The Art and Science of Social Media - Social Tools...

The Art and Science of Social Media

Social Selling10 Ways to Increase Sales

Livestreaming5 Steps to Becoming a Pro

Content Shock!Why Your Job Keeps

Getting Harder

2 Million Employee Advocates?

Walmart’s Best Practices

Trends & Analysis 20 How the Social Tools Summit Hashtag #SocialTools16 Trended Worldwide on Twitter- Again! by Neal Schaffer

Genius Q&A 8 Content Marketing in a Social World: Interview with Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande by Andrea Nelson 16 Past, Present, and Future: Where is the Social Media Industry Headed? Q&A with Likeable’s Dave Kerpen by Brian Mahony

Executive Insights 3 The Art and Science of Social Media Programs by Brian Mahony 4 The Art and Science of Measuring Social ROI by Todd Grossman 6 Best Practices for Building an Engaged Audience via Employee Advocacy by Shane McLaughlin 15 The Diminishing Power of the Social Media Marketer… and What to Do About It by Christopher S. Penn

Tips & Tricks 5 Headed to an event? Set Yourself up for Social Media Success by Vivian Luu 10 5 Steps to Becoming a Livestreaming Pro by Chad Abbott 12 Are You Making These 6 Common Social Media Mistakes? by Martin Jones 14 5 Steps to Building a Social Media Methodology for Your Business by Beth Blecherman 18 4 Influencer Marketing Best Practices to Expand Your Brand by Adam Hendle 22 10 Ways to Increase Sales with Social Selling by John Foley, Jr.

Inside this Issue

Social Tools & Best Practices

&Q A

Brian MahonyCEO Trender Research

Co-Founder Social Tools Summit Editor-in-Chief

neal SchafferCEO Maximize Your Social

Co-Founder Social Tools SummitManaging Editor

andrea nelSonOperations Manager Contributing Editor

nichole JanowSkyPublications and Research Manager

andrea chaMBerSBusiness Development Manager

[email protected]/magazine

Twitter: @socialtoolssmmt#SocialTools16

Linkedin: “Social Tools” group


Staff

Social Tools & Best Practices MagazineVolume 1, Issue 2 - Fall 2016

Published by: Trender Research Inc., 24 Village View Road, Westford, MA 01886 • [email protected]

Copyright 2016 by Trender Research, Inc.The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole

or in part without the expressed written consent of Trender Research, Inc.

Subscriptions: www.SocialToolsSummit.com/magazineYearly printed/mailed subscription in the U.S.: $39.95

Advertising: [email protected]

Disclaimer: Some article submitters may be charged an editing fee to ensure the content is well written and not

overly promotional.

Printed in the USA


3Fall 2016

Some of my first social media cam-paigns were complete failures.

Early in my career I remember when everything with social media was so new, so cool. Everyone was trying to get their program to be viral. It all just seemed so easy. Create a catchy campaign with lots of buzz and throw the spaghetti against the wall – there was a good chance that some of it would stick. Back then social media still included a healthy dose of tra-ditional media, including press releases and comments on articles that you might generate, and coverage you might get from television and newspapers. And there were these cool new social net-works called LinkedIn and Facebook to take advantage of. It seems that if you were clever and creative, should I say even a bit “artsy”, your campaign would succeed. The public and tradi-tional media we’re hungry for interesting stories and new ways of looking at the world and business. The world of social media was shiny and new and I was in on the ground floor being one of the first to join LinkedIn and Facebook. In particular, I remember two cam-paigns that failed miserably. The first was a campaign where we tied social media marketing into the flash mob phe-nomena that was raging at the time. I remember hiring dancers and a DJ and putting together a flash mob at Boston’s government center to promote my com-pany’s new Internet TV device. We did a press release, posted to all the social networks, called the local TV stations, and submitted articles and comments to all the media that might possibly cover such an event. Net result – no one cared, no media covered, and ultimately we ended up looking absolutely ridiculous to people walking by us on their lunch break on a hot summer’s day in Boston. Dusting ourselves off and licking our wounds, we decided that our failure was due to the fact that we weren’t creative enough and did not embrace the social media technology that was available to

us at the time. So for our next campaign we focused our efforts on Facebook for our consumer-facing electronics product. We figured that the best way to create buzz and get folks to our website was to take advantage of a new trend that was emerging at the time – creating a Face-book app. So we did. We created a Fa-cebook app that acted like a breakout game where once a player broke through all of the bricks it would expose our pro-motional campaign and link to our web-site. Not only that, we hired actors and a TV production crew to create a 30 second mini-commercial once they got there. We spent over $20,000 on this campaign. We figured our little breakout game would be so much fun to play it would magically become viral and then people would link to our website, sales would go through the roof, and I, as the VP of Marketing, would be a hero. We had a total of 6 click-thrus over two months. So yeah, not so good. Fortunately overtime I learned from my mistakes and ended up creating some really nice social media programs that were effective and scalable. I once was able to demonstrate an 11% lift in annual sales directly due to social media marketing. Later as a con-sultant, I was able to generate half of my business through LinkedIn promotions and communications. But by this time, almost 10 years after the initial social media boom, things had dramatically changed. The art of social media had become more sci-entific. You couldn’t just spray and pray anymore. You couldn’t just come up with a catchy slogan or do something outland-ish to ensure that your campaign would become viral or have any chance of trending. Nope, social media had grown up, become more programmatic, grown from simply an art form to a science. I don’t think my story is very unique from many that you could tell. Once upon a time, social media practitioners were lone wolves in their organizations, prac-

ticing dark arts that many others simply did not understand. Now to be effective and to scale your programs across the entire enterprise, you have to employ best practices and the latest technology avail-able. In short, you can’t just wing it any-more. You have to be more methodical, more analytical, more deliberate, and you have to find ways to enlist the support of the entire organization and your external customers and advocates to be success-ful. To do this you need the right tools, the right mindset, and the right skills. In this issue of Social Tools & Best Practices magazine we are going to ex-plore the cross-section of the art and the science of social media. For sure you still need both. Social media science with-out art is dry and inauthentic. And good luck getting people to invest their time in something that is boring. But social media as just art— a burst of creative energy— is a matchstick that explodes into flame and then quickly blows out. It’s not repeatable, it’s not measurable, and there is no way to predict ongoing success for your investments. Indeed, to break through the noise on a consistent basis and get your message heard, you need to be a master of both the art and science of social media. �

Executive InsightsThe Art and Science of Social Media Programs

By: Brian Mahony

Brian Mahony is the Managing Di-rector of Compelum Sales and the CEO of Trender Research, and co-founder Social Tools & Best Prac-tices Summit and Magazine.

4

In the end, it comes down to ROI. How else can you prove that social is deliv-

ering business value? Unless ROI can be shown, the value of social efforts is always likely to be underestimated and underappreciated. So how can this be done effectively? While using the right metrics and having the right strategy is key, it’s also impor-tant to present this data in the right way (i.e. a way that all stakeholders can un-derstand and relate to). The “science” element of this can be done with strong planning and accurate measurement but the “art” element needs a human touch and an eye for finding insights that are truly compelling. Here are a few quick tips for getting it right by being smart with social media analytics.

1. Determine how social fits with mar-keting and sales goals Before you start implementing a social strategy, understanding exactly how social fits your company’s overall marketing and sales strategy is essential. This will be different for each company. For major multinationals, social may be a brand awareness tool rather than a lead generator – for a utility company the

focus could be social customer service, and for B2B a way of bringing in highly qualified prospects with thought-provok-ing content. Whatever your strategy, first you need to decide how social fits and from there, identify the metrics that need to be tracked against marcom goals.

