And yet, email newsletter marketing is poised to see continued growth for the foreseeable future – despite all the hype that it’s dead or dying. Here are some proof points and ways you can (and should leverage) email in 2020 and beyond.

1. Unbeatable ROI – As Much As 4,400%

According to OptinMonster, “email marketing remains the best way to attract and retain customers” and has a potential return on investment of up to 4400%. That’s because once you’ve gone to the expense of building an email list of engaged customers who see your content as valuable (instead of SPAM), the cost to send email approaches next to nothing and the people who opted in are genuinely interested in what you’re offering.

2. Consumers Prefer Email When Talking to Brands

According to Campaign Monitor, “More than half (52.7%) of those surveyed in the U.S. check their personal email account more than 10 times a day, and it is by far their favorite way to receive communication from brands.” Think about that for a moment. Consumers are telling you they prefer email over direct mail, mobile apps, and social media; things that cost substantially more than email to build, grow and maintain. This study showed that email is even preferred to push notifications and notifications inside their mobile wallet. And, it didn’t mater what industry. Email won out in multiple industry sectors including retail (online and brick & mortar), travel, entertainment, nonprofit, and digital media.

3. Email Often Has Higher Engagement Rates

“For the “Big 3” of social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), the engagement rate isn’t even 0.6%. Compare that to email’s average open rate of 22.86% and even its click-through rate of 3.71%”, according to OptinMonster. With the hyper targeting capabilities of Facebook, you’d think that social media would give email marketing a run for it’s money. And it did back in the early 2010 timeframe when companies enjoyed organic reach. But then, Facebook decided it needed to make its shareholder happy and so as it went public, it also squashed organic reach and so now even organic posts require pop up ads for elearning companies to reach the very audience who is following your brand.

4. You Own Your Data & Direct Access to Your Customers

Perhaps the most powerful and compelling reason email will continue to dominate is the ownership aspect. As GDPR and other consumer privacy legislation is passed and goes into effect (see California Consumer Privacy Act), data compliance is being regulated. That means, the value of data will continue to rise and the cost to advertise will likely continue it’s upward rise. It’s likely that in the future, the more you spend on 3^rd party advertising platforms, the more it will continue to cost you if you’re not building and managing your own customer relationship database. As the value of third party data continues to rise, direct access to your own customers will be critical for your long-term success. And how do customers want to be contacted? Email, of course (see point #2 above).

5. Personalization & Relevancy Continue to Grow

When you combine the top points, you’ll find the importance of personalization in email marketing continues to dominate. “76% of consumers agree that retail brands are sending relevant, accurate emails which reflect their shopping preferences, location or purchase history,” according to Campaign Monitor. The same study acknowledges that “more than half of those surveyed in the U.S. check their personal email account more than 10 times a day.”

When you’re building out your 2020 plans, be sure that email marketing is getting more than it’s fair share. As much as 58% check email first before doing anything else online. It might just be time to take another look at the investments you’ve made (and should be making) in building and growing your customer relationships via email marketing. Not only is email here to stay, it’s likely to continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Bill Carmody is an Executive Coach and Corporate Trainer. Connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter or BillCarmody.com

The post 5 Reasons Email Marketing Will Continue to Grow in 2020 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

As a result, we’re starting to see more emphasis applied on values such as customer experience, quality of service and competitive pricing in the B2B sector. More B2B businesses are adapting to these challenges. A major part of that adaptation is embracing the online marketplace model. Here’s how:

1. B2B Commerce Growth Is Gaining Attention

A 2019 Forrester’s report estimates that B2B eCommerce transactions will hit $1.3 trillion by the year 2023. For anyone who has an interest in the B2B sector (or contemplating a future in it), this is the ideal time to take massive action.

There are tremendous opportunities in the manufactured goods, aerospace industry, professional electronics, and office supplies and equipment markets. B2B eCommerce is poised for rapid growth and marketers have to be ready in order to growth with the changes in buying habits (or be left behind).

As more players enter the B2B space, quality standards to go up which will further increase acceptance and adoption. All these trends point increasingly towards the rise of an online marketplace model in the B2B industry.

2. Changing Buyer’s Habits

Digitalization is definitely playing its part in transforming the B2B commerce. More and more B2B buyers are turning to the internet for research and online purchases. Businesses with an online marketplace are speculating that within the next couple of years nearly half of their clients will move to purchase online.

