Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Marketing Day: Google AMP, LinkedIn video & Instagram Stories
Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
6 B2B Brands Winning with User Generated Content on Instagram
With more than 500 million monthly active users and a whopping 300 million daily active users, Instagram's popularity and growth presents large and small brands with a huge opportunity to connect with a large, diverse audience. But while most B2C brands have found it relatively easy to build connections and followings on this visual social platform, B2B brands find it more challenging and are coming on more slowly.
For many B2B brands, their products or services don't always have a physical presence that's easily recognized like most B2C brands do. In addition, B2B offerings typically don't scream “fun and exciting” most of the time. But as the old adage goes: where there's a will, there's a way. And one of those ways to help build your B2B brand on Instagram could be user generated content (UGC).
What is User Generated Content?
Generally speaking, user generated content is any content (e.g. blogs, tweets, posts, videos, images, reviews, etc.) created by users on an online platform. As a social media marketing tactic, UGC is quality content that's curated or directly received from users and then shared on your social media pages, with proper credit being given to the original source.
What's So Great About UGC?
Whether you're looking to highlight how your products or services are being used in the real world, showcase your brand's company culture, or highlight customer success stories, UGC can add depth and creativity to your efforts. UGC can also:
- Inspire engagement. People want more opportunities to share their own thoughts and opinions. If they see you engaging with their content and the content of others, you'll likely inspire more participation in the future.
- Help build brand credibility and trust. Sharing content created by your audience adds a level of authenticity to your social accounts, making it more real and more trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. In fact, UGC is trusted 40% more by millennials than information they get from traditional media, according to research from Crowdtap and Ipsos MediaCT.
- Take some pressure off of you to create every single piece of content. UGC is one form of content curation, allowing you to share something cool with your following that didn't take you hours to create yourself.
Whether your brand is just getting started with Instagram or you're looking to take your efforts to the next level, below we dive into some examples of B2B brands using UGC as part of their strategy. And as always, we also have some tips and best practices to inspire and guide you.
6 B2B Brands Incorporating UGC on Instagram
#1 – Buffer
Buffer consistently curates images from its “Buffer Community” to show how other people work, play and live-while also encouraging more engagement from their followers.
Below are a few examples of recent posts featuring images from their community. One thing you'll notice on each post is that Buffer is actively engaging with those who like and comment in the post's feed-thanking people for the love and asking more questions to maximize engagement.
#2 – IBM
One of the big cornerstones of IBM's social media marketing efforts centers on connecting their products and services with events such as the Met Gala or Tribeca Film Festival, and some of that is done using UGC.
IBM reposted this video from tennis star Serena Williams, where she's showing IBM's Watson how to take a proper selfie. To date, the video has more than 7,700 views and a number of comments.
This image was originally posted by an IBM employee to give her following a glimpse of her workday. IBM shared the photo on their account and the photo captured almost 1,600 likes.
#3 – Hootsuite
As a widely-used social media management tool, Hootsuite is all about making it easy for marketers and brands to engage and monitor their social channels. The platform's “#IWorkFromHere” UGC campaign aimed to not only encourage Hootsuite app downloads, but also engage their followers to creatively show off how and where they do their social media work. Below are a few examples of the cool images they were able to get.
Follow Hootsuite on Instagram.
#4 – The UPS Store
The UPS Store, like other shipping and logistics companies, is interesting because it's a B2B and B2C hybrid-serving both businesses and consumers. Their Instagram is nearly completely dedicated to highlighting their wide array of customers they ship for, showcasing their services and their customers' products. They don't boast a huge following yet, but the photos they post are gorgeous and they get pretty good engagement.
Follow The UPS Store on Instagram.
#5 – CBRE
CBRE is a global commercial real estate company with an Instagram account that features gorgeous commercial buildings, skylines and architecture from all over the world-and oftentimes those images are UGC. The key here is that they go beyond ordinary and choose images that are eye catching, interesting or innovative-to show what inspires them to work harder at what they do.
#6 – Adobe
For many of us in the marketing world, Adobe has brought us the design tools that make our lives and jobs so much better. Their Instagram account is all about art and design, featuring an eclectic mix of interesting images with nearly all of them being UGC. Adobe boasts 205,000 followers and typically sees some great engagement on their posts.
At the time of this article, this post had been up for just one day and already had 5,753 likes and 25 comments.
Best Practices & Tips for UGC on Instagram
- Define what you want to say with each post. Images often speak for themselves, but put a little context into the reason you're sharing the image. Consider posing a question to encourage engagement, but make sure you keep up on the thread and respond in a timely fashion. And of course, don't forget to include relevant hashtags so more people can find your content.
