Introducing a whole new concept to the world of social business and social care: cost-per-retention. What exactly is it and why is it so important?
It has long been said (and shown through some pretty simple calculations) that it is far less expensive to keep existing clients than it is to acquire new clients. In fact, last year, Merchant Warehouse put together a great little infographic that showcases exactly that. This infographic showed that it is, on average, six times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one, and that is due in large part to efforts such as loyalty programs.
But to say that acquiring a new customer is six times more expensive does not mean to imply that the cost of retaining a customer is minimal. While we often talk about the CPA or Cost Per Acquisition of a new customer, social media in particular gives us the ability to start placing more emphasis on CPR or Cost Per Retention (ironically, CPR is an appropriate term as companies often struggle to keep their customer base alive).
In order to understand your cost-per-retention, we need to start at the beginning and look at things like CPA and LTV (Life Time Value of a customer).
What Is CPA?
CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition, refers to the cost a brand incurs in order to acquire a new client. Now you can either look at that from the perspective of total average cost-per-acquisition, or you can break that down into cost-per-acquisition-per-initiative. The two are distinctly different and lead to differences in your operations efficiency.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
To start, let’s take a look at overall CPA. This is a pretty simple calculation. First, select a period; for argument’s sake, let’s take a month. Now look at how many new clients you have acquired in that month. Next, look at how much you invested in all of your marketing and advertising initiatives. This includes PPC campaigns on social media or Google AdWords, media buys in traditional media, specific campaigns or promotions, and anything else you did in an effort to sign new clients. Now divide that total investment (let’s not get into the more complex issue of factoring in overhead and operating expenses for this example) and divide it by the number of new clients you acquired. The result is your CPA. (For the sake of this discussion, we assume a direct correlation between the clients you acquired in the month and the expenditures you incurred in that same month.)
If you were to look at initiative-specific CPA, you would need to evaluate each of those customer acquisition campaigns individually, see what led to new customers, how much was invested, and conduct the same calculation (investment divided by the number of new signups) to determine your CPA on each initiative. Don’t be surprised if your CPA appears high. This is where the relationship between CPA and LTV starts to come into focus.
What Is LTV?
LTV, CLTV or Customer Lifetime Value, is the total value of a customer over the course of their relationship with your business. Let’s say, for example, that you run an enterprise SaaS organization. Each month, subscribers pay $500 to access your software and the average customer uses the software for five years. This would mean that your LTV is $30,000. Assuming a 3 to 1 ratio of LTV to CPA, this means that spending about $10,000 to acquire a new customer isn’t completely absurd.
Of course, the goal of any business should be to decrease CPA and increase LTV. That is why companies – particularly subscription-based companies – are constantly making changes and introducing new features in an effort to keep customers around a little bit longer. And therein lies the concept of cost-per-retention.
What is CPR, or Cost-Per-Retention?
The name alone seems more or less self-explanatory; cost-per-retention is the amount of money that your brand must invest in order to retain clients. As noted above, just because it is, according to some reports, six times more expensive to acquire a new client, that does not mean that it is ‘free’ or even all that inexpensive to retain clients.
Quite a bit of an investment has to be made in order to keep clients coming back. Attrition – the loss of clients – is going to happen in any industry. In some industries, particularly those where brand or product differentiation is minimal, it is going to happen at a much higher and faster rate than others. So, what kind of an investment needs to be made in order to retain clients?
Cost-per-retention is going to be an amalgam of a number of initiatives. There are superficial efforts, like loyalty clubs, specials and rewards programs that are clearly seen by the audience, and then there are those investments that are less visible. First, let’s look at the cost-per-retention of some of those externally visible initiatives.
Running a loyalty program or offering returning clients discounts, special pricing or freebies; those costs need to be calculated. In other words, what are the ‘lost revenues’ so to speak of offering these kinds of benefits? And how much greater is the LTV of the customers that participate in these initiatives? Determine those two figures and make the same calculations as we did for the CPA and original LTV, but limit it to each retention-specific initiative. Now, what about those internal costs?
