M.com (E Commerce)Notes 4
M.com (E Commerce)Notes 4
Digital marketing is term used for the marketing of products services digital technologies. It
is fact, an umbrella term for the marketing of products services digital technologies, not only
on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital
medium. simple terms, Digital Marketing is the promoting of products the internet any form
electronic media.
According the Digital Marketing Institute, "Digital Marketing the use of digital channels
promote or market products and services targeted consumers businesses."
Today brands and businesses make the most of technology digital marketing marketing and
services. The whole concept marketing been changed. Digital marketing have become more
extensive, digital platforms are increasingly built-in marketing plans people have preference
use digital devices instead going shops as more comfortable shop while relaxing back home
office while travelling rather than shop. This can become easy especially after smart have
been launched and almost all the functions desktop can performed the phone. search has
finally surpassed desktop search as more more people search for information on their
mobile handsets due efficient and high speed internet technology, better networks and
convenience.
The way which digital marketing has developed since changed the way brands and
businesses utilize technology and digital marketing their Digital campaigns becoming more
prevalent, as digital platforms have become integral part marketing plans. People are using
digital devices instead going physical shops. know how to promote their product online due
increasing traffic users, complexities and intense competition.
The coming the internet development platform allowed users find the information they
wanted, but not allow them to share this information over the web. then, marketers
worldwide were unsure of digital platform. They were not their strategies would work since
the internet had not seen widespread deployment.
In 1993, the first clickable banner went live, after which Hot Wired purchased a few banner
ads for their advertising. This marked the beginning of the transition to the digital era of
marketing. Because of this gradual shift, the year 1994 saw new technologies enter the
digital marketplace. The very same year, Yahoo was launched. Also known as "Jerry's Guide
to the World Wide Web" after its founder Jerry Yang, Yahoo received close to 1 million hits
within the first year. This prompted wholesale changes in the digital marketing space, with
companies optimizing their websites to pull in higher search engine rankings. The year 1996
saw the launch of a couple of more search engines and tools.
The year 1998 saw the birth of Google. Microsoft launched the MSN search engine and
Yahoo brought to the market Yahoo web search. Two years later, the internet bubble burst
and all the smaller search engines were either left behind or wiped out leaving more space
for the giants in the business. The digital marketing world saw its first steep surge in 2006,
when search engine traffic was reported to have grown to about 6.4 billion in a single
month. Microsoft put MSN behind and launched Live Search to compete with Google and
Yahoo. Then Google began to expand, introducing such products as AdWords, which are 3
line ads that show up at the top or to the right of search engine results, and AdSense - which
is a cost-per-click advertising scheme. In time, Google realized the value of analyzing the
content they received and then target ads based on the interests of the users, and thus
became a major player in the world of business.
Then came Web 2.0, where people became more active participants rather than remair,
passive users. Web 2.0 allowed users to interact with other users and businesses. Labels like
'super information highway' began to be applied to the internet. As a result, information
flow volumes - including channels utilized by digital marketers increased tremendously and
by 2004, internet advertising and marketing in the US alone brought in around $2.9 billion.
Soon, social networking sites began to emerge. MySpace was the first social networking site
to arrive, soon followed by Facebook. Many companies realized all these fresh new sites that
were popping up were beginning to open new doors of opportunities to market their
products and brands. It opened fresh avenues for business, and signaled the beginning of a
new chapter to business. With new resources, they needed new approaches to promote their
brands and capitalize on the social networking platform.
The cookie was another important milestone in the digital marketing industry. Advertisers
had begun to look for other ways to capitalize on the new technology. One such technique
was to track common browsing habits and usage patterns of frequent users of the internet so
as to tailor promotions and marketing according to their tastes. The first cookie was
designed to record user-habits. The use of the cookie has changed over the years, and
cookies today are coded to offer marketers a variety of ways to collect user data.
Products marketed digitally are now available to customers at all times. The top three social
networking sites used by marketers are LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
The digital market is constantly changing. A digital marketing professional must find ways
to keep up with this change. They need to be alert and updated about the emerging trends
and the development of newer and smarter Search Engine Algorithms. After all, nobody can
afford to be out of digital marketing today.
(Source: http://www.simplilearn.com/history-and-evolution-of-digital-marketing
article, 31" May 2016.)
Digital marketing benefits businesses of all sizes by giving access to the mass market at an
affordable price. Unlike TV or print advertising, it allows truly personalised
marketing. Digital marketing also comes with a number of challenges you should be aware
of.
Global reach - a website allows you to find new markets and trade globally for only a
small investment.
Lower cost - a properly planned and well targeted digital marketing campaign can
reach the right customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods.
Trackable, measurable results - measuring your online marketing with web analytics
and other online metric tools makes it easier to establish how effective your
campaign has been. You can obtain detailed information about how customers use
your website or respond to your advertising.
Personalisation - if your customer database is linked to your website, then whenever
someone visits the site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy
from you, the more you can refine your customer profile and market effectively to
them.
Openness - by getting involved with social media and managing it carefully, you can
build customer loyalty and create a reputation for being easy to engage with.
Social currency - digital marketing lets you create engaging campaigns using content
marketing tactics. This content (images, videos, articles) can gain social currency -
being passed from user to user and becoming viral.
Improved conversion rates - if you have a website, then your customers are only ever
a few clicks away from making a purchase. Unlike other media which require people
to get up and make a phone call, or go to a shop, digital marketing can be seamless
and immediate.
Together, all of these aspects of digital marketing have the potential to add up to more sales.
Skills and training - You will need to ensure that your staff have the right knowledge
and expertise to carry out digital marketing with success. Tools, platforms and
trends change rapidly and it's vital that you keep up-to-date.
Time consuming - tasks such as optimising online advertising campaigns and
creating marketing content can take up a lot of time. It's important to measure your
results to ensure a return-on-investment.
High competition - while you can reach a global audience with digital marketing,
you are also up against global competition. It can be a challenge to stand out against
competitors and to grab attention among the many messages aimed at consumers
online.
Complaints and feedback - any negative feedback or criticism of your brand is can be
visible to your audience through social media and review websites. Carrying out
effective customer service online can be challenging. Negative comments or failure to
respond effectively can damage your brand reputation.
Security and privacy issues - there are a number of legal considerations around
collecting and using customer data for digital marketing purposes. Take care to
comply with the rules regarding privacy and data protection.
VARIOUS ACTIVITIES OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital marketing is a form of marketing for promoting and selling products or services
on the Internet. It’s the process of leveraging different online marketing channels like
search engines, social media networks, and email to reach your target audience.
Through digital marketing, you can find people interested in your offering, interact with
them, and build trust with your brand.
Digital marketing has a number of types, the most important are website marketing,
search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, PPC advertising, social media
marketing, email marketing, video marketing, and affiliate marketing.
Before creating your first digital marketing campaign, you need to know the different
marketing channels and how they work.