With this changing buyer behavior, B2B businesses will increasingly look to an online marketplace model for convenience. Buyers look for a wide range of options, competitive prices and easy delivery to simplify their buying process.

YoKart, mutli-vendor marketplace platform has provided a number of options that will help new entrants get started. Several businesses that started with this platform found it easy to tackle the disruption that the online marketplace model caused all over the world — namey in an effort to compete with Amazon.

3. The Amazon-Effect on B2B Commerce

Amazon has given a new definition to the customer experience. Even before the buyer has made contact with the seller to make a purchase, the seller should have some basic knowledge about the needs and habits of their buyer. This is best illustrated through the ‘customers who bought this item also bought’ section on Amazon’s website. Now the same kind of reception is expected by today’s B2B buyers.

This is easier said than done. At the outset, there is a need to expand the suite of products/services offered as well as maintaining quality. When done right, this is an effective strategy for customer acquisition and retention — as is competitive pricing. A marketplace model carries all three attributes.

4. More Value to the Customers

The whole online marketplace model is geared towards offering more value to the customer, which is the basis of marketing in modern e-commerce. With the changing buyer’s habits, B2B businesses will now have adequate reason to consider the online marketplace model.

The advantage that B2B enjoys here is that nothing is new and uncertain for them. The model has been sufficiently practiced in other B2B to forecast all the possible outcomes. All B2B players to do is identify practices that work well and are applicable in their business model.

In fact, some of it is already happening. Many B2B merchants have launched their m-commerce or e-commerce websites with features and functionalities that are known to remove obstacles from the shopping experience. Social Media’ role in bringing new customers to the B2B distributors is also signaling a shift towards a much familiar online marketplace model.

5. Safer Way to Product Assortment Expansion

Sellers today don’t like to have their hands tied. Here again the marketplace model delivers. It enables a risk-free product assortment expansion by bringing a whole community of sellers together that imparts flexibility and agility to the e-commerce process.

Another advantage that marketplace model has to offer is for small businesses. With the marketplace model, they’re suddenly looking at a huge throng of buyers interested in purchasing their products/services. And it works out quite well for the buyers as well. They have in front of them several supplier catalogs and lists of available products, which is something that’s usually expected in B2C e-commerce platforms.

Conclusion

Lack of choice and convenience is something that’s frustrated modern B2B buyers and it has been one of B2B e-commerce’s shortcomings. Spurred by the success of the B2C marketplace model, B2B merchants are beginning to deliver more digital commerce options and deliver a more convenient shopping experience. This is further growing customer acquisition and retention. Sellers are mindful of their target audience’s needs and working diligently to deliver on these new expectations. Today’s B2C models shows exactly how this will be done for B2B commerce as it continues to grow and prosper in the years to come.

The post B2B Commerce Will Hit $1.3 Trillion by 2023 — Consider a Marketplace Model appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

This year, with at least some of the hype simmering down a bit, we have an opportunity to separate the hype of blockchain with the practical applications. One article that caught my eye was Social Media Marketing in the Blockchain Era, written by Alon Braun, Decision-Making Scientist. I had an opportunity to speak with him about blockchain’s impact on Facebook’s advertising dominance, and he had some great insights that should be quite encouraging to social media marketers.

GDPR’s Impact on Selling Your Data Profitability
“Today, Facebook is totally free because the platform profits by selling hyper-targeted advertising using your data,” says Braun. “Even if you’re willing to overlook the Cambridge Analytica data breech, or even the most recent NameTests data breech, Europe’s implementation of GDPR is quickly changing the data privacy landscape globally.”

As more consumers attempt to (legally) take back control of their data, the hyper-targeted advertising business model comes under attack. Meanwhile, Braun argues, blockchain technology offers a much safer alternative because each content contributor controls his or her own data. While Facebook stores billions of customer records in a more conventional database structure (read: an enticing honey pot for hackers), a blockchain-based social media platform would disaggregate and encrypt each of these records rendering an attack essentially pointless.

The Rise of Micropayments & Performance-Based Content
Ask any content contributor what their biggest pain point is and they’ll tell you it’s getting paid for your content. As a former Inc contributor with 342 articles to my name, I can tell you this first hand that very few online platforms pay for content anymore. What’s worse, Facebook and YouTube profit from all of this content via their advertising model.