Let’s take a look at an example such as social care. (If you’re not familiar with the concept of social care, you can read up on it here. Essentially, it is the practice of offering customer service on social media.) Social care can be a hugely cost-effective practice. Some of the benefits can include improved response time, higher volume of customer issues addressed, decreased customer service overhead, and much more. But there is still a cost to offering social care.
While it might be perceived as a differentiating value added that retains a greater number of clients, there is still a cost to operating a social care team (or customer service in the traditional sense). This is an area where that cost will have to be determined, then weighed against the ratio of client retention versus attrition. Determine how much more you are making from the extended LTV as a result of offering this service.
There are also other initiatives that might seem like your average marketing practice, but also contribute to cost-per-retention. Take your company newsletter, for example. Operating a newsletter or running email marketing initiatives is, in part, a way to drive conversions. But there are plenty of instances where a newsletter is designed to maintain interest in a product or retain a client’s subscription, or promote one of the aforementioned retention-based programs.
The same holds true for activities on social networks. Maintaining brand awareness and driving engagement from existing clients is crucial to brand differentiation. How can these kinds of initiatives be measured? The practice remains more or less constant. Determine which of these initiatives, or what ratio of these initiatives, rather, are designed to retain clients. Then associate the relative cost of the overall initiative to the retention-based ratio of initiatives. Determine retention rates from individual practices, and calculate whether or not your efforts are generating profits.
Conclusion
Superficially, retention might not seem quite as expensive as acquisition, and for the most part that is true. But the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that we need to determine if the cost-per-retention outweighs the extended lifetime value, or ELTV.
Let’s go back to the initial example, where the initial LTV was $30,000, and the cost per acquisition, for argument’s sake, was $10,000. If we are running a retention program that costs us $1,800 for each user retained, that might look pretty good. But if the average ELTV is three months, or $1,500, we’re actually losing money on that investment.
It’s important to take a step back and evaluate how your marketing, customer service and client retention programs are helping drive additional revenues, because those reviews and studies don’t always take these kinds of issues into account.
What have you found to be the most successful retention program for your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
20 Social Media Fun Facts
/by Corey PadveenEverybody loves social media fun facts that showcase just how impressive the industry really is. Here are a few new ones!
Every year, the world of social media grows dramatically. With that growth comes some great social media fun facts that, on occasion, are hard to believe. These are a few new social media fun facts that will blow plenty of people away.
Sources:
Socialnomics
Cisco
9 markets
Citrix
Search Engine Journal
eConsultancy
Forbes
Gartner
business2community
Social Media Today
CeBit
How many of these did you already know about? Share other great social media fun facts in the comments below or on Twitter!
4 Great Ways to Break the Ice on Social Media
/by Corey PadveenIt can be a little awkward to break the ice on social media, but these tips should help make it easier.
There is no shortage of awkwardness when you are trying to break the ice on social media. You might spot a prospect and want to spark up a conversation, or see a potential lead and want to begin building a relationship, but you might find it very difficult to break the ice on social media without seeming contrived.
There are a few nice segues that make it much easier to get that conversation started or begin building that relationship. These are a few ways you can try breaking the ice on social media next time you want to start a relationship with a prospective client.
Personalize Your Connection
Telling someone that you would like to ‘add them to your professional network on LinkedIn’ has become so overused that a lot of people (particularly those that focus significantly on social) tend to ignore these connection requests.
One great way to get a conversation going is by personalizing your connection request on LinkedIn. These are messages that are sent directly to the user, and a personal message certainly gets noticed. Considering the fact that almost all connection requests use the standard invite rhetoric, venturing out of the box and being creative (or simply personal) makes an impact. From there, it will be much easier to dive into a conversation and this new connection will be prepared for it.
Engage with a Tweet
It doesn’t matter who you are – if you’re active on Twitter, you love the attention your tweets get. People are sharing these microblogs because they want to be heard. When you show someone that you’re listening, they’ll notice.
Something as simple as a favorite or a retweet can go a very long way. (Much further than we tend to think.) People take notice when someone engages with their content, and when you subsequently reach out, they’ll be much more responsive to that. So next time you identify a prospect on Twitter, try engaging with some of their content before making a full introduction. It’ll certainly help.
