YouTube marketing is one of the best resources we have as marketers, but how can we measure if our efforts are paying off?
YouTube is a search engine, and like any search engine, a marketer’s goal is to rank highly for specified keywords and drive traffic and business from our YouTube marketing efforts. But, like any social media program, we need to be able to measure our campaigns and the success of our YouTube marketing efforts. Behind the channel there is an entire set of statistics and measurable data that we can use to see exactly where our YouTube marketing efforts are paying off, and where we need to improve them.
Below is a set of tips that you can use when it comes to YouTube marketing to measure exactly how effective your strategies are. You might be surprised to find just how much information you can pull directly from the backend of your YouTube channel.
Look Into Your Analytics
First of all, where can we find all of this stored information about our videos? In the top search bar of a YouTube account, there is a small dropdown menu where you can select your analytics.
It is in this analytics section where you can begin evaluating the success of your YouTube marketing. The YouTube analytics dashboard allows users to both measure basic information, such as viewer demographics and traffic sources, as well as engagement statistics, which allow you to measure how your videos are performing with your audience. These data are very helpful when it comes to modifying your 
YouTube marketing campaigns, as they indicate where your work needs improvement and where you are finding the most success with your video marketing. Paying attention to these figures will help you optimize your YouTube marketing to ensure that you are not losing anything (from time to audience engagement) with each of your videos.
Your Most Important Data
There is plenty of information to look through in the backend of your YouTube channel. It can become almost overwhelming. What is important? What should you focus on? These are not the easiest questions to answer when you have so much to sift through.
Perhaps the two most important areas of focus in your Reports section are your Traffic Sources and your Audience Retention. (In the menu on the right.) Let’s have a look at those a little more closely.
Your Traffic Sources are going to be one of the most important elements to look at when evaluating your YouTube marketing efforts. These tell you exactly where your viewers are coming from. This will help you structure future campaigns outside of YouTube to drive the most traffic from your most popular sources. Are your email campaigns driving the most viewers to your videos? Maybe it is your social media efforts on other networks, like Facebook or Twitter, that are bringing in the most views. This is where you can find out.
Knowing where your traffic is coming from will allow you to cut out the time you spend marketing on networks that are not driving any traffic to your YouTube channel and focus entirely on areas where you are seeing success. This increases the efficiency of your YouTube marketing and helps maximize your return on investment (time, in this case).
Audience Retention is another crucial focal point of these statistics. Say, for example, you put together a video campaign with a call to action at the end of a video. Then you put together another one with a call to action at the beginning. Which one is driving conversions? You can see this with your Audience Retention tool. Note in the image below that there is a drop off at a certain point in your videos. People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to YouTube, and the longer your video, the less likely it is that people will stay to the very end. We have found that the optimal length of a YouTube video is somewhere in the ballpark of two minutes. After that, audiences tend to move on to something else. So, when it comes to YouTube, a video search engine with billions of options to choose from, the shorter the better. And all of this is available in the Audience Retention report of your YouTube analytics dashboard.
How Are You Engaging?
Engagement is a cornerstone of any successful social media marketing campaign. And contrary to what a conventional understanding of the term ‘engagement’ might suggest, engagement on social media is more about your brand and your audience. It is not solely about how you are engaging with your audience, but also about how your audience is engaging with you. The engagement reports in YouTube focus on your audience’s engagement with your brand on YouTube.
This section is wonderful for tailoring your YouTube marketing to the preferences of your audience. You can find out what videos people like best, where they are commenting most and when your engagement is taking place. Again, this is an area that will help you maximize the efficiency of a campaign and your return on investment.
These are just a few of the great analytics tools available in the backend of YouTube. Of course, like anything, the best way to learn is by doing. So have a look at the analytics dashboard of your YouTube channel and find out where your efforts are paying off. Then tell us how you use the YouTube analytics dashboard in the comments below or on Twitter!
Facebook Marketing: Increase Your Shares [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenFacebook marketing is all about exposing your brand on social media, so how can you increase your number of shares?
We all know that great content is what drives a successful Facebook marketing campaign. People want to engage with brands that are active on social media and posting content that intrigues and excites their fans. But, while we might know that the backbone of great Facebook marketing is great content, it might not be so easy to get your share count up. Luckily, there are a few tips and tricks in this infographic that will help you get the most out of your Facebook marketing efforts to increase your shares and showcase your brand on Facebook.
