With the competition for attention online at an all-time high, the struggle to keep followers engaged with your company’s social channels is real, and ongoing. In addition to the smart use of visuals, businesses often turn to social media contests and promotions to stir excitement and drive activity from their audience.

It’s not as easy as tweeting “Who wants to win an iPad!?”, even though we’ve all clicked on that at one time or another. Excellent social media contests require substantial planning and nimble execution. They have many moving parts and potential points of failure.

Here’s a checklist of 13 ingredients you’ll need before launching the perfect social media contest:

1. Venue

Where will this contest take place? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or will it be present in multiple venues, like a photo contest where participants can enter on Facebook or Instagram? Remember that each time you add a venue for participation, your oversight responsibilities grow geometrically.

2. Entry Mechanism

How do people qualify to enter your social media contest? There are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are: Sweepstakes (nothing required—most common on Twitter); Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter); Like (like a particular piece of content to enter); Share (share a piece of content to enter); Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter); Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter).

Remember: The more you ask your audience to do, the fewer will do it. Remember too that the younger your audience, the more comfortable they will be creating content for your contest.

The more you ask your audience to do in a social media contest, the fewer will do it.
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3. Theme and Name

Is this contest seasonal? Does it tie into a particular product or service? Remember, the theme/name will guide the rest of the creative. Take some time to come up with something that resonates. Try to keep your contest name short, as long names eat up valuable characters in tweets and ad headlines.

4. Timeline

This is where you coordinate the major elements of the social media contest. The best approach here is to work backward from the date that you want to announce winners. From there, figure out when judging starts/ends (if applicable), when entries close, when entries open, when promotion starts, and other key milestones. Be sure to account for time to develop the creative, get approval for the contest rules, and any other internal hurdles that you need to cover before launch.

5. Visual Identity

In today’s social media landscape of visual billboards, you’ll need strong graphics and video to support your contest. Graphic needs may include cover and profile images, logos, headers, landing pages, emails, promoted posts, carousel images, or ad images (to name a few). Videos explaining and promoting the contest should be in both vertical (Snapchat, Instagram) and horizontal (YouTube, Facebook) formats, and likely various other lengths to maximize impact across different social channels. To make sure your design team doesn’t mutiny, use your timeline from step four and give them a single list of everything you need, including specific pixel dimensions and required language or copy. For Facebook, remember the 20 percent rule when creating graphics for promoted posts and ad images.

6. Prizes

What will winners receive? This is a place for you to be creative, and most social media contests are far too obvious here. (See “win an iPad” above.)

Remember, the prize itself can be the theme for the contest, as with the legendary “best job in the world” campaign from Tourism Queensland. The best contests have prizes that tie directly back to the company itself. This becomes particularly important when you consider the downstream results of this effort. You want to activate and attract people who are genuinely interested in your business, not just “contest hunters” who enter everything they can find. If you sell fishing gear, give away fishing gear as a prize, not an iPad.

7. Editorial Calendar

Here’s where you map out (via Excel, a custom Google calendar, and/or your social media management software) all the social media posts, email messages, advertising support, and other communications about your promotion. You don’t necessarily have to write all of the messages in advance—although it’s not a bad idea, and your legal team may require it. Remember that your social media contest (and corresponding communications) has five phases: pre-launch, launch, last chance, completion, and winners. You need to plan multiple messages across multiple platforms for each phase.

8. Seeding Strategy

This applies to the pre-launch and launch phases of your social media contest. This is where you figure out how to give your promotion the best chance of lift-off in the critical early days of the promotion. What you’re trying to do here is make sure that the people who already love you, and the people who have a disproportionate number of social connections, are fully aware of the contest and are ready to participate and spread the word the minute the promotion begins. This could include special “Shh, Coming Soon” emails to key customers and social influencers, making sure all employees are aware of the event and other opportunities.

Remember: You do not want to “soft launch” a contest. This is especially true on Facebook, where the algorithm dictates that slow starters get buried.

9. Amplification Strategy

With the exception of simple Twitter contests and basic Facebook contests that are managed within your timeline, you will probably need some sort of amplification to ensure that your contest has the reach (and garners the attention) you desire. This may include Facebook and Instagram ads (think about custom audiences ads shown only to your email subscribers), Facebook promoted posts, Twitter promoted tweets, ad opportunities on Pinterest, amplification networks like Outbrain, Taboola, and Stumble, and other options. Remember that even if your contest takes place on one platform, you can use multiple platforms to amplify it.

10. Rules

I purposefully put rules and legal advice tenth on this list because I have found it is much easier to have legal weigh in on the entirety of the program (including seeding, editorial, amplification) all at once, instead of having them look at the mechanism and prizes first, and then going back to them later with a second round of inquiries about the other elements. As with the design team, make legal’s job easier by giving them the total picture up-front. Be proactive by doing your research first on what each venue allows for contests, and have the links ready to share with legal. (Here’s Facebook’s Pages Terms.) It’ll make them happy, and you absolutely want to keep them on your side.

11. Community Management

Participants and prospective entrants will have questions and comments about your contest. Some will be easy to address. Others may not be so simple. It is absolutely critical (even for simple contests) that you have a defined plan for who is moderating and overseeing your social outposts. This doesn’t just mean the channels where the contest is located and normal business hours. What is your plan for coverage on nights and weekends? Your day-to-day community management realities will likely be modest compared to what you need to accomplish during a contest. Plan for this.

12. Crisis Plan

You should already have a social media crisis plan. If you’ve never created one, the launch of your new contest provides excellent leverage for getting it finished. Will something go massively awry with your contest, causing you to activate your crisis plan? Probably not. But if it does, and you don’t have that crisis plan to turn to in that critical moment, the chances you’ll ever get to do another contest are just about zero. Consider this to be the “I’m not about to get fired because of a contest” ingredient of this recipe. (See my popular “8 steps to manage a social media crisis” post and slides here.)

13. Software (Sometimes)

As with amplification, you may not need software if your social media contest is very straightforward. But for any sort of contest that requires data collection as part of the entry mechanism, you’ll need software to help build and manage the affair. There are literally dozens of software packages that help you do this, either as their sole function or as part of a larger suite of social media management capabilities. Here at Convince & Convert, we’re familiar with most of them but haven’t used them all first-hand.

Software I can personally recommend (please feel free to nominate others in the comments) includes:

• Wyng: For mid-sized companies on Facebook and beyond, this software packs tons of campaign and content templates and ideas.
• Shortstack: For small businesses up to large agencies, this is one of the legacy providers for contests on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
• Strutta: For medium/large companies hosting contests on Facebook, Instagram, or their own microsite, their DIY and custom packages make this software accessible for most.
• Woobox: This software is designed for mid-sized companies and large brands that make Facebook a top priority.
• Wishpond: This tool works best for medium/large companies connecting contests to lead generation.
• Rafflecopter: This is one of the best options for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to run a simple giveaway with multiple entry points.

Those are the 13 ingredients of the perfect social media contest. What did I miss?

The post 13 Ingredients in the Perfect Social Media Contest appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

With 2018 in full swing, marketers should be thinking about way to level-up their strategies. And as much as we wish it would, money (and a marketer’s budget) doesn’t grow on trees.

You probably don’t have the budget for cash-consuming items like augmented reality or time-consuming brand boosters like Instagram stories. Plus, as social networks become increasingly segmented, it’s tough to know where and when to engage your precise target audience and how to monetize every social network. And even if you do know, the sheer volume of work may be overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of straightforward (and, frankly, less expensive) tactics to increase website traffic and engage prospective customers. These dependable strategies have the potential to generate real, tangible outcomes for marketers. Here are six social media marketing pointers from some of the industry’s leading practitioners on how to make these trends work for you, no matter what your budget may be.

1. The Line Between Social Media Content and Social Ads Is Blurring

With Facebook and Instagram using the same targeting engines and technologies (more or less), your content now has a super high-horsepower amplification engine behind it. Think about building ad campaigns that have direct targeting, retargeting, the ability to target audiences you’ve built, and the ability to target audiences that look like the audiences you’ve built. Test and track them all.

Yes, your content might be a series of editorial style videos. But now they can be distributed with this advanced targeting and specifically served to people that view a high percentage of similar content, and to other people that have the same demographic, interest, and behavioral qualities. This is social content with targeting power like we’ve never seen before.

“Remember that ‘social’ implies you’re giving something useful to the audience,” explained Jason Falls, noted digital marketing speaker and author. “Ad targeting to get people to give you something is fine. But leveraging it to show people how much you can give to them goes a long way in building trust and brand affinity.”

2. Social Ads Are on Steroids

The ability to target people based on multiple data points—including demographics, interests, and behaviors—coupled with the ability to utilize existing audiences and lookalike audiences has created social ad capabilities, audience growth, content virality, website traffic, and event attendance. And sales are endless.

Chad Richards, veteran social media marketer and Senior Social Media Manager at Firebelly Marketing, a social media marketing agency, explained,

“People divulge a lot of personal information on social media, so these networks know a lot about us: our characteristics, our interests, and behaviors. Because of this, it’s never been easier to reach exactly the right people with your products and services. And with Facebook’s Pixel, Twitter’s Universal Website Tag, LinkedIn’s Insight Tag, and Snapchat’s Snap Pixel—all provided pieces of code you place on your website—tracking sales and other conversion events from your social ad efforts is clear and straightforward.”

3. Micro-Influencers Get the Respect They Deserve

Influencer marketing is gaining acceptance from marketers at medium-sized—and even small—brands. Emphasis will shift (as it should) to influencers with small, yet highly engaged followings, and toward those connected to other influencers. More importantly, brands that get it understand that influencer marketing is about relationships and not transactions. It’s about creating win- win relationships that benefit the brand and the influencer.

These micro-influencers have audience reach that big influencers can only dream of. While they may lack celebrity, they have an underdog commitment and fight to prove their value to their audience. They live and die to prove this value, which is ultimately in the best interest of a strategic marketer. A successful partnership with an influencer is worth its weight in platinum.

“Customers love authenticity. It’s what enabled RedBull, Dove’s ‘real beauty’ and Pantene’s ‘Shine’ campaigns 10 to 12 years ago, and what Tory Burch seems to be at with Anni Kravi or The Beauty Chef today,” says Christopher Samuel, global corporate preparedness and engagement lead at Monsanto.

“I recommend brands take the long view. Invite and immerse micro-influencers in authentic real-world brand experiences. Existing fans may choose to become advocates. New ones may create their own real-world content/stories, and the ROI on engagement and conversion will be significant. While in influencer marketing, more is more (micro- plus celebrity influencers), the key to success is a commitment to authenticity, transparency, and long-term equity-building.”

Influencer marketing's emphasis will shift to influencers with small, highly engaged followings.
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4. Social Intelligence Is Easy to Access

With companies like Nuvi and Brandwatch churning out valuable data and beautiful visual reports, any brand can arm itself with the most cutting-edge information about its customers, prospects, its industry, and the conversation. Business development, and marketing in general, needs to focus on what we know about our client or customer. Therefore, understanding the social content that is popular (by brand, competitor, or the industry in general) is critical.

Paying attention to where content and amplification is happening, and which influencers are involved, and which types of content are being amplified—these are all invaluable aspects of understanding what is happening in the social sphere. The opportunity lies in how we extend that knowledge into real actionable insights to inform strategy and tactics.

“Social listening takes real-time conversations and opinions from the internet to the boardroom”, says Will McInnes, CMO, Brandwatch. “Marketers use these insights to beef up their content and influencer marketing practices, and the entire company can gain better insight into what their consumers are looking for everyday. Social data doesn’t just equip marketers with the information necessary to make better business decisions—it allows entire companies to better understand the world they navigate.”

5. Content Intelligence Is Making Life Easier

Yes, we all know we live in a content marketing world. Thanks, HubSpot, for the mass proliferation of this. However, we also know the 80/20 principle applies to content with the most or least levels of engagement. Smart companies like Ceralytics help clients analyze reams of data across awareness, engagement, and conversion, as well as benchmark it against competitors—all while identifying content gaps and missed opportunities with associated keyword difficulties. Say goodbye to overpriced content marketing strategy agencies and hello to smart content that really kicks your competition’s butt.

“The days of ‘if you write it, they will come’ are over,” says Brandon Andersen, veteran marketer and founder of Ceralytics, a content intelligence platform and service. “Succeeding in content marketing now takes a deep understanding of what topics resonate with your audience through the buying cycle. Without these insights, content marketers will continue to shoot in the dark and ultimately fail.”

6. Conversion Matters

Brands will start paying more attention to converting at scale as opposed to the current preoccupation with traffic acquisition. Instead of obsessively chasing more traffic, focus on converting and engaging the traffic you’re already getting.

Whether it’s a conversion on a landing page into a lead or sale, this is the best place to start. From there, you can move across the rest of the site to optimize for email sign-ups, whitepaper downloads, or problem-solving. The crux here is to remove obstacles or friction that prevent visitors from converting. It could be the amount of text. It could be a messaging mismatch between the ad (or general expectations) and the text on the page. Or maybe it’s the image, a lack of trust symbols, or the layout of the page. An improvement of one percentage point in conversion can be a significant game-changer.

“Conversion rate optimization needs to be viewed from your visitor’s perspective. You need to create compelling online experiences for every stage of the online customer journey. The biggest mistake that you can make is to be a greedy marketer and only focus on the bottom of the sales funnel,” said Tim Ash, the CEO of SiteTuners and chairperson of the Digital Growth Unleashed conference.

If your company is a leader and is traditionally first in the space, go ahead and chase the edgy opportunity (and if you’ve got extra time and budget). Otherwise, take the smart and practical approach. Pursue a solid mix of these six opportunities to get the maximum bang for your time and investment.

