As Holly Rollo, CMO and SVP Transformation of RSA, points out in her recent interview that this is a silver linings opportunity for CMOs: “It’s been difficult to get their attention on some of these leads coming across and why they’re important and now, suddenly, we’re getting attention on those kinds of programs.”

She continues: “It’s really forcing them to understand what we’re already doing. In this way, it’s not necessarily doing more things, it’s helping them understand how to take advantage of a lot of the things that we’re already doing on digital or how we’re nurturing some of these leads or helping them understand some of the analytics.” This sentiment is reinforced in a recent guide to B2B Demand Generation by Renegade LLC on how to pivot your marketing strategy and messaging during the COVID era (or in any downturn).

So, where is a good place to start? Prospects are online, so sales reps should be too, and that’s where social selling comes in. Social selling is a strategy that salespeople can use to find and connect with prospects and build trusted relationships with them on the social channels they use, in order to increase sales. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, social selling has a proven track record for bringing in leads and closing sales. Here are some of the numbers:

• 75% B2B buyers use social to research vendors
• 90% decision makers never respond to cold outreach
• 74% buyers choose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight
• 72.6% salespeople who use social media as part of their sales process outperform their peers, and
• Salespeople who use social exceed quota 23% more often than those who don’t

Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble and a social selling expert, gathered 100,000 Nimble users and converted 15% of them into paid subscribers with no marketing budget at all. As he explains in his interview, Ferrara invested his energy into building relationships and it’s proven to be a valuable use of time.

It is important to note that social selling is about serving, not selling. “We’re all bombarded by messages that are not one-to-one, authentic, and relevant,” Ferrara says, “So we throw those away and we toss them aside. If you can effectively enrich the contacts you have, segment properly, outreach in a one-to-one way, then you can drive your opens, your clicks, and your results through the roof.”

Now, Jon’s success didn’t happen overnight, and effective social selling takes training and a bit of patience. For B2B businesses, we recommend utilizing tools on LinkedIn’s platform, as this is where social selling has proven most effective for B2B brands.

After building a strong profile to reflect your personal brand, sales reps can use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator to identify and locate prospects, create leads and build trusted relationships with them using content sharing, publishing, and messaging capabilities. Also, LinkedIn measures your Social Selling Index (SSI) score to see how you rank among other sellers in your industry and network.

The post How to Redeploy Sales Teams in a #WFH World appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Social media can be a tedious and time-consuming task, to be sure. Every morning, you may wake up and update your various social channels, bouncing back and forth between accounts. You need to develop and publish content for those channels to keep followers engaged.

But how many social media channels do you need? How do you prioritize channels? Depending on how many you have, this process could eat up several hours. As a result, your overall productivity suffers: You’re spending too much time and energy on social media, which cuts into priorities like growing your business.

Even worse, you may get sucked down a social media rabbit hole, scrolling through your friends’ and colleagues’ posts. The next thing you know, you’ve devoted 30 unproductive minutes to social media — without a single follower or interaction to show for it.

Find Tools to Increase Your Social Media Productivity 

To prevent a time suck from happening, invest in these six tools that will not only make you more productive on social media, but also enhance your productivity regarding the things only you can do: 

1. Calendar.com

While Calendar isn’t specifically designed for social media management yet, it should be part of your social media toolkit. For starters, Calendar is one of the best calendar apps that syncs with your existing Google Calendar, Office 364 Calendar, and Apple Calendar. This means you can create a social media calendar to manage and organize your social media posts. 

As a result, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

• Plan social media content weeks or months in advance so you can focus on growing your business. You won’t be scrambling to find engaging content every day.
• Customize content for each specific network so you’re not repeating the same message.
• Plan for holidays and days of observance so you can create relevant content surrounding those celebrations.
• Track the performance of your social media efforts.
• Improve the efficiency of your social efforts.
• Keep your entire team on the same page. With a calendar, you can assign tasks to various team members and keep them in the loop. With a shared calendar, people will know when specific social media updates will be published and on which platform.
• Become more effective at time management because you’re setting aside specific times in your schedule to plan and manage your social channels.

When it’s time to plan an upcoming social media campaign, you have room to discuss its progress. Calendar allows you to painlessly schedule a meeting with your team — just share your availability, and your teammates can select the date and time they’re available. This means no more going back and forth via email or IM to set up your next meeting.

You need to have a plan when it comes to social media. With Calendar, you and your team can collectively schedule and plan the direction you’re headed.

2. CoSchedule

This is an all-in-one marketing calendar that can be used by content marketers to stay productive while keeping track of their tasks and teams.

CoSchedule helps users achieve by allowing them to create and customize a unified calendar. With CoSchedule, you can organize the various types of content you produce. This means all aspects of your publications — your blog posts, podcasts, and social media updates — can be created on timelines. You can track deadlines and prioritize tasks for you and your teammates.

At the same time, you can schedule your social media posts or publish a fresh piece of content on CoSchedule. This allows you to share a new piece to the social platform of your choosing with just one click. 

This tool also comes with a handy Best Time Scheduling tool so you’ll know when to publish your social content for maximization. You’ll be informed about the highest traffic time for sharing your content. You can also schedule dozens of social messages in bulk and immediately share content to your followers anywhere on the web.

3. Likeable Local

Likeable Local is a social media management and marketing solution designed for small businesses and agencies. It’s a collaborative tool that handles everything, helping you be more productive on social.

This tool helps with creating content, scheduling posts, and running social media ads. The tool also comes with a scheduling calendar so you and your team know what’s being published on specific social channels. There’s also a convenient messaging center. Every message, comment, and review you receive via social media can be accessed in one location. 

Likeable Local also provides insights. You’ll receive analytics on metrics such as clicks and likes for individual posts, enabling you to see how your social pages are growing.