There is a lot to remember when putting together your Facebook marketing campaign, but if you adhere to the suggestions in the infographic below, you can expect to see those numbers jump pretty quickly.
How are you increasing your shares when it comes to Facebook marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
YouTube Marketing Optimization
/by Corey PadveenYouTube marketing is one of the best resources we have as marketers, but how can we measure if our efforts are paying off?
YouTube is a search engine, and like any search engine, a marketer’s goal is to rank highly for specified keywords and drive traffic and business from our YouTube marketing efforts. But, like any social media program, we need to be able to measure our campaigns and the success of our YouTube marketing efforts. Behind the channel there is an entire set of statistics and measurable data that we can use to see exactly where our YouTube marketing efforts are paying off, and where we need to improve them.
Below is a set of tips that you can use when it comes to YouTube marketing to measure exactly how effective your strategies are. You might be surprised to find just how much information you can pull directly from the backend of your YouTube channel.
Look Into Your Analytics
First of all, where can we find all of this stored information about our videos? In the top search bar of a YouTube account, there is a small dropdown menu where you can select your analytics.
It is in this analytics section where you can begin evaluating the success of your YouTube marketing. The YouTube analytics dashboard allows users to both measure basic information, such as viewer demographics and traffic sources, as well as engagement statistics, which allow you to measure how your videos are performing with your audience. These data are very helpful when it comes to modifying your
YouTube marketing campaigns, as they indicate where your work needs improvement and where you are finding the most success with your video marketing. Paying attention to these figures will help you optimize your YouTube marketing to ensure that you are not losing anything (from time to audience engagement) with each of your videos.
Your Most Important Data
There is plenty of information to look through in the backend of your YouTube channel. It can become almost overwhelming. What is important? What should you focus on? These are not the easiest questions to answer when you have so much to sift through.
Perhaps the two most important areas of focus in your Reports section are your Traffic Sources and your Audience Retention. (In the menu on the right.) Let’s have a look at those a little more closely.
Your Traffic Sources are going to be one of the most important elements to look at when evaluating your YouTube marketing efforts. These tell you exactly where your viewers are coming from. This will help you structure future campaigns outside of YouTube to drive the most traffic from your most popular sources. Are your email campaigns driving the most viewers to your videos? Maybe it is your social media efforts on other networks, like Facebook or Twitter, that are bringing in the most views. This is where you can find out.
Knowing where your traffic is coming from will allow you to cut out the time you spend marketing on networks that are not driving any traffic to your YouTube channel and focus entirely on areas where you are seeing success. This increases the efficiency of your YouTube marketing and helps maximize your return on investment (time, in this case).
Audience Retention is another crucial focal point of these statistics. Say, for example, you put together a video campaign with a call to action at the end of a video. Then you put together another one with a call to action at the beginning. Which one is driving conversions? You can see this with your Audience Retention tool. Note in the image below that there is a drop off at a certain point in your videos. People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to YouTube, and the longer your video, the less likely it is that people will stay to the very end. We have found that the optimal length of a YouTube video is somewhere in the ballpark of two minutes. After that, audiences tend to move on to something else. So, when it comes to YouTube, a video search engine with billions of options to choose from, the shorter the better. And all of this is available in the Audience Retention report of your YouTube analytics dashboard.
How Are You Engaging?
Engagement is a cornerstone of any successful social media marketing campaign. And contrary to what a conventional understanding of the term ‘engagement’ might suggest, engagement on social media is more about your brand and your audience. It is not solely about how you are engaging with your audience, but also about how your audience is engaging with you. The engagement reports in YouTube focus on your audience’s engagement with your brand on YouTube.
This section is wonderful for tailoring your YouTube marketing to the preferences of your audience. You can find out what videos people like best, where they are commenting most and when your engagement is taking place. Again, this is an area that will help you maximize the efficiency of a campaign and your return on investment.
These are just a few of the great analytics tools available in the backend of YouTube. Of course, like anything, the best way to learn is by doing. So have a look at the analytics dashboard of your YouTube channel and find out where your efforts are paying off. Then tell us how you use the YouTube analytics dashboard in the comments below or on Twitter!
