by Elizabeth Hines | Jul 19, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Social Media
This is part three of a three-part series on Twitter for B2B. See part one, Twitter for B2B, and part two, Tweet This: 20 Ideas for Twitter Content for the Supply Chain.
Leverage insights from Twitter’s analytics dashboard to improve audience engagement, reach, and content development.
Twitter is among the most popular social media platforms for companies in the logistics and supply chain industries. In fact, 95% report that Twitter is somewhat or very impactful on business. Yet 81% say that information on tracking and measuring ROI would be helpful to their business’ use of social media.
Fortunately, Twitter offers users a free tool that details how your tweets are performing and what your audience is interested in. In fact, Twitter Analytics can help you better understand your followers and refine your Twitter strategy to increase your engagement.
Here are the basic features of Twitter Analytics that you need to know.
Account home
Your account homepage offers a high-level overview of your Twitter activity in the last 28 days as compared to the previous period. This dashboard also provides information about your activity in the current month, including:
- Total tweets, impressions, profile visits, new followers, and mentions
- Your top follower, who has the most reach in your network each month
- Which tweet mentioning your name (“mention”) had the most engagement
Scroll down to see the same details for previous months.
Tweet activity
This dashboard provides metrics for each tweet in the last 28 days. You can see impressions, engagement, and engagement rate by tweet. Click on an individual tweet to get the details on engagement broken down by likes, link clicks, retweets, or replies. You can also see the day-by-day breakdown of total lkes, link clicks, retweets, and replies.
Audience insights
This is one of the most useful dashboards for insight on your followers, their behaviors, and interests. Smart marketers can use this information to better understand the kinds of content that resonates best with their audience.
The dashboard is broken down into 5 tabs:
1) Overview
See how your audience has grown over time, as well as gender breakdown, household income and net worth. Other features include:
- Interests (e.g., technology, politics, financial news, etc.)
- Consumer buying style (e.g., premium brands, gluten-free, healthy living, etc.)
- Wireless carrier
2) Audience demographics
This tab tell you about:
- Gender
- Country and region
- Language
- Household income, net worth, and home value
3) Lifestyle
Get insight into your followers regarding:
4) Consumer behavior
Learn about your followers’ buying styles:
- Aftermarket auto buyer type (including the last time they purchased a vehicle)
- Consumer buying style
- Consumer goods purchases
5) Mobile footprint
Discover information about your followers’ mobile behaviors:
- Wireless carrier
- Device categories (device type) and mobile/desktop breakdown
In addition to seeing this information for your followers, you can also filter by organic audience and the entire Twitter community to compare.
Events
Events gives you insights into how the Twitter community is discussing certain events or trends, like the Republican National Convention, Tour de France, Independence Day: Resurgence, or Throwback Thursday. Click on an event to learn about the audience that’s engaging in conversation about that topic.
Videos
The videos dashboard collects metrics on your video content. In addition to views, learn how long users are watching your videos and where users stop watching.
Twitter cards
Twitter cards allow you to include rich media in your tweets, and this dashboard helps you track how that content is being shared. You can view the following features:
- Snapshot: An overview of how your content is performing on Twitter
- Change over time
- Sources: The most popular platforms from which users send tweets linking to your content (e.g., TweetDeck, Twitter for iPhone)
- Best practices: Personalized tips for improving your content’s performance
Campaign dashboard
If you are using Twitter Ads, the campaign dashboard allows you to track the results of your ad campaigns. Check how your ads are performing in terms of:
- Impressions: This is how many times your ads have been seen by Twitter users.
- Results: These are the actions that are tied to your objectives. For example, if your goal is website visits, the results tracked will be link clicks.
- Engagement rate: This is the number of impressions for your ads, divided by the number of results.
- Cost per result: This is how much you’re paying, on average, for each relevant action people are taking from your ads.
You can see these results across all campaigns, or segmented by:
- Your different objectives: See the average results for your website clicks campaigns, or the average results for your followers’ campaigns.