And speaking of introductions…
Get Introduced
If you and your target prospect are both active on social media and work in the same (or a tangential) industry, you’ll almost certainly have connections in common on LinkedIn. You should be taking advantage of that!
Not enough people take advantage of the introductions that can be made on the network. In fact, a study by LinkedIn in 2013 found that people are 50% more likely to respond to you when you reference someone they know. That number is even higher when a common connection introduces you.
Respond to Questions
Sometimes the best way to break the ice is to take part in a conversation that is already taking place. See if your prospect has asked any questions or needs expert advice, and chime in if you have an answer. (Not a sales pitch – an answer.)
One of the beauties of social media is that conversations that are not private are open to everyone. Unlike face-to-face communication, people are much more responsive to someone jumping into a conversation on social media than they would be at a bar. If you see your prospect asking for advice or help, share something valuable with them. This does not have to be (and shouldn’t be, in most cases) a way for you to aggressively pitch your product or service. This is a way for you to share your knowledge and expertise in the industry and open up those lines of communication for the future.
Conclusion
Social media makes it a lot of easier to identify a prospect and begin building a relationship with that person. That said, it is not always easy to get that relationship off the ground. Following these steps will make it that much easier (and more natural) next time the opportunity arises.
How do you tend to break the ice on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Link Building Tips to Keep Your Brand Above Board
/by Corey PadveenGoogle just updated Penguin for the first time in a while, and these link building tips will help keep your brand from being hit by any potential penalties.
When it comes to boosting your rankings on Google, link building is among the most viable strategies – assuming, of course, that it’s being done properly. With Google’s latest update to Penguin 3.0, these are a few link building tips to keep in mind in order to avoid any unwanted penalties to your SERPs.
Avoid the Manipulation of Shares
Social signals have long been touted as among the strongest ways to improve your discoverability on Google. The idea of ‘viral’ is on every marketers mind. But with virality comes an organic component.
Manipulating shares through purchases or sponsorships is not the best way to boost your search rankings. One of the major changes that Google has been slowly implementing and expanding upon is the rewarding of, for lack of a better term, naturally occurring content. If a website is known for sharing sponsored articles and links for payment, Google will find out about it and your effort to build links through paid shares won’t go quite as far.
Transparency is the Best Policy
Hiding embedded links and coercing visitors to share your links is another practice you’ll want to avoid when it comes to improving your search rankings.
If people are going to be sharing your content or images, it should be clear that they will be sharing a specific link. Don’t secretly embed backlinks to your website on someone else’s infographics on Pinterest, for example. People should be willingly sharing links to your site.
Don’t Get Too Meta
Self-referencing is fine here and there, especially if you have a relevant article that might provide additional benefit to your readers. But filling your posts and your guest posts with links to your own website is a practice that should be engaged in with moderation.
Of course, when you can share links in anchor text to your website in an article you’re writing, you’ll want to do that. But filling an article with links to any and all bits of content purely for the purpose of building links isn’t going to help anyone. And Google won’t take too kindly to that either.
Conclusion
It remains to be seen what the latest update to Penguin might mean for some websites, but when it comes to link building, these are a few practices you’ll want to keep in mind. Link building is a valuable asset to any website, but only if it is done correctly. After all, these updates are put in place to ensure of just that.
What has been your most successful link building strategy? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
The Importance of Images Online [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenThe importance of images when it comes to building your online presence cannot be understated.
We have all been told about the importance of images. We hear about it all the time from experts and social media users alike. Generally, however, we simply follow this bit of information blindly without ever really understanding why images are so important when it comes to building our online brand.
This infographic from MDG Advertising does an excellent job of putting numbers to support this advice. Have a look at these fun facts and figures in order to better understand exactly why images are so important when it comes to your online presence.
4 Methods to Build Your Influence on Social Media
/by Corey PadveenWhen it comes to growing your social business, one thing you’re going to want to leverage is your influence on social media.
Influence on social media can be valuable to helping build your brand online. But attaining a level of influence on social media that makes an impact with your target audience can be a tough thing to accomplish.