- Make it your mission to find the best content possible. UGC is no different from more traditional content. Quality is definitely better than quantity. Peruse your followers' accounts or use the search function to find content for specific hashtags that are relevant to your brand. Look for images that speak to your brand and message that have already seen some engagement on the original account.
- Stay active to maximize engagement. As you saw in the Buffer examples, keeping up on the activity your posts are receiving and taking steps to grow the conversation shows your followers you're there and you care.
- Launch a contest or giveaway. What better way to encourage people to share their images and videos with you than to offer a little incentive? Just make sure your contest rules specifically outline how you will be using the content they share for transparency and legal purposes.
- Look to your employees for content. If your mission is to give your followers a glimpse into your company's culture, some of the best UGC you can find is from those who have their boots on the ground.
- Get permission to share. Getting permission not only covers any copyright issues down the road, but also personally connects you with someone in your audience. They'll appreciate you letting them know and they may even jump in on the feed to engage when you mention them in your post.
- Credit the original source. If you get the green light to share content, make sure to share their handle and give them credit in your post.
- Utilize “Repost for Instagram” tool. Combine No. 7 and 8 with the Repost for Instagram app for iPhone or Android. This allows you to share any content, while also giving credit to the original poster. Read “9 Awesome Tools to Up Your Instagram Marketing Game” for more marketing tools that could help your efforts as a whole.
Does your B2B or B2C brand incorporated UGC into your Instagram strategy? What advice to your have for other brands? Share them in the comments section below.
Follow TopRank Marketing on Instagram for more insights into our digital marketing agency.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2016. |
6 B2B Brands Winning with User Generated Content on Instagram | http://www.toprankblog.com
The post 6 B2B Brands Winning with User Generated Content on Instagram appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
Writing an Email Like a Human “Absolutely Crushed” A Traditional Marketing Send [2 Min Video]
“If you write an email like a human being would write an email, you're going to get a better response.”
So says Nathaniel Ward, Associate Director, Online Membership Programs, The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a non profit conservative think tank focused on conservative policy formation and promotion.
I realize quoting a political organization of any kind is just asking for an incendiary response in today's political environment, but bear with me on this one.
Partisan or not, they have a very sophisticated email marketing department, especially for a non profit. And Ward's approach to email testing and messaging is critical for any organization to study and learn from.
Time Stamps:
0:27 – How the test was set up
1:17 – The results of the test
1:26 – Interpretation of the test results
1:43 – Ward's takeaway for other marketers
You might also like…
Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough
Online Testing: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit increased clickthrough on landing page by 291%
Earn a Graduate Certificate in Communicating Value and Web Conversion
What B2B Marketers Need To Know About Video
In case you hadn't noticed, video has quickly taken over the Internet, and with it dramatically changed the behaviors of modern buyers. And this is a great thing for modern marketers.
Cisco projects that video will comprise 79 percent of all Internet traffic by 2020. Meanwhile, 72 percent of B2B buyers now watch video content throughout their entire path to purchase with nearly half of those viewing 30 minutes or more while researching a company. It makes perfect sense: video is a powerful medium. For viewers, it's enjoyable to watch and easier to consume and retain. For marketers, it's the best way to connect with audiences in a personal and emotional way. That makes it powerful not only for brand awareness and advertising but also for educating, engaging and converting audiences.
As part of our multichannel marketing strategy, we've produced more than 1,000 videos, which now generate roughly 2 million viewing minutes per year. We partner with Vidyard to help us centrally manage our video content, track the viewing activities of each contact within Oracle Eloqua, and analyze the impact of each video.
Today, video is one of our highest opportunity influencers, but it took some work to get here. Here's what we did:
Step #1 – Organizing and categorizing our video collection
We started by categorizing our video assets to get a better handle on what we already had. We split ours by type, including events, webinars, user conferences and a general category to catch everything else. Then we got rid of videos that weren't helping or were no longer being used. We created a formula accounting for the number of recent views, the value and quality of the content, and the age of the video. Videos that didn't get a high enough score were archived so we could focus on the content that really mattered.
Step #2 – Adopting a modern video platform to optimize results
We adopted a video marketing platform that made it easy to manage, publish, track and measure our video content. This was a key step to building a data-driven video marketing strategy. In addition to making it easier for the team to manage our growing library, we now had access to relevant insights on the performance of each video asset and the engagement patterns of our viewers. By integrating this data into Oracle Eloqua, we could generate new insights on which content was resonating with which segments, and which videos were influencing the most pipeline.
Step #3 – Developing a cohesive content strategy for video
We started with a simple approach. We prioritized our top two buyer personas – developers and operators – and created video content aimed at early- and late-stage buyers in each persona category to help with awareness, interest, education and decision-making. Then we continued to build out our library to ensure that we had video content to address key topics at each stage of the buying journey for each main persona. During this process it's critical to build a plan, set some dates, and stay focused on content delivery.
