social media Archives - Page 2 of 3

November 19, 2016December 16, 2017

Who else wants to create a fantastic social media proposal?

Let’s write a social media proposal

It’s always best to personalize your approach with a potential client, but here is a link to helpful tips on what you need to include in the social media proposal. Best of luck and go get ’em!

[Also see Outstanding Free Marketing Tools You Need to Know About]

“Well-written social media proposals are key to closing deals. If you’re a writer or marketer, your sales team probably needs your help writing those proposals, too. If you’re working solo, you might need to show why you’re a better option than a high-priced agency. Or another freelancer or consultant.”

Read the rest: How To Quickly Build Social Media Proposals That Win Clients

September 10, 2016December 16, 2017

‘Best practices’ may not be best after all

“According to best practices…”

How many times have we heard this hoary phrase? It can be especially interesting to hear when used as an one-note explanation for doing things a certain way. So, let’s take a step back.

The Problem

When someone states their position/request because it is “best practice,” the first question that—should—come to mind is, “According to whom?”

A solution

If you use “best practices” in a sentence, take ownership of this non-concrete term. “According to what I [understand/have read/have been told/just made up/etc.], this is my understanding of best practices.”

[Also see Marketing Outside the Bubble]

Don’t attribute it to the ubiquitous “they” or an “industry standard.” Also, be prepared to share the source(s). By owning your opinion, you can avoid a condescending and dismissive tone.

Conclusion

Best practices in any situation is subjective and should remain flexible. Better yet, don’t get lazy and throw a term around that has no meaning or relevance, as there really is no such thing.

For more thought leadership on this in Forbes, read: Best Practices – Aren’t where Mike Myatt @mikemyatt explains, “too much common management wisdom is not wise at all, but instead flawed knowledge based on a misunderstanding or misapplication of ‘best practices’ that often constitutes poor, incomplete or outright obsolete thinking.”

September 26, 2015December 20, 2017

Social media meltdowns highlight the power of the audience

With social media, “The audience has more control than anyone realizes.”

Well, except for those who spend their days with social. We see it all the time and most recently with Martin Shkreli, who backed down after pursuing a doomed and short-lived battle against the internet.

Although the below article is over a year old, it was a harbinger for traditional media, whose more entrenched practitioners still cling to the old notion that they can be the gatekeepers of the message, story, opinion, etc. No longer. The power has shifted to the audience, and the following article did a great job of explaining it.

The Travel Channel's Adam Richman, last year at a charity event in Los Angeles, had his new show indefinitely postponed after telling a critic via social media to "grab a razor blade and draw a bath." — The Travel Channel’s Adam Richman, last year at a charity event in Los Angeles, had his new show indefinitely postponed after telling a critic via social media to “grab a razor blade and draw a bath.”

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Entertainment

At first glance, Adam Richman and Anthony Cumia might not seem to have much in common.

True enough, they are media stars who took a hard fall thanks to untoward comments on social media. Richman, a host on the Travel Channel, saw the debut of his new show delayed indefinitely after an online spat led him to suggest one critic commit suicide.

Cumia, half of the infamous Opie & Anthony shock jock radio duo, was dumped by SiriusXM after using the c-word on Twitter to describe a black woman he said punched him. The shock jock said she objected to being included in pictures he was taking.

He then spent a lot of time on social media talking about “savage violent animal(s)” who “prey on white people,” noting “she’s lucky I was a white legal gun owner,” and that “there’s a deep seeded [sic] problem with violence in the black community.” Later, he insisted he was not saying anything racist; Gawker saved the posts so you can see for yourself (warning: It’s seriously NSFW).

For some, this is the story of how a Twitter fight can get out of control. But I say both Richman and Cumia were kneecapped by the new reality of modern media:

The audience has more control than anyone realizes.

When you think about how social media works, this makes perfect sense. Online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram take authority from the gatekeepers of media, which once controlled access to large audiences — newspapers, TV networks, cable channels and radio stations. Instead, that power is handed to anyone who can create compelling content.

I found this out when I tweeted a message about the music CBS This Morning played toward the end of a segment on Nelson Mandela’s death. I posted a quick jibe about the use of Toto’s hit “Africa” as a brief observation. But the Twitterverse decided it meant more, sparking enough stories in places like Slate and The Huffington Post that a co-founder of the band eventually weighed in (in my favor, I might add).

