We sometimes forget about some of the most important Google Analytics reports – and they can be extremely valuable.
Google Analytics reports come in all shapes and sizes. We can generate some broad, basic reports that provide us with insights into the activity that takes place on our site, but there also exists a world of highly targeted Google Analytics reports and extremely valuable features that can be quite useful when it comes to crafting strategies both on and off our website.
These five Google Analytics reports and features often go overlooked by the 95% of tracked websites that use Google’s site tracking software.
Secondary Dimensions
Often times we populate reports in our Google Analytics Dashboard and completely neglect the secondary dimensions capabilities that allow for an even deeper understanding of our audiences and the effectiveness of our content.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
By leveraging the insights provided by secondary dimensions, we can begin to compare actions, audiences and content, which will help us optimize certain content sharing strategies outside of our websites. We can also begin to develop a streamlined approach to our Google Analytics Dashboard, connecting as many reports as possible to one another in an effort to simplify the robust platform.
Trackbacks
Generally, most social media marketers will be familiar with the value of monitoring Trackbacks in Google Analytics, but the average user might not even be familiar with what a Trackback report is, and why it can be so useful to, once again, building a more effective content marketing strategy both on and off of our websites.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
So what exactly are Trackbacks? Any time that an external resource links to a piece of content on your website (a ping, pingback, or, as many of us understand it, a backlink) it may register as a Trackback. The difference here is that these reports also include referrals from different social media. So in monitoring your Trackbacks and, more importantly, who posted the link, you can see potential prospects, leads or perhaps even the oft-sought after brand advocate sharing your content on the social web.
Users Flow
The Users Flow report can be found in a number of different places within Google Analytics. It is housed under the Audience, Social and Behavior report sections, and each one is equally valuable.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
The Users Flow chart showcases exactly where users originate, where they land on a website, what pages are visited during a particular session and what activities, or perhaps actions were taken during said visit. Essentially, your Users Flow report can tell you quite a bit about how well your content resonates and what content leads to second or even third impressions within your website. This helps you further optimize the content strategy you have built for your brand online.
Goals and Filters
Goals and filters do not necessarily have to have an e-commerce focus. Goals can be created for a number of different reasons, ranging from economic conversions to a certain number of pages visited per session. Yet so many users tend to overlook the goals feature if they do not plan on selling any product on their websites – and that’s a true opportunity missed.
The same holds true for filters. Creating filters can provide some additional insights into the actions taken by users originating from a specific source. Say, for example you want to know more about the audience referred from LinkedIn. By creating filters specific for the LinkedIn URL, you can see only the activity and engagement of visitors that arrived from this source.
Now how can goals and filters be used together?
Imagine yourself an investor in social advertising for your brand, and you want to optimize your target audience based on the likelihood that they will convert. This research process is accomplished much more easily with the help of goals and filters, as you can now filter for each social network, set goals for a specific type of conversion (maybe a newsletter signup) and see where your ad dollars will be best spent.
On a side note, you can also assign monetary values to abstract goals, like a newsletter signup, based on the value you perceive each conversion possessing.
Cost Analysis
For AdWords users and advertisers, a lot of time is spent looking at AdWords reports, but not enough time is given to Google Analytics reports focusing on AdWords campaigns.
The Cost Analysis report in Google Analytics provides some great insight into where dollars were spent, what events took place and helps advertisers compare channels, keywords and campaigns in order to optimize programs (both in real time and on an ongoing basis). The reports produced allow users to see costs of individual campaigns compared to revenue (which can be tacked on using the conversion tool in AdWords or goals in Google Analytics) in order to understand the performance of campaigns and avoid making any costly mistakes the second or third time around.
Google products are intended to be used with one another, and this is a perfect example of how AdWords and Analytics can help advertisers work more efficiently (and more economically).
Conclusion
Google Analytics reports are varied and a lot of them are extremely useful. Though 95% of websites that track their data do so with Google Analytics, so few are really using the tool to the best of its abilities. It can be so much more than a means to monitor site traffic!
Start using some of these reports and watch as the effectiveness of your online strategies very quickly begins to increase. It won’t be long before you see your website performing just as effectively as social networks when it comes to building relationships and generating new business!
