by Fronetics | Sep 20, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
When it comes to social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, post once a day to improve engagement and visibility.
There has been endless research about the sweet spot for posting frequency to social media sites. The results all point to the same conclusion: there is no one-size-fits-all answer. You have to distribute content consistently over time, at the right time and in the right place for your business.
That being said, we at Fronetics do have some informed, data-based opinions about posting frequency for certain social media platforms. For example, we’ve written extensively about our Twitter experiment, in which we found that tweeting 40 times per day works best for us and most of our clients.
But for other platforms, we find that more doesn’t equal better. In fact, it can often equal worse. Let me explain why.
Why you should be posting less on Facebook and LinkedIn
We strongly believe that most B2B companies should post no more than one time per day on Facebook and LinkedIn. We also suggest that businesses only post during the workweek on LinkedIn. That is because of the way people use these networks — and because of how the platforms’ algorithms value content.
Firstly, though we’d like for prospects to be thinking of our brands constantly, they don’t. And they don’t want to. Think of that one family member that inundates your newsfeeds with posts. Though you might have liked to see a photo from that person now and again, the inappropriate posting frequency causes you to think negatively about each post you see.
And you are a business, not a family member. When you post too frequently, your business loses credibility, and followers view your posts as spam. Even on LinkedIn, which is a network for professional content, over-posting leads to disengagement.
Remember that the lifespan of a Facebook post is about 5 hours, and with LinkedIn, it’s even longer. (One of the first posts on my feed right now is from 5 days ago.) So you don’t need to provide a constant stream of content to get your audience’s attention. Your focus should be distributing the most relevant, interesting content you can. Which is related to the second reason we recommend posting only once a day on these networks: algorithms.
Facebook estimates that each user’s newsfeed must filter 1,500 possible stories from friends and pages every day. Ain’t nobody got time for that! So Facebook, like LinkedIn and other networks, uses an algorithm to determine the content you’d like to see most, based on feedback you provide. That feedback comes from actions you take: hiding posts, liking and sharing posts, and commenting, for example. It even considers how often your friends and the world at large engage with a post. This helps the algorithm filter down to the approximately 300 stories per day on your newsfeed.
All this means that the more engagement you can get on your posts, the more likely they are to be one of the 300 (in other words, appear in the newsfeeds of your followers). The more often you post, the less likely you are to foster engagement, diluting your chances of success and visibility.
So how can you increase likes and comments on your Facebook and LinkedIn posts?
Here are 3 tips for improving your posts to foster engagement.
1) Be strategic.
Instead of sharing content or publishing on an ad hoc basis, create a strategy and schedule to manage posting on social media. Work ahead of time so that you can evaluate what you’re posting from a 10,000-foot perspective. But be flexible enough so that you can always sub out scheduled content for breaking news or content related to current events when it makes sense.
2) Craft better posts.
Spend less time crafting a lot of posts, and more time producing quality content your audience will value. I recently talked about the 10x content rule. If your content is better than everything else that’s out there, people will gravitate to it.
3) Be smart about when.
When you’re only posting once a day, it’s important to make every post count. Use built-in and third-party analytics tools to determine when your followers are using these platforms. Schedule your posts to publish just before the greatest time of active use.
At the end of the day, there’s a fine line between annoying your social followers and remaining top of mind. Maintaining a dynamic and fluid posting strategy will ensure that your social efforts drive followers to action, rather than drive them away.
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by Fronetics | Sep 11, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Social prospecting can help logistics and supply chain companies identify and engage with leads on social media in a genuine — and highly effective — way.
Social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. You know it helps build brand awareness, gather market intelligence, discover customer problems, and influence purchasing decisions. But your lead generation efforts should also include the use of social platforms. It’s a practice called social prospecting, which can be highly effective in identifying new prospects.
What is social prospecting?
With more than 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and over 328 million monthly active users on Twitter, smart marketers know there’s more potential than ever to use social platforms to get their name out there, spread their content, and draw more people to their site. Hey, it’s your job to make people aware of what your company can offer, right? Right.
That’s where social prospecting comes in. It involves scouring the social web, identifying potential prospects for your business, engaging them with content, and getting those potential prospects to your sales team. “Social prospecting is the art of listening to people, not mentions or keywords,” writes Maggie Hibma for HubSpot.
Social media isn’t just for recreational purposes anymore. More than half (53%) of B2B buyers report using social media to research purchases, in fact. Social prospecting allows you to be proactive in finding all of the considerable number of social-media-using prospects who are looking for you, too.
But as with any initiative, social prospecting requires commitment. In order to find new leads, social prospecting needs to become a part of your daily routine. The end results will be quality leads that are already committed to your brand because of the connection you have created through social channels.
Creating positive impressions
The secret behind successful social prospecting is creating and distributing content that shows that you and your company genuinely care about your clients and prospects. It’s about ditching the ‘sales’ game and working to establish your brand as an industry leader that has a connection to your community and a lot of valuable insight to share.
Make your content about your target consumers: What do they need to know, struggle with, or want to learn more about? By distributing this content across social channels to foster sharing, conversation and engagement, you’ll gain influence with your audience (and their networks) and make a positive impression.
Prospecting vs. spamming
The definition of spam is “indiscriminately.” It means “in a random manner” or “in a way that does not show care or judgment.” This is the opposite of how social prospecting should work. The connection that you create with your prospects should be anything but random.
Think about the number of possible prospects on social media right now. Facebook just topped 2 billion active users monthly, and Instagram is pulling in over 250 million daily active users. These massive numbers scream opportunity — but only if you are putting your time and effort into the right people, on the right channels, at the right time.
Sounds complicated? It doesn’t have to be. If you already have a social media presence, that’s step one.
Fronetics’ recently updated Social Prospecting Workbook guides you through using social listening to generate new leads for your business. We’ve identified the quickest way to find potential customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. Every worksheet includes:
- Short preparatory work to make the actual prospecting easy
- Visual instructions on how and where to find prospects
- Pro tips that will help you get the best results
- Prescriptions (Marketing Rx) for success
- Take-home exercises for follow-up prospecting
Download it now, and let us know what you think!
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by Fronetics | Aug 23, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
In keeping with social media etiquette for businesses, you really shouldn’t do these things.
It’s easy to get bombarded with suggestions on how to interact with your customer base on social media. Amid the endless barrage of ideas for what to do, it’s worth remembering that not all social media engagement is equal — sometimes, it’s just as important to remember what not to do. (See for example #LeggingsGate.)
Let’s talk about the specifics of keeping your proverbial foot out of your business’ mouth online. Take a look at the list below of 6 don’ts for B2B businesses.
6 social media don’ts
1) Don’t assume that just because you’re online, offline rules of communication and conduct don’t apply.
It may seem obvious, but it’s all-too-often forgotten. This is a good rule, and an easy metric by which to judge any content before posting: Your interactions online should measure up to professional interactions you would have in person.
2) Don’t re-post, re-tweet, re-gram, or re-share external content without a thorough check first.
Re-posting content that’s of interest to your business’ audience is a great way to promote discussion and engagement. But don’t get sloppy. Remember that even if content didn’t start with you, if it’s posted on your company’s social media accounts, it represents your business. Make sure content is well-researched and from reliable sources. Want to re-post something controversial? Just be sure to include a disclaimer or explanation in your post.
3) Don’t forget that emotional intelligence is just as important for businesses as for individuals.
Never forget that behind every social media account is a human being. The bottom line: “bring emotional intelligence to your social media management. Take the time to address any issues with compassion and understanding.”
4) Don’t ignore comments.
Social media is all about engagement with your audience and potential customer base. Yes, responding to every comment takes time and resources, but it is well worth the effort. A comment ignored sends the message that you don’t feel that your customer’s question, concern, or observation is important. Use comments as the opportunity they are to interact with your followers, and show them that you are ready and willing to address any issues they may have.
5) Don’t delete negative comments.
Once it’s online, trust that people have seen it. Deleting a complaint will only make your business appear insensitive and evasive. Addressing negative comments demonstrates that your company is proactive about resolving issues and taking care of your customers.
6) Don’t forget the basic principals of common sense and good judgment.
This one comes from John P. David of David PR Group. It seems like another obvious one, but people and businesses violate this principle all the time. Always have at least two pairs of eyes on everything you are going to post, and anything remotely controversial should be thoroughly vetted by as many people as necessary. When in doubt, David says, don’t post.
If your company has committed any of these social media don’ts in the past, don’t panic. These platforms offer an ideal place for renewing and tweaking your image. Invest in the creation of a good social media policy. Don’t give the enormously important task of social media management to a summer intern. And, for goodness’ sakes, remember you’re a human talking to other humans.
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by Fronetics | Jun 28, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
In June’s social media news, more social media platforms are making changes to benefit businesses who advertise.
June has seen a lot of recent changes in big-name platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, that will directly impact the engagement between businesses and potential customers. The trend is to create apps that work harder for paid advertisers, increasing brand awareness for businesses and proving their worth through built-in tracking.
Apple has also been working overtime to keep their products competing with the big players in the social media game. New analytics and introduction of Business Chat are keeping the fruit relevant.
Facebook Rolls Out Two New Ad Campaign Tools for Marketers
Facebook delivered two new options for helping businesses grow: Valued Optimization and Lookalike Audiences. The first, Valued Optimization, “works by using the purchase values sent from the Facebook pixel to estimate how much a person may spend with your business over a seven-day period. The ad’s bid is then automatically adjusted based on this estimation, allowing campaigns to deliver ads to people likely to spend more with your business at a low cost.” The second, Lookalike Audiences, helps marketers reach people likely to be interested in a business based on people who have visited their site. Read more
Facebook Expands Click to Messenger Ads to Instagram
Facebook continues to expand ways for users to connect directly with businesses. The Click to Messenger ads have been available through Facebook for a while, and now they’re expanding to Instagram. “Instagram Click to Messenger ads let you reach the people you care about on Instagram and engage with them on Messenger.” Read more
Instagram Makes Sponsored Content More Transparent
Last week Instagram introduced a new “paid partnership tag” that will clearly identify sponsored posts on its app. “Partnerships between community creators and businesses are an important part of the Instagram experience, and a healthy community should be open and consistent about paid partnerships.” This new tag will help users determine when posts are influenced by commercial relationships with businesses. Read more
Apple Rolls Out Analytics to Podcast App
During a podcast session at WWDC, the Apple developer conference, Apple announced that its podcast app will now have the ability to give publishers data that tells them just how much of their episodes are actually being listening to. Apple Podcasts app will allow creators to track aggregated data about when users start, stop, and skip within an episode. This data will give podcasts tangible results that were once estimated from the number of downloads a podcast received. Read more
Apple Debuts Business Chat
Business Chat allows real customer service representatives to communicate directly with users through iMessage. According to the Apple Developer site, customers can use this new feature to “find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Spotlight, and Siri.” The Verge reports that “there will be built-in features like Apple Pay and calendar integration, which will allow Business Chat to facilitate purchases without requiring the user to exit the chat.” Read more
Twitter Experiments with New Promotional Features for Sponsored Live Video
After entering into an exclusive partnership with Live Nation, Twitter is experimenting with new features to help promote events featured on LN. New features like an alert that users can set to remind them of the live event or a branded timeline that will put all tweets about the event on one landing page will help strengthen the relationship between Twitter and Live Nation, paving the way for more partnerships with big brands. Read more
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by Fronetics | Jun 20, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Live video streaming helps businesses promote transparency, good communication, and relatability.
Live video is the “it” trend in social media marketing. According to the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 61% of marketers plan on using live video services such as Facebook Live and Periscope, and 69% want to learn more about live video.
It’s really no surprise video has gained such traction. Platforms like YouTube have made the transition from watching TV in your home to watching videos on your phone seamless. And live streaming, in particular, fits in with today’s emphasis on corporate transparency and putting a real, human face behind business social media accounts. It allows brands to drop their corporate façade and connect to users in a more human way.
And, before you say it, I’ll say it again: Yes, video can work for the supply chain.
So where do you start? Here’s a rundown of some of the platforms you can use, as well as the benefits of live video.
Live streaming platforms
Facebook Live
Facebook Live lets you broadcast in real time for up to 90 minutes per session. Users who have recently engaged (or who frequently engage) with your page will receive a notification that you are streaming live, and they can go to your page to view the video. Viewers can comment and react during the course of your broadcast, allowing you to read their remarks and respond immediately.
Periscope
Twitter-owned and run, Periscope is a standalone platform but integrates very seamlessly with Twitter. It has more than 10 million users, more than two million of which log in daily. There have been 200 million hours of broadcasted video to date with roughly 350,000 hours per day. The service lets users live stream from their mobile devices and push out those streams on Twitter.
YouTube Live
YouTube Live enables YouTube to utilize its expansive creator and advertising network to generate even more video to be hosted and monetized. YouTube makes it incredibly easy to aim, shoot and post live video.
Benefits of live video marketing
There are many reasons why live video is trending. Here are some of the benefits supply chain and logistics businesses stand to gain.
1) Customer engagement and feedback
With live video, users can ask questions and instantly get responses. Having that “in-person” experience strengthens their relationship with your company and brand.
2) Transparency
Being open about your business is a great way to gain people’s trust, and there’s no better medium for that than with live videos. By sharing behind-the-scene processes, product sneak peeks, and other day-to-day aspects of your business, you give users a much-desired sense of transparency. That ultimately will help convert visitors into customers.
3) In-the-know value
Social media users love to feel on top of their information streams, and live video gives them inside, up-to-the-minute scoop. Experiencing the video live, instead of previously recorded, gives your business the advantage of being in the moment with users.
4) Cost effective
Streaming live video is no more expensive than traditional video creation. The tools, basically a good camera, are your only overhead.
GE is doing it right
But don’t take my word for it. Look at the success of GE’s live streaming efforts. The company launched its Periscope channel in 2015, with a behind-the-scenes interview series that gained over 200,000 views.
Another particularly successful campaign was #DRONEWEEK, which gave users an inside look at the facilities creating and testing jet engines, locomotives, and wind turbines. Sam Olstein, GE’s director of innovation, says of #DRONEWEEK: “We’re always trying to tell the full picture of the GE story, which is a complicated one, so any time we can talk about the various industries and variety of expertise and disciplines, we try to find unique and innovative way to do that.”
GE used Periscope to create an approachable, open narrative around their brand. What applications have you seen working for businesses in your space?
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