Mediaboss Marketing

Social media has changed a lot over the last five years and truth be told, thats the understatement of the century.

New platforms have come into the mix. Veteran platforms continue to evolve their algorithms, rules and layouts. There are constantly new things to learn about how to use social media to get the highest coveted asset of all in this space attention.

One thing that never seems to change about social media marketing is the need for something eye-catching. Marketers have argued over whether one-liners beat several paragraphs. Weve talked about the importance of hashtags.

But what also doesnt change, despite the constant ebb and flow of social updates, is the need for the content to compel a fan or follower to stop, look and react.

Social media is a noisy place. Your content is shoved between moving objects (videos) and GIFs (the hottest trend in commenting these days). To capture the attention of the person whos often mindlessly scrolling through the newsfeed, you need something just as catchy.

Does that mean your job is to pump out content thats just as loud? Far from it.

To get someone to stop and engage with your business on social media, you need to create compelling content that promises something in exchange for the persons time. Once YOU know the key takeaway (I cant decide that for you), then you can get to work creating images, videos and more that beg to be engaged with.

And when youre ready to do that, I have 10 tools that you can use to put your message together in a beautiful-looking post thatll stop a scroller in his or her tracks. Lets take a peek.

Im kick-starting this list with a tool thats relatively well-known but often not maximized to its full potential.

Canva is the go-to tool for non-designers because its so easy to use. Yes, you can create some fun social media graphics using its templates, but theres more to it. You can also design advertisements, infographics, brochures and more. Those pieces can be shared on Facebook and Twitter, which means you can get more out of every type of marketing collateral you design even whats meant for offline.

LinkedIn owns SlideShare, so its a natural platform to include on this list because it automatically syncs with one of the largest social media networks used today.

On SlideShare, you can upload your presentations, so they dont gather digital dust sitting on your computer after youve given them. Sharing them with your audience is easy. Simply press a button, and you can distribute them to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

You can also embed your SlideShare presentation on your website using IFrame or WordPress shortcodes (depending on what you use to house your website).

Take your presentation uploads a step further and add your voice overlay to them with SlideSnack.

With this presentation-sharing tool, you can upload past presentations, put your voice to them, and then share them on Facebook or YouTube. You can also embed them on most websites, including those that use WordPress, Blogger, Weebly and more.

Video is the holy grail of social media marketing because it incorporates both visual movement and audio interest. If you have a stellar idea for a video, turn your concept into a reality with PowToon.

You dont have to be a video master to use PowToon. This platform offers several templates to choose from that you can customize and brand according to your business. Then, all you do is plug and play your content and share.

With your video in place, you can use it to promote your business on YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and just about any social network.

Magisto is another video editor that makes it easy to put together professional-looking and -sounding videos, regardless of your skill level. Once you have your videos uploaded and a theme selected, you can drag and drop scenes and add your logo, captions, music and narration.

The free version is limited but still quite robust. With the commercial version, you get several more features, including the ability to custom-brand your video and use commercially licensed music.

Whats an easy way to get engagement? Ask a question. But sometimes, just asking a single question isnt enough to get a healthy response from your audience. Thats where Typeform comes into play.

Typeform is an easy-to-use quiz builder that lets you ask your audience questions. Use the drag-and-drop builder to put together a variety of styles of questions, including multiple choice, image-based, yes or no answers, short or long text answers and more.

Once you have your quiz created, share the link on any social network to encourage participation in a unique way.You can also embed Typeforms on your website.

Perhaps you want to have a little fun with your audience. Interactive quizzes with results you can instantly share are hotcakes on social media these days. Your company can create one, too, using Playbuzz.

Playbuzz lets you put together a series of tests or questions for your audience. Once the respondent is done answering them, theyll either get their end result (10 out of 10 correct!) or find out a fun fact about themselves (for example, which character youre most like on a TV show).

Its a simple way to engage your followers and make your brand fun. These are also great types of content because they encourage your followers friends to engage with your brand, too.

Piktochart lets you take survey results, stats and other tidbits of knowledge and turn them into an eye-catching (and scroll-stopping) infographic.

This type of social media content often scares many non-designers because it feels so rich, and thus hard to create. Piktochart simplifies the process by offering you over 600 templates to choose from.

With your template in place, you can add your own text, fonts, colors and logo. When its done, you can share it quickly with built-in social media options. Its fast and easy.

Visme is another tool that lets you put information together in a beautiful way. This platform offers several options for how that information is displayed, including in presentations, infographics, reports, wireframes and more.

Once created, you can share your content on your website, from a URL or on social media.

Podcasting is a huge trend these days, but if youre new to the world of audio content, production can be a roadblock. Podbean changes that by giving you an easy way to create professional podcasts in minutes without high-tech software or equipment.