3 WordPress SEO Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
/by Corey PadveenThese are a few common WordPress SEO mistakes and some quick fixes to keep them from damaging your pageranks.
SEO has become a much simpler task for the average website owner with the advent of CMS platforms like WordPress. That said, many of us still make a number of slight oversights when it comes to WordPress SEO that result in a loss of potential discoverability on search engines like Google.
The following three WordPress SEO mistakes tend to occur much more often than others, and we have included these simple steps to take in order to avoid making these potentially harmful errors.
Remember Your Alt Tags
WordPress could not make it easier to include Alt tags in images, yet so often we see images that still register as ‘shutterstock-12345’ and can’t help but think, “That’s a lot of lost potential!”
So what exactly does it mean when an image does not have an Alt tag? For starters, it means that if the image does not populate on the page, there is no description attached to it (usually on the top left hand side) to let visitors know what they are missing. More importantly, when it comes to SEO, Alt tags register as keywords. So when someone searches for ‘WordPress’, for example, they will receive a selection of images with Alt tags that include the term ‘WordPress’ in addition to their traditional results. If you miss the opportunity to tag your image, it will not populate those results.
Why is this bad? Your images might outperform your articles in searches, so while your site’s post or page might not make it into the top result on Google, the image can.
In WordPress, the fix for this issue is a simple one. When you upload an image, pay attention to the sidebar on the righthand side.
Screenshot taken 7/8/2014
There, you can easily insert a proper title, description, Alt tag, a link, adjust the size and make all the necessary adjustments in order to ensure that your image is properly optimized for search. In the case that you have already uploaded an image and realize that you forgot your Alt tag, simply open your media library or select the ‘Edit’ option on top of the image, and add it in.
Include All the Details
Whether you’re using Yoast or some other WordPress plugin to assist you with search optimization, make sure that every detail is provided wherever it is required. Of course, your title might populate automatically, but is it too long? The first few lines of your post might populate the meta description, but will it run over? Take the extra few minutes to ensure that the details have all been accounted for so that your article is perfectly optimized for traditional search.
Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.
Here is a simple checklist that can be followed when it comes to those details:
Though these are not the only things to consider when it comes to SEO (for example,there is also keyword density, URL, etc.) these are features that are very easily identified in WordPress, and some of these features (i.e. the Page Analysis feature detailed above) actually include a lot more in-depth SEO analysis to assist you in the optimization process.
Get Your Site SEO Ready
When you first create your WordPress blog, one of the most important things to remember is that it is not yet completely optimized for search. There are certain things that need to be done in the back end in order to ensure that your posts will be optimized for search at a higher level.
First, make sure that you permalinks have been adjusted in order to read as the name of the post and not the post ID. What does that mean? Well, when you first get started with WordPress, permalinks are automatically registered to read as your post ID. What you need to do is visit the Permalinks section of your Settings menu and change the ‘Default’ setting to ‘Post name’. Then, when you write a new post, you will be able to change the URL in order to include your keyword, or a phrase and better optimize each individual post.
Screenshot taken 7/8/2014
Second, you will want to create a sitemap and upload it to your servers and Google. The thing about this, however, is that you will want to wait until you have logged enough pages to make it a worthwhile venture. There are several free services that will allow you to do this for up to 500 pages, like XML Sitemaps Generator, and the rest can be done with a little help from your provider (e.g. Bluehost) and a knowledge of Google Webmaster Tools. A sitemap is very beneficial when it comes to SEO, and the beauty of a WordPress website is that it is very easy to build out the number of pages (so long as they are all properly optimized).
Conclusion
Some of these WordPress SEO mistakes have a quick fix while some require a little more time and effort, but the benefits can be witnessed very quickly. One of the great values of these CMS platforms is that they can be very easily optimized and changed since much of their functionality is superficially accessible. Some of these issues might seem like a chore to fix, but they are certainly worth it. Take the time to optimize your WordPress site for search and watch your pageranks shoot way up!
What other WordPress SEO mistakes can you think of? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Where to Find Your Social Data
/by Corey PadveenSocial data is everywhere, and these are a few of the places where you can find it.