In search engine marketing, advertisers only pay for impressions that result in visitors,
making it an efficient way for a company to spend its marketing dollars. As an added bonus,
each visitor incrementally improves the website’s rankings in organic search results. Since
consumers enter search queries with the intent of finding information of a commercial
nature, they are in an excellent state of mind to make a purchase, compared to other sites
such as social media where users are not explicitly searching for something. Search
marketing reaches consumers at exactly the right time: when they are open to new
information. Unlike the majority of digital advertising, PPC advertising is non-intrusive and
does not interrupt their tasks.Results are immediate with SEM. It is arguably the fastest way
to drive traffic to a website.
In your search results page, you will come across various company ads whose keywords
match the keywords in your search.These ads appear in prominent locations on the page –
along with the other search listings that match your keywords. The paid listings are highly
relevant to your specific search, making it likely that you will click on them. Now let’s take a
look at how SEM campaigns work from the marketer’s perspective. SEM networks are self-
serve operations. Once a marketer selects a network, they can get a campaign up within a
short period of time.
When setting up a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:
Conduct keyword research and select a set of keywords related to their website or
product
Select a geographic location for the ad to be displayed within
Create a text-based ad to display in the search results
Bid on a price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad
Text-only ads are easy to produce. Marketers enter a headline, text for the body of the ad, a
call-to-action and a URL for the hyperlink.Search engine marketing is considered by many
to be the most efficient way to spend marketing dollars.
Examples of search ad networks - The two primary search networks that SEM professionals
target are Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) and the Bing Ads.
Google AdWords is actually two networks: Google Search Network and Google Display
Network. The first network consists exclusively of search-related websites owned by
Google, while the second includes properties such as YouTube, Blogger and Gmail. The Bing
Ads allows customers to buy ads on both Yahoo’s network of websites and Bing’s network.
While Google Ads is a much larger network (around 2x the size), the pricing is often lower
on Bing Ads. Marketers may be able to get a better rank for a competitive keyword phrase
for less than they get on Google. And some report that the clickthrough rates are higher as
well.
How A/B testing can complement SEM
Since you are already making an investment in search engine marketing to bring traffic to
your website, it is a worthwhile effort to optimize that traffic for conversions and increase
the efficiency of your spending.A/B testing your landing pages is an easy way to maximize
your spend, either by optimizing for average order value or revenue per page.Optimizing
your landing page can increase your Quality Score with search engine marketing networks,
thus reducing your average CPC.Optimizely – and other platforms like it – can help you
easily structure and implement your A/B tests, offering real-time results to give you
confidence in your business decisions. Optimizely has integrations with popular ad
networks such as Google Adwords and Facebook that make setting up ad-related
experiments quick and easy.
On the other hand, the goal of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is to get traffic and visibility
from both organic and paid search.
Put another way:
Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the
organic search results.
The goal of SEO is to rank your website in the organic search results.
You can also get your website in the paid area of the search results via pay per click (PPC).
SEO is where you focus 100% on ranking in the organic results. SEM is when you tap into
both SEO and PPC in order to get traffic from search engines.
So yeah, SEM is a broad term that includes SEO and PPC. Which means that SEO falls
“under” the umbrella category of SEM.
CONTENT MARKETING
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a type of marketing that consists of strategically creating, publishing,
and promoting content. Content marketing is typically used to increase brand awareness
and engagement, attract visitors or users, generate sales leads, or drive purchases and
revenue.
Content Marketing
The definition of content marketing is simple: It’s the process of publishing written and
visual material online with the purpose of attracting more leads to your business. These can
include blog posts, pages, ebooks, infographics, videos, and more.
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing
content via channels such as social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press releases,
print publications, and more. The goal is to reach your target audience and increase brand
awareness, sales, engagement, and loyalty.
However, content marketing is not just publishing a thin piece of content and hoping people
will find it. It’s about purposefully tailoring your pages, videos, ebooks, and posts to your
target audience so that they find you the inbound way rather than the outbound way.
Today, outbound marketing strategies (or anything that interrupts your audience members)
aren’t as effective at resonating with and converting audience members as they once were.
Today, your content needs to reach your audience in a way that feels natural
(a.k.a. inbound). A common way of doing this is by creating a narrative for your content —
or telling a story. In doing so, your content will feel more authentic, engaging, and tailored
to your audience.
Why is content marketing important?
Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
Boost conversions
Build relationships between your customers and business that result in increased
loyalty
Show your audience how your products and services solve their challenges
Create a sense of community around your brand
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing is now a mainstream form of online marketing. It has been a buzzword
for a while now, and the mainstream media regularly refers to it. Yet, there are still people
who don't really understand what influencer marketing is all about. Indeed, some people
come across the phrase for the first time and instantly ponder, "What is influencer
marketing?"
The Influencer Marketing Hub is now an established website with hundreds of articles
explaining the intricacies of influencer marketing, along with other types of online
marketing. The original version of this post was the first article we wrote for the site. We
know, however, that there are still people who come here for the first time, wondering what
influencer marketing is
Influencer Marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. It takes the idea of
celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign.
The main differentiator in the case of influencer marketing is that the results of the campaign
are collaborations between brands and influencers.
But influencer marketing doesn't just involve celebrities. Instead, it revolves around
influencers, many of whom would never consider themselves famous in an offline setting.
In our article, What is an Influencer we defined an influencer as being someone who has:
the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her
authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience
a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of
the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.
One of the biggest mistakes that traditional media makes is a failure to see the difference
between celebrities and online influencers.
It is also important to realize that most influencers have systematically built a keen and
enthusiastic audience. It is not accidental that these people follow influencers rather than a
brand. The audience doesn't really care less about your brand. They only care about the
opinions of the influencers. Don't try to foist rules and business practices onto your
influencers. The audience is theirs, and they can simply walk away, taking their followers
with them.
CAMPAIGN MARKETING
What is a Marketing Campaign?
A marketing campaign is a strategic course of action undertaken to promote the brand’s
offerings and specific organizational goals to attain sustainable competitive advantage. The
company goals may include raising brand awareness, improving online presence, increasing
engagement, collecting customer feedback to understand perspective, or increasing
conversion and sales.
The first step towards organizing a strategic course of action is to understand the needs,
interests, and preferences of the ideal set of audiences. The typical aim to create marketing
campaigns is to reach as many customers as possible to grow the business. The entire
process involves a combination of media such as advertising on radio, hoardings, television,
newspapers, digital media, messaging apps, and email. However, there is a slight difference
between a digital marketing campaign and a general marketing campaign.
How is a digital marketing campaign different from a general marketing campaign?
A digital marketing campaign is much more dynamic and sustainable than a general
marketing campaign. It involves marketing efforts via electronic medium and Internet that
are guided towards brand awareness and improved online presence. When using digital
marketing campaigns, a brand has a far better chance to reach its ideal set of audiences
through various means. These mediums include email, social media, search engines, PPC,
blogging, shopping sites, and many more.
Apart from this, the growing Internet usage has made it more relevant in today’s marketing
context, where everyone relies on online recommendations and feedback. According to Pew
Research, 28% of Americans are reported to be “almost constantly” online. This figure is
indicative of the fact that the digital revolution is going to stay with us for a long time. It
proves that if you are looking to build connections with your audience at the right time and
place, then there’s nothing better than online platforms. Apart from this, several other
benefits compel you to invest in digital marketing campaigns. Some of them are listed
below, have a look.