Likeable Local offers four different plans:

• Automated: This is perfect for those just starting out on social media because it focuses on post engagement and page growth.
• Custom: This is another starter package that focuses on custom posts and leads.
• Lead: This plan is for anyone who wishes to generate leads.
• Social: This package manages all aspects of a social media campaign to achieve social media dominance.

4. Buffer

Sharing content is a must if you want to build a following on social media. With so much content being published throughout the day, finding content that will resonate with your audience can be a time-consuming task.

Thankfully, the Buffer app solves this problem. With Buffer, you can schedule posts at various times of the day, even if you’re not online. It’s incredibly easy to use, and it integrates with popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. This allows you to access Buffer from your social media profiles instead of switching between each channel separately.

Buffer can also grab posts from Facebook and Twitter so you can quickly and easily share content that’s relevant to your followers. As if that weren’t enough, Buffer allows you to schedule your various social media posts in one dashboard.

Buffer permits up to 25 team members to access your account. You have the option to set individual access levels for these team members as well. You can review your social media performance, thanks to analytics that highlight how you can improve your results.

5. Sprout Social

The point of being on social media is to develop and build meaningful relationships with your audience. This can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. Sprout Social speeds up this process by helping you identify and strengthen these relationships.

Sprout Social is equipped with a Smart Inbox. Through this, you can engage with and monitor all the messages and comments you receive on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn via one inbox.

You can also monitor your brand by keyword, hashtag, and location searches. Sprout Social gives you the opportunity to convert messages into actionable items and identify influencers. It also offers the ability to receive automated reply suggestions, thanks to machine learning.

Sprout Social provides a social CRM and the ability to plan and publish content across your various social channels. There are also reports that enable you to see how your efforts are performing so you can adjust accordingly.

6. Hootsuite

It’s unlikely that you have just one social media profile; each channel serves various purposes. Your audience may be spread across several platforms. That’s great — except for the fact that managing and updating all these profiles can become a time suck.

Hootsuite solves this problem by allowing you to handle multiple social media accounts through a single dashboard. Through a free account, you can view, schedule, and post messages to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube accounts. It keeps you logged in — you won’t be constantly logging in and out of each platform. 

There’s also a content calendar so you and your teammates know exactly when a specific piece of content will be published. Need to curate content? No problem. Use Hootsuite to search streams by hashtag, location, or keyword. You can quickly find riveting content for your audience to consume. If you stumble across a piece of content you dig while browsing online, it can be shared instantly from the webpage.

Like most other social media management tools, Hootsuite provides analytics to measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

Remaining active and engaged on social media isn’t just important for your fans; it’s important for your brand, too. To avoid sacrificing your time or winging your posts, invest in tools like these six. The only way to strengthen your social media presence is to track it and adjust your behavior to match what your followers need and want.

The post Grow Your Social Media Presence with These 6 Tools appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Google has much to be credited for when it comes to PPC advertising but it’s not all plain sailing. There are certain mistakes that you need to be aware of when navigating your Google Ads account; mistakes that could be fatal to the success of your business. 

1. Not Using The Right Keywords

Keywords are responsible for your business showing up in the SERP when people search for a product or service like yours. 

We won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty, as you’re likely already aware. But what we will say is that you must consider keyword matches, of which there are three types:

• Broad – search contains any word in your keyphrase, in any order, and words that Google thinks are relevant
• Broad Match Modifier – slightly more specific than broad, the match modifier allows you to specify exact keywords that should appear in the search terms that trigger your ad by using a + before the word e.g. +adult +swimming +lessons
• Phrase – search contains your exact keyphrase but may have other words before or after the phrase
• Exact – search contains your exact keyphrase only

If you’re bidding on the keyword “interior design consultation” then your money is being spent every time those words show up in a search term either as a broad, phrase, or an exact match. 

For example, if you have a broad match for “interior design consultation” then you might be paying to appear under the search term “free interior design consultation”. 

Now, unless your consultations are free, you won’t be wanting to appear under this search term. Ultimately you’re spending money to appear in front of people to whom your product is irrelevant and under a search term that is irrelevant to you.

Seriously, you may as well appear under “glow in the dark fishing rods for kids”. 

Here we refer to our good friend, negative keyword research! 

This is something that many people overlook but doing so can be detrimental to your business, as exemplified above. 

In terms of the previous example, you would want to make “free” a negative keyword. The result being that you wouldn’t show up for any search terms that use the word “free”. 

Negative keyword research can be quite time-consuming. To help you get started, Nigel Patel’s blog on 7 Deadly Adwords Mistakes provides a list of likely negative keywords for small business. 

It’s also worth mentioning the risk of bidding on too many keywords. 

Obviously, the goal is for your ads to show up as much as possible under the relevant search terms but using too many keywords means you’re having to create a ton of ad groups, write a ton of ads and optimise a ton of landing pages. 

You can see how this might be costly in time, not just money. 

This brings us nicely onto the next mistake that people often make…

1. Bidding Too Much On Popular Terms 

The temptation, of course, is to bid on keywords that will get your ads seen by as many people as possible. But in addition to this being time-consuming, this just isn’t a smart use of your budget. 

Popular search terms will be dominated by your biggest competitors and it’s likely been that way for years and years… and years. 

So, unless you have a really big budget and you’re on a mission to increase your brand awareness, popular search terms are not your friend.

You will be far more effective bidding on specific keywords that are more relevant to your brand and will attract the most relevant people, rather than desperately trying to establish yourself in a big old pond full of big old fish. 

And due to the rise of voice searching you’re far better off bidding on long tail keywords that show up in specific search terms in a more conversational tone. 

Far fewer people are searching “weather London” and far more are just asking Google “what’s the weather like in London today?”

In fact, it’s thought that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by the end of 2020. 