We constantly hear people talking about big and social data, and the concept of using these social data in order to build strategies, identify opportunities and construct campaigns is quite exciting. The issue we face, however, is that it is not entirely clear where we can find these social data in order to begin harnessing their value.
These sources are just a few of the places where social data exists and where it can be extrapolated and used in order to achieve any one of the above-mentioned goals.
Owned Social Media
This is a given. Your owned social media – any account that is owned and operated by your brand on networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, to name a few – possess mountains of data that can be mined and analyzed for your own needs.
Raw data might not look very exciting (see the Excel spreadsheet below) but for anyone who knows how to use it, it certainly is.
Screen Taken 6-27-14
You can export reports and analyze data sets directly from networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google+ with their latest My Business feature. This data can then be manipulated in a number of ways to serve your own purposes.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the example, but virtually any platform used to monitor web traffic provides us with an exorbitant amount of data – and not just web data, either. (Google Analytics was chosen because of the websites that monitor their traffic, roughly 95% use Google Analytics.)
Screenshot Taken 1-28-2014
While most people use Google Analytics simply to monitor web traffic, the social menu (shown above as a subsection beneath the Acquisition tab) provides some detailed reports on the activities taken by your social audience. Learn their tastes and interests using Universal Analytics, study their behavior on your website looking at things like the Users Flow chart and begin to craft strategies that you know will appeal to these interests and habits.
This process can be further optimized by using Goals and Filters in Google Analytics to begin filtering out traffic and focusing only on a social network, for example, then setting goals to measure the effectiveness of campaigns or strategies on different networks.
Screenshot Taken 1-28-2014
Social Media Monitoring and Listening Technologies
There are no shortage of technologies that exist on the market that make it easy for brands to collect and analyze copious amounts of social data – from industry data right down to competitor insights.
Tools range anywhere from free or inexpensive platforms that provide some fairly useful insights – like Mention, for example – to high-end enterprise level tools that run in-depth analyses on the data collected and provide you with some extremely useful reports – tools such as Crimson Hexagon.
Image Credit: Crimson Hexagon
Social Ad Reports
Social advertising is still in a state of infancy, and therefore, a state of complete affordability. A small injection of cash can lead to major – and very measurable – results. Those results are full of valuable data (because these results go into greater detail about the activities taken by your audience).
When or after running a social ad campaign, collect all of your data, download all of your reports and really start to analyze the results to see where opportunities exist, what you might be able to learn about your target demographics, and how you can turn this small investment into some hugely beneficial strategies that generate equally impressive (if not more impressive) organic results.
Conclusion
While there is data everywhere, these are just a few of the places where brands can begin sourcing and mining their own data. These insights can then be moulded into whatever you need them to be. The beauty of raw data is that they are simply numbers until something is done with them. So they are completely in your control. And as we all know, control is nice to have when trying to build a brand on social media.
Where do you look for social data? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
10 Tips for Writing Engaging Facebook Posts [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenThese ten tips showcase how you can create more engaging Facebook posts!
With so much content being shared to the web (and to Facebook in particular), it is hard to imagine how we can create more engaging Facebook posts. This great infographic from We Are Social Media (WERSM) provides some useful tips that can help you share more engaging Facebook posts in no time.
While some of these tips are repeated quite often (and have become common knowledge) we often forget about some of the most important components that go into engaging Facebook posts. Take a look at the list of pointers and see if you can begin driving higher engagement with your next post on Facebook!
4 Social Business Trends to Watch For in the Second Half of 2014
/by Corey PadveenSocial business trends are exciting and evolving, and these are a few to watch for in the latter half of the year.
Social business trends are constantly on the move. The field is quickly changing and there are new components emerging constantly. I was recently presenting at the Social Media Strategies Summit in New York on the concepts behind building a social business strategy for B2C brands. Hearing two full days of presentations shone some light on what some of the most popular social business trends are, and what marketers should be paying attention to in the second half of this year. According to a whole host of experts (the full summit agenda can be seen here) this is what is on the rise in the world of social business.
Welcome to the Age of Social Advertising
We have advocated social advertising for quite some time, but it has not been until recently that industry experts have really come around on the idea of ‘pay to play’. The social-media-is-free excuse is slowly disappearing, and people are starting to realize that in order to see ROI, there has to be an ‘I’ involved.