The second step is to take action on the insights gathered from consumers. By
understanding past behavior, marketers can anticipate what consumers are likely to do next
and personalize future marketing efforts. Based on a customer’s past behavior, a marketer
might decide to send an email offering a discount code, make an upsell offer, or show
a display ad with a new product that might appeal to the customer.
If a company can understand their target audience and anticipate what they're likely to do
next, they’re able to provide compelling experiences. And creating a personalized
experience comes down to content, regardless of the touchpoint.
EMAIL MARKETING
The use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’s products and
services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty. Email marketing is a form of marketing that
can make the customers on your email list aware of new products, discounts, and other
services. It can also be a softer sell to educate your audience on the value of your brand or
keep them engaged between purchases. It can also be anything in between. Mailchimp can
help you design, build, and optimize your email marketing to get the best ROI in your
marketing program.
When you want to grow your brand or sell your stuff, email marketing is one of the most
popular—and effective—tools around for marketing campaigns. In this article we’ll discuss
how email marketing - and the usage of promotional emails - can help you to grow your
business, and we’ll give you a few tips to help you get started with a successful email
marketing campaign.
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
A type of online advertisement that combines text, images, and a URL that links to a website
where a customer can learn more about or buy products. There are many ad formats. These
ads can be static with an image or animated with multiple images, video, or changing text
(also called rich media ads). An ad campaign can have different goals, and some display ads
educate about the product while others are designed to entertain and engage through simple
games or puzzles. Banner ads are a common form of display ads that are frequently used for
awareness campaigns.
Digital advertising is changing the face of the marketing industry. Remaining competitive in
this evolving market requires a strong grasp of digital marketing in all its forms. One of the
easiest ways to start is with display advertising.
There are many types of display advertising. Banner ads are an example of display
advertising. So are desktop and mobile leaderboard ads. Most ads are rectangular or square
in shape, and the content they contain is typically designed to align with that of the
host website and the selected audience preferences.
Display advertising campaigns can be run through advertising networks such as Facebook
advertising or Google ads that provide powerful audience targeting features as well as
advertising formats (that you can also combine with search ads).
Display ads vary greatly in terms of who they target and how they work. Here’s a
breakdown of the different display ad options and what they do.
1. Remarketing ads
Most display ads you see today are remarketing ads, also known as retargeting ads. Thanks
to the trend toward ad personalization, retargeting campaigns have become widespread.
According to Accenture Interactive, 91% of consumers prefer to buy from brands that
remember their interests and provide offers based on their needs. Retargeting ads do just
that, and they're easy for brands to implement. Here's how they work.
To start, place a small section of code onto your website that collects information
about visitors' browsing behavior, including when they navigate to a category or
product page.
From the information you collect, develop lists of customer types and what kinds of
advertising messages would most likely appeal to them.
Then create and place display ads based on the different categories of interest you
have observed.
A dynamic remarketing campaign is an effective way to keep your brand present in the
minds of shoppers who have already shown interest in what you have to offer.
2. Personalized ads
Google considers remarketing to be a subcategory of personalized advertising, which can be
effective when you segment your audience to deliver a better user experience. Personalized
ads target consumers based on demographic targeting and the interests they have shown
online. You can even create ads that show personalized product recommendations based on
a user’s recent interactions with your website.
3. Contextually targeted ads
Instead of displaying your ads to people based on their user profiles, contextually targeted
ads are placed on websites according to certain criteria, including:
Your ad's topic and keywords
Your language and location preferences
The host website's overarching theme
The browsing histories of the website’s recent visitors
You can let Google make these determinations, or you can take an active role in it yourself
through topic targeting.
Topic targeting - Google allows you to pick from a list of topics and will match your ad to
relevant pages on the Display Network or YouTube. It also lets you specifically exclude
topics that are underperforming or unrelated to your message.
Topic targeting is a lot like affinity targeting, except that your ads are matched with websites
rather than users.
4. Site-placed ads
If you'd prefer to hand-pick the websites that will host your ad, website placement
targeting is your best bet. You can select entire sites or individual pages within sites.
You can even combine placement targeting with contextual targeting. With this approach,
you choose a site and let Google select the most relevant pages for your ad.
The takeaway
Display advertising works more efficiently than most digital options out there, and it does
the job without trying to pass itself off as anything else. It's honest, it's visually engaging,
and it spreads your brand's message without being intrusive.
When you combine display advertising with other marketing techniques, you can reach
potential customers at all levels of their journey.
Display ads also allow you to monitor and track your campaigns to reduce costs while
increasing performance. For example, with A/B testing, you can uncover which headlines,
images, and CTAs get the most clicks and lead to higher conversion rates.
BLOG MARKETING
The term blog comes from the combination of "web" and "log" or "weblog," and was
eventually shortened to "blog."
In the 1990s when blogs first appeared, they were primarily online diaries, where people
would provide personal accounts of their lives. They since have grown to include writing
and media on topics such as news, politics, music, food, business, and much more—there
are even blogs about blogging.
Like many new resources that pop up, visionary entrepreneurs recognized the blog format
as a marketing tool and began using it to provide information and updates to their
customers, and as a way to draw in new business. From there, blogging grew into a new and
effective marketing strategy.
What Is Blog Marketing?
Blog marketing is all about using a blog to reach your target audience, and hopefully direct
attention to your business. Business owners using blogs to market their brands will post a
variety of content, including written posts, pictures, videos, and even audio recordings, in
order to attract more customers.
Most of the time, these posts are meant to educate the readers about a certain aspect of an
industry or reveal some ‘behind the scenes’ information about the business, all while subtly
promoting the products and services being offered. Some business owners even use their
blogs as a source of feedback, asking their customers to leave their opinions and suggestions
in the comments!
Nowadays, you’ll find most business blogs attached to the brand’s online store, though
some people will choose to host their blog on a completely different site. Regardless of
where you find it, a business blog will always include backlinks to products and services, as
well as options to create an account or sign up for a newsletter to stay updated.
How Does It Work?
Blog marketing works by showing potential customers that there are real people behind a
brand, who care about their customers’ opinions and are genuinely trying to connect with
the people who support their business.
Posting educational and helpful content on a business blog makes that brand seem more
trustworthy – they’re trying to help their customers understand the industry and answer
their questions, instead of just shoving a promotion in their faces. It also shows that the
people running the business actually have experience in their industry and are willing to
pass on their knowledge to others.
Likewise, posting more personal content like “Meet The Owners!” makes the brand seem
more trustworthy as it shows a more genuine and laidback side to the brand. A lot of people
prefer to support businesses that are open about who they are and what they stand for, and
a business blog is the perfect place to talk about those things without the risk of being too
unprofessional.
Start Posting!
Next, start posting and don’t stop! Before you start promoting your blog, fill up your blog
with several posts. Whatever your blog content is, from case studies to vlogs, start creating
content right away. No one likes to visit a blog that only has one post. We recommend that
you publish at least ten posts before promoting and marketing your blog. Be creative with
your content creation!
