Tag Archives for " social "

2022 Social Media Prediction: The Year of the Creator

Twitter launched Communities, everyone launched a creator fund, and TikTok became the #1 website in 2021. All of these events and more have built a foundation for the creator economy to take off and shape the future of social media.

According to SignalFire, there are over 50 million content creators driving the creator economy, a “class of businesses built by independent content creators, curators, and community builders… plus the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetization (SignalFire).”

The creator economy is the antithesis of the 9-5 cubical grind and overly polished online profiles. After months of lockdown and a global pandemic, consumers are pursuing purpose and looking to creators to provide an authentic escape.

This means several things for marketers:

1. Niche, online communities are going to grow
2. User-generated, creator, and authentic influencer content will become a necessity while brand content will continue to decline in reach and engagement
3. Employee creators and employee brands will be differentiators

 

Niche, Online Communities Are Going to Grow

The rise of niche, online communities and groups is happening across the digital world. On Facebook alone, there are 1.8 billion users utilizing groups with the average user claiming membership to 5 or more groups.

Communities around gaming have skyrocketed with GWI reporting gaming amongst Gen Z has drastically overtaken TV in terms of interests. Google reports a 70% increase in searches containing “online games with friends” while Discord boasts millions of members in their gaming channels.

Oftentimes these communities are built around creators or moderators with immense influence.

Personally, I am part of 7+ communities on Facebook and a handful of groups across other channels. Each group meets a need or desire the others cannot. The groups are relatively small but have an immense influence on buying decisions and other choices I make.

• #BookTok in TikTok? I have screenshots of 7 books I am going to buy when I get a chance.
• The $100K Club Facebook group? I opened a Chime high-yield savings account the day Tori Dunlap suggested to
• Twitter’s Marketing Twitter community? I’m just one of 800 members and growing
• Reddit’s r/CatsAreAssholes? I have two cats that are jerks and these people just get me

For brands, this means looking at your audience in a new light and asking how you can build an online community, not just a following.

 

User-generated, Creator, and Authentic Influencer Content Will Be Essential

Younger generations shape our demand for fashion, products, celebrities, music, media, and more, which is why all brands, including brands with older audiences, should pay attention to Gen Z.

According to PR Daily, 13- to 17-year-olds  are spending 56% of their media consumption time with user-generated content, a huge jump compared to other generations.

This means brands posting too much brand content are going to continue to see decreases in reach and engagement while UGC, creator, and authentic influencer content will become essential for performance.

What do I mean by authentic influencer content? Well, there is a measurable backlash to the pre-pandemic influencers who carefully curated glamour and luxury in each photo.

“If [Gen Z] is a sign of where global consumer sentiment is headed, it’s likely the “polished” curated self we’ve come to know won’t have the same impact it once did; this would clear a path for more diversity and self-expression in the influencer sector (GWI).”

We are seeing the rise of nano- and micro-influencers and creators because they tend to have smaller, niche followings and a more authentic look and feel.

What does this mean for brands? It means adapting your strategies to include these content types or being okay with declining content performance.

 

Employee creators and employee brands will be differentiators

LinkedIn’s Editor in Chief, Daniel Roth, recently wrote about the rise of the creator employee, which describes the balance between employment and being a creator.

As a marketer in social media, I see friends and colleagues navigate being a creator and employee all the time with mutual benefits to both their employer and their own careers.

For many brands, the idea of employees building personal brands is foreign and concerning but I think the benefits outweigh the risks. Daniel Murray explains it best, “employers are either threatened they will lose that employee, think it’s taking time away from their work, or they are worried about their brand.

But on everything they post, especially on LinkedIn, it has the company they work for [displayed]. So they can see this as free impressions and also as a tool for attracting future talent.”

Here at Convince and Convert, many of our strategists are known in the industry in their own right thanks to their personal brands, which means we win business across industries thanks to those personal brands.

So, what does this mean for brands? I would start with identifying employees interested in creating and then providing them the tools and space to do so.

 

Is Your Brand Ready for the Year of the Creator?

Brands are going to need to look for community building opportunities, ways to significantly increase their external, authentic content, and empower their employees to represent the brand as employee creators.

Start with a simple audit of your social channels. What is your current mix of content types? How can you increase the amount of external, authentic content?

 

The post-2022 Social Media Prediction: The Year of the Creator appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

5 Influencer Marketing Myths for 2022

Influencer marketing is not new but it is constantly changing and marketers have thoughts. Below are 5 common influencer marketing myths we’ve heard and want to debunk.

Myth #1: Influencer marketing is a fad.

Actually, this may be true, sort of. Hear me out.

Post-COVID data shows a 37% decrease in brands working with influencers and a 41% drop in the efficiency of influencer marketing.

However, brands are still investing in influencer marketing, specifically through nano and micro-influencers.

I see this shift as a more strategic approach to influencer marketing and a way to redefine a tactic fraught with issues. 

So, is influencer marketing a fad?

In terms of brands spending lots of money on influencers with large followings? Potentially.

However, in my opinion, influencer marketing in terms of nano and micro-influencers — specifically ones that resonate with niche audiences —  is here to stay & will become an important part of a strategic marketing mix.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

Keep influencer marketing on your radar and dive deep into your personas to see if nano and micro-influencers could connect you with your audience.

 

Myth #2: Influencer marketing is only successful for younger generations.

Marketers around the world are trying to woo the next generation of consumers with influencer marketing. In fact, there are over 15 million search results for “influencer marketing to Gen Z.”

Meanwhile, “influencer marketing to Gen X” and “influencer marketing to Boomers” have less than 10 million results combined.

What’s up with that?

I think it mostly comes down to the myth that influencer marketing is only for younger generations, which is simply not true.

In fact, older generations are spending more and more time on social media and shifting their shopping habits toward online retail, delivery services, and subscriptions which means brands have more opportunities than ever to engage across generations.

Gen X and Boomers also control the vast majority of disposable income in the US.

While some marketers are writing strategies around younger influencers, terms like “Grandfluencers” and “elderly influencers’ are becoming more popular.

Influencers like Joan MacDonald and Helen Winkle are over here living their best lives as 70-year-old-plus influencers with almost 5 million followers combined.

Gen X also has some fabulous influencers like Arlinda McIntosh and Ana Pejkanovic.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

If your audience includes Gen X and/or Boomers, influencer marketing may be worth a try.

 

Myth 3: Influencers have to have large followings to be effective.

We covered this a bit in myth #1, but let’s dive deeper.