“With blockchain and cryptocurrency, instead of just liking, commenting and sharing a post, you can actually make a micropayment,” says Braun. Imagine instead of getting 2,000 likes, you actually received ten cents for each like (or $200) for your effort. This would give rise to performance-based content and wrestle control away from platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

The Impact of a More Global Community
Perhaps the most important coming disruptor is the growth of the international community as the next two billion people will come from China and India. “Today, Facebook is still dominated by an English-speaking audience,” says Braun. “What happens when the majority prefer to communicate in Mandarin or Hindi?” With more global content being created and shared, Facebook’s algorithms will also have to evolve in order to remain relevant.

With blockchain as the underpinning technology for a social media platform, the trifecta of enhanced privacy protection, introduction of effective micropayments with content in your native tongue, Facebook’s advertising dominance is ripe for disruption. Just as the content and platforms evolve, so will pay-for-performance advertising campaigns that drive incremental business. While I’m in no way counting Facebook out, I will say that their current advertising dominance is likely to wane thanks in part to blockchain technology.

The post Will Blockchain Diminish Facebook’s Advertising Dominance? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Every business should have established objectives before tinkering with their social media presence. Set goals early and monitor them constantly. Simply having a Facebook account is meaningless if you don’t create value for your customers.

Are your social media posts only getting a few interactions? Uncertain about what strategies to use to improve your presence? We’ve got 5 easy and free tips to help you boost your social shares and improve that referral marketing campaign.

Build Relationships, Not Traffic

Fostering an online community provides a higher ROI than acquiring new customers- it’s also cheaper. This follows the 80/20 rule of marketing: 80% of your sales will be generated by the 20% of your consumer base that’s loyal to your brand.

Social media marketing allows you to keep your brand up-to-date with your existing customer base and should not be confused with an outbound marketing campaign. According to Ambassador, 71% of customers who had a positive social media experience with a brand were more likely to recommend it to others.

Brand advocacy means your customers market and promote your products for you, which is not only cost efficient, but also more believable than what your employees say about your own company.

Growing your audience and building relationships with industry thought leaders will position your brand to become a leading voice and an influencer. Before acquiring this status, it’s key to partner with influencers early on who will endorse and market your brand for you. This can be accomplished through sponsorship, engaging with them directly, and sharing their content.

These strategies should be standard practice. Stamp your name on every relevant piece of content that you’d want your brand name attached to.

Engage with your audience by honoring any feedback you receive, encouraging user-generated content submissions, and engaging in community groups/forums. Follow your followers and listen to any industry buzz relevant to your business or your competitors.

Social media is also the ultimate user-review resource, so it’s important to immediately respond to any feedback or criticism to mitigate any negative exposure. Through strong social engagement you can be proactive, rather than reactive, in curating a positive social media presence.

Once you’ve established your brand’s identity and built trust with your customers, drop a highly relevant promotion or offer directly in front of them to drive sales.

Provide Value

Content quality always trumps quantity. Examples of highly shareable content include tutorials, infographics, videos, and long-form blog posts.

One strategy that many brands take advantage of is a behind-the-scenes story about the company itself. According to OneSpot, web users consume 100,000+ online words daily. 92% of users want those words to be delivered in a story format.

Share content, self-produced or not, that provides utility for your customers. This could even include a funny meme or a how-to guide from an industry publication.

You’re essentially establishing your own syndicated content platform. Encourage your customers to turn to you for news and information. Provide value that will entice users to engage with your brand in the first place.

As an added bonus, the content you share will provide valuable backlinks for your website and help improve its search engine rankings. This will align perfectly with your multi-channel marketing campaign.

Your highest shared and compounding posts could also be featured on your website and in a company e-newsletter.

Create a Post Calendar

Did you know that overposting can actually harm your brand’s image and reduce the amount of shares you get on a post? It’s important to create a post calendar and brainstorm topics for posts throughout the week. Your social media calendar will likely be an extension of your larger content marketing calendar.

Ideally, you should only post to Facebook once a day for maximum engagement. Research what times of day each channel receives the highest engagement. For example, businesses receive the highest engagement over Facebook between 1pm and 4pm with some studies showing increased engagement on Thursday through Sunday. On the other hand, studies have shown that you should post as many as 15 times a day on Twitter for maximum effectiveness.

