Your social media marketing toolkit

Social media strategy and planning essentials

This is part 9 of my Smart Insights 12 part social media series. In the last part we looked at reporting for social media; in this blog, I discuss what tools you can use to help plan and manage your social campaigns.

Please note that this list isn’t exhaustive. There’s a wide range of tools available, and each person I know uses a different mix depending on business needs. This blog aims to show you the types of tool you need to evaluate; you should then do your own research to find out what gives you're the functionality you need.

Measurement tools

Let’s start by getting the fundamentals put in place. To do social media intelligently, you need to underpin your planning and decision making with accurate data.

Google Analytics campaign tracking

My first port of call is always web analytics + URL campaign tracking. I’m going to base this on GA simply because most clients I work with use GA for campaign measurement. I recommend ensuring that each URL you share has UTM campaign parameters appended; you’ll get your own set of campaign reports specifically for social campaign links.

Top tip: create a UTM tracking taxonomy so that you use consistent campaign parameters. I typically set the following (all lower case):

• Medium social social
• Source [social network] facebook
• Campaign [campaign name] mothersday_2016
• Content [creative asset] video_1
• Term [test version] a

So an example URL for a landing page shared via social media would be:
https://mydomain.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=a&utm_content=video_1&utm_campaign=mothersday_2016

There are premium tools available that are focused on social media analysis and reporting. A good example is Crowdbooster, which provides analytics, automated insights and customised reporting dashboards. There is a 30-day free trial and plans start from $9 per month.

Social network analytics

Each network provides its own free (and paid) analytics tools – use them as much as possible. Let’s use Twitter as the example, you can get the following info for free:

• Monthly summary showing top tweets and overall activity rate
• Tweet level data including impressions per day and top tweets based on impressions and engagement
• Audience demographic breakdown e.g. male/female split
• Twitter card usage data

Planning tools

You need to understand your audience, and learn what content resonates best with them and who is out their already sharing popular content for the topics that are most relevant to your business and products/services. There are several handy research tools you can use.

Buzzsumo/Audiense

Free option? Yes
Pricing From $99 per month
Free trial option (for paid version) 14 days

These are great for audience analysis. You can research by topic and learn what content and which publishers are the most active and popular based on social engagement metrics.

Let’s use Buzzsumo as the example, a tool I’ve used personally myself and found it to be incredibly useful with a simple interface. I’ve used it to:

• Research content topics for a client and drill down into key themes and sub-themes to find out what has the most activity
• Learn which publishers are active and how much engagement they get with their content
• Discover key influencers (brands, bloggers, journalists etc.) who align with key topics and see how much reach each one has

I’ve used this for complex B2B projects like legal services, as well as high street retail. To do any meaningful level of analysis, you really need to switch to the paid version, which gives unrestricted searches and exportable data.

URL shortener e.g. Goo.gl

Enables URL shortening to ensure your content is focused on the message, not the URL.

Bit.ly used to be the #1 choice for URL shortening but the news that it partnered with Vigilink to effectively add affiliate tracking to all shortened links, dampened enthusiasm amongst marketers.

With freemium tools like Bit.ly, branded domains can be purchased with an enterprise subscription, which also gives you access to enhanced features such as mobile deep links and dedicated support.

All links reporting is much deeper, so you can see link share data to help with content optimisation plans. Free tools like Goo.gl do provide data but it’s not as rich:

There are lots of free shorteners out there. For example, Hootsuite provides Ow.ly, which provides deeper link data when you pair it with Hootsuite.

Content tools

Social media is all about the content. Therefore you need tools that help you create and manage your content assets effectively.

When you start out, it’s fine to take a manual approach and create content to upload direct via social networks. However, as you grow and your publishing queue expands, it’s likely your demands will increase and you’ll need a smarter way to schedule and publish content. Below are examples of tools that help you curate visual content.

Everypost

Free option? Yes – pay with a tweet
Pricing From $9.99 per month
Free trial option (for paid version) 14 days

• Available on iOS and Android to support mobile workflow
• Pull in content from multiple sources and publish across social networks
• Customise content to tailor to specific social networks
• Collaboration via permission-based workflow to support team structures

There are network specific tools available, the value of which depends on how active you are on each network. Let’s look at one example.