Traditionally, influencer marketing means utilizing a social media user with a large following. Today, that definition is changing.

While mega influencers (social users with millions of followers) are the first thing many people think of when they think “influencer,” other groups are growing in popularity.

However, there are differing opinions on how many followers each group has, especially in the micro and nano categories where some marketers say nano influencers can have as little as 500 followers and still be effective.

• Mega: 1M+ followers
• Macro: 100K+ followers
• Micro: 10K+ followers
• Nano: 500 to 10K followers

While influencers generally have a conversion rate of around 3%, nano influencers are converting at upwards of 30% in some cases.

What does this mean for marketers?

Marketers should look for opportunities to work with influencers with niche communities and remember that large followings don’t equal better.

 

Myth 4: Influencer marketing doesn’t work for B2B companies.

This is simply not true.

• Linode, a cloud hosting company, has seen 15%-20% customer growth through its YouTube influencer strategy.
• Microsoft teamed up with National Geographic photographers on an Instagram campaign that resulted in over 3.5 million likes and over 1K user-generated content uploads.
• American Express utilized small business owners as influencers in their Love My Store campaign resulting in 400,000 orders of the Love My Store decals.
• Aegora, a professional marketplace, tapped into freelancers across industries to be part of an influencer campaign. The campaign generated over 500 signups.

What does this mean for B2B marketers?

B2B marketers should explore ways to bring influencers into their marketing, whether it’s through employees, customers, or social media influencers.

 

Myth #5: Influencer marketing has no rules.

In an October 2021 news release, the Federal Trade Commission said they’ve officially put hundreds of businesses on notice for “fake reviews and other misleading endorsements”. The penalty for misleading consumers is up to $43,792 per violation.

What does this mean for marketers?

It means there are rules you need to follow, and you shouldn’t be a jerk and mislead and deceive people. Familiarize yourself with the FTC endorsement guidelines and comply to avoid headaches and hardships.

 

2022 Influencer Marketing Myths Debunked!

There you have it! Five myths we wanted to address so you can decide if a dip in the influencer pool is a worthy exploration by you and your team.

The post 5 Influencer Marketing Myths for 2022 appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Make Social Advocacy Part of Your Employees’ Daily Routine

Your employees each have a morning ritual. Grab a cup of coffee. Scroll through Facebook’s News Feed. Respond to emails. Dial into a conference call. Start the workday.

What if your company could become a part of employees’ daily routines? What if there was a way for you to use this downtime to inform others and increase brand awareness?

Welcome employee social advocacy! By tapping into a daily habit that already exists, you can create social advocacy and amplify your marketing efforts.

According to a 2016 survey from Bambu by Sprout Social, seven in ten employees are using social media at work. Blocking popular networks and monitoring browsing history isn’t going to stop anyone from checking Facebook—especially when 11 percent of those surveyed admitted to using social media during bathroom breaks.

Instead of trying to fight a habit that’s already ingrained in your workplace culture, embrace it! Encourage your employees to use their time on social to speak on your brand’s behalf. By outlining the individual benefits, identifying existing champions, and educating and empowering employees, you can strategically build a powerful advocacy program.

 

Answering the Question: What’s In It for Me?

One of the biggest hurdles in getting people involved in an advocacy program is convincing them that there’s a personal benefit. Before you introduce a formal or informal program, you need to answer the frequently asked question, “What’s in it for me?”.

The best way to do this is by not only communicating but also demonstrating the benefits of sharing company content on social.

Collect and share testimonials from sales representatives who have seen an increase in revenue by sharing curated content. Who has had success at positioning themselves as thought leaders within the marketplace? Identify a new employee who learned about the position through a social post.

If these use cases aren’t applicable, try surveying engaged employees to learn what they think is most valuable.

Additionally, you need to demystify the idea using social media at work negatively impacts productivity. Believe it or not, four in five people believe that.

Sure, there’s always going to be the 10 percent of surveyed employees who spend over two hours on social. However, a vast majority spend less than an hour scrolling through their feeds.

You may want your employees to hit the ground running sharing your awesome content, but that may not happen right away. What’s most important, initially, is that your employees are reading the information you’re posting. You want them to experience a more transparent and forthcoming workplace.

 

Identifying and Educating Existing Internal Advocates

Do a quick search on Instagram of your office location and a Twitter query of your branded hashtag. These employees are your initial allies and should be the first group of stakeholders you bring into your employee advocacy initiatives.

That’s what Katie Gear, Area E-Commerce Marketing Manager for Hyatt hotels in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, did when she first launched her advocacy efforts. Gear spoke with Sprout Social’s Community Outreach Manager, Sarah Nagel, about how she scaled her program and identified its first participants.

“Harness employees who are already sharing. Create a more meaningful conversation with their employer, and keep the dialogue they’re already participating in more open-ended,” Gear told Nagel.

Gear identified these brand advocates by searching social and approaching directors in sales and marketing. She asked them who from their teams would be a good fit. 54 percent of those surveyed responded that they don’t have a lot of guidance on how to use social media to advocate for their company.

To address this, Gear followed up by hosting informal social media 101 classes for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

“The courses help them understand what I’m doing with the content and what I look for—and what content works best on what channel,” Gear told Nagel.

So, first, identify and then educate existing internal advocates to help you implement a more effective employee advocacy program. Leverage this highly engaged focus group for feedback. Lean on their insights to help revise your efforts before rolling it out to a larger audience.

 

Empowering Your Employees

Participants in your program shouldn’t view engaging with company news and relevant content as extra work—otherwise, they won’t opt-in.

In fact, 53 percent of employees surveyed don’t think that the marketing team makes it easy for them to advocate for the company on social media. Don’t make engaging with your brand more cumbersome than it needs to be.

Along with internal education on social media best practices, you need to streamline the sharing process and provide your employees with all the tools they need to be the best advocates possible.

When you’re sharing social content with your team, try this:

• Accompany each post with suggested social messaging per each popular network.
• Include a note with each piece of content that tells why what you’re sharing is important and who the internal stakeholders involved with the initiatives are.
• If you’re citing a third-party source, make sure you’re highlighting a reputable publication.
• Make sure that you’re asking your team members to share content and information that they think would resonate with all of the company’s employees or a departmental audience. Employee engagement, just like social media, should be a two-way dialogue.

 

Quantifying Employee Advocacy Success

Strategizing and implementing an employee advocacy program takes time and resources. Be sure that you’ll be able to measure the impact of your efforts. Adding UTM codes to the end of each piece of owned content you share with employees will make it easy to track, measure, and benchmark.