More importantly, you’ll want to know which social media channels to post to based on your audience’s psychographic data. Expanding on this notion, specific categories of content will receive higher engagement on certain days and over certain channels.

Light and interactive content over Facebook will receive higher engagement during the workday on Friday than Monday. LinkedIn is the ideal platform to produce long form and industry-specific content for a professional-based audience. Consider what types of engagement you wish to receive with each post and strategically plan and place each post for maximum engagement.

Brands generally follow the seven-in-one rule of posting, which states that out of every seven posts, one should be focused on self-promotion. Every other post should be about value-added content. Factor this into your content calendar and add columns for the date and social media channels you’ll share each piece of content on.

*Be sure to brand each post you create and use this opportunity to create your author’s voice.

 Interactive and Seasonal Content

Seek audience engagement by providing interactive content with value. Interactive content, such as quizzes, contests, and giveaways are great choices to entice user clicks and consumer brand engagement. This will promote a positive branded experience.

Some experts suggest focusing on your local market, as you will have the easiest time fostering brand recognition and a community immediately at your reach. One of the best forms of interactive content is hosting an event that draws people to your physical offline location.

In addition to sharing your blog posts, you could simply ask your followers a provocative or interesting question that encourages debate and discussion. You could host Q&As or live streams that encourage users to post questions to the feed.

These tactics will show the human side of your brand.

As referenced earlier, studies show that customers want brands to tell more stories. Whether it’s advertising your corporate wellness programs or local community sponsorships, brand storytelling reaches customers on a personal level and is authentic.

Sharing seasonal or trending content shows your audience you have your finger on the pulse. If conducted at the right time, seasonal content has the potential to compound and draw a mass audience to your site for a short period of time. Seasonal content can also be reposted one year later.

Analytics

Finally, assess how well your social media strategy is aligning with your bottom line. Actively track key performance indicators, such as the amount of referral traffic generated from social media channels and the social signals each piece of content is acquiring.

There are many analytics tools your business could use, such as Hootsuite and Buffer. You can use these tools to track the amount of email subscribers or website subscribers that they collect from each post and channel.

If you have Google Analytics activated on your website you can insert a tracking code that will track the amount of times somebody shares a blog post from your website.

The important thing to remember is patience. Results will develop slowly over time, and abandoning your strategies early on will plague your inbound marketing strategy.

Final Thoughts

Social media is a community platform, not a marketplace for your brand. The focus of any inbound marketing strategy is to pull customers closer to you and this requires consistent engagement and value-added content.

Align your content marketing strategies with your social media outreach to retain customers and create demand for your products. In an interconnected world, brand affinity remains the most formidable weapon in a business’s arsenal to separate itself from the crowd.

Want more help? Schedule your free 1-hour breakthrough marketing coaching call with me.

The post 5 Social Media Marketing Best Practices appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

1. Don’t Miss Out On A Massive Audience Of Potential Customers

Part of the problem is the knowledge gap. Many small businesses just don’t know how to use Facebook to get the most out of it. This article can help. We’ll discuss some of the most important ways to maximize your Facebook ROI, and how to get the platform to work for you.

2. Get Your Money’s Worth From Your Profile

It all starts with your profile. Much like your business website, users can tell when you haven’t put any thought or effort into things. The difference is, you don’t have to be a web developer to fix this problem. Just make sure you fill out your profile as completely as possible. List your business hours, phone number, and complete address. Use a description that makes the most of your allotted 154 characters. Your customers go to your page looking for information; give it to them.

Additionally, include pertinent photos: menus, products, location—anything people would need to see to decide to use your business. And make sure your cover photo is something eye-catching and impressive. A cover photo that doesn’t excite isn’t doing you any favors. Get your profile cleaned up and presentable, just like you would with your place of business.

3. Use Reviews

There are a number of reasons you want to turn on Facebook page reviews. First of all, customer reviews give you a chance to measure your performance. If you notice a lot of negative reviews, then you know you need to up your game, and those reviews are usually specific enough to tell you how. Take that feedback (which is free), and put it to good use refining your performance, and improving customer experience.

When the customer reviews are positive, it’s free advertising. People will see the positive reviews and will be more inclined to trust your business. Customer reviews play a big part in buying decisions these days, and you can bet a good rating will be good for business.

