How to use the Instagram swipe up feature in your Stories

If you’re looking to get even more out of your Instagram presence, the Instagram swipe up feature is a great addition to your Instagram marketing strategy.

The Instagram Story swipe up allows you to be more tactical with your Stories, leading to even more clicks and conversions.

Let’s talk a bit more about what this feature is and how it works, before diving into how to utilize it.

What is the Instagram swipe up feature?

Marketers know all too well that Instagram doesn’t offer much in the way of adding links to posts. And changing the link in to your bio can be tedious, especially if you’re publishing multiple times a day and wanting to link to different landing pages. But accounts that meet the criteria to add swipe up links to their Instagram Stories have the option to be more versatile.

Instagram swipe up is incredibly useful because it allows businesses to promote products, blog posts and sign up pages. These pages open right in the app for users to explore as well.

When a swipe up link is added to a Story, viewers can simply tap on the arrow at the bottom of their screen or swipe up on the Story to access the link.

Here’s what this looks like on a Sprout Social Instagram Story below.

How to get the Instagram swipe up feature

Remember how I said only accounts that meet certain criteria are able to access the Instagram Story link feature?

Because Instagram wants to keep it exclusive for the time being, they’ve set restrictions on accounts that can access this feature and add it to their Stories.

In order to get the Instagram swipe up feature, your account:

• Must be an Instagram Business Profile and
• Must have over 10,000 followers

OR

• Must be a verified account

This means that celebs, public figures and brands that are verified and haven’t crossed that 10,000 follower threshold are still able to access the coveted Instagram swipe up feature.

How to add a link to your Instagram Story

Once you’ve reached the criteria that give you access to the Instagram swipe up feature, the link icon will automatically appear at the top of your stories editor (fourth from right).

Once you tap it, the window that allows you to add a link to your Story pops up. Add any link to your website, whether it’s a blog post, a landing page or a piece of curated content you’re sharing with your audience.

This is also where you input information about brand partnerships if you’re sharing sponsored content. Tagging your business partner adds a “paid partnership with” label to your story, but it can also limit your ability to edit the Story.

Click the + Web Link section, add your URL then tap Done. You can easily clear or edit your link by tapping the link icon again, or move forward and share your Story with your followers.

Get the most use from the Instagram Story link

So you know what it is, how you get access to it and how to add the Instagram swipe up feature to your Stories.

Now let’s talk about various ways you can take advantage of this new feature to link to websites from your Instagram account.

Promote blog posts

Want to promote your recent blog post? Creating a graphic and sharing it on your Instagram Story is a great way to get even more social traction to your content! Just be sure you’re on top of Instagram’s Story dimensions when you create your visuals. Remember that not all mobile devices have the same dimensions, so it’s important to create graphics within the right dimensions.

When you create your graphics, be sure to include relevant visuals to your blog content and keep your imagery on brand.

Using similar fonts and colors to your overall brand helps with brand strength and recognition, especially when users are scrolling aimlessly through Instagram Stories.

Take a look at this example of a blogger sharing a link to a recent post.

Notice how the graphic and text are concise and clear; the blog name is above the image, and below is the title of her blog post and even the CTA “Swipe Up,” which appears above Instagram’s native “See More” to signify a link.

You can keep track of your Story swipe ups in your Instagram insights.

Promote products

Another great way to use the Instagram swipe up feature is by promoting your products. After all, Instagram is a visual platform, so use it to share stunning, professional photos of your products with a direct link to their product page.

Take a look at how clothing boutique DressUp promoted their summer tops on their Instagram Story.

Using one of Instagram’s built-in features, the brand created a collage of their products in their Story and used the swipe up to link to a product category page. They’ve made it easy for viewers to instantly shop after seeing something they like.

You can take this one step further with Instagram shopping and link your products to your Instagram account so users can view a story and make a purchase without ever leaving the app.

Promote virtual events

If you’re putting on a virtual event and you’re trying to generate a larger turnout for it, use the swipe up feature to attract registrants. You probably already have promotional graphics for it, so share your graphics to your Stories and include a link to the registration landing page.

Take a look at this webinar promotional graphic from Zapier. They shared an Instagram post from their feed onto their Story and added a direct swipe up link, making it easier for their followers to sign up for their upcoming webinar.

You can easily share your Instagram posts to your own story by tapping the share icon and selecting your Story. This can be a great way both to add links to Instagram posts and get people who are viewing your Story to click to your feed.

Promote landing pages

Whether you’re linking to a sales or service page or an informational landing page, it’s incredibly important to get it in front of your potential customers’ eyes.

These types of webpages are transactional pages, meaning their purpose is to reel visitors in and get them to sign up or make a purchase.

Take a look at this Instagram story promoting and linking to an online course sales and landing page.

Creating Instagram Story graphics (or videos about a service, or even sharing videos of other users as social proof) to link to landing pages should be a big part of your Instagram Stories strategy.

Promote videos

Whether you recently posted a new video to IGTV, YouTube, Facebook or directly to your website, you can easily increase views by sharing a link on your Instagram Story.