Step #4 – Finding the balance between generating awareness and generating leads
We aimed for 80 percent brand awareness and opportunity progression, and 20 percent new lead generation, which helped us determine which content to gate. We distributed different content via email, social channels, landing pages and our core website and made sure all were viewable on any device and available in multiple languages.
The Results
Focusing on the right content while combining our video platform and marketing automation system has led to smarter marketing and better demand generation results. Now we know who watches our videos, which content is most relevant to particular segments and which videos generate ROI.
And I'm happy to say that MongoDB is not alone in this journey. Our friends at Vidyard just shared how more than 100 Oracle Eloqua users are now using viewer engagement data and video marketing insights to make smarter decisions and achieve great results. Given the latest market data on the importance of video for both buyers and brands, I have no doubt this trend will only continue.
It's All About the Leads
Using video is a great way to generate leads. However when those leads don't convert to sales, you can't afford to abandon those prospects. You need to nurture these leads with information aligned to their stage in the buying process.
And to learn just how to do that and more, download the Lead Nurturing Guide for Modern Marketers.
Making Marketing Analytics as Simple as 1, 2, 3
Even 10-foot-high data charts are useless if you don't do something with the data. Image via Shutterstock.
Every smart marketer on the planet gets just how important data is in marketing.
But answer me these questions, and answer them honestly: Do you know how to analyze your marketing data? Do you know how to use your analyses to improve your results?
During his presentation at Call To Action Conference, co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina, revealed that many data-driven marketers are not getting any value from their analytics. They tend to admire data charts rather than analyze the data and act on it. Unfortunately…
Pretty charts don't actually do anything for you unless you take action.
Crap. Who else thought that looking at a few neat graphs in Google Analytics was enough?
Analyzing data can be as easy as 1, 2, 3
To increase traffic and conversions, marketers need to know how to interpret their own data and turn data insights into action. Andy debunked the myth that you've got to be Einstein to analyze your data. This is jolly good news for those of us who break out in cold sweats at the mere thought of number crunching.
He laid out a fool-proof three-step approach to help marketers analyze their own data and turn their analyses into action. It involves using the ever-trendy (but actually invaluable when you know how to use them) Google Analytics reports: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion.
Let's dig in.
1. Turn ideas into questions
What do you want to find out?
2. Find answers
Look for a report that can help you validate or reject the idea.
3. Take action
Take what you've learned and use it to optimize your marketing results.
By using these simple but effective steps, you can find the answers in Google Analytics to some of your most pressing marketing questions. You're going to learn how to decrease bounce rate, rank higher in Google, boost reader engagement and increase conversions. Trust me, this is game-changing stuff.
Make sure you're logged into Google Analytics and on the Reporting page. Let's do this!
Audience reports
Google Analytics Audience reports don't just tell you who your users are, they also show you how sticky your website is. If you want to find out how well your website is working across various devices and browsers, this report is your new best friend.
Example: How to decrease your bounce rate using Audience reports
Sometimes bouncier can mean better, but this is definitely not the case in marketing. If you have a high bounce rate (whether on your website or blog), then it's likely that your content isn't very relevant or user-friendly.
For smart marketers, the aim of the game should be to get bounce rates as low as humanly possible.
Using Google Analytics Audience reports, Andy shows us how to find out our website's bounce rate across different browsers.
1. Ask a question
“Is your website working well in every browser?”
2. Find the answer
Click on Audience reports > Technology > Browser & OS. This will give you an overview of the bounce rates for users of every browser.
All these numbers look pretty similar. So now what? Let's go one step further by clicking on the Comparison view. This option pitches the site average for bounce rates for each browser against each other to give you a clearer picture of which browsers your website is working on.
Bingo! It seems the poor souls visiting Andy's website from an Android or Opera browser were having a particularly tough time. Which browsers have the highest bounce rate on your website?
3. Take action
Don't stop now that you've identified any problem areas. It's time to take cold, hard, remedial action. Why are the bounce rates for users or certain browsers higher than others? What can you do to find out? Simple. You can start by testing your website pages on these browsers to see why people aren't sticking around on your site. You could check out page loading time, browser responsiveness and usability. And then, if necessary, optimize your pages for these browsers.
Acquisition reports
In other words, where are your website visitors coming from? Are they arriving at your website via Twitter or Facebook, or are they landing on your pages directly from Google? An Acquisition report gives you a detailed view of your traffic sources, so you can work out where you need to ramp up your marketing efforts.
Example: How to rank higher in Google using Acquisition reports
For Andy, people who arrive on your website through search engines are much more likely to convert than those who reach you via social networks. In fact:
Search traffic converts into leads 600% more than social traffic.