VIRAL MARKETING
Every day we hear about viral marketing, a new viral video, or content that has spread at
the speed of light. But what is viral marketing? And how did it get to be viral? Is it due to
a viral product or viral advertising? Or is it simply luck that randomly makes something
such a big hit?
This type of content usually has a well-designed viral strategy behind it, but virality is
also due to luck, creativity, and preparation. To break down this concept, we'll explain
the definition, how it works, its advantages, and some viral marketing examples.
PODCAST
Podcast marketing is the act of marketing yourself, the products you sell, or your services by
creating and distributing unique audio content.
Free content is shared with listeners to influence and inform them about how your products or
services can benefit them or their industry without being overly promotional.
Why podcasts?
You might not think your business is the right fit for a podcast, but you may be surprised.
While many podcasts are created for pure entertainment purposes, others are niche and
business focused. There is a significant, untapped market need for informative, niche podcasts
for nearly every industry. Whether you own a SaaS company that offers on-demand tax
services or run a marketing agency, chances are you will find an audience. However, keep an
eye on your marketing analytics to ensure your podcast delivers on leads and inquiries so that
you don’t overinvest.Of course, marketing works best when you exhaust all possible channels.
Consider complimenting your podcasting with cold emails, or create a free trial marketing
strategy.
Benefits of podcasting
If you are still not convinced, here are a few ways you can benefit from podcasting for your
business:
Increased brand awareness: Your podcast generates impressions, just like any other
form of digital marketing.
Connection with potential customers: Podcasting feels intimate—you’re not just an
ad or a website, but rather a voice that’s with them in their car or at home. It’s a great
way of connecting with your audience.
Building authority: When staff appears on a podcast in their capacity as experts, it
builds authority and trust in the brand
VODCASTS.
The term “vodcast” is short for “Video-On-Demand-cast.” In the simplest terms, it’s easiest
to think of a vodcast as the video version of a podcast.
In most cases, vodcasting refers to the practice of taking video of a podcast recording
session—but a vodcast can be any kind of podcast with video elements.
Vodcasters are typically podcasters experimenting with adding video to their standard
audio content. The creator might take their standard audio podcast and add animation,
slides, or even a visualization of the audio feed.
Rather than focusing entirely on the audio quality, vodcasters concentrate on producing
high-quality video content as well.
One common technique is using a video camera to record themselves while recording their
regular podcast episode. That way, they have a regular audio file that they can upload to
their podcast host, but they also have a video file that they can upload to YouTube, social
media, or their website.
How Do You Make a Vodcast?
While getting into the video media creation game may sound intimidating, making a
vodcast isn’t as difficult as you think.
Thankfully, there’s equipment and software available today to help beginners create studio-
quality video content—even on a budget. And if you’re already a podcaster, you likely
already have most of the equipment and know-how needed to transition your show into a
first-rate video podcast for your subscribers.
At a minimum, you’ll need:
A microphone
Headphones
Video camera (one per participant)
Studio lights (one per participant)
An aesthetically pleasing and quiet recording space
And, of course, hardware isn’t all you’ll need. A great vodcast requires high-quality
recording and editing software.
Sure, if your budget is tight, you can get by with a basic video conferencing app
like Skype or Zoom—but your audience cares about video and audio quality. They can hear
(and see) the difference between grainy, amateurish content and studio-quality video media.
If you’re already using Riverside.fm to record podcasts, you know that it automatically
records video for your remote interviews at a professional level. Each participant’s audio
and video feed is recorded locally to their device, meaning your finished product is crystal-
clear regardless of internet connection.
Riverside is an affordable, easy-to-use option that’s made to be flexible enough to record
both audio and video podcasts. It also comes with a Magic Editor that automatically stitches
together the separately recorded audio/video tracks for a polished finished product.
Once you have your setup, record your podcast as you usually would—only with video, too.
That way, you can publish your content (either in full-length form or broken down into
clips) to as many channels as you like, including:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising/
Social media advertising is a must if you’re looking to reach a new, targeted audience—fast.
Like it or not, organic reach is harder and harder to achieve. The days of going viral without
a little boost might be gone forever. Of course it can be scary to move from an organic social
strategy to putting real money on the table. So, it’s important to understand all the options.
When choosing where to place your ads, it’s also helpful to know which networks are most
popular with your target audience. Where is your target group most engaged, most
concentrated and most accessible?
Targeting teens? TikTok is where to find them. Moms, meanwhile, love Facebook.
Try looking at which social networks perform well organically for your brand. Where does
your content naturally strike a chord with fans? This is an obvious choice for your first social
ad campaigns.
Here’s a quick summary from the Pew Research Center’s most recent social media fact sheet.
It shows a great snapshot of the preferred platform of different demographics.
Now that you have a sense of which social networks might be best for your business, let’s
take a look at each network’s ad types.
FACEBOOK ADS
Facebook ads help you achieve one of three broad types of campaign objectives:
Awareness: Build brand awareness or increase reach.
Consideration: Send traffic to your website, increase engagement, encourage app
installs or video views, generate leads, or encourage people to communicate with
you on Facebook Messenger.
Conversion: Increase purchases or leads via your site or app, make cata, or drive
foot traffic to offline stores.
Audience considerations: Facebook is popular across many demographics, with 2.45 billion
monthly active users. Just as many teenagers use Facebook as their parents—and seniors are
quickly catching up.
With detailed targeting options for this huge pool of users, Facebook is a great platform to
get started with social media advertising.
With ads, you can direct users to your Facebook Page or your website. You can also direct
them to a customized Instant Experience. This is a full-screen interactive or informational
destination page within the Facebook mobile app.
Photo ads
Facebook’s internal data shows that a series of photo-only ads can drive more unique traffic
than other types of ad formats.
In addition to a photo, Facebook photo ads include 90 characters of text plus a 25-character
headline. Show and tell! These ads can also include a call-to-action button like Shop Now or
Download.
You can create your photo ad in Facebook Business Manager, or simply promote a post with
an image from your Facebook Page.
Pro tip: If you’ve got a tangible product, a Facebook photo ad is a great way to show it off.
Show people using your product, rather than a simple photo of the product itself.
Video ads
Facebook video ad options range from short, looping video clips that autoplay in users’
feeds, to original 241-minute promoted videos for the desktop. You can also develop video
ads that play within other videos (Facebook video ad Inception!), or even share 360-degree
videos.
With so many options, it’s critical to have solid goals and understand who your target
market is and where your video will reach them.
Pro tip: Short videos tend to have higher completion rates. However, if you’ve got a
compelling message, you can go a little longer. Video can help clearly demonstrate your
services—like a cool dance class—and stand-out in a mostly static news feed.
Stories ads
In this full-screen format, photos display for six seconds, and videos can last up to 15
seconds.
One hiccup: You can’t specifically select Facebook Stories ads on their own. They’re
included as a possible placement when you select Automatic Placements when creating your
ad for the News Feed or Instagram Stories campaigns.