Some of the same social metrics you apply to your marketing efforts can be applied to your advocacy initiatives.

Keep in mind that those surveyed were 16 times more likely to read a social media post from a friend than from a brand. 81 percent of participants went as far as saying they would rather see a friend’s social post than a brand’s post.

Keep a close eye on your efforts, and continue to use the data and anecdotal feedback you receive to revise and refresh your program.

 

Cheers to Your Advocacy Leaders!

As your program gains momentum, your employees will see that advocating on social media isn’t as confusing or hard as they may think. Be sure to start out with a proper framework and approach. Getting your employees to incorporate advocacy into their daily routines can be a seamless and mutually beneficial process.

This post was originally written by Andrew Caravella and updated by Michelle Saunders in 2021.

The post How to Make Social Advocacy Part of Your Employees’ Daily Routine appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

The Questions You Need to Ask Before You Join TikTok

Note: This post is based on a webinar hosted by Jay Baer with our friends from Visit California and ICUC Social. You can watch it on-demand, too.

Perhaps you’ve been waiting for TikTok to fade out and run its course as the next “it” app. You expected it to go the way of Vine, Meerkat, and its predecessor, Musical.ly.

Being cautious of “the next big thing” is understandable for social media marketers who likely are already tapped with content strategies for Facebook Lives, tweet threads, Stories, and Snaps–but you may want to join TikTok now since isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Here’s why:

 

TikTok is Now the Most Downloaded App

Since its launch in 2018, TikTok has consistently ranked one of the most downloaded apps worldwide. In 2020, TikTok finally surpassed Facebook as the most downloaded app worldwide and in the United States.

While it has a reputation for being a “Gen Z” space, now 53% of TikTok users in America are 30 years or older, which is similar to how Twitter’s users align.

It’s not just the popularity of the app that is noteworthy. TikTok users spend more time on the platform each month than Facebook users do on Facebook. For TikTok’s users, the app is a primary source of both information and entertainment. It’s just as sticky, if not more sticky than Facebook is today. That’s quite remarkable.

 

Why Users Are Choosing to Join TikTok

TikTok bridges the gap between a social network and a television network. Serving up very short video clips in an endless stream, TikTok became a more social version of video streaming replacing other sources of entertainment including TV time.

Users are actively engaging with videos they see on feeds and the For You Page (FYP), a whopping 92% of users say they take action after watching videos on TikTok.

Impressively, a quarter of users buy or research products immediately after seeing TikTok videos–and that immediacy is something new for marketers who are used to the challenge of assigning attribution for social content.

TikTok users find ads on the platform are more attention-grabbing than other social networks and are more likely to engage or follow up as a result.

 

What Makes TikTok Different?

We can refer to TikTok as a social media kaleidoscope.

While it looks, feels, and acts as a social network, the user experience is meaningfully different from other social channels. The differences are what set TikTok apart, but those differences also pose challenges to social media content creators and brand marketers who must grasp an entirely different way to create and produce video content.

Brand accounts are permitted on TikTok but they work differently than an individual user. The content that is made and published for TikTok was entirely different when it originated than creating for other social networks (until Instagram copied it with Reels).

Engaging with fans happens, but differently. Measuring and tracking success on TikTok also looks different, too.

One of the biggest differences marketers must be aware of is reach. TikTok is based on an algorithm, but the TikTok algorithm itself is programmed differently than creators are traditionally used to.

Content is democratized in a way that Facebook, Twitter, and other channels have never created an opportunity for. On TikTok, this primarily happens on the FYP.

For creators, there is a real possibility for hyper-acceleration thanks to the algorithm and how it allows for viral impressions. Many TikTok users have a similar story of going from a few to thousands of followers literally overnight or with one video.

There are many niche communities that brands and creators can tap into to begin growing their presence.

 

How to Get Started on TikTok

Before you decide to join TikTok, your team should answer these 8 questions:

1.  Should your brand even be on TikTok?

Increasingly the answer is “yes” if you are looking for audiences that are A) more globally driven, B) not just Gen-Z, and C) resources for content creation and testing are available.

2.  How will you measure TikTok’s success?

TikTok views are auto-played and align to a more standard video impression. Other key metrics on the TikTok dashboard include retention, engagement, and followers. Pro tip: the desktop dashboard is far richer than on the mobile app.

3.  How much time and effort can you devote to TikTok management?

Consider what time you must spend to create, publish and engage in vertical video. Consistency is key to TikTok success, and that can be a heavy lift for marketers.

This chart shows four levels of content that Visit California has planned to include on their channel, ranked across a time commitment spectrum.

4.  What should your content strategy be on TikTok?

Boil it down to this — very cool video visualizations paired with strong audio choices. Because TikTok is such a unique channel, it absolutely requires dedicated content.

Repurposing Reels or other videos isn’t going to play for TikTok audiences. A robust content plan must include branded hashtags, branded effects, leveraging creators, experimentation, and testing.

5.  How often should you post on TikTok?

For creators, posting one to three times a day on TikTok isn’t just normal, it is expected. That lift is probably out of range for most brands getting started. It’s okay to ramp up from a few times a week to daily, but be sure to test how consistent posting affects success metrics.

6.  What should your community engagement approach be on TikTok?

No matter how often you are posting, daily engagement is key for staying current with trends and taking advantage of what’s hot–including hashtag challenges, branded effects, and viral music sounds. It’s best to have someone logging in every day to stay current with what’s happening.

7.  Should you use paid TikTok ads?

The first video that pops when the app opens is always a sponsored video called the top view. Sponsored ads also appear through the newsfeed.

Branded hashtags and branded effects are other ways brands can increase reach and engagement. Our recommendation is to get good and consistent at organic before boosting videos or layering in branded content.

8.  How often should you revisit your TikTok strategy?

Stay close to the strategy as a brand channel launches and content ramps up. Know that the channel is also evolving as quickly as the communities and creators themselves.

Sticking to a quarterly review is a good cadence to look at content pillars, micro-influencers, hashtags, and content choices.

Ready to Join TikTok?

No matter when you join TikTok and implement your branded TikTok strategy, give room to experiment and try new things. While this social network isn’t brand new anymore, it certainly is new and different to most social media marketers and creators. While that can be nerve-wracking, it’s also quite exciting.

