Tag: social media

Going live: 7 tips for any social media platform

Going live on any social media platform can feel intimidating, but if you let fear keep you away from live videos, you’re missing out on an ample opportunity.

Live videos capture attention between 10 and 20 times longer than prerecorded, on-demand content, while more than 20 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.S. watch live-stream videos several times a day.

And keep in mind that you have the potential to reach about 1.7 billion users through Facebook Live alone. 

Social media live video happens in real-time, with no editing, so the footage is completely authentic. This makes live video content appealing to social media audiences.

Regardless of what social media platform you’re going live on, the following are seven tips to help you be more purposeful, engaging and successful.

Announce your live video ahead of time

It’s always a best practice to make sure that your audience is aware that you’re going live soon. This can be as simple as sharing posts announcing the live video in advance and sharing what viewers can expect to see.

But you don’t have to keep your promotion restricted to that particular social media platform. You can cross-promote on different platforms. You also can promote on other mediums, such as blog posts and/or email newsletters and so on.

Some platforms, like Facebook, allow you to create an event where you can include all relevant information about the upcoming live video. When users RSVP to the event, they’ll get notifications and reminders beforehand, which can help increase your overall live-viewing audience size.

Plan ahead with an outline

There is no reason to jump onto a live video cold with no plan. Spontaneity is inevitable, of course. You’re live, after all. But the more you can plan and prepare in advance, the better you’ll be. 

An outline can help prevent many silly mistakes and ensure that you cover exactly what you’re aiming for in your live video. Include any calls to action as well, such as visiting your website, subscribing to your email newsletter or something else.

Because it’s ideal for your live video to run for at least 20 minutes, the better your plan, the easier this video length will be to achieve naturally.

Invest in decent gear

Before you panic about how much “decent gear” might cost you for going live, remember that your gear only has two goals in which your audience should be able to:

  • See you well.
  • Hear you well.

That’s it. So, keep it simple. A basic tripod can prevent your live video from being shaky. A ring light can make it easy to see you, no matter what time of day it is. And wireless earbuds can stand in as your microphone so that not only can you be heard, but most will help cancel out any background noise as well. 

While you’re at it, double-check your WiFi connection and internet speed. There’s nothing worse than your live video crashing midway due to a weak signal.

Practice before going live

Live video on social media is definitely more casual than traditional, recorded videos, but you still want to represent your band well. 

It’s always a good idea to practice before going live. This can involve practicing what you want to say, testing your lighting and evaluating whether there are any potential distractions (such as background noises) that you can eliminate before going live for real.

Focus on connecting with your audience

Going live on social media should be about connecting with your viewers more than anything else. (It should be the priority over selling and promoting.) 

Live videos enable you to show your audience a behind-the-scenes peek into your brand. This helps them to connect with you and/or others behind your brand, creating that human connection.

Invite guests to your social media live videos

The engagement factor for live videos exponentially increases when you can bring guests on to liven up and enrich the conversation. The more dynamic the conversation, the more viewers you’ll get and the more comments that can be generated.

When planning out your live video topics, consider who might have expertise that can elevate the conversation. Some guests might be nervous about appearing on live video, so make sure to reassure them. It helps to talk them through your plan for the live video so that they know what to expect as much as possible.

Consider your timing (but don’t be ruled by it)

Ideally, you’re going live at a time of day when your audience can be most engaged. But it’s also possible that your audience is across multiple time zones, so while you generally want to target the best time for your audience, remember that most live videos are recorded and can be played back by users afterward.

This is particularly true if your brand is global. Target your timing for where the bulk of your target audience is, and then share and promote the recording afterward for everyone else. 

In conclusion

Truly, the most important thing to remember when going live on social media is to simply be yourself and have fun. Live videos are an authentic way to connect with your audience, and they will be able to tell immediately if you’re not being yourself. 

Success comes down to finding that sweet spot between being yourself and representing your brand.

Check out the eight most common social media mistakes and how to avoid them. Newer to social media marketing, explore these 17 free online courses to help you level up your social media skills.

While you’re planning out your next live videos for social media, think about how you can improve your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 tips to successfully advertise on Reddit

Reddit doesn’t look like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, so advertising on the social media platform might feel intimidating.

The website refers to itself as a “network of communities based on people’s interests.” These communities, known as subreddits, enable members to share images, videos and links as well as comment on existing threads. In addition, users can give feedback in the form of upvotes or downvotes that signal a thread’s popularity.

Reddit has about 52 million daily active users and about 430 million users who use it once a month.

That means that with Reddit advertising, you have the ability to reach users you might not otherwise reach.

The following are seven tips to successfully advertise on Reddit.

Actually use Reddit

It sounds simple, but if you want to do well with Reddit advertising, it’s important to be a regular user of the platform to better understand its nuances.

While Reddit has many characteristics that should be familiar to any social media user, the platform is still unique.

In particular, there is an entire Reddit culture that you should be aware of. Dive deeper with our four tips to natively market your brand on Reddit.

Select the right subreddits

Reddit itself is organized by subreddits, which are communities that form around topics and subjects. Each subreddit is managed by different moderators who set their own rules.

Because of that, different subreddits can have different atmospheres, even if they’re related in some way. 

With Reddit advertising, you can opt for subreddit-based ad targeting instead of allowing Reddit to target based on its determination of user interests. This puts a lot of power in your hands but only if you’re selecting the right subreddits for the target audience you’re looking for.

To get it right, you must do your research. Don’t assume from the name of a subreddit that it’s the right one for your Reddit advertising goals.

Be prepared for less robust ad tools and analytics

Many social media platforms offer robust advertising tools and analytics capabilities. But not Reddit, so be prepared for a comparatively basic experience than what you’re used to.

While less robust tools make it harder to execute and pivot as necessary, it does push you to invest time to understand Reddit and its users in order to be successful and achieve your goals on the platform.

Keep it real

Any content that’s overly polished or appears to be trying to hard can get called out by Reddit users quickly.

But to walk the line between not being too polished and then looking like you’re trying too hard to sound “cool” is an art form within itself.

In general, you’re best off with ad copy that’s clear and straightforward. Of course, you can mention discounts or other promotions to generate interest, but you still want to be very direct and concise when doing so.

Definitely keep an eye out for other Reddit ads for inspiration to see how others tailor their voice to the platform and still aim to compel users to take an action.

Select the correct Reddit ad type

The most commonly-used ad format on Reddit is Promoted Posts, and it offers two ad type options: link ads and text ads.

Link ads direct users to a URL outside of Reddit when clicked. But text ads link to a Reddit post, which can contain more text (and that text can include external links).

While both types can be effective, it’s key to think through the goal of your Reddit advertising overall, as well as the ad in question. Link ads are obviously appealing, but there’s a lot of utility to using text ads to share a longer-form message on Reddit. And that longer-form message could generate its own engagement and conversation.

Prepare for ad feedback

Reddit is a platform that bases itself on giving users the ability to voice their opinions. So, it’s entirely possible that these users will provide feedback on your ads, which can be in the form of upvotes or downvotes. It also could be in the form of comments if you’re using a text ad.

This enters the risk of negative feedback that you have to be ready and prepared for. Check out our seven tips for handling negative social media comments.

Always experiment and optimize accordingly

Just like with any other social media advertising platform, experimentation is key to success. Reddit advertising is no different. 

It can take time and effort to get things right. But the reward is reaching a potentially untapped segment of your target audience.

In conclusion

While some businesses might be intimidated by wading into Reddit advertising, there is an opportunity there. If it seems like it’s an opportunity that’s worth exploring and you have the resources to do so, then spend time on the platform to better understand it. Collect examples of ads you like, and don’t be afraid to experiment.

As you explore Reddit advertising, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 benefits of using an Instagram business account (and how to set it up)

Instagram is a must-have social media platform for many businesses, but do you need an Instagram business account?

The visuals-first app generates about 1 billion active monthly users and is particularly popular among consumers 34 and younger. Features have diversified since its founding in 2010, with Instagram Stories, Reels and more available to engage with your target audience.

You can opt for a personal or business account on Instagram. The platform has more than 200 million business accounts that users visit daily. In fact, about 90 percent of Instagram users follow at least one business.

The following are eight benefits of using an Instagram business account.

Scheduling posts

The ability to schedule posts due to having an Instagram business account is huge. Scheduling helps you save time and be more efficient as a content creator and publisher.

Various third-party applications, such as Hootsuite, can make it easy to connect and schedule away. Finding the right tool for you can make all the difference in your social media presence.

Check out these 11 free (or almost free) social media management tools that can help you do it all on social media with a limited budget.

Access to Instagram analytics

Data matters in digital marketing, particularly in social media, such as Instagram. It’s all about understanding your followers and what content resonates with them.

An Instagram business account gives you acces to dive deep into your audience’s profile views, your total reach, your post impressions and even the demographics of your followers.

With this information, you can pivot your content strategy accordingly.

Get a better understanding of Instagram Insights with our guide.

Instagram Shop features available

If your business sells products specifically, you’ll want to be able to leverage Instagram Shop features within your strategy.

With Shops, you can upload a product catalog, tag your products and (depending) you can even process sales directly within the Instagram app. In addition, you can set up: 

  • Collections of products (such as “new arrivals” or anything else that makes sense for your business)
  • Shoppable Reels
  • Brand affiliations that can then share and sell your products for a commission (with controllable permission for who can tag your products)

Plus, you’ll have additional insights data related to Instagram Shop specifically.

Ability to add a contact button

Instagram business accounts can add a contact button on your profile so that when a user clicks it, they can either email you, call you or view a map of your location.

You also can sync your public contact information with your Facebook business page, which means that when information needs to be updated, you only have to do so in one place.

In addition, Instagram business accounts can use action buttons, including “Order Food,” “Book Now” and “Reserve,” if appropriate for your business.

Showing your industry on your profile

With an Instagram business account, the industry you selected that best represents your business when creating your linked Facebook page will show on your Instagram profile.

Of course, this is editable within Instagram.

Adding links to your Instagram Stories

If you’re using a personal profile, the only clickable link you can share is on your profile. An Instagram business account changes this.

You get the option of adding link stickers to your Instagram Stories, which allow you to multiple images and/or videos in a vertical format, where you can layer on various doodles, text and/or interactive stickers. They last 24 hours before disappearing, but they can be pinned to your Instagram profile in Highlight groupings and last longer.

Since about 75 percent of Instagram users take action after looking at a post (such as visiting a website), this feature can help users easily do what you’re compelling them to do with your content.

Age verification

If your business is in a restricted industry (such as alcohol), your Instagram business account can set a minimum age. 

This is important because you can then ensure that you aren’t showing your content to potential underage Instagram users.

Instagram advertising

If you have a marketing budget to spend on your Instagram presence in any way, an Instagram business account will enable you to run advertising campaigns and boost posts on the platform.

Facebook and Instagram and intricately linked in this way. You can build campaigns in the Facebook (now Meta) Business Manager that can serve on both platforms.

In addition, Instagram Shoppable posts allow users to tap on product tags to view a full product description with a “Buy Now” button. This makes it easier than ever to purchase from your business through the app.

How to set up your Instagram Business Profile

In the Instagram app, navigate to “Settings,” then click “Account” and “Switch to Professional Account.”

You’ll want to select the category that best describes your business, and then select “Business.”

And that’s it! You’re ready to roll.

In conclusion

While there are big benefits to switching over to an Instagram business account, keep in mind that there are two features you will lose when you convert, which is the ability to:

  • Make your posts private
  • Link multiple Facebook profiles since you’ll only connect to your business’s Facebook page

Dive deeper to better understand the differences between personal, creator and business Instagram accounts.

Then, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 omnichannel marketing tips to help grow your business

With shopping habits rapidly evolving, it’s more important than ever for your multiple marketing channels to work together to engage consumers and ultimately lead them to purchase from you. Enter omnichannel marketing.

Even if customers are in your physical store, about 42 percent of in-store shoppers search for information online while browsing in-store. In addition, consumers reference up to 10 sources of information before making a purchasing decision.

As part of your digital marketing strategy, your brand likely already has various marketing channels. Omnichannel marketing is all about leveraging your multiple channels to deliver a seamless customer experience. This is where omnichannel goes beyond multi-channel marketing because multi-channel treats each channel as separate and independent. Omnichannel requires you to think through how each channel can complement another and work together to create a personalized experience for the consumer whether you’re connecting with them through desktop, mobile devices or brick-and-mortar stores.

For example, a customer could be direct messaging with your customer service representative on Facebook and then purchasing from your website. Or, you text a customer an offer to compel the completion of his or her purchase after abandoning the shopping cart on your website. You want to offer a seamless brand experience regardless of platform and preferred buying method.

Omnichannel shoppers spend between 50 percent and 300 percent more than traditional shoppers. In addition, omnichannel marketing campaigns generate a purchase rate that’s about 287 percent higher than single-channel campaigns. Companies that use omnichannel marketing also maintain about a 91 percent higher customer retention rate, year over year.

Clearly, your brand should not miss the opportunities that omnichannel marketing offer. The following five omnichannel marketing tips aim to help you grow your business across platforms.

Research and understand your target audience

To create a successful strategy in omnichannel marketing, you must understand who your audience is so that you can effectively build relationships with them across channels.

Who are they? Where are they from? What are their goals and challenges? Which devices are they using? What content do they love? Which platforms and/or channels do they use most?

Social media listening, customer feedback (through surveys and otherwise) and your data analytics tools (such as Google Analytics and social media metrics) can arm you with the information you need to make smart choices about how to best engage with your audience.

Then, you’ll want to use that information to segment your audience. This can include basic demographics, such as age, gender and so on. It also could be based on geographic location. There are many ways to segment your audience. Find out more.

Not sure who your target audience is exactly? Check out our seven tips.

Audit your technology

Depending on the software you’re using for your point of sale system (POS), customer relationship management system (CRM) and so on, it might be time for an upgrade.

If you’re systems do not or cannot integrate, that can be an issue that will hinder your omnichannel marketing tactics and performance.

DailyStory (which features email and SMS text marketing, segmentation, personalization, automation and much more) integrates with your favorite applications, such as Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, etc. You also can connect to thousands of other applications using Zapier.

So, when someone joins your subscriber list, a welcome email can automatically send. Or, if a customer abandons his or cart on your website, an automated reminder can be sent to them via text or email. The sky is the limit.

Evaluate, choose your channels

If you’re new to digital marketing (perhaps your business just launched), omnichannel marketing can feel especially overwhelming.

Start simple. Start small. Then, build and grow from there.

Identify up to three channels and develop a campaign that will run for a set period of time. Consider the potential touchpoints you’ll have with your target audience on those chosen channels (hopefully the ones where your audience spends the most time). That way, you can stop hesitating, get something into action where you can then evaluate its performance and how you can improve for the next campaign.

Omnichannel marketing also involves customer service across multiple channels, so consider how you can best meet your customers where they are, whether that’s Facebook Messenger, email, live chat, Twitter DMs, etc.

Even if you have existing channels already in play, it’s never too late to evaluate what channels are working and which might actually be hurting your brand reputation (because you can spend enough resources on them to properly maintain). More isn’t always better. Quality over quantity always.

Optimize your content

Gone should be the days of copying and pasting the same social media post across platforms. Every platform (whether it’s a social media network, your blog, videos on YouTube, you name it) should be treated uniquely. This  can be based on the features available, target audience there and platform expectations. For example, going live on video and answering customer questions on the fly about a new product or service is something you could easily do on Facebook or Instagram. But you wouldn’t do the same on TikTok, Twitter, a mass SMS text message or even your blog.

Consideration for every place you publish content should be in play as part of your content marketing strategy in general, but it’s especially important for omnichannel marketing. 

Thinking through your content with the omnichannel lens, you want to offer:

  • Engaging and personalized content that supports customers through each stage of their purchasing journey with you.
  • Researched and information-filled solutions to help customers compare products or service and make decisions.
  • A range of content that supports the needs of your targeted customer.
  • Content that’s optimized for the channel and device that it’s beeing consumed on.

While you’re brainstorming, check out our seven tips to level up your overall content marketing.

Measure, measure, measure

Data is everything in omnichannel marketing. The only way you can improve and evolve your efforts is to track the performance of all omnichannel campaigns across platforms.

This isn’t just about reading an analytics reports. Consciously test tactics, request customer feedback and act on the information you’re learning as you move forward.

Typical key metrics to monitor can include email open rate, social media engagement, sales conversion rate and customer retention. But it really depends on the nature of your omnichannel marketing campaigns themselves.

Don’t forget to set goals at the beginning of each campaign. That way, you can have a better sense of whether your efforts are effectively growing your business.

In conclusion

If you’re not leveraging omnichannel marketing in some way as consumers and technology (and buying habits) continue to evolve, you’re missing out.

Think through how you can meet your target audience where they are and how those different channels can complement each other.

As you’re exploring the potential of omnichannel marketing, consider leveling up your overall digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 things you should know about BeReal

BeReal is one of the latest social media apps to create a buzz.

It generated more than 56 million downloads in 2022, catching the attention of TikTok, which launched a feature (TikTok Now) that is reminiscent of what’s making BeReal popular. 

But what is BeReal? Essentially, the app prioritizes more authentic, in-the-moment content. Originally launched in 2020, BeReal offers a “new and unique way to discover who your friends really are in their daily life.” Gen Z users (specifically 18- to 24-year-olds) are the majority of BeReal’s base.

The following are six things you should know about BeReal.

The daily BeReal notification is global and random

BeReal sends you a daily alert asking you to post a picture within two minutes that shows whatever you’re doing at the moment. This alert is sent at a random time each day and at the same time to all users globally.

While users can post after the two minutes is over, the text below that shared photo will say that the deadline was not met. For instance, the text could say: “3 hours late.”

You’re actually taking a ‘double photo’

To take the prompted photo when alerted, you open BeReal and snap a selfie with your phone’s front camera, while the back camera captures the view in the other direction. 

Images are only visible to your contacts on the app for 24 hours.

You have ‘friends’ not ‘followers’

On BeReal, you don’t have followers. You have “friends,” which means that only the people you personally add can see your posts. In addition, you can’t see your friends’ photos until you upload your own. 

Keep in mind that there are no friend/follower counts, removing the temptation to build “influence.”

The app also has built-in emojis, and users can react to and comment on each other’s images. There’s also a “RealMoji” feature, which is a photo taken with the front camera of the user’s face reacting in some way. It allows users to see their friends’ real-time reactions to what they’re doing at that specific moment.

No filters or photo editing

Part of what is making BeReal so popular is its lack of filters and editing. You also can’t import edited photos, so you can only capture an image from within the app in real-time.

You can retake the photo up to 10 times, but the app will tell your friends how many times you’ve retaken the photo before you uploaded it.

BeReal has a Discovery section

While users specifically connect with the people they know, BeReal does have a discovery section. It enables you to see other posts from around the world from other users who have their privacy settings unlocked.

It emphasizes the mundanity of the world, where other apps (like Instagram or Twitter) tend to promote over-the-top lifestyles and images.

No advertising

BeReal does not host advertising on its interface. Depending on your perspective, this can be a good or bad thing. For users, it can feel like a relief to not navigate any ads in an app. For brands, it immediately removes an obvious way to connect with users on BeReal.

Only time will tell how long the ad-free experience will last on BeReal and how funding for the app will evolve.

In conclusion

Just like with any other newly popular social media app, the best thing to do is to try it out yourself. Only then can you better understand the nuances and value of BeReal and how it may or may not fit into your brand’s digital marketing strategy in the future.

Check out the eight most common social media mistakes that you should avoid.

While you’re exploring BeReal, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 ways to handle social media negativity

Social media negativity is a fact of life for both individuals and brands. 

As a brand, however, you want to make sure that you handle any negative comments appropriately. Any misstep can become a problem for your business.

About 94 percent of consumers admit that they will avoid a business that has a negative review. And negative reviews don’t just happen on platforms like Yelp. They occur across social media as well, whether it’s a formal Facebook recommendation, an informal Instagram post tagging the business and sharing the customer experience or simply a negative comment on one of your brand posts on any social media channel.

The following are five ways to handle social media negativity related to your brand, regardless of whether it’s a negative review, negative comment or something else.

Always respond to negative comments or posts

First things first, you should always respond to any social media negativity directed toward your brand. If you avoid them, they can snowball into the perception that your brand doesn’t care.

Address the negativity quickly, be apologetic, polite and offer to move into a private communication channel in order to address the issue in more detail. (That way, your audience knows you’re handling the issue, but the related details remain private between you and the customer.)

Of course, your team shouldn’t have to guess when and how to respond to social media negativity. You can start by crafting templated responses that address common frequently asked questions so that everyone is on the same page. Identify which questions come up from your customers the most (as well as any positive and negative feedback you expect to get or have seen in the past). You can then plan out a few responses to any given negative situation so that you have different templated options available.

Just make sure that you update these templated responses from time to time. And, in addition, always personalize a templated response for the user you’re responding to. It can be as simple as using his or her first name and summarizing his or her complaint to show that you are listening before you apologize and offer a way to help.

Use facts (not emotions) when responding

As a brand, you must remove all emotion out of your response to social media negativity, which can easily be upsetting or angering. Stick with your templated responses (personalized as needed), and leverage facts to address any potentially misleading information. 

Remember, while you’re responding to a particular user, you’re also addressing your entire audience who can see your response. Keep the facts simple and straightforward to clear up any confusion that could have been caused by the user’s social media negativity.

Never delete negative comments

If you delete negative comments, you risk angering people even more and looking like you have something to hide.

Neither is good for your brand.

Respond instead of delete. Of course, if there’s a specific internet troll who is harassing your brand (and there’s no private or public remedy to be had), there are tools across platforms where you can report the post or comment, report abusive users and even ban them from engaging with your account.

Always report harassment

Speaking of wayward, abusive trolls, there is a fine line between criticism and harassment.

While Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have community guidelines regarding user behavior that you should be familiar with, you should also post your own “rules of conduct” related to your social media presence and your online community. Keep your guidelines direct and clear. 

If there is a user that is being abusive and making the rest of your audience uncomfortable, you should consider the next steps of reporting and banning, as available on the social media channel it’s happening on.

Depending on the harassment, you may need to involve your legal team on a case-by-case basis.

Learn from your mistakes

No one is perfect, including your brand. If social media negativity has brought an issue to light, consider it an opportunity to fix it. In that sense, negative comments and posts can be a true source of information regarding a problem with your product, your customer service or something else that could be happening on a larger scale.

If this is the case, then you’ll want to include in your response that a mistake was made that you want to fix and whatever steps you’re taking to resolve the issue.

Over time, this sort of responsiveness and follow-through will benefit your business moving forward.

In conclusion

Social media negativity can feel daunting, but as a brand, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to address it. View it as an opportunity to engage with upset users or customers and turn them into brand supporters due to your proper handling of their issue.

Check out our 11 tips to best respond to negative reviews specifically. 

As you make a plan to better address social media negativity, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

4 tips to help get you verified on Facebook

Considering Facebook is the biggest social media network, it makes sense if you want Facebook verification on your page.

Facebook has 2.91 billion monthly active users as of 2022. This is actually a 6.2 percent increase from its 2.74 billion users in 2021, which was already a year-over-year growth of 12 percent from 2019.

With the potential to reach so many users, Facebook verification can help your page build credibility and a trusting relationship with your target audience. Facebook verification is the process of getting a profile or page verified to show other users that it represents your authentic presence on the platform. A blue checkmark appears next to the name of a verified account.

In addition to building trust, Facebook verification helps public figures, brands and companies who are susceptible to being impersonated with fake pages establish that they actually are who they say they are. A common example is the real Facebook page for a celebrity versus pages run by fans or imposters.

Facebook also prioritizes verified profiles and Pages in its search results, which can improve your brand’s reach.

While anyone can technically get verified on Facebook, there are strict verification requirements you must meet in order to get approved. However, these are only the bare minimum and are no guarantee that you’ll get verified.

To officially apply for Facebook verification, you would: 

  1. Open the Facebook verification request form.
  2. Choose your verification type, whether you’re looking to verify your personal profile (if you’re a public figure) or your Facebook page.
  3. Confirm your authenticity with credible documentation, such as a driver’s license, passport, etc.
  4. Confirm your notability by selecting a category for your business page or profile so that Facebook can ensure that your profile or page is something people are interested in or searching for.
  5. Add the country where you or your business is most well-known.
  6. Add your audience and “also known as,” which is an optional step, but keep in mind that the more information you give, the easier it is for Facebook to confirm your verification. For your audience, you can enter basic information about your audience demographics. If you have no other “aka” names for your business, though, you can leave that blank.
  7. Add up to five articles that show your Facebook page or profile is in the public interest. This is optional as well, but by including popular social media accounts, articles that talk about your business, Wikipedia profiles or anything else, you’re proving that people are interested in, following or talking about your brand.
  8. And submit!

But again, Facebook verification is not guaranteed. (Fortunately, you can reapply after 30 days if you get denied.) The following are four tips to help you get verified the first time on Facebook (and stay verified).

Be professional

When it comes to being professional on Facebook as a brand, there are a few things to consider, including:

  • The overall impression of your Facebook page or profile matches the image your brand presents elsewhere.
  • You’re only sharing on-brand, related content to your page or profile. No off-brand logos, personal posts (depending on the context), low-quality images, incorrect grammar and spelling, anything that doesn’t reflect your brand voice, etc.

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes when looking at your page or profile. What do you see? Better yet, ask a colleague for an unbiased opinion with a fresh set of eyes.

Maintain up-to-date business information

Before even applying for Facebook verification, you want to make sure that your entire Facebook business profile is complete. This includes working links to your website (and working links from your website back to your Facebook page).

But on top of that, you want to keep that information as up-to-date as possible. Perhaps you created a new website, moved store locations, changed business hours, added new products or services or something else. Regardless of what might change with your business and offerings, you’ll want to reflect that on your Facebook presence. 

Post engaging content regularly

Content (and engaging content in particular) is everything on social media. Without it, your Facebook page is a shell business listing that likely will not receive Facebook verification.

Of course, when it comes to content creation and publication, you want to keep your audience in mind, as well as their needs, challenges and interests. 

Check out our 10 tips for creating engaging content.

When it comes to frequency, consistency is critical. You don’t want to publish several posts in one day and then not post again for weeks. 

A content calendar can help keep you organized, but also check out how often you should be posting on social media, especially Facebook.

But beyond providing engaging content, you’ll want to engage with your followers as well. Reply to comments and direct messages, comment on relevant posts from other users, offer Facebook Lives that are specifically an opportunity for you to answer questions from customers and potential customers, etc. An engaged audience shows Facebook that you’re a notable brand that people follow. This contributes in your favor for Facebook verification.

Follow Facebook’s community standards

Do you know what Facebook’s community standards are? In short, they’re a robust list of guidelines that you should get familiar with (if you’re not already) that outline the acceptable use of the Facebook platform.

If you’re violating these standards, you obviously risk not getting verified. If you do get verified and then violate the community standards, Facebook can revoke your verification.

Reviewing the guidelines, turning on two-factor authentication and staying true to your Facebook marketing strategy will help you get (and stay) verified.

In conclusion

If you don’t get verified the first time that you apply, you can apply again in 30 days. However, we do recommend that you use those 30 days to review what you can improve about your Facebook presence before applying again. In fact, you may receive from Facebook at least part of the reason that you weren’t verified. If this is the case, you’ll want to address those issues as soon as possible.

Check out our seven tips to get verified on Instagram.

As you begin to optimize your Facebook presence for possible verification, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. This can include automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

 

Social media posting: How often should a brand really share?

For about as long as social media became a natural component of digital marketing, brands have wondered: “How often should I post?”

Obviously, no one wants to post too much or too little. As of 2022, there are about 4 billion social media users across all platforms, and the average amount of time an adult user spends on social media is higher than ever at 95 minutes per day.

Your target audience is part of these statistics, and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with them by not posting at the right frequency.

If you’re not posting enough, you risk being forgotten by your audience. If you post too much, you risk being a nuisance to your audience and probably even the platform’s algorithm that you’re posting on.

Simply put, the perfect frequency on any social media platform is to post as often as you can consistently that’s quality content (not just posting for the sake of posting). But let’s break down the official recommendations by platform (on both frequency and timing) so that you can see how your brand stacks up and whether there are any opportunities to optimize your posting frequency in your social media marketing strategy.

Social media posting on Facebook

The general best-practice recommendation on Facebook is to post once per day, with a maximum of two posts per day.

Pages with fewer than 10,000 fans experience about a 50 percent decrease in engagement per post if posting more than once per day.

On the flip side, you’ll want to post on your Facebook page at least three times per week at minimum.

As far as timing, general recommendations suggest the afternoon, but it’s important to test this out with your own audience. Keep in mind that your specific audience might have different usage habits, and simply following a general recommendation that everyone else might be striving for could just leave you lost in the crowd. Experiment and pay attention to your Facebook Insights to understand what times work best for your brand.

Check out our six Facebook marketing tips that you should know.

Social media posting on Instagram

The general best-practice recommendation on Instagram is to post at least once per day but no more than three times per day.

The bare minimum is at least once per week, with a better, suggested minimum of at least three times per week.

Definitely avoid publishing several posts in quick succession or disappearing for weeks at a time. It’s all about consistency.

As far as timing, general recommendations suggest early morning or midday, but just like on Facebook, you’ll want to experiment to determine what timing is most successful for your audience. Keep an eye on Instagram Insights as you test out different times.

Check out our 16 Instagram marketing tips that you should know.

Social media posting on Twitter

Studies on Twitter posting frequency do vary wildly, with a suggested range of once per day to 51 times per day. But general, best-practice recommendations advise three to 30 times per day, which can still be a big range to consider. This is because tweets have such a short “shelf life,” so regardless of what frequency you go with, you’ll want to make sure to spread your tweet out throughout the day.

Truly, the bare minimum frequency is once per day, but you will do better with three to 6 tweets per day. The optimal sweet spot for many brands is about 15 to 23 tweets per day. Definitely avoid disappearing from Twitter for weeks or months at a time because you’ll lose followers. 

As far as timing, weekday mornings typically perform well, but you’ll want to experiment for your audience. With timing and especially because the frequency recommendation is such a big range, testing is key. Monitor your Twitter Analytics to find the best mix for your brand.

Check out our eight Twitter marketing tips that you should know.

Social media posting on LinkedIn

The general best-practice recommendation on LinkedIn is to post at least twice a week but no more than once per business day.

Ideally, you’ll want to post once per business day.

Just like with other social media platforms, you don’t want to disappear for weeks at a time. Consistency is always key.

As far as timing, mornings are best. As always, monitor the performance of your LinkedIn posts. You never know if a general recommendation is best for your audience until you test it. 

Check out our six LinkedIn marketing tips that you should know.

Social media posting on YouTube

The general best-practice recommendation on YouTube is to strive for uploading a new video weekly. Of course, the challenge is that video content especially can require time and resources to produce quality content. While the recommendation is once per week, don’t overcommit to what you can realistically do.

You also should set appropriate expectations with your audience by sharing your posting frequency on your YouTube channel. Resist the temptation to disappear for weeks, though. Setting a plan and sticking to it can help maintain consistency.

As far as timing, midday on Thursdays and Fridays is recommended, while Mondays and Tuesdays are considered the worst days to upload on YouTube. Test it out, though. Your audience may always vary from nationwide trends.

Check out our 20 tips to grow your YouTube subscribers.

Social media posting on Pinterest

The general best-practice recommendation on Pinterest is at least three posts per day, with a maximum of 25 posts per day. 

Because this is such a wide range (similar to Twitter), consider your bare minimum one pin daily, with a better frequency being three to five pins daily and the optimal frequency being 10 to 25 pins per day. Of course, this entirely depends on your brand’s bandwidth to create and publish new pins for Pinterest.

Make sure that you’re focusing on new pins since Pinterest has been prioritizing them since 2019 and not overly relying on re-pins. You don’t want to repeat pins frequently or post them to more than 10 Pinterest boards.

As far as timing, late night is a recommended time for publishing on Pinterest. Make sure to test this with your audience to see what the best time might be for your brand.

Check out our six Pinterest marketing tips that you should know.

Social media posting on TikTok

Even though TikTok is a newer social media platform for brands to consider, it appears that the general best-practice recommendation is to post at least one quality video per day. But three videos per day is best.

At bare minimum, you at least need to post several times per week.

As far as maximum videos, opinions vary. Many suggest no more than four or five per day, while some suggest that there is no such thing as posting too much on TikTok. 

As far as timing, general recommendations suggest early morning or late night, but experiment with your content and audience to find what works best for your brand.

Check out our 15 TikTok marketing tips that you should know.

In conclusion

Again, the idea of optimal social media posting frequency for your brand truly comes down to:

  • Your resources and bandwidth to create quality, engaging content.
  • Your target audience’s behaviors and social media usage habits.

If you are considering increasing your posting frequency to meet generally optimal levels, a content calendar can help you stay organized.

While you’re evaluating your social media posting frequency and timing, consider leveling up your digital marketing strategy. DailyStory specializes in automation, email marketing, audience segmentation and more. Level up your process, and schedule a free demo with us today.

7 tips for finding the right influencers for your digital marketing

Influencer marketing is easier said than done, especially when it comes to finding the right influencers for your brand and digital marketing campaigns.

Simply put, influencer marketing involves increasing brand awareness, targeting new and niche audiences and increasing impressions and reach through a partnership with an online influencer. An influencer is an online personality with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media. Of course, social media is a broad term. Truly, an influencer can exist on any online platform, including his or her blog. Ideally, this individual has at least 10,000 followers (but this amount can vary).

Influencer marketing has expanded to a $16.4 billion industry, and about 93 percent of marketers have used influencer marketing in their campaigns. Instagram alone has an estimated 500,000 active influencers. The success behind this style of marketing is that it isn’t perceived the same way as traditional marketing.

When done correctly, influencer marketing is a natural extension of an influencer’s personal brand. This is the case even when links, keywords and other standard marketing tactics are used. With the right partnership, you can tap into the trust that a community has with a particular influencer to boost the reach of your own brand.

But there’s a real risk to feeling like you’re not getting your money’s worth from influencer marketing campaigns. And truly, your brand can look bad if or when working with an ill-fitting influencer.

Of course, marketing in general is never guaranteed, but successful influencer marketing all starts with partnering with the right influencers. The following are seven tips for finding the best influencers organically for your brand and digital marketing goals.

Start with a Google search

It might sound simple, but Google really is a great place to start when seeking the right influencers to potentially work with.

You can search for such terms as:

  • “[Your industry] experts”
  • “[Your industry] speakers”
  • “[Your industry] bloggers”
  • “[Your industry] influencers”

Of course, if you’re looking for more locally based influencers, you can include your state or city in the search as well.

The results you get could be vast, and you’ll then have to narrow down your potential list through researching the influencers you find. But you also could have to expand your search if you’re not getting enough results to work with.

Conduct a hashtag search on Instagram

Instagram is still the preferred social media channel for brands that engage in influencer marketing. So, searching hashtags on Instagram that are related to your industry, product, service or competitor will not only potentially discover viable influencers whom you could work with. You’ll also see related content from different points of view that can inspire your own influencer marketing campaign approach.

An Instagram hashtag search is important because it could lead to social media profiles that your might not have found doing a Google seach alone.

Check out our six tips to master Instagram hashtags.

Explore influencers’ followings

Influencers tend to follow each other on social media platforms. Viewing the Twitter lists of known influencers (perhaps those who might be too big for your brand to afford now) can help you discover other influencers who might be a better fit overall (not just financially).

Of course, this same logic can be applied to exploring the “following” tab of any influencer’s Instagram account as well. It’s just about seeing what connections can lead to the discovery of influencers you might not otherwise know about.

Learn more about social media platforms as they relate to influencer marketing.

Examine your competition’s followers and engagers

By paying close attention to your competitors and their followers, you ensure that you’re not missing any opportunities to reach every possible audience you can.

Who’s engaging with your competitors by liking, sharing and commenting on their content? Who’s following them? The right influencer for your brand could be found in these groups on various social media channels.

Of course, this examination could be part of a larger competitive analysis, which can inform your digital marketing strategy beyond just influencer marketing.

Don’t forget about your own followers and engagers

While those who follow and engage with your competition could include quality influencers you’d like to work with, don’t forget about your own followers who are already engaging with your brand.

Review your follower lists across your social media channels for anyone with a relatively large following of his or her own. Even if they’re not labeling themselves as an influencer, there’s still the potential that they can be compelled to share your content or work with you in a bigger way on a consistent basis.

Browse speaker lists for industry-related events and conferences

Whether in-person or virtual, events and conferences that feature speakers in your industry can be a treasure trove for discovering influencers.

In many ways, the event or conference in question has already done the initial research that these potential collaborators are relevant to your industry (and potentially your target audience) in some way. So, all you have to do is research and decide who is specifically best for your brand.

Keep in mind that there’s no guarantee that a speaker will partner with you. However, they could still connect you to someone else who might be a good fit and is willing to collaborate.

Leverage influencer-finding tools

Of course, discovering the right influencer for your brand doesn’t all have to be a manual endeavor. There are a number of tools available that can help you monitor and discover influencers, including:

There are more tools out there, of course. But evaluate each tool and decide which one best suits your goals and your budget.

In conclusion

Finding relevant influencers is an important step but still just the first step to a successful influencer marketing campaign. Remember that you should still do your homework on any influencer you’re about to collaborate with. You also should have a clear plan and agreement in place that supports your brand’s campaign goals.

Check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

While you’re seeking the right influencer for your brand, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 signs to spot fake Instagram accounts

Fake accounts are a fact of life on social media. But how do you spot a fake Instagram account so that you don’t waste your time and (more importantly) don’t get scammed?

More than 2 billion people use Instagram once a month, making it the fourth most popular social app worldwide. About 8 percent of Instagram accounts are reportedly fake.

Of course, there are many possible reasons behind fake accounts, including:

  • Selling fake products or services
  • Impersonating others, as known as catfishing
  • Inflating follower numbers
  • Using bots for automated activity

Having too many fake Instagram accounts following you can drag down your engagement rate. It also can get your Instagram account potentially shut down since Instagram can assume that you’re buying followers, which goes against its terms of use.

In addition, by spotting fake Instagram accounts, you’ll better avoid typical scams, such as:

  • Phishing, in which a fake account will message you a link and a reason to click on it, but by doing so, a virus attached to the link and steal your login information and other data.
  • False brand collaborations that aim to steal your bank account information.
  • Fake competition prizes, loan offers and more that also aim to steal your bank account information.
  • Emotional scams, where the scammer attempts to get close to you and earn your trust as a friend or romantic interest in hopes of being sent money later on.

Fortunately, fake Instagram accounts aren’t terribly difficult to identify. However, the appearance of fake accounts can vary depending on the purpose and the people behind them. The following are five signs for you to spot a fake Instagram account.

