Amplified Content Marketing

by Michael Stuart

You are here: Home / Archives for ads

ads

Social media Best posting times

Curated by

Social Media Image

Social media marketing centers around getting the attention of your present and prospective customers.

What is the best time to post on social media?

“The best time to post on social media is when your customers (both present and prospective) are online”.

When to post on Social Media in 2020

Social media eCommerce trends indicate that the use of social networks for eCommerce is on the rise with an estimated global eCommerce sales of $4.5 trillion by 2021, a 246.15% rise. Hence, questions like why post on social media and what are the implications of not posting on social media are becoming more and more irrelevant. Now, the only question that needs to be answered is when to post on social media for maximum engagement.

Best time to post on social media in 2020 – Facebook

  • It is more or less safe to post on Facebook on weekdays between 1 pm to 4 p.m. for those who would like to indulge in a bit of online shopping during lunch hours at work.
  • The best time to post on Facebook for online retail brands is not one single time slot but rather a few optimum times are present:
    • Wednesday between 11am-3pm
    • Thursday at 2 p.m. and 4 pm
    • Friday between 10 am to 3 pm
  • Weekends are usually considered to have the lowest engagement rates for consumer goods brands.


What to post on social media for your business: A Guide for FacebookSince Facebook’s audience is highly coveted by online businesses simply because of its sheer reach, you could have a regular flow of informational content, industry news and updates, and product promotions. These will generate brand loyalty and increased sales. Remember to have an effective CTA to your posts on Facebook, like Steam Horse Dry Goods Co. below. The post is crisp, to the point and has a clear CTA.

Best time to post on social media in 2020– Instagram

  • The safest times to post are every day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
  • The best time to post on Instagram for online retailers is Saturdays and particularly at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
  • Wednesday has been seen as the day with the most engagement.
  • Monday is the least engaged day for consumer goods, maybe because people are more likely to catch up on work, and everyone, in general, is more focused on getting ready for the week ahead.

What to post on social media for your business: A Guide for InstagramPrimarily a photo sharing app, Instagram is highly impacted by product images and is a key driver of brand awareness for eCommerce. New product launches, lifestyle posts, and user-generated content teamed up with effective hashtags have been seen to be doing really well on Instagram. You could also post short videos.

Best time to post on social media in 2020 – Twitter

  • The safe time to post on Twitter is between 1 to 3 p.m. every day.
  • The best day and time to post on Twitter for eCommerce brands is on Saturdays at 1 p.m.
  • Sunday has been reported to be the lowest in terms of engagement but has seen some engagement at 11 a.m. and between 1 to 4 p.m. on this day.

Some other types of content to post on social media sites

  1. Posts of your company
  2. Industry news
  3. Curated content
  4. Questions
  5. Videos
  6. Advice
  7. Memes 
  8. Contests
  9. Holiday Posts
  10. Links to freebies

How to post on Social Media? – Apps that post on social media for you

Very often you might be required to post to multiple social media accounts at once, and it can be very daunting for those who don’t know how to post on social media. Here are some tools that will help you with this:

  1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a great tool which enables you to schedule your posts across all major social media pages at specific times. Available both as a free and paid version, this is an excellent tool to publish and monitor your posts on multiple platforms from one single screen. It also has an “auto-schedule” option which is based on the company’s own knowledge on the best time to post on Instagram or on Facebook. 

  1. Hubspot

Apart from publishing and monitoring, if you are also looking for an app that will also do the reporting for you, Hubspot is the app to go to. It provides a closed-loop reporting data, which means that you’re not just seeing which channels are giving you the most engagement, you can also track the funnel down further to see which posts are driving actual leads and sales.

  1. TweetDeck

If you are focusing on just Twitter, you should not look any farther than TweetDeck. Apart from being one of the oldest to be around, it is one of the best too. You can follow several conversations at once with this tool, and it is actually quite fun at times.

  1. IFTTT (or Zapier)

This is a Trigger-and-action tool. Acronym for ‘If This Then That’, IFTTT is an automation tool that can save you a lot of time while it manages your social platforms effectively. The tool links your website, social media pages, and apps based on a trigger and an action. Based on a particular trigger you create, it starts an action. For example, if you publish a blog (the trigger), then IFTTT will automate and create a tweet (the action) about it.