Pro tip: Stories only last for 24 hours, so this is a great format for in-the-moment marketing
like limited time offers. The majority of people Facebook surveyed said they wanted Stories
ads to be “quick and easy to understand.” Keep things simple.
Carousel ads
No whimsical horses on this kind of carousel. A Facebook carousel ad lets you include up to
10 images or videos, each with their own link, all in one ad.
Carousel ads work well to showcase different features of a product, or to explain a step-by-
step process. They’re also a great way to present multiple products or services. For example,
a Gap polo or a Gap t-shirt.
Pro tip: Use the different elements in your carousel ad together to present a compelling,
effective story or message. (That being said: if you need them to stay in a certain order,
opt out of the automatic optimization feature.)
Slideshow ads
A slideshow is an ad that creates a video from several static images—your own or stock
images that Facebook provides.
Slideshows offer the compelling motion of video, but require no video-specific resources to
create. The best of both worlds! If you’re not ready to try video ads but want to move
beyond static photos, slideshow ads are a great option. Plus: fun music!
Pro tip: If you don’t have professional photography on hand, stock photos can be a great
option to help you express your brand’s vibe.
Collection ads
A collection ad highlights your products right in the Facebook feed. The ad includes a cover
photo or video, plus four smaller product images with pricing and other details.
Think of it as your digital storefront, or an instant peek into your catalog. This format allows
people to learn more about your product without leaving Facebook.
Pro tip: Collection ads work especially well for retail and travel brands.
Messenger ads
Messenger ads are simply Facebook ads placed in the Chats tab of the Messenger app.
They’ll appear between conversations.
You can use them to start an automated conversation with a potential customer right there
on Messenger, or link out to your website to your website or app.
Over 1.3 billion people use Messenger every month—many of whom aren’t even Facebook
users. Get chatting.
Pro tip: You can use Messenger ads to restart conversations that have trailed off. Use a
custom audience of people who have previously messaged your business.
Playable ads
Facebook Playables are mobile-only interactive previews of your game or apps. This offers
an opportunity for users to try before they buy (or download).
These ads start with a lead-in video prompting people to play, via a “tap to try” icon. From
here, users can click and instantly test-drive a full-screen demo version, without having to
install anything.
It’s a great way to showcase your game, with a low barrier to entry for someone scrolling by.
Pro tip: Make sure you accurately represent the game in your lead-in video, and keep your
tutorial simple: as little as two steps, ideally.
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your Facebook ads in our Facebook
advertising guide.
INSTAGRAM ADS
Facebook owns Instagram. So it’s not surprising that Instagram ads support the same three
broad categories of campaign objectives as Facebook ads:
Awareness
Consideration
Conversion
Audience considerations: Instagram is most popular with millennials. Plenty of Generation
Z and Gen Xers also use the platform.
Like Facebook, you can target your ideal viewer with custom targeting options. Create
lookalike audiences, define your audience’s behaviors and activities, interests, and
demographics.
Photo
Video
Carousel
Collection
You can create each type of ad for either the main Instagram feed, for Instagram Stories.
Placing ads on IG TV offers a unique ways to reach your audience, too.
Instagram Reels are a new content format for the platform, but so far, there are no paid
advertising opportunities here. That being said: the novelty of Reels could make it a great
opportunity to experiment with organic reach. Get in on the ground floor, and tell your
grandkids you were there when it all began.
Carousel ads
In an Instagram carousel ad, viewers swipe to scroll through different images.
Pro tip: Make sure the images you use in your carousel ad are visually similar and tied
together by a common theme. It shouldn’t be jarring to swipe between the different photos
in the ad.
Look at this Carousel ad for Shutterstock. (Does it make you hungry? Sorry.) The similar
images and consistent bar of text across each photo clearly connect the components of the ad
and help to tell a consistent story.
Collection ads
Just like Facebook Collection ads, these feature a cover image or video plus several product
shots. Clicking on the ad directs the user to an Instant Experience.
It’s the perfect fit for a retail brand. Show ‘em what you’ve got!
Pro tip: Instagram Collection ads don’t include a headline, but they do allow up to 90
characters of text.
Ads in Explore
Extend your ads into the Explore feed and reach an audience who is looking to for new and
novel accounts to follow.
It’s a way to place yourself next to the content that’s relevant and trending—and catch the
eye of the 200 million-plus users who check out the Instagram Explore tab daily. (They’re
brave explorers, out looking for new adventure on the Instagram frontier, and we salute
them.)
Pro tip: Your ad won’t appear in the Explore grid directly, but when a user clicks through on
any photo, they’ll see your post in the scrolling news feed.
TWITTER ADS
Twitter ads work towards three different business objectives:
Awareness: Maximize the reach of your ad.
Consideration: Whether you want video views, pre-roll views, app installs, web
traffic, engagement or followers, this is your category.
Conversion: Bring users to your app or website to take action.
Audience considerations: Nearly two-thirds of Twitter’s advertising addressable audience is
male.
Twitter ad campaigns
With Twitter ad campaigns, you first choose a business objective that aligns with your
business goals.
For example, this Ritz Crackers ad uses a video to showcase its product, combined with a
link to easily… learn more about crackers.
You can select existing organic Tweets to promote, or create Tweets specifically as ads.
Pro tip: Run separate campaigns for mobile and desktop users to get the best conversion
rates. Twitter recommends you avoid using hashtags and @ mentions in your ads. (These
may cause your audience to click away.)
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your Twitter ads in our Twitter
advertising guide.
SNAPCHAT ADS
Snapchat ads can help you achieve three types of marketing objectives:
Awareness: Reach a large audience to increase awareness of your brand and
showcase products and services
Consideration: Drive traffic to your website or app, increase engagement, and
encourage app installs, video views, and lead generation.
Conversions: Drive website conversions or catalog sales.
The Instant Create service is a simplified way to get your image or video ad up in under five
minutes. If you’ve got a simple advertising goal—for example, getting a Snapchatter to call
up your pizza parlor—this is a quick and easy way to get started.
For more in-depth advertising goals, there’s Advanced Create. This is for advertisers who
have more long-term or specific objectives and might need more control over budgets, bids,
or optimization.
Audience considerations: Snapchat is overwhelmingly popular with younger users, with 220
million users under the age of 25. Nearly three-quarters of 18- to 24-years olds use the app.
Compare that to only 25% of 30- to 49-year-olds. About 60% of the audience you can reach
with Snapchat ads is female.
Snapchat offers six types of ads to help you meet your objectives.
Snap ads
Snap ads start with an image or a video up to three minutes long (though Snapchat
recommends keeping things short and sweet at 3 to 5 seconds).
The ads are full-screen, vertical format. These appear between or after other content. They
can include attachments for app installs, landing pages, lead forms, or long-form video.
Pro tip: Don’t try to do too much with a short ad: Feature one strong call-to-action and key
message. Try experimenting with different forms, like gifs or cinemagraphs, and see what
really catches people’s attention.
Story ads
This ad format takes the form of a branded tile in users’ Discover feed. The tile leads to a
collection of three to 20 Snaps, so you can provide a detailed look at new products, special
offers, and so on.
You can also add attachments with a call-to-action, so that users can swipe up to watch a
video, install an app, or buy a product.
