5 KEYS TO CREATING AWESOME CONTENT FOR SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS

Transcription

1 5 KEYS TO CREATING AWESOME CONTENT FOR SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS

2 PRESENTED BY Satisfying the consumer s need for useful content requires an authentic, organic, and dedicated voice that leverages the reputations and experience of people your customers trust. A key source of that consumer content comes from social influencers, those with loyal audiences on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and Vine. Find the influencers and social media personalities who fit your marketing objectives and help create stronger relationships with your customers. Share this: Holly Hamann Co-founder & CMO Amanda Sibley Co-marketing Manager Holly Hamann is the co-founder and CMO of TapInfluence. She has helped launch six web-based startups in the social, music, video, and entertainment spaces. She is a public speaker, Board member of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, and American Marketing Association Marketer of the Year recipient. Amanda Sibley manages the co-marketing team at HubSpot, where she works with large and small companies to create co-branded campaigns to satisfy a mutual goal. Partner companies range from social media networks and search engines, to experts in marketing and sales industries. 2

3 CONTENTS Why Social Content Should be a Key Part of Your Marketing Influencers are Powerful Partners for Building Social Content Key #1: Getting Social-Ready: Where is Your Audience and What do They Need? Key #2: Setting Goals Key #3: Identifying Social Influencers Key #4: Getting the Most Out of Your Content Key #5: Measuring the Right Way Next Steps to Using Influencers to Create Social Content pg 4 pg 5 pg 7 pg 9 pg 10 pg 11 pg 12 pg 14 3

4 WHY SOCIAL CONTENT SHOULD BE A KEY PART OF YOUR MARKETING 80% of people check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up Consumers are getting a constant feed of digital content, while brands need help standing out. To be successful, you need to reach consumers via a trusted source and add value to their lives. But, at the same time, you don t want to disrupt them by trying to sell something. The solution is social content, which is one of the best ways to engage your audience and capture their attention. Done well, social content has four big benefits over other content: VISUAL It s creative and catches consumers attention. VISCERAL It evokes emotion and creates a connection with the consumer and, ultimately, affinity for your brand. VALUABLE It tells your brand story with a personal context, so it adds value to your customer s life. VIRAL It s more naturally distributed via person to person across all social channels. 4

5 INFLUENCERS ARE POWERFUL PARTNERS FOR BUILDING SOCIAL CONTENT On average, people check their phones 110x per day One of the most effective ways to build trust and engagement with your audience is collaborating with key influencers to create relevant, quality content. Some key reasons why influencers make powerful partners include: They have the trust of their audience. They reach and engage a very targeted audience. They represent an authentic consumer experience. They sometimes have bigger reach than brands themselves. They are an army of content creators that are better, faster, and cheaper than what brands can do themselves. Their content is already shareable. Influencers have some distinct advantages that are difficult for brands to replicate, including large communities of followers, consumers trust, authentic personal experience, and social network expertise. Social influencers are effective at starting, sharing, and spreading online conversations, which is incredibly valuable to brands. When it comes to consumer spending, online content and social conversations have a significant impact on how consumers choose what to buy. While product information and brand-crafted messaging is valuable, consumers want information that comes from like-minded people they trust. Content from third-party experts and their personal networks is often more trusted than content from advertising or brand websites. 5

6 In this ebook, you ll find best practices from industry leaders HubSpot and TapInfluence for creating effective social content and ways to make influencer marketing a key part of your content strategy. We ll dig into five aspects of using content and collaborating with influencers including: Getting social-ready: where is your audience and what do they need? Importance of setting goals for your content and campaigns Identifying the right social influencers for your brand Making the most of your content so you get the best return Measuring your content s success (including how to track metrics that are normally assumed to be unmeasurable) The device is no longer a phone. It s become a personal extension of being. Adam Kmiec Senior Director of Social Media & Content Walgreens 6

7 KEY #1: GETTING SOCIAL-READY: WHERE IS YOUR AUDIENCE & WHAT DO THEY NEED? 3 Keys to Building an Effective Social Content Strategy: 1. Know Your Audience 2. Set Clear Goals 3. Define How You Will Measure Success Before you start creating social content, you need to know which platforms are important to your consumers and customize content appropriately. You can do this via A/B testing or other testing methodologies. FOCUS ON THE MOST IMPORTANT PLATFORMS FIRST According to research, Twitter is where most consumers go to complain. If you sell a consumer product, Twitter is a good platform to focus on first before embracing platforms like Pinterest or Facebook. CUSTOMIZE CONTENT TO THE PLATFORM BASED ON HOW CONSUMERS USE IT By matching the type of content you create to how consumers use each platform, you ll get better results and higher engagement. Here are some examples from our research: Consumers use Pinterest to kill time, explore, and get ideas for projects and recipes. Therefore, content for Pinterest should be creative, very visual, and entertaining. If consumers want an expert opinion, product recommendation, or a discount, they visit Pinterest and blogs. Content that focuses on helping consumers make buying decisions can work well on these platforms. Blogs and Facebook are the platforms people use to enter sweepstakes and contests. If you plan to do a giveaway, consider tying it into other content you re promoting on those platforms. 7