Examine the Instagram account

A good place to start is by looking at the suspected account’s Instagram bio. Because fake accounts often are created en masse, there likely will be no bio description or a very generic one.

Often, photos are stolen from real people. Running a reverse image search on such tools as Google Images or Social Catfish can help you identify stolen photos (and the real account that’s the source of the photos). Depending on those search results, you can better understand whether an Instagram account is fake or not.

Of course, the lack of any profile photo is a sign of a fake account as well.

Also, take a look at the account name. If a few characters or letters have been changed (or if the account name seems odd in general), it’s likely a fake Instagram account.

No original posts found

Most fake Instagram accounts either rarely or never post. Remember, bot accounts are created at a high volume to boost follower counts. So, posting content isn’t a concern for many fake accounts.

Granted, not everyone posts a ton on Instagram. But when leveraged with other red flags: If a suspected account has little to no posts, it’s likely fake. If the profile is private, you can still see the post count as a visible number at the top of the account’s profile.

If there are some posts, they may consist entirely of promotional content and suspicious giveaways. They also might be of different people in the sense that photos of attractive women who look similar but are not the same person. Either way, be wary of these types of posts. They’re likely indicative of a fake account.

High number of followers but low engagement

Fake accounts can easily buy lots of followers and likes to help look like they are popular, real accounts. But dig through the liked posts. Are there any comments? If so, what do those comments say? Irrelevant or spammy comments don’t count.

Low-quality engagement is a clear sign of purchased followers, and while real accounts can buy followers, too, it’s a red flag for fake accounts, for sure.

On the flip side, having zero followers is a sign of a fake account as well.

Following a high number of accounts

Bots often are set to follow thousands of Instagram accounts, so a high following count can also be a red flag that the account you’re looking at is fake. Keep an eye out for an out-of-whack following-to-follower ratio.

On the flip side, the account could be following zero other accounts, which could signal a fake account as well.

Relatively new account

Unlike Facebook, which can show a “joined” date on profiles, you’ll have to dig a little bit to understand whether a potentially fake Instagram account is fairly new.

Start looking through available posts (if there are any). If they’re all pretty new and/or batches of photos have been uploaded at about the same time, it’s likely the account is fake.

In conclusion

If you find that an Instagram account is obviously fake, you can easily report it by navigating to the account’s profile, clicking on the three dots on the right side of the screen and selecting “Report.” Follow the instructions given. 

Reporting can help reduce the number of fake Instagram accounts following you if you’re noticing a high occurrence of those.

Beyond reporting fake accounts, you’ll also be able to save yourself and/or your brand the time and hassle of potentially being scammed. 

Check out the 14 biggest mistakes companies make on Instagram so that you can avoid them. You can also grow your Instagram followers the right way with these seven tools.

While you’re examining potential fake Instagram accounts, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips to get verified on Twitter

Twitter, like most social media platforms, aims to help cut through bots, trolls and misinformation by various means, such as Twitter verification.

And if your business is active on Twitter, you might be wondering how to get verified and earn the blue checkmark badge next to your account handle.

Twitter verification involves a manual review by Twitter of your account to assert that your profile is credible, authentic and of interest to the public. This means that Twitter can confirm that your account is not impersonating, manipulating or spamming anyone in addition to not violating any copyright or trademark laws. Of course, Twitter verification doesn’t mean an endorsement of your business. It’s all very similar to getting verified on Instagram.

Accounts that can be considered for verification include those used by businesses, politicians, celebrities, musicians, influencers, journalists and so on. Having a big following alone, though, is not a guarantee for getting verified.

Twitter is the world’s seventh favorite social media platform, so to be validated on Twitter helps build trust with your target audience and could lead indirectly to an increase in followers since verification is a sign of authenticity and public interest.

Keep in mind that Twitter announced a new verification program in 2021 after pausing the program in 2017 when a white supremacist’s account obtained a Twitter verification badge, causing a scandal for Twitter.

While anyone can apply for Twitter verification, not everyone will be approved. Minimum follower counts are required, but they do differ between regions to make the verification process more equitable.

Dive deeper into Twitter’s current verification policy.

The application process is relatively simple. Navigate to “Account Settings” on Twitter and select “Request Verification.” Then, you can follow the prompts to submit your application for review.

But again, Twitter verification is not guaranteed. The following are five tips to help you get verified on Twitter the first time you apply.

Optimize your Twitter profile

Of course, you should already want your Twitter account to reflect your brand. What more can you do to optimize your profile? 

You can start by writing a brief-but-descriptive bio that includes your company’s location and a link to your website. In addition, make sure that you’re using high-quality images for your profile photo and cover photo.

You also can pin your top tweet. This then becomes the first tweet users see when visiting your profile, so the tweet you choose matters.

Maintain an active account

If you’re tweeting sporadically, you’re not setting yourself up well for verification. Beyond tweeting more (but still thinking about quality over quantity), you should consider:

  • Responding quickly to direct messages, mentions and comments.
  • Liking, retweeting and commenting on other users’ content.
  • Following and engaging with verified Twitter accounts.
  • Using hashtags to participate in trending conversations.

When applying for Twitter verification, Twitter does look at how your account engages with other accounts. So, ask questions, post polls and mention other verified accounts to encourage them to join the conversation.

To boost the quality of your own brand content, leverage photos and videos. This is especially important considering that you only have 280 characters to work with. Visuals can help communicate more beyond those 280 characters, and you’ll likely see higher engagement as well.

And with more tweets comes a higher risk of spelling and grammar mistakes. Double-check all copy in your tweets before posting since Twitter doesn’t allow you to edit a tweet after publication (and you wouldn’t want to have to do that as a brand anyway).

Plan and execute a Twitter marketing strategy

To help you stay focused and efficient with your content and engagement on Twitter, creating and executing a separate marketing strategy for Twitter is helpful.

You can start by:

Check out our eight expert tips to market your business better on Twitter.

Avoid shortcuts

You might be eager to get your Twitter account verified, but resist the temptation to take any shortcuts. This includes buying followers and relying on bots, you name it.

You want to keep it real, authentic, credible and reliable as a Twitter account, so avoid any seemingly spammy tweets as well. 

Be patient and trust that embracing Twitter’s best practices will not only result in Twitter verification but will help you stay verified as well.

Ensure that everything you tweet is public

While Twitter gives the option for users to change their privacy settings, you want to make sure that as a brand, all your tweets are open to public viewing.

Private tweets limit interaction and engagement, but private tweeting also signals to Twitter that your account is not of public interest.

In conclusion

While there’s no guarantee, getting verified on Twitter is one thing. Staying verified on Twitter is a whole other thing. It is possible to lose your Twitter verification badge if you don’t continue to follow Twitter’s rules and community guidelines.

View Twitter’s “rules of the road” to get a better understanding of the expectations.

In addition, check out the 14 biggest mistakes businesses make on Twitter.

As you begin to optimize your Twitter presence for possible verification, consider leveling up your digital marketing process, which can include automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

TikTok: 6 tips to get verified as a business

If you’re looking to include TikTok, which is only growing in popularity, in your digital marketing strategy, you also should consider how to get your account verified.

TikTok is a video-based social media platform that encourages engagement around short, vertical video clips. The app has increasingly penetrated popular culture with its various hashtag challenges and viral stars.

As of January 2022, TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users globally. It also boasts the highest social media engagement rates per post.

If your target audience is younger, TikTok might be a “must” rather than a “maybe” in your marketing plan.

But once you create an account, how do you go about getting it verified? Verification is the process that many social media platforms have to confirm that you are you, in the simplest sense. In a world of fake accounts, verification is more important than ever. The benefit of verification is the immediate authenticity and trustworthiness that occurs with that checkmark next to your account handle, which can help grow followers. Your audience knows that the account is truly you and/or your brand.

But verification on TikTok is not a one-size-fits-all process. Unlike Instagram and Twitter, TikTok does not accept requests from users who want to get verified, which can lead to some confusion. In the case of TikTok, it’s a game of “Don’t call us … we’ll call you.” And that call only happens when TikTok perceives you to be a quality account based on consistent activity and viral engagement. In other words, to get verified on TikTok comes down to having a strong strategy on that platform. 

The following are six tips to get verified as a business on TikTok.

Think through your TikTok strategy

Success on TikTok does not just happen. It involves a robust content marketing strategy that’s based on data about your target audience and more.

Do not improvise. Plan out your content and invest the appropriate time and energy into content that will connect with users. You can follow competitors’ accounts for inspiration (what you might want to do and what you might want to avoid).

You also can get organized by creating and using a content calendar.

Follower growth matters

While TikTok won’t say whether there’s a specific number of followers an account must have, it has been seen that the rate of follower growth matters.

Ensuring that your content has value is a great start to growing your followers. But beyond that, consider cross-promoting your TikTok presence on other platforms. Many times, you have to make it extra obvious where your customers and fans can find you.

Focus on post-engagement rates

Consistent posting is key to building up your engagement rates on TikTok. At the same time, quality content matters. 

Regularly brainstorming video ideas can help keep your content fresh.

You also may want to loosely storyboard your idea for an upcoming video so that you can not only be more efficient during the creation process but also more effective.

Keep your audience in mind. Consider their interests, hobbies, challenges and problems. Never stop experimenting with:

  • Popular trends currently happening on TikTok
  • Making high-quality videos
  • Using popular music and other sounds
  • Keeping your videos as short as possible

The hope is that you won’t just grow your engagement rates over time, but you’ll also hopefully go viral from time to time. While going viral can improve your likelihood of getting verified, don’t obsess over it. Keep it simple. Stay focused on posting the best content you possibly can for your audience, and don’t forget to have fun with it.

Go with your niche

You can’t be everything to everyone. In fact, you shouldn’t be if you want to reach the best potential customers for your business.

This is true on TikTok. Your business likely already specializes in a niche within your industry. How do you express that on other social media platforms? How do you want that to be expressed on TikTok specifically?

Niche content can contribute to attracting and keeping a following, which will help get you verified on TikTok that much faster.

Collaborate with an influencer

TikTok influencers can offer a wealth of creativity and reach, depending on who you decide to work with. Plus, if you’re struggling with your content strategy and creation, an influencer could be exactly what you need.

If you’re new to the world of influencers, check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign, whether it’s on TikTok or another social media platform.

Consider your other social media accounts

It might sound counterintuitive, but having a strong presence (and even verifications) on other social media platforms can actually help you get verified on TikTok.

So, while you may want to level up your presence and strategy on TikTok, do not shortchange your other accounts. They all matter. 

Check out these eight most common social media mistakes to avoid so that you don’t get tripped up.

In conclusion

Because the path to TikTok verification is not straightforward, it’s important not to give up. This process can take time. 

TikTok is looking for authenticity, engagement and consistency in the accounts it will verify. (Verification can’t even be bought, only earned.) Stay with it and continue experimenting. The verification payoff will be worth it.

While you’re diving deeper into TikTok for your business, consider your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 tips to get verified on Instagram

For many of Instagram’s nearly 1.5 billion users, Instagram verification is a critical validation.

Instagram verification, otherwise known as that blue check on a user’s profile, is a signal to other users that your profile is the only one representing your brand.

More officially, Instagram says that getting verified means that the visual-first social media platform has confirmed that your account is “the authentic presence of the public figure, celebrity or brand it represents.” It does not equal an endorsement from Instagram.

This verification proves that your profile is not a fake, unofficial or fan account. In addition, it helps your brand stand out.

But you must qualify for Instagram verification. While the exact requirements for getting an Instagram verification badge are unclear, there are some guidelines provided by the platform itself that it takes into consideration when reviewing your application. 

While rumors have swirled regarding how many followers your account needs to have to get verified on Instagram, there is no reason to delay applying for Instagram verification if you meet the guidelines, regardless of the size of your following. (Keep in mind that even if your Instagram account is linked to a verified Facebook page, you’ll still need to apply separately for Instagram verification.)

The application itself is relatively easy:

  • Log into your Instagram account.
  • Go to Settings.
  • Click on “Account’ and then “Request Verification.”
  • Fill out the required fields.
  • If denied, you’ll have to wait 30 days before requesting verification again.

But before you start applying for Instagram verification, the following are XX tips that you can use today to help you get verified on Instagram.

Complete your Instagram profile

Your Instagram profile plays an important role in your verification process. Make sure that it is 100 percent complete. Include a:

  • Well-written bio
  • Profile photo that represents your brand, business or yourself
  • Relevant link

If it’s already complete, ask a colleague to review it. A fresh perspective can identify any opportunities for optimization of your profile that you might not be thinking of.

Avoid cross-platform links in your bio

While we recommend including a relevant link on your Instagram bio, Instagram does not want verified accounts to encourage users to add or follow other social media profiles (such as Facebook or YouTube) in their bios.

That being said, you can still add links to your website, landing page or other web pages. Just avoid linking to your other social media profiles.

On the flip side, it can help to add links to your Instagram profile on your brand’s website, within marketing emails and/or on your other social media profiles. The links to your Instagram account from your other social media profiles especially help validate your profile ownership.

Keep your Instagram account active and uniquely you

Of course, the hope is that if you’re interested in getting verified on Instagram, you’re likely active on the platform. But if you’re not very active, then it’s time to increase your activity in a consistent way.

Regular activity is imperative for Instagram verification. Make sure that you’re posting visually appealing and relevant content for your audience (whether in your feed or in Stories), engage with your followers in comment threads (even on their posts) and monitor your Instagram performance.

Of course, being active on Instagram only gives you the opportunity to consistently reflect your brand personality and everything that makes you unique. When looking over your Instagram content strategy, what helps you stand out, not just from your competitors but also from any impersonator accounts? 

Think about your:

  • Brand voice
  • Visual style
  • Overall feed aesthetic
  • Content theme
  • Hashtag strategy

One easy way to stand out as uniquely you is by sharing behind-the-scenes content that gives your followers an insider’s look at your brand. You also can encourage followers to tag you in their posts, which also helps validate your account as being yours.

Leverage your earned media and SEO

Earned media

Because part of what Instagram is looking for is your notoriety (that you’re a widely recognized brand), earned media can help with that. Earned media is any material written about you or your business that you haven’t paid for or created yourself. The most obvious example is a news article.

Start by Googling yourself and/or your brand and see what comes up. Anything that is relevant should be shared on your account in some way. But if nothing comes up in your searches, you’ll want to create and execute a PR strategy to help change that.

This will take time, but it’s worth the effort (and not just for the Instagram verification).

Check out our eight tips for writing a press release that gets noticed.

SEO

Your notoriety is also helped by your searchability. In other words, the better your search engine optimization (SEO), the better chance you’ll get verified on Instagram.

It’s not a bot that manages your verification request, it’s an actual person. And Instagram does its research. Beyond earned media, what else would someone find when searching for you? Does it positively reflect on your brand and how widely known you are? 

If not, it’s time to turn that tide so that any verification research goes in your favor.

Check out our 12 SEO marketing tips for beginners.

Grow your other social media profiles

While you might be focused solely on Instagram, your presence on other social media platforms can be a factor in your Instagram verification. The stronger the presence on other platforms, the better.

Of course, there’s no magic bullet for growing your following on any social media platform, but a few best practices include:

  • Leveraging any earned media coverage (such as a news article) to your advantage.
  • Showcasing your brand personality through a consistent voice and theme.
  • Posting consistently and frequently.
  • Creating and sharing engaging content.

Check out seven of the best tools to help grow your Instagram followers.

Identify impersonator profiles

One of the factors that Instagram considers for verification is the potential (or actuality) of your account being impersonated.

Instagram itself says that accounts representing well-known figures and brands are verified because they have a high likelihood of being impersonated.

So, it’s in your best interest to keep an eye out for any impersonating, fake profiles falsely identifying themselves as you or your brand. Report them to Instagram, but you’ll also want to document them for the sake of your verification as well.

Do not buy an Instagram verification badge

Do not get tempted. The only way to get verified on Instagram is to apply through the app (or through Meta’s media partners). If you try to shortcut the process or buy your way in, you’ll be wasting your money and risk getting penalized for violating Instagram’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.

In particular, giving false or misleading information during the verification process can actually get your account removed from Instagram entirely.

In conclusion

If you do get verified on Instagram, know that you absolutely can lose it as soon as you’re found to not be following Instagram’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines (or if Instagram finds that you gave misleading or false information on your verification application).

So, you do have to play by the rules, stay active and publish unique and engaging content to maintain your verified status.

If you do not get verified on Instagram after applying, don’t worry. You can re-apply for Instagram verification after 30 days. Use those 30 days to continue working at our tips so that your account can hopefully be approved next time.

Remember, while Instagam verification can be a great asset in your overall marketing strategy on the platform, it’s just one piece of it. Keep all your tactics and plans in place so that you can continue working toward your goals, regardless of whether you’re verified or not.

As you begin to optimize your Instagram presence for possible verification, consider leveling up your digital marketing process, which can include automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 last-minute Small Business Saturday marketing ideas

Small Business Saturday should be marked on every small business owner’s calendar. 

To put it simply, Small Business Saturday is a special day each year when people are encouraged to shop small during the post-Thanksgiving weekend to support their local economies. It applies to all types of small, local businesses.

The holiday was started by American Express in 2010 during the recession and became recognized by the U.S. Senate and all 50 states in 2011.

While about 39 percent of Americans celebrate Small Business Saturday, about 57 percent make it a point to shop at local businesses.

You don’t want to miss an opportunity to share your small business story with your target audience. But you might be busy and find yourself running out of time to do anything special for Small Business Saturday itself.

Don’t worry! We have you covered. The following are five last-minute Small Business Saturday marketing ideas that you can make happen with limited time and a limited budget.

Highlight your business story

Owning your identity as a small business can be as simple as posting a video or image on social media (or an email drip campaign if you have enough time or blog post) that shares the story behind your business. 

How did it get started? Why was it created? What are some of your favorite memories? Biggest challenges? What makes you different from big-box stores? How do you support the community? Who are the people behind your business? What is the relationship with your customers like?

There’s no limit to what or how you can share your business story. Even just a few thoughts can engage your audience in a meaningful way.

Offer a compelling discount or special

To stand out from the crowd of other small businesses marketing for Small Business Saturday, a compelling discount, offer or gift might be needed.

Think about your audience and what might appeal to them. Could it be a discounted packaging of a couple of your services or products? Is there a special gift you can include for any orders that cost more than a specific amount? Perhaps free refreshments in your physical business while customers shop?

You also can reflect and consider anything that’s worked well in the past. 

The key is that you want to blast your offer across your social media channels, email newsletter, in-store signage, etc. Wherever you can share it, including in relevant Facebook groups, do so.

Just make sure that whatever your offer is, it’s something that you can deliver on.

Collect email addresses in-store from customers

Regardless of how you set up your physical business location for success on Small Business Saturday, collecting email addresses from your customers should be a must.

This could be as simple as having a printed-out sign-up sheet (if you don’t have a device and online webform to use). You could even offer a special discount simply for signing up for your email contact list.

Remember that these customers are supporting you on Small Business Saturday, so you don’t want to miss out on signing them up for your email newsletter so that you can stay in touch (and encourage them to purchase from you again).

Confirm that you’re listed ahead of Small Business Saturday

Having an active, correct Google My Business listing ahead of Small Business Saturday is both critical and easy to do.

About 46 percent of all Google searches are looking for local information, while 88 percent of searches for local businesses on a mobile device either call or visit the business within 24 hours.

Check out our 12 ways to optimize your Google My Business profile.

Of course, listings go beyond just Google. Don’t forget Facebook, Yelp and any other platforms that are relevant in your community.

