by Fronetics | Jun 21, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Try these tips to attract potential customers to follow your business on LinkedIn.
This is part three of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B businesses. Check out part one, LinkedIn for B2B: Getting Started, and part two, How to Hire Talent through LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a goldmine for organizations looking to build professional relationships and generate more quality leads. The 433+ million member base presents an enormous opportunity for your company to earn new business. But once you set up your company page, how can you start attracting those members to follow you? We’ve got 10 steps to get you started.
Keep in mind: Attracting followers can work like a domino effect — if you find the right people, that is. When you form an authentic LinkedIn relationship with someone, someone who is genuinely interested in your business and the content you distribute, that person is more likely to like, comment on, or share your updates. Then that person’s network will see that s/he engaged with your business. Not only does this provide exposure for your company, but also offers an endorsement of sorts. It encourages other people in your followers’ networks to follow you as well.
10 steps to attract LinkedIn followers
1) Entrust your colleagues.
Send around a company-wide email encouraging your employees to add your company to their LinkedIn profiles. When they do, your company name and logo show up on their profiles. Additionally, they automatically become followers of your company page and will receive your updates. If you can encourage them to like, share, and comment on your content, even better.
2) Tell your customers and partners.
Follow your customers and business partners on LinkedIn to prompt them to do the same for you. You can also let them know that you have a company page by including it in customer newsletters, your email signature, or other regular communications with them. Engage with their content on LinkedIn to stay top of mind and to get your business’ name in front of their followers as well.
3) Follow your competitors.
Get insight into what the competition is up to and how they are interacting with their followers. Make sure to like and comment on their content since their networks will see this activity (and, thus, your business’ name). You may even go further by following some of their customers and partners — you never know where a new business relationship might start!
4) Add a follow button to your website, social accounts, and content.
Don’t forget to add LinkedIn to your follow buttons on your website, blog, and other social media profiles. You can also add it to the share widgets on your content assets, like blog posts, emails, and landing pages. Doing so provides potential followers with an easy way to locate your company page or to share your content with their networks.
5) Write a blog post about it.
Announce the launch of your company page with a celebratory blog post. Enrich your post with keywords that resonate with your target audience, so potential customers searching the Internet might come across it and want to connect with you. Make sure to share the post through your other social media channels to encourage your followers there to find you on LinkedIn as well.
6) Join group discussions.
LinkedIn groups facilitate conversations about popular issues and hot topics in your industry. Though company pages cannot participate, individual employees partaking in the discussion represent their companies. (In fact, your company name is displayed under the employee’s name when they start a discussion.) Encourage your executives and other company leaders to find and join groups that relate to your business and to actively participate in dialogue. They can also share company updates or blog posts in these forums. Other group members will recognize their expertise and form a favorable opinion of the company — perhaps favorable enough to follow it.
7) Post regular content.
Keep yourself in your followers’ eyes by posting content at least several times a week. Keep in mind it doesn’t have to be all original content. In fact, it’s a smart idea to mix it up and share articles and posts by others that you find interesting. Users who come across your company page will recognize you as a source for frequent, relevant information, and will want to follow you to stay in the know.
8) Like, share, and comment on others’ content.
The more you interact with different members’ content, the more brand exposure you’ll get. Remember, the connections in members’ networks see details of your interaction in their newsfeeds. The more you interact with different people, the larger your reach.
9) Follow industry news and post on LinkedIn Pulse.
Keep up to date with the latest happenings and topics of conversation in your industry on LinkedIn Pulse. It’s a great way to gain inspiration for content. And posting to Pulse is an excellent way to attract followers. Millions of people browse and engage with Pulse conversations every day, so publishing can offer great exposure for your business.
10) Strategically utilize sponsored updates.
Your content can reach users outside of your company page’s followers and visitors through sponsored updates. The Campaign Manager tool will insert particular posts into a targeted audience’s LinkedIn newsfeeds. You just set your budget and choose cost-per-click or cost-per-1,000 impressions, and voilà! While few companies have the budgets for daily sponsored updates, these campaigns can be really effective at attracting followers when you have particularly compelling content to share.
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by Fronetics | Jun 20, 2016 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Source: Microsoft
The $26.2-billion acquisition could result in the customer-targeting solution(s) B2B marketers have been waiting for.
Microsoft announced on June 13 that it would purchase LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, a deal set to close by the end of 2016. Though LinkedIn will operate “as a fully independent entity within Microsoft,” the union will strengthen their shared mission to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
Both Sadya Nadella and Jeff Weiner’s letters to their employees beam with excitement over the possibilities for product synergies. “Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world,” writes Nadella. “It requires a vibrant network that brings together a professional’s information in LinkedIn’s public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics.”
Obvious opportunity lies in enhancing Microsoft’s existing solutions to improve user experience. For example, videos from Lynda.com, a website for training videos that LinkedIn bought in 2015, could be accessible throughout the Office suite, such as an Excel document.
But for B2B marketers, the most exciting possibilities involve “new opportunities … for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising,” as Nadella puts it.
New opportunities for monetization
Jenny Sussin, a Gartner research director, proposes that LinkedIn’s value to Microsoft lies in its algorithms and user data. Successful integration into Microsoft’s existing products could be a game-changer for the B2B sphere, in terms of targeting customers.
First let’s consider the algorithms, two of which Sussin claims were the main attraction for Microsoft. “No. 1 was the algorithm that creates the connection graph, the social networking graph,” she says. “No. 2 was the algorithm that determines the information most valuable and most actionable to you.” Essentially, with this acquisition, Microsoft has the ability to map how professionals are connected and determine what content is most relevant to each individual user.
Secondly, LinkedIn has the most comprehensive, up-to-date personal data about its 433+ million global users of any professional network. And that data has not been available to other companies — LinkedIn even refused access to Google for ad sales — until now. The value of this information to any B2B organization is indisputable.
Now consider that there are 1.2 billion users of Office and 4.4 million users of Dynamics CRM. Microsoft can now combine the information it knows about those professionals with LinkedIn’s user data, map their relationships, and offer customized content within these products. Imagine being able to reach your target customer within the very tools s/he uses most every day.
And those are just two of Microsoft’s products. Skype, Yammer, MSN: there is no shortage of targeted advertising opportunities.
Taking on Google?
Perhaps the most exciting of these secondary properties for B2B marketers is Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Bing Ads are attractive to marketers because of the low cost per conversion. The problem, of course, is volume, as Google dominates the market share.
But with LinkedIn’s data and algorithms, Bing could become “what search is sorely lacking today for B2B targeting,” says Marketing Mojo CEO Janet Driscoll Miller.
“Search marketing is great for determining intent — for understanding what a person wants,” Miller explains. “But social media platforms, like LinkedIn, tell us who the person is. Marrying the two pieces of data — who and what — brings us to the sweet spot of marketing and targeting an ideal audience. LinkedIn provides us with demographic targeting based on business and professional user information.”
Targeting could include factors like company size (e.g., spending capabilities), so marketers would not waste impression dollars advertising products that are far beyond the buyer’s price point. Fold in other LinkedIn solutions, like Lead Accelerator, to improve retargeting, and Bing Ads could really compete.
Google may have a leg up in terms of search volume, but without detailed data on users’ professional demographics, Bing could corner the market as the most effective B2B ad targeting platform.
Cause for caution
While the marriage of LinkedIn and Microsoft’s capabilities shows great promise, hold off on celebrating just yet.
Part of LinkedIn’s value to Microsoft derives from user-provided information. And part of Microsoft’s value to B2B marketers lies in its products’ ubiquity. But what if people stopped contributing their personal details to LinkedIn because of the way it was being used across the Microsoft suite? And what if businesses stopped using Microsoft products over privacy or data security concerns?
Here’s why those are both real concerns: Nadella suggests that your LinkedIn newsfeed could show relevant articles based on the projects you’re working on offline. Taking information from my desktop?! That’s problematic from both a personal and proprietary standpoint. Issues around invasion of privacy and the breech of secure business information could present major roadblocks to success.
How would you feel if a software product you researched yesterday appeared in your Outlook today? If, while preparing a PowerPoint for a client meeting, a pop-up suggested you contact a connection in your LinkedIn network who is an expert on the topic? With the deal projected to close before the end of the year, users reactions to these concerns over the next few months could be telling.
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by Fronetics | Jun 13, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Talent
This is part two of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B businesses. See part one, LinkedIn for B2B: Getting Started, and part three, 10 Ways to Gain LinkedIn Followers.
Use these tools to help you hire talent through LinkedIn.
LinkedIn offers immeasurable opportunity for recruiting premium talent. But how do you begin weeding through the network’s more-than-433-million candidates?
Here are some techniques — both free and fee-based — on using LinkedIn to find professionals who match your company’s open positions.
Organic methods (free)
Share the job in an update
Just as you would share other content, click “Share an update” on the company page Home tab. If you only want a specific audience to see your post, click the “Share with” menu bar just below the update box, and then click “Targeted audience” to define. You can include a link to the job description on your company website or direct applicants to more information on how to apply.
If you have posted a job through the LinkedIn Jobs feature, go to the job page and click the share arrow next to the job title to share as an update.
(Note: You must be a page administrator to share updates on your company page.)
Have your employees share your opening
Encourage your employees to post the news of the open position to spread the word. Jobs that employees share get 30% more applications!
Remember employees are your best brand ambassadors, and sharing the job with their networks also works as an endorsement for your company — it’s like they are saying, “This is a great place to work!”
Make it easy for them by detailing three ways to share:
- Share the LinkedIn job post. If you have posted the job through the LinkedIn Post Jobs feature, individuals can share it with their networks (on LinkedIn and elsewhere) by clicking the share arrow next to the job title on the job page.
- Share your company update about the opening. Employees can locate the company update about the job opening by navigating to your company page and scanning through your newsfeed. Once located, click “Share” at the bottom. Your company name and a link to your company page will appear prominently at the top of their share.
- Share the link to the page on your website with the job description/application. Users can copy and paste the link into the “Share an update” box on the LinkedIn homepage, or use the social share icons (if available) on your website to post it to their newsfeeds.
Mine Group discussions
LinkedIn’s Groups offer a forum for like-minded professionals to discuss current events, industry trends, and other topics related to work life. If you actively participate in these conversations, certain users may have made an impression on you through their insights or informed opinions. You may have even thought that your company could benefit from that person’s knowledge and experience. That’s because Groups are a great source for mining talent.
Say, for example, you notice someone offering an intelligent perspective on emerging technologies in a data warehousing group discussion. It reminds you of an open position with your company. You can use the discussion to further engage with that person about the topic to gain a better understanding of his/her knowledge. And then you can view the user’s profile to learn more about related experience. Connecting with the person will give you further insight into his/her professional interests — and it will allow you to send an InMail with information about the potential fit within your company.
Conduct a good, old-fashioned search
While searching by skills is no longer free, you can still conduct an “Advanced People Search.” Click on “Advanced” next to the Search box above the navigation bar at the top of the site. This allows you to search by location, current and past company, industry, school, title, language, and keywords (e.g., finance, strategy, accounting).
Create a recruitment-focused showcase page
Users who are interested in working for your company can follow this showcase page specifically to keep abreast of opportunities that match their interests. Keep them engaged by sharing company updates related to job openings, company culture, and employee testimonials.
Paid methods
Career Pages
One of the four tabs on your company page, the career page facilitates your interaction with job seekers. This is your employer brand hub, where users will go when they view your jobs or want to learn more about working for your company. You can feature your LinkedIn Job Posts, multimedia (like a video or SlideShare), and employee testimonials. What’s more, you can create dynamic content so that visitors to your page receive personalized messaging and job recommendations based on their location, industry, function, and more.
If you’ve purchased a Silver or Gold Career Page, featured jobs will be displayed on a Careers tab and they will be targeted to the viewer based on relevance to their LinkedIn profile. This is similar to job targeting on the LinkedIn Jobs page, but it only displays jobs at your company.
Learn more about optimizing your LinkedIn company page with our Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page.
Post Jobs
If your company only has the occasional opening to fill, Post Jobs may be your best option. Individual users can purchase 30-day job postings and then link them to a company page.
Here’s how it works: You create a job posting, making sure to select the correct company name from the dropdown menu. The company logo and link to the company page will be included in the post, and it will appear on the list of jobs on the company page. LinkedIn will automatically advertise your job posting to LinkedIn members with profiles that match, even if they aren’t active job seekers.
With your job post, you also get:
- A curated list of members who could be a fit for your hiring needs
- 5 free InMails to reach out to prospective candidates
- Management tools to filter, tag, and share candidates with your team
- Insights to see how your job posting is performing
Job Slots
Ideal for those with frequently open positions or multiple roles to fill, Job Slots are essentially recurring job posts with additional benefits. LinkedIn will automatically recommend job posts to candidates who match your open positions. And you’ll have access to management tools to review and filter candidates, take notes, and send InMail. Additionally, you can take advantage of the Feature Jobs on the homepage and on your company’s Career Page.
With Job Slots, you can also:
- Attract passive candidates via Jobs You May Be Interested In
- Receive a Suggested Professionals curated list
- Optimize your job posts with detailed analytics
- Build your employer brand with Career Page integration
- Improve applicants’ mobile experience with distribution through the LinkedIn Job Search app
LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter is the premium talent-recruitment subscription, ideal for large companies that hire for multiple positions year round. Firstly, it gives you access to the names and profiles of all 433+ million LinkedIn users. You can also send anyone messages through InMail, and you can take advantage of custom templates for candidate communications.
Recruiter allows you to use 20+ additional filters (years of experience, seniority, function, etc.) when searching for candidates. And the “Find more people like” feature lets you search for people similar to candidates you already like. You can also save searches and have LinkedIn notify you when someone new meets your qualifications.
Additionally, the Talent Pipeline Management tool lets you build, track, and manage talent searches and hiring with folders, reminders and smart to-do lists. You can also streamline your workflow and team activities with shared projects, searches, profiles, and applicant notes.
Recruiter Lite
Recruiter Lite is a more streamlined version of Recruiter, suited for individual recruiters and hiring managers. You get:
- Unlimited visibility of your 3rd-degree network
- 10 advanced search filters
- Saved searches
- 30 InMails/months
- InMail templates
- Access to the Projects function
Work with Us Ads
Works with Us Ads dramatically outperform typical banner ads, with up to 50 times higher clickthrough rate. How? Location.
Essentially, Work with Us Ads allow you to own all of the ad space on your employee’s profiles and your company pages. LinkedIn will display your open jobs that are relevant to each particular visitor. You can have the ad drive clickthroughs to your jobs, career page, or your website.
Referrals
Referral recommendations match your employees’ first degree connections to the open roles in your applicant tracking system. It suggests connections for the right open roles, helps your employees share jobs, and keeps them up to date through the entire hiring process.
Which tools do you use to hire talent through LinkedIn, and which do you find are the most effective for your business?
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by Fronetics | Jun 8, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
This is part one of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B. See part two, How to Hire Talent through LinkedIn, and part three, 10 Ways to Gain LinkedIn Followers.
LinkedIn is the most popular social network for B2B companies. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
Chances are your business is on LinkedIn. B2B companies overwhelmingly report it as the most important social network to their business. But there’s a big difference between being on LinkedIn and being active on LinkedIn — and the latter can have a big impact on your bottom line.
LinkedIn has grown to be much more than a professional networking site. Leveraging all of its functions can help you generate leads, recruit premium talent, and establish your business as a trusted source of knowledge in your industry.
Here is a basic overview of LinkedIn for those businesses who are looking to optimize their presence on this most popular B2B social networking platform.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site with more than 433 million users in over 200 countries. It was launched in 2003, and was purchased by Microsoft in June 2016.
Individual users can create profiles highlighting their skills and employment history and “connect” with others. They can also:
- Search and apply for jobs
- Ask for introductions to people in their contacts’ networks (called second- and third-degree connections)
- Endorse connections for their skills and write them recommendations
- Follow companies and Influencers to receive updates on their activities
- See who has viewed their profile
- Share content and updates
- Like, comment on, and share other users’ content and updates
- Send private messages to other users
LinkedIn is free to join, but there are also several subscription options for job seekers, recruiters, marketers, and sellers that offer premium benefits and solutions.
LinkedIn for B2B employers
Businesses can create profiles on LinkedIn, as well as share content, make connections, and see analytics detailing who engages with their company. Getting set up is a little different from creating an individual profile, however. Here’s what you need to know.
The company page
Employers can create a company page. Company pages have four main sections.
- Home: displays the business overview, updates/shared content, friends and colleagues connected to the business, Showcase pages, and links to other affiliated company pages
- Careers (paid subscription required): facilitates interactions with job seekers
- Analytics: provides metrics and identifies trends on your updates, followers, and visitors
- Notifications: offers a daily overview of the updates and page performance
For tips on optimizing your company page, check out our free resource, A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page.
Gaining followers
Once a business has a company page, employees can add it to their personal profiles, indicating that they work there (or have in the past). By doing so, they automatically become followers of the company and will receive its updates in their newsfeeds. When they follow the business or like, comment on, or share its content, all of their followers see this action, motivating others to do the same.
Users can also find and follow your company by typing in the business name in the search box at the top of the website.
Companies can help attract their target audience to follow them by using Follow Ads. Follow Ads appear throughout LinkedIn and can be targeted to users in specific industries, companies, and regions. They invite users to click the “Follow” button and join your page. Here is what it looks like:
There are other types of ads designed to attract followers and drive users to your company page. Learn more on LinkedIn Ads.
Other features to know
Groups
Groups connect users from across LinkedIn with common interests and provide forums for related discussion. While company pages cannot join groups or participate in group discussions, individual members can share your company content in these forums. Your employees who launch, administer, and participate in groups related to your business or industry can help get your business name and content in front of like-minded professionals this way.
If you manage a group related to your business or industry, you can also feature it on your company page — up to three groups per company page or two groups per showcase page. Note that you would have to be the company page administrator and a member of the group you would like to add.
Showcase pages
Showcase pages are subunits of a company page that highlight a brand, business unit, or initiative within your business. If you have multiple business units, for example, users can choose to follow the showcase pages of just those that interest them. Your business can tailor the content and messages you share on each showcase page to better engage the demographic specific to that segment. The idea is to help businesses segment their audiences so they can build long-term relationships through content distribution. Read more about showcase pages.
LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn Pulse is the network’s publishing platform. Users can write blog posts to publish on Pulse by choosing “Pulse” under the “Interests” dropdown menu, or by choosing “Publish a post” from the homepage. There’s no limit on word count, and you can upload rich media like photos, videos, tweets, podcasts, and presentations to supplement your post.
Posts published to Pulse are search-engine friendly, and authors’ networks receive notification when they publish. While you can’t post on Pulse as a company page, you can post content from employee authors on your company page.
Influencers
Launched in 2012, the Influencers program encompasses less than 1,000 of the world’s top business leaders, thinkers, and innovators who contribute regular content on Pulse. Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, and Richard Branson are a few examples. A team of LinkedIn editors select Influencers and work with them to create content around issues and topics on which they can provide a unique perspective as leaders in their industries and geographies.
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by Fronetics | Jun 7, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
A cross-departmental social strategy can help facilitate company collaboration.
In your company, social media should be everybody’s business. It is time for your social strategy to include broader collaboration, breaking down your company’s silos. Here is why:
Though marketing departments like to keep tight control over access to social media, doing this can cost you. Such isolation can impact:
- Brand awareness
- The quality and diversity of your content
- Overall customer engagement on social media
- Customer satisfaction and trust
- Insight into industry trends, so you stay ahead of the competition
The truth is, social media is bigger than just the marketing department. It can help gain insight into what customers need, generate sales leads, answer questions, and distribute valuable information to consumers. It impacts many different aspects of your business, so it makes sense to tap into departmental intelligence throughout the company.
Allowing access to the right people, across multiple departments, could actually facilitate the ultimate company collaboration. Your business can realize the full potential of social media use, and your customers get better service.
Tearing Down the Silos
Often a company has several silos in place: sales, customer service, new product development, and marketing are just a few examples. Historically these departments do not work together, and the sharing of information is rare.
But the digital age has changed the way business is conducted. Consumers are not only buying online, they are researching before they buy and asking questions about products or services through social media channels. In fact, one study found that social media is asserting itself as the primary customer communication channel.
Response time is also a factor to consider. One Harvard Business Review report found that the number of customers who expect a response through social media has doubled since 2013, yet seven out of eight messages to companies go unanswered for 72 hours. Why? Because the marketing department often needs to obtain answers from other departments in order to respond.
If you are ready to tear down those company silos, here is how you begin:
- Define goals and identify who will be on your new social media team. Who is knowledgeable, articulate, and can handle social media needs within each department?
- Assign social responsibilities to key individuals throughout your company, perhaps one assigned person per department. This can be effective and make one-on-one customer engagement manageable.
- Clearly define the roles and responsibilities for customer service, public relations, marketing, sales, management, etc.
- Marketing professionals are not typically trained to answer questions or complaints about service or product issues. Since the customer service department may need to handle several questions through social media channels, consider assigning more than one person within this department to provide a timely response.
- Tap into knowledge from all departments to generate ideas, information, and data for informative, fresh content creation.
- Keep your brand voice consistent by crafting guidelines for the style and tone for all social media interactions. Compiling a list of dos and don’ts is always helpful so everyone knows how to respond in difficult situations.
Today’s consumers are on social media and ready to engage. The question is, do you have a cross-departmental team ready to respond quickly and work collaboratively to meet their needs?
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by Fronetics | Jun 1, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Improve the reach of your videos with these distribution strategies.
This is part three of a three-part series of creating videos for YouTube for businesses. Check out part one, YouTube for Business 101, and part two, Cheap and Easy Tools for Creating YouTube Videos.
If you have put the resources into creating videos for your business, you absolutely want as many people to view them as possible. Hosting them on your YouTube channel is an excellent start. But you can do more to ensure your videos attain their maximum reach.
Here are seven ways to share video content from your YouTube page.
1) Optimize your YouTube channel.
After you have uploaded a video to your YouTube channel, make sure your viewers can easily find and watch it. There are a few ways to do this.
Add it to a playlist.
Consider YouTube playlists like chapters of a book. They help your audience understand what your channel is about and navigate to the content that interests them. Playlists also represent a marketing and branding opportunity for you. For example, Southwest Airlines’ Fee Hacker Tips playlist includes humorous, 15-second clips on how to save money when flying other airlines. Or the Late Late Show with James Corden has a dedicated playlist for its popular Carpool Karaoke segment.
Here’s how to create a playlist. Once you’re done, make sure to add a description of the playlist to give your viewers an idea what it is about.
Use it as the channel trailer.
You can choose to have a video trailer play when a user visits your channel. Much like a movie trailer, this video will give visitors an idea of what your channel — and, thus, your business — is about and will entice them to subscribe. Lonely Planet, for example, uses their beautiful Best Places to Travel in 2016 video as an introduction to their content.
Here’s how to set your video as the channel trailer. You can also choose to have the channel trailer play only when an unsubscribed user visits your page.
Create channel sections.
Channel sections are like building blocks: They allow you to custom build your channel’s layout. You can create a section of particular videos, the most recently uploaded videos, a playlist (or playlists), and more, and then reorder the sections to best highlight the content you want to promote. Your channel can have up to 10 sections.
Here’s how to organize content using channel sections.
2) Embed in your blog posts.
Once your video is on YouTube, it is super easy to share and embed in places like your blog posts. That means the reader won’t have to navigate to YouTube from your post to watch the video: It will play right in your post. To get the embed link, click on the video you would like to use. At the bottom of the video, click “Share,” and then “Embed.” You can choose the player size, as well as other things like what plays after the video is done. YouTube will generate a customized embed code based on your preferences, which you can add to your blog post.
3) Post it to your Facebook timeline.
The number of videos uploaded to Facebook increased by 94% from 2014 to 2015, with more than 50% of Americans who use Facebook daily viewing at least one video per day. What’s more, 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook. This makes having video content on your page almost a must-do.
You can post your YouTube video to your Facebook timeline by clicking the share button and choosing the Facebook icon under the video on your channel. Note that you can also upload a video directly to Facebook by clicking “Add photos/videos” at the top of your newsfeed. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches. Viewer activity on your video embedded from YouTube is included in your YouTube analytics. Uploading directly to Facebook means you will have to analyze your YouTube metrics as well as your Facebook video metrics to get an idea of how your video is performing overall. On the other hand, native Facebook videos have twice as much organic reach as YouTube embeds.
4) Add a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.
Drive viewers of your Facebook page directly to your video by creating a call-to-action button on your cover photo. To add, go to your page’s cover photo and click “Create Call to Action.” (Note: not everyone has this feature yet.) There are several options, including “Watch Video.” Action camera manufacturer GoPro makes use of this button, which leads to its YouTube channel feed on the GroPro site.
5) Use a Twitter Payer Card
Don’t just tweet about your video — actually tweet it! Twitter Cards allow you to attach photos, videos, and media experience to tweets that drive traffic to your website. Ensure your the actual video populates in your followers’ Twitter feed (instead of just a link to the video) with a Player Card. Here’s an example of what it looks like:
6) Give a sneak peek on Vine or Instagram.
Users can share short video clips on Vine (6 seconds) and Instagram (60 seconds). Though the videos you produce for YouTube will likely be longer, you can offer a sneak peek of the more robust content through these social platforms. You’ll reach a wider audience, and probably a younger demographic as well.This is important, keeping in mind that the B2B buyer profile is getting younger, too.
7) Pin it.
Pinterest is another social platform many B2B companies have yet to tackle. But with 100 million active users, there is a lot of untapped potential there. “People are planning out really core and important parts of their lives on Pinterest,” says Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. That includes career and professional endeavors.
You can embed YouTube videos directly onto Pinterest. Just click the “Share” button under the video on your channel.
Another thing to consider: Pinterest boards rank in Google searches. Create some boards around keywords you would like to rank for, post relevant content (like videos) that you’ve created, and watch SEO and the reach of your content improve.
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