In the old media days, an individual’s impact was limited, unless they could get the gatekeepers involved — get a story on the local news, a letter in the newspaper or a call into the local radio station. No more.

When Richman began responding to critics who said his hashtag #thinspiration referenced a phrase popular with anorexics, he eventually suggested one “grab a razor blade and draw a bath. I doubt anyone will miss you.” Amid the controversy, Travel Channel executives delayed the planned debut of his new show, Man Finds Food,which in turn put a crimp in Richman’s plans to showcase his return to TV hosting after losing more than 70 pounds. (He has since released an apology calling his remarks “inexcusable.”)

This isn’t so much about hurt feelings as it is about marketing and branding. The real value of a media personality like Richman or Cumia is the fan loyalty they inspire, which can then be transferred onto other TV shows or products. So when the host’s brand gets damaged in the public space, their value drops.

Anthony Cumia, at an April event commemorating 20 years of The Opie & AnthonyShow, was fired after a series of racially charged tweets.

Cindy Ord/Getty Images Entertainment

Shock jock Cumia faces a different media issue. Radio personalities in his line of work walk a thin line: pushing boundaries enough to satisfy their audience, but facing the risk of widespread public rejection if their offensive shtick becomes widely known by too many people outside the fan circle.

Cumia forgot that his way of talking about such stuff might be acceptable to his regular fans — people inside the closed loop of his satellite radio show and regular Twitter followers. But once his words spilled out into the general public, he found another reaction (just ask Don Imus how painful that can be).

One other thing both Cumia and Richman have in common: Both their social media meltdowns occurred outside their regular jobs. This, of course, is something even the Kardashians learned long ago: Celebrity is a brand that reaches beyond whatever you do for a living into the rest of your life.

And since social media turns everyone into a brand anyway, every interaction there affects a star’s brand — and their possible employment — regardless of whether it happens on the clock or not.

Evidence of the audience’s new power ranges beyond Cumia and Richman. Successful Kickstarter campaigns for the Veronica Mars movie and Reading Rainbow kids TV series have given fans the ability to vote with their wallets to save dead shows. Moves by Netflix and Yahoo to resurrect Fox’s Arrested Development and NBC’s Communityalso shows the power of a vocal niche audience to push programmers into action.

My hunch is that both men will be fine. Travel Channel is probably just waiting for the dust to settle before launching Richman’s new show. More than 21,000 people already have signed a Change.org petition to get Cumia his job back as he plans a new show from his home. In fact, there’s a drive to cancel Sirius subscriptions in support of Cumia that’s building — where else? — on Twitter.

Still, everyone in this new media universe should learn from Cumia and Richman’s example.

Power is shifting to the audience. Stars who ignore that change do so at their own peril.

ERIC DEGGANS

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Original POST

September 13, 2015December 21, 2017

Seven thoughts on effective social campaigns

The original hed was The 7 Secrets to the Most Effective Social-Media Campaigns which was a little click-baity for my tastes but, nonetheless, the post had some good tidbits. My biggest takeaway? “Filter out mobile traffic” on paid social media ads, which after reading, made sense. What do you think?

—

I’ve resisted social media advertising for a long time, believing that there are a host of free tools and free strategies that can help your business grow on social media organically.

What I’ve come to find out (and I’d imagine many of you have discovered this already) is this:

If you’re spending money to advertise online, social media ads may very well earn you the biggest returns.

(In some cases, it’s the cheapest way to reach people.)

There are so many inspiring digital marketers who are pioneering the best practices and cool strategies for social media advertising. As we dip our toes further into social ads here at Buffer, it’s been fun to discover all the great tips we might try. I’ve collected seven of my favorite ones here in this blog post—a list of simple, actionable tips that drive successful social media ads.

I’d love to hear in the comments any strategies you might add!

1. Create multiple versions of the ad

When we write headlines for Buffer blog posts, we often come up with a big handful of options (15 or more headlines per post when we can manage it) so that we can test and see what works best.

The same idea works with social media ads.

When you read about a successful social media ad, it’s likely that the ad has gone through a few key variations based on these actions:

Write several versions of ad copy
Test different images
Adjust and hone your target audience

In the comments of our post on Facebook advertising budgets, Lucie shared this great tidbit about how to gauge what’s working and what’s not:

I always have several versions of the ad and anything with lower than 1.5% CTR after few hours I deactivate.

