Social Media Marketing World is over but the expert tips are worth testing out.
The conference came just before the coronavirus was in full force within the United States and we’re lucky to have been there at all. A lot of digital marketers are working from home and strategizing for the future in these uncertain times. For some inspiration and to spread the knowledge from one of the last US conferences this spring, I wrote down my favorite bite-sized experiments and tips to try out with your own digital strategy.
1. Make content with context
Mike Kim, an expert marketing consultant, reminded us that context is important in our content. Make sure you’re answering these three questions:
- What pisses you off?
- What breaks your heart?
- What’s the big problem you’re trying to solve?
Your content should address these three questions to remain contextually relevant to your audience.
2. Stick with a tone
Mike Kim also encouraged marketers to use a consistent brand voice for each of your initiatives. Some options are:
- Academic
- Professional
- Emoji speak
- Snarky
- Motormouth
Your tone can change depending on the platform, a brand tweet is certainly different than the LinkedIn article you’re writing, but you should maintain a consistent tone in each vertical. It doesn’t matter what tone you choose, as long as it fits your audience and your brand.
3. Your copy shouldn’t read like a sales call
Write your copy without being salesy by adding value within your message itself instead of thinking about what you’d like to achieve in your message. For example, if you want customers to read an article about the “Top 10,” give them a really good #1 in your email promoting the article. This way, they’re’ still getting some use from your email even if they don’t end up clicking.
Showing value upfront earns mutual respect with your viewers, so they can trust that your brand communications will be useful.
Read all of the principles from expert Ray Edwards.
4. Spice up your Stories
Get consistent views of your Instagram Stories by developing a connection between the brand and the audience. Use video, text in your Stories, and engagement stickers to keep your Story viewers involved and coming back each day.
Get all Instagram expert Sue B. Zimmerman’s tips in her own Stories, or check out our video interview with her all about Instagram Stories here.
Here, Sue B. shows off her brand colors and use of stickers in her Story.
5. Investigate where your copy is falling short
Let your data show you content that isn’t getting its job done. Andy Crestondia, CMO at Orbit Media’s tip on how to start with checking out the page path analytics to your FAQ page within Google Analytics. Wherever those users came from, they didn’t get what they needed.
Crestodina’s end goal is to fix the source page so that your content is solving the problem. Or at the very least add a compelling CTA to your FAQ page.
6. Find out what questions your visitors want answered
Crestodina also elaborated with another great idea about FAQ pages–pop a heatmap on that page and see which questions are most popular. Consider fleshing out the topic in your main page copy or writing a separate post outlining the problem.
Good reminder, Andy!
7. Don’t mess with your ads
When you’re using Facebook ads DON’T edit your campaign when you want to make a change. If it’s not doing well, or you need to edit something, be sure to duplicate, change, and republish your campaign instead of editing the existing one. The poor performance of the initial campaign could tank your second chance for optimization.
Pro tip: If you’re using tools like Adespresso they apply this principle by only getting rid of your ad variations when you edit within their app, not by changing an existing campaign variation.
Andrea Vahl, a Facebook marketing expert, was adamant about this rule for advertising on Facebook and it’s certainly one we’re taking to heart.
8. ABT: Always Be Testing
Facebook marketing strategist Jon Loomer gave away his latest top experiments with Facebook advertising encouraging others to try them out.
- When you’re using micro-locations in your ad targeting to reach a specific event or group, consider adding an “Interested In:” segmentation in your ad audience to enhance your pinpointed approach.
- For instance, when you’re advertising to Mariners fans during a game, you can ensure your audience is a good fit by micro-targeting the stadium. To make it even MORE specific, add an Interested In: Ken Griffey Jr. to your segmentation to make sure you’re not advertising to visiting fans.
- Test out Messenger ads for lead generation, which can behave like a bot but will allow for more personalization. Not to mention, usage on Facebook messaging apps have skyrocketed amidst the virtual socialization happening as of late.
- The extended value of Instant Experience ads includes more real estate to advertise with. Plus, interactions with your ad allow you to retarget your audience for a dual reward. Loomer maintains that these underutilized ad types could be a great fit for your goals.
9. Give LinkedIn video a shot
LinkedIn video gets 3x more engagement than text-based posts. While the standard LinkedIn video is definitely a great option, Goldie Chan, the Oprah of LinkedIn’s, top advice is to get your beta applications in for LinkedIn Live and take the plunge into live streaming your content.
Keep your videos informative, under 20 minutes, and put some effort into a polished background/camera angle for high quality and useful content. Plus, Goldie explained that with LinkedIn Live being so new, there’s never been a better time to get started with the features to make your brand stand out. Not to mention, you can easily repurpose your LinkedIn videos by embedding them in your blog. Like this one!
Here Golide is going live on LinkedIn with her branded series #DailyGoldie
10. Support your content with more content
Convince & Convert’s President Jay Baer broke down his team’s playbook for content impact. My biggest takeaway from Baer’s talk was the 1×8 rule for content amplification. Your one piece of big content should have eight supporting pieces, whether they’re promo ads, video, blog posts, opinion pieces, etc. Those eight pieces will help lift and amplify the one large one, plus recycle the in-depth piece for content variety.
For example, if you have a quarterly video series episode as your big initiative, you could promote the large content piece with a behind-the-scenes clip, a blog post about the host, a follow-up article with reactions to the episode, a repurposed episode clip to tweet, and so much more. All of these supporting pieces of content not only add value on their own but bolster the authority and hype surrounding the main initiative.
While we stay home and crank out content, ads, and measure everything, give some of these expert tips from Social Media Marketing World 2020 a try and let us know how they turn out on Twitter.