Host a giveaway

The best giveaways typically require a bit of time to plan and execute, but if you keep it simple enough, your giveaway can still be successful.

You can encourage user-generated content, such as photos with your product, to be posted with a specific Small Business Saturday-related hashtag. Then, whichever photo gets the most likes, you can repost it and give the “winner” a prize or special discount.

There are a number of ways to run a quick, efficient giveaway. Just make sure that you’re keeping everything legal.

In conclusion

If you’re limited on time ahead of Small Business Saturday, don’t fret. Decide what “low-hanging fruit” you can use in your marketing to seize the opportunity to engage with your audience and increase your sales.

As you’re marketing ahead of Small Business Saturday, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

26 social media metrics you should track across platforms

Are you paying attention to the right social media metrics?

Social media marketing can help you achieve your business goals, but it’s important to track your social media metrics to understand what’s working and what’s not.

About 43 percent of consumers increased their social media use to discover new products.

Of course, the best metrics to track on social media relate to your specific goals. But in general, the following are the 26 top metrics to track, based on social media platforms.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media network, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users as of July 2022. Of course, the sheer size of the audience makes it a favorite platform for marketers. But even though it’s popular, it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed when tracking your Facebook performance metrics. Here are five social media metrics you should track on Facebook:

  1. Reach and impressions, which are the number of unique users who saw your content and the number of total times your content was seen (regardless of whether one user saw it multiple times), respectively. Tracking these numbers gives you a sense of how large of an audience you’re reaching and can help give context to other Facebook metrics.
  2. Likes and reactions, which are a form of engagement that give users the opportunity to express their support for a page or a post. “Likes” used to refer to interactions with both Facebook pages and posts but Facebook has since expanded the options to engage with posts. These “reactions” span from “angry” to “love.” They act as social proof that your audience is connecting with your content, and Facebook uses them as a ranking signal to potentially show that content to more users in their news feeds. You also can get a sense of user sentiment about your content by monitoring your post reactions.
  3. Video views, which reflect when a video is played for at least three seconds. To count as a video view, the video needs to be 100 percent on screen in desktop browser mode and at least 50 percent on screen on mobile devices. Within the video-view metric, Facebook offers 3-second video views (when a user paused for your video but did not complete it), 1-minute video views (when a user watches for a significant period of time) and total minutes viewed. This is an important metric to monitor to understand how your video content is performing.
  4. Link clicks, which happen any time a user clicks an external link in your post to access more content. This could be to your website or another web page or site. This differs slightly with Facebook ads, where a traditional link click is called an outbound click and “link clicks” refer to clicks a user has made but still stays within the Facebook platform (such as filling out a form from a lead-generation ad but is still on Facebook). If your goal is to drive traffic to your website or someplace else, this metric reflects your success in those efforts.
  5. Comments and shares, which refer to the number of replies users have published on your content and the number of times users have sent your post to others on Facebook Messenger or shared on their own feeds. This acts as social proof that users are connecting with your content. It’s a bigger interaction than a like/reaction. You also can gauge user sentiment from comments on your posts.

Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Facebook.

Instagram

A visual-first platform owned by Facebook, Instagram now is the fourth most-used social media platform, with 1.22 billion monthly active users. It’s also particularly popular for consumers 34 years old and younger. Here are four metrics you should track on Instagram:

  1. Impressions, which are the number of times your content is seen by users who are logged into Instagram, even if a user saw it multiple times. This metric shows how effective your content is at getting the attention of your audience and beyond. It also helps give context to other metrics on Instagram.
  2. Reach, which is the estimated number of unique users (who are logged into Instagram) that saw your content. This metric is about users, not views, but will show you how large your audience actually is and can help give context to other metrics.
  3. Video plays, which are the number of times your video or reel was played by an Instagram user. Keep in mind that because many videos are short and play in a loop automatically, this metric can be higher than expected based on that content’s reach. It’s important to gauge whether all your video efforts are paying off.
  4. Post interactions, which are the number of likes, saves, comments and shares on any particular post. This metric does not include deleted interactions. To include deleted interactions, look at “content interactions” instead. This is all about understanding how well your content is connecting with your audience and can actually help boost your impressions and reach within the Instagram algorithm.

Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Instagram.

Twitter

A micro-blogging social network, Twitter has about 396.5 million users globally. About 92 percent of the content on Twitter is posted by 10 percent of its users. So, while Twitter might not be the most popular social media network, it has a very engaged section of its users. Here are four metrics you should track on Twitter:

  1. Impressions, which are the number of times your tweet appeared on screen, whether that’s through a user’s timeline or via a hashtag. You can view this metric for your account as a whole and for individual tweets. This metric can give you a sense of how many users viewed your content.
  2. Engagement, which is the number of times users have retweeted, quoted, replied to, liked or clicked within your tweet. This metric shows how effective your content is.
  3. Link clicks, which are any click on a URL or card within your tweet. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website or somewhere else, this metric can show how successful your efforts are.
  4. Profile visits, which reflect the number of users who visited your profile either through a tweet, search or other ways. This metric indicates the number of users who want to learn more about you, whether they ultimately follow you or not.

Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Twitter.

YouTube

A video-only social networking and broadcasting platform owned by Google, YouTube has more than 2.5 billion active monthly users. If you’re already creating video content, you definitely want to create a YouTube presence and share it there as well. Here are three metrics you should track on YouTube:

  1. Total watch time, which equals the total amount of time that all users have spent watching your video. This metric can help indicate how well your content is connecting with users. You also can see how total watch time compares between your subscribers and non-subscribers for more understanding.
  2. Video views, which is defined by Google to be “the number of legitimate views for your channel or videos.” This can refer to views that users initiate, such as by searching or clicking on a thumbnail. This metric can reveal how compelling your video is to potential viewers.
  3. Engagement, which is any interaction with your content beyond accessing it, such as likes, dislikes, views and comments. This metric shows how well your content connects with your audience.

Check out our 20 tips to grow your YouTube subscribers.

TikTok

Seemingly the “new kid on the block” in terms of rising popularity, short-form-video platform TikTok has a particularly large audience among Gen Z and Millennials. Depending on whether this younger demographic is part of your target audience, you may want to consider a presence on TikTok. Here are four metrics you should track on TikTok:

  1. Total time watched, which is the cumulative amount of time users spent watching your video. You’ll only see this for individual videos. However, by regularly monitoring this metric, you’ll see how successful new video content is.
  2. Engagement, which is how users interact with your content. This gives you a sense of how effectively your content is connecting with users. The higher the engagement, the higher your reach will probably be. 
  3. Video views, which are the number of times users played your video. As soon as a video begins to play, that counts as a video view (unlike some other social media platforms). This metric also counts repeat plays, including video loops. Video views essentially act like impressions on TikTok, so you can see how large of an audience you’re reaching.
  4. Hashtag performance, which reflects how many viewers found your video through a particular hashtag. This is important because the hashtags you use on your videos can impact your view count and engagement. Using the right hashtag matters. Tracking this metric will help you make more strategic decisions along the way and potentially attract more viewers.

Check out our 15 tips to market your brand on TikTok.

LinkedIn

With more than 830 million users in more than 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn is the largest social network for professionals. The platform is definitely a must for B2B (business-to-business) marketers. Here are three metrics you should track on LinkedIn:

  1. Impressions and unique impressions, which are the number of times at least 50 percent of your post was visible on screen for a logged-in LinkedIn user for at least 300 milliseconds and the number of times your post was visible to the same standard for unique users, respectively. These metrics show the size of your audience and how visible your content is to them.
  2. Engagements, which reflects video views, clicks, reactions, comments, shares and more in a section on LinkedIn called Update Engagements. You’ll get a sense of how well your content is connecting with your audience through this metric.
  3. Engagement rate, which is based on the following formula: number of interactions plus number of clicks plus number of followers acquired divided by number of impressions. This metric shows the percentage of impressions that result in engagement actions. Of course, the higher that percentage, the more effective your post is.

See our six tips to be more effective with your marketing on LinkedIn. Plus, check out the six biggest mistakes businesses make on LinkedIn so that you can avoid them.

Pinterest

Founded in 2009, Pinterest currently has about 478 million monthly active users. Think of Pinterest as a visual search engine, housing tons of photos, graphics, links and inspiration for nearly anything you might want to find. Yes, it’s popular for recipes and DIY projects, but there really is more to it than that. Here are XX metrics you should track on Pinterest:

  1. Impressions, which show the number of times your pins have appeared on screen, regardless of whether a user clicked to open it or not. This metric is available on an account level or by individual pin, and it helps illustrate how effectively your content is reaching an audience. It also can help provide context for other metrics.
  2. Engagement, which is defined by Pinterest as the number of “saves, pin clicks, outbound clicks, carousel card swipes, secondary creative (collections) clicks and Idea Pin foward/backward swipes.” In the simplest sense, Pinterest is saying that engagement is any time a user interacts with your pin in any way instead of scrolling past it. Monitoring this metric helps you understand how well your content is connecting with your audience.
  3. Outbound clicks, which are the number of times a user clicked on an outbound link (to your website, for example) from your pin. This metric matters is one of your goals is to drive traffic to your website or another web page outside of Pinterest.

Check out our six expert tips for marketing on Pinterest.

In conclusion

Monitoring your social media performance is imperative if you want to achieve your marketing goals. The challenge can be navigating so much data across platforms. Keep your goals in mind, as well as these top social media metrics. That way, you can focus on the most important information for your campaigns.

As you begin to drill into your top social media metrics, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

17 LinkedIn content ideas that you can post

If reaching professionals is a goal of your digital marketing efforts, offering diverse content on LinkedIn is a crucial tactic to explore.

LinkedIn now has more than 830 million users in more than 200 countries and territories, calling itself “the world’s largest professional network.”

But the type of content that a LinkedIn audience of professionals would best engage with is not necessarily the same as what’s popular on other social media platforms. The most popular content types on LinkedIn are: 

  • Long-form content (such as native articles and blog posts)
  • Third-party content
  • Native video
  • Text only
  • Photos and illustrations

But these are just content types. If you’re hitting a wall while brainstorming content ideas for LinkedIn, you’re in the right place. The following are 17 LinkedIn content ideas (categorized by content type) to help you mix up your content and connect with your target audience.

Long-form content ideas for LinkedIn

One of the best ways you can hit your goals with your content on LinkedIn is to offer value. Creating native articles on LinkedIn itself and/or sharing blog posts is a great opportunity to dive deeper into topics that relate to your industry, showcase your expertise and matter to your audience. Here are four ideas that you can run with:

  1. Detailed whitepapers
  2. How-to guides
  3. Research reports
  4. Case studies

The goal isn’t the length of the content. Make sure that every word engages your audience.

Third-party content ideas for LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an excellent platform to share relevant content from other sources. In other words, you don’t have to create everything yourself. With curated content, the sky is the limit. Just make sure you’re pulling from trustworthy sources. Here are three ideas for you to seek out and share:

  1. Adjacent-industry content, where the topic isn’t directly related to your industry but is still relevant. For example, you could be in the retail industry, but news articles about supply chains and shipping logistics still make sense and matter to your audience in the realm of retail.
  2. Expert opinions, where you’re sharing the thoughts and opinions of experts in your industry.
  3. Tips, tricks and life hacks, where you’re helping your audience with everyday problems that they encounter.

Check out our four tips for finding what to share on social media, as well as 12 tools that can help.

Native video content ideas for LinkedIn

Video content must be part of your digital marketing strategy, not just on LinkedIn but in general. About 54 percent of marketers say that video is the most valuable content type for achieving social media marketing goals, and about 85 percent of social media users want more videos from brands. Fortunately, LinkedIn now has the ability for you to upload videos natively into the platform. Here are four video content ideas that you can play with:

  1. Short clips from webinars to show your expertise first-hand.
  2. Spotlight your team. The more you can share their professional journeys and expertise, the more your audience can relate to your brand and the people behind your brand.
  3. Spotlight your customers in testimonials where they share their experience with your product and/or company.
  4. Behind-the-scenes videos that showcase your company culture.

Just make sure to include subtitles on your videos whenever relevant since a majority of users watch videos on mute.

Text-only content ideas for LinkedIn

Just because long-form content gives you the opportunity to dive deeper into topics that can provide value to your followers doesn’t mean that you should ignore the opportunity of short text-only posts. Here are three ideas to help you be as engaging as possible without the “icing” of other types of content:

  1. Tips and how-to’s are great for this content type if you can keep them short and sweet.
  2. Quick company updates
  3. Product and other announcements

The key is to be as short and impactful as possible. Every word counts.

Photo and illustration content ideas for LinkedIn

Getting visual on LinkedIn is just as important as visuals on any other social media platform. A photo (or graphic illustration) is worth a thousand words. And possibly even more than that because it can help catch the eye of your target audience as they’re scrolling. Here are three ideas that you can try:

  1. Data illustrations because everyone loves data, but everyone loves a visual representation of data (so that they can understand it) even more.
  2. Celebrate achievements, such as industry awards, company growth, anniversaries and more. A simple graphic illustration of these milestones can be very eye-catching.
  3. User-generated content, where you can leverage the photos shared by customers and employees (with proper credit, of course).

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create compelling illustrations. Check out these 11 free graphic design tools for the non-designer.

In conclusion

Don’t overthink your LinkedIn content. Keep your target audience in mind and keep experimenting. Engage wherever it makes sense on the platform. And remember, you can always repurpose your evergreen content so that it’s new again in the eyes of your followers.

Check out our six tips to be more effective on LinkedIn, as well as six mistakes businesses make on LinkedIn that you want to avoid.

As you’re exploring how to mix up your LinkedIn content, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 tips for handling negative social media comments

Negative social media comments are a reality for many businesses. But how you handle those comments can not only squash any social media fires but also improve your overall brand perception.

About 35 percent of customers in the U.S. post negative comments about companies on social media. However, answering a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy by up to 25 percent.

Examples of negative social media comments include (but are not limited to):

  • Customer complaints, which are the most common
  • Trolling, where users are publishing outrageous comments that are oftentimes untrue and intend to get other people riled up
  • Spam, which promotes something else
  • Malicious comments, containing profanity and offensive language
  • Harassing or threatening comments, which harass or threaten your social media team, leadership, staff or even other users unrelated to your brand

While you’re considering your social media presence, check out these eight most common social media mistakes to avoid.

The following are seven tips for best handling any negative social media comments your brand might experience.

Don’t delete every negative social media comment

No one enjoys negative comments on social media, but resist the urge to automatically delete every one that you come across.

Deleting legitimate complaints especially makes your brand looks deceitful, like you’re hiding something. And no matter how quickly you might have deleted a comment, you never truly know who has seen it and then notices that it’s deleted (other than the commenter himself or herself).

Of course, if a comment contains offensive language to a degree that violates your community standards for your social media presence, then you always have the option to hide or delete the comment and then block and report the user.

Always apologize

Regardless of whether the negative comment is justified or not, it’s critical to always take the high road and start your response off by apologizing. Think of the “customer is always right” approach.

Not apologizing can lead to a public battle that will only drag your brand down. And remember, if the complaint is silly or the comment is totally unwarranted, others will see that. You’re never wrong for apologizing for someone feeling the way they do, no matter what.

Respond as quickly as possible

The more time you allow negative social media comments to go unanswered, the more time others can see not just the complaint but also that you haven’t responded.

It’s not a good look for brands.

Replying as soon as you can prevents the comment from bubbling up into something more damaging. It also shows the commenter that you’re listening and that you care. And that will be evident to other users as well.

Treat negative social media comments as feedback

No one enjoys reading negative comments related to their brand. Detach the personal feelings you might have and consider all comments as feedback, the good and the bad.

In that light, the tone of your response can and should have gratitude included. This is another way of taking the high road while also being human and relateable. 

Of course, if the comment is truly feedback that can be actionable on your end, make sure to take the next step and communicate that to your team.

Ask how you can help

It sounds simple, but when replying to a negative social media comment, apologizing for how the commenter feels and then asking how you can help is a tactful way to respond.

For example, the comment could be fairly offensive in nature, and the commenter will either be willing to tell you something that is actionable or so surprised that you responded that it ends there.

Either way, you gave it a tasteful attempt that everyone else can see.

Move the conversation into a private space

While you absolutely want to react publicly and quickly to all negative social media comments, it’s recommended to always suggest the opportunity to take the conversation private when appropriate.

This is helpful if someone is being particularly difficult or has an in-depth issue that needs to be discussed in greater detail. You’ll also be able to offer any discounts or other incentives to help make the situation right, which is something that’s better to do in private than in public.

Include in your response a statement that you’ll be following up privately with a direct message. That way, they can know to expect, but others will understand why the thread has ended.

Of course, within the private message, you can keep the conversation there or offer to speak over the phone or via email for a more personal experience.

Pick your battles

While we all want to make social media a more positive place that is beneficial for ourselves and our brands, some users are just attention-seekers looking to stir up controversy.

Keep an eye out for any patterns you might notice and what’s being said by repeated commenters. Pick your battles in general.

In conclusion

Staying on top of any negative comments on your social media accounts will help preserve your brand’s online reputation. When in doubt while writing any response, just be kind. The high road is the best road.

Digging into negative online reviews? Check out our 11 tips.

As you take a new look at how to approach negative social media comments, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

16 of the best marketing campaigns in 2022

An effective marketing campaign is so important to an organization’s success.

Your product or service may be better than your competition, but without an effective marketing campaign, your audience will never know.

Even the smallest adjustments to any marketing campaign your team creates can garner new eyes and loyal customers.

Here are a few tips from experts within the business and marketing world on how you can make the most of your marketing campaigns. 

Dove’s #ReverseSelfie Campaign

“Social media is full of filters that continue to perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards that destroy people’s confidence. Dove sought to combat this with its #ReverseSelfie campaign in 2022. In the video, we see a girl post a selfie in reverse, removing a heavily edited beauty filter to reveal her true face. We see the unedited shape of her chin, eyes, hair, and everything else. The message is obvious – the beauty standards of social media are unhealthy and harm the youth of today. What makes this an effective campaign however is that Dove, being a brand in the beauty realm, is tackling an issue that is prevalent in that industry now.”

– Bill Lyons, CEO of Griffin Funding

Be the Change

“One of the most successful marketing campaigns in 2022 was the ‘Be the Change’ campaign that the American Red Cross ran. This campaign’s objective is to increase the number of people who donate blood, which is a valuable resource for the many individuals who need it.

“The marketing campaign uses various promotional channels, such as advertisements displayed on bus stop posters, advertisements posted online, and television commercials. These advertisements often feature well-known actors and actresses like Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie, to name just a few.

“As a result of the campaign, people could donate blood, which was the drive’s purpose.”

– Jacob Dayan, Co-founder of Community Tax

Food for the Poor 

“A fantastic marketing campaign of 2022 that has been extremely beneficial to the community and homeless is the Food for the Poor campaign!

“One of the many reasons this marketing campaign is effective is because it utilizes targeted content to decrease abandonment and increase conversions. It also presents 3 options to the website visitors about leaving a donation. The reason this campaign is effective is that it appeals to visitors who want to give but aren’t sure how or how much to give. By reminding them of a variety of easy ways to contribute, the campaign can help nonprofit organizations convert more web visitors to donors and volunteers!

“Also, the layout and design of the site are simple and extremely easy to navigate and use.”

-Chris Hunter, Director of Customer Relations at Service Titan

Reddit

“In the modern marketing landscape, being able to grab people’s attention in a short span of time is pivotal to a campaign’s success. This is true even when a company has managed to obtain lucrative ad space for an extremely captive audience.