That ‘I’ (which, of course, stands for investment) has come in many forms – a lot of which was opportunity or sunk costs that most people tended to overlook – but is now clearer than ever: paid ads. Networks like Facebook have made no effort to hide the fact that brands are going to have to accept the ‘pay to play’ model – and why would they? Facebook has reached a critical mass of users and can effectively call the shots. Of course, there is a diplomatic way of doing things, so they slowly rolled it out over time.
The good news is that ads are still relatively inexpensive (we ran an internal case study for a competitive keyword set and found that Facebook can be upwards of ten times less expensive than AdWords) but that won’t last too long. As brands continue to see results and more companies jump on the advertising bandwagon, we can all expect to see those costs rise.
Mobile is Even More Important
It’s no secret that mobile is hugely important. We’ve watched the rise of this platform shoot past anything we’ve ever seen in this or, quite frankly, any other field. It might sound hard to believe, but mobile is becoming even more important.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
There is a 93% global penetration of mobile devices. 93%. Roughly a third of those users are using a smartphone. (Source) Apps and programs are being developed specifically for mobile, and networks like Twitter – roughly three quarters of whose userbase accesses the network via the mobile app – and Instagram are going completely mobile. Brands are looking for ways to leverage the popularity of the platform, and we can surely expect to see mobile campaigns, mobile friendly content and mobile advertising continue to skyrocket in the months to come.
Social Care is Penetrating New Markets
Everyone knows the story of Comcast’s success with social care – essentially, customer service through social media. The brand went from having some of the worst customer service ratings in the provider market to some of the best, all through the use of Twitter. That idea is starting to make it to new markets.
Moreso than ever before, brands of all industries are wondering how they can engage in some form of social care. Last year, Nielsen reported that a third of all online adults prefers to engage with a brand on social media rather than through conventional forms of customer service (including email). As that number has risen, so has the number of companies trying to leverage the popularity of this phenomenon. Positive customer experience (and tweeting about that experience) is an extremely valuable growth opportunity, and that is very capable of being done with social care.
Social Media and the Law
Perhaps the most hotly debated (and longest running) session at the summit took place around the idea of the implications of the law in the world of social media. It is a hugely interesting topic, simply because it is the first media of its kind and old laws have to been reinterpreted to apply to its use.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Recently, a lawsuit was launched by a well-known actress against a well-known retail operation for the use of an image against her consent on Twitter. This is a groundbreaking suit as it really highlights that there are in fact legal implications to using social media – and not just the ones made up by employers and employees dealing with a ‘misunderstanding’. This is a field growing in importance, and we can surely expect to see it come to the forefront in the very near future.
Conclusion
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is so much taking place in the world of social media. These social business trends are only a few of the directions in which social will be heading this year (and in years to come). With such a quickly evolving market, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of the latest announcement or change. But these items should stay top of mind.
What major social business trends have you noticed this year? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 Important Google Analytics Reports and Features (That Most People Overlook)
/by Corey PadveenWe sometimes forget about some of the most important Google Analytics reports – and they can be extremely valuable.
Google Analytics reports come in all shapes and sizes. We can generate some broad, basic reports that provide us with insights into the activity that takes place on our site, but there also exists a world of highly targeted Google Analytics reports and extremely valuable features that can be quite useful when it comes to crafting strategies both on and off our website.
These five Google Analytics reports and features often go overlooked by the 95% of tracked websites that use Google’s site tracking software.
Secondary Dimensions
Often times we populate reports in our Google Analytics Dashboard and completely neglect the secondary dimensions capabilities that allow for an even deeper understanding of our audiences and the effectiveness of our content.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
By leveraging the insights provided by secondary dimensions, we can begin to compare actions, audiences and content, which will help us optimize certain content sharing strategies outside of our websites. We can also begin to develop a streamlined approach to our Google Analytics Dashboard, connecting as many reports as possible to one another in an effort to simplify the robust platform.
Trackbacks
Generally, most social media marketers will be familiar with the value of monitoring Trackbacks in Google Analytics, but the average user might not even be familiar with what a Trackback report is, and why it can be so useful to, once again, building a more effective content marketing strategy both on and off of our websites.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
So what exactly are Trackbacks? Any time that an external resource links to a piece of content on your website (a ping, pingback, or, as many of us understand it, a backlink) it may register as a Trackback. The difference here is that these reports also include referrals from different social media. So in monitoring your Trackbacks and, more importantly, who posted the link, you can see potential prospects, leads or perhaps even the oft-sought after brand advocate sharing your content on the social web.
Users Flow
The Users Flow report can be found in a number of different places within Google Analytics. It is housed under the Audience, Social and Behavior report sections, and each one is equally valuable.
Screenshot taken 6/6/2014
The Users Flow chart showcases exactly where users originate, where they land on a website, what pages are visited during a particular session and what activities, or perhaps actions were taken during said visit. Essentially, your Users Flow report can tell you quite a bit about how well your content resonates and what content leads to second or even third impressions within your website. This helps you further optimize the content strategy you have built for your brand online.
Goals and Filters
Goals and filters do not necessarily have to have an e-commerce focus. Goals can be created for a number of different reasons, ranging from economic conversions to a certain number of pages visited per session. Yet so many users tend to overlook the goals feature if they do not plan on selling any product on their websites – and that’s a true opportunity missed.
The same holds true for filters. Creating filters can provide some additional insights into the actions taken by users originating from a specific source. Say, for example you want to know more about the audience referred from LinkedIn. By creating filters specific for the LinkedIn URL, you can see only the activity and engagement of visitors that arrived from this source.
Now how can goals and filters be used together?
Imagine yourself an investor in social advertising for your brand, and you want to optimize your target audience based on the likelihood that they will convert. This research process is accomplished much more easily with the help of goals and filters, as you can now filter for each social network, set goals for a specific type of conversion (maybe a newsletter signup) and see where your ad dollars will be best spent.
On a side note, you can also assign monetary values to abstract goals, like a newsletter signup, based on the value you perceive each conversion possessing.
Cost Analysis
For AdWords users and advertisers, a lot of time is spent looking at AdWords reports, but not enough time is given to Google Analytics reports focusing on AdWords campaigns.
The Cost Analysis report in Google Analytics provides some great insight into where dollars were spent, what events took place and helps advertisers compare channels, keywords and campaigns in order to optimize programs (both in real time and on an ongoing basis). The reports produced allow users to see costs of individual campaigns compared to revenue (which can be tacked on using the conversion tool in AdWords or goals in Google Analytics) in order to understand the performance of campaigns and avoid making any costly mistakes the second or third time around.
Google products are intended to be used with one another, and this is a perfect example of how AdWords and Analytics can help advertisers work more efficiently (and more economically).
Conclusion
Google Analytics reports are varied and a lot of them are extremely useful. Though 95% of websites that track their data do so with Google Analytics, so few are really using the tool to the best of its abilities. It can be so much more than a means to monitor site traffic!
Start using some of these reports and watch as the effectiveness of your online strategies very quickly begins to increase. It won’t be long before you see your website performing just as effectively as social networks when it comes to building relationships and generating new business!
How to Stop Bleeding Money with Digital Ad Spends
/by Corey PadveenDigital and social advertising are exciting platforms, but there is a lack of understanding that is leading to overspending and underperforming.
Advertising on social media and other digital platforms has always been exciting. Between the measurability, the reach and (in most cases) the affordability, marketers and advertisers have had a field day with these platforms. But as the market has grown and become more complex, a lot of advertisers have decided to forego the very necessary training that helps avoid losing digital ad spends to carelessness.
Optimizing your campaigns in order to ensure that your digital ad spends are not being wasted is an important area that is often overlooked. These are a few tips that can help marketers when it comes to ensuring that every dollar is going towards achieving your goals.
Incremental Bidding
Bidding best practices is often something that gets the best of marketers and advertisers. It’s great for Google and Facebook – not great for the value of your dollar. We often rely on selecting the much simpler “Optimize Bid for Clicks” option instead of setting the bid ourselves. The danger there is that if you’ve allotted yourself a handsome daily or lifetime budget, that means that a click will come at any cost.