Here’s an example of a user sharing a thumbnail of her recent YouTube video on her Instagram Story. The Story links directly to the video so her Instagram followers can immediately watch it.

Once you unlock the Instagram swipe up feature, you can bring your cross-platform promotional content and strategies to your Stories.

Simply create a graphic in Instagram story dimensions, upload it, add a link and publish. Voila! And now you’re able to send followers from Instagram to a video, another social network or your website.

Promote lead magnets

Trying to grow your email list? Promoting lead magnets and email list signups is another great use of the Instagram Story link.

Or, invest in Instagram Story ads, like this example below, that will add an easy-to-use signup form directly on swipe, rather than a signup page that users have to navigate through.

How to increase swipes

Now that you’re getting ready to take full advantage of the Instagram Story swipe up feature, it’s important to note a few tips that can help you to increase Story clicks to your website and other promotions.

Include a call to action

First, you should include a call to action right in your Story. Whether it’s a video or graphic, you need to call attention to the swipe up link at the bottom of your Story.

Add GIFs/arrows

Instagram Stories have a ton of stickers to choose from, like arrows, GIFs and other visuals that can help draw attention to your swipe up link.

You can add an animated arrow pointing to the link, or you can even find stickers that flash “SWIPE UP” at your viewer so they know there’s more they can access.

Post often

As with any platform, the more consistently you post, the more reach and engagement you’re going to receive. If users watch your Stories often, your brand will appear towards the beginning of their Stories feed.

But if you take a long hiatus from posting Stories, you could lose your place in their feed, losing dedicated viewers and potentially loyal customers.

Once you start working on an Instagram Stories strategy, try to keep up with it so you don’t lose that hard work and viewership.

Start increasing clicks and conversions with the Instagram swipe up feature

Ready to start converting your Instagram followers? Learn even more about the benefits of using an Instagram Business Profile, and how its features can help you grow and promote your business.

This post How to use the Instagram swipe up feature in your Stories originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How to create, manage and report on social media campaigns in Sprout

Social media campaigns are focused and coordinated efforts that generate measurable results across social media platforms. Campaigns are a chance to switch things up, reach your audience in a new way, create memorable content and make a real impact on top-line business goals.

However, for all the value they can bring, campaigns come with innate challenges. Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to juggle:

• Concepting, creating and scheduling dozens of social media posts across multiple networks
• Managing your community and monitoring social for all campaign mentions and engagement opportunities
• Soliciting and curating user-generated content
• Reporting on your campaign’s performance to your boss, client or other marketers
• Optimizing your campaign to make sure your numbers keep growing

Whether you’re a brand marketer running multiple campaigns or an agency marketer managing multiple clients, an easy-to-use, turnkey solution that facilitates collaboration, execution and reporting all in one place can work wonders. We’ve created this guide to show you how to run your smoothest, most successful campaign yet—using Sprout Social.

• Set your campaign up for success with a comprehensive publishing suite
• Plan tags and tracking now to report more effectively later
• Bring leaders and stakeholders into campaign planning with ease
• Optimize campaigns with real-time data and feedback
• Engage with your audience to create loyal fans
• Use social data to inspire confidence in your campaigns
• Hone in on the metrics that matter most

Set your campaign up for success with a comprehensive publishing suite

Once you’ve got your strategy squared away, goals set and creative assets prepped, build your publishing blueprint with Sprout.

Manually logging in and out of native platforms to schedule content can be tedious. Sprout’s intuitive publishing tools help you map out your long-term campaign strategy and schedule content across different profiles and platforms simultaneously. The collaborative calendar is shared with all users in your plan, so marketers, managers, clients and marketing leaders can all view or contribute to your planning efforts

Visually engaging content is an effective way to capture your audience’s attention while delivering information about your brand, product or service. When you’ve invested a lot of time creating beautiful assets to support your campaigns, it’s important to be able to access them with ease as you start scheduling out their content.

Sprout’s Asset Library simplifies asset management, letting you create, organize, edit and publish assets from a central location. This accessibility has become even more important as more people shift to working remotely. Sprout integrates with Dropbox and Google Drive so you can add images or videos to your posts directly from the Compose window. If you feel more secure uploading directly from your computer, you can also easily drag and drop files into the Asset Library.

Social platforms have adjusted their algorithms over the years to serve up more relevant content to users and prioritize paid content. As a result, 45% of consumers now rely on suggestions in their feed and/or use discovery tools to find new accounts to like and follow, compared only 25% using hashtags for the same purpose. While campaign hashtags are still an effective way to encourage engagement among your audience and create a thread of connected content on social, brands also need to embrace other tactics to get eyes on their content.

Including strategic CTAs that drive action and publishing your content at the right time are both crucial to driving authentic engagement and optimizing campaign outcomes. Sprout Social’s patented ViralPost® technology analyzes your audience data to find the times most likely to reach your largest audience and receive real-time engagement updates. Use Optimal Send Times in Compose to schedule with precision and choose the best times to post that are specifically calculated for that profile on that day. Or, configure your Sprout Queue with ViralPost®, an automated approach that schedules your content for you while still optimizing your post times.

Plan tags and tracking now to report more effectively later

Marketers continue to struggle to measure the ever-elusive ROI of social campaigns, but Sprout’s tagging toolset can help. As you compose your content, incorporate a tagging structure that organizes and tracks the success of your marketing campaigns. Each tag should serve a specific purpose. Consider creating tags based on content themes, content types or your goals: for example,  awareness, engagement, lead generation and more.

Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa has developed a sophisticated tagging tree that the team uses to categorize every post. The upfront work they put into tagging pays off because they’re able to generate a report tailored for any given campaign or stakeholder, which ultimately fosters more transparent and rewarding relationships.

As you run your campaign, you can also use the tags you’ve created to evaluate and test your content and continue optimizing your campaign. In our recent Sprout Sessions Digital event, speakers shared a number of ideas for how customers have used tags to test in the past.

I keep meaning to dig deeper into tag reports, but always struggle with what to test. These ideas are actual 🔥🔥🔥 #SproutSessions @SproutSocial pic.twitter.com/AAXqr3Xa7A

— Nicole Rothenay (@HelloNicoleR) May 13, 2020

In addition to message tagging, Sprout users can add URL tracking to links to easily identify social referral traffic and conversions from social campaign posts in Google Analytics. Being intentional about your tagging and URL tracking will help later when it comes time to report your results.

Bring leaders and stakeholders into campaign planning with ease

While a specific campaign may be your main point of focus, your content calendar most likely includes plenty of other posts that are part of your overall social strategy. Remember those tags we talked about? Brands can filter their scheduled content by tag and temporarily hide any posts that don’t relate to their campaign from view. This can be helpful if you’re sharing your calendar with leadership or agency clients who want to focus specifically on upcoming campaign posts and strategy.

Since social campaigns ladder up to larger marketing initiatives, brands often implement an approval process that safeguards brand standards. Sprout’s approval workflows let stakeholders review, comment and give final sign off on scheduled posts. This level of governance ensures that marketing leaders feel informed and confident about how social supports campaign goals.

Optimize campaigns with real-time data and feedback

Social campaigns aren’t something you can just set and forget. Consistent management maximizes impact.

While SMMs won’t need to do a full-blown report on their campaign every day, they should be keeping an eye on performance. If you notice a post performing well right out the gate, you can apply those insights to your future content and potentially enhance your campaign in real-time. Additionally, if a Facebook post is resonating with your audience particularly well, or one of your more essential posts is garnering low impressions, you have the option to boost those posts directly in Sprout. A little paid jolt can make a big difference for your campaign.

Inbound messages can also help you revamp content in real-time. The Sprout Smart Inbox centralizes messages from your audience, providing opportunities to engage with new customers and gauge the reaction to your campaign. To organize your inbox, apply message tags as they come in to categorize and separate campaign feedback, leads and customer support.

Sprout’s Inbox Rules allow Advanced Plan users to create automated systems that categorize and apply tags of your choice to specific inbound messages that meet certain criteria. From there, you can surface specific Inbox Views that show only messages relevant to that topic. For example, create inboxes specific to your campaign, customer service issues, product feedback and more. Based on the rules you establish, you can then set up Automated Alerts to receive notifications about the messages you deem most important.

Inbox Rules came in handy for Indiana University when the school encountered a crisis. The social team created rules to auto-apply tags on the specific incoming messages related to the issue and the university.

“Being able to automate that process so that all of the messages that come in during these situations are channeled into one space lets us analyze messages quickly, make decisions or offer suggestions to leadership about what actions should be taken,” says Norman.

Marketers and consumers agree that engagement with audiences is the number one differentiator that makes a brand’s social best in class.

While a lot of inbound messages may relate to customer service issues, there are many other reasons consumers reach out on social. In the latest Sprout Social Index™, we found that 59% of consumers message a brand on social media when they’ve had a great experience.

If someone’s loving your campaign, don’t ignore it. It’s just as important to respond and show your appreciation to those consumers as it is to resolve customer complaints. It can go a long way in building customer loyalty, especially if those consumers are continually engaging with you and your content.

In Sprout, users can view conversation history between your team and contacts. With that context, you can personalize responses and nurture a lasting customer relationship. In the same window, you can add contacts to VIP Lists, which is useful when identifying brand evangelists and potential ambassadors or influencers for your next campaign.

Use social data to inspire confidence in your campaigns

Campaigns are all about the payoff, but only 43% of social marketers use social data to assess campaign performance. There’s a lot to be learned from social data and without it, you can miss out on valuable insights that support top-line goals.

Sprout’s robust analytics and reporting capabilities help you track campaign success and generate reports that inspire confidence, not confusion. If you strategically tagged your campaign content, the Tag Report presents metrics for each tag so you narrow in on metrics like engagements, impressions and clicks.

And if you forgot to tag your messages when you initially scheduled them, don’t worry—you can retroactively apply tags in the Post Performance Report. Rather than apply tags message by message, users with Professional and Advanced plans can tag them in bulk. For instance, if several messages with the campaign hashtag were sent out untagged, use the search feature to bring those posts to the forefront and tag them all at once.

