Facebook carousel ads have only been around for three years, but they have proven to be a fruitful hit in the world of marketing.

The social network’s own analysis of almost 9,000 ad sets reveals ads using the carousel format had a 30-50% lower cost-per-conversion and 20-30% lower cost-per-click than simple, single-image ads.

For some companies, the difference was even greater. Neiman Marcus reported three times more conversions from carousel ads than from other advertising methods, while MVMT Watches saw its click-through rate increase by 75%.

Yes, they take a little more time to put together, but they’re well worth the extra effort. Here are some ideas on how you can use them.

#1. Highlighting a Single Product

A single, static image does the job when it comes to showing off a single product, but there are obvious limitations. Only one use, view or benefit can be properly conveyed; with a carousel, you can highlight up to five.

Ford used a carousel ad to show off their newest Mustang model in locations all around the world, celebrating its global rollout and showing the car off in a variety of color options.

Bosch also used the format, albeit in a minimalist fashion, when promoting their new laser level. The carousel first demonstrates the product “in action” before showing the customer the all-important details–what’s contained inside the box.

On top of the immediately obvious benefit of giving a clearer and more complete view of your product, analyzing which images generate the most clicks will give you key information about which features your customers value the most.

#2. Feature Multiple Products

Carousel ads allow you to show off up to five different products in one go–almost.

Image: Canva

The nature of the format means the first and second images you show will catch the most eyeballs. Any casual Facebook user scrolling through their feed will see the full first image and part of the second, but only a fully engaged viewer, one who chooses to swipe or click to view the rest of the carousel, will see the rest.

For this reason, the “opening” image should always be the one you feel will have the greatest appeal–or the one you most want people to see.

The viewer will only see part of the second image, but that should be enough to get an idea of what it is.

Making this one quite different to the first may be a good idea. A potential customer unimpressed with the first picture may have their interest piqued by the second–then go on to check out the rest of the slides as well.

#3. Direct Customers to Different Parts of Your Website

If your website is divided into sections, each with a specific target audience, a very useful feature of carousel ads can be used to promote each one–and take customers straight to where they want to go.

Each image can be configured to point to a different location; for example, menswear, womenswear, and childrenswear. Leading British sports equipment retailer Sports Direct regularly uses carousels to highlight special offers in multiple departments, such as in this example of its cricket promotion.

This sort of layout is not only useful to the customer, it also gives the business the opportunity to promote more than one sale in a single post – and encourages the viewer to engage, click or tap through in the hope of finding an offer that is of interest to them.

#4. Create How-To Guides

How-to guides can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Customers who feel confident they can get the most out of a product will be more likely to consider it a worthwhile purchase – and they’ll appreciate the company that showed them how it’s done.

Home improvement chains such as Home Depot put a lot of time and energy into demonstrations and guides for this very reason. For example, Home Depot could take this How to Build a Hexagon Planter article and create a carousel ad using the same images.

The carousel format lends itself beautifully to how-to-style postings, allowing you to guide your customer, step-by-step, through various stages of using or getting the best out of one of your products.

#5. Share Panoramic Views

If you’re advertising a location or venue, the carousel ad format can be used to create an immersive, clear view of what a potential customer would see should they visit.

This not only allows you to really show off what you have to offer–it will encourage the viewer to actively engage with your ad, sliding or clicking right to reveal the whole image.

An obvious sector which could benefit here is tourism–a beach, beautiful natural scenes or views from a particular vantage point could all be conveyed far more effectively through a multi-frame panorama than through a normal, single-frame photograph.

But real estate, restaurants, hotels, retail and automotive organizations could also make smart use of this feature. Don’t you want to see more of this breathtaking example from Travelzoo?

Facebook has a handy guide if you’re unsure how to do it.

#6. Appeal to the Emotional and Rational Sides of Your Customers

Though we all like to think the calm, rational side of our mind is in control when we make decisions about purchases, this is not always the case.

Emotion is often the biggest driving force behind consumer behavior–evoking the right emotional response through advertising can be more important than giving the right information.

But giving information and appealing to emotion is far better than doing one or the other, and carousel ads could have been designed for this sort of advertising.

The London Eye’s Valentine’s Day advertisement is a fine example.

Most of the images aim to strike an emotional chord with the viewer with close-up, intimate pictures of smiling, happy, and content couples. These tug at the heartstrings, showing the viewer the sort of experience they could be having if they took up the deal on offer.

But for the more rationally minded, a simple, unspoiled picture of the London skyline is included as a reminder of the real reason someone would choose a giant Ferris wheel over a restaurant or bar. Learn more about the psychological social sharing and audience personas in our blog, “The Psychology Behind Social Sharing.”

What Will Your Facebook Carousel Ads Feature?

Carousel ads are a primarily visual form of advertising; the viewer’s eye will be drawn first to the imagery, which is why that will always be the most important part of your ad.

But the difference between a click and a pass could be in the detail–so the few words you write to accompany each image are important too. Keep your copy clean, clear and informative, and ensure every word complements its image.

The post 6 Ways to Rock Facebook Carousel Ads appeared first on Rival IQ.

In only a few short years, social media marketing has completely disrupted the marketing industry. Everything has changed about the way we market – from how we address customers to how we view our competitors.

I’ll confess: when a co-worker insisted I join Twitter in 2008, I thought it was a useless waste of time. How could anyone share meaningful communication in 140 (now 280 for some) characters? That reluctance didn’t last long at all.

8 Reasons to Seize the Power of Social Media Marketing

It turns out, social media is not a fad or a buzzword. In 2014, a Hubspot survey found that 80% of marketers said social media marketing increased traffic to their websites, and more than half who said they’d been active on social media for three years or more said sales have increased as a result. They also indicated that social media had lowered their marketing costs.

Social Media investment increased from 2014 to 2015 per Rival IQ research

So what exactly does social media marketing offer? Here are eight reasons you should stop ignoring social media:

Reason #1: Direct Communication with Consumers

Social media makes it easy to discover your customers’ needs and interests. The communication is direct and helps foster relationship building. You can ask your customers anything, and they will respond. Customer engagement is the key to marketing success — social media makes it a whole lot easier!

Reason #2: Brand Recognition

As you gain contacts, you also gain their audiences. Social media is a great way to get your name out there, along with the tacit approval of your fans. If they are friendly with you, their friends will assume trust. It is all about fostering and expanding your brand recognition and loyalty.

Reason #3: Improved Customer Service

Zendesk found that excellent customer service was the most important factor impacting trust in a vendor and that people are quick to share customer service experiences – both good and bad.

Social media has made it easy for consumers to share their experience. If you can engage and provide a positive customer service experience with a quick turn around time, your clients will be happy and have a new level of appreciation for you.

Reason #4: Consumer Loyalty

53% of Americans who responded to a Convince and Convert study said they are more loyal to brands they follow on social media. Why? Well, it’s easy. The more you allow your customers to engage with you on a day to day basis, the more connected they feel to your brand.

53% of Americans say they are more loyal to brands they follow on social media.

Reason #5: Content Sharing

While syndicating your content may be out of your price range, getting your followers to help spread the word will cost you only a thank you and perhaps the occasional reward for loyal brand advocates. Social media has made it easy to engage with customers and also share content with them so they can amplify it further.