The post 6 Pieces of Marketing Advice You Can Actually Use appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

One of my favorite sayings from my time in advertising is the quote attributed to Jay Chiat: “Good enough is not enough.” Today, that maxim is more true than ever, and not just in advertising, but in every facet of business.

Customer expectations are now liquid. They slosh over from one category or industry to another. Your customers do not give you a pass because you’re a small biz. Or because you’re B2B. Or in higher ed. Or healthcare. Or financial services. Or because you’re family owned. Or in a boring industry.

The greatest companies in the world are teaching your customers what is possible, and they will come to expect the same from you and your business, sooner rather than later.

The greatest companies in the world are teaching your customers what is possible.
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Every company must continuously strive to get better, faster, and more human.

I just finished my new book, Talk Triggers, written with my good friend Daniel Lemin. (The book will be out October 2. Go to TalkTriggers.com, please, to get alerts.) It’s all about word of mouth and its capacity to build businesses. One of the examples we include in the book is Enterprise rental cars. For many years, their key differentiator was, “We’ll pick you up.” They mentioned it in every commercial to make certain consumers knew they offered this extra service.

Now, Enterprise doesn’t talk about that. Why? Because in the era of Lyft and Uber, being given a ride by your rental car company seems pointless, or not particularly special.

Customer expectations will continue to ratchet up, and there isn’t anything you can do about it other than continue to try to stay in front of them.

The truth is that what passed for a terrific email marketing program, or guest relations program, or new customer orientation program, or video blog in 2014 is commonplace today. It wasn’t that long ago that Amazon popularized free shipping and very recent that Zappos pioneered free two-way shipping. Now? Both are almost universally anticipated by customers.

Customer experience, customer service, and word of mouth are never DONE. You just reach a particular checkpoint, catch your breath, and then push forward to the next checkpoint on the pathway of heightened consumer expectations.

Exceptional brands understand that the customer experience finish line is a mirage, and are constantly upping their game. I witnessed this first-hand last week.

JW Marriott Takes Customer Experience to the Next Level

I stay in a LOT of hotels—somewhere around 120 nights per year for the last 12 years.

Consequently, I have uranium-level points at most places. As a result—and also because I travel a lot to give presentations, and the meeting planner sometimes tells the hotel that I am “the speaker”—it’s not uncommon for me to find a thank you note and a small snack or something when I get to my room. It’s delightful. But because it’s happened in the past, it’s not a massive surprise now.

The JW Marriott in San Antonio Hill Country understands that customer expectations rise over time, and that to continue to be memorable, and to trigger word of mouth, they have to up their own game accordingly. And they have.

The Griffin pin

When I checked in to the hotel, the front desk representative (Robyn) gave me a small, silver griffin pin. She asked me to wear it while on the property, to indicate that I was Platinum Elite status. It’s a nice pin and all. And the griffin is the logo of the JW Marriott brand. But I was a little wary about this pin-wearing gambit. It felt a little like a scene out of The Sneetches. I was curious, however, what the pin might actually accomplish, so I attached it to my sweater.

After hanging up my clothes, I took a picture from the balcony of my room, overlooking the golf course and the grounds. I posted it to Instagram.

I went down to the restaurant for dinner. Sitting at the bar, I had a nice evening. Excellent food, and a killer tequila list. Spying my pin, the bartender (Teddy) proactively gave me a free ice cream sundae. After a massive chicken quesadilla, I definitely didn’t need that, but it was a very nice gesture.

I checked Instagram on my way back up to the room, and PRESTO the resort had commented on my photo, posted just a couple hours previous, at night. Terrific responsiveness by the JW social media team!

The Instagram comment

The next morning, before my presentation to 500 owners of Tire Pros franchises, I found a personal thank you note from Robyn, who checked me in the night prior, underneath my door. Wow!

I have seen perfunctory thank you notes from a general manager. I have never seen a personal note from a front-line staff member.

I’m pretty jaded about hotels, and about customer experience in general.

And I realize that my experiences on the road are different than they are for most people due to how many points and miles I accrue, and all that.

But, it takes a lot to get me to say “these guys really have it working on all cylinders” and the JW Marriott on San Antonio did just that.

In just 12 hours, they accomplished not just one thing I didn’t expect or anticipate, but three:

• A status indicator that made me feel special
• A very timely social media response that made me feel special
• A personal thank you that made me feel special

There Is No Obstacle

None of the things that happened to me at this hotel are, in a vacuum, all that extraordinary. I’d argue that any hotel—and really, almost any business—could mimic much of this. But yet, they don’t. Why?

Based on the research we conducted for Talk Triggers, it’s because most businesses believe that if they do a satisfactory job at their core product/service, that’s enough. They focus on having “good” food. Or “good” customer service. Or “good” beds.

Good enough is not enough.

Good is the minimum prerequisite required for you to remain in business.

Good does not create conversations.

Good does not turn your customers into advocates.

Good is not the goal.

Good is a four-letter word. Don't settle for it.
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The post Why Good Is a Four-Letter Word appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

When it comes to social media and marketing automation, there are ways to win big. However, there have also been some runaway dumpster fires.

via GIPHY

Remember AT&T’s super-spammy debacle called the “Ticket Chasers” program? It was a chance for people to win free NCAA tickets. They outsourced the campaign to a contractor, who then outsourced the Tweets to a robot, who then spammed the crap out of thousands of Twitter users.

The problem was that many of the recipients didn’t even follow @ATT or have any interest in NCAA.

Or, more recently, take @McDonaldsCorp’s unfortunate tweet.

There’s not a lot of substance there, but @Wendys sure loved it.

Even the best of us make mistakes, and public ones at that. But some point to these instances as proof-positive that social media automation is bad marketing—that it undermines the purpose of social media altogether: community engagement and meaningful conversations.

After all, you’d never automate messages to your friends and family, would you? Then how can you (gasp) automate messages to your beloved audience?

The truth is, these accusations miss the point entirely. Social media automation done well is both brilliant and has a positive return. The difference is using what I call “smart-o-mation” rather than “spam-o-mation.”

I don’t like spam. Nobody likes spam. But social automation doesn’t have to be spam.

‘It’s Only Time’

Once upon a time, my company, CoSchedule, ran a test around the perfect recipe for social promotion. We wanted to know how many times we should promote a single piece of content. Which networks work best?

We dug into our own data packed with millions of messages from tens of thousands of users. We also crunched the numbers from over twenty industry-recognized studies on the best times to schedule social media messages on every network.

I’m talking time of day, day of the week, every detail down to the hour. Then, we published our findings.

Recently, I met a marketer who was absolutely raving about this article. That was pretty fun to hear. In fact, he found so much value in it, he had it bookmarked and followed it religiously every time he scheduled a social media messages for his brand’s many accounts.

“For every message?” I asked him.

“That’s right, every message.”

“Doesn’t that take you a ton of time?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s not that bad. Just a few hours per week.”

He was an awesome guy, and we talked for a while longer. Eventually, though, I gave him some good news that I could get him the same results—perfectly scheduled messages—in one percent of the time with some of our automation features.

Surprisingly, he pushed back. It took some time for me to convince him that he should give up the intensive manual labor of scheduling things by hand. He kept saying, “It’s only time—it doesn’t cost me anything!” However, that’s where he, and many other marketers I’ve met, are wrong.

Dollarize Your Time

A few quick questions helped me calculate that his time was worth about $100 per hour. In his mind, he was saving money by not dropping $60 per month on an automation tool. By the end of our conversation, it was pretty apparent that while he was “saving” $60, he was actually spending $1,200 in time to accomplish the same function.

He was stuck in the “it’s only time” trap. He was grossly undervaluing his time. And we constantly see this in marketing teams.

Too many marketers think their time is free. But they don’t realize that it’s actually more valuable than their money.

The purpose of promotion is to get the right people to the right place at the right time—all with the goal of driving profitable customer action. The mechanics of promotion are about ruthlessly outsourcing tasks that can be performed just as well, if not better, by automated processes. When you don’t, you’re stuck in an unscalable pattern.

My marketing friend, like each of us, has 168 hours per week. Let’s generously say he only works 40 hours per week. (He probably works much more, like a lot of you reading this!) That means the three “free” hours he spends each week on perfectly timing his social messages equals 7.5 percent of his time.

Now, I’ll ask you the same question I asked him: “How would it feel to put in fewer hours and get better results?”

It’s possible because that same time previously sunk into menial tasks is now available for high-return pursuits—the stuff you absolutely cannot delegate to another person or tool.

It’s time to embrace smart-o-mation to get bigger results in less time.

Smart-o-mation versus Spam-o-mation

Smart-o-mation is a way to 10x your social media results while saving time and money. In fact, I believe in its power so much, it’s actually a part of my content marketing formula.

However, when people hear me talk about automation, some think I’m advocating for “Ticket Chasers”-style spamming, where you simply spew the same tweets, posts, and pics ad nauseam. This is spam-o-mation, a virtual recipe for alienating your audience in a public way. It’s also the form of automation people actually have a problem with.

Rethink Your Publishing Schedule

Harnessing the power of smart-o-mation is dead simple. It’s all about rethinking your publishing schedule.

Spoiler alert: It’s time to get aggressive.

In my experience, under-sharing on social media is a marketing epidemic. It looks like this: You publish a fresh blog post, then share a link on Facebook, Twitter, or maybe LinkedIn. Hopefully, it picks up some traction and nabs some likes, comments, and shares.

But within a few hours, your post evaporates from people’s feeds. In fact, some studies indicate a tweet’s shelf life is five minutes or less before it evaporates for good.

Now, couple that shelf life with the staggering amount of noise on social. Every single second, there are:

• 814 images published on Instagram
• 2,644,941 emails sent
• 7,844 messages tweeted

This is further compounded by the dismal reality of that post’s reach. According to a report by Social@Ogilvy, brands may experience as little as two percent organic reach.

If you’ve got 10,000 followers, a cool 200 of them will see the post as they breeze through their feeds over the course of two hours.

From our own data, we know that 77 percent of our users share their content on social media less than three times. 37 percent share content on social media just once after it’s published.

Here’s the deal. If you’re sharing a piece of content just once, you’re absolutely wasting your content. You’re leaving tons of engagement and traffic on the table—and this means revenue!

We know this for a fact because when we ramped up our posting schedule, our blog posts got 31.5 times more click-throughs—that’s a 3,150 percent increase in one week. And all because of our frequency.

We more than quadrupled our traffic with essentially no more effort.

Our first tweet attracted only two link clicks. A measly two people visited our content.

If we’d stopped there, this channel would have been a nothing burger. Fortunately, we kept talking about it. We tweeted about this piece of content eight more times, attracting 63 additional click-throughs.

You can take a deeper dive into exactly how we did it with a webinar Jay Baer and Nathan Ellering tag teamed.

How To Quadruple Traffic With A Social Media Calendar

One of my favorite quotes from Jay here was, “The goal isn’t to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media.”

That’s exactly what a more robust posting schedule helps you do.

If you’re sharing a piece of content just once, you’re absolutely wasting your content.
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Smart-O-Mate Your New Posting Schedule

Over time and with constant testing, we settled on a social media promotion schedule that’s about 40 days long for blog posts alone. But, since we publish so much content, manually keeping up with so much social media posting legwork would cost an incredible amount in dollarized time. It would also be a huge opportunity cost.

While our marketing team would be doing excellent social media work by posting at the best times on the optimal days, their time to actually create more content and engage with our followers on social media would be seriously undercut.

That’s why we define our cross-platform promotion schedule and then automate every message with just a few clicks.

We still custom design graphics. We still write valuable copy for every social message. We’re doing far more than shooting out a title and link for 40 days.

But the point to embrace is that intelligent automation will save you time, and therefore increase your ability to drive business value with social media.

Get yourself unstuck from the “It’s only time” trap, get aggressive with your promotion schedule, and capitalize on social automation tools to do the time-consuming tasks for you.

In fact, Convince & Convert saves north of 10 hours each month via the same process. But remember, be smart, not spammy. Add value to your audience at every turn. This will allow automation to supercharge your results rather than sour them.

The post Social Media Automation Is Bad, and Other Marketing Lies appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Sound marketing relies on a foundation of informed decision making. The better we understand the e-commerce marketplace, the better we will be at marketing ourselves in it. That’s why, today, I’ve collected five statistics that say something important about this marketplace, along with my advice based on the facts presented here.

Let’s dive in.

1. Customers Are Twice as Likely to Leave a Review If You Ask

According to the Trustpilot “How Consumers Use Reviews Today” report, only 14 percent of consumers are “very likely” to write an unsolicited review, while 29 percent are “very likely” to write a review if the company invites them to.

The report discovered other related points, such as:

• 19 percent of consumers are reading reviews before they visit a company website.
• Most consumers (about 57 percent) are using search engines to find those reviews.
• 79 percent of consumers want to see companies respond to negative reviews.
• 89 percent check reviews at least sometimes when they shop.
• 47 percent of consumers check online reviews while on a brand’s website, before putting items in their cart. In other words, consumers are checking to see what previous customers think of products while they are actively shopping.

It’s impossible for the modern e-commerce site to neglect views and claim to have a complete marketing strategy. The stats above make it clear that reviews are strongly influencing consumer behavior. The report may even underestimate how strong of an impact it makes to ask customers for a review.

If you’re concerned that asking customers to leave reviews will lead to more negative reviews, you shouldn’t be. In my experience, people are far more likely to leave negative reviews on their own than positive ones.

Just as importantly, no matter what people might say in surveys, scientific research published in the Association for Psychological Science indicates that people favor products with more reviews, regardless of the star rating.

Retailers that display ratings on their sites see conversion rates rise by 270 percent, and people are actually more likely to buy products in the 4.0- to 4.7-star range than products with a perfect five-star score.

In short, ask your customers to leave reviews in your communications, and make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

2. 9 Out of 10 Consumers Prefer Personalized Sites

According to a study conducted by Swirl Networks, 88 percent of consumers say that the more personalized and interconnected their online, mobile, and in-store experiences are, the more likely they are to shop with that retailer. 87 percent of consumers also said they’d be more loyal to a retailer who was capable of accomplishing this.

The same study found that 56 percent of consumers feel Amazon understands their needs on a regular basis. This number dwarfed traditional retailers, where only 25 percent of consumers felt the same way. This has clearly played a part in Amazon’s success.

Any talk of personalization in today’s e-commerce scenario is incomplete without exploring the usefulness of chatbots. Forrester research shows that live chat is expected and effective, with 44 percent of customers agreeing that it’s one of the most important features an online business can offer. It is therefore essential that businesses harness customer data in such a way that marketing and support teams can use it to deliver better, more personalized service.

There are the tools out there to help you accomplish this within your budget and with almost no programming resources. Morph.ai, for example, is a chatbot building platform that suits small businesses and retailers. This software lets you create chatbots that use “conversational marketing.” This means you can have one-on-one conversations with your customers, take orders directly from Facebook Messenger, transact using all payment systems, and provide instant service.

Modern consumers expect live support, sites that understand their preferences, and expect communications from the company to be tailored to their purchase and interaction history, and customer support to be clued in on what is happening so that they can deliver results quickly.

E-commerce sites that ignore this fact will struggle to find success.

3. B2B Shoppers Conduct an Average of 12 Searches, Consumers Visit at Least 3 Sites

According to research by Google, B2B influencers conduct an average of 12 searches before they engage with a specific brand’s website. Search is the number one place these decision makers are performing their research. In fact, 90 percent of B2B shoppers use search specifically to inform their business purchases.

Seventy-one percent of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search, not a branded query. If you want to be exposed to these decision makers sooner rather than later, you should be targeting these more general informational queries.

But if you think this behavior is limited to the B2B sector, you’re mistaken. While reliable data is harder to come by, the average consumer visits three stores before they make a purchase, and 60 percent of them use a search engine to find the products that they want.

The lesson here is one the marketing industry has wholeheartedly embraced: Customer relationship management and marketing automation software play a huge role in setting and managing expectations, and there’s no excuse for modern businesses to avoid using them.

And if you thought a CRM is expensive, you couldn’t be more wrong. HubSpot’s CRM, for instance, is totally free and gives marketers an up-to-the-minute view of the sales funnel, qualifies leads, and automatically tracks customer interactions across multiple channels—on email, social media, or phone calls.

When you’re trying to convert prospects, proper keyword targeting and remarketing tend to have the highest immediate conversion rates. However, relevant information at the right time is the main contributor to sales and separates small-time retailers from the big successes.

4. E-Commerce Shoppers Spend Nearly as Much On Brands as On Marketplaces

According to a study conducted by e-commerce platform BigCommerce, the perception that all of the money is going to Amazon and marketplace sites like it is flat out wrong. In reality, e-commerce shoppers spend almost as much on single brand websites as they do on marketplaces. Shoppers spent an average of $409 on brand websites, compared to $488 at marketplaces.

Many people equate e-commerce with the marketplace model. However, when Amazon is taken out of the equation, it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Amazon accounts for 43 percent of online US retail sales. That means that outside of Amazon, brand websites are making the most money, not marketplaces.

In fact, the same study found that while slightly more money was going to marketplaces than brand websites, the reverse was true in number of consumers. More shoppers had visited a brand website (74 percent) than a marketplace (54 percent).

I’m not trying to argue that marketplace e-commerce sites should abandon their business model. But I am highlighting the value of branding and how strong its impact can be. Obsession with Amazon’s business model can cloud your judgment if you aren’t careful. Offer exclusive products, and find innovative ways to differentiate your brand.

Outside of Amazon, brand websites rake in the most e-commerce dollars, not marketplaces.
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5. Price, Shipping, and Discounts Are Hugely Influential

We online marketers spend a lot of time talking about the importance of identifying a unique selling proposition and competing on differentiators other than price. But it would be a huge mistake to conclude that price is anything less than incredibly important.

The BigCommerce trends report we referenced earlier also found that the top three factors considered “very” or “extremely” influential in deciding where Americans shop were price (87 percent), shipping cost and speed (80 percent), and discount offers (71 percent).

Now, I understand that small retailers struggle to compete with big ones on price. Competing on price alone is a losing strategy for all but one retailer. It offers no lasting branding on its own, either.

But we need to understand how incredibly price-conscious our shoppers are. If you are selling the exact same make and model as another retailer at a higher price, you aren’t going to move a lot of product. In fact, you may need to consider if it’s worth having the product in stock in the first place. Pushing for exclusive items is crucial in order to offer something of value when you cannot compete on price.

Here, you have the most control over shipping costs. Folding the cost of shipping into the price of the product and offering free shipping almost always has a positive impact on conversion rates. While most consumers are at this point savvy enough to know that they are still paying for shipping, the certainty in pricing is a major draw.

The post What These 5 Statistics Can Teach You About E-Commerce Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Does it ever feel like all of your time creating content amounts to simply shouting into the void? Gone are the days when simply writing and publishing an astounding article attracted thousands clamoring to read it. (But really, was that ever a thing?)

In the cold, harsh reality of a content marketer, it’s never enough to just create amazing content. You also have to get that amazing content into the hands of the right people, at the right time, in a resource-efficient way. This is why a content marketing distribution plan is such a central piece of your strategy.

Every Strategy Has Its Limits

Before going any further, let’s quickly break down the two most common strategies in a content distribution plan: organic and paid.

Organic distribution is any distribution you’re not paying for. In my experience, it often ranges from the organic reach of guest posting content in online publications to search engine marketing to the social shares of people who love your content and can’t wait to pass it along.

Organic strategies do have their limits, though. Organic reach on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is getting tougher to achieve. Even if hundreds like and share your content, there’s still much more to be done to drive meaningful results.

Enter paid distribution. Like its organic counterpart, this strategy can include a lot of different tactics, but it frequently looks like Google AdWords spend and paid promotion on various social networks.

If organic distribution is the match that gets your content marketing fire going, paid distribution is the lighter fluid. And as with lighter fluid, you have to use it carefully. Without adequate direction or preparation, you could burn through your resources too quickly to keep the momentum going, and your whole strategy could suffer.

4 Steps to Building a Better Content Distribution Plan

Your content marketing program is only as valuable as its ability to influence positive action. Without a two-pronged distribution plan, your content is going to have a hard time reaching, let alone influencing, your audience. Here are four steps to building a distribution plan that works.

1. Know Your Audience Like the Back of Your Hand

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to reach as many people as humanly possible. This is especially true when social shares or article views are such low-hanging fruit, and you’re looking for something to quickly demonstrate ROI.

But imagine you’re physically mailing your content to potential customers. Are you going to pat yourself on the back just for sending out 1,000 mailers? Of course not.

Instead, focus on your target audience and what you know about them to determine where you distribute your content. Answer questions like, “Who are my clients?” “How did they learn about my company?” “What content did they interact with, and where did they discover and consume it?”

It sounds simple, but it’s critical: Distribute your content where your audience is and where they want to engage with your brand. My team has found success promoting content on LinkedIn because our audience of B2B marketers spends time on the platform and enjoys consuming our content there. Social media platforms are typically great about helping you dig deep into demographic data and target specific personas.

Distribution is about more than just reaching the right audience, though—it’s about reaching the right audience at the right time. For example, to get in front of our audience when they’re in the decision-making stage of their journey, we target specific keywords on AdWords.

Before you take another step in your plan, ensure you know exactly who your audience is, where they live online, and what they need to make their decisions.

2. Use Organic Distribution as a Litmus Test for Your Paid Promotion

Don’t jump headfirst into spending a ton of money on distributing or promoting every piece of content. For one thing, that approach will drain your budget in no time, and for another, it’s not effective.

Instead, distribute your content organically first. Track its performance for a couple of weeks, and then put some spend behind the pieces you’ve identified as high-performing. Determine what action you want people to take after reading your content, and promote the posts that drive the most people to take that action.

Similarly, monitor organic performance on social media, and pay to boost the posts with high engagement rates. Social networks like Facebook reward engagement, so promoting a post that is already doing well organically will save you money and keep your content working for you.

Think of your organic distribution as a test: It doesn’t really cost you anything extra, and you can gain insight into the topics and platforms that resonate most with your audience before you spend a dime on promotion.

Promoting a post that's already doing well organically saves you money.
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3. But Promote Cornerstone Pieces Right Away

There is one exception to the organic-first rule. That’s when you’ve put in all the resources to develop a truly stellar piece of content. This piece of content is so highly valuable to your business and your audience that you’ll be building links to it and creating a lot of other content around it to offer even more value. We call this a cornerstone piece of content.

This cornerstone piece could be a comprehensive 2,000-word blog post on a topic in your industry. It could be a 20-page proprietary research report with data your audience would benefit from. Whatever shape it takes, you know when you’ve created a foundational asset. And when you have, put spend behind it right away.

This can help your content get some early traction, which can then catapult the organic distribution as well. And when the cornerstone piece performs well, the surrounding content that links to it can earn a performance boost, too.

4. Look Beyond Traditional Channels

Outside of go-to tactics like social and AdWords, you can test alternative methods such as paying a site to “host” content and contracting with a demand-generation service. My team has tried these tactics in the past, and they’ve worked well for promoting some of our whitepapers.

When a publication hosts a piece of your content, it promotes it on its site for a period of time and sends you a list of potential leads based on the readers who downloaded your content offer. Many online publications offer content-hosting services in their media kids, so identify the publications your audience visits and see if this service is an option.

You can also work with a demand-generation service to develop detailed targeting criteria. The service will then use those criteria to promote your cornerstone pieces of content to new audiences through outbound demand generation.

Take it all a step further by rethinking your organic tactics, too. Don’t rely on social shares alone to get content to your audience. Use your content for sales enablement, influencer outreach, and account-based marketing to get your work into the hands of the people you want to see it.

Don’t waste another minute shouting into the void. You can maximize the value of the amazing content you’re creating, improve the lives of your audience, and drive meaningful results for your company—and it all starts with a better content distribution plan.

The post How Organic and Paid Content Distribution Can Rejuvenate Your Reach appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Digital marketing blogs may be numerous, but I find them still to be critical. I’ve been in digital marketing for over 20 years, and the only way you can stay relevant that long is to read A LOT. In digital marketing, if you don’t learn, you die. Period.

Members of the Convince & Convert team all have their own reading lists, based on their interests and their topical expertise. Together, we read nearly close to 200 online publications routinely.

Believe it or not, we keep up with blogs by a familiar and comfortable (for me) method: email. I subscribe via email and read (or at least scan) nearly 50 blogs that way. It’s actually far more than that because several of the sources I devour are actually email aggregators that pull the best posts from many, many blogs. I find that gives me the best coverage.

I recently went through my email for a week and put together this list of the 30 top digital marketing blogs and subscriptions that I consume regularly. If yours isn’t on this list, it doesn’t mean I don’t read or don’t subscribe. I just don’t read it as routinely as I do these others.

Please add your own suggestions in the comments for digital marketing resources I may have overlooked. I’m eager to see which you read, as well.

In digital marketing, if you don’t learn, you die. Period.
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Buffer

This blog has gotten hugely popular in a short period of time because the content is fascinating, topical, and useful. Proud investor in this company, am I.

Cassandra Daily

If it’s not #trending, they don’t write about it. Subscribing is like having a focus group of teenagers that you don’t have to feed.

Contently Content Strategist

I’m really impressed with these guys. Solid info every day for the advanced content marketer.

Content Marketing Institute

The powerhouse of the content marketing industry. Strong information and insights, delivered daily. Great job by the CMI editorial team for keeping the quality consistently high on this multi-author blog.

Convince & Convert

Hey, that’s us! I only write one post a week (in addition to a weekly newsletter, Convince & Convert ON), so I definitely read Convince & Convert every day. Subscribe via email here.

Copyblogger

One of the originals, and still one of the best. A must-read, in my estimation. I owe these guys a huge debt, too, because they’ve helped me a lot with my own blog.

CoSchedule

Smart and purposeful content always wins, and CoSchedule does this as well as any of the top content marketing blogs.

The Daily Carnage

Curated marketing news that is handpicked by the Carney team and delivered with just enough snark to ensure it’s opened daily.

Duct Tape Marketing

From John Jantsch and occasional guest contributors, everything that gets published here is worth examining. We work mostly with medium and large businesses at Convince & Convert, but I still learn a lot from Duct Tape and their scrappy, small biz sensibilities.

Econsultancy

Solid, broad-based digital marketing coverage with a research bent. Very strong in global perspectives and trends, too.

GatherContent Blog

In addition to having a terrific platform, GatherContent has also crafted a highly informative blog. It features posts from GatherContent’s own contributors, plus guests posts from experienced content creators, content strategists, content marketers, and more. They’re giving an amazing amount of strategic information away.

{grow}

From my friend the author, speaker, and college professor Mark Schaefer and a good crew of guest writers. {Grow} is a place to find conversations about topics that aren’t covered in the more news-oriented blogs. Also a great example of a multi-author blog that somehow maintains a consistent editorial voice.