  1. Raven

Apart from allowing you to access data and schedule posts from a variety of social media platforms, Raven provides reports from information gathered about pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), and social media channels. Thus, you get insights on topics like what the best time to post on Instagram is or if SEO is a better channel than PPC campaigns.

  1. Buffer (DLVR.it)

Buffer or Dlvr.it are advanced applications that provide Automated scheduling and engagement analysis.

Conclusion There is really no magic rule to engage with users. Every brand is different and so are their respective audiences.

 

What’s Your Story?

Curated by

Brand storytelling is an art and a science, and in today’s world it had better be highly strategic.

Storytelling should convey not only what a company does, but who it is, and why—as well as tap into the emotions of its readers all at the same time. 

Five steps to help tell your story

1: Authentic

Storytelling should convey who you are as a company and not only focus on what you do. Improving your brand’s story involves tapping into the power of emotions and connecting with your consumers on a personal level. Be authentic. Make your readers feel something. Feelings cultivate brand affinity.

  • Loyal customers are willing to stick with a brand even if presented with meaningful and available alternatives if they feel an emotional connection. Strong emotional connections to retailers result in 32% more store visits and 46% more money spent, according to a recent Gallup poll.
  • There are seven emotions that result in stronger sales through increased customer connections, fear, frustration, hope, excitement, anger, fear of missing out, and desire to be first. If you can tell your story in a way that makes the consumer connect with one of these feelings, a sale may be imminent.

 

2: Take a Stand

Make your storytelling demonstrate that you have a clear understanding of trends and current issues happening in your consumers’ world.

  • Quickly State the Problem: Today’s consumers are bombarded with messages; statistics show brands have eight seconds to get a consumer’s attention. If your message doesn’t resonate immediately, you’ve lost. Win your consumers over by demonstrating that you understand their challenges and can provide a solution.
  • Be Timely: What is top of mind today? Review and analyze current headlines and social trends to make connections whenever and wherever possible with your brand. Demonstrating this level of knowledge is a convincing way to engage consumers.
  • Share Your Mission: Define your brand responsibility in society. What is your corporate mission? What issues does your brand stand behind and how do you support those causes? Create communications that share the work you’re doing and publicize it via print, online, and social channels.
  • Take a Stand: Consumers are loyal to brands with a conscience and respond favorably to companies who own their truth.

 

3: Technology

Technology should be at the heart of all your storytelling efforts. From initial concept to optimizing keywords, technology can amplify your brand message across all channels. However, technology for technology’s sake is an endless road. To achieve maximum results, your technology investment in brand storytelling should include: Ease of Use: The ability to host multiple web pages, images, and conversations simultaneously, managed with a platform that lets you publish content and respond to consumer comments quickly and easily, is essential. Distribution Across Channels: Your brand needs a solution that allows you to publish across any channel. Consumers want to hear from brands where and when they want, so if you aren’t delivering your message on their desired device at the time they want it, your brand isn’t maintaining consistent user experience. Measurement Tools: Successful marketers understand the importance of analyzing how and where content is consumed. A key to your success is adjusting content accordingly when measurement tools report that certain communications are underperforming.

 

4: Change

Marketers and content contributors have to master different channels and content as new devices are introduced. Each channel comes with its own set of rules for display experiences and mastering those techniques is essential. Make sure that the quality of your communications doesn’t diminish when published across various channels. Don’t be afraid to try new forms of content. The written word is just one of many ways brands are creating emotional connections with consumers. Videos and images can also be powerful communication tools that resonate.

5: Stats

Your brand story is always a work in progress and it’s important to measure the success/reach of each component to discover which topics, types, and channels perform best. Pay attention to all the specifics you can: bounce rates, social metrics, conversions, leads, etc. Are you analyzing things like the number of visits, sessions, channel-specific traffic, and any other metrics that are important to your particular business?