“Super Bowl airspace is both greatly sought after and extremely expensive, so the initial instinct is to utilize as much time as you can afford. However, Reddit took a novel approach. Rather than the standard 30-second airtime, they purchased a 5-second ad slot for the Super Bowl. The ad displayed what looked like a generic car commercial before suddenly cutting out with a glitchy effect to some text that is all but impossible to read in the time it’s onscreen before it cuts to horses running in a field.

“This ad communicates very little, but it caught people’s attention as they flocked online all collectively wondering what it was they had ever seen. Their gamble paid off, as a post displaying the ad on their official Twitter account holds 465.5k views, showing the power that intrigue and mystery can possess.”

-Adrien Dissous, Global SVP of Marketing at Babo Botanicals

Apple

“A proper ad campaign both captivates the viewer and conveys why the product/service on display is so worthwhile. Additionally, audiences are more receptive to content that doesn’t feel explicitly like an ad.

“Apple demonstrated these principles admirably in their ‘Saving Simon’ ad, part of their ‘Shot on iPhone’ commercial series. Though it is an advertisement, what is on display is instead a short movie about a young girl doing her best to preserve her snowman by keeping it in the freezer until the next holiday season. It is charming, captivating, and humorous, but there’s nothing in the way of extolling Apple’s products themselves.

“Rather, the point is made by showing a professionally shot and edited short movie that was done entirely through iPhone, opening up the possibility for consumers to do the same. They are able to convey the value proposition of their phones entirely through showing what it’s capable of.”

-Jonathan Krieger, Vice President of Sales at Fabuwood Cabinetry Corp.

Duolingo

“Duolingo has had one of the most creative social media marketing campaigns I have seen this year.

“Like many influencers and entertainers, Duolingo has been using TikTok as a way to connect to millions of people through creative and entertaining posts. Their posts clearly target the younger Gen Z audience and are smart in staying up to date with the latest trends and topics in pop culture. Duolingo’s greatest success in their campaign was making their owl mascot, Duo, the star of all of their videos.

“By keeping Duo as the main focus in all of their very entertaining posts, they essentially created their very own influencer with 4.8 million followers.”

-Brandon Brown, CEO of GRIN

Ikea

“Ikea had a recently successful marketing campaign when they partnered with Pinterest. The main reason this campaign was successful is because it capitalized on its audience’s interests.

“It is common knowledge that social media is widely used by most consumers. Especially in the home and design space, visual inspiration is spread across Pinterest daily. This was a great opportunity for a brand to bridge platforms and connect with its audience by targeting where they are spending most of their time online.

“The Ikea interactive product questionnaire built into Pinterest was extremely successful and showed how powerful it can be to create a message and tool that resonates with your ideal customer.”

-Greg Dean, CEO of Layla Sleep

Use of Face Recognition Software

“I think the best marketing campaign in 2022 is to utilize face recognition software to target ads and coupons to specific people. This software is already being used to target particular people on the internet.

“I think it will be fairly easy to transition to brick-and-mortar stores. I can see this being used as effectively outside as in stores. Google, Facebook, and other sites are already using this software.

“These days, it is simple to integrate this software into a physical store so that it can recognize your face as you go through it. In any case, I believe it will be the next big thing in marketing.”

 – Matt Gehring, Head of Marketing at Dutch

Smile

“A viral marketing campaign that started very recently has taken the internet by storm. The campaign is meant to promote an upcoming horror movie called Smile and the campaign consists of people photobombing MLB games and morning talk shows with them smiling creepily into the camera.

“This marketing campaign has received a ton of attention on platforms, such as TikTok and Twitter, mostly because it is such a unique way to promote a product.

“The first instance of this campaign being caught on camera was at an Oakland A’s versus New York Mets game a few days ago in which you could see a woman in a bright green shirt, smiling behind home plate.

“Upon a little more research about the Smile campaign, one can see they have set up an entire website and phone hotline for people to interact with.

“There was another instance that occurred during a recording of the Today Show in which you could see a woman standing outside a window, wearing a bright green shirt and an umbrella, standing there with a very creepy smile on their face.

“This campaign is genius because it gets people talking about what they saw and once they start talking with others about it, they soon realize it is all to promote an upcoming film called Smile. This campaign has been trending on social media platforms for a few days now, so it is safe to say that the marketing campaign has been very successful.”

Amy Adlerstein, SR. Retention Marketing Manager for Canvas People

Google Search On

“One of the most successful marketing campaigns is Google’s ‘Search On’ campaign. People were encouraged to use Google to look up information and find solutions to their problems as part of the campaign.

“The campaign was a huge success, evidenced by the five percent rise in traffic to Google Search during its first year of operation.

“The most successful advertising campaigns of 2022 will inspire people to enjoy their lives to the fullest, be open to change, and use technology to give them more control over their lives. These campaigns are successful because they speak to the requirements and aspirations of the target audience.”

Hilary Kozak, Vice President of Marketing for LivSmooth

Hubspot

“Hubspot’s milestone celebration was able to act as one of the best marketing campaigns of 2022. This year, Hubspot celebrated 1,000 app integrations in their marketplace. The company used this as an opportunity to run a marketing campaign across multiple different channels that showcased its growing success.

“Not only did this campaign appeal to current customers but it showed prospective customers of the wide range of possibilities available with Hubspot’s platform.

“In this campaign, top partners were also leveraged to put a spotlight on the high-level integrations and gain additional publicity from the partners themselves. All in all, Hubspot used a company milestone to create a highly successful multi-channel campaign.”

 Todd Jensen, Head of Marketing at Nursa

Spotify

“This year, Spotify got creative with one of their marketing campaigns which turned out to be a success.

“The company leaned into memes for their advertising in an attempt to showcase Spotify’s versatility in providing music for any occasion. To do this they used the meme model ‘me, also me,’ which shows two panels, one being the mood, and the other being the correlating Spotify music.

“This campaign was great because of its ability to speak to not only Spotify listeners but all music listeners alike. The campaign was launched across a variety of channels globally. It attempts to connect listeners and promote discovery which is why the campaign resonated with so many.”

Sanem Ahearn, Head of Marketing of Colorescience 

Corona’s ‘Pay with Plastic’

“Corona had a great marketing campaign called ‘Pay With Plastic’ that focused on helping the environment, as they partnered with CI Chamber of Commerce and Parley for the Oceans to produce a plastic weigh station where clean-up volunteers could trade recyclable plastic for Corona products.

“They placed recycling machines in Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and Columbia, so that customers got a beer by simply depositing plastic bottles. The partners also cleaned beaches per the number of recycled cans made.

“With so many weather issues happening around the world, campaigns that have a positive impact on the environment will always gain attention. This particular campaign stands out because it’s more than just marketing – it allows communities to give back and come together for a greater cause that can have a positive impact on everyone around the globe.”

Clayton Howard, Director of Analytics at Net Pay Advance

Fitbit ‘Find your reason’

“Fitbit debuted its campaign as a means to help people find their reason for getting into shape, which was a great idea for an interactive campaign. Whether it be for weight loss or health concerns, many of us have different reasons for wanting to get into shape.

“This was a great campaign to make working out look and feel less intimidating and more accessible.

“Fitbit showcased five short documentaries of people that were embarking on their new health and fitness journey, which was really inspirational to watch.

“Rather than providing a generic campaign telling people to work out, Fitbit humanized the experience to make people find their own personal reasons for wanting to get into shape. Such a game-changer.”

Adrian Pereira, CEO and Founder of Eco Pea Co.

CPB London

“One of the best marketing campaigns in 2022 has been CPB London’s campaign for international women’s day. The company wants to challenge traditional gender stereotypes that are still present today.

“Their campaign featured signs posing a statement like “imagine a CEO” in bold text and in smaller text posing the question of whether the reader imagined a man or a woman. This makes readers think twice about the unconscious bias in their heads around men and women.

“This campaign was great because it really makes viewers think and begin discussions around a topic that needs to be challenged.”

Jeffery Pitrak, Marketing and Account Manager at Transient Specialists

Businesses Making Use of Viral TikTok Sounds and Trends

“TikTok at its beginning seemed an unlikely platform for marketing campaigns. However, with certain sounds and trends going viral, businesses were able to join in and harness lots of views using them. TikTok allowed businesses to get creative in how they applied trends to their own videos and connect with new audiences.

“Properly and authentically utilizing trends helps to build a positive brand perception had the ability to re-ignite the love for products and businesses while generating tons of likes and engagement on their social media campaigns.

“Moving forward, I believe more and more companies will hop onto this marketing bandwagon and strategy as social media continues to prove just how valuable of a tool it can be.”

Sacha Ferrandi, CEO and Co-founder of Source Capital

In conclusion

Your specific marketing strategy will have needs or adjustments that will be unique to you and your organization. It is important to consider exactly what type of messaging or approach will be effective in reaching your target audience and customer base.

These tips are a great starting point in successfully shaping, organizing, and ultimately implementing the best marketing strategy for your business. 

As you explore how to level up your own marketing campaigns, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 reasons why email marketing can be better than social media

Both email marketing and social media marketing can be powerful for any brand online.

But if you had to choose one, which is better?

In the simplest sense, even in a world of social media prevalence, more consumers use email than any social media platform, and more than half of consumers check their email before they check their social media in the morning.

But let’s dive a little deeper. The following are five reasons why email marketing can be better than social media marketing.

You own your contact list

Unlike any social media platform, you actually own the contact list of your email subscribers.

In other words, this means that if a platform shuts down (like Vine did), you lose all those followers that you worked so hard to get. They’re gone.

This is because social media platforms are third-party providers of connections. They are the ones who have control over your followers and even your account (whether you get banned or not for violating terms of service, for example).

With email, your subscribers are yours. You have access to them as long as they want to be on your list.

Email is more personal

In an overwhelmingly digital world, consumers are increasingly craving deeper connections with the brands they buy from.

Enter email.

Your message delivers directly into your recipient’s inbox. Personalization can heighten that engagement and connection as well by including his or her first name, for example. Audience segmentation allows you to break up your contacts into groups and adjust your message accordingly, whether it’s customers you haven’t seen in a while or contacts who have yet to make a purchase. The sky’s the limit when it comes to segmentation, especially when using DailyStory.

But with social media, you have to speak at large to your target audience with hope that your followers (and/or their friends) see your content in their news feeds and engage with it. This is in competition with everything else social media users see in their feeds.

Algorithms are not a factor

Many marketers have to spend a great deal of time considering (and strategizing against) social media algorithms. 

An algorithm is essentially a series of calculations that determine what content a user sees in his or her feed on that social media platform. Its intent is to show what the user will most engage with and have a desire to stay on that platform longer.

One of the most talked-about is the Facebook Algorithm since the social network is the largest in the world, and it has shifted in recent years to prioritizing other user content over that of business pages.

Of course, while email doesn’t have to contend with algorithms, you still want to use best practices in order to prevent ending up as spam.

Full control over your content

Instagram requires a properly sized image or video to post. Twitter limits your tweet to 280 characters.

Those are just two examples of how a marketer is naturally limited in what and how to post content on social media platforms.

On the flip side, email is entirely within your control. You can use whatever best conveys your message to your recipients. 

Check out our breakdown of a successful marketing email.

You’ll get a higher ROI with email

Your return on investment should always be a major factor in your digital marketing strategy decisions.

In fact, about one in five marketing emails get opened on average, with an average clickthrough rate of 3.57 percent. Compare that to Facebook, which has an average clickthrough rate of 1.11 percent.

We have dozens of additional statistics that show the value of email marketing on top of that.

In conclusion

Of course, even though email marketing can be better than social media marketing, the best overall strategy is to use both for your branding, promotions and consumer relationship-building. 

Consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 most common social media mistakes to avoid

Social media is integral to any robust digital marketing strategy, but what social media mistakes could you be making and not even realize?

More than half of the world (about 58 percent) now uses social media, and the average daily time spent using social media is 2 hours and 27 minutes.

The opportunities for reaching and engaging with your target audience are obvious on social media, but with every misstep, you risk missing your goals and even alienating your audience (depending on the severity of the mistake since social media users can be quite unforgiving).

Check out what every startup company should know about social media.

The following are the eight most common social media mistakes to avoid.

No defined target audience

Understanding who you’re trying to reach and engage with is critical. Even if you could afford to target everyone, it’s not a good idea. 

Why? Because the success of your social media is based on determining your target audience and creating a strategy focused on reaching that group of consumers. (And no small business can afford to target everyone.)

In other words, you want to spend your resources on the people who would be genuinely interested in your products or services.

Check out our seven tips to help you determine your target audience.

No social media plan

Not having a plan for your social media marketing is not only a mistake in itself, but it can lead to other unintentional mistakes along the way.

Invest the same amount of thought and attention into your social media as you would any other method of digital marketing, such as paid advertising or email campaigns.

Start by listing the specific goals you want to achieve, determine your budget and then a step-by-step action plan that includes a clear outline of what you’re wanting to achieve and how your measure your results (to determine whether you’re hitting your goals).

Keep in mind that you also don’t have to be on every single social media platform if they’re not all serving your brand’s needs. You can do more with less.

When it comes to organizing your content, consider our eight tips to create a content calendar.

Lack of engagement in social media conversations

Engagement starts with posting engaging content. But once those reactions, comments and shares happen, it’s your obligation to be part of the conversation. Lack of participation is a big social media mistake.

Even if comments are negative, don’t avoid them. Consider some of our overall tips for responding to negative reviews (which can be applied to negative comments as well).

Of course, if you’re not seeing any engagement on your social media posts, then it’s time to evaluate your content. The goal is to spark a conversation with every post. What’s working and what’s not?

In addition to public threads, you also need to stay on top of direct messages. About 42 percent of people who have reached out to a brand on social media for customer support expect a response within 60 minutes.

Too much reliance on automation

Social media automation is huge for staying on top of conversations across multiple platforms. However, if you become too dependent on automation, you risk losing your brand’s human touch.

You also risk any automation blunders when a bot doesn’t understand particular context.

Strive for a balance, where you’re leaning on your social media automation tool for the heavy lifting, but you’re still involved in the social media conversations as much as makes sense.

Check out our seven opportunities for social media automation you might not have thought of, as well as 11 free (or almost free) social media management tools.

Posting too much

There’s no magic number of posts that your should strive for each day, but if you’re finding that you’re valueing quantity over quality and not seeing any improvement with your engagmeent rate, then it’s time to take a second look at how often you actually need to post on each platform.

Especially if you notice that you’re posting “good” but not “great” content simply to fill a whole, reconsider. Posting better content, even if less frequently, could lead to better engagement. 

Overly promoting yourself

Clearly, social media is a conversation, not a one-way broadcasting medium. In that sense, you want to avoid promoting yourself too much.

A common social media mistake involves businesses almost entirely publishing promotional or “salesy” content. Doing so can turn off your target audience. The key is about finding a balanced content mix that isn’t all about you. Be socialable.

At the same time, remember that you don’t have to only post your own content. Curated content and user-generated content can benefit your audience as well.

Treating all your social media platforms the same

All social media platforms are not created equal or should be treated the same. A common mistake is using a social media management tool to schedule your content but then scheduling the same content across platforms.

Even if you can tweak the sizing accordingly per platform (the optimized image size for Twitter is not the same for Instagram, for example), that’s a start. It’s all too easy to get stuck posting horizontal images and videos across platforms, even if that’s not best for one or two of your accounts.

Of course, ideally, you understand the demographics of your following on each platform and create unique content accordingly per platform. You absolutely can run a Twitter-specific campaign, for example, that doesn’t appear anywhere else.

No performance monitoring

Social media marketing is ever evolving. Even if you have a plan, that doesn’t mean that nothing can or should change a long the way. Monitoring your social media analytics is imperative. Simply knowing what’s working can help you do more of it. On the flip side, knowing what isn’t working can help you pivot and adjust as well.

Check out our guides for understanding your metrics on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

In conclusion

Every brand has made its fair share of social media mistakes over time. The key is to learn and grow from any mistakes you might happen to make.

While you’re evaluating your approach to social media, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

9 of the best social listening tools for brand marketing

Social listening offers marketers a huge opportunity to learn from and engage with customers and potential customers online.

In the simplest sense, social listening is essentially audience research. You monitor your brand’s social media channels for any customer feedback, mentions of your brand and discussions surrounding specific keywords, topics, competitors or industries that are relevant to your brand.

Learn more about social listening, as well as nine tips to leverage it to gain customer insights.

The right tool can make the social listening process more efficient. Keep in mind that many broader social media management tools include social listening capabilities. The following are nine of the best social listening tools that can help you be successful in your efforts.

Sprout Social

This comprehensive social media management platform offers powerful solutions for social listening and more. Sprout Social features include:

  • An integrated social listening tool that uncovers trends in social media conversations, teaches you about your audience and gives actionable insights.
  • The ability to monitor and engage across social media networks.
  • A single Smart Inbox for all direct messages across networks.
  • Easy-to-understand social analytics.

Sprout Social offers a free 30-day trial. Paid plans start at $89 per month.

Hootsuite

Another comprehensive social media management tool, Hootsuite provides a single, customizable dashboard so that you can view and respond to all your social media messages, comments and mentions across multiple networks. Other features include:

  • The ability to share and schedule engaging content for your social media profiles within the application.
  • A single inbox where you can address incoming messages and deliver timely replies.
  • Multiple social network integrations that can be viewed within the interface.
  • Easily monitor mentions and directly respond to them.
  • The option to customize paid social media campaigns with the Boost tool.
  • Customizable analytics reporting.

Hootsuite offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start at $49 per month (but a 30-day free trial is available as well).

Falcon.io

Falcon.io is an all-in-one social media management tool and customer experience platform for medium-or-larger-sized businesses. This means that you can schedule, engage, listen, advertise and more. Other features include:

  • A single dashboard for social listening, publishing, engagement, reporting and audience data management.
  • The Engage inbox, which manages all private messaging channels, including WhatsApp.
  • Custom response templates for FAQs.
  • The ability to direct specific external messages to internal team members to collaborate on solutions.

Falcon.io offers a free 14-day trial. Paid plans start at $108 per seat per month.

Buffer

Buffer considers itself an omnichannel experience for your social media marketing. It helps you find the conversations that matter most and join in. Buffer’s other features include:

  • Smart alerts using machine learning let you know at a glance if a post has questions, negative sentiments or comments about a purchase.
  • Scheduling and publishing tools to help you plan effective social media campaigns.
  • Reports and analytics tools that help you measure engagement and audience behavior.
  • A Story-monitoring tool that records and analyzes your Stories on Facebook and Instagram.

Buffer offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start at $5 per social channel per month (but a free 14-day trial is available as well).

BuzzSumo

A tool that prioritizes deeper insights is BuzzSumo. You can more easily identify which types of social media posts generate the best results among your audience. In fact, you’ll get recommendations on when you should post and the ideal length of a post. Other BuzzSumo features include:

  • Organization of shared content in order of significance with the Curation tool.
  • The ability to discover relevant influencers for your brand.
  • A significant data analytics suite.
  • A Content Ideas Generator to help you brainstorm new content for your audience.

BuzzSumo offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start at $79 per month (but a free 30-day trial is available as well). You also can save by paying annually.

Mention

Mention can track content sources across 42 languages to monitor for brand mentions throughout the globe. Of course, you can filter for what matters most to you. Mention’s other features include:

  • A competitive analysis tool that helps you compare your brand against two or more competitors.
  • A crisis management tool that allows you to effectively manage any uproar or crisis situation on social media.
  • The ability of team members to alert each other within the interface.
  • Comprehensive analytics.

Mention offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start at €29 per month (or about $31 per month). Free trials also are available for the paid plans.

Awario

With a heightened focus on social listening, Awario tracks keywords in a number of languages. You get everything you need to monitor and respond to comments while building relationships with your target audience on social media. Other Awario features include:

  • A Social Selling feature where you can identify posts that request a product recommendation similar to yours and/or any posts about issues that users are having with products sold by your competition.
  • Tracking the growth in the number of your mentions and their collective reach and sorting mentions by positive, negative, and neutral with sentiment analysis, 
  • Identifying top influencers by social media network.

Awario offers a free trial. Paid plans begin at $24 per month when billed annually.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a complete social media management software intended to help you leverage social listening and get deeper audience insights. You get a single, unified inbox, as well as the ability to publish on multiple social media platforms. Other Agorapulse features include:

  • Unlimited saved searches where you can discover new feedback and customers.
  • Labeling any important posts, competitor activity and customer feedback for easy retrieval and response.
  • Managing Facebook and Instagram ad comments in chronological order.

Agorapulse offers a free 15-day trial. Paid plans start at $79 per month when billed annually.

Brandwatch

Beyond a social listening tool, Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence platform. It offers an AI analyst, which can automatically bring insights to the surface and save you time. Other Brandwatch features include:

  • Auto-segmentation.
  • The ability to analyze images.
  • Data that helps you fully understand how people aren’t just talking about your brand but how they’re displaying it in images, too.

Brandwatch offers a free demo. Paid plans begin at $800 per month, so it might not be the right fit for small businesses (depending on your budget).

In conclusion

Ultimately, deciding on the best social listening tool comes down to your goals and budget. Make sure you take advantage of any available free trials as needed, or dip your toe in with a limited free version of what seems like the best fit for you. You always can upgrade your plan later.

While you’re at it, make sure you understand the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing.

As you’re exploring these social listening tools, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

9 tips to improve social listening and gain customer insights

Social media is a two-way street. Rather than just posting relevant, engaging content, you also have to listen. Enter social listening.

In the simplest sense, social listening is essentially audience research. You monitor your brand’s social media channels for any customer feedback, mentions of your brand and discussions surrounding specific keywords, topics, competitors or industries that are relevant to your brand.

Social listening is a two-part process. You have the monitoring on the front end, but then you dive deeper with analysis and actionable responses. There’s an engagement there, but also the goal to implement long-term strategy changes based on what you’re learning. 

In other words, your brand is aiming to meet the needs of your customers by listening to and engaging with them (but also tracking and analyzing all that information).

While answering a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy by about 25 percent, only about 51 percent of brands use social monitoring or listening in any capacity. In fact, about 71 percent of social media marketers say that they are able to provide consumer insights from social media channels to other departments.

Plus, about 46 percent of consumers think that brands engaging with their audiences on social media makes them stand out above all other brands.

By implementing effective social listening into your overall digital marketing strategy, you will:

  • Engage with your customers and target audience more effectively.
  • Discover more and better leads.
  • Learn more about your customers’ needs and problems (that you can help solve).
  • Identify potential brand partners and influencers.
  • Better track your competition.

The following are nine tips to improve your brand’s social listening and gain beneficial customer insights.

Decide what you’re listening to

This sounds a bit simplistic but truly is important to figure out before you dive into social listening. Social media is vast and noisy. You have to focus.

From these ideas, determine what specifically you’ll be looking for:

  • Direct mentions of your brand. Are there any variations that could be used?
  • Your brand’s social media handle. Include any sub-accounts as well.
  • Any specific product (or even service) names.
  • Specific hashtags.
  • Relevant-to-your-brand keywords.
  • Names of key people in your company (such as your CEO or anyone public-facing).
  • Topics that relate to your brand.
  • Your competition (which should include the same breakdown as your doing for your own brand).

This will help you get started in a more efficient manner so that you can gain more consistent and relevant insights over time.

Look beyond your immediate social media presence

While we wish all conversations about our brands could happen on our posts, through direct mentions or in our incoming messages, that’s simply not the case. Think beyond all of that.

You want to keep in mind that social media users won’t always tag you, that they could misspell your brand name or even use an abbreviation or shortened version of your brand name (Coke, for example, rather than Coca-Cola).

Be strategic about keywords and topics

Definitely put time and research into the keywords and topics you ultimately track and follow. They will evolve over time, of course. But investing in picking the most relevant ones now will only give you better data and insights along the way.

Check out these 11 free keyword research tools that can help you in this process.

Use social listening to identify pain points

If you’re mostly using social listening to understand what your customers are saying about you, you’re missing a larger opportunity. That is to identify the problems and challenges that your target audience is experiencing.

This likely won’t come up because of a brand mention, but rather relevant keywords. Either way, it’s important to understand the bigger picture as far as the potential gaps in your industry or product.

Once you understand the gap, then you can work on the bridge that will make you the best brand for them.

Join in on conversations about the latest trends and news

Obviously, you want to monitor and track all the relevant conversations going on in your industry but go beyond that.

This is a great engagement opportunity that shows the relevancy of your brand. By offering a slice of your expertise where relevant, you easily can reach new users, grow brand trust and loyalty and even discover a new brand partner along the way.

Use empathy when engaging in a new conversation

Keep in mind that while engagement is key in any successful social listening strategy, users might not expect you to join in on their conversation, particularly if they didn’t tag you.

But regardless of whether you’re tagged or not (expected or not), you must empathize. Is the sentiment of the conversation positive or negative?

If it’s positive, thank them and make sure you understand the specifics surrounding their positive impression. If it’s negative, still thank them, but you’ll especially want to dig deeper into what led to the negative impression. Was it a specific feature of your product (or service)? See our 11 tips for best responding to any type of negative review.

Remember that the key to social listening is actually listening. Leave your personal feelings aside. You’re arriving at the conversation to better understand and help if possible.

Prompt responsiveness is everything

Staying on top of your social listening means that you can be proactive and get ahead of any negative sentiments before they escalate. (You’re not waiting for someone to finally reach out to you if they do at all.)

If at all possible, aim to respond within 30 minutes or at least within 24 hours. Make sure you’re responding to everyone equally (not just the positive comments, for example).

Keep an eye on your competitors

Social listening can help you better understand what’s working (and not working) for your competitors.

When you see something that’s working, what can your brand do to outperform them? Don’t just copy them. Think about how you can do something that’s better and more valuable to your target audience.

And when you see something that’s not working, determine how you can fill that gap for potential customers.

Use the right tools

The power of your social listening often comes down to using the right tools. Most major social media platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) do have built-in features that include search functionality, audience insights data and trending data.

However, a third-party tool might be ideal if you’re using multiple social media platforms so that everything can be found in one place, may offer more detailed insights and can even provide some automation capabilities. Some examples include:

In conclusion

Social listening can be powerful for your brand when done right. Start simple by identifying the mentions, keywords and so on that are most important to you. Track your insights, and make sure they are communicated to the appropriate departments in your company.

In this new-ish digital-focused world, you’re often only as strong as your understanding of your customers.

Learn about the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing.

As you’re diving into social listening, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 best Instagram tools to grow your followers

Instagram only continues to grow in popularity for sharing images and videos, which means it’s a great platform for your brand to reach a larger audience.

About 1.22 billion people use Instagram each month, and Instagram is the ninth most-Googled search term, which is a signal that the platform’s content is being viewed in browsers outside of the app as well.

So, what does your brand’s Instagram audience look like? Are they engaged? Do you have a strong reach? 

Using the right Instagram tools can help you be more efficient and effective on the platform and boost your followers. The following are some of the best Instagram tools we recommend you check out to see what works best for your social media marketing strategy.

Repost

Instagram doesn’t have what some would consider more traditional sharing features, so Repost is tool that not only satisfies that need but helps you automatically credit the original poster.

It’s a free app with available in-app purchases (if desired) that does not have a desktop interface.

The value of interacting with user-generated posts by sharing and providing credit at the same time shows that you as a brand value them and their input. Other features include the ability to bookmark content and search for images by hashtag or a specific user’s name.

Crowdfire

Crowdfire is part social media management tool and part content-discovery engine. While the free version only allows you to manage one platform through the app, its premium subscriptions can manage up to 50 social media profiles across multiple social media platforms.

Crowdfire also features a Chrome browser extension that helps you quickly share articles and curate content for posting. A great feature for Instagram is Crowdfire’s image curation feature, which gives recommendations of images to share on your Instagram account. The recommended images are already approved by creators, so you don’t have to worry about copyright.

In addition, you get hashtag recommendations, analytics and the ability to custom tailor posts by platform.

Combin

Complete focused on Instagram account management, Combin offers both follower-growth and scheduling features. You can test the main features with its free version, but the paid subscriptions offer more for engaging Instagram users.

Combin allows you to search through Instagram by hashtags, location and followers. This allows you to keep an eye on your competitors’ comments as well. (See more about how to conduct your first competitive analysis plus 16 recommended tools.)

Therefore, Combin helps you target specific users and get insight into what your target audience engages with most as well as how your competition is engaging with their followers. You can see various comments across multiple accounts in one place. Plus, Combin offers analytics.

Woobox

Woobox is a great tool for creating engagement opportunities for your Instagram audience. However, keep in mind that the free version only allows limited Facebook interactions. You’ll have to choose a paid subscription to access the Instagram features.

Woobox enables you to promote polls, giveaways, coupons and more. In other words, it helps you become even more social on social media. For example, you can even age-gate your contests and feedback if your brand is not geared toward a particular age group.

Truly, this tool is about bringing gamification to your Instagram presence.

Hootsuite

A powerful social media management and social listening tool, Hootsuite has a hair more options in its free version than most tools, but the most powerful features are available in its paid subscriptions.

Hootsuite gives you the opportunity to manage multiple profiles, monitor interactions and hashtags (among other conversations) and more by setting up tabs to organize your social media management.

Additional apps can be integrated (such as Asana) into your Hootsuite account to streamline your workflow.

For Instagram, Hootsuite empowers you to now only create and schedule posts but monitor popular hashtags and search terms on the platform, all in one place, where you can comment and reply as well.

Foursixty

Looking to make more sales from your Instagram audience? Consider Foursixty, which is a tool that can turn your feed into a gallery where users can view and shop through your images. You can try it with a 21-day free trial, but otherwise it is a paid tool.

A strength of Foursixty is its ability to monitor anytime anyone tags or mentions your brand or product and curate all of that and sort by performance, which can be a time-saving method for gathering user-generated content.

Check out our 10 tips to generate more user-generated content.

Other features include Digital Rights Management so that you don’t have to worry about copyright and its ability to track influencer marketing, which helps you discover new influencers through Instagram while getting a better understanding of their engagement. Partnering with high-quality influencers can definitely help you grow your Instagram following.

See our seven tips you should know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

Later

Later is a social media management tool with a visual focus, perfect for Instagram. Its free version allows you to explore, but some key features are tied to its paid subscriptions.

You can use it to schedule photo and video posts while tagging locations and users. Later also includes hashtag suggestions and Instagram Story management.

Part of its analytics capabilities has hashtag monitoring. This means you can see the statistical information about tags and identify the ones that work best for your brand and/or campaign. In addition, Later shows the best times to post according to the activity of your target audience.

If you’re in the retail industry, consider Later’s Linkedin Bio landing page. This feature resembles your Instagram feed and enables users to shop easier. This integrates with Google Analytics so that your can better understand the relationship between your Instagram posts and sales.

Check out the 14 biggest mistakes businesses make on Instagram (and how you can avoid them).

While you’re digging into the best tools to grow your Instagram following, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

10 tips to improve your brand’s online reputation

If you’re not keeping tabs on your brand’s online reputation, you could be shooting yourself (or at least your brand) in the foot.

An online reputation comprises various strategies to shape the world’s perception of your brand online. If handled correctly, you’re able to build brand trust and impact consumers’ purchasing decisions in a positive way. In other words, a good online reputation supports your bottom line.

Think of it as your brand’s first impression for potential customers. 

In fact, consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before trusting a business, while about 79 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

If you’re not on top of how your brand is perceived online, you could be losing out on customers and sales.

The following are 10 tips to improve your brand’s online reputation and put your best foot forward.

Start with an audit

Before anything else, you need to understand where your brand’s online reputation stands right now.

Thoroughly review all online reviews, and while this can feel overwhelming with so many potential places for customers to review you, keep it simple by beginning with the top four review platforms where consumers typically do their research on you:

  • Google
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Facebook

If you’re in a specialized industry that has an industry-specific platform for reviews, include that as well. For example, home-improvement brands will want to keep an eye on HomeAdvisor.

Of course, we encourage you to also Google your brand to see where else it might be popping up, just to cover all your bases.

Once you’ve compiled all the review platforms and reviews, double-check that all business contact details, location information and operational hours are up to date. 

Then, look at what customers are saying. What is the ratio of positive-to-negative reviews? Are there far more positive than negative? If you have multiple locations, is one location standing out in a positive or negative way? Have you responded to all reviews? 

Really assess where your brand is at perception-wise. Knowledge is power, and this information will fuel your online reputation strategies moving forward.

Keep in mind that you can set up Google Alerts to inform you of brand mentions online and more.

Decide on a review strategy and start replying

Now that you know where your customers are reviewing you and what they’re saying, it’s time to implement a review strategy for all relevant review platforms.

Perhaps you set a weekly time to regularly check for any new reviews. This would be the minimum effort we would recommend. If possible, turn on notifications wherever you can so that you can reply to all new reviews as soon as possible.

In fact, about 53 percent of customers expect businesses to respond to their online review within seven days.

You should respond to every review regardless of whether it’s positive, negative or neutral. And timeliness is a factor to be aware of. You’ll want to thank customers for positive reviews, but you definitely don’t want to leave a negative review festering without some sort of response.

Not sure what to say when it’s negative? Always view it as an opportunity to deliver amazing customer service and turn that experience for that customer around. (It’s definitely not the time or place to argue with the customer.) See our 11 tips to best respond to negative reviews.

Encourage happy customers to review you

Unfortunately, a customer is about 21 percent more likely to leave a negative review after a negative experience than a positive review after a positive review.

You must consistently work against that tendency by asking your happy and satisfied customers to share their experiences online. There are numerous ways to do this. Here are just a handful of ideas:

  • Offer incentives, discounts or cash rewards for customers who write reviews.
  • Send email follow-ups to customers requesting a review with a link to make it easy.
  • Have your employees remind happy customers to review you and explain the benefit that positive reviews have for your business.

Monitor all relevant social media platforms

Of course, you can’t properly manage your online reputation without a thorough plan involving social media.

First, consider all the platforms where your brand has a presence (an account, in other words). Then, think about any platforms that might be used by your customers, where they can post about you regardless of whether you have an account or not.

For example, if you only have accounts on Facebook and Instagram, that doesn’t mean that your customers aren’t tweeting about you (for better or worse) on Twitter.

You’ll need to embrace social listening, which is not just about monitoring what is being said about a business, brand, person or topic on social media. It’s also about acting on it. This can involve engaging with commenters or even adjusting brand strategy.

Learn more about social listening and how it’s different from social media crowdsourcing.

Prioritize your SEO tactics

Search engines can be a huge source of organic traffic to your website, but they also serve as research vehicles for consumers to learn more about businesses, products, services and so on.

So, your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy must be on point.

Ideally, you not only want to rank for the keywords that would help drive consumers to potentially purchase from you. You also want to rank for branded keywords that reflect your online reputation for consumers. In other words, you want your brand’s positive mentions ranking above any potential negative mentions.

And remember that blogging regularly showcases your expertise that will only benefit your online reputation, especially in search engine results.

Dive deeper into what you can do with our 12 SEO marketing tips for beginners. You also can level up your SEO skills with these 10 free online SEO courses.

Develop a public relations strategy

Earned media definitely can improve your online reputation, but it can take a little extra effort. 

The extra effort involves a public relations strategy, which is all about promoting your brand’s inclusion in related articles, TV segments and more in the press.

Earned media is not to be confused with paid advertising. But leveraging press releases and connecting with local media outlets and reporters could lead to your brand earning some new coverage over time.

Work with influencers who have great online reputations

In the simplest sense, an influencer is anyone with a digital following (or audience) on a social media platform (but not necessarily) whom you’d like to attract.

The purpose of influencer marketing involves increasing brand awareness, targeting new and niche audiences and increasing impressions and reach.

This makes it a great vehicle to improve your online reputation because you’re leveraging the trust consumers have for an influence to boost your brand.

Check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

Monitor customer service complaints

Even though online reviews can take a lot of your focus, don’t forget about the complaints that are being given to your company directly.

How these complaints are handled can often impact resulting online reviews, though.

Depending on the size of your business, you may need a tool, such as Invoca, to help you stay on top of a high volume of call center or customer service department interactions.

Understanding what complaints are coming in can help you fix anything that isn’t working as expected as well (and prevent future complaints).

Keep track of your competitors

While it’s important to understand your own online reputation, you can take the next step by understanding that of your competitors.

Are they receiving mostly positive or mostly negative reviews? Are they responding to them? How are they responding? What are their customers saying about them?

Find out more about what a competitive analysis is and how you can start yours, as well as 16 tools to make your competitive analysis easier.

Commit to resolve recurring issues

At the core of successful online reputation management is the commitment to resolve any recurring issues to improve your brand’s buyer experience.

Consider the information (positive and negative) that you receive from customers as a critical piece to this commitment. If you keep your customers happy, you’ll prevent many negative online reviews from even happening.

It’s no easy task, but your responsiveness will serve your business beyond just your online reputation. Think about it: How many potential customers simply disappear because of a less-than-ideal experience and never return, whether they made a purchase or not? It’s important to get ahead of the issues and continually innovate what your brand can do better.

As you begin exploring your brand’s online reputation, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Facebook or Instagram: Which is better for marketing your business?

It might not be an age-old question, but many small businesses often ask which is better for marketing: Facebook or Instagram?

Unfortunately, there is not a one-size-fits-all answer.

Sharing about 4 billion users across the two social networks, the opportunities on both are immense. Of course, they’re also both owned by the same company, Meta, so they do share some linkage and features (especially when running paid advertising campaigns).

Facebook remains the most popular social media platform, while visuals-first Instagram has the fastest-growing audience.

The following are four elements you should consider when deciding whether Facebook or Instagram is the best marketing platform for your business.

Usage statistics

Facebook

Facebook currently has about 2.9 billion monthly active users, while about 1.59 billion are mobile daily active users. Around seven out of 10 U.S. adults use Facebook.

About 56 percent of Facebook users are male.

While some think that Facebook is skewing increasingly older, the largest demographic on the social network is between 25 and 35 years old. On the flip side, Facebook’s smallest demographic are seniors 65 years old or older.

About 82 percent of college graduates are on Facebook, and about 75 percent of online users with an annual income of $75,000 or more also are on the platform.

Instagram

Instagram currently has more than 1 billion monthly active users, while more than 500 million Instagram users use the Stories feature daily.

More than 200 million businesses are on Instagram. And more than 50 percent of Instagram users are female. 

Instagram does skew toward a younger audience. About 71 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 use Instagram. In fact, 72 percent of teenagers in the U.S. use Instagram as well.

Functionality of the platforms

Facebook

The social network is all about information, from the about section on a profile or page (which are more robust than what’s available through an Instagram profile bio) to the types of posts you can share:

  • Text only
  • Images or GIFs
  • Videos
  • Links

In essence, because of the variety of options, it can be a distracting and noisy environment where you’re also fighting against the Facebook algorithm.

Instagram

The app is all about images and videos. Text-only posts are not an option.

But that’s because Instagram is less about the communication of information and more about capturing and sharing moments and then engaging around those moments.

Because of some of the simplicity of Instagram’s functionality, it allows brands to laser focus on how their shared moments represent them. That’s when you see such massive brand popularity blossom. (This is in comparison to the almost too many options for sharing as a business on Facebook.)

Of course, Instagram also has an algorithm that drives user experience on the app, but it doesn’t get complained about nearly as much as Facebook’s.

Content marketing

Facebook

Facebook is a great place to share curated content, where you’re sharing someone else’s content to benefit your own audience. (Check out our four tips for finding great curated content to share, as well as 12 tools to help you.) This is because you can easily share links.

This is also the best place to share any company announcements and/or updates. In fact, you can create actual events on Facebook and promote them.

Instagram

The best content for Instagram is original and authentic (not curated). Yes, you’ll see some regrams, memes and even text images. But go original if you want to be successful.

Going behind the scenes is engaging on Instagram. Real-time images also drive engagement, especially through Instagram Stories.

Instagram also is great for image-based contests that center around a hashtag. (Be sure to check out our guide on how to ensure your giveaways and contests are legal.)

Advertising campaigns

As mentioned earlier, Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta (formally known as Facebook). This means that you have the ability to run a single paid advertising campaign in one place that can run across both platforms.

Facebook Business Manager can make it all happen, so you don’t necessarily have to choose.

In conclusion

Ultimately, brands should have a presence on both Facebook and Instagram, but depending on your target audience, marketing goals and brand identity, you’ll likely drive a larger presence on one or the other.

As you’re evaluating your presence on Facebook and Instagram, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

14 biggest mistakes businesses make on Twitter

Many businesses find Twitter to be an effective social media marketing channel.

It offers the opportunity to build your brand’s credibility, engage directly with customers and reach a larger audience.

Twitter, originally created as a micro-blogging platform, is an online news and social networking site, where users can communicate publicly through short posts called tweets.

The social platform boasts about 186 million daily active users and 38 million users from within the U.S.

But with the opportunities come the risk of mistakes that can poorly reflect on your brand (and cause a subsequent loss of revenue).

See our snapshot of the challenges and opportunities of Twitter for businesses.

The following are 14 of the biggest mistakes business make on Twitter.

Not optimizing your Twitter profile

Sure, there is only so much you can do to optimize your Twitter profile, but if you’re not regularly reviewing how your Twitter account looks and what first impressions it might be giving other users, you’re missing out.

Make sure you:

  • Upload your logo or another brand-representative image as your profile photo
  • Choose a relevant and eye-catching cover image
  • Fill out your bio with key information about what your business does and how it helps people. You can check out Twitter accounts you aspire to or compete with for inspiration
  • Pick a URL that is easy to remember and best for potential leads to click on to find out more

No Twitter content plan

Just like any other channel, you’ll be more effective with a plan. Think through your goals. Identify your target audience. Then, consider the mix of content that can help you achieve your goals and reach your target audience.

Check out our seven tips to help you level up your content marketing (whether it’s on Twitter or elsewhere).

Inconsistent brand voice

Your brand story, personality and voice are all critically important to how Twitter users view and understand your brand. 

If you lack consistency in your brand voice, it’s going to be very confusing for anyone you reach with your tweets. In addition, you want to ensure that you’re leaving out any industry jargon in your messagin (unless you are specifically targeting those who understand that jargon, of course).

Keep in mind, that your brand voice should make you human in your messaging and engagement with Twitter users.

See our eight tips for finding your brand voice. Once you know your brand voice, lock it in for your social media efforts and beyond with our five tips to create a brand style guide.

Tweeting too much (or not enough)

Tweet too much, and you look like spam. Tweet too infrequently, and users don’t find you to be an active or credible Twitter account to engage with or follow. It’s easy to make this Twitter mistake, for sure.

Try to keep your tweeting to fewer than four tweets per hour.

Tweeting only at set times

Twitter is a fast-moving social network. If you only tweet at the same time every time, then you’re missing an opportunity to reach more Twitter users. 

You can avoid this Twitter mistake by scheduling your tweets at different times. You can then use Twitter Analytics to gauge what works best for your audience.

Lacking any multimedia tweets

Go beyond just text-only tweets if you want to engage more with your target audience. Aim to mix up your content types:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • GIFs

Tweets with images are about 34 percent more likely to get retweeted than tweets with no images.

Talking about your business too much

Just like on any social media platform, if you talk about yourself too much, you run the risk of either losing engagement, being seen as spam or both. 

Remember the reason why most users are using Twitter. Likely, they want to be informed and/or entertained.

Some companies strive for the 80-20 rule, where they only self-promote 20 percent of the time. Others aim for a rule of thirds, where one-third is self-promotion, another third is entertainment and the last third is education. 

There’s no blatant right or wrong content mix. Take time to review your resources and what makes the most sense for your business, with the goal being to keep the self-promotion to a minimum.

As you begin to plan your Twitter content, consider using a content calendar.

Ignoring trending topics on Twitter

Twitter makes it easy to understand what topics are trending at any given time. You should keep an eye out for the topics that are relevant to your brand and that you can contribute something to the conversation.

Not all trending topics will be relevant. So, if it feels like a reach, it probably is, and you should leave it be.

Using too many hashtags

Unlike Instagram (where users technically can use up to 30 hashtags), Twitter is more restrained by total character count and best practices in hashtag usage.

Tweets with hashtags can increase engagement up to 50 percent for brands. 

But you want to stick to one, maybe two, at most. Once you go above that, you risk looking spammy to other Twitter users. So, be sure to do your research on the best one or two hashtags you should be using to avoid this common Twitter mistake.

Missing your opportunity to ask for retweets

While you might feel it’s a little over-the-top or salesy to ask for retweets, you’ll actually receive a boost in engagement overall. Tweets have a 12 times higher chance of being retweeted if you simply ask for it.

You’ll want to use the phrase “retweet” rather than “RT,” though.

The key is that you’re asking on content that is engaging enough for users to see the value of retweeting. That simple act of asking alone won’t get you the retweets you want if your content isn’t worthy.

Leaving your followers hanging

It’s easy to forget the social conversation side of Twitter since the platform moves so fast. And many businesses do.

But regardless of the noise that Twitter can generate at times, you must make it a priority to respond to any comments or direct messages that come your way. In addition, you want to comment and retweet others’ posts if you find them interesting and in line with your brand.

You want to build relationships with your followers and the broader Twitter community, and that won’t happen if you only broadcast content and never engage.

Ignoring negative comments

Related to not engaging with your followers, you cannot ignore any negative comments that come your way.

No business enjoys negative comments or reviews, but they are part of maintaining an online presence, which you absolutely want to do. Treat them as opportunities to turn this negative commenter into a fan, based on your excellent customer service and social media voice.

Check out our 11 tips to best respond to negative commenters.

Retweeting mentions of your business

Resist the temptation to retweet every mention of your brand. It can come across a little shallow, salesy and insincere to other Twitter users.

Instead, you can reply to the tweet and move on. Or, if it really should be shared, retweet it but with a comment on it to give it context to avoid this easy-to-make Twitter mistake.

Expecting instant success

Most social media marketing success is about the long-term strategy culminating in success over time.

This is no different for Twitter. Tweet once or even three times, and you likely will not see an immediate achievement of your goals.

Monitor your overall account performance for clues on what you can do more of and what you should do less of. Remember that Twitter Analytics can help you with this. It’s free to use and is native to the platform.

Check out our eight expert tips to help you market your business better on Twitter.

As you’re creating your author bio, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

4 tips to market your brand on Reddit

The idea of marketing on Reddit might make many businesses nervous, but rather than avoid the platform, why not embrace it as an opportunity?

Reddit has traditionally considered itself the “front page of the internet.” In other words, it’s a network of communities where users can dive into their hobbies, interests and passions. Registered users can share content on different discussion boards, referred to as subreddits.

Considering that Reddit sees about 430 million monthly active users in comparison to the roughly 444 million monthly active users on popular aspirational platform Pinterest, the potential of a sizable (yet largely untapped) audience is there.

To state it another way, Reddit is one of the world’s most popular websites. As of May 2020, the United States generated about 50 percent of all desktop traffic to the forum site.

On the flip side, Reddit is not a fan of marketing. In fact, it strongly discourages sales content and self-promotion.

But cracking the code to marketing on Reddit (so to speak) comes down to understanding the difference between marketing strategies of the past and those that we recommend today. Simply put, it’s about prioritizing authenticity and delivering value to other Reddit users.

The following are four tips to market your brand on Reddit without being spammy or “Reddit shamed” (or banned entirely).

Invest time in being a Reddit user first

This sounds obvious, but it’s more true on Reddit than on any other platform. Being an engaged natural user of the platform will only help you with your content marketing efforts.

We recommend engaging on subreddits that span your personal interests to your professional interests. Comment, ask questions, be an active participant. 

Not only will you get first-hand experience on the overall code of conduct and expectations of the platform, you also will see the nuances of different subreddits (and how they differ from each other). In addition, you’ll discover the subreddits (and relevant conversations) that your brand should target and engage with along the way. Just like how you want to get specific with your target audience, you also want to get as specific as possible with your selection of subreddits.

There’s no official amount of time that you should invest before posting your own content, but know that you shouldn’t be in a rush. The more you can invest as an engaged user first, the better. You’ll best understand any subreddit-specific rules of engagement, as well as any potential inside jokes among a subreddit’s audience.

Then, once you get going, a general rule of them is to balance your posts with a greater number of comments. For example, commit to 10 comments on others’ posts for every link you share. Think of it this way: You should contribute 80 percent of the time and only self-promote (in an authentic way) 20 percent of the time.

Create helpful content

Helpful and/or entertaining content naturally drives higher engagement. This is no different on Reddit, where users are just as open to content that can help them solve their problems or overcome an obstacle just like anyone else.

Focus on brainstorming an array of how-to content ideas that are relevant for your target audience. This entirely depends on the nature of your business and how you’re trying to reach, of course. Just think about the typical questions you hear from your customers. That’s a great place to start.

Once you have at least a dozen topics that you can create content around, check out our eight tips for developing a content calendar to stay organized. If writer’s block pops up, see our seven tips to overcome it.

As far as posting, you have numerous creative options you can explore on Reddit: 

  • GIFs instead of videos or video links (you can always link to a full video in the comments)
  • Images (just make sure they’re eye-catching)
  • Text (sometimes the preferred medium for in-depth conversations on certain subreddits)
  • Blogs (just make extra sure that your content is highly engaging and useful since Reddit users have a particular distaste for any blog spam)
  • AMAs (“Ask Me Anything” threads that are just that)
  • News (any industry or other type of update that is relevant and timely to that subreddit)

Treat everything as a conversation

This includes engaging with commenters on your own post long after you’ve even posted, just as you would on any other social media platform. 

Remember, social media in general is the compilation of conversations. 

Reddit is no different. In fact, you’ll get called out that much quicker for not engaging as expected. You have to always go above and beyond to prove that you’re human when representing your brand. But in the end, that engagement builds much-needed (and much-sought-after) trust.

No cheating

Reddit users are a skeptical crowd that has seen it all with various cheat-the-system tricks:

  • Face accounts
  • Employee (or colleague) upvoting
  • Undisclosed paid sponsors

The reaction of fellow users and Reddit itself will be very negative if you try to cheat in any way. You risk being banned from a specific subreddit as well as the website itself.

In conclusion

While Reddit can feel like an intimidating site to branch your marketing efforts into, it really is worth the effort if you have the resources (aka time) to invest in it. 

Of course, if you have an available budget, Reddit advertising might be an option for your brand as well.

Organically speaking, though, link dumping definitely won’t work no matter how you try to conceal it. As long as you aim to be human first as you represent your brand and give as much as (if not more than) you take, your business will reap the rewards of reaching a largely untapped audience that can appreciate you investing that effort and being part of the community.

Check out our seven tips to level up your overall content marketing while you’re at it.

Then, consider the possibility of optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

9 tips to create engaging Instagram Stories

No longer the “new kid on the block,” Instagram Stories represent an opportunity for every brand to connect in additional ways with its target audience.

Launched in 2016, Instagram Stories allow you to multiple images and/or videos in a vertical format, where you can layer on various doodles, text and/or interactive stickers. They last 24 hours before disappearing, but they can be pinned to your Instagram profile in Highlight groupings and last longer.

(If this sounds very similar to Snapchat Stories, which were launched in 2013, then you’re right.)

About 500 million users per day use Instagram Stories, and about one-third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses.

Incorporating Stories into your Instagram publishing strategy helps you reach your audience in two different places in the app, both in the Stories section and the traditional feed section.

Check out our 16 overall Instagram marketing tips that you can try right away. Plus, see the 14 biggest mistakes companies make on Instagram (and how to avoid them).

The following are nine tips to help you create engaging Instagram Stories that best reflect your company’s brand.

Create an Instagram Story-specific style guide

Style guides are a great tool for branding consistency. (See our nine expert tips for starting a new brand from scratch.) 

They can include your font choices, preferred filters, branded colors, GIF types and so on.

While your style guide can be in any format, the key is that it can be easily shared among your team members. Your brand can then appear the same regardless of who is creating your Story content.

Use storyboards

With so many content options to explore within Instagram Stories, a great way to get started involves trying storyboards.

This helps you fully plan out your Story before diving into the design.

And planning is everything. 

Storyboards can be as simple as sketching out your ideas slide by slide. 

  • What multimedia do you want to use?
  • How will you string your slides together to create a visual narrative?
  • What call-to-action do you want to promote? How?
  • Any key brand colors to include?

What you decide in advance will make your creation process more efficient and more effective.

Stay within the lines

Instagram Stories are displayed with usernames and ways to interact with the Story along the top and bottom of the screen. So, you definitely don’t want to design your Story in such a way that your content gets covered up by buttons and other features.

Fortunately, Instagram offers grid lines as a guideline to stay within. Think lines of a coloring book. You’ll want to stay within them.

While you’ll see these grid lines appear as necessary when designing within the Instagram app, keep the following spacing in mind if you’re designing outside of the app:

  • Instagram Story dimensions are 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels.
  • But, ideally, you’ll want to center your design elements within 1080 pixels by 1420 pixels.
  • In other words, leave 250 pixels of space at the top and bottom of your Instagram Story design.

Mix up your multimedia

You have almost endless options when it comes to the types of multimedia you can use in your Stories. Don’t get stuck in a rut.

In fact, even a string of slides together can mix things up throughout your visual narration to help keep the viewer engaged.

Types include:

  • Photography, whether or original or stock images
  • Boomerangs, which are looped video clips
  • Videos
  • GIFs
  • Audio

Always be open to experimentation for the benefit of better connecting with your target audience. (Not sure who your target audience is? See our seven tips.)

Take advantage of stickers

Whether you’re looking to add humor or simply a touch of fun engagement, Instagram’s stickers are a great place to start on your Stories.

They range in functions, including frivolous angles, but some of the most useful include:

  • Polls
  • Quizzes
  • Hashtags
  • Account tags
  • Location tags

You also can create your own stickers and GIFs for users to add to their own Stories. You can do so by becoming a verified brand on Giphy.

Earn access to the ‘Swipe Up’ feature

It takes about 10,000 followers to earn the coveted “Swipe Up” feature, where viewers can access a link from within your Story simply by swiping up.

Until you get this feature, you must direct viewers to navigate to your bio to click a link. But once you can direct website traffic through Instagram Stories, you can level up your call-to-action by designing entirely around the idea of swiping up to take a particular action.

It’s a powerful feature once you can access it.

Create branded highlight covers

While Instagram Stories typically last for only 24 hours, you can add them to the highlights section at the top of your Instagram profile to save them beyond the 24 hours.

There is no limit to the number of highlights you can create, but users will only see the most recently updated five on your profile without having to scroll.

Once you begin using highlights, you can create and use cover images. You can design these to reflect your brand presence on Instagram.

Explore tools to create your best Instagram Stories

You don’t have to be a graphic designer or an Instagram native app designing expert to create engaging visuals for your Stories.

There are a number of templates that you can start with, but more importantly, we recommend checking out any of these 11 free graphic design tools for the non-designer.

Monitor your performance

Just like with any digital marketing tactic (especially on social media), you’ll want to keep an eye on the analytics behind your Instagram Stories.

That’s easy enough to do within Instagram Insights. The key is to know when to pivot your strategy.

See our guide to better understanding your metrics on Instagram.

You also can dive deeper into the opportunities and challenges of Instagram for small businesses. and our six tips to master Instagram hashtags.

Then, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

11 best practices to help you grow your social media followers

Social media is a key part of any business’s digital marketing strategy, but are you seeing enough followers and engagement on your accounts?

About 3.6 billion people worldwide were using social media in 2020, and that’s expected to grow to about 4.4 billion by 2025.

So, your target audience is definitely out there. (And if you need help determining your ideal target audience, see our seven tips.)

Of course, don’t miss what we recommend every startup company should know about social media.

The following are 11 best practices that can help you grow your social media followers over time regardless of the platform.

Build a strong brand identity

Branding is everything for successful businesses online. Of course, this means more than just including your logo on all of your multimedia assets and so on.

It ties into your predominant color scheme, graphic designs, voice, even filters. If you haven’t yet solidified your brand’s identity, it’s never too late.

See our eight tips for finding your brand’s voice. And in the fitness industry, we walk you through building an online brand from scratch (that can be applied to other industries as well).

Even personal brands count. Check out our 10 tips for building your personal brand and growing your business.

The most important thing is consistency and cohesion. Once you have your brand identity, own it.

Follow relevant accounts

Following other accounts that are relevant to your interests, industry and business is a great way to:

  • Stay in the know about topics that matter to you and your brand
  • Be inspired by what others are doing on social media
  • Have an opportunity to engage with accounts that are relevant to you
  • Get an idea of what your competition is doing on social media

Of course, there’s also the opportunity to potentially be followed back by others, but that shouldn’t be your primary reason to do it.

Actively engage with your followers

Time is always a challenge, but resist the temptation to “set it and forget it.” Once a post publishes (whether it’s scheduled or live), that’s only the beginning.

Prioritize time to engage with your followers who are commenting on your posts and/or messaging you. 

Granted, you can’t go down the wormhole on it, and the more engagement you receive, the harder it will be to respond to every user. But there are tools out there that can help.

Check out these 11 free (or almost free) social media management tools to help you stay on top of the activity happening with your brand accounts. Plus, see additional reasons why a social media management tool can benefit your business.

And consider these seven opportunities for social media automation that you might not be aware of.

Just remember that social media is a conversation, not just a megaphone. You’ll lose your social media followers if you never engage with them. Invite those connections and conversations.

Publish content that’s worth sharing

Ask yourself honestly: 

  • Are you posting content that excites, entertains, educates? 
  • Is your content engaging? 
  • Are you thinking about your followers first?

If the answer is no, then it’s time to reevaluate your content strategy. Think about how you can add in more:

  • Opinions (just be cautious when it comes to sensitive issues)
  • Trending content (which helps you stay current on social media)
  • News developments from your industry
  • Data and statistics
  • Humorous or cute content (just make sure that it’s relevant to your brand identity)
  • Visually compelling or eye-catching (including videos)

If a majority of your content is sales-heavy, you’re definitely missing an opportunity for engagement with your social media followers (and giving others a reason to follow you).

Use a content calendar

Content calendars are great for both long-term planning and overall content organization.

It’s about striking a balance between posting enough to stay relevant and not posting too much, which looks more like spam. That balance helps you connect with social media followers.

