Tuesday 31 July 2018
Monday 30 July 2018
Friday 27 July 2018
10 Fitness Brands Winning Social Media
We’re emerging from hibernation into the height of tone-up season as days get longer and swimsuit weather inches closer. It seems like everywhere one turns on social media there’s a workout recommendation or cleanse plan begging for a click-through.
So which fitness brands are winning the race of social media engagement right now? What can your brand learn from the winners? We tracked a wide variety of fitness brands (from CrossFit to Health mag) during the past week, picking the most successful on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and learning some lessons that brands from any industry can benefit from. In no particular order:
CrossFit
By now you may have noticed that the fitness WOS – Word On the Street, not to be confused with WOD, Workout Of the Day – is “CrossFit.” Focusing on high-intensity workouts, extreme strength training, competition, and teamwork, this brand has built a cultish fan base and taken the fitness world by storm.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” —Confucius #CrossFit
— CrossFit (@CrossFit) March 29, 2014
Since a major feature of CrossFit’s brand is perseverance and self-improvement, it makes sense that their followers would respond well to Tweets that encourage and simultaneously reinforce these themes.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
This post’s engagement was largely driven by CrossFit-ers expressing dismay and incredulity at this workout’s level of difficulty. Ranging from hilarious meme commentary to expressions of fear about hitting the “box” for this exercise set, it’s a great example of how heavily engaged Cross Fit fans are on Facebook.
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
This Instagram post received a substantial amount of likes and positive comments from followers, showing the effectiveness of CrossFit’s against-all-odds message.
Brand Learnings
- CrossFit gains audience engagement by inspiring and building community on social media
- What’s most successful on Twitter: motivating quotes
- What’s most successful on Facebook: commenting on hard, terrifying, and awe-inspiring WOD’s along with fellow CrossFit community members
- What’s most successful on Instagram: motivating (and sometimes tear-jerking) video and photo content
Nike Training Club
Nike Training Club, a popular smartphone app built for women featuring workouts from professional athletes and recommended exercises, provides substantial free content while simultaneously showing off Nike’s latest workout gear on aspiration-worthy athletic bods. Its social media presence is largely devoted to driving app downloads with the incentive of exclusive content.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
.@skydigg4 is heating up the #NTC app. #canyoudiggit http://t.co/UEYTfoww52 pic.twitter.com/JntDrYnpj0
— NikeWomen (@nikewomen) April 2, 2014
In this Tweet, Nike uses aspirational celebrity athlete content (via a seriously fierce image) to direct folks towards its app (and the exclusive content to be found there).
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Nike Training Club uses Facebook to reinforce its connection with fans. This post lets fans know what’s to come in the app, which is clearly an effective strategy.
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
This post perfectly exploits Instagram’s role as the place for rich, appealing visual content. It doesn’t provide new information, but it does get the credit card in an athletic frame of mind.
Brand Learning
- Nike Training Club strategically posts different content on different social media platforms for different purposes.
- Twitter is for driving followers towards the app
- Facebook is for publicizing what’s next on the app and deepening fan connection with the app
- Instagram is for attractive visual content that tugs at the wallet
Equinox
Equinox is an upscale gym with locations in major American, Canadian and UK cities. While it doesn’t have the impressive follower counts of more mass market gym brands (see below), it gets a lot of love from the followers it does have. From March 26-April 2, 2,132 of Equinox’s 8,597 Twitter followers engaged with the brand–an impressive 1/4 of its followers.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
Make the weekend last longer. #earlymorningworkout pic.twitter.com/UtRrAa8CW2
— Equinox (@Equinox) March 30, 2014
The success of this Tweet is all about timing, timing, timing.Who doesn’t want a longer weekend? What better way to motivate people to come to your gym than by linking their desire for more meaningful moments with your brand? It’s no coincidence that this Tweet went out on a Sunday morning.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
This post is successful for two reasons: it includes a pun (everybody loves a pun), and it reminds people of an exercise we should all be doing.
Brand Learnings
- Equinox has found social media success by using a broad range of content, always deployed with good timing: humorous content, aspirational content, and emotion-centered content.
- Equinox maintains consistency across all social media channels thanks to a well-defined sassy, direct brand voice.
SoulCycle
SoulCycle, a rapidly expanding spinning studio chain with a cultish following that includes the likes of Oprah and Kelly Ripa, is growing quickly on social media, too. SoulCycle loves to respond to customers both happy and disappointed on Twitter, and frequently updates its social media channels with inspirational, timely content designed to get peeps off their butts and onto bikes.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
#DailySOUL: Open yourself up to the possibility that the best part of your life hasn't even happened yet. – @JolieWalsh
— SoulCycle (@soulcycle) March 26, 2014
Once again, inspirational quotes on Twitter FTW.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
This post was put up on baseball’s opening day, proving that brands can win by including content not directly related to their product or service.
