HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS CAN AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS?

In today’s digital world, your brand must be visible on social media. Besides the regular activities, posts and updates, you can level up your actions through influencer marketing. This type of marketing is when companies reach out to influencers for promotional purposes.

Simply put, an influencer is a person who affects the opinions and behavior of others. Social media influencer is someone who does this on social media and earns money through it. This people made their personal brand and followers through regularly posting original content. It is very important to have large number of followers and good number of engagements.

Social media influencers are opinion-makers, whether it’s about sport, fashion, food industry, traveling, education, etc. They find place and purpose in every field. People want to have a role model they identify with, or they just love what they see and the way they communicate with the public.

Some influencers do this as part-time job or hobby, while some influencers have made this a serious business, creating a new full-time job position. The most commonly used platform of Social media influencers is Instagram, one of the best places to share attractive and eye-catchy photos. It’s interesting that these “celebrities” have followers from around the world, which means that the company that hires them gets not only local, but also global coverage and promotion.

Depending on the influencer and the contract you make, they can share announcements according to specific guidelines, or you can leave them with free hands and let the creativity and originality bring freshness to your brand. Also, you need to precise the type of payment. Companies often offer free products to the influencers, but the famous ones ask to be paid for their work.

If this type of marketing is properly used, it can contribute a lot of benefits to your business, increase brand presence and give more value to the brand, create closer and more solid customer relationships, increase visibility and increase profits.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

Social media platforms are cheap and interesting way for companies to promote their business, increase brand presence, use interactive communication and reach their audience. Social Media has changed the entire industry of marketing and advertising, and every business owner is aware that they need to be digitally active.

If you want to choose the right social media platform for your business, you need to set a goal you want to achieve through them and to figure out what platforms your target already uses. Bellow you can find the best platforms for your business:

Facebook – Without doubt, Facebook is the world’s largest SM platform, with millions of private profiles and business pages. Facebook is ideal for all forms of posts, such as photos, videos, live events, business news, products, announcements, articles, upcoming events, and much more. Every business definitely should have a Facebook business page and remain active with posts and updates.

Instagram – It is more than sure that this application has great reach. And your business needs that, right? If you are posting beautiful photos and short videos, creating an Instagram account can be a perfect idea. Instagram is an effective platform for businesses that cater to millennial consumers.

Pinterest – Pinterest is an online platform where users can save and organize images that link to products, articles or other content. According to some statistics, the majority of users are women. Similar to Instagram, this platform is ideal for beautiful photos, whether it’s fashion, beauty, food, etc. Also, Pinterest has buy button, so you can easily purchase the products that are offered.

LinkedIn – This platform is as an online company resume. It is perfect platform to show the previous success of your company, but also to show all the news and future plans. You can share updates about your business’s activity and links to relevant content for your industry.

Apart from the world-renowned social media we have listed above, there are many other online sites and social media platforms that can be ideal for your business. Based on your industry you can find suitable online community with members that share similar interests. With the right activities, here you may achieve much more than on all the other platforms together!

Our advice is to focus on two or three platforms where you will share quality posts and focus on them as much as possible, rather than making accounts on multiple networks and losing audience with average results. Vice versa: if you focus on a single platform, no matter how perfectly you manage it, there is a great danger that you will not reach the target audience and therefore the expected results.

THE UNSTOPPABLE INSTAGRAM

It’s time to accept the fact that Instagram is becoming the queen amongst all media. It seems that their team developers works tirelessly to find users’ needs and bring them to life. The fact that they constantly improve and implement new features that amaze all users confirms the fact that Instagram rules all social media.