See our eight tips to create an effective content calendar.

Promote your social media elsewhere

Don’t assume that everyone knows you have a Facebook page or an Instagram account or a viral video on TikTok.

Depending on what else you’re doing online, think through the opportunities you have to promote your social media accounts elsewhere. 

This could be on your website, blog, podcast, guest blogs (or appearances), email newsletters and so on.

Be smart with your hashtags

Hashtags are all about discoverability. But it’s better to be strategic and targeted than to treat your hashtags like buckshot.

In short, the most popular hashtags (such as #love) aren’t necessarily the ones you need to use because they are, in fact, so overused. You’ll just get lost in the noise.

You can opt for more specific hashtags and/or create branded hashtags to promote user-generated content (among other reasons).

Check out our six tips to help you master hashtags on Instagram specifically.

Explore influencer marketing

Influencer marketing continues to increase in popularity, and for good reasons. It simply makes sense to partner with another brand that (or personality who) is relevant to your target audience.

Make sure you understand who you’re going to work with (whether they’re appropriate for your brand) and what the expectations are.

The result of a successful influencer marketing campaign is increased engagement and more social media followers.

Check out our seven tips you should know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

Keep your customer service team in the loop

Because so many more consumers are contacting brands via social media, it’s important that everyone tasked with responding to those messages are in the loop regarding your overall social media strategy and any significant campaigns.

Maintaining that communication across your team will preserve a consistency in your customer service that should back up the brand voice you’re projecting publicly on social media.

(Of course, this also extends to how you address negative commentary and reviews online. See our 11 tips.)

Consider contests and giveaways

Contests and giveaways should never be the end all be all of your entire social media strategy. But they are a great way to engage with your social media followers and grow your following as well.

First, think about what would spur interest and excitement. Make sure it’s reflective of your brand identity.

See our 10 tips to encourage more user-generated content.

But most importantly of all, make sure you’re on the up and up and keeping every giveaway and contest legal. Check out our guide on Terms and Conditions.

Pivot your strategy based on your social media performance

Similar to what we recommend for just about any digital marketing strategy is not just to monitor your social media analytics, but to refine your strategy as needed based on that performance.

If something is working, how can you build on that?

If something isn’t working, what can you do differently?

Clearly, there are so many factors to consider:

  • Timing
  • Content itself
  • Voice
  • Visuals

And so much more. But that’s what makes social media exciting. It’s always changing, and in general, it’s a grand experiment for every brand to find ways to represent itself, be heard and reach its target audience.

Consider any of these 17 online courses to level up your social media skills.

While you’re exploring how to increase your social media followers organically, think about how you can improve your digital marketing process as well. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips to optimize your Facebook Pixel

The key to any digital marketing strategy involves testing, tracking and refining based on the data.

When it comes to Facebook and Instagram ads, you must incorporate the free-to-use Facebook Pixel to obtain the best data tied to your campaign performance.

The Facebook Pixel is essentially a piece of code that you input onto your website. Once installed, it collects data that enables you to track conversions from your Facebook or Instagram ads, optimize those ads, create target audiences and retarget those who’ve already performed an action of some kind on your website.

To accomplish this, the Facebook Pixel places and triggers cookies to track website visitors as they interact with your website.

For example, a user could add a product of yours to the shopping cart but then leave your website before purchasing. Your Facebook Pixel can then make it possible for you to serve related ads about that product to that user while they’re browsing Instagram Stories. This reflects its retargeting capabilities.

It’s a must-use tool.

In fact, about 5.3 million websites use the Facebook Pixel. And they use it not just because of its tracking features, but also because using it helps the overall return on investment (ROI) of their Facebook ad campaigns. It’s all about increased efficiency.

And you can easily install it yourself if you have access to your website’s code. If not, you can contact your website developer. If your website is powered by an eCommerce platform (such as Shopify), Facebook has partnerships that make the installation process easy, as well as the creation of a product catalog and the ability to run related ads.

You can find your Facebook Pixel (and functionality) in the Data Sources interface of your Facebook Events Manager.

The following are five tips to help you best use the Facebook Pixel for your digital marketing efforts.

Understand what the Facebook Pixel can track

The Facebook Pixel offers tracking for 17 standard “events” (aka actions that occur on your website):

  1. Lead, when a visitor submits their information in any way on your website
  2. Complete Registration, when a visitor completes a registration form on your website
  3. Start Trial, when a visitor signs up for a free trial on your website
  4. Customize Product, when a user selects a specific version of a product (by choosing a color, for example)
  5. Add To Cart, when a visitor adds a product to his or her shopping cart on your website
  6. Add Payment Information, when a visitor enters his or her payment information during the purchase process on your website
  7. Initiate Checkout, when a visitor begins the checkout process to buy something on your website
  8. Purchase, when a visitor makes a purchase of any kind on your website
  9. Schedule, when a visitor books an appointment for your business on your website
  10. Submit Application, when a visitor applies for your product, service or program (a credit card application, for example)
  11. Subscribe, when a visitor subscribes to a paid product or service on your website
  12. Donate, when a visitor makes a donation on your website
  13. Add To Wishlist, when a visitor adds a product to a wishlist on your website
  14. Search, when a visitor uses the search function on your website
  15. Find Location, when a visitor searches for your business’s physical location on your website
  16. View Content, when a visitor lands on a specific page of your website
  17. Contact, when a visitor contact your business through the website

Use parameters to add details to your tracking

You can go beyond the standard events that the Facebook Pixel can track by adding details. This can be done through extra pieces of code called parameters.

You can narrow in on such factors as:

  • Content type
  • Currency
  • How much a conversion event is worth
  • Predicted long-term value

This means that you can use the Facebook Pixel to track a specific area or category of your website. For example, a salon website can separate those interested in hair services from those interested in nail services based on which sections of the website were viewed.98\

Be aware of newer iOS tracking limits

While there’s nothing you can do about it, it is worthwhile to understand that due to third-party tracking changes beginning in iOS 14.5, some Facebook Pixel functionality is disabled in updated Apple devices.

This can feel disheartening in your targeting efforts, but know that only about 15 percent of mobile Facebook users access the platform using iOS devices.

Nonetheless, one consequence of this change is that advertisers can only set up a maximum of eight standard events and custom conversions for tracking.

Think about the full picture

Ultimately, your strategy and how you want to use the Facebook Pixel are up to you. That being said, it’s recommended to place the Pixel base code on every page of your website.

Doing so ensures that you:

  • Won’t miss any conversion events.
  • Have complete control over how and what you decide to track.

Consider the logic of what you want to track to best identify the events you choose. Think about your customer’s journey on your website and what matters most to your business. 

What are your company’s goals? What are the goals of your advertising campaign? If you’re not sure, check out our seven expert tips to set achievable marketing goals.

A few suggested strategies:

  • Retarget visitors with true interest by targeting anyone who stayed on your website for at least 45 seconds.
  • Use Advanced Matching features that help match your website visitors with their Facebook profiles when turned on. This improves conversion attribution and helps you reach more people.
  • Segment your audience by browsing behavior based on the products or website sections they engaged with. (You then could target them with specific ads containing related coupon codes, for example.)
  • Create Lookalike Audiences with your data to target users (who haven’t yet visited your website) with similar demographics and behavior as those who have visited your website.
  • Determine your audience’s intent through their URL activity as long as you have smart, clear URL structures.

Just know that you don’t have to wait to install your Facebook Pixel. Do so right away so that you can begin gathering insights as soon as possible.

Monitor the performance of your Facebook Pixel

Obviously, the Facebook Pixel offers you a wealth of information.

You can track your Facebook ad conversions across platforms and devices to better understand your customers’ journey and behavior, for example, and then use this information to refine your strategy as needed.

Just make sure to compare you’re comparing your ad clicks to actual traffic data. Not all clicks convert into a true landing page view. One reason for this is any loading speed issues your website might have.

Keeping an eye on your ad campaign performance and the insights it yields over time will help you pivot your overall strategy as needed.

See our seven tips to better target your Facebook ads.

Looking to level up your digital marketing process beyond the Facebook Pixel? Schedule your free demo of DailyStory today.

8 tips to make your event marketing better

Understandably, event marketing is a broad strategy that can be used within your digital marketing, based on the events you may or may not be hosting.

But for businesses that do host or attend any sort of event (in-person or online), it’s critical to think through your event marketing strategy. Doing so helps you optimize the natural content and engagement opportunities that exist with events.

About 61 percent of marketers believe that in-person events are the most critical marketing channel.

Event marketing ultimately involves the tools and techniques you use to promote an event, usually with the goal of getting individuals to attend (whether they must pay to do so or not). Of course, on the flip side, it’s important to capitalize and follow through with those leads once you capture them going into the event, during the event and after the event.

The following are eight tips to make the most of your events and boost your overall event marketing.

Set your event marketing goals

Goals always end up being at the center of any successful digital marketing strategy. Understanding not only what you want to achieve but putting that to specifics so that you can lay out the action steps that need to be taken to get there.

Learn more about how to set effective marketing goals.

Consider multiple ways to send invitations

Obviously, you’ll want to invite people to attend your event, but in what ways can and/or should you invite them?

Methods include:

  • Email
  • Social media
  • Direct mail

Choosing any or all of the above methods depends on who you’re trying to reach, but no matter what method(s) you use, make sure you can track invitations against your database and have a streamlined way of collecting reservations.

Leverage your social media for overall event promotion

A lot can be done around events on social media. For instance, a “save the date” campaign can help raise overall awareness of an event and can even include a “countdown” component to boost excitement.

You’ll want to use all the available tools at your disposal, including live videos, infographics with facts about the event and so on.

Then, monitor social media before, during and after the event. Ideally, you’ve established a specific hashtag for your event to make this easier on most platforms.

The monitoring can help you understand what’s happening in real time and respond to any complaints or requests during the event from your attendees.

Think beyond social media

Of course, as handy as social media is, there are other channels to consider for your event marketing, especially when you’re going beyond direct invitations. These include (but are not limited to):

  • Blogging (including guest blogging on other sites)
  • Partner outreach (such as potential collaborators and media partners)
  • Email marketing
  • Early-bird discounts on any channel
  • Pre-event landing page
  • Paid advertising
  • Formal press releases
  • Attendee referral incentives
  • Influencer marketing
  • SMS text marketing

The direction(s) you go in always should touch back on your goals for the event in question. 

Manage your event registration process

Speaking of collecting reservations, your event registration process should be a priority. Obviously, this should be online (whether your event is in-person or not). But beyond that, you have options as far as the method or tools you can use.

Here’s what you should keep in mind:

  • Have a way of tracking the source of each registration, which can done through custom landing pages and/or tracking codes.
  • Include sign-up deadlines that should happen automatically.
  • Capture and store all relevant contact information for individuals.
  • Have automated confirmations and reminders sent to registered attendees.

Incorporate event confirmations and reminders

As part of your event registration process, you’ll want to ensure that you’re sending confirmations whenever an individual RSVPs, as well as reminders as the event gets closer.

In fact, if you have any digital assets to share after the event is over (such as a recording or worksheet, etc.), consider including them in a follow-up email thanking all attendees and offering those assets, especially for those who might have missed the event.

Of course, the more you can automate this process, the better.

Capitalize on lead capture

Events naturally lend themselves to significant lead-capturing opportunities. This happens not just during the promotion of the event, but also during the event itself.

It’s important to capture all contact information for use in drip campaigns later. Be sure to have a data collection process in place during the event, whether that’s a business-card scanner or an online form. This is particularly important if your business is at an event (like a trade show) where you do not have attendee registration information.

You’ll also want to input that contact data into a marketing automation platform or CRM system as soon as you can after the event (ideally, the same day).

If possible, score and prioritize the contacts you made from the event. Depending on the marketing system you’re using, you can direct warmer leads to more of a sales-driven drip campaign, while cooler leads can be directed to more of an educational drip campaign.

DailyStory does offer a lead-ranking system within our platform to help target your marketing.

Measure your performance

When it comes to event marketing, there are a number of different metrics you can use to understand the success of your event. 

And the metrics you use largely depend on your goals for your event marketing. This can include:

  • Event attendance (especially out of those who registered)
  • Lead collection
  • Lead conversion
  • Revenue generated

DailyStory can help with event marketing automations (as well as in other types of digital marketing). And our platform offers even more than automation capabilities. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Instagram or Facebook Reels: 7 best practices for small businesses

With the increasing popularity of Reels (particularly on Instagram), small businesses should take note as part of your social media marketing strategy.

Reels is a feature where users can create and share fun, short videos using a catalog of music and other media. More specifically, they are 15-second, multi-clip videos that can have sound, music and other effects added to them. 

If you’re familiar with TikTok videos, then you’re familiar with the capabilities of Reels. 

About 61 percent of Generation Z TikTok users are leaning toward using Instagram Reels.

Find out more about Reels and three reasons why you should consider using them.

Of course, any success with Reels doesn’t just happen. The following are seven best practices for small businesses using Reels on either Instagram or Facebook.

Best practice #1: Highlight brand individuality

Reels is all about unique content with a thoughtful storyline. In other words, it’s a blank slate for out-of-the-box creativity.

However, if you’re struggling to brainstorm ideas that you can take to the next level (creatively speaking), consider:

  • Sharing company culture
  • Announcing new product launches or offers
  • Creating how-to tutorials
  • Displaying your product or service in an attention-grabbing way
  • Revealing insider tips and tricks
  • Repurposing past content that has performed well
  • Showing what happens behind the scenes
  • Highlighting before-and-after moments

Experiment with hashtags, text and captions. Research what is trending and what your competition is doing. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box, whether that with the use of camera angels, audio, etc.

Just be wary of hard-selling too much. Viewers won’t have an appetite for it, and over time, you’ll struggle to build your reach and engagement on Reels.

Best practice #2: Think vertical and consider file size

Like Stories, Reels content is vertical. This might not be a big stretch for content creation if you’re already creating content for Stories, TikTok and/or Snapchat. 

But it can be an adjustment if you haven’t stepped into those other features and/or platforms yet.

As far as file size for Reels, it’s not a huge concern if you’re creating your content within the platform (either Instagram or Facebook). However, if you plan on importing any cllips for your Reels video, keep these characteristics in mind:

  • The recommended Reels size is 1080 by 1920 pixels.
  • The recomended aspect ratio for Reels is 9:16.

If the size is not accurate, you could end up with an awkwardly cropped Reels clip. 

Best practice #3: Balance authenticity with quality

Reels allows for fun, authentic content, but on the flip side, you still want to balance that with well-produced clips.

Take the time to plan, execute and edit your Reels video clips so that you can walk that line and hit that balance every time to best engage with your target audience. Choosing the right audio is a big piece, so don’t rush the creation process.

We recommend using a visual storyboard process to plan your Reels clip frame by frame. But truly, practice makes perfect. Keep experimenting and creating.

Best practice #4: Avoid watermarks

It’s probably not a surprise that since Facebook is aiming to compete with TikTok by implementing Reels, your content will not be as successful if it has another platform’s watermark on it.

For example, if you create a TikTok video on that platform and then save it to upload it to Instagram Reels, there will be a TikTok watermark in the corner of that uploaded clip.

To avoid this, you’ll want to create original content within Instagram or Facebook Reels so that it can play nice with those platforms’ algorithms.

Best practice #5: Add a custom Reels thumbnail

By creating a custom Reels cover, you are taking the power of your content into your own hands. The cover is the first image users see when they come across your Reels video clip.

Make sure that you design an image that is not only eye-catching but also true to the content users will see by watching your clip.

You can add the cover by clicking on “Cover” after creating your Reels clip. You can then add the image from your gallery.

Best practice #6: Optimize the sharing of your Reels

Once created, Instagram specifically allows you to share the video clip to the Reels tab, where your followers can then access it easily on your profile.

Be sure to share your Reels clip to your feed as well so that it’ll show on your main profile view alongside your other feed posts. You can also save it and share it at a more optimized time for your audience. While various “best time to post” articles exist online, the key is to think about your target audience’s time zone and when they’ll likely be engaging with your content.

  • When they wake up?
  • During lunch?
  • Toward the end of the traditional workday?
  • After dinner?
  • Before bed?

From there, experiment with timing to get the best sense for your brand account since every brand is unique with a different audience.

With a public Instagram business account (rather than a private personal account), your Reels clip could be picked up and suggested to users at large in Instagram’s main discovery Reels tab.

Learn more about the difference between personal, creator and business accounts on Instagram.

Best practice #7: Monitor your Reels performance

Just like with any other feature or even platform, tracking your metrics is critical to understanding what works best for your target audience and what isn’t working at all.

You’ll be able to view reach, likes, saves, shares, comments and plays. Keep in mind that the number of plays can be higher than your reach since users can watch a Reels clip more than once.

Your Reels analytics are located within Instagram Insights on the Instagram app, which is only available for business accounts.

Reels analytics for Facebook pages appear to be in the works as of 2021.

Still embracing TikTok? See our 15 tips to better market your brand on the video platform.

As you’re looking into expanding into Reels, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Reels: What it is and 3 reasons why you should use it for your business

Reels is among the new features you’ve likely noticed on either Facebook, Instagram or both.

It’s definitely how Facebook (which owns Instagram) is attempting to combat the popularity of TikTok, a newer social video app that is exploding among younger audiences.

As of 2021, Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users, while TikTok has reached 1 billion monthly active users.

Similar to how Facebook copied the Stories feature from Snapchat, it’s going with the same playbook for Reels from TikTok. The strategy effectively rocketed the use of Instagram Stories over Snapchat Stories. However, time will tell if this will happen against TikTok with Reels.

But what is Reels? And why should your business use them?

What is Reels?

Reels is a feature where users can create and share fun, short videos using a catalog of music and other media. More specifically, they are 15-second, multi-clip videos that can have sound, music and other effects added to them. 

If you’re familiar with TikTok videos, then you’re familiar with the capabilities of Reels.

The purpose of Reels is to entertain and inspire creativity.

Why you should try Reels

There are three reasons why you should consider incorporating Reels into your social media marketing strategy.

Improved visibility and discoverability

Because Reels is a prioritized feature on Instagram and Facebook, the platforms are giving prioritized status to all Reels-related content you post.

This expands to users’ news feeds, the “Explore” section of Instagram and a dedicated Reels section on Instagram (located in the center of the navigation bar).

In other words, prime-time visibility for your target audience.

The reason for the prioritization is because Facebook and Instagram want to encourage users to start using the feature, so now is the time to jump in and experiment.

Opportunity to make your brand more personable

Because of the nature of Reels, the feature offers your brand the opportunity to share fun and personable content that will entertain your audience and show a potentially relatable side of your brand.

Just make sure that whatever you experiment with and create on Reels is true to your brand. Being fun and using music and effects in your video clips can quickly go off track if you’re not paying attention.

Lower competition

When a social media feature is new, it can take many brands a while to adapt to it and start using it.

The sooner you can begin experimenting with Reels, the further ahead you can get on your own competition. Think of it this way: Even just experimenting now will make you the experienced brand when your competition is just starting to experiment.

In conclusion

Keep in mind that the use of Reels on Facebook or Instagram is not a substitute for your brand’s presence on TikTok. If you’re trying to reach a younger target audience, TikTok should be part of your strategy as long as it’s a relevant space for the users you’re trying to reach. 

In other words, it doesn’t matter how the battle for users between Facebook and TikTok ends up. TikTok is a relevant social media app for now and still deserves consideration.

See our 15 tips to market your brand on TikTok.

For some inspiration, check out Walmart and Sephora since they are major brands that are already using Reels.

While you’re considering how to set achievable marketing goals, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.