Brand Learning
- Inspiration wins once again in the form of short quotes on Twitter, but brands can deepen their relationships with fans on Facebook
- Brand content doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to brand product to win on social media
24 Hour Fitness
24 Hour Fitness is the world’s largest (by memberships) privately owned and operated fitness center chain. It has more than 420 clubs in 18 states in the US. With such a large reach and customer base, it’s the fast food of fitness–convenient, efficient, and always available.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
RT if you agree! #reasons2exercise pic.twitter.com/q0lMzQpXf7
— 24 Hour Fitness (@24hourfitness) March 29, 2014
24 Hour Fitness is direct in asking its followers to interact with its posts. This post is successful because it asks followers to do a specific thing, and asks them to agree or disagree with a positive message–which, of course, pushes people to align themselves with the positive message.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Brand Learnings
- Posting the same content on different social media channels can work if the content is compelling enough to your audience and if you are trying to hit different segments of your customer base that might heavily favor one social media channel over another
Anytime Fitness
Anytime Fitness, another widespread fitness chain, has double the engagement on Facebook that it does on either Instagram or Twitter (and an overwhelmingly larger amount of fans). Is this because, as recent finding suggest, Facebook is drawing older users and driving away younger ones? While Anytime Fitness has plenty of content that appeals to younger people on its feed, it is one of the few national gym chains that markets to older people, as well.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
https://twitter.com/AnytimeFitness/statuses/450290167031812096
This Tweet gives the people what they love: helpful lifestyle content they don’t have to pay for. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why it was a retweet gem.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
The text that goes with this post (click through to see) demonstrates Anytime Fitness’s love for its members. Members like to feel appreciated, and the popularity of this post makes that clear.
Brand Learnings
- Strategy tip: provide free content that’s actually useful for more engagement
- Build trust and a positive association between your brand and your audience by clearing up any confusion they might have about your general industry
- Show your customers/audience/members some love to feel the social media love back
Gold’s Gym
Gold’s Gym is an international gym chain known for its friendliness towards bodybuilders and its innovative classes, such as “Cardio Cinema,” wherein members watch full-length films while on treadmills instead of reclining in seats. Just like their gyms, Gold’s maintains an intense but playful presence on social. Most Engaging Brand Tweet
https://twitter.com/GoldsGym/statuses/450759660619169792
There’s that intense presence I was talking about.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
And again, like 24 Hour Fitness, we’ve got a Twitter/Facebook content popularity repeat.
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
It’s a trifecta!
Brand Learnings
- Know your audience: Clearly, this message (interestingly, the opposite of 24 Hour Fitness’s message) resounded well with Gold’s Gym’s audience, since it was a top performer on all three major social media channels. This is a great example of a brand with a strong, accurate sense of self.
Crunch Fitness
Crunch Fitness is an American fitness club chain that strives to make workouts fun and the opposite of boring, a sensibility it imbues in all its social media content.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
Check out our @POUNDfit class being featured on the @ElvisDuranShow's #WorkoutWednesday segment today! http://t.co/Eh6OjIMiD6
— Crunch (@CrunchGym) March 26, 2014
The Elvis Duran Show, a popular morning radio show in New York City, combined its forces with Crunch for a video segment that it also aired on the radio. This kind of cross-platform exposure works well for Crunch.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Enough said.
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
This playful Instagram video publicizes Crunch’s Rocky-inspired class and provides viewers with a chuckle-inducing workout demonstration, too.
Brand Learnings
- Partnering with other brands and celebrities is a great way to spread your brand to people who otherwise might not have been exposed (or remind them of your brand’s capabilities/features)
- Use #tbt in a creative way and watch audience engagement take off
- Instagram video is a great tool for setting your post apart from all the other’s on a user’s feed
Health Magazine
Health magazine has built an ultra-strong fitness brand by providing innovative content with everything from slimming recipes to workout video clips. They perpetually release a wonderfully wide range of fitness-related content, but what’s performing the best right now?
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
New to belly-blasting? Here's an easy, but efficient move for you: The front plank! http://t.co/qGyOn828iT pic.twitter.com/YvAy7YTxSE
— Health (@goodhealth) March 29, 2014
The plank makes a return appearance on this list! Apparently, fitness enthusiasts like learning power moves that they don’t have to go to the gym to do.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Recipes are a great driver for getting people to your site and making ’em stay there–plus, on social media, they provide unique added value and quality pics.
