Twitter – Editorial PR

08/May/2017

Social media marketing is ever more popular and ever more essential in the twenty-first century, with brands around the world utilising content strategists to connect with target audiences. Still, content marketing can require a complex approach and finding success can be a challenge. By following these six steps, companies can position themselves in the best place to reap rewards by establishing an effective social media marketing campaign.

Understand your consumer base

It is vital for firms to analyse and understand their target audience if they are going to create the right content and connect with potential customers. Consumer bases need to be broken down into segments and businesses need to think about the journey towards a specific product. In general, there are normally three steps to the sales funnel preceding customer acquisition. Therefore, it is essential to know what people want and why they want it.

Decide how to use social media

It’s all well and good taking to social media to connect with customers, but it is important for brands to identify why they are using these platforms. Is it to build brand awareness, provide product education or something else?

Building the community is important and content marketing plans can be dedicated to growing a consumer base of like-minded individuals who align themselves with a brand’s goals, ethics and mantras. Brand awareness is also a good strategy and, in many cases, this can be platform specific. For example, Twitter users will want to analyse data like impressions, new followers, follower count and profile visits. Social media can also be used to effectively boost engagement.

Use the right platform

Though companies might be keen to access every social media platform at once, there are considerable variations between channels, so it is wise to do some research first. For example, a consumer base might be more active on Pinterest than Twitter.

Facebook is the most widely used social media platform and it offers brands a wide variety of opportunities, including live streaming, advertising and the ability to add emojis to content. Twitter, meanwhile, has a very active portion of users, whilst Instagram is expected to go from strength to strength.

Topic research

Having decided which social media platforms are to be used, brands need to begin planning topics for content marketing strategies. Priorities should be placed upon curating relevant, unique and specific posts that will offer value and resonate with any given target audience. Polls can be conducted to establish what consumers are looking for, whilst analysing website data can reveal the topics of most interest to people.

Content calendars

Content calendars should not be forgotten or pushed to the side as unnecessary. Once the first blog post has been produced, it is important to concentration on industry-focused topics consistently and regularly to keep customers coming back for more.

Trust building

Building consumer trust is essential if people are to be nurtured and coverted into followers and, as a result, customers. Potential customers need to be engaged long-term through social media and two-way conversations are great for making individuals feel at ease with a brand. Research suggests it takes eight points of contact with a consumer, at minimum, to gain a sale, and social media can significantly facilitate this engagement.

Following these steps can help unlock the potential of social media and take content marketing to the next level.

Annie

01/Apr/2017

Content marketing has become a crucial tool for businesses wanting to increase their exposure and brand awareness. However, it is far from a quick fix and takes many resources to craft and run a successful campaign. All too often, many of the common mistakes occur, even when seasoned professionals are running advertising. Therefore, it is important to regularly review strategies.

Lack of content promotion

In this era, it is crucial to promote content. Once upon a time, material could be posted onto a blog and then left to gain attention. No more. Now, even the best content has to be shared if it’s to gain the right attention – even if it’s an exceptional piece of carefully crafted content.

Without promoting posts across a varied range of platforms, there is less chance the right people will see it. Though focussing on SEO can help gain more views, organic reach shouldn’t be relied on. Instead, every single piece of work should be shared on multiple platforms to get as many views as possible. This helps build followers, brand awareness and consumer trust.

Publishing content on the wrong channel

There are many platforms available to content marketing strategists these days, but it’s important to publish the right content in the right place. For example, a blog post might work well as a link on Twitter, but it might not gain attention on Pinterest. Meanwhile, LinkedIn certainly isn’t the right place to share personal or funny GIFs, though these can work well as occasional content posted to FB pages.

Focussing on quantity instead of quality

It’s unsurprising that marketers want to create a lot of content and publish it regularly to remain visible to their target audience. However, focusing solely on producing a lot of content instead of checking for quality is a huge mistake. Content must be genuinely useful to consumers, of high quality and with added value; there’s no point in producing average content.

Failing to harness the power of Google Analytics

Good Analytics is an extremely powerful tool, yet many content marketers fail to use it properly. It can give insights into which content is performing the best, thereby helping creators make material that is most likely to find appeal with audiences. It can also tell marketers which website pages get the most hits, and how long people spend on a website. This information is invaluable, and should be used as a matter of course.

Not listening to target consumers

To get more views on content, businesses need to know what their customers want. And to understand this, it’s vital to actually listen. There are many tools to help monitor specific keywords across social media platforms, allowing marketers to follow conversations about brands, products or people. It is also important to respond to all social media comments and act swiftly to correct problems; showing people the face behind the brand.

By avoiding the above mistakes, content marketers can help hone their strategies, develop better content, and give campaigns the best chance of success.

Annie

06/Feb/2017

Content marketing strategists are always on the lookout for ways to improve the efficiency of their advertising, whatever the goal, and with digital marketing taking off, developing a campaign with the potential to return great success has become more complex than ever. One platform often used for content marketers, particularly for the distribution of material, is Twitter. This micro blogging social network offers another way to engage with fans and followers via Twitter Moments.

Twitter Moments was first launched to the public in 2016. Instead of sharing a string of unrelated Tweets, users can actually create a story from tweets and multimedia. These are then uploaded to the networking platform as a ‘story’ for followers to engage with. Twitter’s move in this direction shows that the channel is clearly prioritising digestible, concise content that might be able to compete on an even footing with both Instagram and Snapchat.

For content marketers around the world, the Twitter Moments feature offers a great way to improve engagement with fans and dramatically drive return on investment (ROI) levels higher. One digital marketing and media analyst, Rebecca Lieb, was quoted recently as saying “Twitter Moments just leverages what Twitter is already about, which is real-time marketing.”

With this in mind, there are a few ways for advertisers to utilise Moments to their advantage. Firstly, companies can showcase not only their brand values, but the value of their brand in itself. For example, one healthcare provider developed a moment that focussed on their physician assistants. The company included data on the growth of the profession during the past five years, not only sharing valuable data and insights, but telling a story at the same time.

Another route content strategists could take is to use Twitter Moments to actively engage with their followers and brand advocates. It is best practice on social media platforms to actively share quality content from followers. However, this can be included in a Moment too, adding even deeper levels of trust and reputation among fans. It shows that social media teams really are paying attention to what their fans are saying and aren’t simply clicking the ‘Retweet’ button without properly engaging.

Finally, Twitter Moments can be used to help companies make their brand’s message more concise, while shaping their reputation. It is all too easy for messages on social media, particularly Twitter, to become lost or misrepresented, especially if a follower is out to cause trouble. Companies can also use Moments to deliver a statement, highlight specific messages or tweets, or to frame their perspective on a topic. The latter is particularly useful when responding to current affairs. Using Moments in this way enables brands to give a concise and focussed message that can keep reputations intact.

Overall, Twitter Moments can be a great method for content marketers to focus their follower attention on specific content, helping campaigns to find more success. It can also deliver concise messages, safeguarding a company’s reputation from negative press.

Annie

01/Aug/2016

There are many social media platforms around, some of which might not immediately spring to mind as a good advertising opportunity for content marketers. For example, strategists might readily dive into Facebook and Twitter but leave other platforms on the sidelines. However, with many Fortune 500 brands turning to Instagram as a way to spread their message and interact with fans, this image-based application should not be overlooked.

Instagram made its debut in 2010 and has proven extremely popular with users since then. As the platform gained attention, it began to provide tools for content strategists and marketers. Now, more than half of Fortune 500 brands are using the application, showing just how important Instagram can be for any digital campaign.

A report from TrackMaven that analysed more than 41,000 Instagram posts between May 2015 and May 2016 discovered that the vast majority of interactions were click-based. In fact, 98.9 per cent of all engagement noted was made up of “double taps”, the system Instagram uses for people to “like” an image or video. This clearly shows the platform is not geared towards personal conversations or feedback. Instead, it is about brands and content creators engaging with their fans and followers through “like” and “comment” features.

One interesting point for all content strategists to note is the lack of filter use by global firms. One of the core appeals for users is that Instagram offers a various filters and tools to manipulate uploaded images. However, these are largely ignored by big brands.

TrackMaven Content Director Kara Burney explains that this is because most Fortune 500 brands upload pre-made content, although this method of content dispersal could be negatively affecting engagement because 12 of the filters are well-documented to actually boost interaction. Ultimately, brands should use filters if they want to ensure a smooth and immersive experience within the social platform.

Talking about the fact that many brands do not use filters, Burney said: “This finding indicates that there is an appetitive for authenticity on Instagram. Brands need to remember and respect that their content is appearing not amongst a feed of other brand-generated content, but among content from users’ friends and families as well. Remaining true to the aesthetics of each social network, like taking and editing photos natively in each platform, could prevent the jarring ‘this is obviously an ad, let me ignore it’ effect on social media.”

One of the first Fortune 500 firms to use Instagram was Starbucks, and the brand’s strategy is working. Engagement on the platform has reached a record high for the coffeehouse brand, with a ratio of 24.64, which is calculated on the number of interactions each post gets per 1,000 fans.

For strategists that want to extend their digital approach, utilising Instagram is a wise move that can be used in combination with other social platforms to boost audience reach and interaction. Data shows that some of the highest engagement levels are experienced on weekends and late at night as users sit down to surf the application during their leisure time.

Eain

27/Jun/2016

For content creators and strategists wanting to utilise Twitter to boost engagement, a new analytics solution has been launched. Named ‘Engage’, marketers can utilise the official Twitter tool not only to grow and retain target audiences, but also increase the level of engagement too. Twitter has claimed that the group of Twitter users termed ‘popular creators’ will hugely benefit from the app. It will enable a way to increase business whilst maintaining the social interaction that remains the core purpose of the platform.

News of Twitter’s new tool was made public on the firm’s official blog. The company said that Engage could be used to track post-by-post engagement. This is done by reviewing the content published by a user, including GIFs, tweets, videos and any other activity conducted on the platform. By putting the resulting data to good use, content creators should be able to hone in on the types of content creating the most buzz. They will also be able to talk with more relevance about various posts, whilst continuing the conversation through engagement to boost overall interactions. This could help raise content towards the gold zone of going global and becoming viral.

As part of Engage, users can access a Tweet analytics feature. This makes it easier than ever before to track the engagement on a particular post. As an example, Engage can pull the most important @mentions to the top of the pile for marketers to interact with loyal fans and those with influence. Easily understood statistics, such as Retweets and video views across various periods will also be provided.

Twitter has also made it possible for users to access audience demographics with Engage. It means it’s easier to stay in the conversation and boost long-term engagement levels. The ability to watch a unique real-time feed means that content creators can get a much clearer idea of what their customers and fans are tweeting about, including the how conversations might fluctuate and change over periods of time. Combined with the tools to track and review content, it enables marketers to understand their network better, both in the make up of their audience and how topics, branding and other factors change on a daily basis.

The latest launch of Engage sees Twitter take another step towards providing users with native apps capable of providing in-depth insights and meaningful analytics. It was in 2014 that the firm rolled out its impressions dashboard and, until now, many campaign managers and marketers have had to rely on third-party tools to access valuable insights. Now, the dedicated analytics solution will be the ideal option for celebrity users, popular content creators and high-profile brands.

Engage is already available to creators in the U.S., and can be downloaded from the iOS store. Currently, Twitter has not revealed any plans for extending the solution to other operating systems or regions. However, the company did confirm that although this is only the beginning of the rollout, it hoped to integrate the analytics tool with partner services like Nice and Vine.

Search

EditorialPR Musings
Content Marketing Blog

Content marketing strategies for social media in 6 steps

Don’t make these common content marketing mistakes

Improve content marketing with Twitter Moments

Fortune 500 brands harness the power of Instagram

Content creators benefit from new Twitter analytics tool