Pro tip: Write a powerful headline for your Story ad to encourage Snapchatters to tap.
Collection ads
Collection ads allow you to showcase a series of products with four thumbnail images in one
ad. Each thumbnail image links to its own URL. Snapchatters can also swipe up to see your
website.
Pro tip: Keep the snap itself simple to focus attention on the thumbnails in your collection
ad.
Filters
Snapchat filters are graphic overlays that users can apply to their Snaps. Snapchatters use
them hundreds of millions of times per day.
You can make your filter “smart,” so it includes real-time location, countdown, or time
information.
Pro tip: Snapchatters use filters to provide context to their Snaps. Make sure your filter is
relevant to the time, place, and purpose of your campaign. Leave room for Snapchatters’
own images to shine. Only use the top and/or bottom quarters of the screen for your filter
creative.
Lenses
Similar to Filters, Lenses are a way to layer your brand on to a user’s content. Lenses are a
little more high-tech, however, using augmented reality for a more interactive visual effect.
Face lenses, for example, can manipulate a user’s facial features on-screen to transform
them. Using a branded Snapchat lens, a makeup fan could try a digital makeover, or become
Colonel Saunders.
World lenses work on the outward facing camera. These can map images onto the
environment or surfaces around you—and find yourself seeing just how that Ikea couch
would look in your living room.
Pro tip: A cool lens is great; a shareable lens is better. Think about creating a visual
experience that’s either beautiful or funny, to give your users a reason to share their video
with friends… and tempt them to try for themselves. Like this sweet LOL Doll lens.
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your Snapchat ads in our Snapchat
advertising guide.
Commercials
In certain regions, Snapchat Commercials are another advertising option. These are non-
skippable six-second video ads, and must be videos with audio.
Pro tip: Focus on one simple message, ideally with a reveal or payoff at the five second mark
to build a little suspense. Make sure your branding is crystal clear.
LINKEDIN ADS
LinkedIn ads help your business with three types of marketing objectives:
Awareness: Create more awareness of your company or brand.
Consideration: Drive website visits, increase engagement, or encourage video
views.
Conversions: Collect leads and drive website conversions.
Audience considerations: LinkedIn is much more business-oriented than the other social
networks in this post. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications like job
title and seniority.
Let’s get down to business.
Sponsored InMail
Sponsored InMail is similar to email marketing, except that the messages go directly to
users’ LinkedIn inboxes. Like a pen pal! That you pay for.
However, Sponsored InMail has an interesting unique feature. Users only receive ad
messages while they are active on LinkedIn. That means messages don’t sit around getting
stale.
You can send a direct message to your audience, or create a more conversational
experience—sort of a choose-your-own-adventure, super simple chat bot.
Pro tip: Short body text (under 500 characters) gets the highest click-through rate. But the
sender plays a role too in setting you up for success. Ask yourself: who would my audience
connect with?
Text Ads
Text ads are small ad units that appear at the top and the right of the LinkedIn news feed.
They only appear to desktop users, not on mobile devices.
Despite the name, text ads can actually include a thumbnail image of 50 x 50 pixels.
Pro tip: Create two to three variations of your campaign, both for A/B testing but also to
show your many sides to your audience.
Dynamic ads
Dynamic ads are automatically personalized specifically for each of your prospects. It’s
either AI or magic at work.
Don’t be afraid to get personal! You can target users personally and directly to encourage
them to follow you, read your thought leadership articles, apply for your jobs, or download
content.
Pro tip: Enable your target audience’s profile photo to be featured in their own personal ad,
to visually personalize the campaign. You can also pre-set templates with macros to feature
every target’s name and company in the text.
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your LinkedIn ads in our LinkedIn
advertising guide.
PINTEREST ADS
Pinterest ads work with six types of business goals:
Build brand awareness
Drive traffic to your website
Drive app installs
Drive traffic to specific products
Encourage specific actions on your website
Drive video impressions
Audience considerations: Pinterest has significantly more female users than males.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2020
People use Pinterest to save ideas. That means the network naturally leads to shopping and
purchases, but those purchases may not happen right away.
Pinterest ads are called Promoted Pins. They look and behave just like regular pins. The only
difference is that you pay to have them seen by a wider audience.
Besides basic photo Pins, you can create Promoted Pins with video or a carousel of up to five
images.
Promoted Pins are identified as ads with a small “Promoted” tag. However, if users save
your ads to their Pinterest boards, that promoted label disappears. These saves Pins earn
you bonus organic (free) exposure.
There are a couple of options for promoting your Pins.
Promote Button
Using the Promote button, you can create an ad from an existing Pin in just a couple of
clicks. Promoted Pins created with the Promote button are always pay-per-click, so you only
pay when someone clicks through to your website.
Pro tip: This is a really easy way to get started with Pinterest advertising. Try promoting
some of your best-performing Pins to get a sense of the kind of reach you can achieve with
your desired budget. Make sure to track results over time to see the effects as people save
your Promoted Pins to their own boards.
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your Pinterest ads in our Pinterest
advertising guide.
YOUTUBE ADS
YouTube ads can help you work towards the following business goals:
Collect leads
Drive website traffic
Increase product and brand consideration
Build brand awareness and extend your reach
Audience considerations: YouTube has more male than female users. The audience is well
spread out among age groups up to 65.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2020
There are a few different video ad formats available on YouTube. Since Google owns
YouTube, you’ll need a Google AdWords account to create YouTube ads.
Skippable in-stream ads
These ads automatically play before, during, or after other videos on YouTube. They can
also appear in other places in Google’s display network, such as apps or games.
Users get the option to skip your ad after five seconds. The recommended video length is
generally 30 seconds or less.
However, if you have a compelling story with great visuals, you can run longer.
Pro tip: Seventy-six percent of viewers skip ads by default. However, a skipped ad still
increases the chances someone will visit or subscribe to your channel by 10 times. Make sure
to get your most important messaging and branding in those unskippable first five seconds.
Bumper Ads
These ads are also unskippable, but they’re a maximum of six seconds long. They appear at
the beginning, during, or end of YouTube videos.
Pro tip: Don’t try to do too much in six seconds. Start with a strong visual, stick to one
message, and leave enough time for your call to action.
Outstream ads
These mobile-only ads are not available on Youtube, and will only appear on websites and
apps that run on Google video partners.
Outstream ads might run in web banners, or within apps as interstitials or in-feed content.
Pro tip: Outstream ads begin playing with the audio muted, so make sure your visuals can
stand alone.
Masthead ads
This format really makes a splash, and is a great option for drumming up some publicity for
a new product or service.
On the desktop, a masthead ad will autoplay a preview for up to 30 seconds at the top of the
Youtube Home feed. It includes an info panel that pulls assets from your channel—here you
can add up companion videos as well. When the autoplay stops, the video reverts to a
thumbnail. Users can click through to watch the whole thing from your page.
On Mobile, Masthead ads play in full at the top of either the Youtube mobile site or the app.
Here, you can customize the headline and description, as well as a call to action.
Pro tip: These ads are only available via reservation basis, so you’ll need to contact a Google
sales rep to learn more.
Get all the step-by-step instructions you need to set up your YouTube ads in our YouTube
advertising guide.
TIKTOK ADS
TikTok ads can help you work towards the following business goals:
Traffic: Grow engagement with interactivity and creative content.
Reach: Connect with diverse audiences across the world.
Conversion: Encourage app installs and sales.
Audience considerations: A survey by the Global Web Index found that 60% of TikTok users
fall into the 25-to-44 age bracket worldwide. But in the U.S., 69% of users are between 13 and
24 years old.
TikTok ads are only available in certain regions at this point in time, so depending on where
you live, you might be stuck making organic content for now. But read on so that you’ll be
ready when the time comes.
There’s a social media ad solution for every budget, from just a few dollars a day to million-
dollar campaigns.
Ads on most social networks are sold in an auction format. You set a maximum bid for a
target result (such as a click), or a maximum budget per day. There’s no set amount to pay.
As you create your ad, the ad manager interface will provide a recommended bid based on
your stated goals.
You will generally pay using one of these methods, depending on your campaign goal:
Considering these statistics, the importance of your online personal and professional reputation
can’t be understated. Here are the four distinct digital marketing channels involved in ORM,
channels also referred to as the PESO Model.
Paid Media
Paid media includes all marketing efforts that require payment to feature your business on
external websites and networks. This includes PPC advertising with Google AdWords, display
ads on Facebook, and sponsored posts on industry/influencer blogs. Paid media extends your
reach and drives traffic to your web properties by building new relationships with partners and
customers.
Earned Media
Earned media describes the coverage of your business on external web entities for which you
didn’t pay. It requires you to stand out from your competition with great content, products, or
services that users consider worth sharing, mentioning, reposting, and reviewing.
Social Media
Pages and profiles on social media are “an extension of your brand and create additional
avenues for people to interact.” When it comes to social properties, it’s important to dedicate
the resources to stay active on them by engaging in conversations and publishing fresh content
regularly. As a general rule: not having a profile on a certain network is better than having an
inactive one.
Owned Properties
Your business websites and blogs are properties owned by you, which means you have full
control over them. Of course, the more properties you own, the higher your chances to
effectively build your digital presence. At the same time, you don’t want to cause confusion by
establishing properties that can’t be distinguished from one another.
Here’s how to use these digital marketing channels to start building and managing a healthy
online reputation for your business
.
#1: Decide What You Want Your Online Reputation to Be
With ORM, the first step is to decide what you want your online reputation to be. Do you want
to be perceived as an industry authority? To adopt the position as the market leader? Or be
known for your responsiveness and excellent customer service?
#3: Craft a Social Media Policy to Guide Engagement That Supports Your Reputation Goals
The next step for building an A+ online presence is to have an effective social media policy in
place. Social media policy refers to how a company and its employees interact online.
Here are a few key points to keep in mind when creating your policy:
Don’t allow staff members to freely post whatever comes to mind, particularly if
the content is associated with your business. One reason for that is to protect your
reputation. The other reason is liability. To keep things simple, you could tell your
employees to label all of their posts as “personal” or create a pre-approval process
for content, if necessary.
Sensitive data should never be shared with the public, including financial, legal,
and private client information.
A captivating online reputation is all about professionalism. This also applies to
publishing content on social media.
Reserve the right to edit or delete potentially harmful content.
#4: Design a Social Media Content Strategy to Promote Your Desired Reputation
A social media content strategy outlines the subjects and topics your business or brand wants
to focus on, the use of keywords and media types (articles, video, podcasts), and who’s
responsible for content creation and implementation, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the
same person.
Additionally, there are a number of platform-specific tools that can help you gain demographic
insights about your audience and competitors.
As an example, Instagram Insights requires you to create a business profile first. Then to access
the reports, navigate to your profile page and click the graph icon in the top-right corner. Apart
from insights on followers, you can see the performance of your posts, stories, and ads, as well
as your profile in general.
Conclusion
Building and managing your online reputation means actively influencing the impression that
your business leaves on users. The first step toward a sound reputation is deciding how you
want your business to be perceived.
Paid media, earned media, owned properties, and most importantly, social media are four
digital marketing channels that help shape your online reputation. With social media in
particular, many tools are available to help accomplish daily tasks such as content creation and
staying on a publishing schedule. Also, don’t forget to have a social media policy and content
strategy in place.
Social media listening tools allow you to build a solid understanding of exactly how
customers and potential customers think about you by analyzing what they say on social
channels. You can also learn what they think about the competition. This is incredible
market research readily available in real-time—as long as you know how to access it.
If you don’t have a social listening strategy in place, you’re missing out on some of the most
valuable data available to help build your business.
In fact, nearly two-thirds of marketers agree that social listening has increased in value in
the last year.
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-listening-business/
What is social listening?
Social listening is tracking social media platforms for mentions and conversations related to
your brand, then analyzing them for insights to discover opportunities to act.
Step 1: Monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, products,
and keywords related to your business.
Step 2: Analyze the information for ways to put what you learn into action. That can be
something as small as responding to a happy customer or something as big as shifting your
entire brand positioning.
Social media monitoring is all about collecting data. It allows you to look back at what has
already happened using metrics such as:
Brand mentions
Relevant hashtags
Competitor mentions
Industry trends
Brand monitoring on social media is great for things like monitoring ROI or A/B testing
campaigns. It’s also great information to help prove the value of social marketing when it
comes time to set the yearly budget.
But numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. It’s great if a post gets lots of positive
engagement. But it’s not so great if a post racks up negative comments and angry-face
reactions.
Social listening looks beyond the numbers to consider the mood behind the data. This
“online mood” is also called social media sentiment.
Social media sentiment analysis is a key part of social media listening because it helps you
understand how people feel about you and your competitors. Instead of just counting the
number of times your brand gets mentioned, you look at what you can learn from social
conversations to drive real business results.
Being aware of shifts in social sentiment also allows you to respond right away to
unexpected changes
Social monitoring is essentially a record of what has already happened. The defining feature
of social listening is that it looks forward and backward. It’s about analyzing the information
you collect and using it to guide your strategy and day-to-day actions.
How can a social listening strategy help your business?
If you’re not using social media listening, you’re creating your business strategy with
blinders on. Real people actively talk about your brand and your industry online. It’s in your
best interest to know what they have to say.
Simply put, if you care about your customers, you care about the insights you can get from
social listening. Here are some of the ways social listening can benefit your business.
Product intelligence
Monitoring conversations around the industry also uncovers a ton of insight about what’s
working—and what’s not working—for existing and potential customers.This information is
a gold mine for your customer service, product development, and marketing teams.For
example, Nordstrom’s social team gained some important information here to pass on to the
UX team:Can you tweak an existing product or add a feature to resolve problems people are
talking about? Maybe what you learn will spur a new product idea.You’ll also learn about
frustrations with your current products—and your competitors’ products. Can you modify
things to help address the concerns? If you do, be sure to tell people about it with a targeted
marketing campaign.