Though there are several ways to go about building your influence on social media, these are a few techniques that can help you get there much sooner rather than later.
Write What You Know Best
It has been proven time and time again that blogging can be a hugely valuable online asset. One way to build your credibility online is to write avidly on a topic you know a whole lot about.
While some studies have shown that writing multiple blogs per day can have exceptional SEO value, it is not a necessity for every brand. What you really want to do is write periodically when you know you have a great bit of content that will resonate with the audience you’re trying to reach.
What’s more, you’ll want to ensure that when you write, you’re as detailed as possible. The best rule to follow is a 70-30 split; share 70% of your knowledge and leave your audience wanting that extra 30%. This is an excellent technique for building influence, credibility and driving new business all with one technique.
Answer Questions
On sites like Quora, Blurtit and Yahoo!, people are asking questions hoping, in some cases, that an expert will provide them with an answer. Spend some time on these sites and share your insights. It will certainly be noticed.
Sites like these are ideally designed to let you showcase your expertise. People are asking questions to which you might be able to provide a detailed answer. The key in a case like this is being as detailed as possible.
Unlike a tweet or even a Facebook post, people are posting to these sites because they want a detailed answer. So take some time and really provide your audience with as much of your insights as possible. They will be more than happy to take the time to read it.
Produce and Share Instructional Videos
If you’ve ever visited our YouTube channel, then you might have seen our Q&A with t2 video segment. There, we answer questions that have come in on networks like Twitter or LinkedIn from our audience.
These have proven to be excellent resources for building credibility. Again, this is an area that is ideal for sharing expertise. Look at any content direction recommendations, and you will almost always see a recommendation that suggests the use of videos. Your audience like to see, not always read.
Videos are an excellent way of getting valuable information to your audience, humanizing your brand with the face of an employee, and, of course, building your influence and authority.
Interview Experts
Expert interviews carry a lot of weight. That is particularly true when it comes to building credibility and establishing your own level of expertise.
When an audience sees that you have the clout to command an interview with an industry expert, the impression left is one that reflects on your own expertise. There is an understanding that if you can carry a conversation with an established expert, you must be an expert yourself.
Whenever you get a chance, conduct interviews – either on your blog, on YouTube or in a podcast format – and your audience will see it as a reflection on your own industry influence.
Conclusion
There are several ways to build your credibility online and establish your brand as an industry or thought leader, and as the examples above indicate, a key part of that is dedication.
It takes time and involvement to grow influence on social media. But when you take that time and partake in these activities, your influence on social media will grow at a much faster rate.
How do you build influence on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 of Your Marketing Questions Answered
/by Corey PadveenThese are a few of your marketing questions that we answered in our Q&A with t2 video segments!
We regularly review your marketing questions – either sent in over LinkedIn, Twitter, other networks or asked at a conference where we are present – and put together Q&A with t2 segments where we answer them. These videos have gained some traction, so we want to share with you some of our favorites and hope you’ll check out the rest right here.
What exactly is a Social Client Persona?
How should you structure your bidding for Twitter ads?
What are some criteria to help determine influence on social media?
How can you create an effective call-to-action on Facebook?
How can you build a content strategy using Google Analytics?
These are just a few of the videos that we’ve shared answering your marketing questions! Feel free to send in your questions on any one of our active social networks and it might be featured in one of our videos!
To see more great Q&A with t2 videos, visit our YouTube channel!
Introducing CPR: Cost-Per-Retention
/by Corey PadveenIntroducing a whole new concept to the world of social business and social care: cost-per-retention. What exactly is it and why is it so important?
It has long been said (and shown through some pretty simple calculations) that it is far less expensive to keep existing clients than it is to acquire new clients. In fact, last year, Merchant Warehouse put together a great little infographic that showcases exactly that. This infographic showed that it is, on average, six times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one, and that is due in large part to efforts such as loyalty programs.
But to say that acquiring a new customer is six times more expensive does not mean to imply that the cost of retaining a customer is minimal. While we often talk about the CPA or Cost Per Acquisition of a new customer, social media in particular gives us the ability to start placing more emphasis on CPR or Cost Per Retention (ironically, CPR is an appropriate term as companies often struggle to keep their customer base alive).
