Social media is one of the most quickly evolving areas of digital marketing. So, your social media marketing team needs to keep pace with customers and competitors alike. 

From new social platforms and changing algorithms to the latest technologies and trends, marketing is unforgivingly fast-paced. It comes as no surprise that social media marketers are struggling to keep up. 

In a recent survey by The Social Club, it was found that the accelerated pace of social platforms is becoming overwhelming for social media marketers. 81% admitted that it was a struggle to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies.

Other marketers struggle to develop the wide range of must-have marketing skills needed to perform the diverse role. 

As a result, performance, knowledge, and skills gaps can grow within social media marketing teams—and they can wreak havoc. Luckily, you can combat gaps by identifying and addressing them in a variety of ways.

So, let’s discuss how you can identify and tackle gaps within your team. And in doing so, how you improve productivity, future-proof your business, and equip your team to meet social media marketing goals.

Evaluate Your Team’s Skill Sets & Experience

Before you can identify skills gaps, you need to establish the skills and experience your team currently possesses. 

So, start by conducting an in-depth evaluation of your team’s current skill sets, experience, and knowledge. This will present you with a comprehensive inventory of skills that you can align with your business goals. 

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Ultimately, it helps you determine where your team thrives and where it falls short.

But how do you go about this? 

As a best practice, consider using several different methods of evaluation to get a reliable picture of your team’s current skill set. For example, you might:

Create a Formal Test

Formal tests can be used to assess the technical and theoretical competency of your employees. For example, you can test how effectively employees are able to use a certain tool. Or, you can assess how aptly they identify a particular framework and apply it to a situation. 

While this is a popular evaluation method, there are some limitations to consider. 

Formal test conditions don’t always present a reliable picture of proficiency. Some people perform worse in test conditions due to stress and anxiety. Other people might display competency in test settings but are unable to apply this knowledge in real-life scenarios. 

So, consider using formal tests alongside the two other evaluation methods that we’re going to discuss below.

Conduct On-the-Job Observations

Observing real-world performance is one of the best ways to accurately gauge your team’s skill set. 

On the job, are your employees able to efficiently utilize technologies to meet goals? How effectively do they communicate and collaborate in fast-paced environments? Are they applying their skills, knowledge, and experience to a standard you’d expect?

In-person assessments allow you to observe your team within the everyday work environment. Compared to formal tests, they can give you a more accurate representation of employee performance. But, there’s still the risk that employees’ nerves may alter their performance, which can skew the results of your evaluation.

And of course, in-person observations simply aren’t possible if you’re a remote team. So, you might have to use another method: performance management technology.

Utilize Software to Measure & Evaluate Performance

Instead of relying on in-person observations, you can enlist the help of software to track your employees’ performance. This includes tracking whether employees meet project deadlines, reach benchmark KPIs, and are otherwise engaged in and attending to their responsibilities.

The data obtained from software can help you identify performance gaps. Performance gaps are just as critical to identify and address as skills and knowledge gaps, as they damage productivity and negatively impact your bottom line. 

In many cases, performance and skills gaps overlap in some way. 

For example, underperforming employees might lack the skills or knowledge they need to perform their roles effectively. Similarly, employees who regularly miss work might lack motivation or feel dissatisfied in their role, which can arise as a result of a skills gap. 

To combat this, an HR performance management system with an attendance tracker feature enables you to track performance and attendance in real-time. Attendance software automates the process by identifying absence patterns and quickly alerting you to potentially struggling employees. As a result, you can uncover and tackle performance gaps more efficiently and effectively, all while supporting your employees and earning their loyalty.

Establish Your Team’s Objectives

Setting realistic, unified team goals and objectives can close performance gaps that may be hurting your productivity. When team objectives are misaligned or unachievable, employees disconnect from them. This leads to disengagement and poor motivation. 

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However, when you set clear, realistic objectives and empower your team to achieve them, you can boost productivity and close performance gaps.

Establishing team objectives can also help you identify skills gaps. 

Let’s say that your team really wants to grow its followers on Pinterest. As you proceed to devise a Pinterest marketing growth strategy to meet this objective, you might discover that your team doesn’t know enough about Pinterest to execute this strategy effectively. So, you’ve identified a skills gap.

Armed with this knowledge, you can quickly target this skills gap by hiring a marketer with the relevant experience. Or you could upskill your employees—more on this later. 

Identify Areas for Skill Development

Now it’s time to dig a little deeper and identify any specific skills gaps that exist within your social marketing team. Chances are, you’ll find some—53% of companies currently have a skills gap, according to research by SHRM. 