Once created, you can publish your podcasts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. Or you can upload and promote your podcasts with a Podbean paid plan.

At one point, a lack of technological knowledge was a good excuse for not offering stellar social media content. These tools change that.

Once you have your content format in mind images, videos, quizzes, infographics or audio choose the tool that best matches your goals and get to work.

What other tools have you used to create compelling social media content your audience cant wait to consume?

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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10 tools for creating compelling content for social media - Marketing Land

Getting the message: universities realise their audience is best reached via social media. Photograph: filadendron/Getty Images

Clearing day used to be about spending hours on the phone often on hold or in a queue. And although clearing hotlines are still a big part of the process, universities are realising that if they are going to reach the text-happy generation, it makes sense to open up social media, live chat and text to start the application process and even make offers.

Speaking on the phone is not something many students do in their everyday lives, says Charlotte Renwick, associate director of customer marketing at Leeds Beckett University. We want to make it as easy as possible for students to talk to us comfortably. Of course we will still have lots of people on the phone lines, but we will also have provision for people to text in, use live chat and message through Facebook and Twitter and the teams on all those channels are trained to make offers.

Joe Field, social media manager at Sheffield Hallam university, says last year was a bit of a lightbulb moment: We used Facebook Messenger to initiate the application process, giving applicants an alternative route. This year well offer Facebook Messenger and Twitter DMs as ways people can enquire about course availability, and for us to get basic information about applicants suitability. Well also field questions on Snapchat, but wont use it for applications.

In Birmingham, both Newman University and Birmingham City University will be making offers through Facebook and Twitter messages.

Renwick believes social media also enables people to ask questions they might be otherwise reluctant to ask: Last year we had questions like: Can I bring my guinea pig?

Facebook Live broadcasts will also be featured throughout the day at several universities; Leeds Beckett plans to use the story features on Snapchat and Instagram to keep people updated about how the day is progressing.

Newcastle University, meanwhile, will keep prospective students updated via WhatsApp. Students sign up for personalised information on the clearing process, course places and help and advice around results day and this year were extending that to WhatsApp, so they get alerts straight to their phones, says Matt Horne, digital marketing and social media officer at Newcastle University.

Were using Snapchat influencers to encourage our target audience to sign up for alerts, he adds. Students will also be able to contact us through WhatsApp to ask any questions they might have about clearing, results day and coming here.

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Switching on to social media matters on clearing day - The Guardian

When Pratiksha Tewari, a young child psychologist in Delhi, wanted to wear something different for her friends wedding, she checked out Instagram and settled on a beaded necklace embellished with silver bells of NakhreWaali, an online designer jewellery store.

It worked for me because of the novelty pitch, said Tewari, adding that she cannot find such things at regular online portals. A lot of this stuff is sold on Instagram and small sellers often make customised stuff, which is good for people who like personalised things, she said.

NakhreWaali is one of the numerous budding online businesses running largely on the foundation of social media marketing in the country.

Startups such as NakhreWaali, Vajor.com and Prerto bet on unique, handcrafted fashion products that they showcase on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, creating a niche market away from big ecommerce marketplaces.

Fashion consumers in India want pieces that are unique, with a story, said Antalya Varma, fashion analyst from The Institute of Apparel Management (IAM), Gurgaon.

She expects such niche brands to steadily create a market for themselves, riding on the exclusivity factor. These brands provide a healthy balance in the market for fashion enthusiasts and consumers, Varma said. Most these startups were founded on shoestring budgets and are run without external funding.

NakhreWaali, for example, was started on a budget of just Rs 1.5 lakh. We started off with our own funds, said Gursakhi Lugani, its 24-year-old founder. Whatever savings I had from my corporate job and some that I had earned from my work as a creative head for an online fashion magazine was put into this business, she said.

Lugani never had any formal education in fashion. A friend of mine and I happened to attend fashion week, and we decided to customise our earrings for the event. The compliments we received made me think about turning this into a business. We took the plunge and NakhreWaali happened, she said.

Founded early last year, NakhreWaali is already one of the most popular shops of its kind, having earned Rs 25 lakh in the last six months. Bollywood actors Parineeti Chopra and Swetha Tripathi, comedian Mallika Dua, and TV personality Miss Malini are among its clientele.

Lugani attributes her success to social media. Weve never sold anywhere except online, she said. No one would know NakhreWaali if it wasnt for Facebook, Instagram and the likes we receive. These businesses have flourished greatly on the back of smart, eye-popping marketing on social media where people across the world have access to collections, styles, colours, and prices of their products. Sure enough, many brands are now popular in markets outside India too.

