Hollie Clere, Author at The Social Media Advisor

June 19, 2018
Blog

#GrowYourAudience – Review Social Media Reports to Understand How Your Audience Responds to Your Content

For those of us who spend our days thinking about how to make a more significant impact on social media, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in creating whizz-bang content that we forget to take time to see if what we are creating is doing what we intend. That’s where analytics come in. Social media analytics tools, there are a lot of them, can help us understand how our audience is responding to our content. In other words, analytics let us know if our content works.

Which Tools To Use

Exactly which analytics tools you use depends on what you’re doing, your budget, and how much detail you need. There are not only lots of tools to choose from, but there are also many companies who will gladly follow your social media for you and report the results.

Let’s assume that you are like most people and you really don’t want to spend any money to find out what your social media audience thinks of your content. Let’s also assume that you are active on Facebook and Twitter. (Spoiler alert: If you aren’t using these two platforms you’ve got problems).

Both Facebook and Twitter provide built-in tools that will give you a variety of metrics on your content. Using these tools, you’ll be able to tell not only how many people your content reached but how engaged they were with it.

Let’s take a closer look at these two tools:

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights is a free tool that is available for all business pages. At it’s highest level, it tracks likes, reach, and engagement. To track engagement, it monitors likes, shares, and comments. Data is available over a variety of time periods depending on the metric. Likes, for example, can be tracked over the last 28 days. You can also drill down into how video content performs and get more detail on the people that are seeing your content looking at it by age, gender, and location.

Twitter Analytics

Like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics is designed to help you determine which content is working best. If you have an international audience, you’ll be able to see what time of day has the most engagement as well as look at who is being reached by your campaigns based on a variety of demographics.

Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics are not the only tools available to help you determine if your content strategy is hitting its mark. Each of the social media platforms has their own analytics option for the business or company page areas. They are, however, key elements that should be part of every marketer’s toolbox. By monitoring them on a regular basis, you can make the most of content that is working and avoid spending valuable resources on content that isn’t pulling its weight.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

June 12, 2018
Social Media Strategy

#GrowYourAudience – Drive High Brand Awareness Through Lead Strategies in Facebook

For anyone with a product to sell one of the first things on our list of strategic action items is to build brand awareness. The question is, what’s the best way to do that? Luckily, there is one tool out there that is right at your fingertips. In fact, you are probably already using it—Facebook. The question is, how do you get started?

One of the quickest ways to use Facebook to help build brand awareness is to adopt the same tried and true techniques that are used for generating leads. Here are five common lead generating ideas that can be effectively applied to creating brand awareness.

Post Compelling Content: If you’ve been working with social media for awhile then you know that saying you will post compelling content is easier said than done. The good news is that it can be easier to create content that is all about image than it is to sell a particular product. Blog posts, stories, and other narrative posts can all do an excellent job of telling the story of your business and your brand. Keep it personal and post consistently. You want to engage your audience as well as educate them.
Use Facebook Live: Live streaming to your audience can be quick, cheap, and extremely effective in helping you get your brand name out there. You can stream from an event, educate your audience on how to use a product or have an employee talk about themselves or their job. Pro Tip: Practice before you go live.
Run a Contest or Giveaway: A contest such as a scavenger hunt or a free sample of your product can be very engaging if it is well managed. Plus, you’ll be able to beef up your mailing list with verifiable data.
Run Targeted Ads: If you haven’t used Facebook advertising then now is the time to learn all about it. With the help of the platform’s targeting features, you can reach a whole new set of potential customers. Depending on your particular situation, boosting that compelling content you’ve been creating can be just as effective as traditional ads.
Create Special Landing Pages: Combine a strong call to action with a custom landing page, and you can help your audience learn all about you. While you’ve got your audience’s attention, present your case for why you are the best in the business.

Like all sales and marketing tactical efforts, using lead strategies to drive high awareness of your brand will take planning and work. Before you get started, decide how you will measure success. Then put your plan in place, watch the results, and adjust as you need to. With a well-executed plan, you’ll find your brand garnering a whole new level of attention.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

June 5, 2018
Social Media Marketing

#GrowYourBusiness – Providing Value to Your Social Media Audience

If you are like most social media managers, your first goal is to create content that will get your audience to engage. Share, likes, and comments are all good as gold regardless of the platform. The only problem with using engagement as your key objective is that you have to get people to see your content first. After all, you can’t get engagement if you don’t get views. What’s the best way to ensure that your content gets seen? Make sure you are providing value to your audience.

Let’s think for a minute about what it means to add value. When it comes to social media content, providing value means giving your audience something they can’t get anywhere else. Exactly what that is will depend on your particular circumstance but let’s talk about the top 5 ways you give your users value through social media, regardless of your product or service.

Solve a Problem: When you solve a problem for your audience, you are making their lives better and perhaps removing an obstacle that is preventing them from achieving their own goals. There are many ways to create content that solves problems. A how-to can be a great way to do this but so can an answer to a question, a product discount, or an informative product review.
Tell A Story: Storytelling is a great way to help your audience learn more about you, your company, and your products. Success stories, stories that give insight into your mission, profiles of your team or your customers, can all help your audience learn more about your and add value.
Make Something That is Complicated Simple: Infographics and lists are particularly good ways to turn difficult topics into something that is easily understood. While technical content lends itself well to this type of content, your subject doesn’t have to be technical. A description of a process can also work well in graphic or some other easy to follow format.
Teach: Common questions that users have can be fertile territory for developing content that will teach a lesson about your industry, your product, or your company. How-to videos can be particularly good for this along with solving problems.
Ask Your Community What They Need: Of course we should know our customers well enough to anticipate what type of content will bring them the most value but sometimes it’s still best to go straight to the source. Reach out to your audience to ask them what they need. You might be surprised what you’re missing.

Developing content that gives your friends, fans, and followers value may take a little work, but it is sure to pay off. Once your community learns that the information you provide will make their lives easier, they are sure to come back for more. They are also like to pass it along to others. Providing value to your followers will pay off in spades in terms of brand loyalty, trust, and online presence.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

May 29, 2018
Social Engagement

#FreshContent – Social Engagement as Content

For social media managers, two things are critical—engagement and content. What if you could combine the two? The good news is, you can! But you’ll have to work at it a little bit. You’ll also need to come up with a plan.

What we mean when we talk about adapting social engagement and converting it to content is asking our users to supply us with content—videos, stories, images, etc. In other words, they are engaging with us, and that engagement becomes content. There are lots of reasons to approach content generation this way, but one of the key reasons is that you’ll find your audience engages more readily with the content generated by their peers. Engagement, then, begets more engagement and so on. In this way, you’ll have lots of fresh content, and you have not had to create it yourself.

So how do you go about soliciting social engagement to use as content? Here are eight steps to help you make this part of your social media strategy.

Define Your Goals

Like any element of a marketing strategy, you need to know what you want to accomplish. Do you want clicks, shares, likes, sales? You’ll need to keep this in mind when you ask for content.

Know Your Audience

What type of content is successful in engaging your audience? For one audience, how-to videos may work best, for others, storytelling may be more effective.

Select Your Approach

To encourage engagement, you can run a contest, offer a giveaway, launch a survey, or simply ask. Use the method (or combination of methods) that works best for your particular audience.

Update Your Toolbox

The tools for developing and attaining content improve every day. Make sure that the tools you have access to are the best for what you are trying to accomplish.

Develop Your Call To Action

How you get your audience to act is critical in any campaign. Come up with your calls to action and test them. Don’t forget that you’ll not only need to ask for the content to be submitted but you’ll want it shared, commented on, and otherwise acted upon. You’ll need more than one way to ask.

Decide How to Measure Success

To evaluate if your effort is working you need to how you’ll judge success. Success might look like the number of entries, how many times something is shared, or new sales.

Repurpose Your Engagement Content

One of our favorite ways to use social engagement is to pay attention to what people are posting. This is especially true when it comes to what our audience is asking – as these are great topics for future content! What better way to ensure you are delivering the content your followers are looking for than to respond to their comments and questions with high-quality content?

GO!

Once you are ready, take a deep breath and launch your campaign.

Do It All Over Again

Successful social media campaigns are as much art as science. Take what you learn, make adjustments and try again.

The ever-changing landscape of social media is exciting AND exasperating! You’ll need to be imaginative, flexible and persistent in your efforts. In this way, you’ll learn a lot about your customers, your products, and your company, and perhaps even yourself.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

#FreshContent – Social Engagement as Content

Free + Free = Win!

Are you telling your brand story in social media?

Author: Hollie Clere

#GrowYourAudience – Review Social Media Reports to Understand How Your Audience Responds to Your Content

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Learn how to use social media to grow your business online with our video series!

Follow me

Categories

Latest Articles