Though incremental bidding takes some time and understanding of target audience, it is hugely beneficial when it comes to squeezing every last drop out of your digital ad spends. Starting with a sensationally low cost per click bid won’t result in much success. That’s a guarantee. But there is some opportunity that can be derived from this practice. See what can be squeezed out of your bare minimum, then start working your way up. In this way, at every level, you’ll be able to pull the results that exist for that bid.
Hypertarget Your Audience
If you’re not familiar with the concept of hypertargeting on social media, read up on it here. Essentially, when it comes to targeting your content and, more importantly, your ad dollars, there is a virtually limitless set of criteria that can be used as a filter when determining whom you would like to have see your content.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Of course there are the obvious choices, like age, gender and location. But really dig deeper and start targeting by interest, job title, even employer. If you know that your ad has been designed with a specific audience in mind, don’t run even the slightest risk of not getting that ad in front of those eyes. Take the time to build very specific audiences on any network where you plan on advertising.
Use Custom Audiences
Building off of this idea of hypertargeting your ads, why not get your ads in front of people that have already been in contact with you for some reason or another? That’s the idea when it comes to custom audiences on networks like Facebook. What are custom audiences? Essentially, a network like Facebook, for example, allows you to upload data – either in the form of data sheets, email lists, websites or apps – into Facebook, and it matches emails from your lists with users online. From there, you can select this as a target audience for your ads.
This is a group of people that is already familiar with your brand. If they see you pop up, they’re more than likely to take notice. This is also a great way to maintain your brand as top of mind. Maybe you reached out to some people who weren’t yet ready to make that purchase. Targeting your ads to a prospects list can work wonders when they find themselves at that stage in the funnel when they need to make a decision.
Go the CPC Route
There’s a reason why a network like LinkedIn doesn’t offer a CPM option for advertising, and it’s pretty simple (and good for the advertiser, believe it or not): CPM is worthless. At this point, considering the vast amounts of ever changing information available to us on the Internet, an impression is meaningless. Unless you are running a remarketing campaign on Google’s Display Network, eyes aren’t worth money.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
What does that mean exactly? Well, you can get your content out into the socialsphere and all over the web for people to see, the goal is to get them to take action. If Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all plan on showing your ads to thousands of people in order to charge you for a handful of clicks, why not let them? It is, by definition, the best of both worlds. Of course, the CPC model is slightly more expensive, but by following the other tips outlined here, it is well worth it.
Never Ignore Your Analytics (Not Even for a Second)
From the moment you launch a digital ad campaign your analytics are providing you with valuable insights that can help you optimize your digital ad spends. Look at the performance of each ad in your set, of each keyword and, of course, of each of the selected criteria for targeting. What’s working? What is leading to the lowest cost per click? Which image is generating the most engagement? What activities are people taking on your website once they have clicked through? All of these are important criteria.
Insights are delivered in real time for the first time in the history of marketing and advertising. Previously, we had to launch a campaign and simply hope that it resonated with the audience with which we had intended it to resonate. Now, not only can we launch a campaign targeted to a very specific audience, but we can also launch multiple campaigns at once and select the one that is performing best, removing the wasted cost from the others.
Conclusion
Slowly but surely, the notion that “social media is free” has begun to die off. People are now realizing that, as with anything related to the world of growth, an investment is needed in order to succeed. The value of digital and social media advertising can be huge, but in order to ensure that every dollar can be recouped in return, it is important that you engage in these best practices.
Which network do you think is most useful/valuable when it comes to social advertising? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
t2 Marketing International and NexLevel Sales Partner to Offer Unique Services
/by Corey PadveenIndustry leading digital marketing consultancy joins forces with Forbes Top 30 Social Sales Influencer
Two internationally recognized thought leaders and industry experts combine skills to provide a unique consulting, coaching and training program in digital marketing and social selling strategies.
See the official press release here.
t2 Marketing International’s Director of Global Social Business Strategy, Corey Padveen, and NexLevel Sales Founder, Julio Viskovich, named by Forbes as one of the Top 30 Social Selling Influencers in the World, will combine their expertise by providing consulting, training and coaching to corporate clients in North America and Europe in the areas of Advanced Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy, Social and Big Data Analysis and Social Selling.