The post The Questions You Need to Ask Before You Join TikTok appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

2021 Social Media Benchmark Report: 4 Takeaways for Your Social Refresh

Take a peek into the Convince & Convert team messaging threads and you’ll find us sharing all sorts of research and new data. In fact, when the Rival IQ 2021 Social Media Benchmark report was first released, Corynn shared it with the note,  “TL;DR–everyone needs more carousels.”

You can stop reading now if that’s all you need to refresh your social content plans. But for the rest of you, I’ve got a few more ideas.

The Social Media Benchmark report is an annual study from Rival IQ, our friends in the social content performance data business. The 2021 edition evaluates thousands of brand accounts across 14 industries to set the benchmarks that marketers use to measure social content performance.

Keep in mind that most of the data analyzed were pulled from 2020/early 2021. Social media platforms are constantly shifting their algorithms to respond to new content types, technology, and audience habits.

What is presented in any benchmark study shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but it does enlighten how to plan for your 2022 social media content strategy.

 

4 Cues For Your Social Media Strategy Refresh

1. Posting every weekday may be “expected” but is not necessary.

Creating enough content to post once a weekday on each channel is a common expectation of social teams. Yet as social media engagement rates decline or stay stagnant, brands respond with fewer main feed posts on each channel.

Rival IQ discovered that brands posted on Facebook on average the most per week; but outside of Media brands sharing 53.5 posts a week (7.5 a day!), the average was 5.5 posts weekly.

We’ll take the exception with the finding that brands are only posting content on Instagram four times a week. The API that makes data available is news feed specific. Yet remember that Instagram has 12 different ways in the channel to serve up content or connect with audiences.

This data point is a bit misleading because we can’t accurately benchmark Stories, Reels, Highlights, and Guides with the API.

Twitter was the channel that saw the most volume by brands, almost 3x more tweets than Instagram news feed posts. But Instagram is the clear social media royalty based on Engagements. Instagram audiences responded with more than 7x engagements than on Twitter, on just one-third of the total content.

 

Quality Over Quantity of Posts Matters Most

No doubt you’ve heard quality outranks quantity. This is especially true for B2B brands that are building content to support longer awareness and consideration timelines in their customer’s decision journey.

Focus on creating less social media content that resonates more with key audiences.

Show up in the nooks and crannies of social media channels; focus on different content outlets, like Reels, Stories, and Reddit threads. Even better, explore participation in ways that create more 1:1 micro-connections with your audience.

Direct interaction with audiences in spaces like AMAs, TwitterChats, Audio Rooms, and even DMs can go a long way with building affinity with audience members.

When everything is important, nothing stands out. So when there is actually an opportunity for different-than-usual content, make it shine.  Increase frequency around real-time opportunities, like events, webinars, launches, behind-the-scenes. Take a cue from Media and Sports, which hyper-focus on wall-to-wall coverage of the top story or game day. Media and Sports teams tweeted more than all of the other industries combined.

When everything is important, nothing stands out.

Click To Tweet

 

2.  Mix Up Content Types

We’ve been saying “Video Wins Social” for several years. While in some instances that can be true, the social media benchmarking data shows that in main news feed posts, actually photos and carousels now outrank videos for engagement.

The algorithm may prioritize video content when it’s available, but audiences care less. The reality is that even today, video is still more difficult for content teams to produce at scale unless it is a core part of the business (media, sports, etc). That’s why video appears less frequently as a post type across most industries.

What can B2B brands do without a consistent video workflow? Remember that in today’s visually dominated social feeds, carousels and photos perform well. Avoid posting a simple status in text-only on Twitter or Facebook, especially when it’s easy enough to include a GIF, image, or infographic.

Carousel impressions are repeated in a user’s news feed if they don’t engage the first time. On subsequent impressions, Carousels will display images two and three. You don’t have to win with the first image in a Carousel. Be sure the second and third ones are just as compelling.

 

3.  Identify And Measure What Metrics Matter

An engagement rate is calculated based on all measurable interactions on a post. Social networks are diversifying how audiences choose to engage with any post on their newsfeed–Facebook alone has up to six emotional reactions along with commenting, sharing, and saving posts.

Does an Angry reaction carry more weight or meaning than a Laugh? How does Love compare to a Share?

A better way to measure engagement is to identify what specific reactions are most valuable for your brand. Metrics are like pizza toppings–each one of us has our favorites, so we tend to always stick with those and overlook the other options.

Measure specific, meaningful reactions as a percentage of total engagements to ensure you don’t lose sight of engagements that move the needle. Padding posts to garner more “Likes” to hit engagement numbers is easy to do — but Likes don’t pay the bills (even for Influencers).

Take a Look at Your Own. Social Metrics

Rival IQ acknowledged a better way to measure engagement rates is by using the engagement rate per post metric. Engagement rate per post is the [best] metric because it controls for post volume and audience size and helps marketers understand how they’re doing in relation to their competitors.

Unfortunately, social network APIs continue to skinny the data that is publicly available, so Rival IQ and others cannot do this type of competitive reporting at scale. But you can with your own native metric reports.

 

4.  Plan Seasonal Content and Align Hashtags Accordingly

Hashtags were all about the holidays on Instagram and Twitter this year, so that signals brands must keep up with content that aligns with the seasons. Work ahead by identifying these in your annual and quarterly editorial calendars and planning.

Planning in advance means your team is better positioned to capitalize on seasonal content by finally deploying all the “next year we should do this” ideas that are missed after the fact.

Hashtags that performed consistently well across all industries included: giveaways, alcohol-related, or those relating to holidays and current events. One smart note from the social media benchmark report is that hashtags are not equally used across social media channels.

Use research and hashtag tools to identify the right hashtags and how many to use for each social channel. Update these monthly or quarterly for best effect.

—

Get started with benchmarking and analyzing social content performance with the Head to Head Social Snapshot, where brands can see 1:1 performance against the Rival IQ benchmarks.

Go further by completing a social media audit that identifies the insights to set up strategic decisions for next year’s social media plans. I built a self-paced, free course that explains social auditing and insights, available to guide you through using social media metrics to audit and build social media strategy.

How will you approach social media differently in 2022? Tweet me @LaurenTTeague to let me know.

The post-2021 Social Media Benchmark Report: 4 Takeaways for Your Social Refresh appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling

Social selling is a tool that almost anyone can add to their professional toolbox. While sales professionals have traditionally applied social selling, it can apply to anyone using relationships and relational marketing in their career. Social selling solves the problem of needing to fill a pipeline and connect with customers by building relationships.

For example, recruiters can use social selling practices to identify prospects, build relationships and grow trust with potential candidates before a job opportunity arises.

Social media doesn’t replace your existing selling or relational tools. Instead, it is a different tool that helps leverage the selling skills and the relationship-building skills that one has already fostered in their career.

 

5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling

To explain how social selling helps to grow customer relationships on a one-to-one basis, let’s look at these five ways to use it effectively:

1.  Understand what Social Selling Is (and Isn’t)

Social selling is the art of using social media to find, understand, connect with, cultivate and nurture potential sales prospects.

There are four key steps in this process:

• Identify prospects online
• Enrich ideal contract profiles
• Showcase knowledge and expertise
• Build one-to-one relationships

While it seems obvious, it bears repeating:

Social Selling is not Social Media Marketing.

Though both happen on social media platforms, Marketing and Sales use different approaches to achieve very different outcomes.

Social media marketing supports driving attention and building affinity at a large scale, with multiple audiences in mind. Organic social media marketing supports the big picture and aims of an organization.

Contrast that with the messages delivered through social selling — messages dialed in for a specific audience through more personalized content. While the Marketing team is broadcasting from one to many, social selling is ideal for that one-to-one communication.

 

2. Grow Your Network

A key to understanding how best to use social selling is understanding who is really in your audience. When we pull back the curtain and reveal who’s really in our social media audiences, the results are always different than expected. Remember: Those who are paying attention to your channels are not necessarily who is the most active.

In social selling, we must dive into our respective audiences outside of the brand pages.

Think about your own LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers. They most likely include a mix of the following people:

• Prospects
• Co-workers and colleagues
• Industry peers and competition
• Adjacent peers and competition
• Peers from a group, event, or networking event
• Friends, family, and acquaintances

Who do we want in our audience? When social selling, prospects are in our direct line of sight. However, don’t rule out the importance of developing connections with adjacent peers and competitors or others in the peripherals of your network. This is especially true when seeking out who can connect you to a second-level connection.

Build connections by adding value to their newsfeeds. At Convince & Convert, we are true believers that Youtility marketing pays off in dividends. When relationships are founded because we are helping, not selling, we become indispensable.

Transactions happening online take many forms — you may not get a direct sale, but an introduction or a recommendation from your network can lead to additional opportunities.

Focusing on helping people first, rather than only considering the next sale or deal, can build trust with our audience. Youtility is relevant in any form: Information, entertainment, and perspective. There are several ways to put Youtility into play.

When you’re relevant to gain someone’s attention, they permit you to earn their trust. Every salesperson knows that trust is the way to unlock that relationship and get closer to the desired outcome.

 

3. Be a Good Listener

We coined the term “Acceptable Eavesdropping” to describe the ideal way to listen to existing conversations happening online. Adapting social listening rules to how individuals can eavesdrop pays off in these ways:

• Follow prospects & peers and join the conversation they’re already having
• Comment and engage in content in a relatable way
• Join adjacent and industry groups of your target personas. Participate lightly and gain insights from the
• conversations, questions asked, and answers given.
• Follow relevant hashtags to find new prospects involved in similar conversations.
• Use Notifications and tools like Spoonbill.io to identify and react to profile changes.

Credit: Spoonbill.io

Our actions online are generally public unless we expressly limit them. What is posted publicly is available for anybody to eavesdrop on if they know how to do it. From a social selling perspective, listening to existing conversations provides insights that help sellers fine-tune messaging and identify opportunities to contribute.

Comment on and engage with content and conversations, even if it’s not directly related to your sales effort. Applying a Youtility-first mindset, try to add value with any response or answer. Having an actual conversation builds trust and rapport.

Joining and participating in groups that attract your target personas or adjacent can lead to insights into how those individuals generally talk about their business challenges and needs.

One of the early steps I made this year while working on a startup idea was to join groups on Facebook and Reddit that help me identify and note the challenges of users that my idea will solve.

While I am not participating actively, being part of the group allows me to get familiar with this audience group’s challenges, complaints, and celebrations. Those insights are invaluable as I begin to build my product and demonstrate that I identify with the users’ needs from their point of view.

Wherever you choose to listen, do so to connect within your industry or specialty. Use that time to share information and expertise, ask for advice and build relationships. Select the social channels, groups, and hashtags that reflect the communities within your target audiences to get smarter about prospects and current customers.

 

4.  Engage With Purpose

Listening should inform what content to create and share. All content should start from a place of understanding:

• 1) Who are you trying to reach?
• 2) What does that audience care about?

The Convince & Convert team says this all of the time, but it’s true: creating content your audience cares about is a surefire way to help them find you and stay with you.

But too often, employees are creating content that only they or their employer cares about. The effects just aren’t as appealing. We’ve all seen this as we’re scrolling through our newsfeeds, and we scroll right by what isn’t the most relevant or interesting content.

There needs to be a balanced approach between a company’s social marketing strategy and the employees taking ownership of their personal brand.

When directly engaging with your network, remember the golden rule of engagement– add value to your conversations. Do this by researching their industry and tailoring your content to their interests and needs. Be mindful of all information you share.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid using the word “I” in the first ten words of your post, caption, or comment. Engaging from a place of help means the conversation is not about you.

Stop defaulting to the “Like” (thumbs up) reaction. Using these other reactions will stand out among the different reactions, as others do not often use them.

If the post or article is noteworthy, consider sharing it and crediting the author. Send the author a direct message appreciating the post or tag them in your comments.

Use the Articles & Activities section to see what your contacts are commenting on.  This will give you important insights into what they are interested in and allow you to open a conversation on a mutual piece of content you have engaged with. If your contact is not posting actively, this may help open a dialogue.

 

5.  Measure the Effectiveness of Social Selling Efforts

Social media is a great way to generate leads, sure. But how can we measure the social selling steps of connecting with an audience, building credibility, and earning their trust? How do you know if your social selling plan is effective?

Here are a couple of ways to measure the effectiveness of social selling efforts.

 

Social Selling Index:

LinkedIn’s own Social Selling Index can be a barometer for individual progress. According to Linkedin, the SSI is a helpful measure of how a salesperson’s social selling skills and execution come together.

LinkedIn Social Selling Index

This self-report card allows for progress checks over time as a good base for identifying what steps taken are helping.  It’s calculated by evaluating four distinct pillars:

• Establishing your professional brand
• Finding the right people
• Engaging with insights
• Building relationships

SSI scores update day to day, providing real-time feedback based on your activity and the health of your network over time. The score is based on a scale of zero to 100, with a maximum score for each pillar being 25.