Hubspot

Remarkable volume of useful content. Essentially defined what a B2B blog could (and should be). These guys live and breathe Youtility (which is why they are mentioned in my book).

Hootsuite Blog

The Hootsuite Blog is a fantastic example of what it looks like to provide real value and relevance through content. Yes, the blog leans more toward social updates and how-tos, but it also has a mix of everything you could need when it comes to digital strategy advice and insights.

Ignite Social Media

I don’t read that many blogs written by a single agency, but Jim Tobin and the crew at Ignite seem to consistently come up with interesting approaches that I don’t see everywhere else. Bravo! Jim’s book Earn It, Don’t Buy It is full of TRUTH, too. (I got to write the foreword).

MediaReDef

Must-read for media observers. A delicious, curated mix of tech and pop culture. Great trend watching.

PR Daily News

From Ragan, a nice aggregation of posts of interest to public relations folks. Curated from other sources, and some original content.

PSFK

Maybe my favorite email to receive each day (other than Quartz, which didn’t make this list because it’s not about digital marketing). PSFK is like Willy Wonka marketing. Amazing case studies and super interesting experiments from around the world. I find a TON of my Youtility examples for keynote speeches from PSFK.

Readwrite

My preferred tech news, geek, gadget site. Not strictly digital marketing per se, but terrific at keeping me up on broader tech and social media issues.

Six Pixels of Separation

I’ll never be as smart as Mitch Joel, or as prolific. Thoughtful brilliance flows on this blog like water from a tap. The wide topical array makes it such that not every post is for every reader, but stick with Mitch, and you’re guaranteed to receive something worth your attention at regular intervals.

Social Media Examiner

Outstanding tactical coverage of all things social media, from Mike Stelzner and his excellent team. Brings the best of Social Media Marketing World to your inbox all year long.

Social Media Explorer

Founded by my pal Jason Falls, this is a thinking person’s blog of social media and digital marketing issues.

Social Media Today

A powerhouse aggregator site that has more and more content written specifically for it, too. Noise-to-signal ratio can be a little high, but frequently you’ll find interesting concepts, and it’s a very good source of fresh voices.

SocialPro Daily

From Adweek, this daily digest covers the social webs from breaking news to how-to posts. If you only check one source to keep up with the heartbeat of social media, this is a best bet.

Spin Sucks

Outstanding blog for PR folks, with a side order of content marketing and social media. Led by rockstar Gini Dietrich, with help from a great cast of guest writers. Incredibly active community too, similar to {Grow} and GatherContent.

Statista

Info-junkies like me will never tire of discovering new or useful research and stats to plug into blog posts and speaking presentations. Statista sends a Chart of the Day infographic to your email, and offers a wealth of free (in addition to paid) data and infographics on the website.

Think with Google

While not a “traditional blog,” this resource center makes my UX-loving heart happy. With insights and mind-blowing studies galore, Think with Google is a wonderful cross-section of content, design, UX, CX, marketing, and more. It’s an absolute must-read for everyone, no matter what industry or role you work within.

TopRank

Outstanding coverage of content marketing, search marketing, research, and interviews from Lee Odden and his team. Popular, and deservedly so.

Uberflip

Content experience is the name of this game, in both thematics and UX. Uberflip’s content hub mixes short videos with podcast episodes and traditional blog posts. Bonus: the meta experience of getting Uberflip’s best thinking on their own Uberflip hub.

Yext

When everyone, including Facebook, is shifting attention back to local community and location, expect marketing advice to follow. My friend Jeff Rohrs and the team at Yext are one step ahead here providing sound advice for SMB and B2C marketers.

The post Jay Baer’s Top 30 Digital Marketing Blogs appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Each year, Edison Research and Triton Digital produce the comprehensive and well-regarded Infinite Dial study which probes how Americans use social media, audio services, and other technology.

The 2018 edition will be released on March 8, and includes a shocking finding:

For the first time ever, usage of Facebook went down.

(Register for the free Infinite Dial Webinar on March 8 to learn a lot more about Americans’ usage of social and other tech. It’s the most recent, comprehensive, and accurate data available.)

That’s right. The behemoth of social media saw a decline in usage, from 67 percent of Americans ages 12 and older to 62 percent of that same audience, according to Edison and Triton’s survey of 2,000 randomly selected persons.

This drop is seen in every age and gender demographic as well. It’s not as if only young people, or older Americans, or women are using Facebook less. Every studied group is using Facebook less.

Of course, 62 percent of Americans is still a huge group of people. But this number puts Facebook’s 2018 usage in line with the 2015 penetration rate. Facebook just gave back two full years of user growth.

And a drop from 67 percent to 62 percent is a decline of eight percent overall in one year. Again, not enormous when looked at in isolation, but given Facebook’s steady, upward trajectory since the first Infinite Dial study in 2008, it’s quite a difference in pattern.

Facebook usage dropped 8% in USA since 2017, the first drop in its history. Here are 3 reasons why.
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Why, after a decade, did Facebook finally see a reduction in usage in the United States? I believe there are three explanations.

1. Increased Distrust of Facebook

It hasn’t been a great year for Facebook as an organization. The mainstream media has consistently covered Facebook’s role (or at least complicity) in the world of “fake news.” When you combine this with the company’s other missteps in the areas of privacy and accountability, you end up with an environment where the users of the platform may not fully trust the motives and judgment of those that operate the platform.

Given that Facebook has access to many of our most important personal data points, photos, and feelings, a drop in trust could create a drop in usage.

2. Increased Discord on Facebook

If you’re a Facebook user, I’m sure you’ve seen this in your own News Feed: someone who says they are logging off of Facebook for good because of the rampant negativity present on the platform.

In the shadow of the presidential election, there has been a continued polarization of thought in America, and an acceptance that the new normal is a climate of “us” vs. “them.” This is tiring. Each time you express an opinion on Facebook, you must defend that opinion from segments of your “friends” who are now “the opposition.” This squeezes the fun out of Facebook, like Fergie squeezing propriety out of the national anthem.

When additional Infinite Dial data is released, we’ll have more insight on this point. But I predict we’ll see an even greater drop in daily usage. While there are some people who have signed off of the platform entirely due to discord, anecdotally, I believe the bigger change is people using Facebook a couple times a week instead of every day.

3. Increased Disinterest in Facebook

Indeed, I believe reduced trust in our Facebook overlords along with reduced willingness to argue amongst ourselves on Facebook contribute to this first-ever reduction in usage in America.

But a third explanation is that this drop represents a natural shifting of users to other parts of the Facebook ecosystem. While Facebook’s usage declines, Instagram’s usage continues to march upward, as does the number of people consistently using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

This may be a purposeful segmentation approach by Facebook. It’s particularly true among young Americans ages 12 to 24, where Edison Research observed the largest drop in usage.

After all, one of Facebook’s most attractive elements is that you can do a LOT of different things on the platform. But that’s also one of its great weaknesses. Is Facebook the BEST place for video? Probably not. Is it the BEST place for photos? Probably not. Is it the BEST place for messaging? Maybe.

As Facebook usage goes down, Instagram and WhatsApp and Messenger usage go up because they offer a more tailored experience. As social media progresses, it is natural for our own usage to gravitate toward one or more platforms that offer a more specialized experience that is more relevant to what we personally enjoy best about social media. Thus, some people gravitate toward Instagram. Others, Linkedin. Others still, Snapchat.

Coca-Cola is doing the same thing. They just rolled out four new flavors of Diet Coke, enveloped in a chic, skinny can. These new adjuncts will assuredly reduce consumption of old-school Diet Coke, but they hope that this move will grow their overall market share, across all five beverage flavors.

Last year, I wrote about Facebook mimicking all of Snapchat’s features and baking them into Instagram. At that time, I predicted that while Snapchat’s user base would shrink as a result, it would actually be better for them strategically. Casual users of Snapchat (like me) would leave the platform and use Instagram instead (like me). Thus, the remaining Snapchat user base would become more homogenous, allowing them to charge a greater premium for advertising. And Snapchat just announced their first-ever profitable quarter, so that may be precisely what occurred.

Distrust. Discord. Disinterest. These are the 3 reasons for Facebook’s decline in usage.

But is it really a problem?

Distrust. Discord. Disinterest. These are the 3 reasons for Facebook’s 8% decline in usage.
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Facebook’s vision—as articulated by Mark Zuckerberg many times, and in many ways—is to be the way humanity connects. And they are when you look at the entirety of their holdings. But, when you look at the do-everything workhorse that is Facebook per se, the bloom is finally off the rose. Too big, too boring, too noisy, too everything.

Should Facebook be concerned about this drop in usage? Yes. But as long as they are growing their user base across everything they own, they’ll continue to dominate social media, and beyond.

(Register for the free Infinite Dial Webinar on March 8 to learn a lot more about Americans’ usage of social and other tech. It’s the most recent, comprehensive, and accurate data available.)

The post Facebook Usage Declined and the 3 Reasons Why appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

The sales landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade. Organizations are implementing sales enablement strategies in order to stay ahead of the market. These strategies help sellers improve productivity, accelerate the buyer’s journey, and ultimately reach their target sales goals faster than ever.

If these are all goals you’re looking to accomplish with your sales team, it might be time to invest in sales enablement. In this post, we’ll review five signs you might need to invest in sales enablement, and how your organization can work towards a successful journey today.

1. You Keep Sellers on a Tight Leash

If you’re in marketing or sales management, you may often feel like you have to keep tabs on your sellers, as you don’t want them going rogue and adding slides to their decks that are off-brand. Your organization likely spends a lot of time and energy creating engaging content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. So why are sellers still inserting dated slides that completely alter the company messaging?

If you’ve been trying to micro-manage your sellers’ content, this may be a telling sign you need a better sales enablement strategy. Sales enablement tools actually allow you to let sellers run wild (within reason!) without fainting. With sales enablement, you can empower sellers to choose the right content that’s resonating the best, based on high visibility, into how sales decks are performing across the organization. This gives them the edge they need to move prospects through the sales cycle quicker with content you know will resonate.

Sales enablement also allows sales leaders to implement best practices and ensure every seller always has the most effective materials at their fingertips. It also helps you spot content that’s being circulated with last year’s messaging, and easily find and kill dated content.

Don’t keep sellers on a tight leash. Empower them with the right solutions, and rest easy knowing they’re sharing the right content with the right audience.

Don't keep sellers on a tight leash. Empower them through sales enablement.
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2. You Overspend on Content Creation

You’ve probably heard the grim statistic that 65 percent of marketing content is never used by the sales team. This means nearly two-thirds of your investment in marketing content is wasted, and the ROI of content that’s never used is zero. Yikes!

If you think you’re spending a lot of time creating content that isn’t getting used in the field, it might be time to invest in sales enablement. You can ensure you’re dedicating resources efficiently by measuring the business impact of your content. Sales enablement tools with analytics capabilities allow you to track content availability and usage at every sales stage, as well as measure and optimize your content performance. You can pinpoint what content is helping generate revenue and ensure you’re dedicating your resources appropriately to maintain high performing content with high ROI.

3. You Aren’t Sure Your Message Is Landing

If you’re spending all of your time in content creation, you want to ensure the message you’re arming your sales team with is resonating every time. If you don’t have the tools to measure your content effectiveness, you could be wondering why your prospects aren’t answering your emails and phone calls.

Sales enablement tools with analytics capabilities provide the data you need to gain actionable insight and create and maintain better content that will ultimately help sellers close more deals. Analytics not only allow you to track engagement of your sellers’ presentations, but also track open rates, downloads, and shares of all of your assets via email, your website, etc. This gives you the ability to track what content your customers are spending the most time on. It also provides a holistic understanding of what messaging is working and what isn’t across the organization.

This is invaluable and allows you to take the guesswork out of content creation and strategy, as well as help your marketing team align content for every stage of the buyer’s journey for each persona.

4. Sales Productivity Is Low or Flat

Whether you work for a Fortune 500 company or a growing startup, it’s crucial to ensure your sales team is working as efficiently as possible. If one of your sales reps meets with a prospect who’s interested in your product and wants to see examples of similar customer use cases and estimated ROI, you need to ensure your sellers have that data on the fly. But if your company doesn’t have an organized content repository, the chances of your sales rep finding the right content quickly are slim. This is where sales enablement comes in.

Companies can easily increase sales productivity by implementing sales enablement tools that include Content Management Systems (CMS) with granular search capabilities. In a recent study conducted by Highspot, 75 percent of respondents from companies using sales enablement tools reported that their company had increased sales over the past 12 months. Nearly 40 percent reported sales increased more than 25 percent.

It’s easy to put sales enablement on the backburner, but taking time to research the right tools for your team can make a huge impact on sales productivity and pipeline. Investing in sales enablement not only helps sellers identify the right content to improve customer conversations and increase sales readiness—it ultimately helps your organization create better content that resonates with consumers, closes more deals, and helps you generate more success.

The post 4 Major Signs You Should Invest in Sales Enablement appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

If you just landed here from planet Outbound Marketing or its satellite, planet Offline Marketing, I may be doing you a service by telling you Instagram is the blazing hot channel you want to master.

If you hang out with us here in the inbound and online world, such a proclamation would simply solicit a “no duh.” Nary a day goes by—when I get to my inbox each morning—that I’m not offered a blog post or content of some sort about capitalizing on the rocket ship that is Instagram.

And when my family convenes, which includes two teenagers and their expanding buying powers—and everyone’s tapping away on their iPhones—I don’t even have to ask what they’re doing. They’re cruising and using Instagram.

Is everyone?

Well, no, not everyone, but nearly a billion people are (as you’re about to see). And a surprising 60 percent of them are adults.