Hone in on the metrics that matter most

If your brand has built a paid strategy for your campaign, your bosses will be especially curious to know how that money was spent. Sprout’s Paid Performance Reports help track performance and inform budget decisions on the fly for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn campaigns. The reports are digestible and focus on the metrics that clients and executives alike will care about most, like cost per conversion, cost per click, total spend and more.

If you’re on the organic side and working with a media buyer or paid social expert, these reports can also help you share insights and collaborate to improve both the paid and organic efforts of your campaign.

If you're running paid ads on #socialmedia, organic posts are a necessary piece of your #digitalmarketing puzzle.

Best tip: Make sure the brand messaging you're sharing in your ads is reinforced your organic social posts as well. #SproutSessions #socialmediamarketing pic.twitter.com/V7a1gCrcTN

— Katie Burton, Digital Marketing Strategist (@KatieBurton_) May 13, 2020

And to bring it all home, don’t just tell your clients and executives how your campaign performed, show them. With Sprout’s Premium Analytics customers can tailor a report specific to their campaign with custom reporting options. In addition to the out-of-the-box reports offered, you can build a report from scratch by adding and arranging data and text widgets in a way that tells a story and clearly demonstrates campaign success. Once you’ve drilled into the data that underscores the value of social, share it with your social team and beyond.

Conclusion

Putting it simply, Sprout takes the pain out of campaigns. Dad jokes aside, Sprout can truly help nurture your campaigns, community and company goals.

Sprout removes the busywork from your process, streamlines content creation and simplifies reporting so you can focus more time on optimizing your campaign, tending to your customers and looking forward to your next project.

Try Sprout Social for free with a 30-day trial. Already a customer and need help getting started with custom reports? Find more in-depth how-tos on creating custom reports here.

This post How to create, manage and report on social media campaigns in Sprout originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Social Spotlight: Visa and how to pivot with empathy during a crisis

Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where we dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.

Overview

Brands are in a tough spot right now. Not only are most struggling to determine how to best support customers while also ensuring that their businesses can survive a global economic threat like the current pandemic, but the world’s biggest brands have the added scrutiny of public opinion about how they conduct themselves to worry about. Social has become the primary stage for proving that a brand understands what its audience is experiencing and can adjust its communication with consideration and empathy. And the brands that have the most challenging path to walk are those whose business is most threatened. Financial institutions top that list, but Visa has been able to demonstrate both empathy and optimism by making quick, thoughtful and appropriate adjustments to its social strategy.

What you can learn

1. Pivot your partnerships.

Visa spends a considerable percentage of its overall marketing budget on event sponsorships, the most visible of which is the Olympics. A look back at Visa’s social content from early in 2020 shows a heavy push for its sponsorship, focus on partner athletes and promotion of the event itself. When the IOC announced that it was delaying the 2020 Olympics until at least 2021, Visa had to pivot its strategy and make adjustments to its partnerships with athletes. The result is an emerging content series featuring athletes as they experience the pandemic much like we do–at home and in quarantine.

• Getting started: You may not be able to change the financial terms of any sponsorships or partnerships you have, but you may be able to adjust the marketing or content parts of your agreements. Just as you’d change the copy or design of your advertising to match the current conditions, you should reassess your content and paid sponsorship efforts. 

2. Reposition your offerings for the current situation. Visa is one of the world’s largest financial services institutions, and its products are used by a huge range of people and businesses To serve such a broad demographic, Visa has an equally wide range of product offerings that it can promote via social. But we all know timeliness is key to relevance, so Visa has chosen to promote the products and services that best meet the rapidly changing needs of business owners, employees and customers in the time of COVID-19. 

• Getting started: Do your due diligence to understand the biggest challenges for your audience right now–chances are they’re very different than they were six months ago, and potentially even different than six weeks ago. Once you know what they’re struggling with, assess your offerings and align them with the specific needs of your customers in this unique time.

For hourly workers who live paycheck to paycheck, real time access to already-earned wages between pay cycles can be a lifeline.@Visa is making this possible with the help of its partners @DailyPay, @FlexWage, @BeingInstant, @PayActiv, and @ZayZoon: https://t.co/0plf9cNbKn pic.twitter.com/Opq5eBky7L

— VisaNews (@VisaNews) May 14, 2020

 

3. Be the community resource the community needs right now. Visa has long supported small businesses with both product offerings and philanthropic support. But the need for resources may have never been greater in the small business community than it is right now, and Visa recognizes that now is the time to step up its efforts through new tools, services and partnerships. 

• Getting started: What are your most vulnerable customers struggling with right now, and what resources can you offer them to demonstrate not only that you understand their situations, but that you will support them so they will still be there to be your customers when we get through this? It’s understandable that not every brand can create a seven-figure relief fund or a star-studded benefit, but even a well-researched blog post can change the perspective of someone facing extreme uncertainty. 

 

Our communities need help now more than ever. The @Visa Foundation will designate $10 million for immediate emergency relief and $200 million for small and micro businesses, aligning with the Foundation’s long-term focus on women’s economic advancement: https://t.co/ihNsQpZ7Eg pic.twitter.com/Tge0NWB1Tx

— VisaNews (@VisaNews) April 6, 2020

 

 

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Why digital literacy matters for marketers

Remote work and safer-at-home orders are shifting digital transformation plans everywhere into warp speed, and marketers are along for the ride. As digital media becomes the primary (or only) customer-facing means of communication for most organizations, digital literacy is more important than ever before.

Digital literacy, also known as media literacy, isn’t a new concept. The discussion around it has increased steadily for decades. In the context of marketing and business, progressions in television, radio and internet-based communications repeatedly demonstrate the advantage held by media-literate brands.

Who would have imagined, for example, that an innovative company like General Electric would face significant business issues and fail to adapt to changing markets? And yet it did, despite leadership in industries like aviation, transportation, healthcare and energy. The fall was at least partly fueled by reverting to manufacturing in 2008 when more digitally literate companies were rising to the recession’s challenge and diversifying their offerings.

What does the challenge of media literacy mean for marketing today? Let’s dig in.

There are different levels of digital literacy, and marketers have to aim high

We’re entering a new digital chapter at an unprecedented pace. To keep up, marketers need to make digital literacy a priority. But what exactly is digital literacy for marketers?

In a nutshell, it’s using technology to create and ingest content, as well as understanding how the technology works and what creators’ motivations are.

Let’s use Facebook as a micro-example. Being Facebook literate on a basic level would include understanding some of the essential elements of how the platform works, including skills such as:

• How to create a post
• How to find other people’s posts
• The ways posts are prioritized by the Facebook algorithm
• The various reasons why someone might post (connect with friends/family, make political statements, sell a product, etc.)

Being even more Facebook literate might include knowing how to schedule or boost posts, attract followers, create events and/or work with influencers. It may also include knowing things not to do, like spamming comment sections with links to an unrelated product’s landing page.

The more literate a marketer is with the platform, the higher their chances of success and avoiding stalled content. Digital literacy gives marketers a strategic advantage, both over competitors and in the way an audience views their content.

Digital literacy gaps affect messaging

Marketers are far from the only people who benefit from digital literacy. Yet, many people don’t have the tools to acquire it. Some are working to address this. Parents and schools, for example, are increasingly seeking out and demanding digital literacy education. Computer skills classes now go beyond spreadsheets and word processing to include topics like protecting private information online and gauging a source’s credibility, for example.

Still, not everyone takes those classes, and not all those classes cover the platforms marketers use. Until digital literacy is more widespread, some marketers have to do a little extra work to meet their audience where they’re at. A number of government entities have experienced this while increasing digital communications due to COVID-19. Some communications leaders were prepared, while others are still working to find the best ways to clearly share information.

Where can the public access this website/dashboard?

— New Basin (@NewBasin1) May 7, 2020

For marketers, transparency is critical to closing digital literacy gaps. At a time when consumer access to information is high, accuracy and honesty are key. The last thing you want is to be perceived as deceptive.

The age of (mis)information is putting on the pressure

While marketing has moved online, so has journalism. Most major news outlets now even have social media pages, with government entities quickly following suit.

These developments, along with other trends in 2020, have serious implications for marketers.

For instance, while marketers may know that an informational article on their website is part of a sales funnel, readers may have trouble spotting the differences between the post and a news article. The marketing content may be high-quality and contain valuable and accurate information, but ending up on a payment page might make them feel misled.

Consumer literacy can vary and leads to misunderstanding, as journalists know.

If you're a reporter retweeting dubious and potentially dangerous health information, "RTs are not endorsements" isn't an adequate form of social media distancing. Err on the side of not endangering your followers.

— Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) April 5, 2020

Especially in the era of COVID-19, vetting information is critical for a strong social strategy. Contributing to the spread of misinformation through a brand’s platform can ignite serious trouble. Customers don’t want conjecture. It’s essential that media literate marketers take the time to understand the full context of what they’re sharing or referencing in brand feeds, whether that’s reviewing the credibility of the source on a news story or understanding the full backstory of a viral meme.

When it comes to internally-produced content, striking the balance between helpfully informative and transparent usually means including clues like clear branding to help audiences identify the type of content they’re looking at and its source. That can help avoid a brand reputation nightmare, and even build trust.

Digital literacy helps everyone delineate authentic content from conspiracy theories, even ones with well-produced the YouTube videos. As media creators and distributors, marketers must take steps to respect their audience’s need for relevant, accurate information.

Even marketers have to keep learning

Consumers aren’t alone in the ongoing effort towards media literacy; marketers are right there with them. With fake or poorly-sourced news appearing in everyone’s feeds today, we all have our work cut out for us when it comes to staying informed.

Even without a worldwide pandemic, complacent marketers can find themselves just as left behind as anyone puzzling through digital media. An attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” towards new social platforms or trends in messaging is tempting when campaigns are running smoothly, but can leave marketers blindsided when things change. You don’t want to be left scrambling to understand a new platform or feature well after your competition has begun successfully using it in their marketing.

Platforms and messaging styles fall out of fashion, and results can dip if an effort isn’t made to stay on top of changes in the social space. Take TikTok, for example. Up until 2018, the platform couldn’t outpace Musical.ly, a lip-syncing video app, in the US. After a merger of the two platforms, however, TikTok suddenly rose in popularity and downloads spiked significantly once stay-at-home orders were issued across the country.

Rather than dismissing rising trends, marketers should investigate them earnestly, as several brands have with TikTok. Digital literacy means making ongoing efforts to understand new platforms and practices. It keeps marketers on their toes—and relevant.

Of course, that doesn’t mean jumping into every trend hoping to ride the wave to the top. Understanding new platforms and practices doesn’t necessarily mean participating if it doesn’t match your brand’s needs. That’s why when it comes to trends, brands must favor relevance over reach. Consider what’s needed right now for your brand and your customers, and let those needs guide decisions.

Increasing digital literacy = improving understanding

One of the best ways to understand digital tools, of course, is to use them. This not only builds familiarity and reveals how the competition presents itself on a platform but also opens up a new perspective: that of the audience.

Seeing things from a customer’s perspective is as old a tactic as secret shoppers and proof copies. That’s because it works. Marketers benefit from using the platforms they work in. Organizations often even hire or tap in-house native users to leverage their digital literacy.

Staying on top of media trends this way keeps marketers at the forefront of customer sentiment and interest. What’s on customers’ minds? What questions are they asking? We can only address known customer needs, and digital media platforms provide a helpful window. By paying enough attention, trendspotting improves marketing content.

Sound like a lot of work? It can be, but tools are available to ease the burden. For example, in the case of social media, social media automation can simplify multi-platform posting. Meanwhile, social listening tools display all marketers need to know about engagement on easy-to-digest dashboards.

This is about more than just knowing your target audience. It’s also knowing what they’re thinking, what struggles they’re experiencing and how their behaviors are changing. With this more granular data, marketers can make more informed decisions for their brand.

Data makes a difference

In order to understand customers, you need data. Fortunately, to say digital marketing platforms today are data-rich is an understatement. Social media, in particular, is ripe with customer information, so much so that social media security is a hot topic for both marketers and national security leaders.

All of this (carefully protected) data, however, drives evaluation and improvement. Consumer literacy may stop at knowing how to use tools and how to tell the difference between a friend’s travel post and a travel agency ad. For effective marketers, it requires a bit more, like knowing how to gather, analyze and present data.

Reporting on marketing efforts helps marketers and others in an organization understand the effectiveness of media campaigns, allowing for even deeper digital literacy and more success. Fortunately, automation and listening tools like the ones mentioned above reduce the time and resources necessary to generate worthwhile reporting.

Adapting in the age of digital literacy

Marketers have always had to be creative; it comes with the job. Marketing in the digital age simply means transferring those skills to the technology available today.

Digital literacy for marketers doesn’t have to be difficult. To learn a little more about tweaking that creativity to fit modern marketing, try checking out 9 skills every social media manager must have.

This post Why digital literacy matters for marketers originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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The social media marketer’s guide to YouTube marketing

With 2 billion unique users watching 1 billion hours of video every day, YouTube offers an excellent platform to market your business. Add that to the compelling nature of video in marketing and you have a winning combination. In fact, video marketing has helped marketers to increase traffic, generate leads and reduce the number of support calls.

So there’s no doubt that leveraging YouTube will help you achieve all of these goals and more. This post shows you some of the most essential steps for YouTube marketing and how you can get the most out of the network.

1. Create and brand your YouTube channel

If you haven’t already, make sure you start by creating a Brand Account on Google. When you create a Brand Account, you can authorize members of your team t0 manage your YouTube channel; something you won’t be able to do on a personal account.

Ideally, pick a channel name that’s either similar or consistent to your business name so it’s easy to recognize. And don’t forget to upload channel art that aligns with your brand’s visual identity.

2. Understand your audience

Marketing on YouTube is mainly about creating content to reach and engage a target audience. And for that, you need to know what that audience likes. What kind of content do they want from you? When are they most active? Where is your audience mostly based? How often do they expect to get new videos from you? All of this and more will help you craft a winning YouTube marketing strategy.

The YouTube Analytics tab will provide you with valuable insights into your subscriber demographics and watch time. This will help you identify which regions of the world your videos are reaching, what time people are viewing your videos, how old your viewers are and what gender you mostly reach. Use these insights to plan your YouTube content strategy.

You could also take a YouTube survey asking your viewers what they’d like to see from you as Cut did in the following post on their Community tab. They sourced a poll to their audience asking which mother-daughter pair they’d like to see in an upcoming episode. It’s a clever way to use your audience’s input in your content. Additionally, the comments on your videos can also help you understand your audience and further inform your YouTube marketing strategy.

3. Learn from the best

While understanding your audience will give you an idea of what content to create, it won’t necessarily help you get ahead of the competition. For that, you should look directly at your competitors and learn from their YouTube marketing strategies. What are they doing right and how can you replicate that? What mistakes are they making and how can you capitalize on that?

Find your competitors’ channels and watch their most popular and least popular videos. Try to identify what resonates with the audience and what complaints they have about those videos. Beyond judging the content for yourself, you could even go through the comments to see what people are saying. Also, think about the content that you find interesting and informative. Would you watch your competitor’s videos and find the content valuable? Use these insights to inform your YouTube content strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re competing with the following video on designing an abandoned cart email. You can see that there’s no video description, which you can capitalize on by creating a compelling description for your video. Plus, the comment shows someone complaining that there’s no proper intro in the video. Capitalize on this as well by creating intriguing intros on all your videos that call out the real life problem you’re solving for your viewers.

Additionally, go through your competitors’ video descriptions (if any) to identify the keywords they’re using. If you find any that could be relevant to your channel, use them for your YouTube SEO. You could apply the same research strategy on your favorite YouTube channels as well.

4. Nail your YouTube SEO

While marketing on YouTube is mostly about creating quality content, optimizing your videos for visibility is equally important. It won’t matter how entertaining your videos are if people can’t find them in relevant search results. That’s exactly why you should invest your time and effort into YouTube SEO.

At the least, your YouTube marketing efforts should include the basics of YouTube SEO, such as:

Optimizing your titles and descriptions with keywords

In many ways, the YouTube search engine works similar to the Google search engine. It will prioritize high-quality content that’s relevant to the search term. And one of the ways it will determine the content’s relevance in a search is through the terms and phrases in your video titles and descriptions.

For example, see how the top search result for “juggling football” is a video titled “soccer/football juggling tutorial.” It specifies that the tutorial is about juggling in soccer specifically and not about juggling in general, making it relevant to the search. A brief look at the description also shows that they’ve used multiple variations of the keyword there as well.

Use your competitor research from earlier and conduct keyword research to discover the most relevant search terms your target audience is using. Then use these terms seamlessly into your titles and descriptions for a better chance at showing up in the right search results.

Creating eye-catching thumbnails

It’s not enough that your videos show up in relevant searches; you also need people to click on them so YouTube can further determine your content’s relevance. That’s where your video thumbnails enter the picture. Your title may give people an idea of what your video is about, but your thumbnails give them a glimpse of your video quality.

So make sure you use customized thumbnails that instantly catch the eye and compel people to watch your videos. Select an appealing image from your video as the thumbnail, then add graphics, text overlays and filters as needed to make the image pop.

Cross-promoting your videos

Since the number of video views plays a role in YouTube SEO, you should also get viewers to watch as many of your videos as possible. So try cross-promoting relevant and related videos by displaying end screen recommendations at the end of your videos. Here’s an example of Great Big Story recommending related videos within their Around the World playlist series. Make sure the recommended videos lead to a logical progression of content that your user will be interested in, such as a playlist.

Also, you should cross-promote your videos using other social media platforms to get as many views as possible. In some cases, you might even find opportunities to embed your YouTube videos on relevant blog posts. Here’s the same Great Big Story video posted on their Twitter profile:

Great Big Story senior producer Beryl Shereshewsky checks in with seven people in seven different countries who show us how they prepare their perfect cuppa. ☕️

We sample all of it—from Japan’s matcha to Argentina’s mate. https://t.co/d8Dyj6pxTh pic.twitter.com/VhdhrDRmPO

— Great Big Story (@greatbigstory) May 8, 2020

5. Have a consistent publishing schedule

Consistency is the key to YouTube marketing success. Creating and editing quality content takes time, so you may not necessarily be able to publish a video every day. But make sure you have a posting schedule and follow it religiously.

This will give your audience an idea of when they should expect your content and help you engage them more effectively. The more content you publish, the more opportunities for engagement you’re opening up. This could eventually help you gain more visibility in people’s feeds. Plus, having a proper publishing schedule makes it easier for you to plan your content and schedule videos ahead of time.

In fact, you could use the calendar view option on Sprout Social’s YouTube publishing tool to better plan your video content alongside your social content. This will help you visualize your overall or single-network content schedule and understand your post volume across the week or month, so you can seamlessly make necessary adjustments.

6. Offer captions and subtitles in multiple languages

According to YouTube, about two-thirds of a channel’s views will come from outside the home country of the content creator. So even if you hadn’t intended to build an international audience, there’s a good chance your channel already has viewers who speak other languages besides English.

Effective YouTube marketing involves catering to this existing audience and enhancing their experience as well as attracting more viewers who share similar characteristics. This makes it crucial to provide closed captioning and translations of your content. Based on the insights from your YouTube demographics data, find out which countries your viewers come from and prioritize English and other languages accordingly. Also, adding closed captioning assists with making your videos accessible to all viewers.

If you’re worried about the cost of translating your content, note that you don’t necessarily have to spend a dime. YouTube lets you crowdsource translated captions from your fans for free. For this, go to the Creator Studio and turn on community contributions under “Subtitles.”

Keep in mind, you can always provide subtitles or closed captioning with or without timestamps yourself. Just upload a supported transcript file in the Advanced settings of your video options.

7. Partner with influential creators

With hundreds of thousands of loyal fans, influential YouTubers have the power to effectively market your channel and products. Consider partnering with them to amplify your YouTube marketing efforts. Collaborating with YouTube influencers gives you an opportunity to reach a new audience as well as provide some credibility or endorsement behind your products.

The actual approach and campaign type may vary depending on your end goal and your product. Is it brand awareness? Newsletter signups? Or farther down the marketing funnel?

For example, TruAudio partnered with What’s Inside?–an influential YouTube channel with over 6.8 million subscribers–to promote their products. The channel provided viewers with an in-depth look at how the product works and linked to the product homepage in the description.

But if your plan is to promote your YouTube channel or a specific video on your channel, you could also get the influencer to share those relevant links in the description box as well. You might even co-create a video with the influencer and publish it to your channel instead, depending on your goal and approach to YouTube influencer marketing campaigns.

8. Invest in YouTube ads

While proper YouTube SEO can go a long way, solely relying on organic reach won’t get you scalable results. For that, you need paid advertising to reach a highly relevant audience through means other than YouTube search results. Invest in YouTube ads to promote your content and products through other channels and drive more viewers to your channel.

You have the option of running a few different YouTube ad types and expand your reach by keyword or audience. Run a few different paid ad promotions to test which is successful for your goals.

Perfecting your YouTube marketing

The steps outlined in this guide show you some of the essential steps to get started with YouTube marketing. But note that to perfect your efforts, you should consider YouTube marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy instead of a standalone initiative.

For instance, include videos into your overall content strategy  to create a perfect balance  with other content formats. And add YouTube into your overall social media strategy so you can seamlessly manage it with other platforms.

Learn how to easily integrate YouTube into your existing social social media strategy with our free social media toolkit.

This post The social media marketer’s guide to YouTube marketing originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

It’s been a long time coming. And now, it is finally here.

Today, I want to introduce you to the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.

From being in the SEO industry for over 21 years now, I know that it would be more convenient to do your SEO research while you are browsing the web or searching Google than constantly having to come back to Ubersuggest.

That’s why I created this Chrome extension.

So, what’s inside the Chrome extension?

Well, the easiest way to know what’s included (it’s free), is to just go and install it and test it out.

But here’s what’s included…

Keyword overview

When you are searching Google, you’ll see an overview within the search bar.

You’ll see the monthly search volume and the cost per click for that keyword.

When you click the “view all” link, you’ll see a detailed overview for that keyword.

The graph breaks down the total monthly search volume. What’s cool about the chart is that it shows you both the monthly mobile searches and desktop searches.

And above the graph, you’ll get metrics on how hard that keyword is to rank for (SEO Difficulty) and how competitive that keyword is from a paid advertising (Paid Difficulty) standpoint.

Under the graph, you’ll also see 2 bar graphs. The first one breaks down whether or not people are clicking on the SEO results, paid results, or not clicking anywhere at all.

The second one shows data on the age range of all of the searchers.

Link overview

Above the organic results, you’ll see a speech bubble that breaks the average authority of the sites that are ranking (domain score) and the average number of referring domains the top 10 results have (backlinks).

If you want a more detailed overview, you’ll see a graph in the sidebar that breaks down how many referring links each of the top 10 listings have.

Keep in mind the link metrics are based on referring domains. So, if a website has 100 links from the same domain name, it will only count as 1. Because what really matters when it comes to SEO is how many unique, relevant sites you can get to link to you as opposed to having the same site linking to you over and over again.

Even more keyword data

In the sidebar, you’ll also find even more keyword data.

You’ll see a list of other popular keywords that are similar. You’ll also get metrics on each keyword… from how often it is searched (volume), to what it would cost to bid on that keyword (CPC), to how difficult the keyword is from an SEO standpoint (SD).

And if you scroll to the very bottom of the screen, you’ll see a list of related keywords that Google provides.

Again, you’ll be provided with data like search volume, cost per click, and SEO difficulty data.

URL metrics

Whenever you perform a search on Google, you, of course, see a list of websites that rank for that keyword.

As you can see, under URL you see the authority of the website (domain score), how many Pinterest and Facebook shares the URL has, and how many unique domains are linking to that result.

What’s cool is you can click on the “down arrow” next to the link count and see the exact list of sites linking as well as their domain score and anchor text they used for the link.

Pick your country and language

The last feature in the extension is that you can change your location and language.

All you have to do is click the “Settings” link in the sidebar.

You’ll see a long list of languages and countries that you can choose from.

No matter what version of Google you are using, such as Google.com.br or even Google.co.in, you’ll see SEO data whenever you perform a search.

Conclusion

I have some more big changes coming to the extension in the near future but I would love to hear what you think about it so far.

And if you have any feature requests, just leave a comment below. That way we can prioritize what we add to the extension next.

So go checkout the Ubersuggest extension and give it a try.

What do you think of the extension? What other features would you like me to add?

The post Ubersuggest Chrome Extension appeared first on Neil Patel.

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