The joint program provides businesses with a complete suite of digital marketing and sales strategies ranging from data mining and analysis techniques to social selling strategies, social care best practices, content strategies and full-scale social media program development, coaching and training.
The group provides a number of distinctive benefits and solutions including:
About the Consultants
Corey Padveen, t2 Marketing International
Julio Viskovich, NexLevel Sales
For further information or to schedule a consult, contact:
Corey Padveen
T: (1) 800-607-4550 ext. 4
Email: corey [at] t2marketinginternational.com
Julio Viskovich
T: (1) 604-209-3001
Email: julio [at] nexlevelsales.com
An Infographic on Sharing Infographics [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenPeople respond to infographics on social media differently based on the network they are using.
It is important to be aware of certain best practices when it comes to sharing infographics on social networks. Pinterest is easy: simply pin it up and watch the engagement begin. But to ensure you will see that same level of interest from your audiences on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s important to be aware of some of the best practices on each of those networks.
This well-titled infographic from Lemonly showcases exactly what you need to pay attention to when planning to share your infographics to a few major networks other than Pinterest or Tumblr. Take a look and see if you can’t spot a few best practices you might have overlooked in the past.
How to Manage Your Risk Averse Brand on Social Media
/by Corey PadveenSocial media can be a tricky domain to master, particularly for more risk averse brands.
If you run or work for a risk averse brand, you know that social media is a difficult beast for a number of reasons. The concept of ‘real-time’ takes on a whole new challenge when you are constantly concerned with your brand’s perception in the public eye. The catch is that social is very quickly becoming less of an option and much more of a requirement – for all brands. So what can those brands that are afraid of the platform do to conquer it?
These are a few best practices that a more risk averse brand should adopt when it comes to transitioning into a social business.
Plan, Plan, Plan
The best way to ensure that your brand is protected in any case and to minimize the risk that it is not, requires you to plan for virtually every single possible scenario that might arise. Lots of issues can come up (in a very public way) on social media.
Early on in the planning stages of a program or campaign, there should be an evaluation of every piece of content (or style of content) you plan on sharing in order to see if there is any way it might be misinterpreted or backfire. Create scenarios and figure out how those scenarios would be addressed. Remember, deleting a post or a tweet because it resonated poorly is not an option. The moment it is shared, it is seen and captured forever. Plan for exactly that reality.
Strategize
It sounds an awful lot like a plan, but your planning is a minor part of the overall strategy. If you plan on transitioning into a social business, your strategy will be the cornerstone of operational success. You are essentially trying to shift your company’s culture, and that is not a simple task; particularly when there is no guideline telling you what to do.
Your strategy should encompass everything from a content calendar to the aforementioned planning for various scenarios on social networks (good or bad). The strategy will prove to be a useful guideline (and risk minimizing) resource as you make this transition.
Start Counting
Since social has become a part of business, the question everyone seems to as is whether or not “social media” can be measured. Social media is a communications tool; you don’t need to measure it. What you need to do is measure your progress and see how your use of social media is making an impact.
Providing clearly laid out key performance indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks (either internal or competitive) is a great way to showcase the values to a risk averse brand or board. Explaining exactly what is being measured, how you plan on measuring it and what metrics will be used as indicators for success or failure will make even the least social savvy individuals more comfortable with using the platform.
Teach
Assuming that people know how to properly use social media for business is somewhat ignorant. Yes, there are roughly two billion people with active social profiles. But that still leaves about five billion without any. And while there might be over a billion users on Facebook, there are only about 30 million businesses and a fraction of advertisers on the network. Teach your teams how to use these networks.
Provide training, introduce concepts slowly and send out refreshers so that people can truly familiarize themselves with using these networks from a business standpoint. Again, when trying to change a culture, it is best to start incrementally and work your way out.
Play It Safe
If you are worried that providing customer service on Twitter will open your brand up to negative backlask, there is a simple way to ensure that this does happen: don’t provide customer service on Twitter.