In either case (and especially when there’s negative feedback), you need to be responding to reviews. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly the negative ones. Seek to resolve the customer’s issue, and change their opinion of your company. Even if they are unreasonable, and refuse to rescind their original statements, more level-headed users will see your attempts at reconciliation, and take it as proof that you care about the needs and feelings of customers.

So turn on reviews, keep an eye on them, and respond promptly to concerns.

4. Show, Don’t Tell

Visual content (including photos, images, and videos) is 40 times more likely to get shared than non-visual content. If you want to increase engagement, spread your message further, and maximize your leads, you need to be adding visuals to the quality content that you post. These visuals could include infographics, photos of events, and so on. When choosing images to share on your page, make sure the visuals you are using are professional and build your brand reputation.

5. Analyze & Adjust

The only way to know for sure if your Facebook efforts are working is to set some metrics and track them. There’s a number of things you can measure, and a number of ways to track them, but it’s something you need to be doing. Measure how effective your efforts are, determine what’s working and what’s not, and make adjustments accordingly. As you fine-tune your strategy, you will find a larger audience, increased leads, and better conversion rates.

Using Facebook for your business can have significant returns, if done right, especially for small business marketing. It’s a great way to connect with your customers and start conversations. These Facebook marketing ideas should get you started, and help you increase traffic to your page, your website, and to your digital shopping cart.

The post 5 Facebook Marketing Tips For Small and Local Business appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So, what’s the secret to marketing to generations that are typically grouped by stereotypes? The secret is, of course, treating each generation as individuals. Treat them as if they were individual people with their own skill sets and viewpoints. That’s exactly what they are, after all. Today we’ll be looking at the three generations and show you how to reach them using social marketing.

Millennials

The US alone has 75 million of these people, which is an awful lot to try and target. The New York Times tells us that around two-thirds of millennials would rather make $40,000 per year doing a job they loved over earning $100,000 per year doing something they didn’t like.

How can you apply this to social marketing? Millennials aren’t looking for more “fun and excitement” than any other generation when searching online. What they want to find is some meaning to it all.

This is the reason that social marketing and search engine optimization made the recent shift away from marketing like a robot and moving towards authenticity. Millennials are able to smell this fake content from miles away. They find fake things hollow and meaningless.

You need to show millennials your authenticity by creating a personality around it, or by giving your brand a narrator. A great example of this is Greg Shuey of Stryde. He regularly hosts Facebook Live broadcasts where he and his team show customers what they are working on. Authenticity is created when you post through social media like your brand is a person, rather than a faceless corporate construct.

Generation X

Did you know that 45^th President of the United States Barrack Obama is a member of Generation X? What was the one thing that truly characterized his presidency from when he started campaigning to when he left office? His pragmatic hope of course.

Generation X was characterized as the “rebel generation” in the early 90s. These are the kids who grew up under Reagan and played grunge rock in order to drown out the world around them. At least, this is the stereotypical view of this generation. The reality of generation X is that it’s pretty easy to characterize them; generation Xers are the hopeful strategists of the generations, and most of them can spend up to 10 hours a week consuming content online. As such, there’s plenty of potential for social marketing with them.

Show generation X the value and practical uses of your product, but be genuine and authentic about it. Bestselling author Andrea Butje of Aromahead Institute came up with an ideal solution for authentically offering valuable and practical information about products. She did this by offering certification courses, allowing students to use the education they have in essential oils to create an aromatherapy career. Gen Xers are more likely to bite if you offer them something of value that could ultimately change their lives.

Baby Boomers

Many people consider baby boomers to be adults that don’t understand modern technology, but this isn’t a fair representation of the generation. This might come as a bit of a surprise, but the latest research from Pew Research Center confirms that, as of 2016, 64% of adults between 50 and 64 were on at least one social media site.

Baby boomers are the most ignored area of society in terms of social marketing. You should never forget that around half of all consumer expenditures come from baby boomers. This generation is also spending around $3.2 trillion annually. It’s a market you can’t afford to be missing out on.

Before you go all crazy and spamming baby boomers with social marketing, though, there is one thing you need to keep in mind. They don’t see social media as a marketplace, more so as a place that they can connect with their long lost friends.