You have a big opportunity to inspire consumers through effective storytelling and complementing this with the right technology is key to success. Implementing these tips will help you build stronger consumer relationships and increase engagement.

Source: econtentmag.com

What’s Your Story?

Curated by

Brand storytelling is an art and a science, and in today’s world, it had better be highly strategic.
 
Storytelling should convey not only what a company does, but who it is, and why—as well as tap into the emotions of its readers all at the same time.
 
 
 
Five steps to help tell your story
 

#1: Authentic

Storytelling should convey who you are as a company and not only focus on what you do. Improving your brand’s story involves tapping into the power of emotions and connecting with your consumers on a personal level. Be authentic. Make your readers feel something. Feelings cultivate brand affinity.
 
  • Loyal customers are willing to stick with a brand even if presented with meaningful and available alternatives if they feel an emotional connection. Strong emotional connections to retailers result in 32% more store visits and 46% more money spent, according to a recent Gallup poll.
  • There are seven emotions that result in stronger sales through increased customer connections, fear, frustration, hope, excitement, anger, fear of missing out, and desire to be first. If you can tell your story in a way that makes the consumer connect with one of these feelings, a sale may be imminent.
 
 

#2: Take a Stand

Make your storytelling demonstrate that you have a clear understanding of trends and current issues happening in your consumers’ world.
 
  • Quickly State the Problem: Today’s consumers are bombarded with messages; statistics show brands have eight seconds to get a consumer’s attention. If your message doesn’t resonate immediately, you’ve lost. Win your consumers over by demonstrating that you understand their challenges and can provide a solution.
  • Be Timely: What is top of mind today? Review and analyze current headlines and social trends to make connections whenever and wherever possible with your brand. Demonstrating this level of knowledge is a convincing way to engage consumers.
  • Share Your Mission: Define your brand responsibility in society. What is your corporate mission? What issues does your brand stand behind and how do you support those causes? Create communications that share the work you’re doing and publicize it via print, online, and social channels.
  • Take a Stand: Consumers are loyal to brands with a conscience and respond favorably to companies who own their truth.
 

#3: Technology

Technology should be at the heart of all your storytelling efforts. From initial concept to optimizing keywords, technology can amplify your brand message across all channels. However, technology for technology sake is an endless road. To achieve maximum results, your technology investment in brand storytelling should include:
Ease of Use: The ability to host multiple web pages, images, and conversations simultaneously, managed with a platform that lets you publish content and respond to consumer comments quickly and easily, is essential.
Distribution Across Channels: Your brand needs a solution that allows you to publish across any channel. Consumers want to hear from brands where and when they want, so if you aren’t delivering your message on their desired device at the time they want it, your brand isn’t maintaining a consistent user experience.
Measurement Tools: Successful marketers understand the importance of analyzing how and where content is consumed. A key to your success is adjusting content accordingly when measurement tools report that certain communications are underperforming.

 
 

#4: Change

Marketers and content contributors have to master different channels and content as new devices are introduced. Each channel comes with its own set of rules for display experiences and mastering those techniques is essential. Make sure that the quality of your communications doesn’t diminish when published across various channels.
Don’t be afraid to try new forms of content. The written word is just one of many ways brands are creating emotional connections with consumers. Videos and images can also be powerful communication tools that resonate.
 
 
 

#5: Stats

Your brand story is always a work in progress and it’s important to measure the success/reach of each component to discover which topics, types, and channels perform best. Pay attention to all the specifics you can: bounce rates, social metrics, conversions, leads, etc. Are you analyzing things like number of visits, sessions, channel-specific traffic and any other metrics that are important to your particular business?

 

You have a big opportunity to inspire consumers through effective storytelling and complementing this with the right technology is key to success. Implementing these tips will help you build stronger consumer relationships and increase engagement.
 
Source: econtentmag.com

Attracting Audience Attention

Curated by

How to Attract an Audience with Creating Captivating Content

 
 

To be successful, every business has to tell its stories.