These are some of the newest Instagram features that shook all competition away:

1. Recommended Posts.The Recommended Posts came right after several changes such as the ‘you’re all caught up’ icon. Instagram has also improved something that the users asked for long time ago – the algorithms for prioritizing newer posts. Up till now, Instagram’s feed was not organized chronologically, something that the users were not very fond of. However, they have decided to give time and date a little more importance.
2. Answering questions in stories.Marketers saw this as a blessing the moment it was enrolled, for it is a very smooth way to interact your audience and drive engagement. Using stickers to pose questions will increase transparency and will bring your brand get closer to the customers.
3. ‘Mention’ in stories.Users now have the option to share content that mentions them. It can only be shared in their Stories in a form of a sticker that tags the original creator. Re-sharing content that has mentioned your brand is really awesome because it allows you to post testimonials without looking like you’re bragging and in the same way it gives you a chance to prove that you appreciate your customers’ opinion.
4. Shoppable Instagram Stories.Instagram implemented click-to-shop tags to use in the feed and in Stories, making e-commerce easier than ever to conduct. And, one thing’s for sure, Instagrammers love to shop! Users can tag their products and lines using a few stickers, such as: a shopping bag image, a sticker with the product name, and translucent text.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONCEPT CREATION

Content creation can sometimes lead to lack of ideas and creative blockage. Marketers and copywriters are often tempted to go down the same road of constant repetition, which results in basic content that has already been seen many times. And, we all know how irritating it can be. If you feel like you’re running into a dead-end, you might want to change your creative routines.

This is where the importance of concept creation comes. Our company realized through its experience that concept creation really comes in handy when trying to be innovative. Concept creation is the process of generating ideas and turning them into multiple rough sketches that will further be the basis of the final content.

First and foremost, know your audience! Analyze the general temperament of your target groups, as well as the language and tone of voice they prefer to hear. Also, beware of the things they find dull and boring. To make it short – empathize with them!

Next comes the part that our employees find most fun – brainstorming! We all tend to skip this part as we feel it’s time-consuming. However, the more time we spend in generating ideas, the more likely are the chances our content will turn out successful and unique to the public. And remember, the rule here is ‘quantity over quality’. Don’t be afraid to think unconventional, and to view things from different angles. Try doing this from different places, as working in one same place can blunt your creativity and the best ideas usually come completely unexpected and random. Always carry a sketchbook with you, or at least write your ideas on your phone so you don’t forget them.

After the creative burst of thoughts is drained, filter your ideas according to the brands identity, promotional goals and type of audience and pick the one you find most attractive, unique and in the same time achievable. Once you pick your favorite concept, you’re to continue to its development.

SHOULD MARKETERS BE SCARED OF FACEBOOK’S TRANSPARENCY TOOL?

This year Facebook has survived a stressful period of trying to balance its feet on the unsteady ground caused by the big Cambridge Analytica Scandal. Following these events, Facebook introduced a new way of ‘fixing things’ by offering its customers a full, transparent view into every active Facebook Ad.

Yes, we are talking about the frightening ‘Info and Ads’ section that shook every marketer working on this social network. Before this feature, ads were only visible to those who were targeted with it. Now, people can go to every page they are interested in and see every active Facebook ad as well as every post the Page is spending money to promote. This option offers even more transparency regarding the political related ads. While on the Standard Facebook Pages can be seen only the active ads, with the political ads there’s a different story – all the ads are being archived.

Even though Marketers reacted furiously towards this enormous change, it now seems they found a way to adapt their strategies around it. According to our experience, it turns out that the Transparency tool has a few positive sides after all.

These are the benefits we felt in our work since the enrollment of this tool:

1. Tracking your competition

Good news for all the nosy marketers out there! Now, you can look deeper into what your competitors are doing at the moment. What’s even more exciting is the search bar that gives a list of countries currently targeted by the page. By analyzing their active posts, marketers can not only understand their competitors’ communicational strategy, but also their product strategy and the goals they try to achieve through this network.

2. Know what’s trending

We’re all familiar with creative blockage and constant repetition of certain patterns in the posts you create. Well, now you can see the way your creative competitors think. You may come through certain type of posts that are trending and attractive to the audience and implement some useful fragments in your posts. Of course, we are not talking about copying the creations, but about staying updated with current trends.

3. Transparency

Last but not least is the transparency that your customers benefit from. They can make sure that your page is verified and trustworthy by searching trough reliable information about your ads. That way they can learn how to trust your company. And trust leads to what matters the most – loyalty.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IGTV

Instagram is constantly proving its domination over the Internet, and it certainly won’t settle for any less. Once again, the public was surprised by how Instagram played its newest card, by creating an actual TV on its social network.