In order to understand your cost-per-retention, we need to start at the beginning and look at things like CPA and LTV (Life Time Value of a customer).
What Is CPA?
CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition, refers to the cost a brand incurs in order to acquire a new client. Now you can either look at that from the perspective of total average cost-per-acquisition, or you can break that down into cost-per-acquisition-per-initiative. The two are distinctly different and lead to differences in your operations efficiency.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
To start, let’s take a look at overall CPA. This is a pretty simple calculation. First, select a period; for argument’s sake, let’s take a month. Now look at how many new clients you have acquired in that month. Next, look at how much you invested in all of your marketing and advertising initiatives. This includes PPC campaigns on social media or Google AdWords, media buys in traditional media, specific campaigns or promotions, and anything else you did in an effort to sign new clients. Now divide that total investment (let’s not get into the more complex issue of factoring in overhead and operating expenses for this example) and divide it by the number of new clients you acquired. The result is your CPA. (For the sake of this discussion, we assume a direct correlation between the clients you acquired in the month and the expenditures you incurred in that same month.)
If you were to look at initiative-specific CPA, you would need to evaluate each of those customer acquisition campaigns individually, see what led to new customers, how much was invested, and conduct the same calculation (investment divided by the number of new signups) to determine your CPA on each initiative. Don’t be surprised if your CPA appears high. This is where the relationship between CPA and LTV starts to come into focus.
What Is LTV?
LTV, CLTV or Customer Lifetime Value, is the total value of a customer over the course of their relationship with your business. Let’s say, for example, that you run an enterprise SaaS organization. Each month, subscribers pay $500 to access your software and the average customer uses the software for five years. This would mean that your LTV is $30,000. Assuming a 3 to 1 ratio of LTV to CPA, this means that spending about $10,000 to acquire a new customer isn’t completely absurd.
Of course, the goal of any business should be to decrease CPA and increase LTV. That is why companies – particularly subscription-based companies – are constantly making changes and introducing new features in an effort to keep customers around a little bit longer. And therein lies the concept of cost-per-retention.
What is CPR, or Cost-Per-Retention?
The name alone seems more or less self-explanatory; cost-per-retention is the amount of money that your brand must invest in order to retain clients. As noted above, just because it is, according to some reports, six times more expensive to acquire a new client, that does not mean that it is ‘free’ or even all that inexpensive to retain clients.
Quite a bit of an investment has to be made in order to keep clients coming back. Attrition – the loss of clients – is going to happen in any industry. In some industries, particularly those where brand or product differentiation is minimal, it is going to happen at a much higher and faster rate than others. So, what kind of an investment needs to be made in order to retain clients?
Cost-per-retention is going to be an amalgam of a number of initiatives. There are superficial efforts, like loyalty clubs, specials and rewards programs that are clearly seen by the audience, and then there are those investments that are less visible. First, let’s look at the cost-per-retention of some of those externally visible initiatives.
Running a loyalty program or offering returning clients discounts, special pricing or freebies; those costs need to be calculated. In other words, what are the ‘lost revenues’ so to speak of offering these kinds of benefits? And how much greater is the LTV of the customers that participate in these initiatives? Determine those two figures and make the same calculations as we did for the CPA and original LTV, but limit it to each retention-specific initiative. Now, what about those internal costs?
Let’s take a look at an example such as social care. (If you’re not familiar with the concept of social care, you can read up on it here. Essentially, it is the practice of offering customer service on social media.) Social care can be a hugely cost-effective practice. Some of the benefits can include improved response time, higher volume of customer issues addressed, decreased customer service overhead, and much more. But there is still a cost to offering social care.
While it might be perceived as a differentiating value added that retains a greater number of clients, there is still a cost to operating a social care team (or customer service in the traditional sense). This is an area where that cost will have to be determined, then weighed against the ratio of client retention versus attrition. Determine how much more you are making from the extended LTV as a result of offering this service.
There are also other initiatives that might seem like your average marketing practice, but also contribute to cost-per-retention. Take your company newsletter, for example. Operating a newsletter or running email marketing initiatives is, in part, a way to drive conversions. But there are plenty of instances where a newsletter is designed to maintain interest in a product or retain a client’s subscription, or promote one of the aforementioned retention-based programs.
The same holds true for activities on social networks. Maintaining brand awareness and driving engagement from existing clients is crucial to brand differentiation. How can these kinds of initiatives be measured? The practice remains more or less constant. Determine which of these initiatives, or what ratio of these initiatives, rather, are designed to retain clients. Then associate the relative cost of the overall initiative to the retention-based ratio of initiatives. Determine retention rates from individual practices, and calculate whether or not your efforts are generating profits.
Conclusion
Superficially, retention might not seem quite as expensive as acquisition, and for the most part that is true. But the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that we need to determine if the cost-per-retention outweighs the extended lifetime value, or ELTV.
Let’s go back to the initial example, where the initial LTV was $30,000, and the cost per acquisition, for argument’s sake, was $10,000. If we are running a retention program that costs us $1,800 for each user retained, that might look pretty good. But if the average ELTV is three months, or $1,500, we’re actually losing money on that investment.
It’s important to take a step back and evaluate how your marketing, customer service and client retention programs are helping drive additional revenues, because those reviews and studies don’t always take these kinds of issues into account.
What have you found to be the most successful retention program for your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 Blogging Worst Practices to Avoid
/by Corey PadveenBlogging is a popular activity, but there are some worst practices out there that all bloggers need to avoid.
Just as there exist best practices when it comes to different activities on social media, there exist worst practices. Sometimes, knowing about the worst practices can be just as valuable as knowing what you should be doing.
These are five things that bloggers often do, but that should be avoided at all costs. Some make you look deceptive or unprofessional, while others are simply in bad taste. Have a look and make sure you aren’t committing any of these blogging fouls.
Undated Articles
It might seem like it isn’t all that big of a deal, but it is. That goes double for a post that contains stats or any kind of data. Considering how quickly this environment shifts, it is extremely important that posts are dated so that readers know whether or not the information is still useful.
Consider it this way: if you’re writing an article about Facebook, and you don’t know much about the network, you’re going to want to do some research. If you come across a blog that states that Facebook has nearly a billion users, that post is somewhat outdated, and the information you’re reading is wrong. It won’t look too good if you decide to share it. So, for the sake of your readers, let them know when an article was published so they know whether or not it is still relevant.
Misspellings and Grammar
Again, this might not seen like it make much of a difference, but it speaks both to the ease of reading your article and to your level of professionalism. A slight typo here or there won’t cause people to flee from your blog, but if you display a total lack of writing ability, people will be hard pressed to return.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
Take a minute or two to gloss over what you have written and make sure that you have both corrected any spelling errors and implemented proper grammar techniques. It is a greater pet peeve of the online community than most people think.
Attribution
See that little line in italics underneath the photo above? That’s an attribution. Blogger often use images – whether they use them properly or not is not the case, but you should always use them legally – without providing an attribution. Take a second and add in the attribution; not just for legal reasons but for proper etiquette as well.
Attribution not only protects the you legally when it comes to your blog, but it also showcases another degree of professionalism on your blog. It isn’t hard to do, but it will make a difference.
State Your Sources
Up above, the use of statistics and data was referenced. Well, those statistics and data should be referenced as well. Blindly stating a fact or figure in your copy does not look good and takes away from the credibility of your article. Adding a link can make a world of difference.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
Even in cases where you know something to be true, or it is ‘common sense’, you should still find a source and link to it. And make sure it is a credible source. Linking to another unaccredited blog is worthless. Find a scholarly article or an official report and use that as a source. It will, once again, increase the validity of both your statement and the article as a whole.
No Train of Thought Writing
A blog might be a more personal way of communicating with your audience, but there should still be a clear arc that is followed over the course of your article. Yes, your blog might be a little more personable and conversational than a news article or report, but it is still a written publication. Keep that in mind.