These days, such stories are usually told through posting content online in blogs, articles and social media.
  • But just pushing content onto the web is meaningless if it doesn’t interest the audience. In an online world bursting with billions and billions of pages of content — with new content being added every minute.
  • how do you ensure you’re creating compelling content that generates views?
  • Whether it’s defining the details that will capture interest, timing your posts to grab the most views or choosing the right venue for your message, there are strategies that will help your online voice be heard.

1. Cater Content To Customers

As a printing company, our target companies are other businesses that need printed collateral, as well as individuals that have a specific need. Content about our latest printer is not effective. However, design tips or examples for wedding invitations, how-tos, or graphic design tips for other businesses will create value that organically leads to sales. Your content does not have to revolve specifically around your goods or services. Rather, cross-pollenating your content into the desired industries you would like to sell to is an effective way to create value and sales. – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs
 

2. Choose The Best Platform For Each Message

Different channels accomplish different types of engagement. Facebook is great for showing company culture. We find images and behind-the-scenes videos get the most likes and shares. For Twitter, we’re testing tweets that are story driven; you create a thread, and each tweet links to different content that threads up around a point. This is a great way to repurpose multiple pieces of content, and it drives conversation with people commenting on tweets. Instagram is obviously image and video driven. The trick with Instagram is choosing the right hashtag to get the right visibility. If you’re looking for leads, you’ll need users to download an asset that’s useful. We’ve been doing checklists on how to do something accompanied by a case study that proves it works. – Kerry Guard, MKG Marketing
 

3. Write Step-By-Step Guides

I’ve noticed that some of our best content is how-to guides that show users a step-by-step process on how to implement something on their own website. This has helped gear us to becoming more of a resource-based blog where customers can find information on how to make their own sites better. Find out what guides your customers want and write a detailed, step-by-step process that will help them. You can even turn some of your most popular ones into content upgrades in exchange for email addresses. – Jared Atchison, WPForms
 

4. Round Up The Experts

When producing content, a helpful strategy is to include experts with relevant experience on the particular topic you are producing content around. By including these experts and their take on a specific issue, you’re providing them with a platform to share their thoughts and ideas and increasing your chances of them sharing your content with their audience — “seeding” the content with additional readers. If the content is well-received, the results will compound from there. – Brandon Pindulic, OpGen Media
 

5. Answer The Questions You’re Always Asked

Answering tough questions about our industry has been a boon for traffic to our site. Some of our top-performing pieces are articles on how much an app costs to build and on how much money an app can make. Think about the questions clients or potential clients ask you all the time, and then go and create blog posts to answer those questions. – Ryan D Matzner, Fueled
 

6. Take On Trending Topics In Your Industry

I’ve noticed that the content that tends to get the most engagement on my company’s blog and my social media channels is around topics that are disruptive to the industry. For example, in the digital marketing industry, some of my most shared and engaging content dealt with new trends, such as voice search and mobile AMP (accelerated mobile pages). The keys for greater engagement and cultivating thought leadership are to provide helpful context and actionable information that empowers your readers. Don’t be a journalist, be a thought leader instead! – Kristopher Brian Jones, LSEO.com

7. Pitch Solutions, Not Products

No one wants to hear your sales pitch. No one is as excited about your product as you are. What they want to see is someone like them who’s struggling with the same issues. Then they want to see you fix those issues. Case study marketing is the way to go. It’s organic, it’s not just about you and others want to share it. At Enlighten we spend a remarkable amount of time working with clients after the sale to follow up and document the successes. These successes become inspiration for others that see them. Case studies have people asking you for help rather than you asking them for business. – Jeremy Jacobs, Enlighten

8. Integrate Insightful Interviews

Interviews are a great way to generate traffic to your site. Find people in your industry to interview and send them a few questions. You can then post your article in a question-answer format and optimize it for SEO. The trick is to find people that your audience is interested in learning from and asking them questions the audience would like to know. You can create a poll on your site to find out who your audience would like featured on your site. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
 

9. Livestream For Authenticity

Content that receives the most engagement for us is livestreaming on Instagram. For instance, after I released my most recent book, I did a handful of Instagram livestreams with other entrepreneurs, and each segment received more engagement than any other type of content marketing we produced. Livestreaming is the most transparent way to showcase your knowledge and expertise without sounding scripted or rehearsed. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Creative Development Agency, LLC