A large majority of our customers are from India, the UK, US, and UAE, said Prerna Agarwal, founder of Mumbai-based handcrafted jewellery brand Prerto. We also have stockist in New Zealand, Africa, Canada, Singapore and several other countries across the globe.

Agarwal, who has selectively opened the brand to a few fashion shows and exclusive multi-designer stores, said she has now managed to start another online business two months ago with her earnings from Prerto.

Apurva Lama, director of apparel brand Appycat Street, said she owed her business to social media marketing. Instagram alone drives half of our traffic, she said. Weve had sales from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Weve reached corners of India that we hadnt heard of and have built a steady international customer base with a number of sales in the US, UK, Dubai and Australia, she said.

NakhreWaali has built partnerships with entities in Dubai and Milan to enhance sales in those cities and plan to add more to the list very soon. Consumer connect is a common thread binding these brands.

Brands like Appycat Street and online designer apparel and jewellery store Vajor.com have collaborated with social media influencers like fashion bloggers and models who widen the market further for them. Natasha AR Kumar, founder of Vajor, said the brand placed high value in content development and has worked with lifestyle and fashion bloggers as well as people from different walks of life.

We have a section on our blog called Vajor Muse where we feature intriguing and inspiring women who are travellers, writers, environmentalists, artists who are doing all of this aside from their day to day jobs, she said. Started in 2014 without any external funding, Vajor has been growing at an annual rate of 200%, Kumar said.

Appycat Street have had Instagram stars and lifestyle and fashion bloggers Komal Pandey (College Couture), Nilu Yuleena Thapa (Big Hair Loud Mouth), and Dolly Singh (Spill that Sass) help them reach a wider audience. However, despite their success and popularity, many of these startups are facing some difficulty due to lack of funds.

Himani Singh, founder of online beauty store Ayca, said that being self-funded has made it sacrifice on things like customised packaging, which required huge volumes and cash flow. Singh and her business partner Mallyeka Watsa started Ayca by investing Rs 5 lakh from their savings. The brands turnover in the past six months has been around Rs 20 lakh and it has Bollywood actor Harshvardhan Kapoor among its clients. According to Varma of IAM, these brands understand their customers inside out and provide them with exactly what they require. India is an aggressive market, and with time competition is only going to increase, she said. These brands need to focus on what they bring on additionally to the table other than their basic products, through their brand image, sales and service.

Surbhi Gupta, an MBA student from Pune, said she was an avid online shopper and she had started purchasing products exclusively from smaller, customised websites rather than the big guns like Myntra, Jabong and Koovs. The big websites offer mainstream stuff to their customers things can be found in any mall, she said. There are so many smaller websites to choose from here, and the stuff they sell is pretty affordable since we know where and how most of them are being made.

Continued here:
Smart social media marketing drives millennial businesses - Economic Times

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We are a society tearing through the digital landscape, and theres no hint of us slowing down anytime soon. New stars are born every day in the digital world. Some stay burning bright, while others quickly burnout.

Take for example, the Pokmon Go craze that took the world by storm in 2016. The augmented reality game exploded onto the global app scene early last summer. And while a series of technical and safety-related missteps led to its slowdown, it quickly clued marketers into the possibility of augmented reality.

Related: 5 Content Ideas for Making Money With Facebook Live

On the flipside, mobile app Snapchat has held strong in the social media realm since its release in 2012. This social media starlet has clued marketers into the power of expiring content, so much so that it was offered (and rejected) a $3 billion buy-out from Facebook.

But, what the rise and fall of these digital stars tell us is that new technologies are rapidly evolving, right alongside the wants and needs of consumers. And in order for your business to keep growing in the digital marketplace, youve got to develop a marketing strategy that keeps up with the technology. Here, we take a look at five of the biggest digital marketing trends for 2017 to help you get started.

In todays world of information overload, users are increasingly becoming all about the visuals. People need clear, concise dissemination of information, and visuals do just that. The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percentof the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Ergo, visuals speed up comprehension and retention. Whats more, the right visuals have the ability to enhance emotions and feelings. Enter: the importance of visuals to establish your brands identity in the digital marketplace. Effective logos, infographics, photographs, animationsand website design are all laying new foundations for enhancing brand identity, and they arent likely to disappear anytime soon.

This visual infographic by NatGeo allows users to make sense of Manhattans quickly changing skyline in a matter of seconds.

Related: The Modern Marketing Strategy Every Business Should Start Using Today

The desire for connection and engagement is whats driving the current demand for visual content. But, this same desire for engagement is now leading marketers to discover a new, monumental need for interactive content. Interactive content requires active participation by the user. In effect, these new forms of content -- quizzes and polls, contests, voting, calculators, assessmentsand animated infographics -- are adding a whole new layer of depth to the total user experience. But, more importantly, they are inviting the user in, to be a part of the brand. They are enhancing connectivity and effectively turning one-time visitors into brand loyalists. This growing trend is likely to lead the pack for marketing strategies in 2017.

