Bill Gates

While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may have dethroned him as the richest man in the world, Bill Gates continues to maintain his reputation for one of the most generous tech CEOs in the world.  Gates, who co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen, has been known to frequently give back. Gates co-founded The Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett, in an effort to recruit other wealthy people to donate at least half of their net worth to philanthropic organizations.  Individuals signing up for the pledge have the option to place their donation either during their lifetime or after death. The Giving Pledge has attracted many noteworthy people, including Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.  Aside from The Giving Pledge, Gates continues to take part in charitable causes and pays it forward as often as he can.

Michael Dell

Founder and CEO of Dell Technologies Michael Dell has long been known as one of the most charitable figures in technology, and continues to show that through The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, a charity he founded with his wife.  The foundation focuses on improving the lives of children living in urban, impoverished areas by improving aspects of health, education, and home life.  Since 1999, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has pledged $1.563 billion to non-profits and other causes in the U.S., India, and South Africa. Michael Dell is undoubtedly one of the most generous tech SEOs on the scene, and continues to show that through his efforts.

Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller of Polycom has dedicated a large portion of his career to philanthropic efforts.  The company’s former CEO most notably supports the Moment by Moment Foundation, a charity that recruits volunteer professional photographers to photograph terminally ill children and their families.  Miller frequently provides financial support to the foundation, and has become a pillar of the charitable effort. Miller has also taken part in Beyond Differences’ “No One Eats Alone” program, which promotes social inclusivity and teaches children how to make friends during school lunchtime.  Miller continues his involvement in various charities and organizations, solidifying his status as one of the most charitable tech CEOs out there.

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Instead of merely looking at an advertisement for a product, and then going to a store and purchasing it, consumers want to talk about the product before they buy it.  In fact, they also want to share their opinions after they have used a product. The product becomes part of their experiences, and they are eager to share those experiences with other consumers.

Make Connections

Businesses that make meaningful connections with their consumers on social media notice something magical happening:  their sales skyrocket. Social media is vital in today’s marketing world, and when a business connects and interacts with its customers through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, people take notice.  

By leveraging user-generated content for a branding campaign, businesses are letting consumers know that they value and appreciate their opinions and comments.  Consumers sharing positive brand experiences through social media channels (via photos, reviews, and discussion boards) are fantastic opportunities to use consumer-generated content for a branding campaign.  When consumers see that a company is authentic in its interaction with them, they will feel the company is relevant and ‘understands’ who they are.

Use Hashtags

An excellent way to utilize user-generated content is to set up a contest on your brand’s social media channels and encourage consumers to participate using a particular hashtag.  For example, suppose a business ran a campaign in which celebrity lookalikes posed while holding the brand’s product.  This would instantly add social proof for the brand’s authority and definitely generate some buzz.

Consumers were invited to replicate the ad and post their own photos on social media platforms, using the hashtag generated specifically for the contest.  The campaign slogan could read, “They sure look like celebrities, and so can you!” With company engagement on social media platforms, consumers become brand advocates and are more likely to share content with their own followers, thereby producing even greater ‘free’ advertising for the brand.

Try to Create a Buzz

Some very successful user-generated content campaigns are terrific examples of how useful they can be.  Not only does leveraging user-generated content increase business for the duration of a brand campaign, but it also increases brand social media followers.  In the long run, creating ‘buzz’ over products can have lasting, positive consequences for businesses.

A company can inspire its consumers by including their thoughts, opinions, photos, and reviews into its brand campaigns, creating a strong relationship bond.  The consumer feels a personal connection to a company who shared a photo on social media of their family on vacation using the brand product. It’s a trust in the company the consumer feels, and that can be a significant key to the success of user-generated brand campaigns.

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You don’t need to give up on your online marketing goals just because it’s a bit intimidating at first. Yes, there is a learning curve, but there are plenty of people and tools available to help you get on track. Let’s take a look at some of the best platforms for your small business to use when getting started with an online marketing initiative.

Social Media

This one might be a no-brainer, but it needs to lead off our list anyway. There is a lot to like about promoting your business on social media. For one thing, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have enormous reach, making it nearly certain that a large portion of your target market is present and waiting to be found. Also, there are plenty of ways to use these social media platforms for free – at least at first – meaning you can invest nothing but your time when getting started. If you begin to see positive results, you may want to move into paid forms of social media marketing to (hopefully) accelerate your growth.