10. Tap Into Holiday Spirit

Is there an important date or popular holiday coming up? Injecting your brand (in an authentic way) allows you to take advantage of its popularity. Posting content that taps into the interest of a given date almost always guarantees fantastic engagement. Holidays such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day are obviously days you want to take advantage of. You can also time your content to coincide with the release of a popular movie or more niche holidays, such as “National French Fry Day” or “Star Wars Day.” Timing your content to highlight special days allows for predictability. It’s simple, and you can easily track results. It also allows you to tap into niche or international audiences that you may not otherwise reach. – Shu Saito, Fact Retriever
 
 
 
mike stuart, 1stonline.us
 

The Death of Microsoft’s LinkedIn’s SlideShare

Curated by

In 2016, SlideShare had over 70 million unique visitors per day, and it was listed by Alexa as one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world. At its peak, it was such a powerhouse that Obama used the network to post his birth certificate. It also stood for years as a premier B2B social channel: In 2015, author and marketing expert Jay Baer referred to it as “content marketing’s secret weapon.”

 
 
Power users have been dropping the SlideShare channel.
 
  • Top content creator and SlideShare investor Dave McLure hasn’t posted to the channel in over 11 months.
  • HubSpot, the content marketing powerhouse that posted over 60 presentations in 2017 and reached over 500,000 users, has posted only once in 2018, reaching a total of just over 1,000 users.
  • So what has caused this exodus of power users and decline in social-media prominence? A perfect storm of shifting parent-company priorities, insufficient revenues, and a user base largely outside of the US.
 
Despite SlideShare’s massive fan base, loyal users, and billions of impressions, a once-powerful channel is all but dead, and here’s why.
 
The Loss of Human Touch
The rapid growth of SlideShare from a small startup to a top website began in 2009, in a tiny room in India, when Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle saw the need for a “YouTube for presentations.” Within a few years, they had built a network of 38 million registered users by providing a desperately needed tool—and a new social channel for presentations.  But the key to their success wasn’t the tool, it was the human touch it added to the presentations.
 
SlideShare didn’t have a marketing team fueling its rapid growth. It relied on loyal fans. Its fans were the content creators, and to ensure the best content was featured, the team at SlideShare would manually curate the site each day, ensuring that the best presentations were prominently featured.
  • Kit Seeborg, author of Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business, was responsible for most of the content curation the users loved, she stressed how important human curation was to SlideShare.
  • The curated content was a huge hit. It was also one of the drivers of SlideShare’s email list, which, at the time of LinkedIn’s acquisition of SlideShare in 2012, was growing by 250,000 new subscribers each week. After the sale to LinkedIn, the curation process remained a critical part of community-building, until 2016, when the program was ended. Since then, the homepage has changed very little, which was a major clue to marketing insiders that LinkedIn was giving up on SlideShare.
  • During 2016, the team of editors who had been curators for SlideShare were moved off the product to support other LinkedIn projects, such as Pulse. The SlideShare company page on LinkedIn is now blank, with only a few remaining engineers listed as employees.
 
Some alternatives to SlideShare:
  1. Host your own content. There are new plugins for websites which allow you to host your slides on your own website and allow easy sharing and embedding. 
  2. Microsoft may create a social PowerPoint for 365. That is speculation, but now that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, and with the recent move to put Office in the Cloud, we could potentially see a new social aspect of PowerPoint in the future. 
  3. Use Prezi. It’s an alternative to SlideShare, but it does require you create content in Prezi’s own software rather than in PowerPoint; that requirement can be a pain for some.
  4. Use Google or Dropbox or ISSUU document sharing with their built-in presentation handling.
As we are continually bombarded with new marketing channels, tactics, and tools, one thing is clear: Slides are not going away. Events seem to give brands the personal touch the digital world just can’t, and slides are usually the No.1 content type at events.
 
The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.
 
The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today
 
  1. First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure not all of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks that are found on Slideshare. 
  2. Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.
  3. Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation.
 
Slideshare’s coming passing comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and Scribd, among others.