This BuzzFeed quiz is just one of the many quizzes utilized by the site to increase traffic and enhance user interactivity.

Related: 5 Ways to Get Your ROI With Your Company's Social Media

As of 2015, online videos accounted for 50 percent of all mobile usage, and video content is still very much on the rise. Another form of visual content, videos have the power to connect with consumers and deliver a truckload of information, feelings, thoughts, and responses all within a matter of seconds.

But, in order to heighten the emotions and excitement for users, brands are now "going live." This means that businesses are able to promote their content ahead of time and then interact in real-time with their consumers. This live element is adding a humanistic component to brands, helping to increase feelings of trust and honesty amongst consumers.

Take, for example, womens magazine Grazia UK. Last summer, the magazine was working on launching a major week-long collaborative project, deemed the community issue. Throughout the project, the magazine livestreamed multiple behind-the-scenes events -- including a live debate amongcontributors -- making users feel like they were really a part of the whole process.Users were invited to submit and contribute to the debate, using a specific hashtag on Facebook. The live event was extremely successful, as it brought the magazine and its community of women to life.

Related: 8 Rookie Marketing Mistakes I Made But You Don't Have To

I alluded to the influence of social platform Snapchat earlier on, but lets delve a bit deeper into the effects of expiring content for marketers and consumers. Much like the live video element, expiring content is helping to increase excitement for consumers.With expiring content, users are given a limited window of time to view content before it quickly disappears into oblivion, never to be seen or heard from again. In effect, this creates a massive sense of urgency among consumers. And in a world where interconnectivity takes the cake, the thought of not knowing whats going on is, well, utterly disturbing. Expiring content helps pique user interest, while also working to keep their eyes glued to the screen in anticipation of whats to come.

Related: 4 Ways Small Businesses Can Master Marketing

This whole theme of bringing brands to life runs strong into our final digital marketing trend. Retail brands are now finding ways to interact with their customers, live and in-store -- seamlessly blending physical marketing elements of the past with modern digital elements of the present.

Beacon technology is at the forefront of this new marketing strategy. The installation of more than one million beacons is forecasted for U.S. retailers this year. Basically, beacons are physical landmarks that can send signals to mobile devices. These signals are now allowing shoppers to scan in-store products to read reviews and check to see whats in stock. Likewise, retailers are able to use beacons to send push-notifications to shoppers, allowing them to see what special deals are being offered on items throughout the store. Target is just one of many major retailers now tapping into this technology to drive its digital marketing campaign.

The in-store marketing trend is one of many that are now finding ways to blend the physical world with the digital world, all in an effort to enhance user interactivity. Now the dominant mode of connection in the digital world, user interactivity should now be at the core of your business marketing strategy.

Ultimately, its up to you to utilize technology to establish connections with your consumers. And these five digital marketing trends are a great jumping off point.

Karina Welch is marketing manager at Blue Fountain Media.

Originally posted here:
5 Digital Marketing Trends Your Business Needs to Try - Entrepreneur

"The band will regain control of its social media channels".

Arcade Fire have apologised for the social media campaign accompanying the release of their new album Everything Now, which has seen the band use Twitter to promote dress codes at their shows and post a series of fake news stories.

Last month, the band attracted criticism for creating a dress code for fans attending their Webster Hall show in New York, before they were forced to clarify that attendees were allowed to wear whatever they want.

They have also released a series of fake news stories on their Fact Company site, with one focusing on a fictional writer who goes behind the scenes of their marketing campaign and discovers that the band were considering selling removable jihadi beards.

The campaign has also seen Arcade Fire stage an elaborate hoax on their merchandise page, where they claimed to be selling an $109 fidget spinner that contains a digital download of their new album.

Now, theyve released an equally bizarre statement to apologise for the campaign, claiming that it was the idea of Tannis Wright, a fictional promoter working for the Everything Now Corp, an equally fictional company that the band claim to be controlled by.

In the statement, the band said: In recent weeks, it has come to light that Tannis crossed the line from marketing into outright fiction on more than one occasion, and has even offended some readers, fans, and websites. He wasnt being truthful with the band or our fans at all times.

They have also confirmed that the band will regain control of its own social channels, marketing and publicity. You can read the full statement below.

Meanwhile, Arcade Fire will return to the UK next year for a tour that sees them taking in three dates at The SSE Arena, Wembley.

Read the rest here:
Arcade Fire apologise for controversial 'Everything Now' social media campaign - NME.com