1. Not Using SKAGs 

SKAGs or single keyword ad groups are, you guessed it, ad groups that only contain one keyword. 

SKAGs allows you more control over your ad account by removing the risk of burning your budget on irrelevant searches meaning Google will view your metrics as more relevant and you will rank higher in the SERPs. 

Using one keyword in an ad group allows you to write better quality targeted ads that are relevant to what the searches are searching for. And create high-quality landing pages specific to each ad group. 

Generally, the idea of SKAGs is to remove any disparity between search terms, keywords, ads and landing pages – ultimately improving the experience for the user. 

Creating ads that are super relevant to your users will increase your CTR and Quality Score and eventually decrease your spending. Jostle Corporation found that after implementing a SKAG strategy their CTR increased by 33% and their CPC decreased by 15%.

Using strategies such as single keyword ad groups in your ad account can be hugely beneficial which brings us to our next mistake…

1. Poor Account Strategy

A clean account structure allows you to streamline your user’s experience and increase your Quality Score by ensuring that the searches triggering your ads are relevant to your audience. 

A poor account strategy denies your authority and relevance in relation to search terms thus decreasing your visibility in the SERPs. 

A great blog from Wordstream sets out the 6 main components of a Google Ads account as follows.

• Campaigns
• Ad Groups 
• Keywords 
• Negative Keywords
• Ad Text
• Landing Pages

The important thing to think about is how your bids are placed throughout your account structure. 

As we have discussed, your bids should be low on generic, highly competitive keywords and higher on specific long-tail keywords. 

For example, if you have a jewellery company then you should have a low bid on “gold necklaces” because this is a very common search term with a large volume. You should have a higher bid on “gold astrological pendant necklace” because this will have fewer searches and be more relevant to your product. 

It is then important that your ad account is optimised so you have high-quality landing pages that correspond to your keywords. 

So if your keyword is “gold astrological pendant necklace” then you want your landing page to be a page about gold astrological pendant necklaces. 

A solid account structure and a streamlined user experience is the best way to increase your Quality Score, reach and ultimately sales. Focusing on optimising your ads account is often a better use of your effort than focusing on say one type of ad. 

This leads us on to our fifth and final mistake. 

1. Spending All Your Money on Display Ads

In recent years, display ads have been held up as the ultimate ad for achieving a wider audience reach and a lower cost per click. However, there are serious cons to using them, particularly if it’s where you’re putting most of your budget. 

Display ads have undergone impressive development since its inception which means that currently, Google can display ads on external 3rd party websites. In doing so publishers earn a cut of the CPC and the ads have a far more vast user reach. 

Obviously not being confined to Google search traffic is beneficial. A wider audience reach across multiple platforms means that bidding on popular keywords will cost less and the competition will be lessened. 

That being said, there is a lack of control that comes with display ads regarding where they are shown. Google does have certain algorithms in place to match your ads with relevant sites, but this isn’t always reliable and there is a risk that your ads will appear on sites that are not relevant. 

Optimising your ads account is really the only way that you can fine-tune your audience. With display ads, it’s far harder to target specific users which can have negative effects on your conversion rate. 

That is to say, you’re much more likely to convert if your ads are targeting people who are ready to buy your product, rather than people who may have only just heard of your business. There’s less awareness with display ads of the user’s intention as the display network has no reliable way of distinguishing between a user who is ready to purchase and a user who is essentially uninterested. 

PPC Protect has written a really great article about the Google display network that delves deeper into the pros and cons of using display ads. 

We’re not saying display ads are a total dud but it’s worth resisting the temptation to put ‘all your ads in their basket’. 

When it comes to your budget strive for balance! 

Like we said, as a Digital Marketing Agency in London, we know Google has a lot to be credited for when it comes to PPC and advertisers are able to reach millions of users worldwide through Google Ads. 

That being said, understanding the mistakes that are so often made can save you a lot of time and probably a lot of money. 

Anchor Text – Digital Marketing

Do-Follow Link – https://www.thegoodmarketer.co.uk/blog/marketing/google-ads-vs-facebook-ads/

Bio – The Good Marketer is a Marketing Agency in London which drives more traffic, generates conversions and increases sales for Small-To-Medium Sized Businesses.

The post Avoid These 5 Fatal Mistakes in Your Google Ads Account appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

In the interview below, you can read about some of the actions SAP has taken since COVID-19 began. Tillman discusses event cancellations, virtual conference offerings, and some of the tools that SAP is currently offering to solve common issues resulting from the pandemic. You’ll also see how SAP’s brand purpose help shaped these decisions. It’s worth noting that SAP is not alone in embracing purpose as you can read about in Renegade LLC’s special report on B2B Brand Strategy here.

NOTE: Since answering these questions, SAP has officially launched the Concur Fusion Virtual Summit and Ariba Live Virtual Experience. Both online events have free registration and provide hours of on-demand content to include keynotes and breakout sessions.

What’s the toughest decision SAP has made thus far in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

With safety and well-being of our employees, customers, and partners being our top priority, on March 3, after closely monitoring COVID-19 developments, we made the decision to cancel all SAP in-person events for the month of March. We looked at a combination of quantitative travel data from SAP Concur and qualitative discussions with the leadership and product teams across the organization. For example, through SAP Concur we found that flight bookings on Monday, March 2, 2020, had decreased 20 percent compared to the same day in 2019. 

Out of an abundance of caution, we cancelled SAP Concur Fusion, SAP Ariba Live, X4, SAP NOW events, as well as participation in all third-party events, including SXSW – before it was officially cancelled. SAP Concur Fusion and SAP Ariba Live will offer a number of free and open digital experiences on the original event dates, as well as on-demand session content afterward. The Qualtrics X4 Summit has been rescheduled to early Fall 2020 after nearly 85% of 1,800 surveyed attendees said they’d prefer to move it back to a later date.

What actions have you taken for your customers?

SAP operates the largest business network in the world, representing more than 4 million suppliers in over 190 countries and $3.21 trillion in commerce on Ariba Network. As such, for the next 90 days, we are opening access to SAP Ariba Discovery so any buyer can post their immediate sourcing needs and any supplier can respond to show they can deliver. Free to post. Free to respond. Access to SAP Ariba Discovery will help buyers and suppliers connect quickly and effectively, and minimize disruption caused by shipment delays, capacity issues and increased consumer demand in times of crisis.

The SAP Concur portfolio processes hundreds of thousands of travel itineraries for people around the globe, monitors their flights, and alerts them of any changes or delays. In response to increasing schedule changes and cancellations stemming from COVID-19, we want to do our part to help those who must travel. Between March 13 and April 14, any individual traveler can sign-up for TripIt — and download the app if they’re a first-time user — and receive TripIt Pro for six months. Existing TripIt users will also get the premium service complimentary for six months. By doing so, we hope to make things a little easier for anyone that must leave their home and family.

With Qualtrics, our Experience Management platform, we are offering for free our Remote Work Pulse, a daily barometer of employee well-being.  

How should CMOs prepare for the coming months?

This is an unprecedented moment in time for all business. The need for a contingency plan, no matter the circumstance, is the utmost importance. When making the decision to cancel all events, our team quickly mobilized and created a task force to determine what’s next – whether it was negotiating with event suppliers or working with our tech team to transition to digital. It was a learning experience and a lesson in how we must prepare for the future.

Additionally, for conferences that go digital, if they go right, we could see a big change in the events landscape. While remote won’t replace the power of face to face communication, it may transform the way we conduct business moving forward and this is a great opportunity to strengthen our digital offerings.

To hear more of Alicia Tillman’s inspirational thinking, you can listen to my podcast interview with her on Renegade Thinkers Unite, here.

The post How Purpose Helps Brands Through a Crisis appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

(Here are the slides from that presentation) [slideshare id=76358269&doc=drewneisserssustorytelling-170525214729]

One of my pet peeves, by the way, is that presenters neglect to tell stories even when they are on panels about storytelling. The same goes for bloggers. To really understand let alone explain this topic, you need to start crafting stories yourself and share them at home, at the office, in writing, and on the stage when the opportunities arise. But here’s the good news — this is well-trodden territory and resources abound including the 9 featured below.

1. Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

There are lots of types of storytelling and it helps to understand the main ones before you approach the branded variety. Story Engineering is geared for budding novelists, focusing on the “6 core competencies of successful writing” including Concept, Character, Theme, Story Structure, Scene Execution and Writing Voice. This will give you a great foundation especially if you grasp the difference between an Idea and a Concept.

2. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

This is the bible for aspiring screenwriters and even those who’ve succeeded in the profession many of whom attended McKee’s legendary screenwriting workshops (which btw we are using workshops for starting projects) . McKee is a master at showing how all the elements fit together and the critical relationship between structure and character. You’ll also enjoy the references to 100’s of films that you’ve seen and will have a new appreciation for why they were so memorable.

3. Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar’s Greatest Films by Dean Movshovitz

No studio in history has cranked out as many hits in a row as Pixar that not only succeeded with global audiences but also with typically irascible film critics. Their secret – if the story is flawed the movie will be too so they spend months if not years making sure the story is perfect before starting production. This book spells out their formula in language even we marketers can understand!

4. The Art of Storytelling by The Great Courses

If you’ve never experienced a Great Course, an extensive series of recorded college classes by acclaimed professors, this particular one will convert you for sure. Professor Hannah Harvey also happens to be a professional storyteller herself, making this more like a visit to The Moth than a classroom. Importantly, you learn some of the nuances of oral storytelling versus the written forms like novels and screenplays discussed above.

5. Ted Talks Storytelling by Akash Karia

For the about the cost of a large double shot cappuccino from your favorite coffee bar, this little book packs a terrific punch, offering 23 storytelling tips derived from the over 30 of the most popular TED Talks. If you have a speech to give in the near future, this resource will be particularly helpful as the author breaks down how to wow an audience while providing examples that are sure to inspire.

6. StorySelling by Nick Nanton and J. W. Dicks

Having worked our way from novels to film to public speaking, this book will help you craft your business story and importantly, offer guidance on how to spread the word. Rich with examples of entrepreneurs that used stories to propel their companies to new heights, you’ll recognize some of the critical storytelling elements from the other genres we’ve already covered. The difference is that these authors offer specific exercises to help you discover and refine your personal or professional brand story.

7. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin

If you’ve read any book by Seth Godin, you know that he always offers great examples of how this or that business found a unique way to cut through. This book continues that pattern only all of them point back to a fundamental premise that stories — great stories — carry the day for all sorts of brands in a wide range of categories. Although Godin’s book is less prescriptive than StorySelling, it does offer further inspiration to refine your brand story if you haven’t already.

8. Marketing Today with Alan Hart Episode 46

My friend Alan Hart has a terrific podcast series that features interviews with a number of top Chief Marketing Officers. The episode that I recommend in this context is the one with Clay Hausmann, CMO of Aktana. Unlike most CMOs, Clay actually took time off to train as a screenwriter and while that adventure didn’t yield an Oscar, it did lead him to a story-driven strategy brief that he breaks down in detail on the podcast. (If you want a copy of how Hausmann’s approach played out for Beats, just email me.)