Skills gaps can arise for a variety of reasons. Talent shortages, poor training, lack of experience, and failure to keep pace with new technologies can all result in skills gaps that put your company at a competitive disadvantage. 

With a fine-tooth comb, inspect your team’s digital marketing skills, experience, and objectives to illuminate any areas for improvement. For a social marketing team, the most pressing and common skills gaps include graphic design, videography, and photography.

Provided by The Social Club, here’s an example of what social media marketers deem to be essential skills, compared to how many marketers feel that they actually possess these skills.

Provide Continuous Training & Development 

Before you rush to fill your skills gaps by hiring new employees, consider upskilling your current employees first.

Upskilling is a learning and development strategy that involves providing continuous training to employees to help them learn new skills. There are a bunch of benefits to doing this—it’s more cost-effective, it boosts productivity, and it even increases employee satisfaction and retention. 71% of employees who took part in employer-provided upskilling opportunities say that it increased their overall job satisfaction.

That said, any old training program won’t do. Training content needs to be delivered strategically, with a focus on keeping it engaging and interactive to maximize knowledge retention. 

Here are some top tips for training your social media marketing team:

• Create visually engaging and interactive online training videos
• Utilize other interactive training methods too, like memory games, quizzes, and puzzles
• Assign employees to a mentor for 1-on-1 training and development sessions
• Create a centralized online knowledge base packed with valuable content (how-to’s, blog posts, indexes, etc)
• Offer bitesize training modules to help employees retain knowledge
• Most importantly, provide opportunities for them to exercise their new skills

Seek Feedback From Customers

Your customers are invaluable information sources. Their feedback can shed light on areas that your social media marketing team needs to improve on, driving learning and development initiatives in the right direction. 

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There are lots of different ways that you can request feedback from your customers. Follow-up emails, social media, and website surveys are just a few examples. And you can request feedback on pretty much anything you want, from the quality of your YouTube videos or Instagram photos to the consistency of your brand’s voice across your social channels. 

Just make sure to avoid common customer survey mistakes if you want to garner the best results.

If you’re still struggling to obtain customer feedback, there are different ways to tap into what your customers are thinking without asking them directly. 

Reviews left on third-party websites like Google and TrustPilot can be a source of valuable feedback. Try encouraging customers to leave reviews which you can use to accumulate useful information. For example, recurring pain points that come up in reviews may uncover hidden skills gaps or performance gaps within your team.

You can also use social listening tools to monitor what customers are saying about you online.

Review Your Team’s Workload

A heavy workload hinders productivity and is one of the leading causes of performance gaps. But it can exacerbate skills gaps, too. 

Without the means to undertake professional development, employees can quickly fall behind competitors. Remember, 81% of social media marketers struggle to stay on top of social media marketing developments. 

The same study found that 53% of social media marketers claim that it takes over an hour a week to keep on top of the latest marketing trends. 10% say that it requires over two hours of dedication a week.

Put simply—if your team has a heavy workload, keeping up just isn’t possible.

Assess your team’s workloads and, with the assistance of your employees, adjust them to free up time for learning and development. Through this process, you might also realize that you can reallocate resources to maximize skill utilization and reduce skill gaps. 

An employee who excels in paid advertising, for example, should invest more time in utilizing and refining those specific skills. Or, if various team members are tackling campaign management alongside their other duties, it might be wise to hire a dedicated social media marketing manager to unburden these responsibilities. This provides more time for learning and development while also closing a skills gap. 

Consider Hiring Additional Team Members

Sometimes, hiring new team members is absolutely essential. 

For example, it could be that your team completely lacks the necessary experience to fulfill duties in a complex area, like social media analytics. Or, it could be that your team’s workload is so heavy that it’s impossible for employees to leverage all of the necessary skills to their full capability. 

In these scenarios, look into bringing new team members on board. But be careful—a poor hiring process can result in bad hires and a host of other issues. Not only can this widen skills gaps even further, but it can seriously damage your team’s overall productivity. 

So, it’s critical that you precisely identify the skills and experience that you need a new hire to possess. From there, you can create job ads that accurately detail the responsibilities of the role, increasing your chances of attracting high-quality candidates. 
Using talent acquisition software, you can then leverage AI to automate the labor-intensive candidate sorting and screening process. Talent acquisition tools can match and score candidates according to your preset rules, dramatically reducing the time it takes to find the best candidates to interview.

Evaluate Your Team’s Culture

A team culture that is misaligned with your company’s values and objectives can contribute to performance and skills gaps. This is why it’s so important to continuously evaluate your team’s culture, nurturing positive cultural traits and weeding out any negative traits.

Performance monitoring and attendance tracking software can help you identify engagement issues and tackle their underlying cause. Gathering employee feedback via pulse surveys and eNPS surveys can highlight areas for improvement that you may have otherwise missed. And external employee review sites are also a useful way to glean honest, unfiltered insights into your team’s culture.

To effectively close performance and skills gaps within your social marketing team, work on fostering a culture that embraces knowledge-sharing, unity, collaboration, and continuous learning and development.

Key Takeaways

As the latest digital marketing trends, technologies, and platforms continue to emerge at an accelerated rate, knowledge and skills gaps are bound to crop up. It’s vital that you empower your social media marketing team to keep pace with competitors and meet marketing goals by identifying and addressing gaps.

Once you’ve identified gaps through observations and analysis, you can work on closing them the right way. The best ways to tackle gaps in your team include providing continuous training, hiring experienced employees, and adjusting your team’s workload.

The post Are Skill Gaps Holding Back Your Social Media Marketing Team’s Potential? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

In today’s overcrowded social media world, learning how to create viral short videos is a great idea.

Viral marketing videos spread fast online and get millions of likes, shares, comments, and views.

And that’s not all.

Short-form video is dubbed the most engaging type of in-feed social content by 66% of marketers.

No wonder, 33% of marketers plan to invest more in short-form video content than any other type of social media strategy in 2023.

Granted, short-form video is captivating, engaging, and boosts conversions.

However, learning how to create viral short videos that resonate well with your target audience is never an easy task.

Fret not, we’ll show you how to go about it and win big on social media.

But before that, here are a few things you need to understand.

What Makes a Video Go Viral on Social Media?

Creating viral videos on social media is the dream of every marketer—a powerful way to generate marketing leads.

Generally, videos go viral on social media when they connect with their audience, make them laugh, inform, teach, and persuade them.

Here are a few key elements of viral videos:

• They tell a story
• They aren’t promotional
• They connect with the emotions of your audience 
• They are relevant
• They make people laugh

How to Create Viral Short Videos for Social Media Step by Step

Follow these simple techniques to create short-form videos that generate more views in a shorter period.

1. Understand Your Target Viewers

Knowing your audience, including what they want (or don’t want) is vital when planning to create viral short videos for your social media marketing strategy.

In fact, understanding what resonates with them and motivates them to share your video can help to increase the number of views on your videos.

Start by creating a comprehensive avatar that represents your target audience. It’ll help you identify who your target viewers are, which social media platforms they use, what they do for fun, etc.

Here are some tips to help you:

• Create well-rounded social media personas
• Examine your social media analytics
• Use Google Analytics
• Engage with your audience to understand what video content they’d want to see 
• See the types of viral videos your competitors are creating 
• Analyze data from your customer service tool understand customer preferences and interests

Gathering all this information will help you understand what grabs your viewers’ attention and what video content they are searching for on social media.

Once you have this information, you’ll find it much easier to find viral content ideas.

2. Determine Your Video Marketing Goals

Learning how to create viral short videos for social media isn’t enough for a successful social media video marketing strategy. You also need to determine why you want your videos to go viral.

Even if your videos go viral, if you aren’t achieving anything with them, you’re wasting resources.Here are 5 goals you can accomplish with social media video marketing according to Sprout Social.

Of course, you could have different goals you want to achieve with your viral short videos including:

• Boosting brand awareness
• Increasing revenue and sales
• Sharing knowledge and educating your viewers
• Introducing the latest products
• Boosting customer service and loyalty 
• Increase your online following

Each goal will require you to create specific kinds of short videos for your audience.

Most importantly, your goals should align with your overall business goals.

3. Draft a Creative Video Content Brief

Prepare a thorough video content brief and storyboard. 

It’ll help you pin down the message you want to pass to your audience, the tone and length of your video, as well as the distribution channel. This will help you stay aligned with your goals. 

Here are important elements to include in your video content brief:

• Video title: The topic of your video. For instance, you could share event planning tips to market your event planning and management brand.
• Description: What you want to cover in the video.
• Vital items to include: Include anything specific you need to add to the video.
• Related content: List any related content you intend to include or use as reference for your videos.
• Competitors: The types of video content your competitors are creating that you want to outshine.
• Social media platforms: What channels do you plan to post your videos on—and what version is best for each channel?
• Video format: What video format do you intend to use?
• Keywords: To improve your video rankings on social media, you need to identify what keywords to target.
• Hashtags to include: They help to make your video discoverable by your audience.
• Call to action: What action do you want your audience to take after watching your videos?

4. Create a Compelling Concept

To create viral videos for social media, draft a top-notch, compelling video script to grab your viewers’ attention and ultimately achieve your goals.

You also need to brainstorm compelling content ideas to include in your script.

This will give your video a logical flow.

Remember that your video needs to cover your message in the shortest time possible.

Here are key pointers for creating viral short videos:

• Start with a hook: Grab your audience’s attention with a catchy opening. Here, you can use an interesting fact, joke, or memorable statement.
• Use effective video editing tools: Outstanding video edits are what will grab your audience’s attention. Use powerful video editing tools. Here is a post on video editing software by Attrock.
• Video additions: Include images, emojis, or other components that help to attract viewers.
• Keep the video short and to the point: According to a recent Vidyard Video in Business Benchmark Report, 62% of viewers say they will watch the whole business’ video if it’s less than 60 seconds long.

5. Tell a Story

Stories drive people to take action.

Besides, telling a story in your video is beneficial in many ways including:

• It humanizes your brand
• It makes your audience remember you
• It helps to build a community that resonates with your brand
• Stories sell better

Tell a compelling story in the shortest time possible by finding a universal context for your concept. This is a great starting point to grab attention.

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The good news is that you can come up with your stories and use AI text-to-video generators to transform them into a series of captivating short video clips.

6. Pay Attention to Popular Trends

To create viral short videos for social media marketing, you need to understand what’s trending on the platforms you intend to use.

Remember that in some platforms like TikTok, new trends come up constantly.

To make your video go viral, you need to jump on a trend the moment it comes up. This will make your audience see you as a trendsetter.

Search for trending songs, hashtags, sounds and other elements that appear at the top of your Reels feed, TikTok trends, Twitter trending topics, etc.

Be sure to put your own spin on a trend in your content to remain unique.

Pro tip: Ensure your brand’s social media page has a professional profile picture that showcases your expertise and brand identity. You can use a profile picture maker to create stunning profile photos effortlessly.

Due to the benefits of going viral on social media, every marketer wants to create viral short videos. However, this is not an easy task to accomplish.

While there is no guarantee that your videos will go viral on social media, following these tips and guidelines can increase your chances.

The post 6 Tips on How to Create Viral Short Videos for Social Media appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

If you’ve read any of the statistics about the success of Instagram marketing, you’re likely looking for ways to get started. Instagram is an incredible marketing tool that can help you establish a brand identity, grow your customer base, and increase sales.

Before you jump in, it’s essential to create an effective Instagram marketing strategy, so you can experience the results everyone’s talking about.

Why Instagram Is Such an Important Platform for Your Business

With about two billion users, Instagram is a key social media platform for growing your brand and attracting new customers. If that’s not enough to get you to focus on the visual social media outlet, consider these statistics: 

• According to their own data, 60% of people learn about products or services on Instagram. Users are open to being marketed to and have come to expect it. By marketing on Instagram, you’re putting your business in front of people who are curious about new products.
• Again according to Instagram, 90% of Instagrammers follow a business. Many users don’t mind seeing posts from businesses they’re interested in. They may even like it and follow brands they adore.
• 44% of people use Instagram to shop, according to the platform’s research. Features like shoppable posts and the ability to save payment information within the app is driving more people to shop on Instagram. You can take advantage of this by highlighting product features and offering discounts to new subscribers.
• Instagram’s advertising reach grew by almost 21% last year, compared to Facebook’s less than 7%. This amount varies by demographic, so it’s essential to understand your target audience before you map out your content strategy.
• The Instagram app is the second most downloaded app in the world, making Instagram marketing a good investment of your time and resources wherever you may be.
• Instagram beats Tiktok, Twitter, and Snapchat for number of users. If your goal is to reach the most people possible, Instagram is the way to go.

Benefits of an Instagram-Centered Marketing Strategy

A successful Instagram marketing strategy takes high investments of time and resources. So why should you center your marketing around Instagram and not another platform? 

• Boosts Brand Awareness and Trust. Instagram gives you another place to interact with your target audience. If you take full advantage of it, you can establish your brand image and build trust in the eyes of your audience.
• Reaches the Right People. Instagram’s algorithm cross-references information about the content itself (captions, hashtags, and locations) with information about user engagement to show users more of what they’re interested in. If you utilize hashtags, location tags, reels, and stories correctly, Instagram’s algorithm will help get your business in front of the right people. 
• Grows Product Sales. Instagram offers shoppable posts, product launch features, and the ability for users to save their payment information within the app. All of these features help to streamline the purchasing process and help you grow sales as a result.
• Fosters Customer Relationships. The ability to like, comment on, and share posts makes building customer relationships and a community around your product easy. These relationships help to build trust in your business and your products. 
• Drives Higher Retention Rates. Instagram’s retention rate measures the percentage of viewers who watch your stories until the last segment. Retention rates are one of the most important metrics to consider when evaluating your reach. However, it takes lots of time and resources to foster good engagement with your content, so it’s important to be consistent and do frequent content audits to see what you can improve. 

How to Create an Effective Instagram Marketing Strategy

Success in Instagram marketing means higher engagement rates, a bigger customer following, and increased sales. The following are best practices to help you see results.

Analyze Current and Past Data

Instagram Insights offers metrics that can help you evaluate the performance of your content. These include recent highlights, accounts reached, accounts engaged, and total followers. After reviewing this data, adjust your strategy as needed and release more content. It’s important to note that Instagram Insights is only available to business accounts, and you can only access it from the mobile app.

Identify Shortfalls

Take a look at underperforming content and compare it to your top-performing posts. Make adjustments as needed. Consider whether it’s to the structure of the content, the time of day released, or the type of hashtags used that you may need to alter. 

If you’re starting from scratch, look at what your competitors are doing and think about what you’d like to do differently. How will your brand stand out?

Set Realistic Goals

While it can be tempting to set lofty goals for your business, it’s better to start with small, manageable goals and build out from there. These goals should include the number of posts a week, response time for inquiries, number of likes or shares, and more. When setting your goals, think: What do you want from Instagram, and how can you best accomplish it?

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Research Successful Competitors

As with any other marketing strategy, you must know what your competitors are doing. Look at what your competitors do well and determine how to do it better or position yourself differently. Highlight what makes your brand different from your competitors and effectively communicate that to your audience.

Plan Your Posts

You obviously don’t need to know everything you’re going to post just to get started. But it’s good to have an idea of some of the content types you plan to use. When determining your content, consider:

• Content Pillars. Content pillars help make up the foundation of your content strategy. The different types include behind-the-scenes content, user-generated content, product demos, culture-focused (showing the human side of your company), and customer stories. Your content pillars contribute to your brand image, so it’s important to consider what you want it to be when planning your content.
• Generate a Style Guide. A style guide helps ensure consistency in the look of your Instagram posts and gives users an idea of what to expect. It should include composition, color palette, fonts, filters, captions, and hashtags. 
• Content Formats. Instagram offers reels, IG Live, stories, and visual-based posts as options for sharing content. Each of these has its own benefits, so consider your campaign’s goals and how you can mix the formats to accomplish them.

Utilize a Content Calendar

Consistent posting is vital to a successful Instagram marketing campaign. Content calendars can help you plan what type of content to share and when. Then you can create content for a month or more at a time and schedule it with a social scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite.

Best Practices to Follow for Your Instagram Strategy

Remember some best practices to see the best results from your Instagram marketing strategy. These gold standard approaches include:

• Define Your Audience. The more you know about your audience, the better. Once you define your audience, be sure everything you post focuses on them.
• Solve Customer Problems or Address Needs. Users are more likely to interact with your content and follow you if they believe your profile solves their needs. Make sure to consider their needs and desires as you start producing content.
• Create a Clear Brand Image. This visual style contributes to brand awareness and associations. What do you want your customers to think of when they see your content? What are things you don’t want your brand associated with?
• Prioritize Engagement. Engaging with your audience and similar brands helps drive conversations about your products. It also helps to develop trust in your business.
• Post Actively. To get the most out of Instagram, you’ll probably want to post daily. Try out various times to determine when your audience is most responsive to your posts.
• Leverage the Professional Dashboard. This dashboard is Instagram’s central destination to track performance, utilize professional tools, and explore educational information. When used to its full potential, it can help you track your performance, grow your business, and stay informed.
• Optimize Your Profile. You can optimize your profile in various ways, including incorporating a keyword into your name or username, writing a clear and concise bio, and displaying a profile pic that best represents your brand. 

Use Proven Keywords for Hashtags. Hashtags are searchable keywords that help users connect with content they’re interested in. Using them in captions on your reels, stories, and posts can help increase your visibility and grow your audience.

The post The Ultimate Guide to An Effective Instagram Marketing Strategy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Looking to create awesome social media content to boost engagement?

It’s a given that creating engaging social media content is crucial for building a strong online presence, engaging your audience, and growing leads and sales. 

But how do you get it right?

Here are some tips and examples.

9 Tips To Create Social Media Content That Boosts Engagement

Start by creating professional and compelling social media profiles. Then use these tips when creating content. 

1. Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is the key to marketing success, whether it’s in email personalization or creating tailored social media content. 

For instance, Canva creates tailored messages for each of its target groups. This is a post for nonprofits.

And here is content created for teachers.

How do you identify your social media target audience?

You can use market research, email survey campaigns, or website forms to find out your customers’ social media preferences.

Here are other ways to gain audience insights:

• Facebook: Facebook Audience Insights gives data about your audience like this.

• Instagram: Click the Insights action button to get details of your existing audience and their engagement with specific content.
• Twitter: Twitter analytics and Tweet activity page give you stats such as key demographics, languages, and interests of your audience.
• LinkedIn: Access the “Analytics” tab where you can see audience insights.

Tools such as Copper CRM also let you sync your contacts with social media accounts to build lookalike audiences and target specific groups.

This Copper CRM review gives you more details on how to use this tool to sync contacts.

2. Define Your Goals and Metrics

While boosting engagement may be the primary goal for creating social media content, you’ll need to go granular when defining your goals. And tie each goal to a specific social media metric that you can track.

Here’s a framework to help you get started:

3. Choose The Right Content Type 

The types of social media content you can experiment with include:

• Blog posts
• User-generated content 
• Live streams/webinars 
• Ebooks and whitepapers  
• Stories and reels
• Contests/giveaways
• Videos
• Infographics
• Polls and surveys

Be sure to link the type of social media content you want to write with:

Your Target Audience’s Interests

As you can see from this image, short-form videos, images, and live videos are the most engaging social media content, as per a 2022 survey.

The Type Of Content Suitable For Each Social Media Platform And Demographic

Here’s a quick summary of the type of social media content to write for each platform/demographic.

Your Niche

The type of social media content you’ll create will also depend on your industry.

For instance, a Gartner study found that educational and user-generated content works best for software marketers. 

4. Create A Mix of Social Media Content

Experiment with different types of content, such as text, images, videos, and live streams. 

Simplilearn uses different types of social media content to boost engagement. This is a post on LinkedIn that promotes its professional certificate program.

And, on YouTube, the brand has multiple informative videos.

Make sure that your content is offering something of value to your audience.

Whether it’s helpful tips, informative articles, or just entertaining videos, give people a reason to stick around and keep coming back for more.

5. Write Compelling Social Media Copy 

Write social media copy that is catchy and easy to understand. And always include a call to action that encourages people to share your post with their followers.

The more shares you get, the wider your reach. 

Are there any formulas for writing catchy copy?

I have these tips for you:

Keep it short: Here are the ideal lengths for each platform:

• Instagram: 138 to 150 characters
• Facebook: 40 characters
• LinkedIn: 220 characters
• TikTok: 300 characters

This is an example of a short and catchy caption on Instagram:

Include action words and adjectives: Experiment with action words such as earn, save, act now, and adjectives such as powerful, awe-Inspiring, brilliant, etc. See this example from TED Talks.

Use numbers: Numbered lists and guides with easy steps can help increase engagement. See how Semrush does it.

Ask questions: Humans are always drawn to questions that spark curiosity like this post.

Write the social media copy by following the Google EAT guidelines so that your social media campaign can also help in getting good results from the search results. Your social media copy should include trustworthy, authentic, and expert facts and information.

6. Use Trending Hashtags

Utilize relevant hashtags and keywords to increase the visibility of your social media content. 

For example, if you are a food blogger, you may want to use hashtags such as #foodie, #yum, and #foodporn.

You can search for trending hashtags by typing your keyword on social media platforms’ search bars. 

Platforms like Twitter also have an Advanced Search feature where you can search for specific tweets and hashtags.

You can also use the right software to generate hashtags in your industry. These software can help you to create and how to use hashtags for your social media campaigns.

7. Post At The Right Time

Timing is crucial when it comes to social media. Post your content when your audience is most active to increase your reach and engagement.

According to a recent study:

• The best days to post social media content are Tuesdays to Thursdays
• The best time to post social media content is 9 AM and 10 AM.

But, there’re individual variations between each social platform when it comes to the peak engagement time or days. 

For example, posting on Instagram between 10 AM and 1 PM on most weekdays can help you maximize your reach.

8. Use Visual Elements

High-quality visual elements, such as images and videos, can make your content more engaging.

Be creative with how you present them. 

One way to stylize your photos and images is to use photo filters. You’ll create stunning visuals in minutes.

See this eye-catching visual from Velvet Spectrum.

9. Encourage Engagement

Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions, starting a conversation, or running a contest. You can also host a giveaway as Fraser Hill Farm has done.

Be sure to show your audience that you value their opinion by responding to their comments.

You can also use lead generation software that allows you to integrate your social media platforms to manage and monitor interactions.

10. Analyze and Improve

Creating powerful social media content isn’t all about just content creation. Studying the content’s effectiveness is equally important. You need to use social media analytics tools to figure out if your social media posts are performing as expected. 

Check whether they’re generating significant engagement, driving sales, and bringing you new followers. 

In the case of blog posts, you can leverage a Google index checker and Google Analytics to check if your social media post helped speed up indexing or improved its rankings on Google.

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Wrapping Up

Remember that social media content doesn’t just have to be about your brand. In fact, some of the most successful social media campaigns focus on providing valuable information or entertainment to users. 

The goal is to get people talking about your business in a positive way!

Use analytics tools to track the performance of your content on each platform and adjust your strategy accordingly.An easy way to master your social media content strategy is by becoming a Certified Social Media expert. Learn how to apply proven strategies and boost social media engagement.

The post From Clicks to Conversions: Create Content that Boosts Engagement appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

LinkedIn is a fantastic medium for extending your reach, positioning yourself as a thought leader, and building your personal brand.

However, to get the most out of this platform this coming year, you need to understand the key pillars required to create a winning LinkedIn marketing strategy. And that’s what this article is all about– here are 5 actionable tips you can integrate into your 2023 LinkedIn marketing strategy to make it stronger and more effective.

1. Original Content Over Links

Whether it’s a completely new post or something you’re repurposing from your website, original and fresh information is how to get an engaged audience that keeps coming back.

You want to avoid simply regurgitating links and info that’s posted outside of LinkedIn. For one, most social media platforms want to keep people on their sites. And second, it shows you’re a thought leader in your industry.

If you want to get a feel of how this works, take a look at your favorite brands and personalities on the site to see the type of content they post. Heck, you can even check out my page for examples.

LinkedIn gives you all the tools you need. There are a variety of content types you can post to the platform, including blog posts and articles, video content like live sessions and interviews, case studies, and more.

2. Show Your Personality

Part of my philosophy is humanizing your marketing so you can create authentic relationships that translate to success and growth. LinkedIn was originally conceived as the “social media for professionals,” and, sure, it still is. However, that doesn’t mean you should trap yourself in a box where your content comes off bland and boring.

For your marketing strategy to be effective, it needs a relatable approach so your audience can connect with your brand on a personal level. If you have a funny bone and some wit, show it off!

Of course, you want everything to align with your marketing messaging and your personal brand voice.

3. Leverage LinkedIn Analytics

As mentioned above, LinkedIn gives you plenty of solutions so you can be creative and post content through various mediums– blogs, videos, etc.

But LinkedIn also provides you with the tools to see how that content performs through LinkedIn Analytics. It gives you invaluable data such as how much engagement a post gets, how different times affect the post’s performance, whether or not your content is getting leads, and more.

With this info, you can see how your marketing strategy is working and if it’s time to go full steam ahead or pivot and rethink your approach. And you should be constantly assessing the performance of your content and evolving your campaign so your marketing strategy is as effective as possible.

4. Figure Out Your Optimal Post Frequency

As with any social media platform, post consistency and frequency are key components for growth and success. Plus, the time of day when you post plays an important role in engagement too.

For example, brands that post regularly find that they see the most engagement from users typically during the morning or early afternoon. If you’re representing a large company, you can get away with a few posts a week. And if it’s your personal page, you can post every day if you want.

Regardless, finding the right groove will take time and testing to get right.

5. Engage With Platform

Yes, you’re busy but don’t just post your content and go on about your day. Take some time to be active on the platform. Respond to comments on your posts, participate in discussions, and share info and resources with the rest of the community. When people see you’re an active member, they’re more apt to return the favor or remember you as someone with valuable info to share.

I know these 5 tips will take your 2023 marketing game to the next level on LinkedIn! 

Thanks for reading,

Joshua B. Lee

The post 5 Tips You Can Use to Improve Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy in 2023 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

So you want to advertise, but you’re not sure which of these two mega social media platforms is “best” for your business.

Well, to be honest, no matter how much your budget is… who your audience is… or what you’re offering… 

The answer is BOTH… and IT DEPENDS.

This article will explain why as well as give you the 4 biggest differences when creating your ad on both platforms.

Now in case you didn’t know, Facebook & Instagram are owned by the same parent company, which now goes by the name Meta. 

As a marketer, this is great because it makes advertising on both platforms super easy. Meaning, if you want to run both a Facebook ad and Instagram ad, you can get your ad on both platforms with just a few extra clicks (see below)… and possibly some minor tweaks to what your ad says and looks like (more on that in a moment).

Let’s get clear on why “BOTH” is the answer…

Whether you’re new to social media advertising or you’ve been advertising for a while, it’s in your budget’s best interest to TEST any new offer or messaging on both platforms.

When you test both, every time you launch a different campaign, you will see that the results you get per platform will vary and are affected by many different factors:

• Time and day you launch
• Who your ad gets shown to first (even if you’re targeting the same audience)
• Season
• Competition
• Ad Spend

That list could go on and on. And “the algorithm” is a tricky thing that can’t exactly be mastered because of it’s unknown and uncontrollable factors.

You see, if one platform was better than the other, everyone would be using that one!

And if you’ve heard that “your audience” may be on one over the other… you need to throw that thought out the window.

According to statista.com, “Facebook has roughly 2.93 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022” and “is the most used online social network worldwide”.

Instagram, on the other hand, has roughly 1 billion monthly active users.

BUT… no matter who your audience is, your targeting options are selected in Ads Manager the same EXACT way for both platforms… using the same EXACT data.

It could be true that MORE of your audience is active on one of the platforms, but they’re definitely on both and that should not be your big deciding factor on where to put your ads… especially if you have a smaller ad budget.

What a smart marketer will do is test their ad on both Facebook and Instagram, review the results, and if one platform strongly outperforms the other, then you can move all or more of your ad spend over to that one.

In other words, using that data you collect is why the answer is also IT DEPENDS. So…

STEP 1: Test BOTH platforms

STEP 2: DEPENDING on the results, decide on continuing with one or both

But here’s where things get a little more complicated.

Facebook ads and Instagram ads have several “placement” options! You saw about half in the gif above, but there’s really about 2 dozen of them. 

EXPERT TIP: If you’re just getting started, just focus on mobile Feeds & Stories. After you start seeing results you like, then you can test other ad placements.

Now there are definitely more than this, but the biggest Key Differences to be aware of when running a Facebook ad Vs Instagram are:

Video Length

Meta is always changing the rules on how long a video ad can be per platform and placement. The company does recommend running shorter videos, under 30 seconds. HOWEVER, take that recommendation with a grain of salt. Longer videos can still do very well IF they have a good HOOK (first few seconds that draws in your viewer), and is also helpful, entertaining, or both. That being said, I recommend going shorter when possible & keeping it under 2 min so you can run your video on both platforms without any issues.

Video & Image Ad Dimensions

Again, this isn’t just a difference per platform. It depends on your ad placement. You can easily look up all the recommended aspects per placement (also shown while you’re creating your ad). But if you don’t want to bother with different dimensions for different placements, the most universal and best optimized ratio for your content is going to be either a 1:1 or 4:5 ratio with a 

resolution of at least 1080 x 1080 pixels.

Text Length

The written portion of your ad has limits on Instagram – with the maximum being 2200 characters and the “recommended” max being only 125 characters. You may hear that having shorter ad copy a.k.a. shorter text in your ads is better. On Instagram, I’d agree shorter is usually the way to go, but again… that’s not always true or necessarily often true. Don’t be afraid to hit that maximum if you’re a killer copywriter. Based on millions of dollars of data that I’ve seen, short and long text can perform equally as good, especially on Facebook. The biggest factor in how your text performs is how compelling and well-structured the writing actually is.

EXPERT TIP: Add an extra space between sentences. Use bullet points to make it look less overwhelming. Make it sound conversational (like you’re talking to a friend).

Text Location

On the Facebook News Feed, the primary text is above the button and video/image. On Instagram’s News Feed it’s below the button and image/video. And on Instagram Stories, it’s below the video but above the button. So if you’re directing someone on where to click, then make sure you navigate them appropriately by writing out “Click the button above” or “Click the ‘Learn More’ button below the video” based on your ad placement.

It is important to note that Stories and Reels are quite different from News Feed ads and can be run without any post text at all. 

If we wanted to dive into all the differences between all ad placements, this article would be at least 5x as long… and would probably just confuse the heck out of you.

So for now, I hope this helped you understand the key differences, the importance of testing your ads on different placements, and not limiting yourself to just Facebook or just Instagram ads!

The post The 4 Biggest Differences Between Facebook & Instagram Ads appeared first on DigitalMarketer.