Linkedin reports that social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than those with a lower SSI as if we needed an incentive to boost scores. The more consistent you are using LinkedIn, the more significant the impact on your SSI score–but more importantly, the greater impact on your network overall.

 

Trackable Touchpoints

Making every touchpoint that we have with individuals trackable seems impossible. But in digital, we can get close with the right tools in place. Using data capturing and tracking technology makes it easier to qualify prospects and understand when they’re more ready and open for conversation.

Avoid duplicating Marketing’s role by trying to create campaigns on your own. Instead, it is more effective and more manageable to make individual touchpoints interactive.

Augment your emails and shared content to track when they are opened and viewed. Some of our favorite tools to do this include:

• Video tools that allow for viewability reporting, like Vidyard GoVideo
• Email enhancers like MixMax for automation and Sigstr for signatures 
• Campaign URL builders and short URL providers
• SMS Messaging

 

Go Forth and Prosper

When applying social selling to building relationships with your social network, remember this: Doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all. Take these ideas, and don’t hesitate to make subtle shifts in how you approach social media individually.

By focusing on the social more than the selling, success will follow.

Need an assist? The Convince & Convert Consulting team offers workshops on how teams can apply social selling to Sales, HR, and Professionals of all kinds.

The post 5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

4 Reputation Management Realities That All Brands Now Face

 

What do Beyoncé, Kate Middleton, and Harrison Ford have in common? Other than having devoted fan bases, they’re celebrities who have a reputation for giving very few interviews. They control their messaging tightly.

While Beyoncé and Kate Middleton choose to go directly to their fan bases with highly choreographed messaging through their social media channels, Harrison Ford is one of only a very few celebrities who aren’t on social media at all.

However, whether or not they choose to connect with their fans online, none of these celebrities can stop the millions of rabid fans who run fan accounts, who post to Reddit and Instagram, and who analyze their every move through YouTube videos and blog posts.

Why does this matter for you and your business? 

Just like celebrities, the rise of fan culture on the internet has fueled both a huge boom in brands’ abilities to control their own reputations, as well as the decentralization of where reputation management lies.

We are now able to build communities of like-minded customers and brand fans. With that comes the responsibility of monitoring a growing array of websites and spaces where brands rate products, review services, comment, and ask for help.

 

4 Key Considerations of Reputation Management

Ratings and Reviews Are No Longer a Choice

“The rating trusted most by consumers is 4 stars followed by 4.5 and 5 stars,” according to review software company ReviewTrackers.

Many years ago, I worked for a well-known arts & crafts brand. At that time, the company I worked for gave the ability to customers to rate and review patterns (the directions consumers would use to create their craft projects), but not the products themselves.

The thinking was that we didn’t want the companies’ own products to have negative reviews. And yet, study after study shows that a few negative reviews actually bolster trust in reviews overall. Furthermore, customers tend to trust relatively positive reviews most (see above quote from ReviewTrackers).

What brands must do is not only encourage reviews with open arms but encourage customers to look at positive reviews as social proof. Today, that same company has embraced product reviews both on their website and in their digital marketing efforts.

And this goes beyond B2C brands. Brands as wide-ranging as US Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the US whose reviews are mostly on Google My Business, to DeSantis Breindel, a New York City-based branding consultancy whose reviews are on platforms like Clutch (both brands are clients of Convince & Convert) are not only monitoring and responding to reviews but also using reviews to feed their marketing efforts (see below).

A post shared by Mint (@mintapp)

 

It’s Not Just What They Say, It’s What You Do

“39 percent of social media complainers who expect a reply want it to come within sixty minutes, yet the average response time from businesses is five hours,” found research by Jay Baer and Edison Research.

In 2016, C&C founder Jay Baer wrote, “​​Haters are not your problem….Ignoring them is.” That reality is more true now than ever before.

Customers expect help with their issues, and when you don’t respond to negative reviews, your prospective customers will hold you accountable for that inaction.

To positively impact your reputation, treat reviews as an opportunity for customer service and excellent customer experience. Respond to your reviews; add context; thank brand fans and address fan haters.

 

Social Listening Is More Complex Than Ever

“Word of mouth is directly responsible for 19% of all purchases, and influences as much as 90%,” says the book Talk Triggers by Jay Baer and senior strategist Daniel Lemin.

Outside of owned review channels, brands must monitor reviews and conversations on channels from Facebook and Reddit to the bumper crop of industry-specific review sites such as Zocdoc and Healthgrades.

Using monitoring tools like Meltwater and Sprinklr helps brands to stay on top of what’s being said. Beyond sentiment and topics, brands must make sure that they are leveraging the built-in AI to analyze conversations for trends to keep on top of what their proactive messaging needs to be.

Not sure how to leverage these social listening tools to uncover this data? Consulting firms like Premium Blend can help to build strong queries and implement effective listening processes.

Again, it’s not just knowing what people are saying, but also using this data to shape what your brand should be talking about to be relevant to your customer base.

 

Showcase Your Customers’ Words and Stories

Reputation management is the reactive part of our work, but we also have the opportunity for reputation marketing. Leverage the stories that your customers are telling about you to market your products/services to prospective customers.

Whether you’re aggregating real customer social media posts like Korean beauty brand Hanacure does on their @hanacureeffect Instagram account or you’re using a tool like SocialProve to pop-up notifications to website visitors that indicates when others have purchased on your website, you’re engaging in reputation marketing.

What are some ways that your brand can leverage customer stories as social proof?

• Proactively turn user-generated content (UGC) into social media campaigns
• Leverage customer reviews and quotes on landing pages
• Showcase real customer feedback in advertising
• Address questions you’re getting from Quora, Reddit, and/or your own communities as content
• Create animated videos featuring customer reviews
• Integrate real questions into your chatbot scripts or FAQs
• Highlight your review scores using in your top-navigation and/or footer

 

3 Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Your customers are already out there talking about your brand—are you encouraging them to do so in the places that help you to strengthen your reputation?
2. Are you showcasing the level of customer experience that your prospects can expect from your team?
3. Are you reassuring prospects that others like them trust you?

That’s your opportunity with reputation management. Don’t waste it.

The post 4 Reputation Management Realities That All Brands Now Face appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

‘Tis the Season to Double Down on Social Customer Care (and Protect Your Community Managers)

Just when we thought we, as social media strategists and community managers, could rest up from the twists and turns of the last 18 months, the holiday season is upon us.