Google+ Marketing Explained [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenGoogle+ marketing can be an excellent tool, but you need to understand the social network in order to execute an effective strategy.
There is a ton to know about Google+ in order to effectively execute a Google+ marketing strategy. That explains the length and detail of this excellent infographic. Considering Google+ has the backing of search giant Google, it is no wonder there is so much intricacy involved in understanding the social network.
In the last couple of years, Google+ has exploded with regards to membership. Now whether or not these numbers are inflated due to the fact that Google+ automatically signs Gmail users up is not the point. The fact of the matter is, there are hundreds of millions of members on the network, and whether or not you plan on engaging with them, having a Google+ marketing strategy in place will help you with your search rankings.
Have a look below and learn exactly why Google+ marketing is important to both your social marketing strategies as well as your SEO efforts.
How are you using Google+ marketing in your social media strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media, Will You Be My Valentine? [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenSocial media is going to be a big part of Valentine’s Day. How is the holiday manifesting itself on social networks?
Valentine’s Day features two things: love and bitterness. And we can be sure to see plenty of that on social media networks today. In fact, we have already been seeing quite a bit of it. Radian6 and NM Incite have both conducted studies that show a few interesting trends on social media leading up to Valentine’s Day. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the bitterness of men outweighs that of women 23% to 11%. As one might expect, however, women have a greater share of voice on social media when it comes to Valentine’s Day, outweighing men 66% to 34%. Below are a couple of figures from the NM Incite report.
The infographic below details exactly what Radian6 found about the holiday and its relevance in the world of social media. Quite a bit of chatter for marketers to join in on.
How do you plan on engaging with your audience on Valentine’s Day? Do you have any social media specials or promotions you have put together for the day? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Best Mobile Tools for Social Media Marketing
/by Corey PadveenWhen you’re on the go, what are the best mobile tools you can use to manage your social media marketing?
Social media marketing is no 9-5 gig; far from it. When we’re on the go, we need to have access to our dashboards and accounts, because social media is all about real-time engagement. If we miss an opportunity to engage, we might be missing an opportunity to acquire and possibly convert a new customer.
With that in mind, what are some of the best tools we can use when it comes to mobile social media marketing? The app store is filled with some great (and almost all free) business apps that can help us efficiently run our social media programs when we’re out of the office. Have a look below for a list of some of the social media marketing apps we think are the best.
Facebook Pages
The Facebook Pages app is an excellent tool for monitoring your company or fan pages on the go. The app allows for nearly all the same insights and features as your admin when using your Facebook pages on a desktop. You can view insights, receive notifications, and even monitor the success of campaigns as they are executed. This is a particularly great tool for marketers managing client pages. This allows you to be away from the computer and still engaging with your clients’ customers and fans in real time.
HootSuite Mobile
HootSuite is a favorite among marketers when it comes to social media marketing management. It is an easy-to-use, efficient dashboard that incorporates the majority of the most popular social networks.
Considering the vast number of users, it is no wonder that they have developed an excellent mobile app. The HootSuite mobile app allows users to manage a number of profiles from their phone. Granted, there are not as many options available on the mobile version as there are on the desktop dashboard (it is effectively just Facebook and Twitter at the moment) but it does give you some of the same capabilities as the desktop version.
iDashboard
Google Analytics is a vital tool. And while we may not necessarily need to constantly access it in real time on-the-go, it is still nice to have the option. And the option of using iDashboard is a nice one. The Google Analytics app (paid version) has a ton of great features. Not only can you access all of your Analytics accounts, you can also look into specific data regarding traffic, referral data, social monitoring, and much more! So when you need a quick bit of information when you’re on the road, the iDashboard has it for you.
Foursquare for Business
These are just a few of the great apps available for running your social media marketing on the fly. There is no shortage of other apps, including stand alone apps for Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more. What are some of your favorite social media marketing apps? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Mobile Marketing Tips: Capture Your Mobile Audience
/by Corey PadveenMobile marketing is quickly becoming one of the biggest trends when it comes to engaging with your audience.
Numbers don’t lie. In the past year, we have seen the use of mobile devices when accessing the web and social media rise sharply. According to a recent report, consumers increased their use of social apps on mobile devices by 76% in 2012 compared to 2011. For some users, most of the time they spend on social networking sites now takes place on a mobile device. And the number of users of the mobile web nearly doubled in 2012 compared to the previous year. Taking these figures into account, it would be foolish for any marketer to ignore the power of mobile marketing.