Baby boomers also tend to be very loyal customers. That’s the whole purpose of the “Like” button on your Facebook page. The way to succeeding with social marketing for baby boomers is to get them to interact with the Facebook page and make them feel like loyal customers who can be engaged.

So, how is this done? By giving them great deals for interacting with your page. Give them the chance to try things for free. If you are in their local area, then promise that you’ll have a friendly chat with them if they stop by the store. They place a heavy value on face-to-face interaction, preferring it over digital communications.

The true issue that many social marketing campaigns have when campaigning to generations is to focus on stereotypes and not reality. This just makes you look like you’re trying too hard – such as when Sonic tweeted “bae” to their followers. If you want to win then you need to be treated followers like people, no matter their generation. They are people after all, and not a generation.

The post How to Reach Millenials, Boomers and Gen X with Social Marketing (Stereotype-Free) appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So, if you judge digital marketing by the dollars spent, then you could easily argue that the only money you should be spending in digital marketing would be to launch a paid search campaign on Google or to boost your content on Facebook. The wisdom of the crowds would lead you to this conclusion, and if you stopped here then you’d be fighting it out for category dominance in your industry’s keywords and social media engagement.

Seeking An Alternative to Facebook & Google

What’s fascinating to me is that all of the advertising on Facebook and Google still leverages traditional banner ads and text-based ads. In 1995, during my tenure at Modem Media, we were seeing as much as 44% click through rates on banners ads. Today, the industry average click through rate is somewhere between 0.04% and 0.17% for display banner ads – and has been that low for some time now.

When you then combine ad blocking, bot fraud and banner ad blindness, you can see why most marketers are actively looking for alternatives that will deliver better results. Having been in the digital marketing industry now for 22 years, I’ve seen quite a number of companies saying that they’ve got it all figured out and can consistently deliver ROI. When you pull back the layers of the onion, however, you’re usually seeing their best case studies with a giant asterisk that “your results may vary.”

So what’s the answer? Where do you go to generate engagement and drive sales when everyone appears to be doing pretty much the same thing and getting lackluster results?

Quality Content Marketing Developed Authentically Reigns Supreme

Here’s what my agency, Trepoint, has discovered. While content marketing has been around for some time, it’s only recently that the focus has shifted from companies talking about how great they are to companies authentically looking to answer questions and solve problems that people actually have.

By quality content, I don’t mean beautifully designed infographics and blog posts that tell the world how great your company / product / idea is. Quality content is about understanding what your audience really wants to know and delivering that knowledge as incredible value for free and with no strings attached. 

As marketers have started to do more (social media) listening, they are discovering what problems people have that they can actually solve. It turns out that being a real person that’s actually helpful is the best marketing that exists. Your content that is focused on the needs of your customers and potential customers outperforms the ad spend on digital advertising simply because when people find something incredibly useful, they tend to share it with others who are experiencing a similar problem.

I recently interviewed Jay Baer for an Inc article and I LOVE his example of River Pools and Spas. Specifically that in 2008, it turns out that if you couldn’t pay your mortgage you had exactly zero interest in investing in an in ground pool in your back yard and River Pools and Spas was in a world of hurt. They took to their blog to write more than 300 blogs posts answering every question any prospect had ever asked them. In doing that, they not only survived in 2009, but shortly thereafter they became number one in their industry.

In tracking their metrics, River Pools and Spas discovered that their average customer read 100 pages of content before reaching out to someone live. Why is that? Because when you’re seriously considering making a major purchase decision, you’re looking for all sorts of information to help you make an intelligent business decision.  By identifying and proactively answering every question you could possibly ask about an in-ground pool, they drove deep engagements with their prospects and their sales skyrocketed.

Adding the X-Factor of Influencers for Maximum Impact

Now if you don’t have the time or inclination to write 300 of your own blog posts, it turns out that you can pay highly qualified influencers to do the heavy lifting for you. These are NOT celebrities, but rather bloggers and social media experts with highly engaged audiences that you’re looking to reach. While I do not believe influencer marketing is the magic bullet that solves every digital marketing challenge, I do think it’s delivering the kind of value we haven’t seen in digital marketing for quite some time.