“If people within the community see you as an active partner in supporting the creators they
admire, they’ll be more likely to trust that you have their best interests at heart too.”
You will also find people who already love your brand and are saying great things about
you on social media. These are natural brand advocates. Reach out to them and look for
opportunities to collaborate in meaningful ways with these existing cheerleaders for your
brand.
1. Hootsuite
You may not be surprised to learn that we think Hootsuite is one of the best free social
listening tools out there. You can use Hootsuite to set up social media streams that monitor
conversations, keywords, mentions, and hashtags.
You can monitor and respond to conversations or mentions immediately from one
dashboard—instead of logging in and out of various social platforms.
Hootsuite also allows you to keep an ear to the ground in your industry by monitoring the
competition and building relationships with social media creators (a.k.a. influencers) and
potential brand advocates.
3. Adview
adview social listening dashboard within Hootsuite
Unlike most social listening platforms, Adview is used specifically for social listening on
Facebook and Instagram ads. You can use it to monitor up to three Facebook Ad Accounts
across unlimited pages.
When you add Adview to your Hootsuite dashboard, you can reply to comments on all your
Facebook and Instagram ads in one place.
4. Talkwalker
Talkwalker offers robust social listening features that analyze blogs, forums, videos, news
sites, review sites, and social networks all in one dashboard. They draw data from more than
150 million sources.
You’ll be able to monitor conversations around your brand while analyzing the engagement,
reach, comments, and sentiment behind them.
5. Synthesio
Synthesio dashboard
Synthesio tracks conversations on highly specific topics in carefully segmented audiences. It
allows you to segment your social listening data by language, location, demographics,
sentiment, gender, influence, and more. The reports also come with a handy social
reputation score.
6. Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics dashboard
Track mentions, keywords, and sentiment across multiple languages. Also, you can easily
find influencers across social networks and other online sources.
The Mentionlytics social media monitoring tool combs through social platforms, along with
blogs and news sites, for mentions. Since it’s integrated with Hootsuite, you’ll be able to
easily view them on your dashboard.
7. Netbase
Netbase dashboard
NetBase uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help you focus your social listening on
key conversations. It collects data from hundreds of millions of social posts daily plus more
than 100 billion historical posts across the social web.
8. Audiense
Audiense dashboard
Audiense allows you to identify any audience—no matter the size.
The app creates reports that tell you what they’re discussing, what they like, and even how
they think and behave.
Its audience manager also helps you find and understand very specific audiences to make
sure you have the perfect match for your brand.
9. Digimind
Digimind dashboard
Digimind sources data from more than 850 million sources in 200+ languages. Using
artificial intelligence, it analyzes mentions to monitor trends and sentiment, presenting them
in useful data visualizations.
The customer service, content marketing, and product development teams could all benefit
from what you learn when you’re listening on social media. Make sure to communicate
those learnings. And seek input from those teams, too. They might have specific questions
you could answer by tweaking your social listening setup, too.
Social media analytics is the ability to gather and find meaning in data gathered from social
channels to support business decisions — and measure the performance of actions based on
those decisions through social media.
Social media analytics is broader than metrics such as likes, follows, retweets, previews,
clicks, and impressions gathered from individual channels. It also differs from reporting
offered by services that support marketing campaigns such as LinkedIn or Google Analytics.
Social media analytics uses specifically designed software platforms that work similarly to
web search tools. Data about keywords or topics is retrieved through search queries or web
‘crawlers’ that span channels. Fragments of text are returned, loaded into a database,
categorized and analyzed to derive meaningful insights.
Social media analytics includes the concept of social listening. Listening is monitoring social
channels for problems and opportunities. Social media analytics tools typically incorporate
listening into more comprehensive reporting that involves listening and performance
analysis.
IBM points out that with the prevalence of social media: “News of a great product can
spread like wildfire. And news about a bad product — or a bad experience with a customer
service rep — can spread just as quickly. Consumers are now holding organizations to
account for their brand promises and sharing their experiences with friends, co-workers and
the public at large.”
Social media analytics helps companies address these experiences and use them to:
These insights can be used to not only make tactical adjustments, like addressing an angry
tweet, they can help drive strategic decisions. In fact, IBM finds social media analytics is
now “being brought into the core discussions about how businesses develop their
strategies.”
THESE STRATEGIES AFFECT A RANGE OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY:
Product development - Analyzing an aggregate of Facebook posts, tweets and
Amazon product reviews can deliver a clearer picture of customer pain points,
shifting needs and desired features. Trends can be identified and tracked to shape
the management of existing product lines as well as guide new product
development.
Customer experience - An IBM study discovered “organizations are evolving from
product-led to experience-led businesses.” Behavioral analysis can be applied across
social channels to capitalize on micro-moments to delight customers and increase
loyalty and lifetime value.
Branding - Social media may be the world’s largest focus group. Natural language
processing and sentiment analysis can continually monitor positive or negative
expectations to maintain brand health, refine positioning and develop new brand
attributes.
Competitive Analysis - Understanding what competitors are doing and how
customers are responding is always critical. For example, a competitor may indicate
that they are foregoing a niche market, creating an opportunity. Or a spike in
positive mentions for a new product can alert organizations to market disruptors.
Operational efficiency – Deep analysis of social media can help organizations
improve how they gauge demand. Retailers and others can use that information to
manage inventory and suppliers, reduce costs and optimize resources.
Typically, a data set will be established to support the goals, topics, parameters and sources.
Data is retrieved, analyzed and reported through visualizations that make it easier to
understand and manipulate.
These steps are typical of a general social media analytics approach that can be made more
effective by capabilities found in social media analytics platforms.
Natural language processing and machine learning technologies identify entities and
relationships in unstructured data — information not pre-formatted to work with
data analytics. Virtually all social media content is unstructured. These technologies
are critical to deriving meaningful insights.
Segmentation is a fundamental need in social media analytics. It categorizes social
media participants by geography, age, gender, marital status, parental status and
other demographics. It can help identify influencers in those categories. Messages,
initiatives and responses can be better tuned and targeted by understanding who is
interacting on key topics.
Behavior analysis is used to understand the concerns of social media participants by
assigning behavioral types such as user, recommender, prospective user and
detractor. Understanding these roles helps develop targeted messages and responses
to meet, change or deflect their perceptions.
Sentiment analysis measures the tone and intent of social media comments. It
typically involves natural language processing technologies to help understand
entities and relationships to reveal positive, negative, neutral or ambivalent
attributes.
Share of voice analyzes prevalence and intensity in conversations regarding brand,
products, services, reputation and more. It helps determine key issues and important
topics. It also helps classify discussions as positive, negative, neutral or ambivalent.
Clustering analysis can uncover hidden conversations and unexpected insights. It
makes associations between keywords or phrases that appear together frequently
and derives new topics, issues and opportunities. The people that make baking soda,
for example, discovered new uses and opportunities using clustering analysis.
Dashboards and visualization charts, graphs, tables and other presentation tools
summarize and share social media analytics findings — a critical capability for
communicating and acting on what has been learned. They also enable users to grasp
meaning and insights more quickly and look deeper into specific findings without
advanced technical skills.
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