With that in mind, we thought we would share a few helpful tips when it comes to optimizing your mobile marketing strategy. Have a look below to find out what you can be doing (and in some cases, for much less than what you might expect).
1. Mobile Site
Whether you are an e-commerce store or a restaurant, having a mobile website is going to be a crucial part of your mobile marketing. Simply having access to your website on the go can help users engage with your brand wherever they are and whenever they need to. Furthermore, this is not as complicated as it might seem. Today, there exists a number of services that help transform your site into a mobile-friendly one without much configuration. Nearly anyone can do it! Tools like Mobify or MobilePress (for WordPress sites) can help you transform your website. Furthermore, there exist numerous options in some of the more popular CMS platforms that automatically render your site for mobile devices. So when building your site, keep your mobile marketing strategy in mind, and be sure you are constructing a mobile-friendly one.
2. QR Codes
QR (Quick Response) Codes are a great way to engage with potential customers visually, and drive them to your mobile site or mobile landing page with an offer. Essentially, a QR Code is a pseudo call to action that leads people to find out more by scanning it. What a QR Code does is it sends data to your device and loads that information immediately on screen. This is growing in popularity in the real estate
world, and is catching on elsewhere as well. The benefits of a QR Code lie in its mystery. People want to know more about enticing offers, and a QR Code allows them to do that right away. Furthermore, they are not all that expensive to incorporate into your mobile marketing strategy! There are even free services like Quikqr that you can use.
3. Geo-Targeted Mobile Marketing
This is where mobile marketing really pays off. Geo-targeting and location-based marketing are the real bread and butter of a mobile marketing strategy. These strategies give you the ability to directly target potential clients in your area and offer specials or promotions to users who visit your store, restaurant or location. Optimizing your social networks like Foursquare and creating deals therein are where you stand to reap the highest benefits.
A tool used by a popular shoe store in Europe to attract nearby patrons begins a countdown when a potential customer enters a competitor’s store. The countdown starts at 100 and works down to 0. Users who see this countdown must make it out of the competitor’s store and into the other shoe store as quickly as possible. As soon as they enter, the timer stops and the number on which it lands is the discount the customer can receive. This strategy is literally dragging clients out of a competitor’s store and having them run to yours!
4. Mobile Applications
This is where you can get very fancy – but for a price. Customized mobile apps might be the most expensive form of mobile marketing, but they certainly have the highest payoff. As we noted above, mobile app use
has skyrocketed in the last year, and those numbers show no sign of slowing. Users like the idea of a customized mobile application that they can use to interact with your brand. Whether it is an app for an airline to book your seats, or an app like the TV series (The Walking Dead has created where users can “zombify” themselves) people like to have fun with their mobile devices. So, if you have the budget, consider spicing up your mobile marketing strategy with an app tailored to your brand.
What are your mobile marketing strategies? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media at the Super Bowl [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenSocial media was the big winner at the Super Bowl, and these numbers show exactly why.
We all know that social media made a splash this year at the Super Bowl. As we noted in a recent post, roughly half of all Super Bowl ads this year featured some form of social media integration, mostly in the form of a hashtag. That was up from just a few last year, and only one two years ago. Clearly, the trend of social media for business is picking up steam in the marketing and advertising world.
Well, a week after the big game, Marketing Profs has put together some great infographics detailing exactly how social media was used during the Super Bowl, the impact social had on the game, and the impact the game had on the world of social media.
Have a look at these infographics below and tell us what you think; where does social media in the world of business head from here? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Facebook Marketing: The Impact of Graph Search [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenFacebook marketing is seeing some major changes with the introduction of the Graph Search feature.
Not long ago, Facebook announced that it would soon be introducing the Graph Search functionality to the social network. This meant quite a few changes to the world of Facebook marketing, and we noted a few of those changes in a recent blog post about Facebook’s Graph Search. But while we all might understand that the advent of Graph Search will mean a changed landscape with regards to Facebook marketing, we might not necessarily understand why.
This wonderful infographic that we pulled from our Pinterest page does a great job of breaking down and really detailing exactly how Facebook marketing (and digital marketing, in general) stands to change as a result of Graph Search. So, while we all know that there will be a change, now we can understand exactly how and why. With that, we will be able to better execute Facebook marketing strategies, taking into account Graph Search and all that it brings to the table with regards to our marketing efforts.
Have you had a chance to use Graph Search yet? How do you feel this feature will impact your Facebook marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media Marketing: Finding Great Content
/by Corey PadveenSocial media marketing can only be successful if you have great content.
Marketers are always looking for tips and tricks to boost their social media marketing efforts. Well, while there are many steps one can take to enhance one’s social media marketing, the only true key to success is finding content that followers and fans not only want to see, but want to share. Content is king when it comes to a successful social media marketing campaign, and today we have a few great tips to help you find that content and boost the loyalty of your fan base.
Have a look below for four great tips when it comes to seeking out great content to showcase in your social networks.
1. Keep an Eye Out for Big News
Millions of people download apps and monitor news sites every day to keep up to date with the goings on of the world. With such a vast audience already tuned in, you can always be sure to increase your audience engagement when sharing news content. But be careful: sharing top stories is all well and good, but you should be sure that these stories are relevant to your niche. If, for example, you run a marketing agency that specializes in mobile apps, you shouldn’t be posting news about farming subsidies increasing with new laws passed in Congress. While this may be intriguing content for some, it is not an issue that that audience will be looking at you to find. And furthermore, it is not something your target audience will necessarily want to hear about. So take advantage of sites like Mashable, AllTop and major new sources to feed relevant content to your networks and boost your fans’ loyalty to your brand.
2. What’s Hot on Social Media
It never hurts to follow pages and brands that share relevant content. In a study done by Dan Zarrella at HubSpot, he notes that while 22 is the observed maximum number of tweets per day that a brand should be sharing, if your content is relevant, there is no maximum. So when it comes to social media marketing, you should be paying attention to the most popular content of the day. Whether it is top news on your LinkedIn page to share to groups, trending content on Twitter, or highly shared articles or posts on Facebook, popular content exists for a reason: people want to read it. So find what’s hot and share it with your followers.
3. Find Your Top Sources
You should always have a set of blogs, websites or social media sources that you check regularly for great content. This takes quite a bit of time and research. The initial step will be a widespread search with your keywords, followed by some filtering to find only the best sources of content you have seen on the web. Of course, promoting your own content is always the goal, but social media marketing is also about sharing great content. So do the research and find some sources for content, then get sharing. AllTop, noted above, does exactly that. Like many news aggregators, AllTop pools together all of the top news from the day from a variety of sources and shares it in one space. Aggregators are a great place to find relevant content, so find the best ones for your niche and check them daily.
4. Create Content
Of course, the best thing we can do as marketers when it comes to social media marketing is share our own content with our networks. This is much easier said than done. Sourcing content and sharing it is far simpler than taking the time to develop our own blog posts or images, and posting them to our networks. But the payoff is much greater in the end. If we can develop original content (and don’t forget, this content can be derived from other sources we have read) then we stand to reap much higher benefits when that content is shared to our social networks. Again, the two things to keep in mind when drafting content is interest and relevance. In order for our content to be shared with our audience, we are going to want that content to both appeal to the interests of our audience and be relevant to our social communities.
Where do you find the best content? What social media marketing strategies have you implemented when it comes to sourcing content? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Pinterest Marketing: How Are Users Interacting? [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenPinterest marketing is growing increasingly important, but how are users on the visual social network engaging?
There is no shortage of literature out there telling marketers how important Pinterest marketing is for business. At this point, we all know that Pinterest marketing is going to be a vital part to any successful campaign. While this might be well understood, we might not all understand exactly why. When it comes to any aspect of our social media strategies, we should be able to justify why we are implementing a certain element. This is the case regardless of whether or not we are working with the “next big thing” (in this case, Pinterest marketing).
In the infographic from ViralBlog below, we can see exactly how people are engaging on Pinterest. So from now on, when we are told that Pinterest marketing is a must when it comes to our social media strategies, we will understand why, and we will be able to justify our use of Pinterest with some of this impressive data.
How do you incorporate Pinterest into your social media marketing strategies (if at all)? Where have you found the visual social network to be most beneficial (if you use it)? If you are not using it, why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!