2. Combining social data with sales and marketing KPIs When determining value or making important decisions, the impact of social, marketing and sales activities on the bottom line is often the most important factor. On its own, social data doesn’t always provide the direct link to ROI that management may need. But when combined with data such as website traf-fic or sales data the value of social be-comes much clearer. The key is to pre-sent this data in a way that correlations can be made easily. It can take time to find the best way to link social data to more standard business metrics but it’s worth putting in the extra effort to find the most powerful links. 3. Use good graphics that make an impact This is where the art comes into play. Let’s face it, metrics can often be

a bit dry. Throwing out endless streams of numbers is rarely a good way to get someone’s attention or prove the value of your efforts. Similarly, overly com-plex graphs and charts tend to confuse not inform. Good data visualizations can be the difference in getting your point across about social ROI. Spend some time distilling key numbers into a few visually appealing, simple but powerful graphics and your efforts to explain the ROI of social will be much more effec-tive. As social becomes an increasingly significant part of marketing efforts for companies in all industries, being able to measure social ROI will only become more important. With a strong measure-ment strategy and a clear idea of the fig-ures that matter, social media marketers can make sure their efforts don’t get un-dervalued. �

Executive InsightsThe Art and Science of Measuring Social ROI

By: Todd Grossman

Todd is CEO Americas at Talkwalker. He is a senior executive with proven expertise in measurement, analyt-ics, public relations, communica-tions, sales and marketing from his past experiences at Precise, a Kan-tar Media company, and PR News-wire’s broadcast and multimedia division, Multivu.

Social Tools & Best PracticesFall 2016 5

Tips & TricksHeaded to an event?

Set yourself up for social media success.By: Vivian Luu

Whether it be a one-day symposi-um or a four-day conference, live

events are a prime destination for your target customers to gather and glean in-spiration from each other, as well as from you. Using social media to enhance the attendee experience can yield fruitful re-sults. If done right, it can help you deep-en relationships with prospective and current customers. Instead of translating tactics directly from your normal digital programs however, keep the following best practices in mind as you head to the show floor.

Plan ahead Exhibiting at events can be excit-ing and rewarding. You get to attend thought-provoking sessions, network with like-minded professionals from around the world and meet with custom-ers in-person. It’s also time-consuming and atten-tion-demanding: You must pay attention to what’s happening in real-time and re-spond with speed. To keep pace with what’s happen-ing around you in-person and on social channels, plan ahead. Identify what your goals are for attending your conference and map out how social media will sup-port them. After that, list out which tac-tics you’ll use to achieve those goals, onsite and offsite. Combining scheduled social media

updates with live updates is a great way to convey the messages you want to share about your brand and join conversations in real-time. Hootsuite is my favorite tool to accomplish this because it’s accessible, easy-to-use and allows me to custom-ize updates across different social media platforms. Bulk scheduling is a plus!

Add value, not noise To stay relevant to the conversation, focus on adding value and avoid overt promotion. Most conferences have a dedicated event hashtag to facilitate online conver-sation and knowledge-sharing. Unfor-tunately, sponsors and exhibitors often share messages that do neither. One tweet such as, “Looking for X? Stop by Booth #Y today! #conference-hashtag” may seem innocuous. 150 simi-lar tweets from sponsors and exhibitors are straight up annoying. Keep your finger on the pulse of what attendees are talking about and make your contribution meaningful. I love using Keyhole for this.

Have a backup If you work on a team, buddy up. Having a team member monitoring your social channels in case the need for trou-bleshooting arises is a lifesaver. I set up Slack project channels to communicate with team members and filter critical communications from email. Some con-

vention centers have poor cellular ser-vice, inhibiting important calls and mes-sages. If you’re a one-person band, review your event agenda and schedule time to review updates. When I’m flying solo, I squeeze this in after keynotes, when cof-fee break starts and at the beginning of lunch hour. Event marketing can be a powerful channel for connecting with your tribe and feeding your sales funnel. Fold in a complementary social campaign, lev-eraging the right tools and keeping the right best practices in-mind to amplify your impact. �

Vivian Luu is an omni-channel mar-keter and digital strategist based in Boston, Massachusetts. She leads experiential strategy for IBM’s Soft-ware Group Global Conferences at George P. Johnson Experience Mar-keting Agency.

6

If you’ve attended any of the recent Social Tools Summits hosted by our

friends Neal Schaffer and Brian Mahony, you heard lots of discussion on Employ-ee Advocacy. It’s a simple idea. Encourage your employees to tweet, post, share, discuss and otherwise tell your story as a com-pany to the masses on social. Employees become ambassadors for your brand and culture. Their friends, family and connections listen to them because they know them and trust them. The value of your brand goes up. Sales go up. So does your stock price. People line up to work at your company because it’s such a cool place to work. Your CEO gives you a gold watch and slaps you on the back. You retire at 40 and live hap-pily ever after.

Not. The execution of your employee ad-vocacy program is no easy job. Sure, our companies have great news to share, new products to launch, new announcements to announce. But we can’t expect good news to go viral just because our people are good company soldiers. We need to understand what drives them to share, and most importantly, create a value proposition for them. Here are seven fundamentals to keep in mind as you build your thriving com-

munity of social media ambassadors and brand evangelists.

1. Find your Subject Matter Experts “Influencer” is a term that is way overused these days. I prefer the term Subject Matter Expert (SME). SMEs are naturally passionate about the programs and initiatives they own. Why wouldn’t they be natural advocates for them on social media? Asking SMEs to tweet or post ena-bles their own success by spreading word of their good work. It personalizes what could otherwise be faceless and boring corporate content. Are people from your company foundation tweeting about your compa-ny’s contributions to your community? Are members of your tech team posting about your latest mobile app? The same information in press releases or market-ing campaigns is not nearly as authentic.

Executive InsightsBest Practices for Building an Engaged Audience

via Employee Advocacy By: Shane McLaughlin

Shane McLaughlin is a Senior Man-ager who leads content and social media strategy at Walmart, directing content for the company’s extranet supporting 800,000 associates and driving the associate social media advocacy program. Prior to his cur-rent role, Shane helped found the in-ternal communications function for the eCommerce division of Walmart.

Social Tools & Best PracticesFall 2016 7

2. Share meaningful content, not mindless promotion. No one wants to be a shill on social. Even the great content you think will go viral in a millisecond may fall on deaf ears. It happens. For an advocacy program to get legs, it has to have substance for the people sharing. Content is still king. But you need to marry the key strategic themes of your company with the wants and needs of your social advocates. Break news with your network. In-vite them to beta-test an innovative prod-uct. Share early access to a service. A lit-tle exclusivity goes a long way to drive “buzz” on social.

3. Audience is about quality, not quan-tity A small team can make big waves on social. Most of the sharing in your program will come from a core group of people who are passionate about your company. There may be many people in your network who never share a thing. That’s fine. Just because they are not tweeting away doesn’t mean that they aren’t look-ing at your stuff. The content still could be valuable - they may be sharing it in other ways – at cocktail parties and in their real-world conversations. Either way, they are brand advocates.

4. Use your users for content Get your users involved with con-tent creation. Invite them to share their pics and posts with your community. Use common hashtags to classify it across networks. When they are not just sharing, but creating content that supports important news and initiatives, that content be-comes more relatable to your audience. And when your company embraces it by highlighting it in official channels, your company culture comes to life.

5. Ply them with pizza In 1971 Albert Mehrabian came to the (now famous) conclusion that the vast majority of communication is through body language. So if you’re not getting in a room with your core SMEs every now and then, you may not be getting the whole story about what they think about your program. You can’t see someone shrug their shoulders on Facebook.