Business Listings

For a simple, but potentially powerful, step, consider adding your business to a number of business listings sites that are available on the web. If someone visits a listing site looking for businesses who do exactly what you do, it would be a shame to not be present. This is a step which should not take much in the way of time or effort, but it just may help you land additional clients or customers moving forward.

Google Ads

When you decide to take the step to enter the paid marketing arena, this is likely where you are going to start. Google Ads (long known as Google AdWords) is a huge platform which provides the marketer with an incredible degree of precision. Don’t be put off if you don’t have a big budget at the moment – you can carefully control how much you spend, making it possible to test out various ads and other factors without breaking the bank.

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In a pre-internet world, influencer marketing often came in the form of product endorsements by celebrities. Consumers would see a celebrity using a given product and would be motivated to purchase that product for themselves. That type of marketing still exists, of course, but online influencer marketing has taken on a different form. Now, the influencer may not be someone like a famous athlete or actor/actress, but rather a blogger, YouTuber, SEO consultant, or other digital ‘celebrity’ within a given space.

This is good news for businesses who hope to promote products or services online. With so many influencers available, you may be able to form meaningful, beneficial relationships in your space. Let’s look at three tips for making that happen.

#1 – Have Something to Offer

Sure, it’s great for your business if an influencer speaks well of your product, but how does that benefit them and their business? Like any good relationship, you need to make sure there is value on both sides. Think mostly about how you can serve others and the rewards are likely to come back to you in a significant way.

#2 – Be Real

If you are simply sending out a cold, form e-mail to all of the influencers you can think of in your space, it’s unlikely that you will get much of a positive response. As an alternative, try to build a real relationship over time by following along on social media, reading blog posts, commenting, etc. Invest in the person and what they are doing before you go asking for favors.

#3 – Respect Talent

Someone who has built a reputation as an influencer in a given industry didn’t get to that position by accident. They have a level of knowledge and talent in the field that should be respected. In other words, don’t expect to simply tell an influencer what you want them to say about your product, or how you want them to say it. This is a creative, successful person, and they have earned the right to be trusted.

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Of course, other platforms do exist, but Twitter is primarily a young person’s platform and 70% of Pinterest users are female. Finding the right platforms to market your content is only the first step. Actually reaching those customers over said platforms is much more difficult.

The old ways of sharing your content and letting it accrue shares naturally are gone. This is why we’ve outlined five advanced tactics that are sure to yield your brand greater reach and engagement over any social media platform.

Targeted Sharing

This is by far my favorite method for curating conversation over social media and getting your content in front of a large audience. There are few ways to conduct targeted sharing:

• • Tag a thought leader/influencer in a post snippet who would find interest in your content

• • Attribute a quote in your snippet to a thought leader and then tag them
  • Post content in community forums or on thought leader posts

Using these strategies, you can add authority to your posts and even begin a conversation over a topic in your industry with somebody who is respected. It’s the easiest way to get your content visibility in front of a large audience and also increase post engagement.

Influencer Marketing

Partnering with an influencer is also a great method to get your content in front a large, loyal audience. Just be sure the reviews of your content are favorable and that you reciprocate by sharing influencer content to your audience. Together you can grow your readership and customer base to massive proportions.

Filtering for Custom Audiences

Never overlook the efficacy of advertising your content or an event your brand is promoting. Use Facebook’s ‘Audience Insights’ or Twitter’s analytics tool to segment your audience by demographics and psychographics and target them with relevant content they are likely to engage with. This is also a great method for simply coming up topics or promotional ideas for content or products.

Remarketing

Have you ever posted a piece of video content that went viral? Well, why not retarget those same users with another piece of relevant content? Why not repurpose that same piece of content into an infographic or video to make it go viral again? Remarketing is a great strategy to nurture researcher intent and maybe even capture a few easy sales by finally convincing those skeptical customers.

Leverage Video

Finally, you should honestly post every piece of content as a video. According to one report, marketers who leveraged video were able to increase their revenue 49% more than marketers who didn’t. Video receives higher engagement over every single social media platform than text content and is in high demand.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is only one piece of the pie as hiring a mobile app developer and investing in email marketing can deliver equal returns. But as social media platforms limit their reach and focus more on the personal side of their experience, brands will have to get more creative to reach their customers and deliver a high return.

The post Advanced Tactics to Promote Your Brand Over Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been under fire for their questionable data policies and their use as propaganda ploys.

Trust in all institutions, whether private or public, has never been lower, especially in the Silicon Valley. Rather than connect brands with their customers, social media may have assisted in creating a larger divide.

Organic reach over social media, especially Facebook, has never been lower and it’s leaving many businesses to abandon the channel as a promotional vehicle. But social media marketing is not dead.

In fact, marketing content over social media is still very profitable, if you know which channels and what content to market. Let’s explore.

Content by Channel

Facebook

There are currently 2.2 billion active users on Facebook, making it the world’s most popular social network. If you’ve already used the network, then you know that video is by far the most prominent piece of content being shared by your friends.

Facebook receives over 8 billion daily video views and marketers are upping their budget to match this demand.

Live video also performs well over the network, although Instagram has attempted to challenge Facebook’s hegemony for some years. After Facebook Live hit the network, Facebook recieved a 700% uptick in video views annually.

Best Content: Video, Live Stream, Local Content, Images

Twitter

While Twitter may be a significantly smaller network, advertisers enjoy access to much of the same demographic and psychographic information that Facebook has to offer. Research has shown that Twitter users tend to be higher earners and a vast majority of them engage over their mobile phone. With limited character posts, short text based tweets with links tend to be in the highest demand over the network.

Best Content: Images, Mobile Optimized Articles

Instagram

Instagram users are a vast, diverse pool and tend to offer greater engagement than other networks. In fact, brand engagement over Instagram is growing faster than marketers signing up for the platform.

Think about it. Instagram is the world’s most prolific visual content website and most people tend to be visual learners. Between video and high resolution images, brands have an opportunity to capture user attention and engage with customers that no other platform truly offers. Now wonder Facebook bought it out.

Best Content: Images, Video

Pinterest

There are over 75 million Pinterest users in the US, with an overwhelming majority of them being female. Being a heavy image-based sites, brands have great opportunity to engage users with product images and behind-the-scenes brand images.

Best Content: Images

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional network primarily composed of curated content and job listings. LinkedIn is a great social network for thought leadership articles and personal branding campaigns.

Best Content: Guest Posts, Articles

Snapchat

Finally, Snapchat is one of the largest social media platforms in the US, but offers very limited options for marketers. With that said, Snapchat is much less saturated with business profiles than Facebook or Instagram, and offers the opportunity for brands to show off behind the scenes content that are authentic.

Best Content: Images, Videos

Content By Media

Infographics

Infographics are visual charts and tables that typically tell a story. Infographics are some of the most shared mediums of content over the internet and shared at a much higher rate than textual content.

Humans process visual content 60,000x faster than text and people typically seek out stories in the midst of their content viewing experience. Being easily scannable and sometimes highly emotional, infographics are the perfect addition to any article you wish to share over social media and make a good thumbnail image to your post.

Video

Video receives the highest engagement out of any other form of content available digitally. According to Brightcove, video engagement is more than 1200% higher than text and image based posts combined. Consider that the world’s two largest social platforms, Facebook and Youtube, are also the world’s most trafficked video platforms.

Video content is so effective because it’s visual and doesn’t require active cognisance by the viewer. It’s as equally passive, as it is mentally demanding. Beyond this, video performs well over every single social media platform available.

Be sure to create videos with high quality resolution and brand storytelling. Use annotations and rich snippets to encourage sharing or to insert an alternative CTA.

Interactive Content

Tools, quizzes, and interactive content performs well as a link magnet for your website, but it’s also highly shareable. Interactive content is primarily used as a vehicle to entice users to engage with your brand and share your content. From contests to user-generated content submissions, interactive content has the ability to go much more viral then text based content.

Whether it’s marketing a mortgage payment calculator or a quiz to see if you have OCD, interactive content encourages greater engagement, making it more shareable.

Images are Critical

Finally, visual content clearly dominates over textual content. But this doesn’t mean that both should be mutually exclusive. Studies have shown that including one image on a Tweet can boost its retweet rate by 150%. The same was found over Facebook, where engagement was 2.3x higher.

The key is to insert a high resolution, original image on your post snippets to acquire attention from scrollers. Use images to tell a story and make your article feel less intimidating to read and more scannable.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is not dead, although the strategy has changed significantly. Ultimately, social media is still a vehicle for engagement with your customers. With a renewed focus on friends and family, creating fun and emotional posts that are visually enticing will receive the highest engagement over any social media platform.

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