Most Engaging Brand Instagram Post
But it’s not all eating clean. Health prides itself on a message of balance, not deprivation, so pictures of beautifully hued macaroons occasionally make their way onto their Instagram (a great move for tailoring content to the visual social network).
Brand Learnings
- Health succeeds by posting a wide variety of content on all its social networks
- Tailor the content to the social network
Jillian Michaels
Jillian Michaels, a personal trainer who came to fame through the Biggest Loser TV megahit, now has her own fitness megabrand that includes everything from DVD’s to apparel. She walks a fine line of being a celebrity and health authority, and is incredibly popular on social media.
Most Engaging Brand Tweet
Exactly! pic.twitter.com/LBi13nprth
— Jillian Michaels (@JillianMichaels) March 27, 2014
Michaels preaches a message of hard work and radical self-acceptance. The philosophical bent of her brand is a big part of what draws her audience.
Most Engaging Brand Facebook Post
Michaels spreads the same message to Facebook fans.
Brand Learnings
- Uplift ’em: people respond well to positivity that’s non-branded (and seems appropriate to your brand). Don’t be afraid to post a non-branded piece of content for higher rates of engagement.
Wrap-Up
So, we’ve learned many things. Mainly that people love posts about planks (just kidding) (say that ten times fast). But there are also some questions left in the air, such as: Does the amount of fans and followers that fitness brands have on social media correspond to their member/subscriber base? How does a brand go about figuring out that connection?
What do you think it takes for a fitness brand to see success on social media? Is there a formula or is it different for different brands with different target audiences? How can you apply this industry’s social media lessons to your own campaigns? Holler in the comments below!!
This post 10 Fitness Brands Winning Social Media originally appeared on Sprout Social.
source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/fitness-brands/
Thursday 26 July 2018
Stop Making These Embarrassing Email Etiquette Mistakes
How many business emails do you get and send per day, and how many of them still follow conventional email etiquette rules?
Statistics say it all:
Business emails grow from year to year, while customer emails go down.
Why is that? Don’t customers want to open, click, and respond to marketing emails anymore? Or do marketers still don't know how to write emails the right way?
Truth is, as of 2018, at least half of the workplace are millennials. And this is a generation not too fond of writing emails.
To most millennials, emails are a kind of ancient practice.
If you are a millennial, you prefer to communicate via social media and messengers and have no problem sending dozens of messages each day.
Unfortunately, email etiquette just doesn't exist on these platforms.
And when you use email outreach tools like NinjaOutreach to create personalized messages and set up automatic outreach campaigns to your email lists, you may tend to make email etiquette faux pas that could have severe consequences for the business that you represent.
https://gyazo.com/b5636bbfc47778fa5a0ae13df87330b9
Below are these most common, embarrassing email etiquette mistakes and what you need to do about them.
1) Your subject line isn't clear
Today, I got a marketing email where the subject line said: "RE: Lesley."
Doesn't that sound like spam to you?
As career coach Barbara Pachter said in her book The Essentials of Business Etiquette, customers "often decide whether to open an email based on the subject line."
And spammy-looking headlines like that are less likely to encourage more customers to read your message.
What should you do instead?
Make sure the subject line of your marketing email addresses customer concerns or explains the issue you want your email to talk about.
Try to use descriptive subject lines for a person to understand why they need to open your letter.
For example:
- Free Webinar - Training ROI: Investing Ιn Training
- For all the moms out there
- How to Answer the Dreaded "Tell Me About Yourself" Interview Question
- Hope to see you in a couple of weeks
- Meeting date changed
2) You use colloquial expressions
Don't do that unless your brand tone of voice intends that and you know that the target audience speaks the same.
"Hey" and "Yo" are not the best variants to use. Consider "Hi" or "Hello" instead.
Also, it's okay to write "dear" in business correspondence.
Of course, make sure you spell your email recipients’ names right. Embarrassing typos can sabotage all your marketing endeavors.
In my case, I've lost count of all the wrong spelling variations of my name that I’ve gotten in my emails: Leslie, Lesly, and Lelsey are just the top three coming to my mind right now.
A sign of good manners would be to add a professional signature block. Give customers more information about you: a full name, title, your company name, and contact information.
Stay formal, and don't try to sound like a chum.
Here's what the signature of a NinjaOutreach Outreach Manager looks like:
Make sure to use the same color, font, and type size as the rest of your email.
Another point to consider is a sign-off.
- The best email closings in 2018 are:
- Best wishes
- Regards
- Sincerely
Also, it's still okay to use "Best" and "Thanks."