Just because there are a thousand different places where your brand can be “social” doesn’t mean that it has to be. If you are uncomfortable with a particular feature on a social network, or perhaps you don’t trust the security measurements that have been taken in order to protect private conversations, you simply do not have to use them. Do not feel as though you need to have a presence on every network. It is better to have an excellent presence on two or three networks, than a mediocre presence on a dozen.
Conclusion
These are just a few ways in which more risk averse brands can begin adopting and integrating social media. It can be an intimidating playing field at first, but the incremental involvement and the education process can help even the most reserved brands make an impact.
Would you consider your brand to be risk averse? What have you done in order to conquer social in that case? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
6 Social Media Best Practices You Probably Aren’t Doing (And Should)
/by Corey PadveenWith the constantly changing social media landscape, it’s hard to keep up with trends.
There are a lot of hugely beneficial and fairly simple social media best practices in which brands and individuals should be participating, but most people simply don’t know about them. Social moves at such a high speed, that it can be difficult – and for some, even tedious – to keep up. So, with that in mind, these are a few of the more valuable things that most people should know about when it comes to social.
Leveraging Employee Advocacy
For brands, something that often goes overlooked is the fact that your first set of brand advocates is much closer than you might think. Within any company, there exists an entire workforce of prospective brand advocates. It’s important to take advantage of the opportunity that comes from leveraging this audience.
While a best practice would not be requiring that your employees share your content (in fact, this would like backfire in an extraordinary fashion) it is certainly wise to consider adopting an internal culture whereby employees are invited to share content, create content and involve themselves with the brand on social media. It might surprise you to see how much faster your audience can grow when capitalizing on this opportunity.
Taking Advantage of LinkedIn
For most people, LinkedIn is seen as nothing more than a large network in which to share your virtual resume. The truth of the matter is that LinkedIn offer a tremendous amount of opportunity if you are using all of its features.
First of all, LinkedIn’s rich media feature (shown in the image below) allows users to integrate much more than a simple resume. You can link videos, upload images and a little further down, showcase some of your publications. It is really a one stop shop for every bit of professional exposure you have received.
Screenshot taken 5/2/2014
It’s also important to take advantage of Groups on LinkedIn. Whether you are an individual or a business owner looking to increase your personal or brand exposure, LinkedIn Groups can do wonderful things. Take note of the groups that are meant for discussion, and those that are meant for articles, and build a content strategy on LinkedIn that you see resonating with your audience.
Use Google+…A Lot
It’s still surprising that so many people ignore Google+. On the personal side, Google Authorship is an outstanding way to increase your content’s exposure. For the brand side, sharing content to your Google+ Circles and Google+ Communities that generates clicks and +1s is a more powerful practice than virtually any other when it comes to SEO. And that’s SEO in total, not just SEO with regards to social signals.
Source: Searchmetrics. 2013 US Search Ranking Factors.
Write About Your Competitors (in a Good Way)
If you go to Google and type in “Best Social Media Listening Tools” one of the first items that pop up is an article from monitoring tool Brandwatch. The thing is that this isn’t a page on the Brandwatch site that talks about how it is the best tool in the marketplace. It is actually a blog post wherein they list ten competitors that offer free social media listening capabilities and do it quite well.
Often, business owners are afraid of touting competitors. After all, why would you recommend a competitors products when you are trying to reap the business for yourself. But people respond to useful information, not self promotion. If you’re an ad agency, you have a far better chance of having an article seen that showcases the ten best commercials of the year rather than a simple case study that features your own work.
A mix of the two is an important component of any strong content strategy and content marketing campaign.
Use a Suite of Technologies to Help You Execute a Strategy
There is no such thing as the perfect tool. People are looking for it, some applications claim that they have created it, but the reality is that to really execute a strategy effectively, you’re going to need a suite of technologies to help you.
Evaluate different tools that offer different services and see which ones will a) provide you with the greatest value and b) work well in conjunction with one another. It’s better to have several tools doing each task exceptionally well than one tool that is mediocre at everything.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the social media best practices you might not have known about. Considering the fast nature of the evolution of social media, no one can be expected to know everything. But as you try to build out your brand – whether it is your personal or professional brand – these are a few of the items you might have overlooked.
Can you think of other social media best practices that are not all that well known? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!