It feels like it could be a doozy.

• Global supply chain challenges are causing significant inventory gaps for some.
• A tight labor market causes other delays, shortages, or increased prices.
• Some families are gathering for the first holiday season in two years, and the expectations are HIGH.

Heightened customer expectations and consumer demands equate to a potential increase in the velocity of service inquiries. Sprout Social predicts a rise of 44% more messages on Instagram if last year’s trends continue and a 14% increase in Twitter messages.

 

Avoid Social Customer Care Burnout

With this challenge, of course, comes new opportunities to provide trust-building service to your potential and current customers.

Before we move into how to mobilize your company to provide extraordinary social customer care, this is a great time to remind everyone reading that social media community managers are grappling with burnout:

• The faucet never stops. You can set hours, scale teams, and establish processes, but this work never turns off.
• Daily jobs can consist of wading through endless hateful comments, especially on platforms like Twitter which is full of a polarized political scene.
• It’s harder and harder to break through and get a significant creative win, especially when expected to wear the hats of designer, video editor, copywriter, strategist, and customer service representative.

That takes us to the first recommendations for activating an excellent customer experience on social media this holiday season:

 

Train Your Social Care Team

If your social media manager is the only one serving as your organization’s social media customer service center, you need to rethink your approach.

As the demands ramp up, ensure you meet as a team and determine the resources you need to deliver the experience you want. Ideally, integrate your customer service team directly into your social listening inboxes.

Train anyone involved in responding to consumers on social media, so they understand the context of where they are playing, how it’s different from traditional customer service, and the brand’s social media voice and tone.

 

Establish Guidelines That Encourage Maximum Transparency (and Yes, Even Disappointment!)

During this season, you may not have good news for all. But all complaints or questions need a response.

Decide now how you can be the MOST transparent as possible in your response strategy, understanding that you don’t always (and can’t always) SOLVE the issue, but you can ALWAYS hear the issue.

Edison Research discovered that not answering a complaint results in a 50% decrease in advocacy. However, responding to a complaint results in a 25% increase in advocacy. NOTE: that did not say SOLVING a customer’s issue. Responding alone increases advocacy.

Consider the following:

• What will you not respond to?
• How will you respond to positive comments?
• When do you respond with a full response vs. a simple acknowledgment?
• When will you move conversations “off-stage” and into a more private channel like a DM?

 

Ensure Your Community Management Team Has The Right Software

If you don’t have a social listening tool in place, now may be the season to invest in a tool. Setting up your tools to make it easy to identify, respond to, and catalog customer inquiries will save huge amounts of time.

Today, many tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite that you may already be using for posting have add-ons for listening. There are also stand-alone tools like Meltwater that can provide an extra layer of support.

 

Make Contacting Customer Service Easy and Accessible

In your social media bios, add other places where customers can receive service along with the hours and contact information.

 

Use Integrated Social Tools To Respond To and Organize Responses

Each social channel has a set of tools that can help you provide information and organize your response.

Program automatic/quick replies for frequently asked questions. On Instagram, set up an FAQ Highlight that answers all frequently asked questions, so people don’t have to leave the app when looking for an answer.

If you aren’t using a social media monitoring system, utilize the message status capabilities within your social media inboxes, so you can filter based on messages that need a response.

 

May Your Social Care be Merry and Prepared

The best thing leaders can do is equip their teams with the necessary resources to scale social media services smoothly. In the best-case scenario, you won’t need them. But realistically, there will be a point in time where this preparation will ensure a better customer AND employee experience.

The post ‘Tis the Season to Double Down on Social Customer Care (and Protect Your Community Managers) appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Use Social Listening for Lead Generation

Would you like your social media marketing strategy to bring in more leads?

Hardly any business would say “no” to that.

One of the best ways to generate leads from social media (apart from investing in social media advertising) is to use social media listening.

At this point, just about any business uses social media monitoring to help their customers and prevent a social media crisis.

These days anyone can message their favorite brand on Facebook and get help immediately. Anyone can tweet to a business on Twitter and hear back within a day.

Social media support has become a norm rather than a competitive advantage.

Yet, not many businesses realize that social media listening can also be used to acquire customers, not just help existing clients.

How to turn your social media strategy into a lead generation powerhouse?

Let’s see!

1. Treat Social Media Listening as a Project

The first step is to create a well-defined process.

More often than not, social media listening is mostly owned by your social media team (or a single social media manager).

They log in to a dashboard (or an individual platform like Facebook or Twitter), go through private messages, and post standard replies (like “Send your order number here to get help”).

Then they scroll through updates where the brand was tagged to see if there is anything else that needs a reply.

This is a bare minimum effort that a social media listening strategy usually entails.

Yet, this strategy fails to capture important opportunities, like winning a new customer or fixing a fundamental product or website error. To make more of your social listening strategy, make sure to:

 

1.1. Monitor more than your tagged mentions or DMs

If your brand is more or less known in the industry, consumers will be discussing it without ever tagging your social media profile. You want to know what they are saying, so:

• Monitor different variations of your brand name (one word, separate words, etc.).  For example, in my case, that would be both “seosmarty” and “seo smarty”.
• Monitor the names of your CEO / founder or any other public representative. I would also want to keep an eye on the mentions of “ann smarty”
• Exclude tagged (linked) mentions because you will be notified of those by a social media platform and you are likely already monitoring them anyway. Creating a separate feed for your untagged brand mentions will help you catch those more effectively instead of losing them in the clutter.

Most social media listening platforms allow you to create one unified feed monitoring keyword mentions. Here’s what it may look like using native Twitter search:

 

For local businesses, monitoring your location feed on Instagram is also a very good idea.

 

1.2. Include other team members into your monitoring routine

Social media messages are all different. Some people ask for immediate help, others simply share their feedback on a product or website usability.

This is why this process should involve more teams within your company.

This is where social media listening should be treated as a project where one central role (in this case, a social media manager), distributes messages around the company and even sets deadlines to make sure these messages are adequately acted upon.

Agorapulse is social management and monitoring platform that gets it: Every social media update you get through their monitoring solution can be assigned to a different team member with a comment.

Including various teams (design, product development, etc.) into your social media listening process helps everyone be on the same page and answer important questions:

• Are customers liking our product? How can we improve it?
• Is our website easy to navigate? How can we make it better?
• Are our customers satisfied with our customer support? How can we improve it?
• Are there unhappy customers and how can we win them back?
• And finally, what has prevented any person from becoming our customer and how can we still convert them?