Sign-offs to forget are:
- Take care (Are you implying that danger is coming?)
- Love (Too personal)
- Yours truly (Sounds insincere)
- Have a blessed day (Has a religious overtone)
- Looking forward to hearing from you (Sounds passive-aggressive a la "Hey! You'd better reply to this email.")
- Tnx (Are you twelve? Don't pretend you've forgotten the alphabet)
- [Nothing at all] (Sounds impolite)
Lastly, use classic fonts for your marketing emails. No one will take your purple Comic Sans seriously. A 10- to 12-point type Arial or Calibri black font would work best.
Also, don't type in ALL CAPS – it looks like you scream – and avoid the extra use of exclamation points. Seriously!!!
3) You don't proofread
It's really just bad form to send error-ridden emails in general — especially if it's a marketing email aimed to convert a reader.
What else makes you look unprofessional and like you don't care about the customer who'll read your message?
- Typos in business and marketing emails
- Impersonal templates for your business emails
- Plagiarizing texts from competitors and using them as your own
So, make sure to proofread your messages carefully before you hit that Send button and use the best tools to spot plagiarism.
4) You don't consider cultural differences
Tailor your marketing emails according to your target customer profile.
If working with a wider audience that consists not only of native English speakers, for example, use simpler language to help readers get your point quickly.
You have three seconds to keep their attention after they've clicked your email subject line, so make sure to use words that elucidate rather than confuse.
Also, consider the cultural background of your customers when structuring your email and deciding on what words to use.
Be careful with humor. What seems funny to you may not sound the same for a receiver. What’s more, spoken and written humor is far from the same: you don't see a customer, and you can't predict their reaction to your joke.
To quote Barbara Pachter once more: "when in doubt, leave it out."
5) You email when angry
This should go without saying, but you should never write marketing copy or send any business emails when under a foul mood.
It’s true that writing best quells negative emotions, but marketing and business email are not the proper medium for venting.
Readers are not stupid. They feel your anger and will react accordingly. They will either ignore your email or meet it with hostility, which doesn't really play well for your business.
So stay away from writing any professional emails when sad, stressed, or frustrated.
Remember the incident when some unidentified Comcast employees renamed the bills sent to some customers for some passive-aggressive retribution?
https://gyazo.com/1830eed6002a792aeea80b0f466bd0b1
Don’t ever do that to any of your business emails.
Be careful when hitting Reply All.
First, no one likes getting tons of messages that have nothing to do with them.
Second, these messages are hard to ignore because of continuous notifications recipients get on their smartphones, which is annoying.
Third, this exposes email addresses of other people in your list and can turn into a privacy or security issue that will certainly reflect poorly on your business.
Takeaways
So there you have it. The top 5 email etiquette mistakes you need to stop making.
To recap:
- Use short and descriptive subject lines
- Avoid colloquial expressions in greetings and sign-offs
- Add a professional signature block to your emails
- Avoid typos in names and overall text of your emails
- Never use one-size-fits-it-all email templates
- Don't plagiarize email texts from competitors
- Proofread your outreach emails before sending
- Make sure you use the correct name of your email recipient
- Be mindful of cultural differences of your customers
- Be careful with humor in your marketing emails
- Use short words and sentences to make it easier for customers to get your message
- Never write marketing emails when sad, stressed, or angry
- Keep emails straight to the point
- Remember that about 60% of your customers read emails from mobile devices, so optimize your texts accordingly.
To Conclude
Though most of us choose chat and messenger apps in everyday life, email remains one of the most profitable marketing channels for businesses. So, take heed and start following proper email etiquette.
And before you hit send, step into your target customers' shoes for a moment and think: “Would you respond to your own email?”
The post Stop Making These Embarrassing Email Etiquette Mistakes appeared first on NinjaOutreach.
source https://ninjaoutreach.com/email-etiquette/
Wednesday 25 July 2018
Saturday 21 July 2018
Instagram Influencers and Followers Case Study
At NinjaOutreach we know perfectly well how important it is to offer up-to-date and relevant information to our customers. For that reason we have invested a lot of money and time into a complete rewrite of our social engines. The rewrite took 5 weeks, and we have since collected 7,340,568 Instagram profiles, a considerable increase from the 400,000 we had before. Of these:
- 557,043 have been deleted since we started collecting
- 2,414,877 are private profiles
- 46,576 are verified profiles
- 2,015,533 have more than 1000 followers
- 89,694 have more than 100,000 followers (major influencers)
In the following sections we share some interesting insights from our data science team (of course, only the profiles that are still existing are taken into account).