To that end, if you are interested in learning more, I want to invite you to join Trepoint’s free webinar on influencer marketing. We are practicing what we preach and are doing our part to deliver value to those who are authentically interested in improving their digital marketing. And, if you have some additional insights on what’s working for you, please share in the comments section. Even after 22 years in the business, I don’t believe I have all the answers – far from it. What I do believe is that really smart people tend to find each other and work together to make our industry better.

The post The Most Effective Form of Digital Marketing Today appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

In 2012, I TOTALLY blew off Snapchat. I saw it as nothing more than a sexting app for flirtatious twenty-somethings. What could possibly be the value of a mobile app equivalent of a tired disappearing ink magic trick? Who cares if the content disappears? Especially since the recipient could screen capture the content and bypass the very feature that was supposed to make Snapchat great?

I was underwhelmed by every feature in this app and advised my clients not to bother with it. Besides, most companies hadn’t mastered much larger and more established social networks (Reddit anyone?). Why be a “first mover” on an app that appeared to focus on erasing content rather than preserving it.

Boy was I dead wrong!

The Wild Beast that is Social Video

As Nancy Grace so astutely points out, “Snapchat has over 10 billion daily views on its video content. Let’s wait a moment for that number to sink in. This exceeds even YouTube, a website that is built on showcasing video content and straight double of their last year numbers.”

Even though YouTube is fuzzy on just how many daily views they receive, all of my searches supported this claim. In fact, in 2016, Snapchat appears to be the leading social network when it comes to daily video views, exceeding Facebook’s 8 billion.

Now, you can make the argument that both Facebook and Snapchat’s video views are inflated given the autoplay nature of these videos. But we’re splitting hairs until the likes of Nielsen can report on television commercials actually watched (not just aired). Why hold social media to a higher standard than what traditional media is held to (especially since television still commands the lion’s share of the media dollars)?

Simply put, video continues to dominate the growth of both social and mobile platforms and there’s not sign of this slowing down. The fact that Snapchat leads the pack is nothing short of incredible.

The Hidden Magic of Disappearing Content

While Snapchat empowers its users to determine what content lives on via it’s “Stories” platform and what content disappears within 24 hours of posting, I can honestly say that what I saw as a huge weakness is actually a powerful strength. Specifically, the fact that the content doesn’t live in perpetuity gives Snapchat a sense of urgency that most other social media sites and mobile apps lack. If you want to be part of the community, you need to pay attention to what’s being posted. Snapchat brilliantly leverages FOMO: The Fear of Missing Out. Didn’t see that cool content yesterday? Too bad. You should have been there. Perhaps they will repost it or drop it into their stories. But there’s always a chance they won’t and that fear of missing out on culturally relevant hot content drives daily consumption habits that most other social networks lack.

The attitude of “it will always be there” permeates most other social networks. In this regard, Snapchat stands out as a contrarian and has benefited tremendously from this unique perspective.

Learn From My Mistakes

The takeaway here is twofold. First, if you’re using video on your social channels (and you should be), then you need to find ways to leverage Snapchat to deliver your video. There are lots of articles already published on how to do this.

“That fear of missing out on culturally relevant hot content drives daily consumption habits that most other social networks lack.”

Second, and this is the more important of the two, when you find yourself reacting negatively to something other people are excited about, rather than dismiss it, look for an opportunity to learn. That was my lesson around Snapchat which is why I wanted to share it with you. By dismissing what is clearly a powerful platform, I missed an opportunity to learn, experiment and benefit from Snapchat’s growth over the past few years.

I can’t tell you what the next Snapchat is going to be, but I can tell you that when your team comes to you with something they are excited about, it’s worth spending some time to understand what’s driving their excitement and how it could apply to your business objectives.

The post Why I Was Dead Wrong About Snapchat appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

As a marketer, Facebook has pulled the rug out from everyone. Sure, they are raking in the profits and their stock price has never been more outstanding, but their gain is your loss. Let’s break this down and if you disagree with me, I welcome your comments and feedback. The industry could use a healthy debate about this topic.

Cardinal Sin #1: Thou Shalt Pay To Build Thy Audience, And Then Pay Even More to Reach Them

Please forgive me if I sound like a crotchety old man complaining about this one, but after 22 years of pioneering in the digital marketing industry (I’m 43 and started my career in 1994), nothing frustrates me more than an algorithm change whose beneficiary is the owner of the platform. Facebook encouraged everyone to invest heavily in building their pages. If you’re old enough to remember “Like Gates”, we marketers invested heavily in getting our best customers and prospects to “Like” our page.

