.

With the rise of active Internet users, product marketing has started focusing more on technology rather than conventional marketing methods to increase the ARR   and reduce the MRR churn   of a business.

By taking advantage of social media, marketers can use sponsored ads on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to maximize their brand awareness and attract new customers.

Efficient social media management

With 3.48 billion social media users worldwide, the most successful tactic to reach new customers is to have numerous social media accounts to engage with them. However, getting yourself to manage these accounts at once can be a fulltime job since creating the best posts or answering comments or direct messages can take hours or even days.

Using marketing tech to manage and monitor all of your social media accounts at once can help SMEs plan their posts and campaigns better.

Connect tasks

One of the solutions that marketers should use no matter what is the ability to integrate their apps and simplify their tasks. In this case, integration marketing technology allows marketers to connect their apps without requiring any technical expertise.

Integrations will allow SMEs to collect valuable data across different apps and create reports that will help them set the best KPIs   to ensure that their teams will make smart decisions that will benefit the companies long term.

Drive more sales and build customer relationships

SMEs that use platforms to organize their customer data will benefit greatly since it will help them determine which types of content have the highest engagement and conversion rate.

By learning more about their customers, SMEs can improve customer experience by sending exceptional targeted content and offers that will keep their audience interested and drive them further down the marketing funnel.

5 examples of MarTech tools that SMEs need

1. Moosend

When it comes to email marketing automation, the market has a number of MailChimp alternatives that can provide you with the right tools to get your email marketing automation strategy going.

Moosend, for example, is a great alternative to help you plan your email campaigns and automate them. With a free forever plan, you get to send an unlimited number of campaigns without losing any features.

Also, you can take advantage of Moosend’s pre-built newsletter templates and adjust them to your brand through a fast and easy drag-and-drop email building system that will save you time and effort.

When you’ll have your email ready, you’ll have to set up the automated workflow that will distribute your awesome email to your subscribers.

Since email is one of the best marketing channels any business should use to promote their brand image and products, investing in a great platform will help your business succeed faster.

2. Google Adwords

Google Adwords is a very popular and successful advertising option that allows you to promote your products using one of the biggest search engines worldwide.

While Facebook might be a worthy opponent, the problem-solving nature of search engines gives your customers more reasons to click on your ads and find a solution to their problem.

Taking advantage of AdWords’ bidding system can give SMEs full control over the money they spend on it and have the best ROI while avoiding unnecessary costs.

3. Buffer

Managing and posting on several social media platforms can be a lot of hard work, so what marketers need is a social media management platform to help them schedule their posts and automate the process of social media posting.

To do so, SMEs can take advantage of Buffer’s easy to use social media management platform to connect their social media accounts and schedule their next big post without switching between several social media accounts.

Adding Buffer to your MarTech Stack will help you manage and monitor your social media content and campaigns and through social media monitoring tools.

Compared to other social media marketing platforms, Buffer is a good value-for-money option to schedule posts that will engage all of your customers and lead them toward conversion.

4. WordPress

Since its launch back in 2003, WordPress has managed to establish itself as the most popular content management system, powering 34% of all websites, including Mercedes-Benz’s site.

WordPress’s success as the best CMS lies in creating personal blogs or multifunctional websites without having any technical skill whatsoever.

The Sartorialist has a great example of a simple scroll down blog that catches the eye.

WordPress also offers a variety of themes like Divi to display your content in style and various plug-ins such as Yoast SEO, a free plug-in that allows you to create content that is optimized for search engines.

5. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a great ecommerce platform that can easily be compared to Magento, one of the largest ecommerce platforms with more than 300,000 business clients. This SaaS platform offers affordable solutions to SMEs providing unlimited storage and bandwidth while it can be integrated with Facebook and the Google store.

Using a well-priced ecommerce platform can help SMEs not only promote their products but save significant amounts of money coming from ownership costs. Compared to other famous platforms, BigCommerce has the most built-in features that provide new businesses with cheaper solutions without compromising performance and quality.

Takeaway

To thrive, SMEs need to take advantage of the solutions that will give them more with less. Investing in cost-effective marketing tech tools is an excellent way to see your business grow and expand beyond measure.

The vast number of MarTech solutions can help businesses save invaluable time, increase brand visibility and create the best content that will convert leads into loyal customers.

So next time you search the market for the best tools, don’t forget to choose these that will have the greatest ROI without losing performance or quality points.

The post How marketing technology benefits SMEs appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Post by Luke Fernandez

Today it seems that our smartphones have become our lifeline or a digital Swiss Army knife that people can’t seem to detach themselves from them. Believe it or not, people will spend an average of three hours on their phones every day, while the top 20% of people spend nearly five hours on their phone. Due to the fact that people are becoming more and more dependent on their smartphones and technology in general, companies are taking notice of this trend and are adjusting their marketing efforts to reflect this. That being said, companies are merging their social media presence and their online shopping platforms to retain, attract and increase their audience and revenue, ultimately creating the social commerce industry.

What’s social commerce? It short, social commerce is the use of social networks to facilitate online commerce.

More and more of us are now purchasing products and services from businesses through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and many more. Now that our lives are becoming more social every day, businesses realize that these social platforms are where their consumers are spending the majority of their time, and they’re finding innovative ways to take advantage.

Crafting a smart social media marketing campaign can help your business get exposure, communicate more effectively with your audience and generate more revenue. When businesses properly integrate a social commerce strategy, they can expect to see a boost in customer loyalty, retention and sales.

Here’s an infographic we crafted on what social commerce can mean for your brand:

Businesses have yet to fully understand how powerful social commerce can be. Using these social media platforms will allow businesses to better understand the immediate wants and needs of their consumers and also predict and prepare for the future when they analyze consumer trends and purchasing habits. Notably, in the past two years social referrals to retail ecommerce sites have grown by 110%. This is a clear indicator that investing in social commerce can be a catalyst for the expansion of your audience and an increase in your business’s profitability.

The post The rise of social commerce (infographic) appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Tactics to master on search, mobile, video, email, ads & more

Post by Josh Wardini

The Internet is constantly changing to accommodate dynamic consumers who continue to look for better ways to improve their online experience. This dynamic attribute affects digital marketing as well. Brands, small and big businesses, and marketers need to be updated with the latest changes in digital marketing if they want to rise through the Google ranks.

This year has brought some surprising changes to digital marketing. For example, influencers became more prominent on social media and other online platforms. They served as a major game-changer for companies hoping to build partnerships for a better shot at their target audience.

Another trend that is undoubtedly shaping digital marketing in 2019 is the apparent dominance of mobile devices over desktops. As the quality of handheld devices and even wearables continue to improve, more marketers are taking steps toward creating mobile-friendly campaigns.

This is just the start of mobile device dominance. A lot of experts are expecting more consumers to lean toward smartphones and tablets in the near future.

Companies should also begin to market themselves as secure and safe brands to transact online. This new trend is sparked by increasing concerns regarding online privacy and safety. Needless to say, people are now only willing to trust brands that can guarantee the safety of the data they gather.

Digital marketing in the near term

What’s next for digital marketing?

For now, signs suggest that companies need to begin focusing more on appealing to the audience’s emotions more than anything else. Simply put, relatable and engaging content will be more effective for the rest of the year and beyond. This is just one of the many trends that will shape digital marketing campaigns in the future.

We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the latest digital trends that every marketer and brand should know. If you’re hoping to propel your company to rise against the competition, the following infographic will be worth the look.

Even if you’re just hoping to understand what consumers will be looking for next, you’ll definitely want to browse through this list of trends. Check it out online.

The post Digital marketing campaigns: 7 trends to watch (infographic) appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Post by Megan Totka

Digital marketing is a must today — it’s an essential element of any modern business. If your business wants to acquire new customers, it’s vital to use the right digital marketing techniques to show off your brand and pique your customers’ interest.

You also need to understand how to track your results and gain insight into your customers. There is so much involved in the digital marketing field, which is why people need to have more than the basic knowledge of the Internet to use digital marketing to increase sales.

So check out these five ways to amp your digital marketing so you can reap the maximum benefits.

Use social media apps

1Digital marketing and social media go together, so you need to ensure you have a grasp on the numerous social media platforms and apps before diving in head first.

Remember that social media grows more powerful by the day; there is no denying mobile’s impact on the B2B landscape. There are countless apps, from ones that help you record live video, a content format many people favor so you can stand out in the increasingly competitive social media algorithms, to ones that allow you to see all social mentions of your company.

The more experience you have with the main social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, the better.

Understand metrics

2Digital marketing is a great way to tell customers about your business and is also an excellent way to find out what they are looking for. Businesses have to track their campaigns and understand metrics to see if they’re working or not. Metrics include things such as the number of followers the brand has on social media platforms to the number of people who fill out a form on a website.

To make the metrics even more useful, they can be categorized by gender, age group, location and more. This allows for personalization to increase relevancy and boost the chances of making a sale. The most successful digital marketers understand both where to get the metrics and also how to use the information they glean to their advantage.

Keep up with the trends

3Digital marketing is one of those parts of marketing that has some constants, but also has things that change. As an example, video is a part of digital marketing that has evolved into a highly successful part of finding success; eMarketer.com found that 46 percent of users act after viewing a video ad.

It’s important to follow digital marketing trends since digital marketers need them to reach potential customers. The more you use up-to-date tactics, the better your marketing will be received. Businesses need to be seen as modern to attract customers. Knowing the latest trends is an easy way to prove that your business is current.

Learn to understand and discuss SEO

4Search engine optimization, or SEO, is an essential part of digital marketing and delves into the world of online content. While digital marketers may not be the writer who’s curating the content or the blogger who’s creating it, they still must understand how SEO works and how to find keywords to accompany the content. You can increase brand awareness and improve your SEO with podcasts, social media, blogs and your website when you learn how to effectively engage and amplify your audience.

Sharpen your writing skills

5Digital marketing extends beyond social media. While it’s helpful to have the ability to edit photos and create videos, people who want to find success in digital marketing need to have strong writing skills.

It will be tough for anyone to break into the digital marketing arena if they’re not able to write paragraphs of information in a clear, effective manner. Original content in the form of articles, images and videos is what people actively seek out. Make sure to publish high-quality content consistently to attract new visitors to your site and keep your existing ones coming back again and again.

Digital marketing via social media, your website, email and other online methods enables your business to communicate instantly with an audience around the world. There is no other type of marketing that gives you a global reach like digital marketing, so make sure you take full advantage of what it can do for you.

The post 5 ways to take your digital marketing to the next level appeared first on Inside Social Media.