The strategy then would look something like this:

Create lots of ad variations
Check often to see what’s working
Deactivate the lowest performers and try something new

In terms of testing out different ad copy, there are many popular recommendations for what might work (including a few ideas I’ll share below). This SlideShare from e-CBD, while a couple years old, has some interesting ideas for things to try: power words, time prompts (“now,” “limited time”), and question marks.

For images, you can test things like product pictures, people and faces, evenmemes.

And when it comes to custom audiences, there are some great tactics on different ways to hone in on a segment that converts (probably enough tactics for a post of its own, which we’d love to cover separately). One bit of advice I’ve found helpful in thinking through things is another useful comment on our Facebook Ads post, from Bill Grunau:

You want to cast a large net, BUT not try to scoop up the entire ocean.

A target audience of 3,000 to 5,000 is very, very small. For FB ads it should be in the high five or six figures as a minimum. If it is many millions then it is likely too big.

2. Use the “Learn More” button

When creating ads for the Facebook News Feed, you get the chance to include one of seven buttons with your ad.

If in doubt, it’s best to choose a button instead of no button.

And the best button of all? The “Learn More” button.

You can add the button in the bottom section of the Facebook Ads editor. These are the seven button options to choose from:

Shop Now
Book Now
Learn More
Sign Up
Download
Watch More
Contact Us

The theory behind why this button works is that it helps focus your ad to an even greater degree, like a Mario mushroom for your already great copy. Adding a button enhances the call-to-action and primes a reader to take the action.

As for which button works best, you’re might notice that one fits your niche particularly well (“Book Now,” for instance, would be great for vacation spots). For the “Learn More” button, there seems to be growing evidence that it’s the best overall bet for engagement.

Noah Kagan found that “Learn More” converted better than the other optionsand better than using no button at all.

And Facebook ad tool Heyo ran an A/B test to see the effect that the “Learn More” button had, compared to no button at all. The result: a 63.6% increase in conversions and 40% decrease in cost-per-click just from the Learn More.

3. Create a custom landing page

If the goal of your social media ad is conversions—sales, signups, what-have-you—then you’ll want to think not only of the ad itself but also where a person might end up once they click.

Picture social media ads as a two-step process:

Create the ad
Create the destination

Some of the most successful social media advertising campaigns include custom landing pages, where the copy carries over from the ad and the action crystal clear.

The more targeted your ad, the more targeted your landing page needs to be.

You’ll see this often with e-commerce ads that do a great job targeting a single product and then send the person from the ad to the main product page, full of menus and related products and all sorts of potentially distracting (albeit eminently useful) places to click.

[Also read, 12 Social Media Tips for Business]

Siddharth Bharath, writing at Unbounce, suggests a click-through landing page, which is an intermediate page between an ad and a final destination (shopping cart, for instance).

This keeps the focus on the offer – the reason the prospect clicked – and leaves them with two options: buy now or lose the deal forever.

As Unbounce describes it:

Videos or product images paired with a description and product benefits help to persuade the visitor to click the call-to-action.

Socialmouths shared five key elements of these social media ad landing pages.

Goal-Driven Copy Length
Limited Form Fields
Key Visuals
Responsive, i.e., “Mobile-ready,” Design
A Single Call to Action

Of these, the single call-to-action stands out as a potentially quite key element.

Also of note, the goal-driven copy length suggests the idea that there could be multiple goals for your social media campaign, something like a spectrum from immediate goals to long-term goals or sales/lead-gen to awareness/education. In general, a landing page for an immediate goal has short copy. A landing page for a long-term goal has long copy.

4. Mention price up front

Another interesting tip from Siddharth Bharath involves the idea of pre-qualifying your traffic. Essentially, it works like this:

You only want people clicking through to your ad who are comfortable paying the price for your product.

The key then is to share your product’s price early.

Doing so will help qualify the traffic that heads to your landing page. Instead of filtering out people when they reach your pricing page, you can do so before they even click—thereby saving you pay-per-click costs that wouldn’t have amounted to a conversion.

The goal, in other words, wouldn’t be about people clicking your ad. The goal would be people clicking your ad and eventually buying your product or service.

5. Promote a discount

In a survey of Facebook users, 67 percent of people said they were likely to click on a discount offer.

A simple strategy for a successful social media ad: Mention a discount in your copy.

In a really cool case study from Hautelook, the clothing website ran a 50% off sale on their Diane Von Furstenberg line. Mentioning a discount in their ads led to a huge sales day—the third largest sales day in company history.

And discounts don’t necessarily always need to be tied to huge sales events. At Buffer for instance, we have three different pricing options (free, Awesome,Business), and at the Awesome price the price is lower when paying a year in advance rather than month-to-month. It’s kind of a built-in discount and one we could explore using in our social media ad copy.

6. Filter out mobile traffic

When creating a social media ad, you’ll typically have the option of segmenting the audience by a number of factors, including those using a desktop/laptop versus a mobile device.

To fully optimize your conversion rate, show your ad to those on desktops and laptops. Don’t show your ad on mobile.

This slide deck from Ad Espresso (a Facebook ads management tool) does a great job explaining the differences between types of social media ad placement, particularly on Facebook.

The DOs & DON’Ts of Facebook Ads from AdEspresso

The mobile News Feed is great for mobile app installs and engagement. It’s tough to get website conversions.

Here’s the key slide:

Noah Kagan also mentions excluding mobile traffic in his steps for getting started with Facebook ads.

Avoid showing your ads to mobile traffic. Most likely your page is not mobile designed and that traffic is less likely to purchase or sign up for an email address.

That last sentiment seems key here: Mobile visitors are less likely to convert to a sign up or a sale. If conversions are the goal of your social ad campaign, then it might be great to focus solely on the desktop audience.

A couple of additional notes here also:

Not only do the most successful social media ads hone in on the device type, they also keep in mind the location of the ad. Typically sidebar display ads—like those offered by Twitter or Facebook—see lower click through numbers (they’re recommended as a great option for retargeting). The best results are those that appear natively in the News Feed or timeline. Ezra Firestone calls these “advertisements that blend in with the platform.”
Removing mobile display from your ads is an often-recommended strategy, though there’s definitely two sides to the discussion. Brian Honigman,writing at SumAll, mentions that your ads should focus on mobile first in order to capture the huge volume of Facebook traffic that accesses the site from mobile devices.

7. Focus on relevance score

When I wrote about our Facebook Ads experiments a few weeks back, I was so grateful for all the advice and learnings that folks shared in the comments. This bit from Lucie has stuck with me:

I test my ad on a small budget and see the relevance score first. If it is less than 8/10, it means I should adjust my targeting. If it is higher, then I know I hit the nail on the head.

Jon Loomer wrote a detailed breakdown of Facebook’s relevance score, explaining what it is and how it’s calculated.

Briefly, relevance score helps explain the way Facebook views your ad and why it might prefer certain ads you’ve created versus others.

Facebook says they use relevance score to determine “expected” interaction with your ad.

Relevance score is calculated based on actual and expected positive and negative feedback from the ad’s target audience. The score is updated in real-time as users interact with and provide feedback — both positive and negative — with that ad.

Positive feedback includes people liking, commenting, and sharing your ad and also any desired actions taken with your ad (clicks to website for instance).

Negative feedback includes those instances when people hide your ad or ask not to see ads from you.

It’s all delivered on a 1 to 10 scale and based on real interactions with your ad; there’s a 500 daily impressions minimum in order to receive your first score.

From Lucie and Jon’s advice, there are a couple of great takeaways and strategies on how successful social media ads look at relevance score.

Test your ad with a small budget first, to see where your relevance score lies. Once you achieve relevance of 8/10 or higher, then promote the ad more heavily.
Since relevance scores update in real time, check your ads often. If the score dips below 8/10, adjust the ad.

(This second point hints at a higher-level bit of advice with social media ads: Don’t just set ’em and forget ’em. Consistent, active monitoring is key.)

Summary

As we’re in the early stages of testing out social media ads at Buffer, it’s a real privilege to be able to learn from those who have gone before us, trying and testing to see what works in social ads. We’re excited to take all the great advice here and use it in our own experiments and campaigns.

One of the best blueprints I’ve seen for creating a social media ad (particularly a Facebook ad) is this brief list from Noah Kagan, which condenses a lot of the sentiment from the above strategies.

Call to action: Choose “Learn More”
Headline: Give away something for free
Text: Social proof showing why the reader should care
Link Description: Give call to action for them to get benefit

Try to create an ad that uses natural text versus something that seems like an advertisement.

What have you found works well for you with social media ads?