Though you might have an urge to veer off on tangents when writing, staying on course will mean two things: greater audience retention (visitors reading the full article) and a more positive and lively conversation around the topic.
Conclusion
Writing a good blog is hard. Maintaining a level of value in everything you publish can be a time-consuming task, and part of that value is staying away from these worst practices. Doing that will help showcase your blog in a more positive light and generate ongoing interest from your audience.
What are some other pet peeves of yours when it comes to blogging? Share them with us in the comments below or on Twitter!
2014 Social Media Dictionary [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenThere are a few important terms with which every social media marketer should be familiar. Luckily, they can reference the social media dictionary.
There are always new buzz terms and hot topics that seem to be making their way through the world of social media marketing. Luckily, Adestra has put together the social media dictionary for this year that captures a lot of those hot button terms and explains exactly what they mean.
Are there any terms you see here that you haven’t seen before? Tell us what you have learned from this social media dictionary either in the comments below or on Twitter!
The Three Ts of ContenTTT Creation – Type. Tone. Timing.
/by Corey PadveenWhen it comes to content creation, there are a few very important criteria to consider.
Your content creation process should not be a fly-by-night approach in the hopes that it resonates with your target audience. Effective content creation and promotion builds off of a carefully laid out content strategy.
In order to begin developing and optimizing that strategy, there are several considerations that need to be taken under advisement. Among those, one of the most important is going to be the Three Ts – Type, Tone, Timing.
While the Three Ts is not the only component that will factor into your content strategy, it is going to be a vital component with regards to development, delivery and consistent optimization.
Type
First and foremost, you’re going to want to figure out what type or types of content resonate most with the audience you are trying to market to on social media.
Early on in your social business strategy, you should have identified a target social client persona. This is the audience to whom you would like to share your message. It’s not some broad range of demographics – this is a specific person that you envision as a qualified prospect.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
Look at your historical engagement rates specifically with that group of users. What kind of content resonates most with them? Aggregate data might suggest that you only share images, because they generate significantly higher engagement rates, on average.
You should be looking at your own content and, more importantly, the content with which this audience is most likely to engage, and build your upcoming strategies with a focus on these types of content.
If links or text-based updates outperform images for your audience, modify or update your strategy accordingly.
Tone
Should you share content with a casual, airy tone of voice, or should you be more professional in your tone? Again, you’ll want to see exactly what tone of voice your target client persona tends to be most responsive to and focus your efforts there.
While social media is all about being social, people are social in very different ways. Of course you want your brand to be personable online, but sometimes that personality is a professional one sharing important information in a more serious tone. That said, there is also as much of a chance that your audience will be most responsive to and engage most with a friendly, laid back brand persona.
The key here is trying out different approaches and seeing where you’re finding the greatest results. Keep in mind, however, that it is your prospects’ opinions and engagement rates that should dictate how you position your brand, not necessarily the overall sentiment.
Timing
When are your prospects online? When are they most likely to engage with your content?
You’ll want to share content enough over the course of the day or week that your audience in its entirety is given a chance to engage, but you’ll want to reserve those calls-to-action and more important content for the times of day when your target client is online and ready to engage.
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Just like the tone of your content, this is going to take a little bit of trial and error. Take the time necessary to test content at different times of the day and figure out when you’re best suited to share business development-oriented content. Maybe you have great engagement at three in the afternoon, and only a small rate of engagement before nine in the morning. But if you see that the morning engagement is coming from the audience you are trying hardest to reach, that’s where you’ll want to focus your efforts.
Conclusion
Two things are quite clear: first, you should not rely on aggregate data to tell you how to structure your content strategy. When you’re first getting started, that might be a useful approach, but you will want to pay attention to the performance of your own content in order to determine how you will optimize your strategy moving forward.
Second, the most important thing to consider when developing or optimizing a strategy according to the Three Ts is your target client persona, not just the audience in general. This optimization process should be done with your business in mind. In order to do that, you will have to consider your target client and what they want to hear from you.
Try out the Three Ts the next time you conduct a content strategy audit and see what you learn about your audience!
Have you found a Three Ts strategy that works? Tell us about it in the comments below or on Twitter!