9. Various articles and podcasts by Drew Neisser

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t call your attention to at least some of the content I’ve published on storytelling. First up are my extensive interviews with Douwe Bergsma, CMO of Georgia Pacific, who is a big proponent of the power of storytelling and has reorganized his department around this skillset. Then I’d encourage you to listen to various Renegade Thinkers Unite podcast episodes including the ones with Chandar Pattabhiram of Marketo (#12), Mayur Gupta of Spotify (#14) and Meredith Kopit Levien of The New York Times (#18). Or better yet just subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, iHeartRadio or Messenger since there will be more on storytelling in episodes to come!

Final note: If you have any great resources on brand storytelling, particularly in the area of story-driven creative briefs, please let me know. This is definitely a collaborative journey!

The post 9 Epic Resources for Students of Brand Storytelling appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It was none other than Oprah Winfrey, who announced she had just selected “Midwives,” his already-bestselling novel, for her book club. A year later, “Midwives” was still on the bestseller list, and 19 years after that, Chris is the author of 20 novels, many of which have won awards and attracted huge audiences.

Because Chris started his career in advertising (we worked together at J. Walter Thompson in the mid ‘80s) and we marketers are increasingly obsessed with the idea of brand storytelling, I thought he would be an interesting and instructive guest for “Renegade Thinkers Unite.” Happily, he was all that and more, offering valuable insights to any brand that’s looking to consistently create content that people actually want to consume. Since we talked for 55 minutes over a two-part episode, here are a few of the key takeaways.

Writing Starts With a Disciplined Approach

The fact that Chris became a successful novelist was no surprise to those of us who knew his work ethic. “I was writing between 5 and 7 a.m. in the morning before going to work at Thompson and then Monday and Tuesday nights when I came home from work,” Chris recalled.

And though his hours changed as he got older, “the goal is to write a thousand words a day [since] it is a whole lot easier to edit garbage than a blank page.” Bohjalian then edits his work with a messy fountain pen and ultimately his books go through seven to nine drafts. How many drafts is your content going through?

Be True to Your Brand and Your Audience

During our time together at JWT, there was another budding author on an adjacent floor by the name of James Patterson. At the time, Patterson was Executive Creative Director and an intimidating character to us account people, but he nonetheless wrote a blurb for the back of Chris’ first book.

When asked about Patterson’s writing, Bohjalian complimented “his deep respect for his readers and his understanding that he needs to be giving them something back.” Chris also pointed out that “James Patterson is also a brand and readers have very specific expectations of what they’re going to get when they open one of his books.” Do consumers know what content they can expect from your brand?

Have the Courage to Stay in Your Lane

Learning from one’s mistakes is hardly a new concept, but Chris raises the bar with his clinical self-examination. “When my books have failed artistically, it’s usually because I lost courage,” he shared. He went on to explain, “I’m really proud of the opening third of ‘The Night Strangers’ but then I lost courage and instead of focusing on one individual’s PTSD and the ramifications for his family, I took one of those hard left turns into the sensational and that’s not my specialty.” Do you know your sweet spot and how to tell if you’re veering out your brand’s subject or style lane?

Stay Social on Social Media

Like many brands, you might expect Chris to flaunt his product (i.e., books) on his social channels. But drop into his feed and you’ll get a personal tour of his beloved “802” (AKA Vermont) as well as other aspects of his life. Chris even makes a point not to post about his writing.

“Goodness gracious, my fans don’t need to learn a whole lot about my books on the social networks. They want to know what interests me about either Vermont or Armenia because those are my passions,” he explained. Chris also invests time in getting to know his fans on social media. “The social networks are fun,” he concluded. Are you creating social content that reveals the human side of your brand?

Want more? Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of my complete interview with Chris Bohjalian.

The post Brand Storytelling: Reaching Your Audience on a Personal Level appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Well, first and foremost, I needed to recognize that despite the visual similarity to his predecessor, Louie is a canine of a different color and requires a customized strategic approach, one that embraces his strengths and tempers his weaknesses. And second, I needed to start to imagine the wonder he could become, opening the door to a slobbery yet enduring love fest. It is in that spirit that I offer these six strategies to succeed in 2018 and introduce you to six sages kind enough to share their wisdom on my podcast, .

1. Proffer a Profound Purpose

Four years ago, Coss Marte was in solitary confinement just hoping for a piece of paper to write down his wish list should he actually get out of prison. Today, he is the founder and CEO of ConBody, a fast-growing fitness company that’s branched out into Saks Fifth Avenue and online courses. After recognizing that his drug selling was “creating a web of destruction,” Marte has made it his purpose to help people like him get on their feet (15 out of 17 of his employees are ex-cons) and he also helps current inmates in Rikers Island get fitter as well.

2. Double Down on Design

Early in my career, a client suggested that our “brilliant” campaign was merely “polishing a turd.” At the time, it was simply accepted that marketers had to play their product cards as dealt rather than driving the creation of something more appealing. Jerome Nadel, CMO of Rambus, thinks that a hands-off approach is nonsense and deploys “design-led marketing” to make sure what goes to market is worth the energy to sell it. Nadel sums up the benefits of this approach noting, “Better products and services are easier to promote and sell.”

3. Engage via an Emotional Experience

The health care industry is not exactly famous for offering a warm and fuzzy experience. Hoping to fix this, the CMO of UCHealth, Manny Rodriguez, ended up being put in charge of customer experience as well as marketing. Explains Rodriguez, “What I quickly realized is that in order to succeed with this notion of being patient-centric, we had to sell an experience…and we needed to stop talking about ourselves and start focusing on the patient.” The result was a better experience and some of the best examples of brand storytelling I’ve seen in 2017.

4. Transcend via Total Transparency

Most CMOs would describe their challenge as tough but few compare to that of Morag Lucey’s, who became CMO of Avaya shortly before they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And rather than retreat into silent chagrin, Lucey and her team got ahead of the story, noting that the problem was debt from a leveraged buyout and not the business’ fundamentals. Making sure that all stakeholders both within and outside the company, “understand exactly what you’re going through,” notes Lucey, was absolutely crucial.