Instagram's user base will likely hit 1 billion in 2018.
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So over on the ShortStack blog, where I contribute often, and where social media marketers come to learn about the power of Instagram contests and promotions, I rounded up a series of great marketing ideas from Instagram experts. I tapped the minds of the leading Instagram bloggers, authors, and leaders of companies that deliver Instagram-specific software services to social media marketers and collected a little goldmine of tips.

I invite you to check out ALL the tips here or simply scroll to take in my favorites, an infographic I titled “11 Hot Instagram Marketing Tips.”

The post 11 Hot Instagram Marketing Tips from Social Media Experts appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Podcasts are a great way to educate yourself. Whether you’re on the train, in the car, at your desk, or anywhere in between, this medium is an incredible vehicle for supplementing your industry knowledge. Every week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the best marketing podcasts around, spanning the whole marketing landscape.

Whether you’re new to podcasts or you’re a seasoned listener, I know you’ll find value in each weekly round-up. Let’s get listening, shall we?

Six Pixels of Separation # 605: Next Level Negotiation Skills With Chris Voss

Have you ever had to negotiate as if your life depended on it? I know—it’s certainly not what you were expecting from a podcast recommendation column. But Mitch Joel’s latest guest, Chris Voss, has done it. In a former life, he was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI and representative the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group as a hostage negotiator. Yeah. INTENSE. These days, Chris teaches negotiation at USC and Georgetown University and wrote “one of the best books [Mitch] has read in a long time.”

Takeaways: Chris wants us master “no,” not “yes.” This flies in the face of traditional negotiation tactics, but Chris says “yes” is a trap. When people say no in any situation, especially in a negotiation, it makes them feel safe.

“We have been so battered by people trying to get us to say yes to something,” Chris says, “that it’s a ground-ball to get them to say no.” Intentionally going for no makes any interaction go much smoother, even though it may not seem the best way forward.

Chris finishes his point with a story of how a recent political campaign lead by one of his Georgetown students used the “no” approach with great success. The campaign called Republican voters using both “yes” and “no” methods as a means of an A/B split test. The results? The calls conducted using the “no” script yielded a 23 percent greater donation rate compared to the “yes” script. I think it’s about time we begin to master our “no!”

CONEX: How to Create a Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy

In their true “first” episode of the new Conex (which stands for Content Experience) Show, hosts Randy Frisch and Anna Hrach interview the show’s co-producer, Jay Baer.

Those of you reading this likely know Jay from all the things he does here on his home site. But you may not know that he’s co-writing a new book focused on the underrated power of word of mouth (WOM) marketing.

Given the sheer competitive volume that now exists through social media and content marketing, we as marketers and business operators need to find more cost-effective avenues to getting in front of our customers. Fortunately, Jay lays out the path to leveraging WOM marketing in 2018 and beyond.

Takeaways: According to Engagement Labs, 19 percent of all US purchases are driven by word of mouth, with up to 40 percent of these purchases influenced by WOM. These numbers are even higher in the B2B space, given the heavy pull that a trusted perspective can have on a very important business decision.

In order to make WOM work for your business—to give them a story, as it were—you have to do something outside of the frame of their current expectations. Jay shares a very cool quote from his co-author, Daniel Lemin, which states, “Same is lame.” It’s catchy, and it’s true.

When you do something original, something that will make you known (shoutout to Mark Schaefer), you create something worth sharing. This compels your current customers to tell their friends, which marks the start of an excellent WOM campaign.

Jay mentions this early in the podcast, but I believe it connects perfectly to what he describes later in the show: “If your content isn’t an experience, what’s the point of doing the content?”

He then goes on to pose his own question: Unless the content you’re creating for your audience is their “favorite”—favorite podcast, favorite YouTube channel, favorite newsletter, etc.—then why are you doing it at all?

Are your company’s story and content something worth experiencing?

Are your company’s story and content something worth experiencing?
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Marketing Smarts: Personalizing Your B2B Marketing to Supercharge Lead Gen—Adobe’s Drew Burns

Host Kerry O’Shea Gorgone invites Drew Burns, the senior product marketing manager for Adobe Target, on the show to discuss the best ways to personalize website and business experiences for B2B companies. With Drew’s extensive background in content targeting and testing, he was the perfect selection for this terrific topic. In this episode, they dig into lead generation, personalization, and of course, how to optimize it all.

Takeaways: According to Drew, the B2B companies that will succeed are the companies that use personalization to their advantage. He is already seeing from his analysis that companies who are not implementing these personalized approaches are losing business. Customers are looking for something that speaks to them directly—and immediately. When they don’t find it, they move on.

Personalization can reduce the frustration a visitor experiences when they visit your site, especially that first time. By dynamically pulling in information from a generic Google search, your site may be able to guide the customer into an area more highly relevant to them than the homepage, creating a more effective experience.

Drew mentions that many of Adobe’s customers are seeing a massive, 25X return on their targeting and personalization investments. While it’s not always the sexiest work, it is damn effective and can yield remarkable returns when done correctly.

Does your site have the right personalization tools and strategies in place?

That’s all for this edition! I’ll be back with a new batch next week. In the meantime, share any podcasts you think I should know about with me @jwsteiert on Twitter or in the comments below!

The post Recommended Marketing Podcasts: Week of February 12 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Do you want to make a billion dollars? We’ll tell you how: Invent a drug that builds and sculpts every muscle in your body perfectly in one dose. One pill, and you’ll look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jillian Michaels.

If only it were that easy. The unfortunate reality of exercise is that even if you use steroids, you’re going to have to make working out a habit.

Storytelling is no different. Sure, you can change people’s minds with one story. You can reword a beggar’s sign and get people to give more money. But if you want to build a long-term relationship—as a business or in everyday life—you’re going to need to think of storytelling like going to the gym.

Every story you tell becomes a part of your overarching story, just like every workout at the gym helps build your physique over time. The best companies are adept at consistently telling their story in a variety of ways over time. The most intriguing people tell lots of stories. They answer questions with stories. They relate to people with stories instead of just saying, “Me too.”

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably convinced that you should be using stories more to build relationships. But it’s not always easy to convince an entire organization to start going to the gym, so to speak. Let’s explore a few specific ideas for how you can make the case for stories inside your company.

Want to build long-term relationships? Think of storytelling like going to the gym.
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Selling Storytelling Inside Your Organization

Ten years ago, it was possible for one person to make content work for an entire organization. That’s no longer the case. Today, you need real support internally. It won’t necessarily happen all at once, but it’s the first step you have to take. And while it’s not easy, it pays off.

Let’s look at how Marriott’s content marketing program got started. Nine years ago, Kathleen Matthews, the hotel giant’s executive vice president of communications, walked into Bill Marriott’s office with an idea. She’d spent 25 years as a reporter and news anchor for an ABC News affiliate in Washington, DC, and she knew the power of a good story, especially when it came from a compelling figure.

She wanted Marriott to have a blog. And she wanted Bill Marriott to write it.

“Why the heck would anyone want to read a blog from me?” Marriott, then 76 years old, responded.

Matthews quickly convinced Marriott he was the best person to tell the company’s story, even though he didn’t even use a computer. So they struck a compromise. Marriott would dictate a blog post once a week.

And so, Marriott’s digital storytelling journey began. It started with those simple blog posts, but over the next seven years, their efforts grew exponentially. Before long, they were operating a full-fledged global media company.

In the next three years, Marriott launched a popular digital travel magazine, Marriott Traveler, that covers cities from Seattle to Seoul. It has built content studios on five different continents. And it’s even won Emmys for its short films like Two Bellman and French Kiss.

Becoming a Media Company

When you walk into the ground floor of Marriott’s headquarters, it fittingly looks like the lobby of a modern hotel. There are chic white lounges and cozy pods. A friendly receptionist welcomes you. But then you notice something unexpected. In the middle of the lobby, there are nine flashing screens encased in glass walls, like a TV control room that’s been teleported from Hollywood to Bethesda, Maryland.

In a way, it has. Inside the control room—dubbed “M Live”—typically sit various media veterans tasked with seeing just how much a hotel brand could capitalize on the new opportunities digital media gave Marriott to tell their story.

“We are a media company now,” Emmy-winner David Beebe, then Marriott’s vice president of global creative, told us.

It’s a big statement, but one that Marriott’s content production backs up. Which raises the question: How did Marriott evolve from a single woman—Kathleen Matthews— storming into the CEO’s office and advocating for content to one of the most advanced content marketing operations in the world?

Well, after a few years, Bill Marriott’s blog took off. And before long, he was convinced that content was the answer to the challenges Marriott faced in telling the story of a company that spanned almost two dozen different hotel brands.

So in 2013, Marriott made a big bet and hired Karin Timpone away from the Walt Disney Company, where she had led the launch of successful digital products like WATCH ABC, so she could connect Marriott to the “next generation of travelers.” In June 2014, Beebe, who was also working for Disney, followed Timpone.

Beebe and Timpone got to work fast. By early 2015, Marriott had created a successful TV show, The Navigator Live; a hit short film, Two Bellmen; a personalized online travel magazine; and some exciting forays into virtual reality with Oculus Rift. These projects generated immediate returns, from high viewer engagement to millions of dollars in direct revenue and even content-licensing deals. They helped the company build stronger relationships with its customers.

“We’ve said it before—we have a very intimate relationship with our customers,” Beebe said. “They sleep with us, after all. It’s sort of a joke, but it’s true.”

After these initial wins, the company doubled down on storytelling even more and beefed up its in-house staff, bringing in folks from CBS, Variety, and other media powerhouses.

They also joined forces with a wide range of outside creators—(including Contently!)—from famed producers Ian Sander and Kim Moses to YouTube celebrity Taryn Southern, who stars in a web series called Do Not Disturb in which she interviews celebrities in their hotel rooms.

Beebe rejected the temptation to insert any overt Marriott branding. When he got the first cut back from Marriott’s wonderful short film, Two Bellmen, for instance, his first note was to take out most of the brand plugs.

“We don’t want to see any ‘Welcome to the JW Marriott, here’s your keycard,’ and then a close-up of the logo,” he said. “None of that.”

In other words, Marriott bet on having career storytellers lead their content marketing program—not career marketers.

The key to making this work, however, wasn’t by shutting marketing out. Instead, Marriott found success by breaking down silos and gathering marketers and content people around a common cause.

The key to that is M Live, its glass-encased content studio.

Launched in October 2015, the studio has nine screens showing everything from the social media campaigns of Marriott’s 19 brands to real-time booking information to Marriott’s editorial calendar. But what might be even more impressive—and instructive for other brands—are the eight swivel chairs. Each seat in the glass room represents a different department such as PR/Comms, Social Media, Buzz Marketing, Creative + Content, and even one for MEC, a media- buying agency that amplifies well-performing content at a moment’s notice.

Some marketers may dismiss this scene as a fad—a foolish brand playing media company. But in truth, it’s actually the sign of a great storytelling culture—one that embraces media as marketing.

At the time of this writing, although Marriott is very much building a media business—with plans to license short films and webisodes to places like Yahoo!, AOL, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon—M Live and the Marriott Content Studio are still very much a marketing initiative.

“We did not get this far by saying, ‘I want to build a media company,’” Beebe said. “First and foremost, [the goal] is to engage consumers. Get them to associate with our brands, build lifetime value with them. Content’s a great way to do that.”

A Culture of Storytelling

While M Live and the Marriott Content Studio are making great strides reaching people externally, they’re also having an impact on life inside the company. The content team has put in hard work evangelizing and explaining what they’re doing—part of the reason they built M Live smack in the middle of the lobby for all to see.

One executive, for instance, spent three months leading a project to create a guide that explains M Live and how anyone in the company can help if they have an idea or see a trending story. They’ve connected the M Live team to customer care to handle any complaints or problems, and each Marriott brand is getting deeply involved with the content creation process. “People are getting it,” Beebe said. “Now that we’ve done a lot, they’re starting to see the impact.”

Even Bill Marriott comes down to see what’s going on.

“He loves it, loves the idea of what we’re doing,” Beebe said. “He’ll just come sit down and chit-chat and pick up the phone. He’s actually gotten on Matthew’s computer and shown his wife stuff.”

It’s that support from Bill Marriott and CEO Arne Sorenson that’s pushed the ambitious content operation forward so it can keep transforming the company.

“That’s really what our goal is,” Beebe said. “To take all the brand marketers, all the brand leaders and teams, and turn them into great storytellers.”

Not every company needs to build a sophisticated content studio like Marriott to build a great culture of storytelling, but if they want to succeed as storytellers in the future, they do need to embrace what that studio represents—the destruction of silos and the shared goal of using stories to build relationships and make people care.

Which is, of course, is what marketing is all about.

This is an excerpt from the Amazon #1 New Release, The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming Into the Void, and Make People Love You” by Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow, available today.

The post How Marriott Built One of the Best Brand Newsrooms on Earth appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

B2B content marketing is almost universally embraced. 87 percent of all business-to-business organizations are using content, according to an eMarketer survey of firms with 100 employees or more.

So the question about B2B content marketing isn’t WHETHER it’s a viable marketing approach. Rather, it’s WHAT must be done in 2018 to make it more viable, and HOW content marketing for B2B must change in the face of altered customer expectations and heightened competition.

eMarketer recently released a new report on this topic called B2B Content Marketing 2018. I was one of the content marketers interviewed for this study. It’s a sound and thorough report, and I encourage you to review the summary, listen to the podcast overview, and consider becoming an eMarketer PRO subscriber to get access to the entire piece.

Good news: I’ve reviewed and analyzed the complete report. Here are my favorite findings, plus commentary on what I think they mean for the future of B2B content marketing.