The first algorithm change forced us to go back and re-up our audience from “Like” to “Follower”. And just when you thought that was safe, Facebook changed their algorithm again to force you to pay dearly to reach anyone who liked or followed your page. God help you if you didn’t get some organic engagements before boosting your posts, as you were doomed to pay through the nose just to reach the very people who already gave you permission to market to them via Facebook.

Cardinal Sin #2: Thou Shalt Not Use Tried and True Promotional Tactics to Promote Thy Page

Outside the Facebook marketing universe, it’s perfectly acceptable to give your audience something of value in exchange for them taking an action you’d like them to take. Hell, Marketo and Hubspot each built their respective Billion and Multi-Billion dollar businesses doing just that. What this awesome eBook? It’s free, just fill out this form. Care for a sweepstakes entry? Give us your data. But God forbid you reward one of your ideal customer prospects with a sweepstakes entry just for liking, commenting, or sharing your content. You’re out of bounds and risk the Facebook police shutting you down. Why is that? Because you’re siphoning off Facebook’s revenue stream. Don’t give our audience anything of value until you pay our increasingly expensive toll first. Want more likes, comments, and shares? Facebook’s solution is to sock your money into boosting your posts, not rewarding consumers for their behavior.

“Facebook continues to raise the tolls to reach your audience and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the rules are summarily changed…”

Cardinal Sin #3: Instagram is Our Platform, Ergo Our APIs Won’t Work with Twitter

Before Facebook bought Instagram, you could take awesome photos and share them on BOTH Facebook and Twitter. Remember those days? Now, if you share your Instagram pictures on Twitter, you look like you’re a total newbie. That’s because Facebook intentionally removed the APIs that allows your pictures to display properly and instead only shares a link that forces you back onto the Instagram platform. The message clearly being that Twitter is not part of the Facebook family and so if you want to see Instagram pictures you must be on Instagram or Facebook.

Are Three Reasons Enough or Shall I Continue?

Other possible gripes would include:

(4) Access to opt-in customer data
(5) Facebook Apps Restrictions
(6) Exorbitant Cost of Video Ads

and a host of other changes that make marketing to your customers outside of Facebook’s ad network increasingly prohibitive. The bottom line here is that Facebook continues to raise the tolls to reach your audience and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the rules are summarily changed with little to no warning.

So, What’s the Alternative?

I know what you’re thinking: “So what are you going to do? Facebook is the 800 lb gorilla and has a monopoly on social media reach, don’t they?” Yes .. and no. You see, the tighter Facebook pulls in the reigns, the more enticing the alternatives look. Ultimately, your best bet is driving customers back to your website where you control your engagements with them. In the meantime, Twitter keeps missing its growth projections and is hungry as anything to get your marketing dollars. Snapchat has grown up from the sophomoric drunk idiot at the party taking dick pics to a respectable platform that has captured the hearts and minds of Millennials and growing into many other generations at a rapid clip.

The point is that you are not beholden to Facebook marketing despite how massive its numbers are. Even if you run several Facebook campaigns, you’d be wise to find ways to drive the audience back to your site where you can entice your audience to exchange their information for items of real value. The more you blindly invest in Facebook, the riskier your long-term propositions are for cost effectively reaching your audience. So before you throw your hard earned cash into the Facebook marketing black hole, take a minute to consider your options. When you do, you’ll find that there are at least 3 exponentially better alternatives to banner advertising.

The post Is Facebook a Colossal Waste of Money? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Evidence of Doe Anderson’s commitment to help clients succeed in this arena is now embodied in the creation of a new role for Jason Falls. Effective September 15, 2007, Jason will head up Doe Anderson’s social media activity. His title mirrors the title of this blog – Social Media Explorer. This is the first step in formulating an innovative new strategy that has agency-wide implications. More on this later.

The web site you are on is Doe Anderson’s toe in the water of blogging. Jason will be exploring all aspects of social media with opinions, analysis and discussion, and invites you to comment and join the conversation.

Please join me in congratulating Jason. In the coming weeks, he will be inviting you to learn more about social media and how everyone in the agency needs to think differently when applying these strategies for our clients.

The post Doe Anderson Explores Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.