Followers and following
The distribution of the number of followers is incredibly skewed, so it's very difficult to visualize it in a readable manner. This is because the great majority of profiles have a low number of followers (less than 1000), whereas there are profiles with hundreds of millions of followers. This is a difference of 5 orders of magnitudes. Thus, the only way to produce readable graphics is to use a logarithmic scale on the x axis:
As one can see, profiles with a high number of followers are pretty rare: only 10 profiles have more than 100 million followers, and 420 have between 10 and 100 million. The log scale is necessary since on the other hand we have almost 4.5 million profiles with less than 1000 followers. One of the challenges we face at NinjaOutreach is to present only the profiles that are relevant to each of our users.
A simple and useful metric to gauge profiles is the ratio between the number of followers and the number of profiles one is following:
The ratio is very low if a person follows a lot of profiles while being followed by very few accounts. On the other hand, it's very high for the so-called influencers, which have a big audience while at the same time following very few accounts. If the denominator is zero, the ratio is undefined. On average, Instagram accounts have 296 more followers than following, but for verified profiles this ratio jumps to 17,910.
Another important distinction is between micro and major influencers. For simplicity, here we call micro influencers the profiles with less than 100,000 followers, major influencers the profiles with more than 100,000 followers. We calculate that the average followers to following ratio for micro influencers is 37.7, whereas for major influencers it is 18,104. The distributions are once again very much skewed: the median value for the former group is just 1 (meaning that half of the micro influencers have a follower to following ratio equal to or below 1, i.e. they are not really influencers) and there are profiles with very high ratios that contribute to a higher average value. For the major influencers, the median is 650; the distribution is similarly skewed.
What do these values tell us? If you are looking to run campaigns across niche markets you should look for micro-influencers with a followers to following ratio greater than 30 (which amounts to only 5% of the total number of micro-influencers). On the other hand, if your campaign needs major influencers, you should look for profiles with a followers to following ratio greater than 20,000 (which amounts to 8% of the total number of major influencers).
Engagement, engagement, engagement
Perhaps the single most important metric that can reasonably summarize an Instagram profile is the engagement rate. It is defined for each unit of content published by the profile (that is, each post) as the ratio between the sum of the number or likes and replies and the number of followers of the profile:
This metric is of course an approximation, but as we will see it is extremely useful in identifying the quality of a profile.
First off, we plot the distribution of the engagement rate across micro and major influencers. This is the result:
The chart is again very useful to get an idea of which values of the engagement rate are average or better, and we see that there are considerable differences between micro and major influencers. For the former group, 11% is the average engagement rate, while for major influencers values are of course lower and the average is 3%.
One may also wonder how the engagement rate and the followers to following ratio are related. As the chart below illustrates, there is no simple (e.g. linear) relationship between the two metrics:
We can therefore conclude that the engagement rate is a metric that we can use in combination with the followers to following ratio.
Images or Videos?
There is a noticeable difference in engagement between image posts and video posts, and the contrast is even more pronounced for major influencers.
The chart above is fairly dense but extremely interesting. It contains two different histograms, overlaid on the same axes, that display the distribution of the ratio between the engagement rate for image posts and the engagement rate for video posts. If you think that image posts have a higher engagement than video posts, then you would expect this ratio to be higher than 1. The chart confirms this belief. The process that allowed us to produce such an image is the following: for each profile in our database we took the average engagement rate for image posts and the average engagement rate for video posts and we computed the ratio between them. Then we created the histograms above, which display the frequency of each value.
The result is that, on average, for a micro influencer image posts have 1.5 times more engagement than video posts, while for major influencers this multiple increases to more than 2 times. Note: this is not to say that video posts have terrible engagement, but the conclusion is that with respect to image posts and as calculated by the formula above the engagement is lower for videos. This may be explained by the fact that the Instagram application itself facilitates the action of liking image posts over video ones. However, investigating systematic biases like that one is outside the scope of this post.
That is only one side of the coin: the engagement quality is also determined by replies and likes. On Instagram, the number of likes is much higher than the number of replies. On average, the profile of a major influencer will have 237 times more likes than replies, while for micro influencers the multiple is lower at 42 times. Replies are usually considered stronger engagement than simple likes, so this should also be considered by those that have to decide which influencers to partner up with for sponsored campaigns.
Profile quality
The engagement rate can be used as an indicator of profile quality and can produce some accurate results. In particular, it appears to be very good at pointing out which profiles don't have genuine engagement.
From the formula that defines the engagement rate, we can see that this rate can be above 1 if the sum of likes and replies exceeds the number of followers of a particular profile. This can happen for a fraction of the total posts of a profile (e.g. if one or two posts gain extreme popularity for some reason) but it cannot certainly be the norm, since the number of followers will balance out.
For healthy profiles the engagement rate will be well below 1, but we can look for profiles with huge rates as an example of the opposite. In fact, in our dataset we have profiles with engagement rates well above 100. For example, the user ksjh2537g has a rate of 32,200%, having 21 followers and a single post with 6662 likes and 118 replies. This is a profile that advertises an Indonesian business that sells likes and followers:
Another example of an artificially high engagement rate is the user johnmaldonado023, which has 2 followers and is following 30 accounts, but has a single post with 277 likes and 2 replies. Lo and behold, one of the comments is from the profile express.followers581, which is yet another business that sells fake likes and fake followers. There are countless other examples with similar statistics: the user priora has 50 followers, is following 93 profiles and has a single post with 10,400 likes and 12 replies.
As we observed before, the followers to following ratio is to be used in conjunction with the engagement rate. In this case, the followers to following ratio would not necessarily have been sufficient to discard these low quality profiles, but the engagement rate is quite effective.
Conclusions
In this post we performed some very high-level exploratory analysis of the profile data we collected. In particular, we observed the usefulness of two key metrics, the followers to following ratio and the engagement rate. If you are looking for influencers as part of an advertising campaign you should focus on these ratios to filter out the profiles that don't align with your campaign targets.
In the next post of this series we will perform an even bigger analysis with 6.5M more profiles (for a total of 13.5M profiles), and we will explore geolocation data of the profiles and the differences between profiles belonging to different categories of profiles.
The post Instagram Influencers and Followers Case Study appeared first on NinjaOutreach.
source https://ninjaoutreach.com/instagram-case-study/
Wednesday 18 July 2018
Monday 16 July 2018
Friday 13 July 2018
Tuesday 10 July 2018
Want to Be Better at Content Marketing? Read This
Are you interested in becoming a content marketer, or you have actually already started but are still wet behind the ears? Then this article about content marketing best practices is for you.
Don’t be fooled by how pedantic it seems to sound. Seasoned content managers still swear by these. And the sooner you learn the rules of the trade, the sooner you are to getting well on your way to content marketing success.
Just exactly what are best practices, anyway?
Technopedia describes best practices as techniques, methods, or processes considered as the most efficient ways to achieve the same desired result. These are often written out as part of a company's content marketing strategy to ensure that you reach your goals with as few errors as possible.
Most content marketing best practices are standard while others change as content marketing strategies evolve. That's why it pays to know what these are even if you've been doing content marketing for some time.
In this post, I will be sharing with you ten current content marketing best practices you need to observe to stay ahead of your competition and achieve the results you desire.
1. Quality writing matters
I decided to start off with this content marketing best practice because this is the most important. No matter how well you execute the other nine I will mention, if you don't observe this, all others will be useless.
A well-written piece of content is the heart of any successful content marketing strategy. Stuffing your article or video script or ebook with keywords (which is, by the way, a big no-no) won't be able to mask poorly written content.
That said, make sure that you give your content the time and attention it deserves. Do some research for the information you'll share, and make sure that your sources are credible.
And please, proofread and check your content for typos and grammar mistakes. With tools like Grammarly and Hemingway available, you have absolutely no excuse not to check your work before hitting the Publish button.
2. Perform periodic content audits
Doing a content audit on a regular basis is an essential best practice content marketers must implement for two reasons.
First, a content audit will help you find old content on your website and social media accounts. You can choose to take these out or freshen these pieces of content by incorporating more current data published. That way, your brand's website and social media accounts provide your target account with relevant and timely content.
Second, performing a content audit can reveal gaps in your content. Content creation is one of the significant challenges faced by content marketers, according to a report published by the Content Marketing Institute.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
Once you determine what these content gaps are, you and your team can transform these into topics for new content to publish.
3. Formulate your brand's value proposition
A goldfish's attention span is nine seconds. Most people that go online have attention spans much shorter than this. That means that your content only has 10 seconds to capture your visitors' attention and convince them to stay.
Source: Nielsen Norman Group
This is where your brand's value proposition becomes do not. A value proposition essentially tells your audience what value would they get from your content, and why should they care. These are the two things that you need to communicate at the start of your content. Otherwise, you lose their attention, and they end up leaving your page.
4. Give your audience what they want
According to a survey done by Meaningful Brands, 84% of customers expect brands to create content that educates, inspires or entertains them.
Source: Meaningful Brands
Yet, the survey also saw that 60% of content that brands publish are not able to help them reach their content marketing goals.
The reason lies in the understanding that marketers have about content marketing. Despite all the information available describing what content marketing is, some marketers and even brand owners still think that content marketing and advertising are one and the same.
"You can see it in the content that they publish," said Adam Steele, Founder of Loganix Citation Building. "The content they publish tends to focus on either their brand or their products and services."
Of course, there's nothing wrong with having these kinds of content in your content marketing strategy. After all, one of the reasons why brands delve into content marketing is to generate leads to turn into customers that will buy from them.
But, as Aaron Haynes, Founder of Fenix Pro, pointed out, these should not be the only type of content to create.
"The goal of content marketing is to open the lines of communication with your target audience," said Haynes. "The way to do this is by first knowing and understanding the pain points of your brand's buyer persona. When you're able to give them content that addresses these pain points, and shows them ways how to overcome them, they will slowly let down their guard. Only then, will they be open to finding out more about what your company has to offer."
5. Use long-form blog posts and articles
A study done by Orbit Media showed that more content marketers and bloggers are writing up longer posts and articles.
Source: Orbit Media
Quite surprising, isn't it? After all, people's attention spans are much shorter these days.
Adam Heitzman, co-founder of Higher Visibility, said the reason is that of the amount of information they provide to your visitors.
"People are very impatient when they're online," he explained. "They don't want to keep on going from one blog post to another just so they can solve their problem. They want everything already available for them in one place. Writing a long-form blog post allows you to become thorough and in-depth on the topic."
6. Repurpose your content
Repurposing already published content should be a part of your content marketing strategy.
Let's face it: creating content is not easy, even for seasoned content marketers. Writing a blog post or article takes time and effort. Repurposing your content is a cost-efficient way of extending the life and profitability of your content while offering a fresh way of answering questions of your target audience.
Repurposing content also helps extend your audience reach. "Not everyone enjoys reading blog posts and articles," Zach Smith, Marketing Manager of PortaPottyPros, explained. "Some prefer watching videos. Others learn faster when the information is presented as an infographic. The more people you can reach, the more visitors you can nurture and convert into customers."
7. Optimize your content for multiple devices
Mobile internet use is one of the content marketing trends expected in 2018. But that doesn't mean that laptops will be a thing of the past. In fact, this analysis from comScore shows that consumers today will be using multiple platforms when connecting to the Internet.
In other words, your content should be easy to consume whether it's viewed on a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone. By this, I don't just mean that it's easy to read. Everything on your brand's website must be accessible and easy to use, regardless of which device your audience chooses. Otherwise, your audience will not hesitate to leave your site and go to your competitor.
8. Distribute your content in multiple channels
Next to the quality of content you create, the most critical part that determines your content marketing strategy's success is your distribution plan. You must be able to distribute your content across different channels during their most optimal days and times to get the most engagement from your audience.
One good example of this is the Four Seasons hotel. Until recently, the content they publish in their Four Season magazine is only viewed by guests that stay in their hotels. They decided to expand this by featuring some of the material published here on their website and on their Facebook page.
Source: Screenshot from Four Seasons’ Facebook Page
Because of this, they're not only able to previous clients to stay again but also attract new customers.
Using a marketing automation platform is now the best practice when it comes to content distribution. It allows you to upload and schedule your content in bulk, freeing up time for you to devote to other tasks.
An even more effective way to expand this strategy would be to actually nurture conversations via email. Email marketing, to date, is still one of the most top-performing marketing channels in terms of ROI.
And as far as email outreach goes, NinjaOutreach is an example of a tool you can use to:
- Find email addresses
- Add your contacts to a list
- Create personalized messages
- Add dynamic fields to suit each of your contacts, and
- Set your emails to go out at the best times, complete with automated follow-ups
Source: Screenshot from NinjaOutreach Home Page
9. Capitalize on User-Generated Content
According to Adweek, 85% of customers consider User-Generated Content (UGC) highly influential in their decision to buy from a particular brand. Incorporating this into your content marketing strategy can also help increase conversion rates by 29%.
Unlike influencer marketing which involves collaborating with a micro-influencer to create content for your brand, UGCs are pieces of content created by your existing customers. Not only are they more genuine, but also capitalizes on the fact that people love an opportunity to share their opinions about different brands.
One way to generate UGCs is by running a contest. This is exactly what Starbucks did through its White Cup Contest as part of the launch of their reusable plastic cup. Customers were encouraged to doodle on their Starbucks cups and send in pictures on social media using the hashtag #WhiteCupContest.
Source: HubSpot
Within three weeks, the contest generated close to 4,000 entries. That's 4,000 pieces of content that Starbucks used to promote their brand and their latest tumbler!
10. User experience matters
In 2016, the Columbia College in Chicago decided to significantly reduce their website from 36,000 pages to just 944 pages.
At first, this move may sound surprising. But, as it turns out, by cutting trimming down their site, the college received double the number of student inquiries they get in a month.
The Norwegian Cancer Society also did the same thing, removing 4,000 pages from their website. As a result, the organization received 70% more one-time donations, 88% more monthly donors, and a 164% increase in members.
The positive results experienced by these two sites show the importance of ensuring that your users have a pleasant experience on your brand's website. You need to make sure that the content here is not only relevant but also well-organized so that your visitors can find what they need quickly.
While you don't need to be a master in web design and development, it is considered a best practice to learn and understand the basics. That way, it will be easier for you to coordinate with the company's design team so that your visitors will find it easy to navigate through your website.
In Conclusion
Content marketing will continue to evolve. These 10 best practices I mentioned are those that have been tried and tested to deliver results despite industry changes. Experiment and test these out, so that you can find the ones that you can immediately incorporate into your current content marketing strategy.
The post Want to Be Better at Content Marketing? Read This appeared first on NinjaOutreach.
source https://ninjaoutreach.com/content-marketing-best-practices/
Thursday 5 July 2018
Wednesday 4 July 2018
24 Epic Email Marketing Stats
When it comes to choosing the best method for your online marketing budget, there are more than a few options.
The following are currently some of the most recognized ways for reaching out to your target audience:
- Traditional paid ads
- Search engine optimization
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Viral marketing
- Email marketing
Now with all these options currently available, how do you decide how to allocate your marketing budget?
Of course, you can’t pick just any method. Before you spend your marketing budget, you have to make data-driven choices to make sure you choose the strategies that will give you more bang for your buck.
And when it comes to hard numbers, it seems email marketing is still the top performer.
According to a recent survey, email marketing gives back a whopping $4,400 ROI, or a $44 return for every $1 spent. Not to mention, email marketing consistently outranks any other marketing tactic year after year in terms of ROI.
If you look at the ROI metric alone, email marketing stands out as the most sensible choice.
On top of ROI, email marketing is also one of the best methods to add personalization to your marketing.
Through email marketing, you have the option to get users’ permission to obtain their names and data so you can deliver better content for them, and nurture your conversations in a way that feels way more personal. All these can even be done via a well-planned email flow mapping and some automation.
You don’t need to worry about the rapidly increasing shift to mobile, either, because email marketing is not getting left behind in that area.
In fact, email open rates have been increasing in mobile.
Still not entirely sure about making email marketing your top strategy?
Let’s let the data do the rest of the talking.
Here is a list of the top 24 email marketing stats every marketer should know.
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The post 24 Epic Email Marketing Stats appeared first on NinjaOutreach.
source https://ninjaoutreach.com/24-epic-email-marketing-stats/
Tuesday 3 July 2018
#SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for July 2018
Summer is just around the corner and we’re getting ready by brushing up on our strategic chops. This June, #SproutChat is bringing you insight on industry topics ranging from knowing which analytics you should be focusing on, different ways to use social to appeal to millennial audiences, and we’ll cap it all off by celebrating #SocialMediaDay together!
See a topic that interests you? Use the “add to event” button to ensure a calendar reminder.
Wednesday, July 4: NO CHAT! Enjoy your 4th of July.
Wednesday, July 11: Pinterest Marketing With Sprout Product Marketing Specialist, Amber Washington
Join us for a #SproutChat that will dig right into the state of social marketing on Pinterest in 2018! Whether you’ve neglected Pinterest for business or are looking for ways to evolve your strategy, we’ve got you covered. Our Product Marketing Specialist, Amber Washington, will be joining us to talk all things Pinteresting!
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Wednesday, July 18: All Things #AgencyLife With #SproutPartner Nathan Greenberg
This chat will focus on all things #AgencyLife with special guest Nathan Greenberg from Arkside! Arkside is an award-winning, multimedia ad agency. Their specialties include marketing strategy for law, finance, automotive & healthcare. Get ready to get your agency hats on and dig into common issues that agencies face.
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Wednesday, July 25: Redefining ROI With Lucy Hitz
Join us for a #SproutChat chock full of #SproutData. We’ll be joined by Lucy Hitz who is the brains behind the 2018 Sprout Social Index. We’ll take a look at the challenges marketers are facing especially when it comes to ROI, what consumers want vs what marketers are doing, and everything in between. You won’t want to miss this one!
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This post #SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for July 2018 originally appeared on Sprout Social.
source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sproutchat-calendar-july-2018/