5. Create Catchy Content

Content is only king if what you create is surprising, relevant and has a strong emotional hook. A great example of this comes from the Mars brand Whiskas. Reports Rob Rakowitz, Mars’ Global Director of Media, “recognizing that people who are adopting cats or kittens weren’t equipped with all of the knowledge and insights that they should have as new pet owners, we created Kitten Kollege.” Enrollment levels in Kitten Kollege would make any marketer meow.

6. Invest in Integration

In this age of programmatic, real-time digital optimization, many marketers are tempted to push out different messages across different channels. The problem with this approach is that the big brand story gets diluted. Grant Johnson, CMO of Kofax, faced this situation when various companies were pulled together under one leadership team. Concludes Johnson, “Part of cutting through effectively is a relentless focus on delivering consistent messaging across every touch point and element of a given campaign.”

Final note: You can find these and other episodes of Renegade Thinkers Unite on iTunes, and .

The post 6 Smart Strategies to Shine in 2018 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Despite LinkedIn’s reputation as the ultimate B2B platform, it has some kinks to work out. Feeds are becoming increasingly jammed with Work Anniversary notifications, and its limited user experience has some professionals up in arms.

We asked social media experts what they think about LinkedIn’s status as a B2B networking platform:

Q: LinkedIn is increasingly touted as THE “social selling” platform for B2B brands, especially in conjunction with ABM (account based marketing) AND our feeds seem to be increasingly cluttered with Work Anniversary notifications. How are you feeling about LinkedIn these days?

Andrea Hofer, Global Social Media Manager at Philips Healthcare: Each social channel is catered to different people and different facets of life and therefore we see different content being shared. Not a lot of people would share business content on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, but they would do so on LinkedIn or Twitter. Conversely, those wedding pictures are kept off LinkedIn to maintain a professional presence.

I personally often find my LinkedIn newsfeed more interesting than my Facebook newsfeed. The professional nature of the platform results in a lot of social cooling, but what I lose in personal stories I gain in the quality/relevancy of links shared. Additional post tagging/filtering options would increase relevance, such as life event, work anniversary, job opportunity, case study, etc. I have found that nothing beats LinkedIn for targeting the medical C-suite. Facebook may be cheaper, but you are not able to effectively drill down to that audience.

Jennifer Forrest, Director of Social Media at DEG Digital: I think there’s a misconception that LinkedIn is the only tool for B2B selling. Don’t get me wrong, LinkedIn is still the king of the B2B selling experience, but it’s not the only player. Facebook is the more efficient platform from an ad targeting perspective. But that misconception comes with a similar one about who B2B buyers are. They are still people who live and consume products in a B2C world on a daily basis. So, it’s not crazy for Facebook and other platforms to be viable options for B2B, but LinkedIn is still at the top.

Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade, LLC: I have a love hate thing going with LinkedIn right now. I love using it as a directory akin to the old white pages to research folks I’ve met or might want to connect with down the road. For that function alone it is unrivaled. But because I’ve met so many people over the course of my career and it seems that every single one of them have become publishers, my feed is more than just useless – it’s annoyingly so. I’d love to see them kill work anniversaries and maybe even birthdays and then figure out how to filter out the drivel that masquerades as useful content.

Q: Are you spending more or less time on LinkedIn, and if so, why?  

Stephen Monaco, Founder of Future Marketing Institute: LinkedIn feels lackluster to me ​now so I’m spending less time on it than I did in the past. Like so many others, I quickly grew tired of accepting invitations from people who then started pitching me within minutes of becoming a connection. This is off putting to say the least.

Brian Moran, entrepreneurial consultant: I’m not spending enough time on it and I blame LinkedIn for that. LI is arguably the best research tool for business (selling is 90% preparation and 10% presentation). LI tells me so much of what I need to know for the 90% part of that rule, and yet I could be doing so much more on the platform.

Joel Comm, Author, speaker, brand influencer: I spend very little time on Linkshare as it is mostly noise. I do enjoy Slideshare and find it the best way to deliver new content to the platform.

Jason Falls, Founder of Conservation Research Institute: When I spend significant time on LinkedIn, I get business. That said, I don’t care for its user experience much, so I don’t spend a lot of time there that I don’t need to. Still, the improvements they’ve added over the last two years are good, have improved the site and experience and are more conducive to people connecting with the right people for business purposes. The notifications are trivial … you can turn them off by notification type if you don’t like them. LinkedIn is still a fertile ground for me, anyway.

Forrest: LinkedIn has made huge strides throughout the past year from a user standpoint. It’s much more of an interactive experience than it has been in the past, making it easier to spend more time on the platform.

Neisser: I find myself spending more time on LinkedIn mainly to make sure I not only understand its capabilities for social selling but also to become a true expert practitioner of social selling. Not surprisingly, this is connected to Renegade’s growing Social Selling Training practice.

Concluding Thoughts

LinkedIn may not be perfect, but it’s still an effective networking tool for businesses. The platform’s research capabilities and huge web of professionals provide valuable resources for any B2B seller. If you can look past its limitations, LinkedIn may be worth its weight in gold.

The post Is LinkedIn the King of B2B Social Selling Platforms? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Today, enlightened marketers realize 90% of decision makers never respond to cold outreach, and as such, they’re dipping their toes into the realm of social selling, which has quickly become a source of myths and misunderstanding.

To help debunk these myths and get brands on the right path, we have created a social selling training program, partnered with Nimble’s founder Jon Ferrara on two recent podcast episodes AND an upcoming webinar on July 31 (), and addressed five of the most common social selling myths in the post below.

1. It Doesn’t Work for B2B

If you’re new to the notion of social selling, you might falsely conclude that B2B buyers aren’t on social media. The truth is that 75% of B2B buyers now use social channels to research vendors. That means three-quarters of your prospects are checking out your company on LinkedIn, learning more about your culture on Facebook, watching your most interesting videos on YouTube and even tracking your newsworthy content on Twitter.

2. It Isn’t Measurable

Given that roughly 14 people are involved in a B2B buying decision, measuring the impact of any single component of the marketing mix and the sales process is admittedly tough. Despite this hurdle, one study reported 54% of salespeople have tracked their social media usage back to sales, while another study noted salespeople who use social media exceed quota 23% more often than those who don’t. Add in sophisticated Account Based Marketing (ABM) tools, and social’s impact on your prospect’s journey is absolutely measurable.

3. It’s Impossible to Scale

B2B companies with hundreds, if not thousands, of prospects and an army of salespeople fear that social selling simply isn’t scalable. In truth, social selling can scale along with the growth of the sales force, assuming each salesperson is given a finite prospect list. Scaling is also helped by tools like Dynamic Signal’s VoiceStorm to help distribute content, Nimble’s social CRM platform to build prospect lists and DemandBase’s ABM system to track interactions.

4. It Drives Sales Instantly

Only seasoned social selling practitioners know that this relatively new approach is not instantaneous by design. In fact, social selling reflects the new reality that B2B buyers often spend up to nine months researching before they even contact a prospective vendor. Just like any other form of relationship building, social selling takes time, but the good news is that it is time well spent — 73% of salespeople who use social media as part of their sales process outperform their peers.

5. Your Sales Team Doesn’t Need Social Selling Training

If your sales force is predominantly made up of millennials, you might assume these digital natives know the ins and outs of social selling. Wrong again, Pokémon breath! According to one research study, approximately one in four sales reps feel they know how to use social for selling and the results did not vary much by age group. The reality is that given all of the tools and potential time sucks associated with social selling, sales force training is a must regardless of age.

To learn more about how to put social selling to work for your company, be sure to register for our upcoming webinar: , below:

The post 5 Stupid Myths About B2B Social Selling appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The fact that the conversation turned to politics shouldn’t be too surprising given the recent success SNL has enjoyed thanks to its Trump, Spicer and Melania parodies. What was a bit more surprising is that the day also started on a political note.

Pottery Meets Politics

Evan Kraus, President of APCO, a global communications consultancy, kicked things off with a keynote that took us back to a 2,000-year-old pottery brand and fast-forwarded to the most recent presidential election. He provided the history lesson as a means of setting up two key points that lead to a third. Point 1 was that we all make emotional connections with brands and point 2 was that we are all part of tribes and behave accordingly.

For marketers, the implication is that if you can define the tribe well, you can connect with them. Noting that the slogan “Make America Great Again” resonated strongly with Trump’s target tribe, Kraus concluded that it wasn’t just the language but how the candidates engaged with their tribes that ultimately decided the election’s outcome.

Micro-Influencers: Less Is More

Social influencer and entrepreneur Shaun McBride, better know as Shonduras, rallied the audience with his stories of success on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube. Shaun is a wonderfully engaging and down to earth speaker who has a knack for translating his success into advice for brands. Among the many nuggets he offered:

• Focus on micro-influencers with truly engaged followers
• Diversify your efforts. You never know when a platform will go away
• Get behind something important versus a one-off gag. It will have lasting value
• Build an audience not by asking them to do something but by giving them something of value
• Listen to your fans and then follow up on their suggestions

Employees Are Your Best Advocates

In a breakout session, Cisco’s Carmen Shirkey Collins and Casie Shimansky shared how they built a highly effective employee advocacy program. As proof of their success, they noted that they have a 6-month backlog of employee-written stories for their blog and that employee posts on channels like Instagram have twice the industry average when it comes to engagement. The lessons for others include:

• Set goals: without them, you can’t show success
• Make it about them. The hashtag #WeAreCisco set the tone
• Offer guidelines, don’t script. Staff aren’t told what to put on Snapchat when they’re the voice of Cisco
• Recognize success: Cisco celebrated Top 9 photos on Instagram at year end and strives to treat their Snapchat ambassadors like VIPs
• Forget stock photos. Employees are infinite source of “real” images and some are even good photographers
• Start small: Snapchat takeover started with 20 ambassadors, now they have 80 around the world

From Twitter to Netflix

The next breakout session focused on Twitter, featuring Allison Goreham of Turner, Bianca Prade of SKDKnickerbocker, Josh Martin of Arby’s and Nina Miskin of Twitter. Mishkin called everyone’s attention to an extraordinary Twitter moment when a tweet about Rihanna and Lupita Nyong ended up inspiring a new Netflix movie in a matter of days from tweet to deal! Among the tips shared at this case-rich session:

• Risk is inherent in social. So educate all the stakeholders in advance
• Dealing with legal: Create a playbook and content that anticipates arising issues
• Translate the value of social into terms non-social folks can understand
• Creativity pays: Arby’s extremely clever food art that only hardcore gamers understood helped attracted new customers and appealed to their core

Never Too Many Stories

There were many other sessions I couldn’t attend since there were 4 breakouts going on at a time. On the main stage, I did catch Doug Busk, Group Director, Digital Communications & Social Media for The Coca-Cola Company presenting on “Storytelling.” Busk offered insights into Coca-Cola’s approach to corporate storytelling noting their primary goal was to build “brand love and corporate trust.” Busk pointed to the importance of transparency to achieving these goals and shared a recent success story with their “Our Way Forward” videos featuring their new CEO.

Last but not least, I too presented on Storytelling, offering up “The Top 7 Reasons Most Brands Fail at Storytelling” while pointing out how all these fails could be fixed. Using personal stories to illustrate both the power of storytelling and the pitfalls brands face, my 7 fails included:

1. Old school strategies. Brands need a new strategy statement which includes Conflict, Character, Voice and more
2. Brands don’t like conflict but without it, there is no drama, no reason to engage, no emotional connection
3. Brands want to be the hero: Better to be the sage or sidekick and let the customer be the hero
4. Forgetting to surprise the audience
5. Trying to tell the whole story: It’s okay to leave some things to the imagination
6. Measuring the wrong things: Storytelling is not direct marketing so focus on brand health metrics
7. Neglecting to tell a cohesive story: Just because it’s news doesn’t mean it’s relevant to your brand

And that was just Day 1!

The post Live from Atlanta, It’s…Social Shake-Up! appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

To help you along this journey, we’ve been interviewing “renegade thinkers” from a broad range of categories. You’ll meet five of these individuals below, each of whom suggests a new question for you to add to your list—and one or more of them could be the difference between success and failure in the years to come.

1. Would your employees stay with the company even if they received a more lucrative offer elsewhere?

When you ask senior marketers about their proudest accomplishments, most will start with “building a great team,” knowing full well that they can do very little on their own. But Patti Newcomer-Simmons, VP of Marketing at Intuit, took this one step further, noting that once the right players were in place, she needed to keep them from defecting to competing software companies. To do that, the secret was “employee engagement,” an approach that resulted in a 30-point increase in job satisfaction, as measured by the question above. Listen to the entire conversation below:

2. What if you turned all your employees into the research department?

If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then Dara Royer, CMO of Mercy Corps, should be in the inventors’ hall of fame for rebranding a global organization on a $50,000 budget. To do this, Royer enlisted the help of Mercy Corps field agents and trained them as market researchers, which served the dual purpose of involving them in the process and obtaining critical insights that provided the foundation for a highly successful rebranding.

Mercy Corps was recently recognized as the 2017 EquiTrend “Brand of the Year.” To hear more of this remarkable story, listen to the podcast below:

3. How do I know what I know?

Hopefully, this isn’t breaking news for you, but it turns out that the left-brain versus right-brain theory of innate creativity is just a myth. We all have the capacity to be creative, but most of us just forget how. Larry Robertson, author of “The Language of Man: Learning to Speak Creativity,” interviewed more than 40 MacArthur grant winners (AKA “geniuses”). He found that creativity was rooted in the ability to ask the right questions, starting first with the willingness to question all of your assumptions, no matter how hard-earned! For a fascinating and instructive take on creativity, listen to the podcast with Larry below:

4. Are you trying to sell a candle when you should be selling light?

Have you lost sight of the “end-end benefit” of the product you’re marketing? Reclaiming that vision will undoubtedly help you find a more meaningful way of sharing your brand story. Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Marketo, explains that to get there, you need to start by being “outcome-driven rather product-driven.” He adds, “Many times I remind my own teams that customers don’t care about products, they care about value and ultimately what a product offers them.” To hear more about this approach, listen to the podcast, below:

5. Am I still drawing a distinction between offline and online marketing?

Since very few senior marketers were born as “digital natives,” there is a lingering tendency to align departments and strategies against perceived digital and non-digital universes. This must stop! “Those two worlds are intertwined and inseparable now especially from a consumer’s standpoint,” explains Mayur Gupta, Global Vice President for Growth & Marketing at Spotify. Gupta suggests that brands need to find a story that resonates regardless of channel. To learn about the trifecta of data, tech and storytelling, listen to the complete podcast, below:

What new questions are you asking these days?

The post 5 Questions That Will Challenge Your Assumptions About Marketing appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We recently spoke with Michael McMaster, VP of Lead Generation for JumpCrew, a social media marketing platform that aims to bolster small businesses’ presence on social media.

Drew: With all social platforms placing more and more importance on video content, do you feel video is a format that small businesses are capitalizing on correctly?

Michael: In a word, no. Small businesses are not capitalizing on video, and that’s often because they’re lacking a broader social media plan. Videos uploaded directly to Facebook do very well with their algorithms and provide a great way to showcase a business or provide a behind-the-scenes view.

Drew: What is the most underutilized feature within content marketing that businesses often neglect?

Michael: Many are missing a multi-channel plan that aligns with their buyer’s potential needs during the decision-making process. The most important of these buying stages are: buyers who recognize they have a problem (but who might not know the brand) and of course, interested buyers—ready to buy.

Drew: As platforms like Facebook, Google, and Yelp grow more robust review features to compete with each other, how do you think this will affect the manner in which businesses promote themselves and engage with their audiences?

Michael: The standard best practices of handling unflattering online reviews still apply. Businesses usually have a chance to address the review, and turn it into a positive one, or to remove it after addressing the customer’s concerns. Facebook, Google, and Yelp all impact online search results, and therefore a business’s online reach and bottom line.

Yahoo search is partially powered by Yelp reviews, people constantly ask their friends on Facebook for recommendations, and Facebook pages are indexed by search engines. Even Google provides a 5-star review system of businesses, which are displayed within online searches.

Drew: Do you ever see Snapchat becoming an important platform for SMB marketing?

Michael: Yes, Snapchat won’t impact search engine results, but there’s a lot of potential with geofilters and Stories. Snapchat is a great platform for promoting an event, providing a glimpse of a product in-use, or sharing a promo code.

Drew: Do you think the increasing prevalence of chatbots will change the way marketers approach social media campaigns?

Michael: Facebook recently unveiled plans to make a lot of money with the Messenger app and will push users to find business information via Messenger. Facebook will most likely take a percentage of the sale when generated through Messenger, along with a fee to use the feature. Marketers need to be aware of how social media platforms are constantly evolving and how to adjust to various algorithms when displaying content and posts.

The post What SMBs Need to Know About Social Before Diving In appeared first on Social Media Explorer.