8 CONSUMER BEHAVIOR BY SOCIAL PLATFORM 8

9 KEY #2: SETTING GOALS What Do Influencers Have that Brands Don t? Trust Authentic consumer experience Bigger reach Better, faster, cheaper way to produce content Ability to share content with their targeted audience Setting goals is a must! If you re not sure where to get started, goals help you formulate a plan. They also help you hone in on the most important activities for realizing your objectives. Consider these two major themes for your goals: MAKE SURE EVERY PIECE OF CONTENT YOU CREATE ADDS VALUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE Determine your consumers needs and create content that helps them solve pain points and problems. Formulate an appropriate mix of short and long form content based on how you can solve your audience s problems. Create content tools that help your audience do their jobs better. SET GOALS FOR CRITICAL METRICS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO YOUR BUSINESS Measure and report on them regularly so you can gauge what s working. Increasing your reach is a good goal, but also think beyond it to other specific goals such as: Leads generated for your sales team Driving traffic to a branded site or social channels Getting more followers Capturing addresses Increasing sales and growing your customer base Building relationships with influencers and content creators 9

10 KEY #3: IDENTIFYING SOCIAL INFLUENCES 9 Questions to Determine if an Influencer is a Good Fit: 1. Is their content relevant to your brand? 2. Do they post frequently? 3. Do they have audience data? 4. Is their content high-quality? 5. Do they have high audience engagement? 6. Are they professional? 7. Do they have the ability and desire to build a relationship? 8. Do they have clear expectations, and do they understand your objectives? 9. Do you have similar compensation objectives? As discussed, one of the key ways to reach your goals is by creating content that your audience finds valuable. But, first, you ll need to identify content creators to develop it. You have three possibilities for finding them: Identifying internal people to create content Curating it from external sources Collaborating with trusted third parties, such as influencers Out of these options, the most powerful is using influencers to create content. When working with influencers, follow these seven guidelines to build collaborative, positive relationships: Let them tell authentic stories Think of them as partners Showcase their content on various platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or YouTube Give proper influencer attribution Clearly explain the actions you want your audience to take Be always on by working with influencers throughout the year, rather than focusing your efforts only on holidays or other one-off dates Increase value (and exposure) of their content by using it in ebooks, blog posts, webinars, marketing, advertising, and case studies 10

11 KEY #4: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR CONTENT Get the most out of your content by getting it in front of the right people. After working so hard to create content, you want to realize a positive return from it. The key to getting the most out of your content is getting it in front of the right people. In other words, build content that solves a problem for a specific audience segment and then promote it using the platforms and channels they prefer. Use these best practices to get started: ENCOURAGE CONTENT SHARING by using social media sharing buttons whenever possible, such as at the top of blog posts. INCLUDE LINKS TO YOUR CONTENT when you post on social media. This is the key to getting clicks on your website, which can turn into leads, and, eventually, customers. Use unique tracking on each link to determine which content performs best. KEEP MOBILE IN MIND 78% of Facebook users use a mobile device to read posts. Be sure your content displays correctly on mobile devices by using your mobile phone to check formatting and links. If you re linking to a web page within your post, be sure it s also formatted correctly for mobile. OPTIMIZE CONTENT FOR EACH PLATFORM by ensuring it s appropriate for the platform s audience and focus. For example, content that helps working professionals balance their jobs and personal lives might perform better on LinkedIn than Facebook. BE AWARE OF EACH PLATFORM S IMAGE DIMENSIONS as they vary widely. Images optimized for Twitter will look different when posted on Facebook. For a list of graphic dimensions for social media platforms, get HubSpot s infographic: The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Image Dimensions. 11

12 KEY #5: MEASURING THE RIGHT WAY Don t let getting more followers and likes be your only goal when it comes to measurement. After you ve partnered with influencers and created great content, it s important to measure outcomes and quantify the impact on your business. Getting more followers and likes are great, but don t let it be your only goal. With an analytics dashboard, you can quantify key metrics that are often assumed to be unmeasurable such as content reach and Total Media Value. Measuring the success of your influencer marketing drives smart decision-making so you can optimize future social content efforts. Outcomes to track and measure include: Content reach (individual and total for all influencers) Content views Content engagement (such as likes, tweets, comments, pins, and shares) Total Media Value of content (your real dollar return on influencer investment) Influencer rankings by reach, views, and engagements 12

13 THE IMPORTANCE OF MEASURING Image #1 - TapInfluence Analytics Dashboard: Reach Image #2 - TapInfluence Analytics Dashboard: Views 13

14 NEXT STEPS TO USING INFLUENCERS TO CREATE SOCIAL CONTENT The key to creating successful content is to add value to consumers lives. By partnering with digital influencers, brands increase their ability to reach more consumers by exponentially scaling how quickly and broadly high-quality content gets shared. Marketers are beginning to identify key influencers in their industries and form trusted relationships that help them stay close to their consumers. Get started by following the five key strategies we discussed in this ebook including: Getting social-ready Setting goals Identify the right social influencers Making the most of your content Measuring success By harnessing the power of influencer marketing and using these best practices from HubSpot and TapInfluence, you ll engage consumers with high-value content that builds relationships, inspires trust, and furthers your business goals. 14

15 NEXT STEP Want to learn more about how leading brands are influencing their audiences? A TapInfluence brand strategist can help you determine if influencers are a good fit for your content strategy. For more information on finding and utilizing sources for influencer marketing, connect with us online at or contact us directly at: info@tapinfluence.com (720) Share this ebook: 15

16 5 KEYS TO CREATING AWESOME CONTENT FOR SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS Share this ebook: