State of Search 2015 – Jabez LeBret on The Art of Social Media

jabez

Think about your user before thinking about the campaign. First step, is your site mobile friendly? You have to give people the content WHERE THEY WANT THE CONTENT, for many that’s on their phone. You need to know the audience you’re marketing to.

Millenials 20 – 36 yrs old
Gen Z <20 yrs old. – not on Facebook! On Instagram and Snapchat (Snapchat side note – recently introduced filters to buy which works great for their demographic.)

Notes on some of the major social networks:

LinkedIn – Groups, nobody is interacting in the discussions anymore, you may as well abandon them for now. Add companies that you’ve worked with to your experience. With turned on notifications it will send out a notification to everyone and you will see a spike in views and interactions. Spread these out experience additions out, don’t do them all at once. The notification will let your connections know that you are an “employee” of the company but if you clearly list the specifics of the job which shows you are not necessarily an employee but have worked for them this is ok. You should be looking at who is looking at your profile. Message them (not in a creepy way) to say you noticed. Be on Pulse (LinkedIn’s blogging platform). MUST USE UNIQUE ARTICLES! No republished posts as they will not get the traction.

Facebook – Posting organically is pointless, those that engage with these posts are already your biggest fans so you’re not gaining any new audiemce. When it comes to developing our social campaigns we jump to the sale too fast. We need to condition the buyer to buy before we tell them to. How do I build into the user the condition to want to buy? Think of the “White, white, white, white,white …. What do cows drink?” joke. Page post ads is the way to go. Psychographic targeting – go beyond age and demographic and into the finer details of their interests, do they have a dog? Are they married? Etc. The user on Facebook isn’t there to interact with your brand and to buy stuff they are there to interact with their friends and family. When posting images you need to change up the saturation of your image for your ad so that it will stand out. Changing the color tone makes it stand out or blurring the image etc. works as well, this will make the user stop to look at the image. Don’t put text above the image! Simply share the link that has the image rather than posting it as a photo, then delete the link however the image will remain clickable! Auto play vs Youtube – Auto play is way better, more shares, likes and views though the user watched less of the overall time of the video in auto play (interesting but not necessarily always true). 5 min vs 2 min videos – people will watch the shorter video for longer and will be more engaged, the shorter the video thebetter.

Pinterest – Use infographics! piktochart.com is great for making infographics, super easy to use. You can often repurpose an infographic think of good wayt to do this. Be sure your infographics, like all content, is high quality.

Instagram – Use all the hashtags! You really can’t overdo it. UGC (user generated content) is much easier to gain for some businesses than others. Help the user to create a good story, send them questions that they can answer, guide the conversation, help them help you.

Research! Who is active? Who do we want to have talking? Equip people with the information that they need. Aim for influencers.

Use hashtags – be sure to research
Comment directly to users
Send permission request
Break the piece up into pieces
Repost it to other places
Possible video?
Run the content again

Live streaming video – Who will win? Meerkat or Periscope? Who knows! Pay attention to this medium, not sure all the possible uses but it’s worth figuring out how it can be used for you. Activism video marketing can be great! Look at the “Like a Girl” campaign by Always, this is a great example of video marketing done well. A Another example is the West Jet piece where they surprise clients with the gifts they wished for. Though these aren’t livestreams they are great examples of video marketing done well.

Other notes:

Images are important!
Google search “14 Amazingly Free Stock Photos” to find great photo source.
Users don’t want stock photos, they want a real experience, better pictures.

Always, where you can, add another audience.

Don’t cross post, each network has a different audience, you need to post to each network specific to it.

Look up Michael King’s piece on persona building.

Check out the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion –  about what causes people to buy things.

 

Find Jabez at
http://jabezlebret.com/
@jabezlabret