IGTV (Instagram TV) is the latest feature on social media that raised a lot of different views and opinions. This new ‘attack’ is served in a form of a standalone app as a new section inside the Instagram application. IGTV can be used not only by official profiles, but basically by anyone who wants to create a video. It gives its users the chance to engage with their current follower base on Instagram. So, what does this app offer? It lets users create long-form vertical videos that last up to 60 minutes.

Many people are now wondering if Instagram started a planned, direct, competitive war towards Youtube. Regardless of that, these are great news for Instagrammers that have an existing fan base as it gives them the freedom of posting their video content without the need to move to Youtube and make an extra effort to create a new fan base there, since in allows them to upload videos directly to Instagram.

For now, Instagram doesn’t offer the option to monetize IGTV—through in-video ads, or through payment of content creators. However, it is exploring ways to make IGTV maintainable by giving creators a way to monetize their content, and ad revenue shares could be in the list of possibilities.

LINKEDIN BRINGS CAROUSEL TO ITS SPONSORED CONTENT PRODUCT LINE-UP

Building a connection with the customers is number one priority for almost every brand, and what is a better way to advertise than to tell a good story? LinkedIn, as the most popular B2B Social Network is an integral part of every marketing campaign designed by our company.

On June 12^th, LinkedIn launched its new advertising format – Sponsored Content carousel ads. This new feature gives businesses option of posting ads that include up to 10 customized, swipeable cards, aligned in horizontal line.
However, this isn’t a new thing for marketers since Facebook launch it years ago, but regardless of that fact, it is definitely a huge plus for a social network of this caliber.

The main advantage of this option is its attractive and interactive nature, that offers a new set of opportunities for content creation and promotion.
“Your stories become tangible and encourage your audience to engage with your brand on both desktop and mobile.”, says LinkedIn. This can improve the storytelling of the product, giving it a richer, noticeable visualization. It gives the opportunity to show numerous offers at once or thorough presentation of a single offer.

No surprise this showed an immediate success that drew the attention of businesses, since more than 300 advertisers have tested it after its launching. Even 75% of those who used the beta version confirmed that they would definitely use it again, because they witnessed an astounding rise in CTR compared to the standard Sponsored Content Campaigns they have used till then.Carousel ads go together with the standard metrics for measuring campaign’s performance, including click-through rate, number of leads, and clicks and impressions of individual cards.

This is the biggest update from LinkedIn, following the introduction of native video ads for company pages launched in March.

DEVELOPING B2B MARKETING STRATEGY

For the last couple of years, it has been impossible not to come across some fancy buzzwords, such as: content marketing, personalization, hyper-segmentation, targeting etc. The popularity and controversy of these subjects has grown progressively as people seem to learn more and more about digital marketing and how it affects them.

However, these things are practically mundane to every marketer, since they are just new, catchy and rephrased ways to explain the standard process of marketing: set your goals-chose target audience-work efficiently-satisfy needs.

Regardless of the semantics, something that every marketer should do is to distinguish the basic target audience they aim at. Firstly, we need to answer the question: ‘Is our company’s product intended for personal usage or our main goal is to make a transaction with another business?’
Differentiating these two situations are crucial for every aspect of creating the marketing strategy since the tactics for achieving the goals are quite non-similar.

While B2C focuses on satisfying consumers’ needs in a personal and more emotional way, B2B sees the customers as rational, logical-driven individuals that seek the most cost-effective transaction for their business.

First things first: in order to succeed, you need to know what you want to succeed in. Set your goals, and make sure they are realistic, measurable and consistent with your customers need.

As to segmentation, something that really eases marketers to get through B2B customers thick skin is to create buying personas. This seems to be really helpful in the process of classifying the customers into few groups with their own mutual characteristics, their struggles, interests and as weird as it seems, you need to identify the type of communication they find repulsive.

Many content creators force themselves to write in a distinctive, complicated vocabulary to make sure they sound somewhat ‘professional’. Specification of the product you’re offering implemented in a short, concise, readable text, translated in the tone of voice they prefer to hear is the most basic formula for a successful content.

Keep in mind that the decision makers are human, just like you. They have the need for entertainment as well as information, just like you. Try to understand their buying persona instead of trying to over-impress them.