- Individual campaigns: See how specific campaigns are performing against your goals.
- Individual tweets: See which combinations of copy and creative are contributing the most to your campaigns.
- Targeting criteria: See which of your targeted audiences are responding the most to your ads.
Other features
Conversion tracking
Set up conversion tracking to follow what happens after users view your ads. This way, when users click on one of your links, retweet, like, or simply see your tweet and then go to your site, you’ll know where they came from.
Get high-performing tweets in front of a larger audience with Quick promote. Choose your tweet; click “Promote;” target a location (worldwide, country, state/province/region or metro area); and select your budget.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 22, 2016 | Blog, Customer Service, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
Today’s customers expect value, quality, and speed. Focusing on how your can deliver on those promises is what will win you business.
Remember that great advice: focus on yourself, not on what others are doing. According to an article in Harvard Business Review, the greatest challenge your company faces today is not keeping up with your competitors, but keeping up with your customers’ expectations.
This is not to discount the importance of watching business trends and monitoring the competition. But, your primary focus should be on what your customers need and expect and if you are providing it.
What do customers expect?
In today’s digital age, your customers’ expectations wash away traditional boundaries. According to a report in The Economist Group, customers compare and contrast their digital experiences across all industries, even those that offer totally different products or services.
Do you stand out above the crowd? Ask yourself this:
- Do you offer value, quality, and speed? Customers used to be willing to trade off one to get the other. Those days are gone. Today’s customer dictates that they want it all: lowest price, good quality, and fast delivery.
- Do you offer what the “big guy” does in terms of product, service, and ease, but with the care of a small business people trust? The size of your business does not matter in a digital marketplace. But, you must offer the scope, scale, and influence associated with being big, while maintaining the creativity and personal service characteristic of smaller businesses.
- Do you focus on helping customers to meet their objectives and needs? Do you share a purpose? According to an article in Harvard Business Review, what you provide ideally is not something you are going to do to them, or for them, but with them. It’s a journey you take together.
- Do you offer an intuitive sales funnel? Customers expect you to be where they are, deliver what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. If they are shopping your site, leave, and come back later, they want to pick up where they left off. They demand intuitive ease and ultimate convenience while they shop.
- Do you offer personalized customer experiences? Remember what happened every time Norm entered that television bar called Cheers? Your customers want you to know their name when they return, as well as their unique individual preferences, and they also want you to make relevant recommendations for products or services they may like.
- Do your social media interactions inform and help customers? Your posts should not deliver a sales pitch. Social media content should be educational, entertaining, or support the needs and interests of your audience.
There are new rules businesses must follow today in creating the ideal digital journey for their customers. Focus your attention on exceeding customer expectations and answering to their unique needs, not on your competition.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 7, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Your content stinks. Here’s why.
Twenty-seven million pieces of content are shared every day — and most of it is crap. To attract readers to your content, you must stand out, and I mean really stand out, among the masses. That’s no easy feat.
You may be spending an enormous amount of time and money as part of a content marketing effort, but, if no one is reading what you’re producing, you’re definitely not achieving your ROI. Consider the following points, and ask yourself if any could be negatively impacting your readership.
Here are the top 10 reasons no one is reading your content.
10. You don’t have a strategy.
Only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts to be successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. And that number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy. Having a clear vision for your content and a plan for executing that vision is crucial to earning an audience.
9. Your content isn’t search-engine optimized.
Seventy-seven percent of today’s buyers use Google to research information about products. Search engine optimization (SEO) means writing copy for your digital assets so they will be prioritized by Google in web queries related to your business or products. Three of four people will click on the top five search results. So the further you move from those top five results, the less likely someone is to find, much less read, your content. If your content isn’t SEO-friendly, readers may not even have the chance to see what you’re writing because it is so far down in their search results.
8. You are using the wrong channels.
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, did the tree fall after all? Stop publishing in the empty woods. Who is the target audience for your content, and where are they active? Evaluate your audience (or lack thereof) in each of the channels where you publish, and see if something is amiss. This will vary greatly by business. You can access personalized information on your followers’ social media habits through analytic programs like Google Analytics and sites like Tweriod.
Also to consider: on lightning-fast platforms like Twitter, a miscalculation of timing could be to blame. (See The Best Time to Post on Social Media.)
7. You’re not publishing often enough.
Inconsistent content is one of the primary reasons readers become disengaged with a particular publisher. Even publishing one more blog post a week can significantly boost your readership. Try a little experiment for a few months by playing with the number of times per week you publish — say, three times per week one month, four times the next, and five the next. You’ll find the sweet spot where you get the most engagement but can also handle the production schedule.
The next reasons have to do with the substance of the content itself.
6. You’re publishing a sales pitch instead of content.
Imagine you’re looking to buy a car. Researching different options online, Site A, run by Dealership A, offers expert opinions about various makes and models, while Site B talks about how Dealership B offers top-notch customer service and a no-nonsense negotiation policy. You’d probably never come across Site B in the first place because the content is irrelevant (and trite… and annoying), whereas Site A has exactly what you’re looking for.
Content marketing is your opportunity to provide valuable, expert information to people who are seeking it out. Associating your brand with that sort of expertise attracts customers — not to mention, helps them find you via organic search in the first place. No one wants to read your sales pitch over and over again, and they won’t.
5. You are not telling the truth.
I am talking about two different definitions of truth here.
For one, are you being honest? Today’s consumers can smell b.s. from a mile away, largely because the Internet forgets nothing and forgives nothing. The prevalence of user-review sites and platforms like social media means customers will always have an outlet to share their experiences, both good and bad. If your business does not provide what you promise, people will be upset and take to these forums to complain about it. Trust and transparency are two key assets in earning (and keeping) readership.
Secondly, are you being true to who you are as a business? A recent Harvard Business Review article defines successful marketers as mission-focused, not consumer-focused. Don’t produce content based on what you think your customers want to hear. The beauty of content marketing is that when you put your business mission out into the universe through content, people who are seeking that information find you. In other words, build it, and they will come.
4. You’re not offering anything of value.
DigitalTonto says, “The first step towards engagement is creating value beyond the basic transaction of payment for a product or service.” This is the essence of content marketing: a related offer of value in the form of expertise, entertainment, etc. For example, L’Oreal Paris provides free makeup tutorials on its YouTube channel, Destination Beauty, and, Apple offers free classes, product demonstrations, and tech support from the Genius Bar for product users.
The question to ask is, what is your value to your customers? Can you offer expert advice on a particular topic through a blog? Is there something about your products or your people that would make for entertaining or informative videos? Do you have access to top-of-their-field specialists that could lead a webinar series? Find whatever it is that is unique to your company, and leverage that in your content marketing to attract readers.
Because there is so much content out there, today’s consumers can afford to be partial to publishers who provide information in a way that is pleasing to them. They also have shorter attention spans than goldfish. That means things like format, length, accessibility, and voice can majorly impact whether people read your content or not. Also, be mindful that different platforms should offer different experiences based on reader expectations (e.g., Instagram isn’t the place for lots of text).
2. You’re not heeding performance analytics.
The one certain constant in marketing is that things will always change. What works for you one year will certainly be irrelevant the next. Content marketing won’t allow you to rest on your laurels, either. You should stay on top of your analytics to monitor what kind of content is successful in the present moment, and you should tweak how you’re doing things as people, technology, and events change. Keep testing new ideas to see how they are received, and get rid of old standbys that no longer pull their weight.
1. Your content is bad.
While this seems obvious, it’s worth repeating. If the quality of your content is bad, no one will read it, regardless of what value it offers. The same goes for if you find yourself saying, “it works,” or “it’s fine!” If there are 27 million options, who would choose “fine?”
Do an honest evaluation of your content, or have a neutral outside party do so for you. Is it original, substantial, and well-written? Make sure that your content is edited, and that it is free from grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and awkward phrasing. And remember that you get what you pay for. Professional writers can be expensive, but there’s a reason for that — theirs is a specialized craft, and very few people can do it well. If you want people to read your content, you should make sure that it’s worth reading.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Feb 15, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
When you are posting on social media could be as important as what you’re posting.
Timing is everything, and that statement especially holds true when it comes to posting content to social media. If you are sending out your message and nobody is there to see it, you are that proverbial tree falling in the forest; you did not make a sound. Your post had little to no impact.
So, even if you are putting in the time and effort to craft informative blog posts, tweets with just the right message, or Facebook posts that inspire more than just page likes, you still are not getting the most exposure you can out of social media.
Data that delivers results
According to research by social media scientist Dan Zarrella, when you are posting your content can be almost as important as what you are posting. Luckily, there is an ample amount of analytical data out there regarding optimal times to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.
For example, looking at broad-based Twitter engagement, research suggests that users go up by 30 percent on weekends, speculatively because more people are on their computers, smartphones, and tablets during their free time. On weekdays, this peaks at 4 p.m. EST, perhaps as people check into social media as the workday begins to wind down and they are seeking a diversion.
Some studies suggest that Twitter use often peaks slightly earlier, between 1 and 3 p.m. on weekdays, and this might be attributed to people who take an extended lunch break.
LinkedIn studies show that the optimum times to post content are Tuesday through to Thursday during normal work hours. Also noted: Tuesday 10 to 11 a.m. is known to get the most clicks and shares.
When it comes to Facebook, another marketing study suggests that there is quite a wide range of variables, and it is really based upon your audience. But, in general, the best time to post on Facebook is 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Other popular times include 1 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and lunchtime (12 to 1 p.m.) on weekends.
There are poor times to post on Facebook, too, such as weekends before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., according to SurePayroll’s research.
Research supports that B2B content generally performs 16% better during typical business hours, while B2C content performs 17% better on weekends.
Your (personal) optimal posting time
But, the problem with these suggestions is that they are just statistical generalizations of when might be the optimal time for posting content. What you need is analytics that are specific to your particular followers. Your audience maybe a different demographic than those represented in these studies, and when they are reading, sharing, or retweeting may actually surprise you.
You can access personalized data regarding the social media habits of your readers and followers through analytic programs like Google Analytics and sites like Tweriod. There are a wealth of available free tools, which provide valuable insight regarding your audience.
Here are a few to consider:
- Tweriod is a free Twitter tool that helps you know the best time to tweet. The free analysis will analyze up to 1000 of your followers. Tweriod is not part of Twitter but rather is something you may access to better understand your followers’ schedules and interests, like what they have retweeted.
- Followerwonk can help you to individuate your potential Twitter audience by learning not only who follows your competitors, but who commonly retweets their content. You can also look at your own personal audience and discover what content they like, share, and maybe even link to from other posts, as well as when they are most active on social media.
- Facebook Insights tells you the best times and days to post content by accessing your page’s insights in the posts sections. In the graph section for “When Your Fans Are Online,” you can see the days and times when your fans are using Facebook. This data is constantly updated.
- Google Analytics provides insights, analytics, and data regarding your website, and it lets you do more than measure sales and conversions. It also gives insights into how visitors find and use your site, what they are clicking on, and how to keep them coming back.
Many people still play a guessing game when it comes to deciding the best time to post their content for the most impact. But, studies suggest the average life of a tweet is only about 18 minutes. So, if you tweet something during an inactive period for your Twitter audience, you are probably wasting your time.
Posting the right content, at the right time, can make the difference between getting valuable comments, shares, and clicks on your links, and it can provide a myriad of valuable new leads.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Oct 21, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy, Talent
If you watch enough romantic comedies, you’ll start to recognize a pattern. It goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Movie follows antics of girl + boy, winding its way through the (oftentimes hairy) narrative. Throughout the movie we see the main characters discover what’s attractive, appealing, or annoying about the other. Eventually, these main characters end up together at the end – well versed in one another’s attributes, nuances, and idiosyncrasies.
If you think about it, the storyline of our main characters’ isn’t that different from the parallel storyline that could be drawn about lead nurturing activity in B2B marketing. When you first meet your lead, chances are they won’t be ready to purchase right away (a Marketo benchmark survey says that half aren’t). But if you spend time establishing a relationship and building trust, the moment your lead is ready to purchase, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.
As more and more buyers are engaging with brands before they are ready to purchase, an essential function of any marketing department is lead nurturing. That is, moving leads through the sales funnel by leveraging what’s known about their needs and online behavior. Congruently, marketing software company Marketo describes lead nurturing as being “personalized, adaptive, and able to listen and react to buyer behavior in real-time.” Using a true multi-channel approach allows us to accomplish this. In a recent publication, Marketo endorsed the use of this multi-channel strategy:
“A typical buyer moves quickly from email, to social media, to your website and then back to social media, in the blink of an eye. Marketers need to prepare their lead nurturing strategy for multi-channel engagement. Buyers need to see an integrated experience across every single channel.”
Considering the multi-channel digital activity of buyers, building a multi-channel lead nurturing strategy is essential for companies that are looking to create an optimal end-user experience. Here are four tools that will help you deliver a series of targeted messages across multiple touch points and platforms to help move your leads through the buyer’s journey.
Email
Presuming that your B2B leads are derived online, email seems like a natural channel to use to connect with and nurture your leads. And it is. Create opportunities to educate your leads by sending them targeted emails that contain informational content. You’ll have to take it further than that though, or your emails will come across as spammy and annoying. Build trust with your leads by reminding them they’ve met you before – use personalization tokens (contact name, job title, etc.) within your emails. Similarly, don’t just blast the same email to your entire contact database; take the time to segment your leads based on where they stand in the buyer’s journey. A lead nurturing email you send to a lead that has only downloaded a top-level white paper should look vastly different than the email you send to a lead that has downloaded a case study, a product brochure, and a pricing guide. Above all though, make certain that the content you’re sending is valuable, relevant, and of excellent quality.
Phone
“No other interaction is more influential in the path to purchase than a phone call.” – Invoca Call Intelligence Survey
Call intelligence company Invoca has strong feelings for the telephone – and for good reason. Their analysis of 32 million phone calls found that phone calls made after parties had first engaged online had an average conversion rate between 30% and 50%. Sure, a rejection by email is less painful, but when the conversion rates are that high, you can’t afford not to pick up the phone. There are some ways to make it easier, though. Start by promoting your phone number. It sounds simple, but for those of us who work largely in the digital world, it can be easy to forget. Display your phone number in your company’s website header and throughout your site’s landing pages and blogs posts. Ensure simplicity for mobile users by making your phone number clickable on your mobile site.
Social Media
It’s not enough these days to simply post and pray, particularly on social media networks. Social media lead nurturing includes monitoring, listening, and engaging. Give your leads some love. Look for opportunities to favorite, like, or retweet the content of your leads. Monitor LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for mentions of your company, similar products, or industry and then respond with activated content using both social media and a longer form of correspondence, like email. Finally, don’t discount lead nurturing activities that use paid social media ads. These ads can be particularly successful when you are nurturing leads based on specific attributes such as geographic location or company size.
Dynamic Website Content
Displaying personalized web content for visitors helps to keep leads moving forward in their buyer’s journey. Let’s say you’d gotten a great email response from a lead when you shared your product brochure earlier in the week. Displaying complementary web content, like a pricing guide, to your lead the next time he’s on your website assures alignment between your content and your lead’s proximity to purchasing. You can also use dynamic web content to target various verticals, organizations, or buyer personas.
Multi-channel lead nurturing is really about using all the tools at your disposal to meaningfully connect with your leads in order to build trust and establish credibility as you guide them on their journey to becoming a customer. Building a winning strategy does require attention to detail as there are many moving parts, but at the end of the day, if your messaging is credible and consistent it becomes less about channel and more about content. And ultimately, high-converting lead nurturing campaigns are only as good as the content they’re built around.