Tailwind

Free option? No
Pricing From $9.99 per month
Free trial option (for paid version) Yes (based on activity threshold)

This is the leading solution for visual content scheduling and publishing on Instagram and Pinterest. Positioned as ‘smarter visual marketing, it allows teams to manage content calendars, collaborate across multiple team members and has a small business packages, as well as upgrade options for enterprise customers.

Management tools

Ok, so you’ve created your content, sorted your links and got your tracking in place. Now you need a way of managing your updates and ongoing communication with followers. Step up the social media management dashboards…

Tweetdeck/Hootsuite

Free option? Yes
Pricing From $7.99 per month (Hootsuite)
Free trial option (for paid version) 30 days (Hootsuite)

They provide activity dashboards to show what’s happening across your social networks, with the primary focus on Twitter (Tweetdeck only covers Twitter). Key features include:

• Set-up single access or multi-access team accounts e.g. more than 1 person can tweet from your handle
• Add multiple Twitter accounts (great if you’re a freelancer working with multiple clients)
• Create multiple streams so you can follow different conversations e.g. I have a column for my #EcomChat network
• Schedule posts and automatically shorten URLs
• Quickly RT, like or reply to tweets
• Direct message one or more followers

Buffer

Free option? Yes
Pricing From $10 per month
Free trial option (for paid version) 30 days

This helps you schedule all your social updates and create publishing queues. It has some neat features:

• Set different publish schedules and velocity for each social network e.g. post to Twitter 3x daily, only post to Facebook 1x daily
• See key social metrics fro each post e.g. # RT, likes and mentions for each tweet
• Sort by popularity

To access the detailed analytics and features like data export, you need to upgrade to the business package ($99 per month)

You can of course invest in other scheduling and publishing tools. Agora Pulse is a good example, offering free tools (I like the Twitter analytics report card) and a monthly subscription service from €49 per month, with a free trial option. Some of the cool features:

• User profiling to identify ambassadors and influencers
• Competitor analysis for Facebook and Twitter
• Integration with Facebook apps e.g. run contests
• Team workflow to assign and manage tasks across multiple users

Screenshot: Agora Pulse Twitter report card

For heavier users such as agencies with multiple clients, tools like Sprout Social have been highly recommended to me, though I’ve not used personally. Pricing starts at $59 per user per month with a free 30 day trial.

IFTTT

Possibly the coolest and most flexible tool on the block, IFTTT is a free community that lets you create recipes for event-based triggers to automate social marketing.
For example, there’s a recipe to automatically share new Instagram photos as native Twitter photos.

You can create a new recipe using a simple process and choose triggers and actions from the wide range of integrations that IFTTT supports. I’ve got a simple recipe that sends a DM to my Twitter when a new person subscribes to our EcomChat email group.

Your thoughts, comments and personal experience

So this is step 9 in the Smart Insights 12 step series on social media strategy and planning.

Did you find it useful?
What tools do you use to help deliver social media marketing? What mix of free and paid tools works for you?

Please join in the discussion and share your experience in the comments field at the bottom of this page.

Keep an eye out for next month’s article, “Handling complaints and negative PR via social media”.

Missed the previous articles? Catch-up here:

1. 6 reasons why you need a social media strategy
2. How to create a social media strategy and plan
3. Competitor analysis for social media strategies
4. Understanding the role of organic and paid social media
5. Creating a social media content strategy and plan
6. Aligning social media with other marketing channels
7. Resource planning for social media
8. Reporting for social media

Thanks
James

Thanks to James Gurd for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. James is an experienced ecommerce and digital marketing consultant with more than 14 years’ B2C and B2B digital strategy and transformation experience. He is the Owner and lead consultant at Digital Juggler. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-platforms/social-media-marketing-toolkit/

Search Engines overtake Traditional Media on Trust [#ChartoftheDay]

Greater public trust in search engines only reinforces the importance of SEO

It's the morning after the night before. For those political nerds this side of the Atlantic who stayed up well into the early hours to watch the debate between the two candidates to become the leader of the free world, I can only say well done.

Among the barbed questions, infantile bickering and rude interruptions, discerning observers may have noticed one thing missing. Objectively verified facts. Sure the candidates bandied around plenty of statistics, but sometimes what matters more is not the statistic but its source. And even is a statistic is technically correct, it may be incredibly misleading. For example Donald Trump's repeated claim that 52% of African American's are unemployed includes all those who are in school, college, staying home for childcare, volunteering or retired. Hardly everyone's definition of 'unemployed'.

The fact a candidate to be president of the richest, most powerful nation on earth can engage in a debate with such a skewed attitude to 'the facts' points to a major change in how we access media and who we as a society trust.

Today's chart covers this, and reveals a very interesting trend. Search engines are now more trusted than traditional media providers, and social media is also gaining trust (albeit from a lower base). Social has now reached the 50% threshold, and looks set to gain even greater trust from users in the coming years.

Search engines besting traditional media points to their increasing power in all aspects of our daily lives, including the political. This only reinforces the need to develop a strong SEO strategy, although remember. With great power comes great responsibility.

• Source: Atlas
• Data Source: Trust barometer

source http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/search-engines-overtake-traditional-media-trust-chartoftheday/

The Secret to Winning in the Online Display World

How to avoid the common mistakes of programmatic advertising

Access to digital display ad inventory is becoming commoditized. It used to be that marketers and brands worked with publishers independently, leading to “handshake deals” that often left smaller players out in the cold.

Thanks to online trade desks and programmatic ads, this is changing. Most trade desks and platforms cooperate, and with the democratization of ad inventory, marketers and competitors operate on a relatively equal playing field.

It’s great that the playing field is equal, but that doesn’t mean marketers can mix a martini and call it a day just yet. The failure or success of your campaigns is ultimately up to you, and there are plenty of obstacles to pay attention to. And as with most things in life, you as a marketer need to play an active role in your media buying to guarantee you’re getting the best results.

The Hangover

Traditional trading desks and display advertising platforms come with their own list of headaches before you can even add ice to your drink. Here are just a few:

• Margin extraction: Platforms, or players within those platforms, are taking cuts of the ad spend, which ultimately reduces the effective buying power of the advertiser. Every platform, system, and middleman — and there are a lot — that stands between the advertiser and the audience lowers campaign effectiveness.

• Lack of verification: As much as some people like to compare trading internet advertising with stocks and bonds, there’s a big difference. If I buy a share of The New York Times from a broker, I know that I own a share of The New York Times.

• Ad fraud: At this point, display advertising is not that transparent. Even on the most reputable platforms in the industry, there’s a chance that if I buy an ad on nytimes.com, that ad could show up on a completely different website. There are many new verification systems springing up — like Google and AppNexus — but nothing is perfect yet.

If this sounds like you should just leave your trading desk or throw in the digital marketing towel, don’t. But don’t assume it’s a big competitive advantage, either. The real secret to winning in this world is control.

Taking Back Control

Remember, there are a lot of good things about the programmatic system of media buying. The democratization of inventory means small entities can bid on premium space, and the automated systems allow marketers to make changes on the fly.

To avoid throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, make sure you’re employing a few strategies to maintain control of your campaigns:

1. Ad Verification

Believe it or not, even on the best platforms, there is a risk of your brand running on bad websites or places where ads are never seen by the consumer. Many exchanges are rapidly improving, but they’ve mostly been slow to provide tools for marketers to monitor this.

As a result, it’s very important to use an independent, third-party platform to ensure ads appear on intended sites, reach targeted audience, and stays true to campaigns. Several companies now offer this service, including AdXpose, Google Attribution 360 (formerly Adometry), Adsafe, and Double Verify.

2. Attribution Modeling

When you’re spending significant amounts of money across several different advertising channels, it becomes challenging to measure and attribute customers to the ad spend. Platforms like to make it sound cut and dry, but if a consumer sees four of your ads on four different websites and becomes a customer a few days later, who gets credit?

Because all of those platforms will want the credit, you need an independent attribution modeling tool to fairly assess your return on ad spend and ad effectiveness. These tools establish rules that determine how credit for sales and conversions are assigned, making it easier for you to know when your money is effective.

3. Dynamic Creative Optimization

Because ad inventory is so easy to come by, the smartest marketers are now thinking beyond where they place their ads and how they pay for them. Strategies like dynamic creative optimization (DCO) use data from your media buying systems to optimize ads for a given user based on your return on advertisement spending.

DCO is best used for large campaigns that require direct response. This makes testing so many options make more sense because the potential impressions served are so great.

Increasingly, marketers, brands, and even advertisers are beginning to use third-party tools to take control of media buying. This is a great thing because, despite how it proclaims to be open, transparent, and programmatic, this industry is still new and working out some of the kinks.

By using independent tools and technologies, marketers are able to get valid second opinions on how their dollars are being spent, which helps to maximize campaign effectiveness and reach those all-important key performance indicators. And with that, marketers can sit down for the evening with their drinks in hand.

 

Hagan Major is president and chief operating officer of YellowHammer, a New York City-based performance trading platform that provides programmatic buying solutions for advertisers and agencies that demand a tangible return on their advertising dollars. As COO, Hagan is responsible for YellowHammer’s corporate strategy and internal operations.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/internet-advertising/internet-advertising-strategy/secret-winning-online-display-world/

Few businesses successfully integrating digital and traditional marketing [#ChartoftheDay]

Many businesses are trying to integrate digital and traditional marketing, but only 1 in 20 have achieved full optimisation.

Today's chart of the day comes from our 2016 research into managing digital marketing, which asked 1096 marketers from around the world about their experiences of managing the challenges of digital.

One particularly important finding from the report was the poor state of integration between digital and traditional channels. There can be no doubting that this is important. Customers increasingly spend their time online and assess content digitally, making digital marketing ever more important. Yet some brands are starting to think traditional channels have become under-rated as a result and starting to question if they've over-invested in digital.

Whether one channel is more important than the other is an irrelevant question; clearly both are of immense importance and which one is more important will vary between businesses. The key thing is that they should be working together to drive the same message and goals. Yet we found 50% of businesses have no or limited integration.

And of those with some integration, most are merely at the stage of trying to integrate them but have not yet fully achieved it. Only 5% report having fully optimised the processes, so there is clearly a long way to go.

• Source: Smart Insights, TFM & eCommerce expo- Managing Digital Marketing Report 2016
• Sample Size: 1096

source http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/businesses-successfully-integrating-digital-traditional-marketing-chartoftheday/

Introducing our RACE analytics dashboard to help stay on top of critical marketing KPIs

Use our new RACE analytics Google Sheet to see your key marketing metrics at a glance

For Marketing, Digital marketing or ecommerce managers, the first week of the month is always a frantic one launching new campaigns, monthly dashboard reviews and on top of that you need to report the performance of your marketing to the internal stakeholders (the boss). Hopefully, it's a good news story, but if it isn’t, that just adds to the workload, identifying what went wrong and putting plans in place to turn things around.

This is where you need to practice the art of analytics, to quickly create a report or dashboard with a subset of key metrics covering all marketing activities in an easy to understand format for rapid review and recommendations for upcoming activities?

But how do you create a dashboard for reviewing digital marketing performance to compare different time periods such as monthly, weekly, quarterly or annually. While Google Analytics has many, many metrics and many many reports, consolidating them into the measures you need for a dashboard showing a marketing funnel can be a challenge. Sure, you can browse the Google analytics custom dashboard gallery, but you will find that many of these don't cover the 'full-funnel' needed for a strategy or business level review, instead they tend to focus on tools to help with tactics like SEO or social media.  You can also use the

This is where the Google Analytics API and the Google Sheets add-on comes into play

The purpose of the Smart Insights dashboard is to help managers to complete a regular weekly or monthly review of the current effectiveness of their digital marketing using Google Analytics with Google Docs Spreadsheets. We use this combination ourselves in our monthly reporting! The dashboard makes it easy to compare digital marketing performance through time with a focus on the key digital marketing measures across the customer lifecycle or marketing funnel defined across the Smart Insights RACE planning framework. For example, you can compare year-on-year or compared to the previous reporting period.