Publish Your Own Research

According to a survey from Ascend2, 50 percent of B2B marketers say that research reports generate leads with the highest customer conversion rates, compared to other forms of content marketing.

(Note: Convince & Convert will be kicking off a research series soon.)

50% of B2B marketers say research reports generate leads with the highest customer conversion rates. #contentmarketing
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Seek Content Downloads

The same survey from Ascend2 finds that leads with high conversion rates begin with a content download. Two-thirds of B2B content marketers believe this to be the case. Compare this to webinar registration (45 percent) and demo request (37 percent).

This surprises me. I would assume (wrongly, it appears) that a webinar registration indicates more specific and meaningful interest than a content download.

Taken in tandem with the point above about research (which is typically distributed via download, like the eMarketer report) the “make research, and allow people to download it if they provide their information” is an even more sound approach.

Know That Credibility Is Only Somewhat Important

This one is disheartening to me. Research from our friends at the Content Marketing Institute and SmartBrief found that when seeking information about potential products and services in a B2B environment, prospective buyers aren’t all that concerned about where that information comes from.

40 percent of respondents say the source of the information doesn’t matter, as long as it is credible. (To which I say, “Well, then how do you know it’s credible?”)

31 percent say they prefer the information to be unbiased.

Interestingly, 24 percent prefer the information to come from the company or manufacturer that they are considering. (I call this the “fox watching the henhouse” approach to content marketing.)

Taken together, I interpret this to mean that while it is, of course, optimal to have strong third-party endorsements, creating content marketing that extolls your own virtues is more than just possible. It’s actually acceptable and desirable in many B2B consideration funnels. Fascinating!

40% of B2B buyers say when researching, the source of info doesn't matter, as long as it's credible.
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Consider Increasing Your Content Marketing Budget

Competition gets tougher, and audiences get more jaded. That’s the current cycle in B2B content marketing. To continue to succeed, many firms are increasing investment.

38 percent of companies in B2B anticipate boosting their content marketing budgets in 2018, according to an Informa survey.

And content is also becoming a larger and larger share of total marketing spend. Based on their research, Content Marketing Institute finds that the most successful companies in B2B are spending approximately 40 percent of all marketing dollars on content marketing.

So what do we cut in that scenario, as content vacuums up more and more budget dollars? Collateral material? Events and exhibits? Sponsorships? Print ads? Logo golf balls?

Part of this budget increase is for content marketing software, including robust editorial calendars and productivity tools.

38% of B2B companies anticipate boosting their #contentmarketing budgets in 2018
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Don’t Stop Content Marketing at the Purchase

You’ll find excellent commentary in the eMarketer report about the need for content to be created and targeted explicitly at all stages of the funnel, including post-purchase. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I wrote a whole piece about why B2B content marketers are spending their resources incorrectly and mostly ignoring content for retention:

B2B Marketers Are Working Harder Than Necessary

Think Quality, Not Quantity

The script has flipped on this equation. Back when there were still green field topics and authority to be seized, a quantity-driven strategy made sense. Now, there are very few—if any—stones unturned.

Changes to customer expectations, massively increased competition, and social media and search engine algorithm shifts have, in combination, resulted in a new content marketing world. Now, crafting the definitive piece on a particular topic is a far better idea than crafting a bunch of okay content executions across a broader topical spread.

I loved this quote from the eMarketer report:

“There’s this push for quality content over quantity,” said Timothy Morral, director of editorial content at Walker Sands Communications. “Part of it is driven, because B2B brands recognize that they need quality leads. Quality content and quality leads work in parallel.”

Exactly! Not only does quality content break through, but quality content creates quality leads, and mediocre content creates mediocre leads.

Get Good at Multi-Sensory Content Marketing

Most B2B content marketers come from a writing or publishing background, either via education or experience. This is because, for a long time, B2B marketers deployed the overwhelming majority of their content marketing in writing. B2B content marketing meant white papers, ebooks, data sheets, FAQs, and so forth.

Now, however, changing consumer content consumption patterns (powered partially by the shift to mobile and the ability to stream video just about everywhere) have made written content (like this content, ironically) less popular, in favor of multi-sensory executions like videos and interactive white papers and the like.

Companies (and Convince & Convert partners) like Vidyard and SnapApp are powering B2B video and interactive content to increase reach and conversions. Here’s an article Anthony Helmstetter, one of our Analysts, wrote on video marketing:

The 3-Part Secret to Video Marketing in 2018

Don’t Sleep on Search

Despite the shift to multi-sensory content executions to break through the clutter, a Digital Donut survey found that organic search is still the top-performing method for driving traffic to content, with 44 percent of respondents listing it as one of their top three choices.

39 percent cited email to your own list. (Although if those prospects are already on your list, it’s not really a new audience or source of traffic.) Paid search ranked third with 33 percent of respondents ranking it in the top three. Linkedin and Facebook were next, and the remaining options lagged far behind.

Organic search is still the number one tactic for driving traffic to B2B #contentmarketing
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Find Ways to Boost Relevancy

Your prospective customers, even when in active shopping mode, have no shortage of content consumption options. Content is EVERYWHERE. From you, from your competitors, and from third parties.

Content becomes disproportionately successful when it’s more interesting at the format level (video, interactivity), or more specific and relevant to the potential customer. This is what is powering the move toward account-based marketing (ABM) in B2B. In an ABM scenario, the content is by definition customized and tailored to a specific industry or company. Why? RELEVANCY is the killer app.

One of the easiest ways to boost content marketing relevancy is through personalization. If you’re not already personalizing, you’re probably behind. 68 percent of B2B marketers said they are testing personalization of content and offers, according to a Chief Marketer study.

As I acknowledged in the eMarketer study, however, while personalization is effective—and clearly is the future of content—it requires effort. This approach can be a strain on your resources and team. This is especially true if you are already having trouble getting buy-in from leadership that the existing content program is worthwhile. Asking to allocate additional funds to create highly bespoke content can be an obstacle.

There you have it. The 9 B2B Content Marketing Musts for 2018. Thanks to eMarketer and all the other organizations that are putting out such great research and reports on this topic.

If my team and I here at Convince & Convert can help you stay ahead of customer expectations in the area of content marketing, please get in touch about a free analysis. We create Digital Marketing Maturity Maps for some of the world’s most interesting brands, and guide them as they accelerate, measure, and propel their digital. 

The post 9 B2B Content Marketing Musts for 2018 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

In July 2016, Unilever shocked the business world. They were purchasing Dollar Shave Club—a startup dreamed up just five years earlier by an improv comedian named Michael Dubin— for $1 billion.

Reporters were baffled. Similar e-commerce subscription startups like Birchbox, Trunk Club, and Stitch Fix had failed to attract anywhere near the same interest. Plus, Dollar Shave Club sold blades that paled in comparison to the high-tech razors that brands Gillette and Schick were famous for. Heck, it didn’t even make its own razors! It just bought them wholesale from manufacturers in China and resold them. The billion-dollar price tag was also five times Dollar Shave Club’s expected 2016 revenue—a near-unprecedented multiple for a retail startup.

So why did Unilever pay such an unprecedented price tag? As forward-thinking analysts began to explain, it wasn’t about revenue. It was about the company’s relationships—with customers, and consumers at large. Relationships that began with possibly the greatest startup launch video of all time.

Dollar Shave Club’s Origin Story

In 1990, a group of comedians that included Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, Ian Roberts, and Horatio Sanz had created an improv group called The Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB). Before long, the UCB had its own Comedy Central TV show and served as a talent pipeline to Saturday Night Live. As class offerings expanded, it became the destination for the thousands of young creatives who stumbled out of their college acting classes and into the bright lights of New York City each year.

In the early 2000s, Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin was one of those young creatives. For eight years, he honed his craft at UCB while working in various television and marketing jobs. In December 2010, he found himself at a Christmas party talking to one of his father’s friends. The conversation took an unexpected turn, and before long, the family friend was asking him for help selling 250,000 razors he had acquired from Asia. (We’ve all been there, right?) The conversation would have weirded a lot of people out, but it gave Dubin an idea. What if he started a service that would eliminate the expense and hassle of selling razor blades? What if they just showed up at your door each month for $1 each?

Faced with the challenge of getting the startup off the ground and attracting investors, Dubin knew that he had to speak to men like him. Men who were fed up with a razor monopoly that forced them to pay more than $20 for just a few blades. And so he bet big on what he does best. He created a hilarious video to connect with his target audience and cast himself as the protagonist in the Hero’s Journey of his own brand.

“Are our blades any good?” Dubin asks in the beginning of the video. “No, our blades are fucking great.”

What follows is 90 seconds of absolute absurdity that nonetheless touts all of the features of Dollar Shave Club’s razors. There’s a toddler shaving a man’s head, polio jokes, a machete, a clumsy bear, a giant American flag, and perhaps the best “make it rain” scene of all time.

The rough cut of the video convinced former Myspace CEO Michael Jones to sign on as Dubin’s partner. When the video was released on March 6, 2012, it went viral. The startup got more than 12,000 orders in the first 48 hours.

What Dollar Shave Club Got Right About Content Creation

Dollar Shave Club’s origin story highlights something powerful: The economics of marketing are changing quickly, with great content as the ultimate currency. As a result, brands that embrace great storytelling can achieve an incredible advantage over their competition.

The principles behind Dubin’s success aren’t new. Companies have always told stories to drive sales. From the very first barters made to the present day, that hasn’t changed. But everything else has. The sheer pace of technological change in how we are able to communicate our stories to each other—from the birth of radio a century ago to the hurricane of social media apps that mark the 2010s—can be daunting for brands.

On one hand, it presents a huge opportunity. Content is being published everywhere, and consumers are now immersed in stories everywhere they go. Per comScore, time spent with digital media tripled between 2010 and 2016. At last count, 65 percent of all time spent with digital media occurred on mobile devices, consumed primarily via social networks. As a result, companies that excel at storytelling can reach their target customers more effectively and at greater scale than traditional advertising ever offered—all at a fraction of the cost.

On the other hand, there’s more content now than ever. At a conference in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that we create as much information every two days as we did in human history up until 2003, a figure that’s only increased since.

As a result, brands can’t create mediocre content and expect to stand out. Half-baked content simply has little chance of breaking through on social or search.

“There’s not a whole lot of value in writing a decent blog post anymore. [There’s not a lot of value] unless you can be pretty extraordinary,” SEO and content analyst Rand Fishkin, who also founded Moz, told us. “Ask: If they’re searching for an answer to a question, would they rather reach your piece of content than anything else on the internet right now? Unless the answer is a slam dunk, ‘Yes, this is 10 times better than anything else out there,’ I’m not necessarily sure it’s worth publishing.”

But when you do create something amazing that stands out? The results are staggering.

Especially when you keep doing it over time.

Brands can’t create mediocre content and expect to stand out.
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How Dollar Shave Club Scaled Its Storytelling

Dubin and Dollar Shave Club continued to crank out hilarious videos that their target audience watched millions of times and shared enthusiastically. One of the best follow-ups, “Let’s Talk about #2,” introduced their new butt wipes product and made more jokes about bears pooping than you ever thought you’d see in a brand video.

It also started shipping The Bathroom Minutes, a small comic newspaper, with every order. And in late 2015, it launched MEL, one of the most ambitious editorial sites ever launched by a brand.

As Contently managing editor Jordan Teicher wrote in The Content Strategist: “MEL is a great example of how ambitious storytelling can stand out if brands stop trying to play it safe. It’s the only place you can read articles like ‘I Went Shark Fishing and Accidentally Caught a Kilo of Coke’ or watch short documentaries about subjects like former Harvard graduates who become medieval fighters.”

In total, these videos helped build an incredibly strong brand and lasting relationships with consumers. Moreover, they helped Dollar Shave Club achieve a financial exit that seemed impossible just a few years before.

As David Pakman, a partner at Venrock and an early investor in Dollar Shave Club, explained: “There are two things that drive multiples: the financial metrics and the story.”

As Dollar Shave Club proved, the right story can make those financial metrics look five times as good.

This is an excerpt from the Amazon #1 New Release, The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming Into the Void, and Make People Love You by Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow. Order it today to take advantage of some awesome bonuses, and sign up for the free storytelling course based off the book.

This post is part of a paid sponsorship between Contently and Convince & Convert.

The post How Storytelling Turned Dollar Shave Club Into a Billion Dollar-Brand appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Once upon a time, social took up just a tiny corner in the world of marketing. Oftentimes, companies reluctantly threw a small percentage of their budget at it without really investing much in the way of staffing, strategy, or analytics. But as anyone knee-deep in the evolution of the industry knows, those days are gone.

Bypassing traditional customer service channels, social is now the channel of choice for consumers who want to reach out to and engage with brands. And those consumers have seriously high expectations: 53 percent of them expect a customer service response within an hour! The power of social now goes beyond simple brand awareness or reputation; it’s quantifiable dollars and cents.

Social will be a major part of most companies’ marketing strategies in 2018, but are you looking at the right metrics to measure your success in the social realm? If you’re evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns based merely on page likes and clicks, I’m afraid you’re missing the boat.

I recently joined Jim Rudden, CMO of Spredfast, for a webinar breaking down how to best approach social planning and measurements this year. While social is the single most measurable form of marketing ever, that doesn’t mean we’re measuring it well. I’ve seen lots of mind-numbing social media scoreboards in my time! So how do we focus on the metrics that matter? Here are a few:

1. Post Volume

This one is crucial, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to getting it right. The harsh reality is that there is no “neutral” in social. Every time you post—whether it’s a major campaign rollout or a response to a customer comment—it either builds or hurts your brand, so hitting on the right cadence is paramount.

Learning how to get in that “Goldilocks Zone” where everything is justttt right is a moving target. It will vary from brand to brand and channel to channel. And don’t think you can set it and forget it, either; you need to test and revise throughout the year to keep things fresh. You have to work to find where the decay point lies for your audience.

There is no 'neutral' in social.
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2. Relevancy Score

Social algorithms seem to be forever changing, and making sure your content is seen by your audience is getting harder and harder. A great way to ensure that your posts are getting the broadest reach possible is to make them hyper-relevant.

Much like Google’s system, Facebook now rates paid content. It’s on a scale of one to 10, and once your post has accrued 500 impressions, you’re assigned a score based on things like how often it is viewed, liked, and shared, as well as negatives like how often it’s hidden or reported.

Keeping an eye on these scores—and adjusting your content and approach accordingly—is the best way to get more eyes on your posts. If your content is effective, they’ll show it to more people. After all, it benefits both your brand and Facebook to deliver advertising that people want to see.

3. Video Minutes Viewed

Video content is quickly becoming one of the most effective weapons in the social toolbox. When it comes to tracking impact, though, the simple metric of how many views a video gets is virtually worthless, in my opinion. On Facebook, just three seconds constitutes a “view,” so it’s clear that we need to be far more nuanced about how we’re measuring engagement if we truly want to determine the success of video posts.

In addition to determining the total and average minutes watched, the dwell pattern can tell you all about where attention is dropping off for your viewers. This can be especially powerful if you have a call to action in your video that you want to make sure is reaching your viewers.

4. Post-Click Conversion Rate

Oftentimes, the goal of social content is to drive consumers back to your website to take part in a deeper engagement with your brand. Just looking at post clicks isn’t going to tell you if that’s happening consistently, though. What really matters is what happens after the click.

You can get 500 clicks on a post, but if the customer isn’t taking the next step and purchasing your product or interfacing with your form etc., then you’re not getting the job done. The percentage of conversions happening from those clicks is the real measure of how effective your content is in spurring the behaviors your brand wants to foster.

The most useful metrics for your business will vary based on your individual priorities and goals, of course, but these are a great starting place.

To go more in-depth on these and to hear about the other three vital metrics you’ll need to employ in order to properly measure your brand’s social impact in 2018, you can find Jim’s recap here and check out the Social Measurement in 2018 webinar.

This post is part of a paid sponsorship between Spredfast and Convince & Convert.

The post 4 Essential Social Metrics for 2018 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Consumers see up to 10,000 messages from brands every day. From mobile ads to social media posts to television commercials, no one can escape.

As a coping mechanism, people have learned to weed out the cheap from the authentic by listening to honest brands (those that are always transparent and trusted by consumers) and ignoring fake ones. Companies with authentic messages flourish, while marketers who attempt to mislead customers or participate in an unrelated conversation pay the consequences.

The Consequences of Inauthentic Messaging

Sometimes, the biggest brands make the biggest mistakes in the form of messages that lack authenticity and consumer trust.

When legendary “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher passed away last year, Cinnabon used the opportunity to promote its product in an ill-conceived ode to the actress. Cinnabon posted an outline of Princess Leia with a Cinnabon Classic Roll in place of her iconic hairstyle. Fans cried foul, forcing the company to retract the ad and issue an apology for a style that Fisher famously never liked much anyway.

Back in 2014, DiGiorno tried to insert itself into a conversation where it didn’t belong and faced severe backlash. Hopping on the trending #WhyIStayed hashtag, DiGiorno’s account posted “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.” Unfortunately, the hashtag was not about hanging out with friends but about domestic abuse victims and their struggles to escape bad environments. The blunder now serves as a reminder of why brands must always do their research before attaching themselves to popular topics.

When brands don’t practice what they preach, consumers notice. During the iPhone 6 release, customers were concerned about rumors the phones would bend and break if handled roughly. Attempting to capitalize on this fear, the LG France account posted about how LG phones didn’t bend—but sent the tweet from an iPhone. Consumers ridiculed the brand, pointing out that even LG employees didn’t use its products.

In all these situations, brands were dragged through the public square on social media for being inauthentic. Each one admitted the errors and issued apologies, but in the age of screenshots and Facebook Memories, their mistakes will live on forever.

Brands: Always, always do your research before attaching yourself to popular trends and topics.
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Why Brands Should Admit Their Faults

Businesses cannot afford to become their own enemies online. According to Havas Media, consumers only trust about 22 percent of brands. Inauthentic messaging suggests to customers the company does not believe in its own missions, products, and services. If the company doesn’t believe in itself, why should anyone else?

Brands with inauthentic messaging distance themselves from their audiences and open the door for more down-to-earth competitors to steal their customers. People ally with brands because they see their own personalities and values reflected, but most people don’t want to describe themselves as insincere, foolish, or untrustworthy. When brands step outside their identities and try to latch on to unrelated trends, customers notice—and the results are rarely positive.

Consumers, especially millennials, want to do business with brands they believe in. Forbes and Elite Daily found that 43 percent of millennials rank authenticity as more important than content when consuming news. Audiences would rather hear something unflattering yet true than something positive yet questionable. They don’t expect brands to be perfect—all they require is a little honesty.

How to Stay Authentic

Maintaining an authentic brand message means telling the truth, even when the truth isn’t particularly flattering. It’s just like real life: People trust those who admit their faults but distrust those who claim to do no wrong.

By following these strategies, brands can prove their authenticity and maintain audience trust:

1. Be Transparent

Selective transparency is impossible to maintain. Someone inevitably forgets which secrets aren’t supposed to be public, and when something slips, consumers feel like they have been misled. To maintain an authentic image, be transparent about all issues within the company.

A recent consumer study found that 56 percent of those surveyed said additional product information—like where a brand sources its goods and how it makes its products—instills more brand trust. Further, close to 40 percent said they would switch brands if the new one promised complete transparency.

Bottom line: Let clients know about delays and potentially bad PR before they hear the same news from somewhere else. This helps the brand get ahead of issues before they spiral out of control. It also creates deeper bonds with customers who appreciate being kept in the loop.

2. Apologize for Mistakes

Companies make mistakes all the time. Brands that own their mistakes fare much better than those that try to cover them up.

In October, an NPR employee accidentally posted on the company Facebook account instead of a personal one. NPR quickly took down the post, which discussed Ramona and her affection for cats, and issued a brief apology. Because the company owned the mistake quickly—and because it was an innocent mistake to boot—readers reacted warmly to the mix-up.

3. Solve Problems

After apologizing for mistakes, don’t assume everything is back to normal. Provide the audience with a resolution—an action that shows how the company will fix the problem and prevent it from happening in the future.

Wells Fargo is still paying dearly for lost consumer trust after allowing employees to create millions of fake accounts in customers’ names. When it became immediately clear that an apology could never undo the damage, Wells Fargo began a campaign to “make things right,” communicating with customers about eliminating unattainable sales goals and providing settlement expenses. The company still has a long way to go, but in the case of major mistakes like this one, actions speak far louder than words.

Curating an authentic brand image doesn’t have to be so hard. By following these strategies, companies can engage in honest dialogues with their audiences and set a foundation of trust that will pay dividends for years to come.

The post The Sensitive Marketer’s Guide to Brand Authenticity appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Podcasts are a great way to educate yourself. Whether you’re on the train, in the car, at your desk, or anywhere in between, this medium is an incredible vehicle for supplementing your industry knowledge. Every week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the best marketing podcasts around, spanning the whole marketing landscape.

Whether you’re new to podcasts or you’re a seasoned listener, I know you’ll find value in each weekly round-up. Let’s get listening, shall we?

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast: How a Virtual Assistant Can Save Your Sanity and Grow Your Business

Jess Ostroff is not only the managing editor of Convince & Convert. She is also the founder and Director of Calm at Don’t Panic Management, a virtual assistance agency. A few weeks ago, Jess released her first book—Panic Proof: How the Right Virtual Assistant Can Grow Your Business and Save Your Sanity—and is sharing how employing virtual assistants can take your business to new heights.

She joined host John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing to explore how she got her start in freelancing, how she keeps her team focused on the skills that make them indispensable, and why her business model is so cost-effective for so many organizations.

Takeaways: Unless you’re a workaholic and like working late hours, getting someone who enjoys doing the tasks that bog you down makes sense on so many levels. Being a business owner or a manager is hard enough as it is without adding the additional stress of handling the necessary, albeit challenging, tasks we must complete.

Jess points out that hiring a full-time team member for a task that will only require 20 hours of dedication, as opposed to the typical 40, is unfair to both the company and the employee. “[T]here [are] so many choices and so many ways to get the right person for the right job,” she says, and she’s absolutely right.

The freelance economy can certainly be a tough jungle to maneuver, but when you find the right people, it makes perfect sense.

AskPat 1001: How Do I Streamline My Business so I’m Not Overwhelmed?

As host Pat Flynn goes into his next 1000 episodes, he’s changing things up a bit. Instead of taking questions over voicemail and answering “off-air,” he’s holding live coaching sessions and recording for his listeners.

It’s a cool concept that I haven’t heard in the marketing space very often. Considering Pat’s abilities to think on the fly, it’s a perfect fit, and he’ll certainly never run out of guests looking to find the right answers for their business.

In this episode, Pat welcomes Gianna from Family Fun Twin Cities, a blog looking to be the one-stop resource for things to do with kids in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Takeaways: Gianna’s question at the 4:43 mark of the podcast is the heart of the episode: How do we go above and beyond for our customers without burning ourselves out?

Gianna is truly trying to build long-term relationships with both her audience and her clients. It’s certainly the right thing to do, but it can be quite difficult to balance. Pat listens to Gianna carefully and, after each of her answers, either further clarifies or offers excellent, actionable advice that she and her business partners can execute.

For example, one of the cool things they agree on is creating separate email campaigns for clients that are separate from the emails destined for FFTC subscribers. While it might seem simple, it’s often the simplest solution that turns a worrisome issue and into an impactful piece of your business. I’m a fan of the way Pat is now running his show, and I hope he’s able to help a lot of people.

How do we go above and beyond for our customers without burning ourselves out?
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Unpodcast #208: It’s All Downhill from Here

It’s been a little while since we’ve included our fine friends from north of the border, Scott and Alison Stratten. In this edition of the show, they go over Chewy’s knack for customer service (and as someone who used to work for a direct competitor, this is absolutely true), Alison’s Endy mattress story, a new Yelp policy that could be harmful for everyone, and yes, yet another hotel charging for bad reviews. Now, where have we seen this before?

Takeaways: Since I already called out the Chewy example, let’s stick with them. Two customers tragically lost both of their dogs in one weekend and then received two, 40-pound bags of dog food from Chewy as part of their auto-ship order. It’s gut-wrenching.

When I worked at Pet360, we’d often encounter a pet parent who ordered food or a toy for their pup only to find out that their pet had passed away. These situations were difficult to handle, but we’d also start with our condolences, encourage them to donate the food or toys to a local shelter, and refund their purchase.

What Chewy did, and does, goes above and beyond. They did all of the things Pet360 did but also asked for a picture of the dogs and included them in a memorial book to honor their pups. And they didn’t stop there—Chewy also sent flowers to express their condolences.

The experience that Chewy has created for their customers is unsurpassed in the pet world. Even though PetSmart has since acquired them, their culture that puts the customer first continues to produce incredible stories like this one. As much as I disliked Chewy during my time at Pet360, I respected the hell out of them. Every brand can learn from these top dogs.

That’s all for this edition! I’ll be back with a new batch next week. In the meantime, share any podcasts you think I should know about with me @jwsteiert on Twitter or in the comments below!

The post Recommended Marketing Podcasts: Week of February 5 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

When given a choice, I choose to laugh, no matter the situation, as long as kindness prevails. With that said, I have been told that my professional voice is memorably unprofessional—perceived as advantageous or dangerous, depending on the recipient’s sense of humor. I am not alone.

For all marketers struggling to convince others that humor, does, indeed, garner trust ergo sales, let me employ the words of some distinguished old man:

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Truer words have been spoken, but never words so relevant to this particular argument. Shaw said this at the turn of the nineteenth century, yet brands still struggle to embrace humor.

Very, very important and serious brands worry, “If we are funny, will we be trusted?” Absolutely—humorous brands are trusted. I am not alone in believing so:

“Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.”

— Baltasar Gracián

Circa 1600, long before modern advertising came to be, Gracián wrote these ever-relevant words. True then and now, humor garners trust. If your brand is running a solid 400 years behind the times, don’t worry: It’s never is too late to add humor to your content marketing.

Especially in 2018, when influencer marketing is arguably the most powerful tactic your brand will implement this year, comedy is powerful and available. Choose funny, light-hearted, trustworthy influencers; watch as their jokes have you laughing all the way to the bank.

Because the archaic advice of old men is rarely enough to influence a nation (lol the irony), please enjoy these three modern examples of humor closing the sale. ABC.

It’s never is too late to add humor to your content marketing.
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A: Visa Dispatches a Flock of Dancing Olympic Influencers

In truth, not all brands are innately funny, nor can they be, no matter which celebrities star in their commercials. That said, influencers help brands cheat the system. Brands need not be hilarious; they need only piggyback on the personality of their influencers.

For example, Olympians are seemingly happy people—blame the endorphins from all those workouts. They’re a natural fit for brands hoping to earn trust. Audiences happily accept that these athletes need sponsorships to pursue their passions. In this way, no one begrudges athletes dancing for the sponsors that, very honestly, make athletes’ dreams a reality.