Reason #6: Increased Website Traffic

84% of respondents in the Hubspot survey said they saw increased traffic with only 6 hours spent on social media per week. If spending an hour or so a day on social media sites increases traffic, isn’t it silly not to?

For those of you out there thinking, “six hours a week!? I can’t afford to spend an additional six hours a week on social media with such a small team!” I hear you. For many of us, six hours a week is too much.

Try using Buffer to schedule out your social media posts in advance. Connect the social channels you’re active on and schedule your customized posts or cross-post across the channels you want to share. As mentioned, creating 100% homegrown content is time-consuming. You can use the content inbox in Buffer to queue up RSS feeds of your choice for curated content.

Reason #7: Higher Conversion Rates

With every post or tweet, you invite people to follow your links and like your website, page, or profile. Hopefully, you’re not linking to your landing pages and asking for a conversion with every tweet, but even posting something unrelated and exciting makes strangers curious about you, your brand, your business.

Posting exciting, new, and trending content makes you more interesting and attractive — leading to higher conversion rates.

Reason #8: Higher Search Engine Rankings

While tweeting and posting may or may not directly impact your rankings, the result of social sharing jury is still out on whether Google and the other major search engines include social activity in their search ranking algorithms, but many marketing/SEO professionals consider social media an important SEO factor.

So now that you know why social media is an incredibly valuable tool, you’re probably wondering: what do I do first?

Identify What Social Channels Are Right For You

You can’t be everywhere at once and trying to would raise your marketing costs – definitely not the goal of social media. The trick is to narrow down your social media efforts to the channels where your target audience is most likely to spend time and share content. Competitive intelligence can help with that. Scope out your competitors to find out where their audience is and what kind of content elicits a response from them.

For B2B companies, Twitter and LinkedIn are the most critical social media channels.

You’ll also find clues in your CRM (customer relationship management). If you have a great CRM software, entering customer emails will pull links to their social media profiles into their records. You can search for each social channel, find two or three where you have the most customers, and concentrate on those channels.

Also, check out Rival IQ’s research on Social Media Trends 2017.

Social media is your brand’s voice

Compared to more traditional marketing, social media marketing is cheap and easy. You don’t need to hire a film crew and actors or a photographer and models. It’s casual, spontaneous, and takes place anytime, in real time. However, it’s a good idea to have a strategy mapped out, content based on research planned, and some stunning graphics on hand to spice up everything from your tweets to your white papers.

Social media is your brand’s voice, and it deserves careful consideration. Choose your representatives carefully and give them guidelines on how to approach customers and influencers, and about how to handle complaints. If you approach social media as a business asset and apply the same planning that you’d throw at an ad campaign, social media will be your most powerful marketing tool and your cheapest.

This article was originally published on September 3, 2015, and has since been updated. 

The post Is Social Media Marketing Your Most Powerful Tool? appeared first on Rival IQ.

#1. Create and Save Your Twitter Searches

Twitter searches are what you want to show up in the RSS feed. You can set these up to catch anything you want – from mentions of key staff members, products, brand names, competitors, to industry-specific keywords and more. Plus, you can filter results by language, geographic location and even sentiment to be sure you’re only getting what you need.

With defined searches, you can actively listen for people talking about your brand or issues surrounding your brand. It makes it easier to find the people you need to reach out to and connect with to nurture relationships.

For instance, if you want to see who’s talking about your competitors:

1. Type in your competitor’s name in the Twitter search box, found at the top right of the screen.
2. In the list of results, you’ll see: top, live, accounts, videos, and more options. Click “More options” to choose between all, tweets, accounts, photos, videos, and news.
3. From here, choose between “from everyone” or “from people you follow.” Next, choose between “from everywhere” or “near you.”
4. Now, you can move on to “advanced search” to get even more refined results, if you don’t want to save the search as is.
5. Here, you can choose to search for words or phrases, hashtags, narrow the results based on language, from accounts, to accounts, and mentioning these accounts, location, date range, positive or negative mention, questions, etc.
6. After the advanced search options are filled in, you can save the search.

Repeat the search steps as needed for everything you want to track in an RSS feed.

#2. Subscribe to Twitter Lists

Return to the search bar at the top right of the main Twitter screen. Search for the topic you want to find lists for. For instance, if we want to target chefs, we’d search “chefs”.

Twitter will return everything related to chefs, from people, to news, and photos. You can choose to view all of the results, or just the top ones, but you’ll have to dig a bit deeper to get to the lists.

On the left hand sidebar, change the search parameter from “everything” to “timelines” to see the lists you’re looking for. Take a few minutes to browse them and choose the ones you want to subscribe to.

Not liking how Twitter handles the lists? Google can make it easier for you, with an advanced search of Twitter.

In your Google search bar, enter site:twitter.com “Your topic” list. Browse the lists and select the ones you want to subscribe to.

Metaverse #Coffee : Amazing ??? #Repost @yblinc ・・・#rfforma #рфформа #chefcoat #chef #instachef #chefsofinstagram #… pic.twitter.com/zhTHmOf363

— Metaverse Coffee (@MetaverseCoffee) May 25, 2016

#3. Build Your Own Twitter Lists

Build your own Twitter lists to help you segment your community and stay on top of industry trends. Lists are a wonderful way to keep an eye on other accounts without following them, which is ideal for listening to the competition.

Click the gear at the top right of your homepage. Choose “Create a List.”

Name the list and give it a short description so you know what it is – and choose whether or not you want it to be public or private. Private lists are the best way to spy on the competition.

Add people to your lists. Use the search box to find people by name or username. Once you’ve found them, click the gear icon and select “add or remove from list.”

#4. Create Widgets and Feeds

Login to your Twitter account. Go to “Settings”, and then click “Widgets.” You’ll want to create widgets for anything you want to turn into an RSS feed, but you can choose from:

• User timelines
• Favorites
• Twitter Lists
• Collections
• Search Results – use operators like “to:username” to find people tweeting to you.

Once the widget is published, write down the ID – found in the widget URL. Use this Google Script, which will copy to your Google Drive when you click the link. Open it and select “Run” and then “Twitter_RSS” to authorize it. The authorization is only required for the first run.

From inside the Google Script Editor, go to “Publish” then “Deploy as Web App” and then “Save as New Version.” Your permissions must be set to “Anyone, Including Anonymous” to allow app access. Click “Deploy.”

Now you’ll have a unique URL you can add to your RSS reader. It will look something like this: https://script.google.com/macros/s/ABCD/exec.

Add ?yourTwitterwidgetID to the end of that URL, and you RSS feed is ready to go!

So – if your Twitter widget id is U564654, your RSS feed URL would be: https://script.google.com/macros/s/ABCD/exec?U564654

Add the URLs for each of your Twitter widgets to your RSS feed reader, and you’ve cut through the noise of your Twitter feed, so you can focus only on what is most pertinent to you.

Create Twitter RSS Feeds for Easier Management

It might sound like a lot of work to set up, but the targeted searches will be worth the effort. Once your RSS feed is in place, a single click will show you everything being discussed around the topics you’re interested in.

The post 4 Steps to Create Twitter RSS Feeds appeared first on Rival IQ.

However, every time large companies release new campaigns, they give away some of their marketing secrets. Just by operating on a day-to-day basis, they reveal to anyone watching how they go about attracting new customers and retaining the ones they already have.

And helpfully, many of their carefully researched techniques and approaches can easily be adapted to a smaller budget. So, let’s take a look at some marketing tips for small business from these big players.

5 Marketing Tips for Small Business from Big Players with Big Budgets

1. Help Your Customers, Like Home Depot

Home Depot, the largest home improvement chain in the USA, doesn’t just sell products to its customers.

It also publishes project ideas and tips, gardening advice and countless how-to guides and videos. In-store, it even holds regular workshops showing customers, existing and potential, how to carry out various tasks around the home.

Sign up for our #DIHWorkshop on 5/19 at 6:30pm and learn to build a wooden grill caddy! https://t.co/0eQ4IOx0Ik pic.twitter.com/MkHqSdbtJo

— The Home Depot (@HomeDepot) May 14, 2016

This isn’t just the company showing some altruism and doing something nice. Customers appreciate the company going out of its way to help them, creating a closer bond and greater brand loyalty. Furthermore, in Home Depot’s case, a customer who knows what he is doing is more likely to attempt larger projects – and where are they going to buy the material from?

A company that helps them, or a competitor that doesn’t?

You’re an expert in your field, so think about how you can offer the same sort of service to your own customers.

This could be in the form of articles on your blog, videos on YouTube, helpful tweets, replies to Facebook comments or just good old-fashioned face-to-face service.

And because you’re relying on yourself, not a vast army of customer service employees, you might even be able to do this better than your larger rivals.

2. Target Your Advertising, Like Rolex

You’ll never see prominent Rolex branding on the jersey of an NFL team, nor will you spot the famous crown on the shirt of an English Premier League side. Football and soccer may well be two of the world’s most popular sports, but their appeal is to the mass-market – and Rolex is not a mass-market brand.

The appeal of Rolex is to a relatively small slice of the population – the wealthy, those with a sufficiently large disposable income to consider buying a very expensive watch. With this in mind, Rolex targets its sponsorship at sports that are more likely to be of interest to an affluent audience.

The watchmaker invests heavily in its links with golf, sponsoring more tournaments around the globe than any other company. Rolex also has a heavy presence in tennis, equestrianism and sailing, and spends a reported $21 million per year to be associated with the glamorous, exclusive world of Formula One motor racing.

The Rolex marketing budget it not spent on reaching the most eyeballs; it’s spent on reaching the right eyeballs.

A more generalized campaign is easier and the “views” count might look good, but chances are you’ll be paying out most of your budget to reach people who either can’t buy your product or who have no interest in it.

A targeted campaign may take more time to plan, and it’ll probably pull in fewer total views, but you’ll be catching the eye of the people who actually matter to your business – and you won’t be wasting money on the people who don’t.

So do what Rolex has done – identify your core market, and find the best ways to put your brand in front of them.

3. Maintain a Strong Social Media Presence, Like Comcast and Starbucks

The main Twitter account of Comcast has tweeted around 10,000 times. That sounds like a lot, and by most measures it is, but the company uses a separate handle to provide support and assistance to its customers – and that account, ComcastCares, has sent over 410,000 tweets.

Customers who get in contact to report an issue get a personal response from one of the social media team members monitoring the account. Most are invited to send a direct message so issues can be discussed in more detail and the problem resolved as quickly as possible.

And big companies don’t just use social media to deal with complaints. Starbucks, for example, engages all kinds of customers, giving individual responses to comments, questions and compliments.

@_amandaobregon So cute! What did you suggest?

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) May 17, 2016

The sort of engagement practiced by Comcast and Starbucks is not just customer service – it’s also a form of marketing. Customers are more likely to develop positive feelings about a business, and recommend that business to their friends, if they feel engaged and valued.

You won’t receive as many complaints as Comcast, nor will you have as many people getting in touch with you as Starbucks. But you can still follow their lead and ensure you speak to the people who are speaking to you.

Remember, marketing isn’t just about attracting new customers – it’s about keeping the ones you already have.

4. Explore Why People Would Choose Your Product, Like Dyson

The Dyson company, producer of vacuum cleaners, hand driers and fans, didn’t even exist in 1992. Twenty-five years later it’s a global giant in its field, holding substantial shares of key markets including the USA, Europe, China and Japan. If you don’t own a Dyson product, someone you know almost certainly does.

Dyson’s meteoric rise happened because consumers bought into what the company’s marketing told them – that even something as dull as a vacuum cleaner could contain interesting, cutting-edge technology that made a difference to the way it performed.

That is, after all, why people today choose to buy a Dyson. They believe the innovations contained within the distinctive machines make them more effective – therefore making a tedious chore a little less tiresome.

This UK Dyson ad, featuring company founder James Dyson, pushes home the scientific message with a laboratory backdrop, short, snappy facts and statements backed up by research.

What are the key factors in their decision? Cost, style, ease of use, technology, something else?

Telling consumers that they should buy your product might work on occasion, but you’re more likely to make a sale if you can also tell them why they should buy it.

5. Consider a Furry Friend, Like Budweiser

There’s a popular saying: “Never work with animals or children.”

It’s often attributed to W.C. Fields, but advertising agencies clearly don’t hold the comedian in too high regard. That’s a good thing, because consumers love to watch and share anything that’s fluffy, cute, emotional or amusing – and animals can cover all those bases.

Budweiser’s famed Clydesdale horses have been around for decades, starring in all manner of campaigns for Anheuser-Busch. The horses have many talents; they can tug at the heart-strings, like in the Brotherhood commercial – the most-shared of all the 2013 Super Bowl ads.

The animals in these two examples, and many more, make them into something we want to watch – and that some of us will even share with our friends.

Small businesses could never afford to produce slick, professional videos like Budweiser – but they can still harness the power of cute in their advertising.

The animal doesn’t even need to interact with your product; it could be nothing more than a funny video of a cat, with a related message – tailored to what the cat does – from your company tacked onto the beginning and end. Remember when Ikea filled its store with cats? It was big budget, but yours doesn’t have to be.

If that isn’t an option, could a furry friend help your more basic forms of promotion?

Even a static ad for your brand might be enhanced, and made more attractive to a consumer, if it includes a grumpy cat, a grinning dog or a happy fish. Check out these examples from Microsoft and furniture store DFS.

A cute animal makes all the difference to those ads, and it could for yours too.

Some of these tips might work for you, some of them won’t. But many of them can and will work for any kind of business – no matter how small your budget may be.

The post 5 Marketing Tips for Small Business appeared first on Rival IQ.

Hashtag Basics

Let’s start with the basics, just for clarity’s sake. Hashtags are keywords prefaced by a # — for example, #marketing. On social media sites, they are live links, and clicking on them takes you to a feed of all people using the same hashtag. It’s a natural connection to your core audience.

Hashtags are used on nearly every social media network with the notable exception of LinkedIn. In fact, if you want to learn more about hashtag best practices for individual networks, check out our channel best practices for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Adding a hashtag will help make your content discoverable and extend your audience by connecting with people of like interests. If you make up your own, bear in mind that hashtags can have numbers, but can’t have spaces or special characters.

With Rival IQ, you can take your hashtag game to the next level by easily identifying which hashtags perform the best in your competitive landscape using our Social Posts feature.

6 Ways to Optimize Hashtags for Business

1. Choose your hashtag(s) wisely.

Think outside the box to find clever ways to associate your product or service with something people naturally love to talk about. LG makes appliances, and their feed includes, for example, tweets with #recipes:

Brighten up your dinner table with a grapefruit, kale, and avocado salad. #Recipe #WednesdayWisdomhttps://t.co/qXcSxQTqqn

— LG Electronics (@LGUS) April 13, 2016

Had they chosen #stove, the resulting audience would be far less targeted…even though it seems like a natural choice.

2. Keep it short.

If your focus is B2B, you might choose #SMB or a combo pack – #SMB #Marketing to broaden your audience. Limit your hashtags, though, or you won’t have room left to be interesting. Long hashtags are very specific and not used much, so users are not searching for them.

3. Live blog/tweet events.

Industry events usually have lively hashtags, and joining in helps you connect with industry leaders and interested onlookers. Check out #SMMW16 to see how social media pros keep it lively and fun.

Kicking off day 2 of #SMMW16 ? Let’s do this ?? pic.twitter.com/Q8EZ7Zsubt

— Heather Gjerde (@LilMsSociable) April 19, 2016

My Facebook feed was full of selfies with Gary Vaynerchuk.

4. Create an event of your own.

An event doesn’t have to be a convention. It can be a contest or giveaway, an invitation to tour your business or have lunch. Anything that will appeal to your core customers. Popular hashtags include #contest, #giveaway, #freebie, and #swag.

5. Join a chat.

Industry chats are a great way to meet new people, including influencers. Even if you join a chat hosted by a competitor, you can connect with new friends. Chats are not the place for a sales pitch or self-promotion, so you won’t likely offend anyone. If you can’t find an industry chat, start one, and invite industry experts to share their wisdom.

6. Automate.

IFFT has a lot of options for hashtag actions. Automatically add hashtag users to a list, cross-post hashtagged messages to other social channels, follow other users on snapchat, and more.

3 Ways Not to Optimize Hashtags

In addition to what you should do, there are a few things you should avoid like the plague.

1. Never insert a promo into a tragedy.

Every time something horrible happens, idiots will flock to try and hijack the thread. As I am writing this, #Wheniwas is trending. Women are invited to tweet their stories of sexism, sexual harassment and abuse. Here’s the description of the hashtag topic:

“Documenting experiences of sexism,harassment and assault to show how bad the problem is &create solidarity. We may add tweets with our @ or # in to the project.
worldwide everydaysexism.com”

Given that, and the heartbreaking messages from women who were sexually abused as young as 5 or 6, this tweet from a website that sells workout clothing is in spectacularly bad taste.

Churro and Serro got a little messy today. Video coming soon!!! #challenge #WhenIWas #FitnessTuesday pic.twitter.com/0zY0Srsy4m

— Barbell Brigade (@BarbellBrigade) April 19, 2016

This one went fairly unnoticed, but a few brands have really damaged their reputations with hashtag hijacks during crisis moments.

2. Don’t go overboard.

You have only 140 characters to share your message. #marketing #smallbiz #B2B #WednesdayWisdom #companyname #SMB #businessadvice….it’s just annoying.

How to rock your first 100 days as a #digital #marketing #leader. https://t.co/OZwlEIhBgA #Gartner #GartnerDMC pic.twitter.com/MT6WHgWKog

— Gartner (@Gartner_inc) April 19, 2016

3. Avoid used keywords.

Keywords already associated with other companies, tv shows, movies, or celebrities won’t yield the results you expect. If your B2B company name is Treanor, Walters & Dawson manufacturing, #TWD is not likely to connect you to your ideal customers.

And Now! A Moment on the Importance of Etiquette with @SoManyArrows! ~ HQ #TWD pic.twitter.com/jiTZvR2vb1

— Blackberry Patch RP (@Tingling_Lemons) April 19, 2016

Using the right hashtags in the right way can help you connect with a much larger following and grow your business.

The post Optimize Hashtags Using These 6 Tips appeared first on Rival IQ.

Guess what? Most businesses can find a way to use it. It’s not only another way to reach customers, it’s a way to deliver real value to all your social media accounts. What can you do on YouTube? To answer, let’s take a look at big and small companies in different industries using YouTube marketing in creative ways.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #1: GE

GE is a pioneer in social media. They consistently adopt new social media channels, connect directly with their customers by requesting and showcasing user-generated content, and post videos and graphics about every aspect of their business.

GE’s YouTube channel offers transparency, information, and experimentation. You can watch their commercials, see interviews with visionaries, scientists, and engineers, learn about future and current technology, and be generally amazed by everything they do.

GE’s audience includes customers, young people considering a career in engineering or science, and literally everyone interested in science, medicine, and technology.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #2: Eric The Car Guy

You might not have the deep pockets and professional video capabilities of GE, so meet Eric the Car Guy. He’s a mechanic with a website where you can order parts and find DIY help. His channel includes how-to videos for all kinds of automotive repairs, Q&A sessions, and general advice, like “Getting your car ready for a road trip.”

This video has 3.5 million views, so it’s clear he knows how to answer questions people want to know. There’s no fancy video effects, just a personable guy showing fans exactly how to do something.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #3: Photorec Tony

How-to videos work for many industries. Photorec Tony offers tips, equipment reviews, and other interesting content about photography. In this video, which has more than 118k views, he explains the difference between two different cameras.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #4: Cupcake Jemma

Cupcake Jemma is the YouTube home of Crumbs and Doilies, a London bakery, features how-to cake baking and other goodies, along with helpful equipment videos, decorating tips, and behind-the-scenes peeks at the bakery. This rainbow cake has nearly 2 million views!

YouTube Marketing Case Study #5: Keller Williams

Keller Williams Realty, Inc. is one of the largest real estate companies in the U.S. and THE largest international real estate company in the world. The Keller Williams YouTube channel is devoted, not to selling houses, but to attracting talent to staff its 700 offices.

Here, you can watch interviews with top executives and agents, learn more about the company, see the monthly financials, and get success tips from the pros.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #6: Caterpillar

A familiar B2B name in heavy equipment, Caterpillar decided to showcase its products in a very unusual – and memorable way. On the Caterpillar YouTube channel, you can see a big-scale Jenga game, watch a gigantic sand castle construction, see the tug of war competition below…or get safety tips and other useful information.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #7: AWeber Email Marketing

AWeber offers email marketing software tools to help businesses run and analyze email marketing campaigns. The AWeber YouTube channel offers helpful videos with how-to, strategy, tips, case studies, and industry news.

How You Can use YouTube to Market to your Customers

No matter what product or service you’re marketing, your customers are searching for information. Use videos to provide company information, product information, industry information, how-to instructions, reviews, and put a face on your company.

Just take a look at this adorable Christmas card by Wholesale Warranties.

Marketing just doesn’t get more endearing than that.

The post 7 YouTube Marketing Case Studies appeared first on Rival IQ.

5 Tips to Increase Your PPC ROI

#1. Use Emotional Triggers

Emotionally driven copy converts. Studies show emotional ads are nearly 2x more effective than rational ads. Which emotions do you want to trigger? Happiness, for the most part. Typically, the more positive an article, the more likely it is to be shared. However, people are also likely to share when negative emotions stir them to action, despite preferring good news to bad. People are not likely to share content that leaves them sad. While this applies to things like articles and memes on the Internet, you can still use these emotional triggers to inspire action on your ads, as well.

Generally, shorter, basic words appeal to our emotions. So, instead of, “concern” use “worry.” Instead of “immediately” use “right now.” Instead of “difficult” use “hard” or “tough” and so on. Instead of “receive” use “get.”

Your space is limited with AdWords, so it’s important to get your message across with the shortest possible words. You only have 25 characters in your headline, 70 characters in the ad text, and 35 characters for your display URL.

#2. Choose Keywords Carefully

If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, you won’t get conversions. Keywords fall into one of three buckets: informational, navigational, and transactional. Go after the transactional keywords with high commercial intent. People who use these keywords are ready to buy, which is part of the battle. Catch them when they’re ready to buy, and you’re much more likely to convert.

Take time to audit your account regularly for keywords that are in the way of a good campaign. Ditch the keywords that aren’t performing well, even after you’ve adjusted your copy. Ditch plurals and misspellings. Regularly cleaning your keywords will make it easier for you to focus on the keywords that are converting.

#3. Use the Right Ad Formats

If you’re in the ecommerce space, consider using shopping ads. CTRs for shopping ads on computers, smartphones, and tablets, are between 2 and 3%, but search ads are on the decline, at least on computers. As more people turn to shopping with mobile devices, the prevalence of shopping ads continues to increase.

According to AdGooroo, the top paid search advertisers, on average, spent over half of their budget (63%) on product listing ads (PLA) and the remaining budget on traditional text ads. Walmart.com spent 71%, BestBuy spent 79%, and eBay spent 93%. The PLAs had an average CTR of 5.96%, while the text ad average CTR was 4.91%.

#4. Test, Test, and Test Again

Split-test your PPC ad copy by running multiple versions of the same ad to see which gets the highest CTR. Then, choose to continue running the ad with the highest CTR, or continue testing with other variations to see if you can push the CTR even higher. Split test your:

• Headline
• Call to action (CTA)
• Display URL

If you’ve sparked their interest enough to get them to click the ad, that’s only half the battle. You need a stellar landing page, optimized for conversion rate as well. Just as you ran multiple versions of the same PPC ad to see what worked best for your audience, split test your landing page. Run various tests where you change one element at a time, to keep clear, concise, data. Consider split-testing:

• Layout
• Copy and CTA
• Color scheme and button color
• Offer
• Graphic/photography

Another way to gain insight into what people are doing on your website is to use a heat mapping tool. Heat maps let you see where users are spending the most time, and doing the most clicking. If you have an optimized page, then you should see a lot of activity around your buttons. If you notice lots of activity in one part of the screen, but it’s not the activity you want, consider changing your layout.

#5. Invest in Remarketing

Remarketing is a valuable tool because it allows you to reconnect with people who visit your website without converting. An average of 68% of customers who place items in their cart will abandon it, and retargeting can help bring them back. The Google Display Network has remarketing tools, as do Facebook and Twitter.

Decide which visitors you want to retarget. For instance, you can retarget based on product page(s) they visit, retarget based on reaching a certain page in your checkout process, or based on the fact they haven’t visited a certain page. Retargeting abandoned shopping carts helps improve conversions simply because sometimes people simply forget to go back and finish the checkout.

Now, Bring it All Together for Better PPC ROI

The stronger your keywords are, the easier it is to write the targeted, emotional copy that compels people to click on your ads. Following those tactics makes it easier to write the content you need to keep their attention once they’re on your landing page. How can you optimize your landing page?

Write a compelling headline. Keep it relevant to the PPC keywords. Keep landing page copy clear and concise, and targeted to the PPC audience. If you’re running multiple PPC campaigns with different audiences, send them to different landing pages that have each been designed with CRO in mind. Keep the design clean and uncluttered. It builds trust, and helps draw attention to your CTA.

While you may not see your conversion rates skyrocket overnight, applying these tactics to your PPC campaigns will make a difference. If you’re noticing a higher CTR, but still not getting an conversion rate increase, analyze your landing page and your offer. Be diligent and continue testing until you find your “secret sauce.”

The post 5 Sure-fire Ways to Increase Your PPC ROI appeared first on Rival IQ.

Conversion rates are a major factor in the success of an online business. Without a decent conversion rate, you cannot expect to produce sales in volume. Making even small adjustments in design and strategy can lead to big increases in conversion. Here are some tips on how you can increase conversion rate!

#1. Conduct a Usability Analysis

If your website design isn’t user-friendly, you’ll have a harder time converting website visitors into paying customers. Check your analytics platforms to learn more about where users are clicking, and the “flow” of pages from the start of the visit to the end.

Here are some tips to help you improve your UX to increase conversion rate:

• Use heatmaps to see where on the page your users are most active. If you discover your users aren’t following the path you intend, it may be time to make changes to the design.
• Invest in usability testing to get an inside look at how users are responding to your website. Various online tools allow you to choose people based on demographics, and watch their experience as they visit your website. Use the results of the usability testing to make adjustments to your design.
• Place the most valuable content above the fold. Users aren’t likely to take the time to scroll to find what they are looking for, but when they do, they’ll scroll all the way to the bottom where the scrolling stops. Place calls to action here.
• Make sure your design has plenty of whitespace. Though some may consider it “wasted space”, it is necessary to keep pages from being too cluttered. Whitespace breaks up the content and other elements on a page to make it easier to read. When used properly, it can help draw the eye to the important parts of the page, to guide the reader’s attention to the right places.
• Provide chunks of information, with big, bold, and easily discernible headlines. This makes the text easier to scan – which research shows people do more frequently on the web. Rarely do people read web pages word for word, instead only picking out certain words and sentences.

#2. Split Test

Even if you follow the principles of good web design to the letter, it’s a good idea to split test your design and content. Minor content and design changes, such as background color, can have an influence on conversion rates. Split testing allows you to serve multiple versions of your website to your audience, and see which one gets the best response.

Run multiple split tests to determine which gets the best response from your audience. Split test one element at a time to avoid potentially skewing results. Run one split test for color, one for placement of elements on the page, one for copy, etc. Then, combine the elements with positive response and watch what happens. You can also split test various offers to see which one customers are more likely to respond to.

#3. Nurture Relationships and Focus on Customer Service

Nurture relationships with customers, both new and old. Since it costs an average of six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer, it’s important to build relationships with everyone. You want to convert that new customer to a repeat customer, and eventually, convert that repeat customer to a loyal customer, and to a brand ambassador. Do this with a customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The right CRM platform for your business depends on your business goals, but CRM allows your sales and marketing teams to work in harmony. It gives you a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in your business as a whole, while letting you zero in on a particular customer to see where they are in the sales funnel. Check out these two customer scenarios: 

Paul just signed up to join your email list and get your free report. At the bottom of your first email, invite him to reply to the email with any questions or concerns about the product or service you’re offering. You’ll open the door to conversation, and if Paul’s not ready to buy right now, you can continue to nurture the relationship so that he comes to you right away when he is.

Let’s look at long time customer, Sally, who has suddenly stopped doing business with you. Looking at her record in your CRM, you see she’s spent hundreds of dollars with your company over the last six months, but abandoned her last shopping cart. Reach out to her with a special, limited time offer to see if she comes back to purchase. Look at her customer service records. Did she recently have a bad experience? Find out how you can to rectify it.

A quarter of Twitter and Facebook users expect a reply to their complaints via social media within an hour, and two thirds of those users expect a response within a day. 65% of respondents say they’ve stopped using a brand as a result of one poor customer service experience. Good customer service matters because 40% of customers start purchasing from the competition because they have a better reputation for customer service.

#4. Revisit Your Content Strategy

What does your content strategy look like? Is it designed with your customer in mind? Are you creating content to educate, inform, and entertain them? Revisit your sales funnel and make sure the content you create is written to and for that audience, at all stages of the funnel. Create content based on topics tied to your business goals. Promote your content to get it in front of the right audience.

Plan not only the content you’re going to write, but where you’re going to publish it, and how you will promote it. Consider using multiple types of content: blogs, infographics, slideshows, videos, and podcasts. Interactive content – quizzes, calculators, assessments, and polls – typically convert well, around 70% of the time, compared to 36% of the time for passive content. Interactive content drives 200% more conversions.

Be consistent. Publish content regularly. Create and follow a style guide so all content looks uniform, and helps people understand what you’re communicating.

#5. Invest in Retargeting

Retargeting helps capitalize on the Effective Frequency, the theory that customers have to see your advertising message multiple times before making a decision to buy. Though there’s no exact science on the number, we know messages are more effective when repeated. Retargeting works by capturing the traffic that visits your website and advertising to them when they visit other sites. For instance, when someone browses through a few product pages and leaves, or puts items in their shopping cart and abandons it, you can run a Facebook advertising campaign that will remind them to come back to your website again. Retargeting can boost ad response by up to 400%.

#6. Build Trust

A key to converting customers into loyal buyers is building trust. Trust is necessary throughout the entire buying process: before, during, and after. Only 69% of people trust branded websites, with the majority of trust (84%) coming from recommendations from people they know. Only 48% of consumers trust online ads, such as search engine, video and social media ads, and 42% trust banner ads. You can build trust to increase conversion rate by:

• Making it easy for people to learn more and contact you. Have an about page that details more about your business and experience. Have a contact us page with at the least an form and email address. If possible, also include a physical address, and phone number.
• Using social proof. Add customer testimonials or case studies to your website. 88% of people surveyed say they trust testimonials from other customers as much as they do recommendations from personal friends and family.
• Including a FAQ section. This helps address consumer doubt and push them closer to making a purchase. If they can’t find the information they’re looking for, they’ll either give up, or go somewhere else to find it. Not sure where to start? Look at past data to determine what customers are asking about most frequently and start there.
• Adding security symbols. If you’re collecting financial information right on your website, have your payment page verified by VeriSign or a similar company. Apply, meet the necessary criteria, pay a small fee, and get the symbols. Simply having this verification can go a long way in building trust because they know you’ll keep their information safe.
• Removing risk with a guarantee or free trial. When there is little or no risk to the consumer, they are more likely to buy. Create a guarantee that you can not only stand by 100%, but entices the customer. Take for instance, the Tempurpedic offer. New customers get a 90-night in-home trial, to see if they like the new bed before they commit. Since the beds are expensive, it’s natural for customers to wonder about making such a large investment. But, being able to try the product with no commitment – and a full refund minus shipping and handling fees, reduces the risk to the customer.

You Can Increase Conversion Rate, But it Won’t Skyrocket Overnight

With this blueprint and dedicated effort, you will see an increase conversion rate, which will in turn increase revenue and profit margin. Focus on improving one area before moving on to the next for the best impact.

The post 6 Ways to Increase Conversion Rate The Right Away appeared first on Rival IQ.

Data is everywhere, and there’s no way to escape it. According to the IDC, in 2011, we created 1.8 zettabytes — 1.8 trillion gigabytes — of information. That’s enough to fill 57.5 billion 32 GB iPads. The following year, we hit 2.8 zettabytes, and by 2020, we are forecasted to hit 40 zettabytes.

With all that information, it’s no wonder so many businesses are overwhelmed and don’t know what to do with all the data at their disposal. As it stands, businesses are only analyzing 12% of their data, leaving a whole lot of untapped potential.

4 Ways Marketers Can Use Big Data

Big data can be found in a number of places throughout business operations: sales history, transaction data, website analytics, and social media, to name a few. The possibilities for what can be done with big data are nearly endless. Investing in data collection and analysis can prove highly beneficial to businesses both online and off.

1. Real-time Pricing

Major retailers such as Macy’s and Kohl’s, use big data for real-time pricing. Platforms like Wiser allow businesses to adjust pricing in real-time based on a variety of factors including competitor pricing and time of day. Wiser says retailers using their platform see a 22% increase in sales revenue, a 7% increase in profit, and an 18% increase in checkout conversion rates.

2. Improve Reach

In his 2012 re-election, President Obama’s campaign manager chose to use big data and analytics to drive efforts. Using a staff of 100, half of them worked in an analytics department, 20 of them worked at various campaign headquarters locations, and 30 of them worked in the field to interpret data. With the data collected, Obama’s team worked on key metrics: encouraging voters to register, persuading undecided voters to vote for Obama, and getting votes to the polls on Election Day. They did this with a strategic online presence, social media, personal messaging, and ad buying. Data helped the campaign staff figure out where to reach the pivotal voters, and the best ways engage them.

3. Target Content and Marketing

Your business can use big data to tailor marketing campaigns to better reach new and existing customers. Take for instance, eBags, a leading online luggage retailer. Thier large catalog, featuring more than 60,000 SKUs. Since many of the brands they cary are exclusive, using a blanket approach like a sitewide discount coupon isn’t as effective as creating personalized, timely, discounts. With big data, the company was able to segment their audience and deliver the right content to the right user at the right time, resulting in higher conversion rates and an increase in the average order value (AOV), as well as improved margins for their house brand.

4. Fraud Prevention

While this isn’t directly linked to “marketing,” this is a real issue. Global credit card fraud reached $11.27 billion in 2012. Merchants incurred 37% of those losses, so it’s critical to take steps to minimize fraudulent activity. Feedzai is a platform that uses big data to do just that, whether via mobile, online, or in-store. In real-time, the platform uses a combination of machine learning and behavioral analysis to determine if there’s anything fishy about the transaction and sends an alert.

3 Tools for Big Data Analysis

To make the most of the data your business is already collecting, you’ll need tools to help you convert those numbers into actionable data points you can use to make decisions for your company. Countless tools are available on the market today, so it can be difficult to determine which ones to use.

1. Rival IQ

Rival IQ provides an insightful social media analytics tool to help mine data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and your website. Learn more about what your competitors are doing. Track mentions on Twitter to find and engage influencers in your niche. Find out who is mentioning your company and the competition, see their reach, and the content used, so you can foster relationships and adjust your SEO and SEM strategies as needed. We are huge fans, obviously  

2. Data Hero

DataHero is a business intelligence tool designed to connect multiple cloud services into a single dashboard for analysis. Import data from Google Analytics, MailChimp, HubSpot, Desk, Shopify, Dropbox, OneDrive, and several other applications to get a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in your business and how it affects your bottom line. Use the connections to generate charts — starting with the ones DataHero suggests for you — to make sense of the data each application collections.

3. Hotjar

Hotjar is a heat mapping tool that shows you where your users are clicking and how they’re scrolling on your website. For example, if conversion rates are low, you can use the heat map to determine where people are active and what they’re ignoring. Make a few changes to the layout, and watch your conversion rate to see if it increases. The scrollmap feature shows you how far users scroll down the page before abandoning it, so you can see where you need to make adjustments.

Make Your Marketing More Powerful

Big data doesn’t have to be a big headache. With the right tools at your disposal, you can cut through the clutter and get straight to insights you can use to make confident, informed, and strategic decisions about your marketing strategy. Have some favorite data-driven marketing tools? Share them with us by commenting below!

The post The Big Data Explosion: Marketing Edition appeared first on Rival IQ.

15 Content Marketing Checklist Items You Need to Know Before Publishing

Double-check Your Content Structure

1. Beef up the title. I probably spend as much time on title/concept than on writing the post. I do regular competitive content reports to be sure my content is in line with what my customers are interested in and rely on expert advice about writing great headlines.

2. Set the hook. The first paragraph on the page is the most important part of the post – and the point where you’ll lose a lot of readers. Make sure it’s compelling.

3. Draw a strong conclusion. The end of your post should be as strong as the beginning. Remember, you’re trying to get people to do something (even if it’s just come back for more). Summarize, ask questions, and invite them to comment.

4. Check for readability. I use AtomicWriter, a free plugin for Chrome. It’ll point out potential issues and make suggestions to fix them.

5. Check the optics. Web readers prefer text that’s easy to scan. Short sentences, short paragraphs, and lots of white space.

6. Let it rest. I know you want to publish it the minute it’s written (HOT OFF THE PRESSES), but don’t. Sleep on it and take a look the next day, or even a few days down the line. This will help you catch incorrect word use spell-check might miss (are you sure the future of your company is at steak?), to cut down on the hyperbole (see previous example), to better focus the writing where it might have drifted off point, and to cut down on repetition and fluff.

Don’t Forget About Your Content Strategy

7. Make sure the post aligns with your strategy. Your blogging strategy should be laid out to accomplish several goals. Most companies shoot for a pretty good mix of objectives:

• Adding to customer knowledge base / answering questions
• Allowing a glimpse inside the company so customers can get to know you better
• Announcing a new thing or event
• Reporting news and events
• Case studies

While it’s perfectly acceptable to throw in some oddball humorous posts, personal news, or cover the company softball fiasco, most of your posts should stick to the plan.

8. Check for keywords. You should have a list of keywords/phrases you hope to rank for, and each post or article should contain some of them – in context, of course.

9. Verify that your CTA is clear. What do you want readers to do? Have you made the invitation clear and easy to spot?

Top-Off Your Post With On-Page Optimization

10. Write a great meta tags. Your meta description shows up under the title on a Google search. It needs to be concise, contain keywords, and accurately describe what’s on the page. Meta tags help search engines categorize your pages and users find exactly what they’re looking for.

11. Add optimized images. Posts with images are proven to be shared and opened more often. Find an attention-grabbing image for your header, and sprinkle in a few extra graphics to break up the text. Size your graphics properly for fast loading even on mobile devices.

12. Check your links. Make sure all links in your text are working and link to credible sources. Add some internal links to your other blog posts or web pages to help increase the time visitors spend on your site.

13. Make sure you have keywords inside header tags. If you’re using section headers, use keywords. Section headers increase readability and draw the eye…so I recommend them.

Promote With a Strong Social Media Strategy

14. Prepare a few different intros for social media. You don’t want to send out the same tweet 20 times over the next few weeks, but you do want to tweet it out and share it across other social networks. Get creative. Pull quotes and stick them on a visual background. Use different points made throughout, rather than just the main focus. Ask a question or pose the subject differently.

15. Schedule your posts. You can’t be on social media all the time (don’t you have a job to do?), and luckily, you don’t have to be. There are some terrific social media scheduling tools. Pick the one that suits you best and run with it. Just be sure to monitor comments, shares, and replies.

Quality Trumps Quantity

Producing quality content is not for the faint of heart. It takes knowledge, style, and above all, dedication. It’s like a golf swing. You might connect, but if you fail to follow through, the ball’s not going where you want it to go.

Writing is only part of the equation, and what you do to make your writing stand out is what determines it’s success. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to business blogging. Write longer, and use this checklist to make sure your effort was worth it.

Did I leave anything out of my content marketing checklist? What do you do to polish your blog posts before publishing?

The post Your Complete Content Marketing Checklist appeared first on Rival IQ.

Social media is an important part of your digital marketing strategy.

With marketing becoming more data-driven than ever before, it is important to identify social media analytics tools to help you measure key metrics of success.

Regardless of how wonderful and persuasive your copy might be, analytics help you identify what is working, what you can improve, and what you can try.

The life of a social media strategist can be stressful. Making social media efforts effective takes a well-balanced combination of appeal, placement, personality, and customer knowledge. In short, you have to post the right stuff in the right place at the right time.

Here’s a list of social media analytics tools to help you analyze and improve your social performance.

10 Social Media Analytics Tools

1. Followerwonk

Dig into fascinating Twitter follower details using Followerwonk, a Moz tool. Find out where your followers are from, how much influence they have, when they are most active, how long they have been on twitter and much more.

With information presented in interactive graphs and charts, you can compare your account to your competitors, connect with influencers and active users and learn what type of industry-related content is most often shared.

Cost: Basic services are free. To get the full benefits along with other useful tools, you’ll need a Moz Pro account, which starts at $99 per month.

2. Sprout Social

More than just a social media management software, Sprout Social creates detailed reports across multiple Twitter and Facebook profiles, allowing you to keep track of all your accounts. Easy to use reports offer a wealth of information with minimum fuss.

In addition to tracking expected metrics including posts and engagement, Sprout Social lets you generate an engagement rate report to see your team’s response time, analyze workflow, and follow trends. Reports and information is concise and beautifully presented for quick understanding.

Cost: Packages start at $59 per month.

3. Google Analytics

The go-to resource for analytics, Google Analytics includes social media metrics to help you determine the conversion value of your social channels.

While it can be difficult to initially understand the different terms, interactions, and how to set up custom reports based on your goals, the depth of knowledge is highly valuable. It is definitely a lot more hands-on than some of the other options.

Use Google Analytics to find out where your visitors come from and see social activities from all channels and on your website. We use Google Analytics in combination with our own tool to get a holistic understanding of our web and social performance.

Cost: Free.

4. SocialMention

One of the most useful free social media services out there, SocialMention provides metrics like sentiment, keywords you rank for, and your top influencers.

Taken together, these metrics provide a detailed look at who your audience is and how they respond. It’s ridiculously easy to use (just paste in your brand name), fast, and simple to understand.

Cost: Free.

5. Sendible

With Sendible, you can build custom reports and distribute them to team members on a schedule you set up. You can monitor mentions and engage with your audience across multiple platforms, track your email results and social media efforts, and measure the popularity of shared content.

Sendible is a great program if you love details, but novices may find themselves drowning in data.

Cost: Standard pricing starts with a $59 and there are a lot of pricing plans to meet different needs. They also offer custom plans, a limited $9 “Taster Plan” and a 30-day free trial.

6. Crowdbooster

If figuring out what to do with your data is intimidating, Crowdbooster might be right for you. It’s a management tool that analyzes your Twitter and Facebook impact and makes improvement recommendations.

Would you benefit from knowing when to post,  who to engage, and what your most popular content is? Crowdbooster can help with that.

Cost: Limited service plans starts at $9 and go to $119 for multi-user access. Try it free for 30 days.

7. Kissmetrics

One of the most popular suite of tools on the market, Kissmetrics tracks visits to your website – where visitors come from and what they do while onsite. It helps you narrow your marketing focus to channels and content that really work for you. We use Kissmetrics a lot at Rival IQ and are huge fans!

Kissmetrics takes you beyond the success of your campaign and into the ROI. Other features include A/B test reports, cohort reports that tell you how many people have opted in and out, and a people search to show you who visits and how they behave on your site.

Cost: Service plans starts at $200 and go to $2000 for high-volume accounts. Try it free for 30 days.

8. Social Searcher

Social Searcher is a social media search tool with a powerful suite of analytics tools. No signup is required – you can start gathering information by pasting in your brand name. It’s that simple.  The program will return side-by-side reports on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Your search will also generate detailed analytics. In the free version, you can find information about hashtags, posts by day, hour, or week, sentiment measure, links, and much more.

Premium packages offer more features: you can set up email notifications based on keywords, brand mentions, or other criteria, export data to Excel, and track KPI data.

Cost: Free for limited use, and up to 19.49 €/ Month – Sorry, pricing was not listed in U.S. currency.

9. HubSpot

HubSpot offers comprehensive reporting on your sales funnel from email and social media clickthroughs to landing pages and conversions. Track revenue from the source to figure out what marketing efforts are most effective.

HubSpot recently launched a free CRM product that integrates with its other tools. Other features include post automation, a blogging platform, and mobile app integrations.

Cost: Plans range from $200 to $2,400 per month, and you can try it free for 30 days.

10. Rival IQ

What social media metrics toolkit would be complete without Rival IQ? We’re all about analyzing your own performance while keeping an eye on the competition. You can use the information from your landscape to increase social media engagement, find your key influencers, and monitor other social media metrics.

Rival IQ features allow you to compare your results to industry competitors and figure out exactly where you need to improve. We provide actionable reports in clean, easy-to-read format, and you can export any report you see within the product as a PNG, PDF, CSV, or PPT.

Cost: Plans starts at $199 and you can try it free for 14 days.

Use Social Media Analytics Tools to Strategize

Monitoring social metrics is not an easy task, and a lot of businesses struggle with reporting. The right social media analytics tools can not only make your job easier, but give you the data you need to make more strategic digital marketing decisions.

The post 10 Social Media Analytics Tools for Marketers appeared first on Rival IQ.

The obvious choices are the big three: Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. But you might be surprised to learn that, while 71% of all adults are on Facebook and only 23% are on Twitter, B2B marketers report greater success on Twitter and Linkedin.

How do you find your audience?

Who is your ideal customer? If you have not created personas or clearly identified your target customer, you want to start there. Look at your current customers for clues as well.

Plus, do some research on your competition, because chances are, where they are spending their social bandwidth, you should, too.

Use this research and information to prioritize the top 2 or 3 social media channels. Don’t start with more than that. And if you are currently doing a mediocre job on 5 or 6 networks, step back and reset your strategy with greater focus!

Start with the Basics

Age, gender, education, location and interests play key roles in determining where you’ll find your audience. Start building your strategy with demographic and social media clues from your CRM.

• Age: If you want to build an audience of teens and young adults, your best bet might be Instagram. According to eMarketer, Instagram has 26.2 million users between the ages of 25 and 34, and 61.9% of American teens are active users. Young people also make up the core demographic of Snapchat…more than 6 in 10 users fall in the 18 – 24 age range. You’ll find few retirees on Instagram, so if your target audience is Baby Boomers, you’ll have better luck on Facebook.
• Gender: Want to reach women? 87% of Pinterest’s 47.1 million users are female…meaning only 13% are male. Facebook also leans slightly female, but by a lesser margin, only about 10%. Men prefer Twitter by an ever-widening margin. If you’re looking for moms, Pinterest is worth a try.
• Educated/professionals: Linkedin outstrips the other social media sites in user education level and white-collar professionals. Their biggest demographic group is 30 – 49 year olds, and the fastest-growing demographic is current and recent college graduates. Twitter is another top choice for the executive crowd.
• Location: Looking for an international audience? While most sites attract plenty of global business, China’s favorite social network is Tencent QQ and its associated channels.
• Special considerations: Some groups eschew popular channels for specialized sites that cater to a specific audience. If you want to target gamers, for example, you’ll find 100 million of them on Steam…and virtually no one else. Inbound.org is a huge, active community of – you guessed it – inbound marketers.

Here’s a very long list list of more than 800 social media sites and the number of users for each from DMR.

Gain competitive insights

Starting with an intimate understanding of your customers is great, but people don’t always behave in the way informed logic predicts.

Before you go all-in on a social platform, run a quick competitor analysis report.

Learn where they post, what they post, and how their audience responds. You might be surprised – or not.

If you’re in a B2C industry where you can employ powerful visuals (food, jewelry, travel…), your competition’s audience is most likely to respond on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. B2B users in the professional arena will likely be more interested in information than fantasy pictures – although eye-catching graphics increase shares for any post.

Use the experience of industry leaders and social media pioneers to help you decide what kind of content to produce. Don’t mimic, adopt. If your competitors’ customers like videos, make your own videos. If they consistently share photos, post great photos.

Before you make your move, study your competition and what they are doing.

Expand your presence and OWN it

You don’t always have to follow the rules. Quora and Google+ each attract a professional audience and you might prefer the slower pace. Tumblr is a huge, fast-paced microblogging platform where memes, gifs, and short video clips are wildly popular. Medium is filled with advice, how-tos, and articles written by experts. It’s a great platform for knowledge-sharing.

The social media channels you prioritize should be popular with your audience, but also easy for you to understand and use.

When you’ve chosen the channels that suit your customers, your preferences and your industry, then make sure you are consistent in your outreach. Post at least once a day, cross-promote content to build audience on other channels, and respond to every query, mention or comment.

The right place at the right time

Great social media presence is about being in the right place, at the right time, with the right content.

Be spontaneous, personable and unexpected – but be intentional and targeted!

Consider your social media presence and the platforms you choose as part of your goal of delivering excellent customer service, and you can’t go wrong.

The post How to Find Your Social Media Presence “Sweet Spot” appeared first on Rival IQ.