The Smart Insights RACE framework used in all our member resources was developed to help digital marketers plan and manage their activities in a more structured way since we found that many don't have a digital marketing strategy with clear objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators).

By reporting on just four metrics for each of the Reach, Act, Convert & Engage parts of the funnel you can measure the key areas of your digital marketing plan to see which are working or require attention. In addition to overall visits, leads and conversion, the dashboard also includes key low-cost channels used by many businesses of organic search, social media and email marketing.

How to use the RACE dashboard

What you will need:

1. A Google account to open and make a copy of the spreadsheet
2. The Google Analytics spreadsheet add-on within Google Spreadsheets click here
3. A Google Analytics account
4. Your Google Analytics ID

How to get the dashboard

Expert members can get the dashboard by visiting this page.

Please then follow the instructions on the Google Sheets Read page, starting by making a copy. Here are some visual examples to help you.

1. NB. Ensure you use the same Google Account for Google Analytics and Google Sheets.

2. Make a copy of this Report - you do this from the "File" menu of Google Sheets > "Make a copy" option

When you first open you will see a blue box, top left, saying the spreadsheet is 'Read-only'

The first thing you should do is to 'Make a copy' via the file menu, which you use for your internal use.

3. Install the Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets - Add-ons > Get add-ons in the Sheets menu.

This is how it will look once it is set up. When you first look, Google Analytics won't be there so you will have to add it using the 'Get add-ons' option.

Choose 'Get add-ons' and then search for Google Analytics - you want this one which offers to 'Access all of your Google Analytics data in Google Spreadsheets' - it's available from Google.

When you click on it you will see these details.

Next click the + Free button and it will be available.

Next, the hardest part which is to find your Google Analytics 'View ID'

4. Place your Google Analytics View ID on Cell B3, Tab "++Configure Report++"

5. Find your GA View ID in analytics to customise it to your business
- Sign-in to your Analytics account.
- Select the Admin tab.

- Select an account from the dropdown in the ACCOUNT column.
- Select a property from the dropdown in the PROPERTY column.
- Under View , click View Settings"
6. Place your Google Analytics View ID on Cell B3, Tab "++Configure Report++"

7. To calculate and display 'Leads' & 'Sales', identify which GA Goals are most relevant to you in your view and replace the goal numbers "ga:goal1Completions' (for Act conversion goal) and "ga:goal2Completions' (for Convert goal) in Tab "Report Configuration" Cell B8, C8, D8 & E8

You can find out the Goal numbers by clicking on the Admin tab we mentioned at step 5 and by then clicking on the Goals option under view.

8. Add your reporting dates to Cells B6, B7, B10 & B11.

For example to compare two consecutive months or year on year changes.

You can see an example of this in Step 6 above where we are comparing two months.

9. Now you are ready to run your first report in the Sheets menu! Simply select "Add-ons" on the Google Sheet > "Google Analytics" > "Run Reports"

Congratulations - The example data on 'RACE dashboard' sheet should now be updated. If not, carefully check each of the steps above.

Once set up the whole process is more straightforward if you are simply using one Google View / Account. You will just need to repeat steps 8 and 9.

But is my information secure?

Yes!- This dashboard is built using the popular online Google Docs Spreadsheet Sheets to report on business marketing performance using Google Analytics data from your Google Account via the Google Analytics API. This data is only available to those in your business who can sign in with their username and password to have access to the account and know the ID of the website property and view. It is not available to Smart Insights or anyone who doesn't have this information since the same Google Analytics and Google Docs account must be used.

Download Expert Member resource – RACE Digital Marketing Dashboard

Use our practical reporting dashboard built in a Google Docs Spreadsheet using your Google Analytics data to report on the performance of your digital marketing.

Access the RACE Digital Marketing Dashboard

source http://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/web-analytics-strategy/introducing-race-analytics-dashboard-help-stay-top-critical-marketing-kpis/

How brands can stay relevant in a digital first culture: Interview with Jay Baer

Tips for brands adapting to Digital from the author of Youutility

Many brands are struggling to adapt to a digital first culture and more seriously, struggling to remain relevant.

It’s clear that brands moving from the industrial revolution to the connected economy need to be doing a lot more than creating a digital marketing dept in their organisational chart. Rather, they need to be adjusting and adapting their culture.

I interviewed Jay Baer, author of the New York Times best seller, Youtility and one of my favourite business books. We discuss the challenges for brands that struggle to grasp “digital”, what brands can do to differentiate themselves in competitive markets and Jay’s latest book, Hug Your Haters.

Q. Many brands struggle to grasp how “digital” is structured within their organisation with many treating their digital activities within a silo -what words of wisdom could you provide brands to adapt a digital first culture?

As Gary Vaynerchuk says, you have to market in the year in which you are living. Consumers are spending less time with every method of reaching customers (TV, radio, print, outdoor, et al), except for digital, which has seen a 110% increase in consumer time spent per day since 2010.

The best way to adapt to a digital first culture is to spend time talking to your customers and prospects. Understand how they consume information and you’ll soon realize that digital is non-optional for your business.

Q. With brand loyalty in decline, what are the opportunities for brands to redefine themselves in the era of content marketing?

Smart brands use content to shift from top-of-mind awareness to friend-of-mine awareness.

They focus on help, not hype. When you do so, your brand can develop relationships with customers and prospects that pay off geometrically over time. After all, if you sell something you create a customer today. If you help someone, you can create a customer for life.

What words of advice would you have for brand to create points of difference within a crowded market place through content marketing?

Focus on being useful. The problem with most content marketing is that it doesn’t actually benefit the customer. If the content is solely about the company, its products and its services, it’s just a brochure in a different guise. Consumers are too smart for that. Give them something utterly useful and they’ll reward you for it.

Q. Your book, Youtility resonated with my own thinking as to how organisations can become more “human” e.g. Hilton Suggests and their technique to answer questions through social no matter if the user is a customer or not.

To apply this mindset into a brand strategy – does this require a different organisation culture?

At some level, yes. Because humanization (and empathy, in a customer service context) requires brands to allow their representatives to interact with customers and prospects as people, rather than as the brand itself. Smart brands let their front line personnel work without a script, giving them permission to act like real people, not bots.

Q. What simple steps could a brand follow to define Youtility within their organisation?

None. There are no simple steps because the principle of Youtility (creating marketing so useful, customers would pay for it) is the exact opposite of how we were trained to do marketing.

But the best first step is to look at all of your existing marketing and think about whether it serves the company or the customer. And if it’s the former, how can it be made more useful?

Q. You latest book, Hug Your Haters – suggests a move for organisations/brands to move towards the Age of the Customer – what practical steps could a brand take to move their customer to the centre of their strategy?

Recognition that customer service is now a spectator sport. That because so many customer interactions take place in public now (via social media, etc.) that customer service IS the new marketing.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/customer-engagement/customer-engagement-strategy/brands-can-stay-relevant-digital-first-culture-interview-jay-baer/

The Importance of Different Types of Retail Loyalty [Infographic]

New research highlights different approaches to engaging retail customers

The DMA has identified four different types of consumers when it comes to brand loyalty. Some customers are always loyal, others only loyal for certain purchases. But whatever their natural propensity for brand loyalty, you need to engage them and build trust. The DMA's 2016 research presented below shows that over half of consumers will stick to a brand that provides good service when they know they could get a cheaper deal elsewhere. In addition in found customers don't particularly like being asked to provide reviews, yet brands are keen to do this. One the flip side, almost half of customers would like to receive free gifts from brands, but only one in ten companies do this. There is clearly currently a big mismatch between consumer desires and brand actions, and this needs to close. Find out more by checking out the infographic below.

Thanks to the DMA for publishing this infographic 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/customer-engagement/customer-engagement-strategy/importance-different-types-retail-loyalty-infographic/