This is the fundamental step in understanding your target audience and creating a better lead generation and conversion strategy.

 

2. Monitor Your Competitor’s (Unhappy) Customers

Your social media listening can not only help you understand your customers. It can also help you understand (and even win) your competitors’ customers.

This is why monitoring your competitor’s brand name is as important as monitoring your own.

Lots of customers will publicly share their dissatisfaction with various aspects of your competitors’ operations, so it is a good idea to create a separate feed for monitoring those complaints:

It is a great idea to treat these mentions as your own, i.e. assign these messages to your website and product developers, as well as involve your sales team for them to reach out to some of these people to try and get them to try your product (that doesn’t have these problems).

Additionally, use this trick when planning and developing your product to define your value proposition and identify your competitive advantage.

 

3. Seek Lead Generating Links

Finally, links can bring leads both directly (from people clicking on those links) and indirectly (by improving rankings of your site). And links can be acquired through social media listening.

Create a separate feed to monitor the following hashtags that journalists are using to find sources and opinions:

• #PRrequest
• #journorequest
• #asktwitter

Include your local and/or niche journalists into that monitoring feed to listen to what they have to say, what they are writing about and what they are asking.

In many cases, you will be able to suggest angles they may be interested in writing about based on what they are tweeting. Buzzsumo is a  great way to find those journalists on Twitter:

Once you set this feed up, your social media manager will go through that daily and assign selected tweets to your outreach team.

From there, to be able to evaluate these efforts, make sure to create well-organized link monitoring links. For example, Ahrefs alerts notify you via email when your domain gains (or loses) backlinks.

And Link Checker will help you organize those links for you to be able to clearly see which links were acquired through social media and assign important metrics to them (like nofollow / nofollow links, indexation status, redirects, etc.)

Additionally, Finteza will help you evaluate your traffic-driving links and analyze whether those clicks result in leads:

 

Conclusion

Social media listening can help you on many levels – from converting your potential customers to better understanding their needs. All of that can boost your lead generation efforts and help your conversion optimization strategy.

The post How to Use Social Listening for Lead Generation appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

5 Influencer Marketing Myths for 2021

 

Influencer marketing is not new but it is constantly changing and marketers have thoughts. Below are 5 common influencer marketing myths we’ve heard and want to debunk.

 

Myth #1: Influencer marketing is a fad.

Actually, this may be true, sort of. Hear me out.

Post-COVID data shows a 37% decrease in brands working with influencers and a 41% drop in the efficiency of influencer marketing.

However, brands are still investing in influencer marketing, specifically through nano and micro-influencers. I see this shift as a more strategic approach to influencer marketing and a way to redefine a tactic fraught with issues. 

So, is influencer marketing a fad?

In terms of brands spending lots of money on influencers with large followings? Potentially.

However, in my opinion, influencer marketing in terms of nano and micro-influencers — specifically ones that resonate with niche audiences —  is here to stay & will become an important part of a strategic marketing mix.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

Keep influencer marketing on your radar and dive deep into your personas to see if nano and micro-influencers could connect you with your audience.

 

Myth #2: Influencer marketing is only successful for younger generations.

Marketers around the world are trying to woo the next generation of consumers with influencer marketing. In fact, there are over 15 million search results for “influencer marketing to Gen Z.”

Meanwhile, “influencer marketing to Gen X” and “influencer marketing to Boomers” have less than 10 million results combined.

What’s up with that?

I think it mostly comes down to the myth that influencer marketing is only for younger generations, which is simply not true.

In fact, older generations are spending more and more time on social media and shifting their shopping habits toward online retail, delivery services, and subscriptions which means brands have more opportunities than ever to engage across generations. Gen X and Boomers also control the vast majority of disposable income in the US.

While some marketers are writing strategies around younger influencers, terms like “Grandfluencers” and “elderly influencers’ are becoming more popular. Influencers like Joan MacDonald and Helen Winkle are over here living their best lives as 70-year-old-plus influencers with almost 5 million followers combined.

Gen X also has some fabulous influencers like Arlinda McIntosh and Ana Pejkanovic.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

If your audience includes Gen X and/or Boomers, influencer marketing may be worth a try.

 

Myth 3: Influencers have to have large followings to be effective.

We covered this a bit in myth #1, but let’s dive deeper.

Traditionally, influencer marketing means utilizing a social media user with a large following. Today, that definition is changing.

While mega influencers (social users with millions of followers) are the first thing many people think of when they think “influencers,” other groups are growing in popularity.

However, there are differing opinions on how many followers each group has, especially in the micro and nano categories where some marketers say nano influencers can have as little as 500 followers and still be effective.

1. Mega: 1M+ followers
2. Macro: 100K+ followers
3. Micro: 10K+ followers
4. Nano: 500 to 10K followers

While influencers generally have a conversion rate of around 3%, nano influencers are converting at upwards of 30% in some cases.

What does this mean for marketers?

Marketers should look for opportunities to work with influencers with niche communities and remember that large followings don’t equal better.

 

Myth 4: Influencer marketing doesn’t work for B2B companies.

This is simply not true.

• Linode, a cloud hosting company, has seen 15%-20% customer growth through its YouTube influencer strategy.
• Microsoft teamed up with National Geographic photographers on an Instagram campaign that resulted in over 3.5 million likes and over 1K user-generated content uploads.
• American Express utilized small business owners as influencers in their Love My Store campaign resulting in 400,000 orders of the Love My Store decals.
• Aegora, a professional marketplace, tapped into freelancers across industries to be part of an influencer campaign. The campaign generated over 500 signups.

What does this mean for B2B marketers?

B2B marketers should explore ways to bring influencers into their marketing, whether it’s through employees, customers, or social media influencers.

 

Myth #5: Influencer marketing has no rules.

In an October 2021 news release, the Federal Trade Commission said they’ve officially put hundreds of businesses on notice for “fake reviews and other misleading endorsements”. The penalty for misleading consumers is up to $43,792 per violation.

What does this mean for marketers?

It means there are rules you need to follow, and you shouldn’t be a jerk and mislead and deceive people. Familiarize yourself with the FTC endorsement guidelines and comply to avoid headaches and hardships.

 

2021 Influencer Marketing Myths Debunked!

There you have it! Five myths we wanted to address so you can decide if a dip in the influencer pool is a worthy exploration by you and your team.

The post 5 Influencer Marketing Myths for 2021 appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com