Order pizza and get everybody to-gether in a conference room for lunch. Not only do they appreciate the gesture, but having a meal creates an informality that gets the ideas flowing.

6. Feedback is your friend Surveys are great because they give people a chance to give you constructive feedback in an anonymous forum. (If you’re serving them pizza, your people will have a harder time criticizing you, of course.) Ask your advocates to rate your con-tent. Let them tell you what content they are most likely to share. Report back to them what you learned – and how you are evolving to get better at delivering for them.

7. Stay flexible – we are only getting started! How people share is constantly changing. Snapchat and live video are hot now. Who’s to say in two years some new platform will be all the rage? One thing is certain. Companies are waking up to the potential of employee advocacy on social. Those who figure it out stand to drive quantifiable results that build their brands, make sales and influ-ence audiences. Those who don’t will just be tweeting in the dark. �

If you are interested in placing an advertisement or submitting editorial content, please contact us:

Advertising, contact Andrea Chambers: [email protected]

Editoral Submissions, contact Andrea Nelson: [email protected]

Social Tools Are on the Menu

Our Inaugural Issue!Serving up tools and best

practices to a growing industry

hungry for knowledge

AdvocacyMoving Towards

Participation Marketing

Instagram10 Best Ways Businesses Can

Use Instagram

The Trump EffectHate ‘em or Love ‘em:

Lessons from “Yuge” Social

SAP Goes Social“Share of Voice”

Case Study

8

In this far-ranging interview, Andrea tracks down an industry thought lead-

er to get a pulse on the future of content marketing. How is the technology of so-cial networks changing the rules of the game? How can promoters improve the authenticity of their content? And finally, how does content marketing fit into the larger context of an integrated social media program?

Andrea: Could content marketing ex-ist without social?

Yes content marketing could exist and has existed without social. The oldest example I can think of is the Furrow Mag-azine published in 1895 by John Deere Co. which featured a Farmers Guide with Tips and Tricks for Farmers to get bet-ter yield for their crops. This was a free publication they distributed and is a great example of content marketing way before social. Bettie Crocker is another exam-ple: they published a free recipe book in an effort to sell cake mixes. While content marketing doesn’t need social to exist, social does help am-plify content and get it to be more viral. On the inverse I think social may not ex-ist or be in the same form that it is today without content marketing. Social con-versations all revolve around content and

without content marketing it would be hard to have those conversations.

Andrea: How would content market-ing change if users had to pay for Fa-cebook/Twitter?

So there are two ways that I can think of this working. One is people paying for access to be on Twitter and Facebook and consuming content there and interacting and engaging. If that were the case I think you would have a much smaller percent-age of the audience on these channels so I don’t think that would be as effective for distributing content and engaging people there. The other way I can see it working is if you are paying for access to distribute content on there. If you wanted to pro-mote your content on there you would have to pay for it. I don’t think Facebook and Twitter will ever get to that in terms of paying to post content, but they are certainly making people pay to promote their content. And as social media chan-nels get more and more crowded and noisy, in order to rise above the noise you will probably have to pay more and more to do so. It’s very similar to what happened with search and SEO. SEO got more and more competitive so people had to end up paying to show up on the first page. In the same regard, Facebook tunes their news feed and Twitter like-wise. If you when want to get the atten-tion of people you will have to pay for that, and I think we are already seeing that happen.

Andrea: How will closed APIs on Fa-cebook/Twitter impact content mar-keters and marketing technology?

If I may revise this question, it wouldn’t be about closed APIs but rather, shared accounts. Big changes happened

last year for Twitter and are coming in the next few months for Facebook. They no longer share the shared count data so you can’t easily see exactly how many times a piece of content was shared on those channels. It is possible but very dif-ficult to do so because they are locking that down. Twitter is locking that down not for business considerations but technology considerations. The database that they moved to—Cassandra, just doesn’t sup-port that type of operation in the back end… but there is hope for a potential posting of that API at some point. Facebook on the other hand is poten-tially limiting access to the API. So lots of shared accounts which used to be able to see exactly how many times a piece of content was shared no longer can, making it hard for content marketers to know if they are doing well on social. I think we will start to see a shift in terms of the metrics that content marketers use to measure how effective their content is. They will now probably focus more

Genius Q & AContent Marketing in a Social World:

An Interview with Curata CEO Pawan DeshpandeBy Andrea Nelson, Contributing Editor, Social Tools & Best Practices Magazine

Pawan Deshpande is the founder and CEO of Curata. He is a regular speaker at technology, entrepre-neurship, and marketing events such as American Marketing As-socation (AMA), SXSW, TiE-Con, Gilbane, and Content Marketing World.

&Q A


9Fall 2016

on consumption metrics like how many page views, or lower funnel metrics like how many leads a piece of content brought in direct B2B, or how much rev-enue. We will start to see a mindset shift as to how people tune and create their content. The other thing here is that I think a lot of people share content without ever consuming it in the first place. I believe there are some stats that talk about peo-ple sharing Twitter content that just a small fraction of them are actually read-ing themselves.

Andrea: How do you manage large teams doing content marketing?

Two ways really. Early in the matu-rity cycle for content marketing we see folks creating content on an ad-hoc basis when they think of new content to create. The content creation process is sporadic, but as teams mature and get larger they start building editorial calendars, and that is one of the foundational elements of a more mature content marketer: let-ting people collaborate around a central calendar. The second piece is managing the workflow—separating specific content marketing related responsibilities based on people’s areas of specialization. This entails a division of labor including creating, editing, and then distributing through social, email, or paid channels, almost like an assembly line as you start working with larger teams.

Andrea: How do you make content marketing appear authentic?

Being authentic is very important, because it is content marketing and people are always (rightly) skeptical of

marketers, so you definitely need to be authentic to gain their trust. In terms of how you actually do so, I start by pro-viding in-depth long-form content. A lot of people have smaller, shorter bursts of content which, though easier to read, lack depth and credibility. When you flesh things out more you demonstrate that you really know what you are talk-ing about. We actually tested this at Cu-rata using our own content marketing platform. We measured our short-form content vs. long-form (over 1,500 words) for blog posts and found long-form con-tent got three times more social shares, eight times more page views, nine times more leads generated, seven times more pipeline sales generated, and five times more revenue. Long-form content is way more effective, and I think that is mainly because it is more authentic and credible.

Andrea: What is the advantage of a specialized content marketing plat-form vs. a general all in one social me-dia platform?

I think there are four different pieces here. In larger companies the social me-dia and content marketing tendency is to sit on different teams so they each need their own piece of software. The second point is that social moves at a very dif-ferent pace than content marketing, since social doesn’t necessarily have deadlines for posts—it’s more about just getting it out the door. Content marketers work

towards a deadline, so the process and workflow are very different. Social tends to re-publish the same post over and over again, unlike content marketing where they are just publishing it once and may-be refreshing it later on. Social has fewer steps in the process of getting something out the door, whereas with content mar-keting the content is meatier, which re-quires much more thorough review and editing. Social content is not evergreen, while content marketing often is. By ev-ergreen I mean content that stays relevant and gains you more and more followers and views over a long period of time. In social everything is constantly evolving; you post it and it’s pretty much instantly swept away. Marketing platforms let you audit all the content you have already created so you can see what needs to be refreshed. Social doesn’t necessarily have the same notion. The metrics these platforms are meas-uring for social versus content marketing is very different in terms of performance. Social content tends to be consumed on a social channel such as LinkedIn, Face-book, or Twitter, and therefore you can’t really measure exactly who is consuming the content. You only know how many times it has been consumed and what the reach is for the content. The only time you know the “who” is if someone shares it. With content marketing most of the time it tends to be consumed on your own properties, such as your own site or blog, and there are a lot more in-teresting analytics you can start to tie in. You can track exactly which customer or lead consumed a piece of content, so you have a much more in-depth understand-ing with a content marketing platform thanks to the richer analytics capabilities.I think of a content marketing platform as like a factory where goods are made. Social is more like FedEx or UPS: it’s a delivery channel for disseminating those goods. They serve very different func-tions, with advantages to both. �

“Being authentic is very important, because it is content marketing and

people are always (rightly) skeptical of

marketers, so you defi-nitely need to be authen-

tic to gain their trust.”

10

Tips & Tricks5 Steps to Becoming a Livestreaming Pro

By: Chad Abbott

Livestreaming has become a science. With the introduction of multiple so-

cial platforms and widespread availabil-ity, brands and agencies can no longer simply be present in the space— they have to excel in it. Facebook Live, spe-cifically, has opened the door to a sea of data that has broadcasters scrambling to get the upper hand. From newsfeed pri-oritization algorithms to archived video searches, the marketer can be easily overwhelmed. The best way to excel at streaming is to plan and execute a simple strategy. Here are the 5 steps you can fol-low to become a livestreaming pro:

1. Define Goals and Content This is the most important, and overlooked, element of livestreaming. For example, if you seek fan acquisi-tion, brand awareness, earned media or social engagement, your strategy should include queue’s to encourage viewers to like, follow, or share while watching. These requests can be naturally folded into your programming when planned and executed well. Lead generation is another common livestreaming goal, and is best served on a landing page with an email gate. Quality content will attract viewers willing to give an email address, and will even be qualified leads when the time comes for outreach. A final common streaming goal is virtual event attend-ance. With easy integrations to common ticketing platforms such as Eventbrite, gathering and engaging an audience has never been easier.

2. Choose Platform and Hardware Now that you have a plan in place, ask yourself these three questions. Where are your fans? Where do you want them to be? What platform serves these goals? The answers to these three simple questions will help you make de-cisions regarding platforms and produc-tion logistics. Have you invested heavily in Twitter marketing? Broadcast to Peri-scope in order to reach your hard-earned audience. Do you want a bigger Face-book audience? Use Periscope as a tool to shuffle viewers to Facebook Live for future events. Livestreaming is a tool, and when used strategically, it can have an enormous impact on your brand’s so-cial influence.

3. Promote Your Livestream This is just marketing! If you’re broadcasting to Facebook, use geo-loca-tion and demographic features to target

Chad G. Abbott (@ChadAbbott) is a digiatal media executive at the fore-front of the discussion about how to put cutting edge technologies to use for brands. He is the CEO at Abbson Live, a company that provides strat-egy, marketing, and production for the highest quality livestream cam-paigns in the country.

“Quality content will attract viewers willing to give an email address, and will even be quali-

fied leads when the time comes for outreach.”


11Fall 2016

Facebook Ads in order to gather the audi-ence you desire. Another effective means of promotion is finding influencers in the industry or community you are stream-ing to. Finding influencers with large so-cial followings and asking them to par-ticipate, or even just tune in, is one of the most impactful marketing strategies for live video. Finally, use direct invitations, now a feature of Facebook Live, to ask viewers to tune in for a stream. Take ad-vantage of this feature

4. Go Live and Learn The best way to get better at stream-ing is to try it! First, listen to your view-ers. They will be more than happy to comment on your successes and fail-ures— listen to their suggestions! Also, be aware of possible technical improve-ments. Are viewers complaining about poor audio quality? Invest in a micro-

phone. Make simple camera adjustments to diffuse complaints about camera an-gles. Lastly, never stop improving your content. The best way to improve stream-ing content is to look at what has been successful, and expand on it.

5. Repeat Try, and try again! Frequency is key. Don’t disappear! Once you’ve earned

an audience, make sure to entice them with regularly scheduled broadcasts that will keep them interested and expecting more. Consistency is also crucial. Once every detail, logistic, and contingency has been ironed out, its time to fine-tune your content strategy. As your content quality increases, your audience will be soon to follow! �

Accelerate and de-risk sales and marketing projects... and get your teams working together.

At Compelum we end the silo mentality and get your sales and marketing teams working together. Whether you’re building out your sales and marketing teams for the first time, or trying to take your processes to the next level, working with the experts at Com-pelum will help you complete your projects faster and at less cost. Contact us today: [email protected]

“Silos are for corn, not Sales and Marketing teams.”

“Where are your fans? Where do you want them

to be? What platform serves these goals? The answers to these three simple questions will

help you make decisions regarding platforms and

production logistics.”

12

You already know that social media is essential for communicating with

your customers directly and for branding your business. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a business today that doesn’t have a presence on at least a cou-ple of social media platforms. From large enterprise organization with sizable so-cial teams to small businesses and start-ups with only one person managing the organization’s social profiles— everyone knows that if you aren’t on social media, you might as well be invisible. However; given the importance of social media in marketing today, it’s somewhat surprising to see that many businesses— even ones with consider-able budgets and resources— still don’t really get it. Browsing through the pro-files of these businesses, you’ll see nu-merous mistakes and missteps that pre-vent them from getting the most out of their social presence. There’s no one clear path to social media marketing success. Plenty of busi-nesses have tried unorthodox tactics and strategies and come out on top, while others followed the best practices to a “T” and gained little traction. But it has become clear what not to do. Avoid com-mitting these six social media mistakes:

1. Oversharing Other Businesses’ Content It’s never a bad idea to share relevant content that comes from other businesses or news sources, especially if you know it will resonate with your own audience. But you don’t want to go overboard with sharing others’ content at the expense of putting your own content out there. Alter-native perspectives are nice to have, but ultimately, you want to position yourself as a thought leader, and relying too much on the expertise of others will hinder that goal. One great thing you can do to dem-onstrate your expertise while bringing

in content from elsewhere is to use what others are talking about as a jumping-off point for your own commentary. This al-lows you to share your view while foster-ing more conversation and activity.

2. Posting with the Wrong Frequency Having a regular, predictable post-ing schedule is key for keeping your audience engaged. If you aren’t post-ing enough, or with the proper cadence, your voice and message will be lost in the noise of your competitors and others. It’s an attention economy, and only those with a consistent and engaging message will attract a loyal audience. On the flip side, if you’re posting too much, your au-dience will likely find you annoying and either unfollow you or just start tuning you out. Each social channel has its own sweet spot for how often you should be posting. Below is a range of posting fre-quencies on some of the most popular social channels, to get you started.Facebook: Between three and ten times per week. • Twitter: A minimum of five times per week with no maximum. Feel free to scale up as you see fit given the level of conversation around your industry or business. • LinkedIn: It used to be two and five times per week, although this has in-creased recently to once each day. • Pinterest: Between five to ten

times per day. Visual media is exploding in popularity, and since it’s not as time-intensive to consume as text, you can af-ford to do more here. A lot more. • Google+: Between three and ten times per week. • Instagram Brands on average post 1.5 times a day, although some share up to 20 photos a day during special events with no adverse effects. • Snapchat It probably goes without saying… As often as you like, in a 24 hour period, to tell an engaging story.These figures are obviously not set in stone, and do change as platforms, algo-rithms and audience consumption habits change — they’re merely guidelines that work in most cases. You are certainly free to lean more on one network over anoth-er if you see that you’re getting a lot of engagement there. The best advice? Do what works best for your organization and your audience.

3. Leaving Profiles Incomplete This one is pretty obvious, but it’s

Tips & TricksAre You Making These 6 Common

Social Media Mistakes?By: Martin Jones

Martin Jones is a Sr. Marketing Manager for Cox Communications social media team where he leads the social media, content market-ing and employee advocacy strat-egy for Cox Business. He is the editor of the Cox Business blog CoxBLUE.com.

“To tweet or retweet, that is the question.”


13Fall 2016

shocking how many businesses (and business professional) don’t have a com-pleted profile on the social platforms they use. It’s not enough to just set up the pro-file, throw a profile picture up, and wait for the visitors to come in droves. A Field of Dreams social strategy (if you build it they will come) seldom works. You have to be as complete as possible, filling out your “About Us” section, posting busi-ness hours, contact info, and everything else that might help visitors get to know you better. Not only is that the kind of informa-tion your potential customers are look-ing for, but an incomplete profile looks sloppy and amateurish, and reflects on your brand. Regardless of the industry, most businesses want to project an air of conscientiousness and polish, and hav-ing a half-done profile is a quick way to achieve the exact opposite.

4. Focusing Too Much on Vanity Met-rics It’s natural to want to brag about how many followers, friends, or connections you have, or how many likes and retweets a piece of content received. These types of numbers may make you feel good, but they don’t really mean much in terms of reaching your business goals. Don’t post shallow, clickbait-y content just for the sake of getting clicks or shares. Social media should drive tangible results—brand recognition, leads, sales, etc. You want to post content that gets high levels of engagement, like follow-up replies and backlinks. This shows that people aren’t just mindlessly shar-ing your headline; they’re actually dig-ging deeper into what you’re talking about. While you may not be able to say you went viral, you’ll know that you’re reaching the right people and driving real results for your business.

5. Committing Social Media Faux Pas We’ve all seen it before: a social me-dia team member at a known brand de-cides to bring his or her standup act to the business’s social channels and ends up offending people and drawing nega-tive attention from the media. Often, this takes the form of insensitive jokes toward a political happening or social event, and while the intentions may have

been harmless, the results were not. In other instances, a business will try to co-opt a social cause, but will end up being called out for piggybacking on a serious topic for its own financial gain. Using humor and backing social causes can be powerful ways to build your brand on social media, but it has to be done tastefully and skillfully for it to have the desired effect. It›s worth having clear internal policies about what can and cannot be posted or discussed on branded social channels. In most cases though, if you›re spending a lot of time wondering if you should or shouldn›t post some-thing, it’s wiser to err on the side of cau-tion and keep quiet. My mantra in these situations is simple, Do No Harm. If there is even an inkling in my mind that a piece of content, or even a sentence could reflect badly on the organization, I would rather reword it, or omit it to pre-serve my integrity and the integrity of the organization.

6. Lacking a Diverse Array of Content Formats Even within a highly targeted audi-ence, you’re likely to have people who have different preferences for the way they like to consume content. Some peo-ple love visual media like videos and infographics, while others prefer text or audio. One of the most common ways in which businesses fail to engage the max-imum number of people is that they only post their content in one format. Mix it up a little —use a wide ar-ray of formats that can appeal to vari-ous audiences’ tastes and preferences. This might sound time-consuming and

difficult, but always remember that you can repurpose content for a variety of formats. The subject of a blog post can be condensed into a video, and an in-fographic can be fleshed out a bit more in a podcast. Presenting your content in multiple ways is critical for reaching and engaging all members of your audience effectively.

What You Can Do Right Now Don’t make easily avoidable social media mistakes: improve your approach today with these tips. • Incorporate a posting frequen-cy into your social media and content schedule. Don’t over-saturate any one channel, but if you are getting lots of en-gagement on one platform, do encourage it (the “land and expand” approach vs. “one and done”). • Sit down with your team and draw up rules for when to jump on a trending topic and when to steer clear. Come up with guidelines for sensitively address-ing (or not addressing) breaking news. • Think about how to repurpose a handful of your most successful content pieces into other formats. If a heavily data-based blog post was shared widely, for example, you could turn it into an eye-catching infographic. �

14

Tips & Tricks5 Steps to Building a Social Media

Methodology for Your BusinessBy: Beth Blecherman

When I led technology implementa-tion projects for a top consulting

firm, we always worked according to a strict methodology, creating require-ments documents for changes needed and making sure we complied with com-pany-wide standards. Now that social media is being used by businesses both small and large, these standards should apply to the social media staff as well as employees who contribute to or use social media. Here are the key steps for creating a social media methodology for your business:

1. Build Messaging Standards Social media can be used to com-municate areas such as brand awareness, customer outreach and conversions. No matter how large or small your business may be, you need to have social media standards in place to make sure the right messaging is being shared. These stand-ards should include pre-approved mes-saging as well as a process to review and approve any new messages. The stand-ards should be specific to each social media platform because communication with 140 characters on Twitter will look completely different from messaging on your Facebook Page.

2. Build Standards for Special Situa-tions Although the social media messag-ing your business uses may be directed towards your customers, you are using a public platform. There will be special situations. Here are a few examples: • What happens when a troll is di-recting negative message towards my brand? • Do you change your scheduled so-cial media updates for breaking news or other events? • What happens when a customer ex-presses a positive or negative response on social media?

• How can humor be appropriately used on social media? Inappropriate use of humor on social media has caused many problems for businesses.

3. Build Standards for Photos, Videos and All Media Shared On Social Media Photos, videos and other media are important for efficient and effective com-munication on social media platforms. Any media shared on social media should comply with approved standards. For ex-ample, on Twitter are your employees al-lowed to share photos taken in the office? If so, of what and how can you make sure they are not sharing anything confiden-tial? Can employees create videos or live streams at work - and what are the stand-ards for that activity?

4. Personal vs. Business Social Media Social media also needs to be fresh and authentic so having employees share social media can offer that view. At the same time, businesses need to discuss with employees the difference between sharing “business” social media and per-sonal messages. If they have personal so-cial media brands, do they need to have the comment “these are my own per-sonal opinions and not associated with XYZ Business”? Or are they allowed to

put their business name on their personal social media properties at all? Since em-ployees can be some of the most pow-erful brand advocates, do you want to implement an employee advocacy pro-gram with its own set of standards?

5. Tools for Automation Research what social media tools are available to scale up your efforts and im-prove ROI. The Social Tools Summit’s offer many discussions on the tools and platform options for social media man-agement and employee advocacy. The tools range from zero-cost “freemium” products to substantial enterprise-wide solutions that can significantly manage social media efforts, saving time and au-tomating as much as possible the imple-mentation of standards.

If you follow this five well-worn guide-lines, you’ll be well on your way to im-plementing social media methodology that is both flexible and works for your business. �

Beth Blecherman is a social media marketing consultant and founder of TechMamas.com (@TechMama). She is the Chief Community Of-ficer of Savitude.com (@Savitude-Women), a marketplace and app for working women to find better fitting clothes using technology that ena-bles shopping by shape.


15Fall 2016

In the old days of social media, success seemed like it was just a few tweets

away. The very act of participating in social media marketing virtually guar-anteed some attention. Those days are far gone. Today, social media marketing success is far out of reach for the average marketer. Why is succeeding so difficult to-day? Three factors contribute to the di-minishing power of the average social media marketer.

Content Shock! Content Shock, a term first coined by Mark W. Schaefer, refers to the point in marketing when we create more content than humans can consume. We simply have no time in the day to consume even a fraction of the content being produced.Marketers are pumping out content to please search engines and the endless need for fresh social media content. Publishers are producing content at a record pace in hopes of earning page views which yield a few measly coins from digital ads.

Consumers make content which competes with both, from Snapchatting one’s Tinder date to live streaming an event. How fast is content shock set-ting in? Consider this graph created by SHIFT Communications of news stories per year. Content shock is real - we are producing far more content than people can consume. What are the consequences of con-tent shock to social media marketers?

The Organic Decline With so much to choose from, social networks have had to impose algorithms to selectively display content, such as content from friends and family, or con-tent deemed to be informative. What tends not to make the cut? Brand content. Brand content from the ever-diminishing social media marketer. Post it and they will come worked in 2004. Today we ask a different cliche - if a brand posts but no one sees it, did the brand even post? Without advocacy, without fans ac-tively caring, branded organic social

content is practically invisible.

Only Large Budgets Need Apply The solution social networks would have you believe will solve your social media woes is, of course, paid advertis-ing. To a degree, sponsoring and paying to have your content seen does work, but it’s limited by your budget. Back in late 2014, SHIFT Communications estimated the effective budget needed to ensure all your fans on Facebook saw a post was a penny per two Likes (fans); today, it’s more like a penny per Like. That seems manageable until you realize that’s for every post. If you post 5 times a day and you have a mere 100 fans, you’re paying $5 a day in advertis-ing just to be seen. Now, consider what that means when you have 10,000 fans, or 10,000,000 fans, as so many companies do because

Executive InsightsThe Diminishing Power of the Social Media

Marketer… and What to Do About It.By: Christopher S. Penn

Christopher S. Penn is an author-ity on digital marketing and market-ing technology. He is a recognized thought leader and speaker. He is a founding member of IBM’s Watson Analytics Predictioneers, co-founder of the groundbreaking PodCamp Conference, and co-host of the Mar-keting Over Coffee marketing pod-cast. He is the author of over two dozen marketing books including many bestsellers.

Continued on next page.

16

Brian: As a leader in the industry, you’ve seen the social media industry evolve over the years. In your mind, what has really changed and what have been the major forces shaping the industry to what it has become today?

Dave: When social media first came to be it was much more of a bi-direction-al platform and much more organic in terms of the ability to reach customers and prospects without paying. And now we’ve seen it become much less social

and much more media focused over the years. Today, a business running a social media program can’t be successful with-out a significant portion of their budget being spent on paid media on the various social networks. That’s really been the biggest change over the years. Of course, many new social networks have come into existence, but the biggest change has been the emergence of the need for paid media.

Brian: So part of what you are saying is that social media has moved beyond being strictly organic to becoming more “corporate” in terms of the paid search aspect. How has it developed in terms of being more formulaic, perhaps more sci-entific, than the organic art form it used to be?

Dave: As the industry has grown it has certainly become more scientific and predictable than it was five years ago, but I still think there is a lot of art to it.

Brian: It’s also become a lot noisier too, hasn’t it? There are so many different social networks out there and tools have

Genius Q & APast, Present, and Future:

Where is the Social Media Industry Headed? An Interview with Likeable’s Dave Kerpen

By Brian Mahony, CEO of Trender Research

Dave Kerpen is the founder and CEO of Likeable Local, a social me-dia software company. He is also the cofounder of Likeable Media, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing agency for big brands. He is also a New York Times bestselling author.

&Q A

Continued from previous page.they rushed out to buy Likes in the early days of their social media marketing. You will be spending hundreds or thousands of dollars per post just to be seen - and that doesn’t mean you’ll get likes, clicks, or shares, much less leads or sales.

Solutions For social media marketers who don’t have multimillion dollar war chests or content factories pumping out torrents of content for a few clicks each, what are our choices? How do we reverse our fortunes, reduce our diminishment, and make social media work again? Strength comes from numbers; one answer for now is to leverage the power of our tribes, our crowds. Who are our

loyal fans? Who are our socially active employees? Who are our best custom-ers? Using advocacy software such as Dynamic Signal’s platform or collabora-tive social communities such as Slack, we’re able to unify our base of indi-viduals to work for us. When we share through these platforms, we engage our most interested population to re-share for us, creating signals for the algorithms to organically feature our content. Strength also comes from empower-ment; the more we equip our best advo-cates with tools to help them grow their audiences, budgets to boost their content, and support in the creation of content, the more powerful their voice works on our behalf. Influencer marketing done well

isn’t just cutting a check to someone with a megaphone. It’s a holistic process of helping influencers grow and building a mutually beneficial relationship. Combine influencers and advocates, and you have a potent brew that can stand the ever-changing winds of fortune in the social networks.

Conclusion Companies which fail to embrace group and crowd-centric social media marketing will continue to see their so-cial media power diminish. Ads will become ever more expensive as content continues to flood in. Only when we be-come many voices instead of one can we be heard over the din. �


17Fall 2016

made it so easy to post content across a checklist of multiple media channels. Not only that, but you have the ability to post in different formats, with different tones, and even different digital media such as photos and videos, all tailored to your various audiences. In that noisy environment, what can you do to break through to effectively promote your brand?

Dave: As I said I think paid has become very important. Also it is key to only put content out there that you think is go-ing to resonate and then adjust as you go based on what the data tells you. These days it’s less about throwing stuff out there and seeing what’s going to stick and more about using the data to build a sophisticated, more predictable social media program.

Brian: So it’s almost like there is art involved in it, but you also need to fol-low these sophisticated processes and best practices to make sure your message

not only gets out there but gets seen and heard and acted upon?

Dave: Yeah, that’s right. Look, the me-dia landscape has always been noisy. The model is very similar to the proliferation of TV channels. It started with three tel-evision networks and now there are lit-erally hundreds of options. It’s the same thing with social media and will continue to be. But at the end of the day, great con-tent delivered to the right audience will

always win the day.

Brian: In that kind of en-vironment, how do social media tools and processes need to change to adapt?

Dave: Well, you know there are two things. As we said, any social media program needs to take paid social media into account. So any tools need to work with both paid and organic social channels. Second is, the tools need to be built in a nimble way because the rate of change in social media is so much faster than in other industries. It changes so fast that if you build a tool that isn’t easily adaptable then you are going to be in trouble as the industry changes.

Brian: So we talked about where the industry has come from and where it is now, but where is it all going? If you look into your crystal ball, five years from

now what is the industry of social me-dia going to look like and what are the major trends that are driving towards that future?

Dave: Well five years ago if you would have asked me I would said you are going to see a huge convergence of social and mobile, and we have seen that happen. No one talks about social and mobile be-ing separate any more. It’s assumed that if you are doing social it has to also be

done using mobile. Five years from now, my prediction is the new integration will be AR (augmented reality) and VR (vir-tual reality), and we are already seeing the beginning of that with Pokemon Go. That is only going to accelerate in the next couple of years as more and more brands and publishers begin to integrate AR and VR into their social media pro-grams.

Brian: Haha. We’re definitely deep into that trend. I almost ran over a couple of those people blindly walking into the road to capture a new monster. Yes, that’s very insightful and I can see that becom-ing a larger trend. So Dave, for our final question, can you share with us any parting advice you might have to help our audience improve the effectiveness of their social media programs today?

Dave: Well I think again, stepping back, I would say make sure you are being nimble with the programs that you are building. And Brian, I know many of your readers are evaluating social media tools, so my advice to them is you should never sign a contract for more than a year with a software company because of how quickly things can change. Similarly, make sure you build programs that are adaptable in the very fiber of their be-ing so you can quickly change with the times. �

18

Tips & Tricks4 Influencer Marketing Best Practices

to Expand Your BrandBy: Adam Hendle

Influence marketing is making relation-ships between brands and customers

more personal, more transparent, and more human than ever. As such, interest in influencer marketing has skyrocketed since 2013, with Google trends show-ing interest climbing an astounding 16x! Coupled with a recent Burst Media study showing 74% of all marketers plan to use influencer marketing this year, it’s no se-

cret that brands are realizing the power of influencer marketing. However, the question that keeps surfacing is how do I know if my influencer marketing cam-paign is effective? In this article, we’ll go over the best practices and tips that I’ve seen while watching thousands of influ-encer marketing campaigns launch.

1. Set clear goals upfront One of the best aspects of influencer marketing is that you can get extremely creative with the content that is created and tailor that content to drive towards whichever goals your brand may have. While some brands focus on driving sales, others look to grow their social media presence or simply increase brand awareness. Each of these goals may have different content associated with it and without a doubt the call to action will be completely different. So be sure to set your goals early so that any influencers you work with can help craft content that will push towards that goal. Moreover, be mindful which social media channel is best for each goal. For

instance, Instagram is a great tool to use if you want to raise brand awareness, in-spire customers, show off a product, or grow your brand’s social following. But if you are looking to track ROI, or teach users how to use a more complicated product, then YouTube might be the bet-ter place to start. Longer content in the form of video can play a vital role in not only informing potential consumers about your brand, but also giving them time to learn, consider, and virtually experience a product through a trusted source.

2. Use a different tracking link for eve-ry influencer you hire While using one tracking link for your entire influencer marketing cam-paign is a good start, it doesn’t paint a complete picture and can result in miss-ing crucial insight into what was success-ful and what was not for your campaign. Taking the time to set custom track-ing links for each influencer you work with will help you track and experiment with different content and creator types. For example, you may want to test how well your product does in a tutorial ver-sus a review or you may want to test how well a beauty creator fairs compared to a tech creator. I’ve seen several brands sur-prised when their mobile game sees more success with beauty or lifestyle creators over gaming channels. Importantly, un-less you track each piece of content indi-vidually you’d have no way of knowing.

3. Coupon codes are incredibly power-ful My favorite way of tracking influ-encer marketing campaign success is through creating custom coupon codes for every influencer you work with. Cou-pon codes help incentivize a viewer to take immediate action. Moreover, influ-encers love being able to offer their au-dience something more special than just

a link to the product they are speaking about. Used in conjunction with tracking links, coupon codes also help paint a more detailed picture to your campaign performance. For example, a viewer may love the product the creator they are watching is speaking about, however, in-stead of clicking the link in their descrip-

Adam Hendle is the General Manag-er of FameBit, a self-service platform for connecting brands and creators on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Currently home to over 50,000 creators and used by brands such as Adidas, Machine Zone, Seri-ously, Dollar Shave Club and hun-dreds more. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamhendle.


19Fall 2016

tion they open a new tab and search for that brand name. This would typically go untracked. But if the viewer has the ex-tra incentive of a coupon code, they are likely to enter that at checkout allowing you to track that conversion. A valuable tip with respect to cou-pon codes, is to not put an expiration date on them. Especially with a platform like YouTube, where content continues to live on long past your campaign, you want to ensure that the coupon code that is mentioned in the video is still relevant and usable so that you don’t miss out on any new customers. Taken a step further, platforms such as Instagram do not allow clickable links in the content description which makes tracking even more difficult. However, including an easy to remember coupon code in that description will greatly help your brand track that post’s effective-ness.

4. Social Listening tools Something that I love to do while tracking an influencer marketing cam-paign is to also use social media listen-ing tools such as Mention. These tools al-low you to track mentions of your brand name across different social media chan-nels giving you insights on how many

people are talking about your brand and what is being said over a period of time. This works great as a safety net that can catch activity around your brand that may have been missed by consumers not clicking tracking links or using coupon codes. Influencer marketing is truly an amazing and effective way to market your brand, product or service and is the only channel where you’re getting amaz-

ing branded content, immediate reach to new customers and brand ambassadors that deliver content in a very human and authentic way. I wish you all the best with your influencer marketing cam-paigns and happy tracking! �

Join Our LinkedIn Group:“Social Tools & Best Practices”

Follow Our Twitter Handle:“socialtoolssmmt”

Stay connected!

20

Hashtag marketing is a big affair now, with consumer brands and sports

teams promoting their hashtags and ad-vertisers actually sponsoring hashtags on Twitter. It has been the dream of many a social media marketer to have the hashtag that is central to their brand trend on Twitter, and this is what fuels big brands to pay their way into viral-ity. As co-founder of the Social Tools Summit, I have been responsible for the social media marketing of our events and have personally managed to get our event hashtag, #SocialTools16 (or #So-cialTools15 for 2015 events) to trend at all of our events. Looking back at how I did it, I would break my advice to you down into the following seven areas:

Events Trend Easier Most brands miss the boat when they simply rename their brand by adding a # sign in front of their brand name. Trend-ing hashtags result from a lot of people talking about the same thing at the same

time, and this is why creating an event around a hashtag is the easiest way for it to trend. Be it a sporting event, a lim-ited time flash sale, or a conference like the Social Tools Summit, hashtags trend when there is a lot of conversations hap-pening around hashtags in a short amount of time. When I say short amount of time, I mean in the course of a few hours, if not just one hour or two. Longer events sup-ported by mass audiences can continue to trend over days, but it becomes natu-rally more difficult. For most businesses, aim to promote a hashtag to trend over the course of a day if not a few hours. Hopefully you now see why limited-time events naturally support more effective trending.

Have Active Social Media Users Par-ticipate I was brainwashed early on in my social media career that social media us-ers that are customers are more valuable than non-active social media users that are customers because they will tend, all things being equal, to have a greater Customer Lifetime Value. These same customers, fans, or participants who are active on social media will naturally share your event with their network, es-pecially if it is Instagrammable (see next page). This is why having an advocacy pro-gram, whether for your social media fans, active social media partners, or active in social media employees, will naturally help your hashtag trend so long as they are at the event or somehow participat-ing. The Social Tools Summit is lucky in that the topic of our conference IS social media, so the participants and attendees happen to be active social media users themselves.

Influential Anchor(s) Influencer marketing is here to stay,

and clearly deploying influencers can help give your hashtag extra trending power. You need to have at least one, if not more, influencers deployed at your event that will also participate in the on-line conversation and share your hashtag. I recommend that all events actually hire a live-tweeter to share all of the tidbits, but if you want to increase your chance of your hashtag trending, hire some influ-encers. Fortunately, we have had many speakers who themselves I would con-sider influencers, so these anchors have given great reach to our hashtag before the event even started.

Promote the Hashtag BEFORE and DURING the Event If you want a hashtag to trend, you need to make it part of every image and tweet you send out before your event as well as

Neal Schaffer is an experienced hi-tech sales and marketing executive and one of the world’s preeminent authors, speakers, and advisors on B2B social media. A Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer two years in a row and creator of the leading social media for business blog “Maximize Social Business”, Neal has spoken on three continents and also teaches as part of the Rut-gers University Mini Social Media MBA Program.

Trends & Anaylsis

How the Social Tools Summit Hashtag #SocialTools16 Trended Worldwide on Twitter- Again!

By: Neal Schaffer


21Fall 2016

showcase it during your event on all print and display materials. While some said it was distracting, we deployed a tweet wall at our recent Social Tools Summit in Boston that was front and center next to our panels and thus became part of the conversation. I actually moderated my session utilizing questions in realtime that appeared on the tweet wall. In such a way, the more you make hashtags - and the conversations containing them - cen-

tral to your event, the greater chance that hashtag will trend.

Make the Scene Instagrammable If you’re going to do a physical event, why not do it in a location that tends it-self to be naturally photographed? This is one of the reasons that we chose the Fair-mont Hotel in San Francisco to host our last event and the panorama ballroom at the historic Omni Parker House in Bos-ton to do the event before that. Even if you can’t have an event at such a pho-tographable location, set up interesting scenery insider where people can take hashtag-infused selfies, or simply make a board that people can carry around for photos that has the hashtag printed on it for others to see.

Promote the Conversations If your brand wants to promote the hashtag, promote your fans that are uti-lizing the hashtag in their conversations with a simple ReTweet or Repost. This is good for your relationship with the fans but also allows you to be promoting your hashtag without seeming self-promo-tional because it is coming from someone

else. I don’t have the data, but naturally if the sponsor of the hashtag is listening and participating in the conversation, it makes those participating happy, which could encourage a more frequent use of the hashtag, thus aiding hashtag trend-ing.

Global Reach The Social Tools Summit is a physi-cal event in a single location but is also livestreamed globally. This global aspect tends to help in aiding a hashtag trend globally because conversations are com-ing from a broader geographical area. Consider adding a livestreaming com-ponent to your event as well, whether it be gated like the Social Tools Summit, or utilize YouTube Hangouts on Air, Face-book Live, Periscope, or all three social networks! The more the merrier! You don’t have to do all of the above if you want to trend a hashtag globally, but the more components you add the higher your chances. I’ll be using the same ap-proach for #SocialTools16 at our San Jose event on October 26, so make sure you check it out to see if it is trending - and feel free to join the conversation! �

Social Tools Summit #socialtools15 soared to 50M users at the 2015 Social Tools Summit.

#socialtools16 San Jose - October 26th

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People often forget that social media is a rich source of information that

you can use to increase your sales. How? By researching and finding the best leads for your organization, to form a con-nection with those leads, and finally to make that sale and keep your customers coming back for more. This is known as social selling, which is the art of using social media to find qualified prospects for your organization, and then engaging with them. Now you are probably wondering, “How can I do this?” Start by following these ten tips for increasing your sales with social selling.

1. Use Social Media to Find Prospects Social media is a rich source of pros-pects for your business. No matter what products or services you offer, there are people out there on social media look-ing for an organization just like yours to solve their needs. Social prospecting means finding those people. The trick is to listen for keywords and phrases that tell you some-one is a good prospect for your business. For example, try listening for:

• People looking for a product recom-mendation• People talking about a product like yours• People talking about previous purchas-es from you• People complaining about your com-petitors

When you use social prospecting to find leads, you’re cutting through the noise on social media so you can focus exclusively on customers who have ex-pressed a need you can fill or a problem you can solve.

2. Join a Conversation Joining conversations on social me-dia is a logical next step after you find your potential prospects. Joining a con-

versation means making them aware of your business and demonstrating just what you can do for them. Your aim is to find conversations that are relevant to your business, and that you can make a valuable contribution to. When you contribute something useful to a conversation, customers will remem-ber you when they’re ready to buy.

3. Involve Your Customers If you want to boost sales, you need to put the “social” in social media. Social selling is all about finding the right peo-ple and forming a good connection with them. One of the ways you can do that is by getting social with your prospects. Try engaging your customers by of-fering the chance to talk to your team one on one. When you involve your cus-tomers, you build a strong relationship. You’re no longer just another business; you’re a valued source of information, and someone they can talk and relate to.

4. Look for Problems to Solve Your customers are looking for prod-ucts or services that make their lives bet-ter. If you want to boost sales with so-cial selling, turn to social prospecting as a way of finding problems that you can solve. When you look for problems you can solve, you’re looking for people who will be inclined to buy a product like yours. They key is to listen for words and phrases relevant to what you do, so you can figure out who needs your help.

5. Build Hype for a New Product When you release a new product, naturally you want to encourage plenty of people to buy. Social media is a great tool for building some hype about your new product. For example, you can use tweets or Facebook statuses to give customers some intriguing hints of a new product to come. Or why not run a social media contest to give a handful of lucky win-ners their own brand new product to test and review? Use visual sites such as Instagram or Pinterest to share images of your upcom-ing product, or produce a short YouTube or Vine video. You can build intrigue by teasing some details, offering an exclu-sive sneak peak, or making a bold state-ment about what your new product can do for your customers.

6. Make Connections Social selling is all about connec-tions. Once you’ve found your prospects, focus on building a good connection

Tips & Tricks10 Ways to Increase Sales with Social Selling

By: John Foley, Jr.

John Foley, Jr. is CEO of interlinkONE. interlinkONE provides the ultimate tool for social media prospecting and selling, AwarenessHub. Aware-nessHub allows companies to prove the ROI of social media marketing and generate sales for their business-es. Learn more about John at John-FoleyJr.com, and AwarenessHub at AwarenessHub.com


23Fall 2016

with them. One aspect of that is joining conversations and making yourself use-ful. Another way to make a connection is simply showing an interest in your new contact. Making connections on social media is a simple formula:

A. Find the right peopleB.Make yourself knownC. Engage with them and show them some loveD. Add value to their lives

Once your customers know and like your brand, you can guide them towards a purchase.

7. Provide Something Useful Once you find the right people on so-cial media, adding value to their lives is a must. You need to give them reasons to stick around and pay attention to your brand, which is why you need useful con-tent. But how do you decide what useful content looks like for your customers? With social prospecting you can learn a lot about who your customers are, their demographics, their interest in your business, and what they would like to see from a business like yours. Armed with that knowledge, you can craft content that adds real value. Useful content should entertain, solve a problem, answer a question, or provide information that the customer has been looking for.

8. Manage Your Reputation Social media means a large num-ber of people are out there talking about businesses, including yours. When some-one is considering buying from you, the chances are they’ll ask around on social media and find out what other people are saying about you. That’s fantastic news if people are saying good things. But what happens if someone has a complaint about your business? It’s vital that you deal with complaints swiftly and professionally. Take complaints seriously. Talk openly with your customer and find out what they need from you to resolve the issue. If you do this, prospects will see that you’re professional and you care about your customers. The right approach can

even turn negatives into positives when a customer who had an issue talks about how quickly you solved it for them.

9. Encourage Referrals People enjoy getting referrals from reviewers they trust. Someone who’s in the market for a new product or service is likely to ask their friends, family, or colleagues in the hope of getting tips and opinions. Referrals have the trust fac-tor, too. When people recommend your business to others, that recommenda-tion comes with an endorsement of your products and services. To make the most of this trust fac-tor and drum up more leads for your business, encourage your customers to be your brand ambassadors. Doing this can be as simple as asking them to like or share your content. You should also

thank customers for positive comments. You can also encourage referrals by offering loyal customers a first look or chance to review your products or ser-vices, and encouraging them to share the news with their contacts, or offering re-wards for spreading the word.

10. Manage the Buying Cycle Social selling means finding the right people and reaching out to them in use-ful ways. But how can you turn that into helping your prospects move from show-ing an interest to making a purchase? The answer is by managing the buy-

ing cycle. By paying attention to what you learn from social prospecting, you can ascertain where someone is in the buying cycle. For example, some customers will be ideal targets for you, but might not have expressed a specific wish to buy. For those people, you will want to make them aware of your business and be on hand to answer any questions if they come up. If you start hearing phrases such as “can anyone recommend” or “I’m wondering if this product is right for me,” you know that person is looking to buy. Once you’ve pinpointed where in the buying cycle a customer is, the next step is to tailor your content to match where they are. For example, a new customer might want some general information. A customer looking for a specific product will require more focused and special-

ized content. By targeting your content to the buy-ing cycle, you make sure that what cus-tomers see is relevant to them. It’s all part of showing them that you understand their needs and are worth their time. Finding strong leads and encourag-ing those people to buy is the name of the game. Social media gives you access to invaluable information about who needs your products or services and who is ready to buy. Mine social media for that information and you will increase sales for your business. �

How. Social. Works.SocialToolsSummit.com

San JoseOctober 26, 2016

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