Holy cow. So when your goal is to drive conversions, focus on optimizing your website for search engines rather than driving traffic from social media. Andy suggests that you can creep up the search engine ladder by finding out how you currently fare in Google and turning your findings into action.
Sneaky.
1. Ask a question
“What phrases are we ranking for?”
2. Find the answer
If you haven't already, activate Search Console in your Google Analytics settings. Then go to Acquisition > Search Console > Queries. You will not only get a list of all the phrases you rank for (under Query), but also how highly you rank for them in Google (under Average Position).
Andy recommends that to be even more cunning, you should find the phrases you rank for on page 2 of Google.
It's not that hard to move up a tiny bit in your rankings. If a tiny bit means going from page 2 to page 1, trust me you're going to quadruple traffic next week for that page.
Do this by adding an advanced filter. Select Include > Average Position > Greater than and enter the value of 10.
These are Andy's results:
What about yours?
3. Take action
Now it's time for you to search for these phrases in Google, confirm the rankings and see which web pages you're dealing with. It's down to you to improve these pages to push them further up the Google ranks. Andy suggests creating longer pages or adding video as some ways of doing this. If you're short on ideas, here's a rather handy on-page SEO optimization checklist from Amanda Gent, another Orbit Media web marketing buff.
Behavior Reports
These reports give marketers golden insights into the behavior of their website visitors (no prizes for guessing that one right!).
They can show you precisely what your website visitors are searching for, what they're engaging with and what they are actually doing on your web properties. For example, you can find out what your visitors typed into Google before clicking on your website, which posts they spend the most time reading and the path they follow, from landing page to exit page.
This is not just nice-to-have info; it's absolutely vital to any marketer who wants to succeed in these consumer-centric times. Yes, I'm talking to you there!
It's every content marketer's dream to create content that people want to engage with. Andy kindly shows us all how to use the Behavior reports to find out which of our blog posts people love the most.
Example: How to boost reader engagement using Behavior reports
1. Ask a question
“Which of your blog posts are the most engaging?”
2. Find the answer
Go to Behavior > Site Content > All pages.
Search for “/blog” in the filter field to view posts on your blog page only. Then organize the results by the Comparison view.
Select “Avg. time on page” from the drop-down list in the third column. This shows you which blog posts your readers are engaging with most compared to the site average.
Look for similarities between the most engaging posts. Do they talk about the same subject? Are they the same type of post (e.g., a how-to or a guide)? In the example, the posts with the highest engagement all cover Google Analytics. Hey, what a marvellous topic for a blog article!
3. Take action
The actions are pretty obvious. Once you know which posts your readers dig, you need to deliver more of the good stuff. Invest some time in promoting these posts. Create and publish more content on the same or related subjects.
Conversion Reports
If a marketer's ultimate goal isn't to convert, then what is? Conversion reports give you valuable insights into which of your website pages or posts push people to convert. It may not be rocket science. But it certainly is pure 24 carat marketing gold.
Example: How to increase conversions using conversion reports
1. Ask a question
“Which blog posts inspire action?”
2. Find the answer
For this one, you need to have goals set up in your Google Analytics account. If you haven't, there's no time like the present.
Go to Conversions > Goals > Reverse Goal Path. This shows you which pages your converters were looking at before they completed an action, or goal.
Select the goal from the “All goals” drop-down list. In the example, Andy selects “Newsletter subscribers”.
This shows you which pages people were on before subscribing to the newsletter. Now click on “advanced” to add a filter:
And then filter as so:
Voilà! A list of the blog posts your visitors were reading before subscribing to your newsletter.
3. Take action
With this valuable info under your belt, you can now focus your efforts on driving traffic to the posts that convert the most visitors. Andy recommends promoting these posts using social media, email or even showcasing them on your website's home page. You could also publish more content on your highest converting topics.
From passive marketing to active marketing
There we have it. A whole host of great examples - based on asking questions, finding answers and taking action - that we can all use to perform our very own analyses and improve the results of our marketing efforts.
Andy taught us that analyzing our own marketing data is fundamental to improving our marketing results and that anyone - dataphile or dataphobe - can do their own seriously valuable data analysis. All you need is a Google Analytics account and a no-nonsense approach.
As for the most valuable takeaway of them all? Inspiring marketers to not only act on their data, but also to adopt a culture of analysis, reflection and experimentation. Now you've got the tools you need to become an active data-driven marketer, the rest is down to you.
The Big Dirty Secret Every Doctor Knows
(MedPage Today) -- Eminence-based medicine is not the exception. It's the rule.
Monday, August 1, 2016
Election 2016 Snapshot: Medicare
(MedPage Today) -- Trump and Clinton offer different visions for Medicare
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)