Waking up and realizing yesterday wasn’t a dream . . . #VirtueMoir #TeamVisa #TeamCanada . #Repost @visaca ・・・ That feeling when you’re named Team Canada’s flag bearers. Congratulations to @tessavirtue17 and @scottmoir14! You redefine what’s possible in sport, we redefine how you can pay. Visa. The official payment technology partner of The Olympic Winter Games.

A post shared by Tessa Virtue (@tessavirtue17) on Jan 17, 2018 at 8:47am PST

While no one is rolling on the ground after watching this clip of Canadian Olympians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, one would expect them to smile (lest you have no heart). The Olympians’ joy is authentic and their gratitude apparent. This small execution is certainly more effective in stirring warm emotions than a lame joke about five percent cashback.

Stoked to announce my partnership with #TeamVisa ! It’s going to be a fun year! #PeyongChang @visa_us

A post shared by Jamie Anderson (@jamieanderson) on Sep 20, 2017 at 3:30pm PDT

US Olympian Jamie Anderson, believer in “good vibes and gratitude,” exudes warmth in many of her sponsored posts, happy dancing her way into the Olympics. Visa was smart to sponsor another athlete known for her joy, goofiness, and talent.

B: Two Words (or One Word?), Poo~Pourri

“You would not believe the motherload I just dropped.” Can anyone forget this ingenious video sponsored in 2013? Originally served to me as pre-roll ad, it may still be the only YouTube ad I’ve watched to the end, then shared with my friends. An innately funny product, Poo~Pourri found some brilliant copywriter that keenly exercises every hilarious poop analogy known to man, and then some.

Poop jokes made intelligent? Poo~Pourri is a product that lives up to its promise. This potent combination is likely never to be repeated again, though others may try.

C: British Airways Produced a Laugh-and-Learn

If you are seeing this video, chances are your tush is already in a seat, and the sale has already been made. However, marketers are learning more and more about the importance of nurturing current audiences with rewarding and memorable content, hence the ever-trendy humorous airline safety video.

While there are many to choose from, I especially like this video from British Airways for the sole reason that appreciating dry British humor says good things about my character. (A necessity after I snuck in a few good poop jokes in the previous example.)

Not by accident, all examples shown here are videos of one sort or another. As my brilliant colleague Anthony Helmstetter has discussed, video marketing is on the rise in 2018. For that reason, among many others, Anthony’s 3-Part Secret to Video Marketing in 2018 is well worth the read.

The post Yes, There Is Power in Your Marketing Humor appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Is personalized marketing good, or evil?

I’ve been asked some form of this question so many times, in so many places, by so many different types of companies. I figured I should answer it here, in writing.

Actually, you may have ASKED this question—if not of me, of someone. Maybe of yourself?

The question often sounds like this: “When does personalized marketing cross the line and become creepy?”

We think that this line is thin, and that just the slightest push toward additional customization based on behavior or inferred intent will send potential customers running, afraid that “big data” has run amok.

We think that personalized marketing is like the famous line from Spinal Tap: “There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.”

The reality is that the line is actually pretty wide. Customers are, in fact, exceptionally tolerant of personalization (even hyper-personalization) as long as ONE THING IS TRUE: The personalization must either inform or reduce friction, period.

In short, the personalization must be a Youtility.

This may seem axiomatic to you. “Of course, if we’re going to personalize, it should be in service of an enhanced customer experience,” you may think. But that is by no means always the case, is it? If you’ve ever bought a product and then seen ads all over the damn internet for the SAME PRODUCT YOU JUST BOUGHT, you know that personalization isn’t always useful, and sometimes can be downright irksome.

Understanding that personalized marketing must be useful—so useful that people would pay for it, to quote the definition of Youtility—is critical. Because we are very quickly entering an all-new era of digital marketing; an era where the availability of big data makes it very, very easy to personalize customer communications and interactions in a way that would have been unthinkably complex just a short time ago.

We’ve talked about the power of 1:1 marketing for a long, long, LONG time. But now, artificial intelligence and machine learning have teamed up with real-time data collection to give just about every marketer the option to personalize some, or a lot, of the customer experience.

And that power is intoxicating in ways both good and bad. The option to give customers just what they want, when they want it, and where they want it based on what we know or can ferret out about them SHOULD improve CX. But the ONLY way to insure that it does is to start every personalization project with one, simple question:

“How does this improve the customers’ lives, regardless of its impact on the company?”

Ask yourself that, and your personalization efforts will always contain enough incremental usefulness that customers will largely embrace it, even when it is FREAKY.

Look at Netflix, for example.

Netflix Uses Potentially Creepy Personalized Marketing, but With Youtility

In an extraordinary column on Medium published last month, Netflix data engineers described, in detail, precisely how they create as many as a dozen different pieces of “cover art” for every Netflix show.

Based on other shows you’ve watched, Netflix automatically serves you the artwork that the algorithm believes best matches your thematic and actor preferences, subtly encouraging you to watch more, because the graphic makes you believe, “This show is exactly what I want to watch!”

For the movie Good Will Hunting, for instance, Netflix serves up different images based on whether it thinks your affinity is stronger for Robin Williams or romantic comedies.

Someone who has watched many romantic movies may be interested in Good Will Hunting if we show the artwork containing Matt Damon and Minnie Driver, whereas, a member who has watched many comedies might be drawn to the movie if we use the artwork containing Robin Williams, a well-known comedian.

But the machine learning behind these personalized artwork decisions is much more dynamic and robust than just Minnie Driver versus Robin Williams. For the hit show Stranger Things, for example, Netflix included in their Medium post a collection of nine very different images, each designed to appeal to different members based on their preferences (!!!):

You might think this is at least a little invasive. It’s definitely fascinating, looking at the same programs on Netflix when you’re logged in as yourself versus as your spouse, to see what the algorithm has determined each of you prefers.

But we tolerate this data mining because it has enough Youtility for us. The trade-off between loss of privacy and more compelling video content recommendations seems like a good deal.

You may not have a room full of data scientists cooking up this kind of personalization. (When I first read the Netflix post on Medium, when I got to the part about HOW it works, my head almost exploded.) But you don’t need scientists. You need to understand that personalization is just a value exchange, the same way that asking for an email is a value exchange.

The same way that connecting with someone on Linkedin is a value exchange.

The same way that paying someone to mow your lawn so you have more time to do other stuff is a value exchange.

You Don’t Get to Decide What’s Good Personalized Marketing, But They Do

As marketers, assisted by robots, our ability and opportunity to personalize with data is wizardry made commonplace. But we cannot ever forget that our audiences—not us—are those that decide what is satisfying and what is creepy. They decide what is clever and what is stupid. They decide what is in bounds and what is out of bounds.

And in almost every case, that decision is based solely on whether or not the personalization makes their lives better, or just helps you sell more stuff.

The post Non-Creepy Personalized Marketing Must Have Youtility appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

B2B marketing values relevancy, which makes emerging trends pertinent for any marketer looking to get a jump on their effectiveness in 2018. From embracing multimedia content creation to using copywriting in a more story-driven, personal form, these marketing trends are something all B2B marketers should keep in mind.

1. Multimedia Content Creation

Blog posts are fine for informational reference, but there’s demand for multimedia content, especially video. In fact, on today’s multimedia-driven web, people spend more time with digital video than social media. The podcast audience also continues to expand.

The message is clear: Audiences are becoming more familiar with visual and auditory forms of content, instead of traditional copy. In 2018, B2B marketing looks to involve more multimedia content to engage business-to-business leads.

Live video is another exciting aspect of multimedia content. B2B marketing relies strongly on at least one party demonstrating desirable expertise, and one excellent way to showcase expertise is live video. In fact, a Livestream study found 80 percent of brand audiences would prefer to watch a live video instead of reading a blog post. Hosting videos on Facebook Live, while taking and answering questions, is a fantastic way to showcase expertise to potential B2B partners and the general viewing audience alike.

It’s easy enough to have a professional-looking website in 2018, but be prepared for your audience to demand more.

Audiences are becoming more familiar with visual and auditory content, instead of traditional copy.
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2. Mobile Accommodations

It’s already essential for brands to have a mobile-friendly website, considering that 69 percent of digital media engagement is on mobile platforms—a number that will only increase in 2018. In fact, mobile is steadily surpassing the web as the go-to platform.

As a result, B2B marketing will likely embrace mobile formats in the future and beyond. These range from mobile-friendly website and email template designs to mobile apps that enhance the brand experience.

3. Virtual and Augmented Reality

The virtual and augmented reality industries are rising quickly. Industries from fashion to B2B marketing are embracing these new technologies. In 2018, B2B marketers will continue to explore ways to engage audiences with virtual and augmented reality.

We’re just now seeing the impact of VR and AR on B2B marketing engagement ideas, including putting customers in a virtual product simulation and using a “virtual space” where marketers can address questions, as if they’re in the same room with the viewer. It’s a form of futuristic webinar, and it’s effective: Research from Stanford shows virtual reality simulations can be effective motivators for buying behavior.

4. Automating Business Leads

While you should certainly be doing your part to attract leads to your businesses naturally, there are also resources out there that can provide B2B leads directly to you. You can set demographics like industry, number of employees, and business revenue to hone in on a demographic that is most likely to be in need of your product or service.

For small businesses, especially, which may lack the time and resources to uncover a multitude of leads on their own, automating business leads can be ideal. The efficiency of business lead automation makes it a likely trend for business in 2018 and beyond.

Automation tips businesses can use to bring in new leads more efficiently include:

• Consider marketing automation software. In surveys of marketing automation software users, the users highlight the usefulness of marketing automation software in increasing leads and accurately measuring results.
• Use mail merging software to automate email send-outs and follow-ups, with automated tracking capabilities on a spreadsheet via Google Drive. Mail merging enables users to personalize emails, like a contact’s name and publication, drawing from information on a spreadsheet of contacts.
• Compile key information about leads with forms and surveys. To incentivize survey participation, offer a discount or prize to someone within the pool who participates. Base the survey questions around information relevant to the business’ target demographic.

5. Influencer Marketing

There are a variety of influencers across social media that drive purchasing decisions for their high number of followers. Although B2C brands tend to dominate influencer social media channels, there are also business-oriented influencers, on YouTube in particular, that reach audiences in the B2B sphere. Look for B2B marketers in 2018 and beyond to embrace influencers just as advertisers have, using their platform as a way to engage a relevant audience quickly.

2018 is an exciting time for B2B marketing, with a wide variety of exciting new ways to market with relevancy and technological savvy.

The post 5 B2B Marketing Trends That Will Shape 2018 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Is your content on YouTube? Have you considered taking your content global? In this article, you’ll discover how to expand your reach and influence on YouTube by optimizing your videos for viewers who speak different languages. Reveal Your Ideal International Audiences You may assume that all of your YouTube videos are being viewed in English-speaking [...]

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Are you a blogger, video creator, or podcaster? Are you wondering how creators are making money? Look no further. In the first study of its kind, Social Media Examiner commissioned a comprehensive study of more than 4,300 creators. In this report, you’ll discover: The most common ways creators monetize their work. What produces the most [...]

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Are you wondering if LinkedIn is worth your time? Want to know how other marketers approach LinkedIn? In this article, you’ll discover new research insights that reveal what content performs best on LinkedIn, which industries use the platform today, and how marketers are planning to move forward. #1: Long-Form Content Performs Best It’s well-known that [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Want to make money from your content? Wondering how a loyal audience can create business opportunities? To explore business models that help publishers generate revenue, I interview Joe Pulizzi. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers, business [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Do you want your employees to contribute to your social media marketing? Looking for tools to manage the content people share on social? In this article, you’ll discover five tools that will help you coordinate the content your team posts on social media. #1: Leverage Employee Advocacy With Smarp If you’re looking for ways to [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Want your LinkedIn posts to attract more viewers? Wondering how to increase views and shares of your LinkedIn content? In this article, you’ll discover five simple tactics to improve engagement on your LinkedIn posts. #1: Write Text-Only Posts You’ve probably heard that people engage more when a social media post shows an image or video. [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Do you want to use customer endorsements in your social media marketing? Wondering how to create a persuasive testimonial video? In this article, you’ll learn how to produce an effective testimonial video to share on social media. Why Testimonial Videos? People value the opinions of their peers. According to a BrightLocal study, 84% of consumers [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Wondering how much you should spend on Facebook ads? Do you need to set a budget? In this article, you’ll discover how to set a Facebook advertising budget by working backward from the revenue you need to generate. #1: Set a Target Revenue Goal Defining a revenue goal for your campaign seems like a simple [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show with Erik Fisher, Kim Reynolds, and Jeff Sieh, we explore Facebook Publisher changes, YouTube Breaking News, Facebook Camera updates, [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Want to create a sales video that converts? Looking for expert tips about building rapport with your prospects? To explore how to sell with video on YouTube and Facebook, I interview Jeremy Vest. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Looking for an easy way to create video content? Do you blog? In this article, you’ll learn how to turn a blog post into two types of videos you can share on social media. #1: Segment Your Blog Post for Scripting Video is the perfect way to repurpose your content. Start by looking at your [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Want to try some new social media marketing tools? Wondering which apps can enhance your social media audio, video, and images? In this article, you’ll discover 24 useful social media tools. #1: Narro Narro is an app that converts text articles into audio files so you can listen on the go. To convert a text article [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

If you’re new to Facebook business options or want to add something new to your current Facebook marketing plan, this page is for you. Here, you’ll find articles and resources to help beginner, intermediate, and advanced marketers use Facebook pages, profiles, groups, ads, Live video, analysis, contests, and more for business. Put My Business on Facebook [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle