Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino revealed in a recent interview that he believes The Social Network is the best film of its decade. He’s wrong. Space Boobs in Space is the best film of the 2010s. Space Boobs is a perfect film, it told the whole story. The Social Network, on the other hand, has plenty of room for improvement (2010? Ha, those were the innocent days for social media). That’s why I think it’s time for a sequel. And since Tarantino’s such a biiiig fan, he should direct. Don’t get me wrong, David Fincher is a legend (he brought us Se7en, ’nuff…
No one wants their emails to wind up in the spam folder.
But did you know some of the most common reasons emails go to spam are also the most preventable?
AWeber’s CEO and Founder Tom Kulzer joined The Hustle & Flowchart podcast to share his top tips for entrepreneurs — including how to dodge the spam folder and improve your email deliverability.
Here are his top 3 tips:
1. Encourage interaction and engagement.
Have human conversations over email. Start a conversation with your subscribers by encouraging them to reply with their thoughts about a question or with feedback.
“Have a genuine reason for your audience to reply to your email. And make sure that if they do reply, you don’t send a canned response. Engage with people — they’re people,” said Kulzer.
Plus, Kulzer cautions that lack of engagement over time can indicate to internet service providers — like Yahoo!, Gmail, or Outlook — that your audience isn’t interested in your content.
“While you might have your audience’s permission to email them, they may not have opened a message from you in a while. The longer your contacts go without engaging with your emails, the more likely it is to have an impact on whether internet service providers deliver your messages to the spam folder.”
Running a re-engagement campaign will let you get a sense of who is truly interested in keeping in touch — and who’s not. Look at your stats, and clear your list if they’re truly not active subscribers.
There’s no reason to use link shortener services in emails.
Tom explains, “Many people use link shorteners to make the link look cleaner in an email. But if you have a visible URL in your emails — shortened or not — email service providers are going to rewrite the link behind the scenes so that the sender can track click through rates.
This rewritten link and the redirect can be a sign that the message is fraudulent and is more likely to be sent to spam.”
An easy fix? Link words in your email, rather than including the full link address or using link shorteners. Use language such as ‘click here to contact customer support,’ or ‘read more here.’ Not only will it help you avoid the spam folder, it will look better, too.
3.Set expectations before people subscribe.
On your email sign up form, tell people exactly what they’ll receive as subscribers before they join your list.
“One of the most common reasons emails land in the spam folder happens before you even press send,” said Kulzer. “On your sign up form, explain how often your subscribers are going to hear from you, what they’re going to get, and what they’ll receive after delivering the lead magnet you promised in your form.”
By setting expectations with your audience up front, they’ll be less likely to mark you as spam because they know exactly what to expect.
Want to learn more about avoiding the spam folder — and how your email service provider impacts deliverability? Kulzer dives deep into the topic of email deliverability — and provides some technical insight — on the Hustle & Flowchart Podcast below.
US President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday afternoon declaring social media companies to be broadcasters (as opposed to carriers). While the exact language of the EO has yet to be revealed, an alleged draft has circulated on social media throughout the day. If what we’re seeing is close to the final order, it’s safe to say there will be huge ramifications for the tech community and the billions of us who use social media regularly. For your reading pleasure, here’s the draft of Trump’s upcoming EO regarding social media. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/RNDUzZWyxQ — Angry Staffer (@AngrierWHStaff)…
Michele Frolla is a travel and language blogger at The Intrepid Guide. She earns a living from affiliate commissions, advertising revenue, and working with tourism boards to promote destinations.
Unfortunately, when the world stopped traveling, affiliate income and ad revenue for bloggers in the travel industry stopped too. But for Frolla, COVID-19 has been a blessing in disguise. "It has forced my hand to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time," says Frolla.
Frolla always wanted to launch a language program to teach her audience new languages. To help her decide if this was the right direction to take her business, Frolla turned to her email marketing platform and email subscribers.
It turns out her audience is as interested in language as the destination where the language is spoken.
So she launched a new language program using email marketing for every step of the process.
Here’s how she did it.
Build your email list to protect yourself from the unknown
Frolla learned the hard way, as did many in the travel industry, that things can change overnight.
The World Travel and Tourism Council is projecting a global loss of 100 million jobs and $2.7 trillion in revenue due to COVID-19. And Statista forecasts that global revenue for the travel and tourism industry will be down 34.7% in 2020.
Explore new revenue opportunities
The COVID-19 experience led Frolla to take a good look at her business and consider how she could continue earning money that’s not dependent on travel, advertising revenue, or social media platforms.
As a travel and language blogger, Frolla's previous revenue sources had included income from affiliate commissions, advertising revenue, and working with tourism boards to promote destinations. Unfortunately, when the world stopped traveling, Frolla's affiliate income and ad revenue from the travel industry stopped too.
That’s why she decided to investigate the option of creating a language education program. With a program like this, she could continue to provide value and a service to her audience — even when they can’t travel.
"I can sell my language products. My audience can purchase the product and use it when they're commuting, at home, or traveling. It's something that I'm quite passionate about and makes sense with the way things have been for the tourism industry the past few months, "says Frolla.
To promote her new language program, Frolla knew she would need a larger email list.
Frolla used 2 tools to grow her email list and welcome new subscribers.
1. A landing page
When Frolla first created her travel blog, she knew that email marketing was important. She chose AWeber because she wanted to go with a platform that was going to grow with her. "I'm getting my head around the incredible power of the tool," says Frolla.
Frolla has found that landing pages created with AWeber’s Landing Page Builder are an awesome way to grow a list by being able to share specific information. She drives traffic to her landing page from her social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
"The landing page was easy to set up. I decided to direct traffic to a certain landing page to get my language and travel tips, as opposed to having pop-ups all the time or having a sign up form that might not get seen," says Frolla.
2. Automated email campaigns
After someone enters their contact information on your sign up form or landing page, you should immediately send an automated email to welcome them to your email list. This is exactly what Frolla does with AWeber’s email automation platform Campaigns.
Frolla welcomes subscribers to her list, includes links to some of her most popular content, and sets expectations on how often she will communicate with subscribers.
Your email list is an excellent way to gather product feedback.
Frolla uses email marketing to identify users and provide feedback before she launched her product.
Recruit your most loyal followers to test your product.
Frolla recruited some of her most loyal subscribers to be part of a testing team for her new product. Via email, she sent them a form to apply to be a part of her testing team. It allowed her to get real user experiences to improve her course.
Don't forget to ask for testimonials.
She also was able to get testimonials from her testing team Frolla uses the testimonials in all of her promotional materials as social proof of its impact.
Promote your product to your list
Frolla announced to her entire email list and on social media that she had a new course coming to create some buzz around the launch.
Giveaways can get your audience’s attention.
Frolla gave away two free courses as part of the launch. In the email, she made it super easy to enter the giveaway by including a link to enter.
Explain why you’re passionate about your product
A lot of your audience may purchase the product because of the creator as much as the content. While it is essential to detail the features and benefits of your product, don't forget to tell your audience why this product is important to you.
How to get other people to promote your product
The power of email is magnified when you can get others to promote your product using their own email list. You should never buy an email list. But you can extend your reach when influencers or affiliates promote your product to their own lists.
Extend your reach by creating an affiliate relationship with influencers.
An affiliate arrangement can be a win-win situation for everyone if done right.
It helps you quickly grow your audience by introducing you and your product to a whole new group of people. You can set up your affiliate program so that you and your affiliate both earn a percentage of revenue every time someone purchases your product. The affiliate, or influencer, will receive a commission for each product they sell.
How Frolla created her affiliate group
Frolla reached out to people in the language community — bloggers that she knows and trusts and bloggers who know and trust Frolla.
The communication Frolla sent was straightforward. She would send an email or message on social media and say: "Hey, I've got this course coming out. Would you help me promote it?"
If Frolla received confirmation that they were open to promote her product, she would send them a link to a Google form so they could provide details to set them up as an affiliate.
Expand your affiliate group beyond your network.
Frolla also expanded her outreach to people she did not personally know. With the Facebook community administrator's permission, she posted in private Facebook groups and asked the group members if they would like to become an affiliate.
She also reached out to content creators of courses Frolla had previously signed up for or taken. Since she was familiar with their class, she could be sure they created quality content and had an audience with similar interests to Frolla’s own audience.
Make it easy for your affiliates to promote your product.
Frolla uses a course creation platform (Teachable) that makes it easy for customers to purchase her product and for affiliates to get their commission. There are several platforms available, so make sure the platform that you are considering integrates with the tools you are already using — like AWeber.
Frolla includes bonuses that are exclusive to her product and only available for a limited time, so there is an urgency to take action.
Frolla also sends her affiliates a product launch kit that includes:
Social media banners for FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram.
A sequence of six emails for her affiliates to customize to their audience.
Product information.
A list of benefits of being an affiliate.
The retail price.
The commission percentages that affiliates earn.
Launch dates.
Pro tip: Make the process as easy as possible for your affiliates. Do all the heavy lifting for your affiliates so they can focus on promoting your product.
Send email swipe copy to your affiliates.
To make it ridiculously easy for affiliates to promote your product or services, send them email swipe copy. They can quickly customize the email content and send it to their list.
Frolla sends her affiliates a document containing a 6-part email sequence. She includes email copy and images of the product. She recommends that each affiliate adapts the emails to their own voice.
Here’s what the email sequence covers:
Email 1: Introduction to course
Email 2: Benefits of learning italian
Email 3: Frequently asked questions about Intrepid Italian
Email 4: What people say about Intrepid Italian (testimonials)
Email 5: Creates urgency. (24 hours left to buy)
Email 6: Final warning. (2 hours left to buy)
Try AWeber and start growing your business online.
You’ll get everything Frolla uses to grow her own business online — including sign up forms, newsletters, and landing pages.
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 socialmarketers 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.
— 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.
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. Alook back at Visa’s social content from early in 2020shows 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.
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/ihNsQpZ7Egpic.twitter.com/Tge0NWB1Tx
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
