October 11, 2016
10 Must-Have Digital Marketing Skills For 2016 And Beyond
Digital marketing strategy has become the focus of most marketing strategies for a practical reason: The majority of today’s target audience — both consumers and businesses — are online and looking for information there. However, sources also reveal the challenges of digital marketing, both this year and in the future, that all marketers will have to consider if they want to be in the right position to capitalize on opportunities.
For example, Cisco reported that by 2019, there will be 3.9 billion global internet users – just over half the world’s population. They also estimated that 70% of consumer internet traffic will be online video by 2017. Forbes noted that 78% of those it surveyed said that company social media posts influence their purchase decisions. With smartphone users checking their devices up to 150 times in a day, Econsultancy concluded that 62% of the companies that created a website specifically for mobile had increased their sales.
However, there are challenges that must also be addressed: Ninety-four percent of respondents in one study said that their first impression of a website centered on design, while 40% left if a site took more than three seconds to load. Demand Metric found that 82% of consumers surveyed felt more positive about a brand after they read custom content from that brand, requiring companies to produce more content.
With these stats in mind, here are 10 essential digital marketing skills every business leader must master in order to stay ahead in an ever-changing landscape:
- Content marketing. Companies are still struggling with ways to create content that truly engages their audience. Those that have been able to do so have enjoyed greater success in their digital marketing strategies. Having the ability to craft this type of content is at the top of the skills list for 2016 and beyond. Using a team of skilled copywriters, I’ve been able to see a difference in engagement levels in the content we produce.
- Video development. With video content becoming “king” within content marketing, the ability to develop, produce and share memorable videos that reflect a company’s brand attributes is a must. These engaging videos are more likely to be shared than any other content, which makes an even more compelling argument for having skill in your repertoire. I find it important that I continue to develop my own video skills to continue benefitting from this engagement level.
- Web design and development. It would seem that is an easier area to be mastered, but the fact remains that there is still a skills gap that needs to be filled. The value of great web design has also increased in recent times, simply based on the need for mobile-friendly websites.
- Social media. Despite so many years of use, social media skills remain critical in 2016 due to the increased use by businesses and the growing number of platforms available.These will likely require a strategist to determine the best fit and channels to use. Now that there are also more ways to use social media (including surveys, quizzes, live video and more), marketers are paying closer attention to this arena.
- Security. As more consumers and businesses move online to conduct business and share information, security is paramount. This includes the ability to understand how data can be leaked or hacked, as well as the technical know-how to use available security technology, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication.
- Consumer psychology. With consumer behavior becoming a central part of digital marketing’s objective to create personalized, engaging messages and dialogue with target audiences, having the ability to understand consumer behavior and capitalize on those findings can be a significant competitive advantage.
- Data analytics. Data means nothing unless you know what to do with it, including how to organize the information, see patterns, and connect them to what needs to change within the digital marketing strategy. Digital analysts are now some of the most sought-after talent.
- Human connection. While it may sound strange to say being human is a good digital marketing skill to have, it seems as though digital marketing can easily lose touch with real human relationships. Alongside automation and technology, it’s critical to keep the human element of marketing at the forefront of everything you do, especially in relation to human behavior, problem-solving and customer service. To do this requires listening to your audience and customer base.
- Paid search. With more people using the internet to search for information and solutions to their problems, the need to direct them to your digital properties in a crowded space is key. However, you want to make sure you get the greatest return on investment: That’s when you could use a paid search specialist who understands the available ways that you can leverage this segment and maximize the results.
- Mobile marketing. Today more than ever, people are relying on their smartphones for most online communication, including social media, search, email and more. That means having those who are skilled in understanding know how to use the various tools and platforms in a mobile environment, which is much different from a desktop. This requires having a cross-section of marketing skills in addition to the experience of working within the mobile environment.
If you are eager to add these digital marketing skills to your own skill set, there are many places to get help, including Google’s online digital marketing courses and Google AdWords certification, Target Internet’s online courses, and the American Marketing Association. If you’re looking to further expand your education, you can always register for some college and university courses on digital marketing to increase your know-how and thrive in a competitive environment.
Angela Ruth - Forbes
August 2, 2016
Facebook Launches 360 Photos!
Facebook introduced photo sharing on its social media platform more than a decade ago, and now hundreds of millions of photos are shared each day with friends all over the world. Now, with the launch of “360 photos,” your friends can experience the moments you share as if they were with you.
Facebook recently launched “360 photos,” a new supported format for uploading smartphone panoramas and images taken with certain 360-degree cameras and photo apps. Facebook users will now be able to view photos from every angle including above, below, behind and next to you.
The best part is that you don’t necessarily need a 360-degree camera to share these more immersive views of your world. Flat photos uploaded will now automatically be converted into interactive images made for fullscreen viewing by tilting your smartphone while using the Facebook apps for iOS and Android.
You can easily identify the immersive 360 photos by looking for a compass icon on the right-hand side of photos. To explore a 360 photo on the web by clicking and dragging, or on mobile by tapping and dragging the photo or moving your phone. Additionally, 360 photos can also be viewed using an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headset. While using a supported Samsung device, click View in VR in the top left corner of the video, place the phone in the Gear VR, and experience the photo in an immersive VR environment.
The days are still early for VR and 360-degree content. However, Facebook is currently influencing this push of new technology into the mainstream as well as positioning themselves as the go-to destination for immersive content. By creating this, Zuckerberg stands a lot to gain. Encouraging the use of this new technology will most likely have users spending more time on Facebook tilting photos, in turn creating more advertisement money.
Google is constantly testing new interfaces, currently it’s the new “people also search for” Google carousel search feature in Mobile.
Google officially launched the local Carousel feature back in June 2013 as an expansion to their already existing Knowledge Graph, and now they are testing a cleaner, more boxed-in look on the mobile search interface. Like many of the other Google carousel features in mobile, this new look scrolls left and right as opposed to the previous “people also search for” box.
Below is an animated GIF based on some of the screen shots shared by @MattNavarra:
If automatic biometric, device, and behavioral logins become as commonplace as social logins, marketers will have to up their game.
To marketers, logged-in users are the online equivalents of gold.
They have definitive user profiles, even if their real-life identities are sometimes anonymized as they work their ways across the marketing ecosystem. With logged-in users, marketers don’t need to layer on possible behaviors, attributes, or purchase histories, or make suppositions about their offline lives, as they do with their unlogged fellow travelers.
Now, imagine a connected world where you are automatically logged in by your body, your behavior, or your device.
If a large number of users can login without remembering and using usernames/passwords, how will so much “gold” affect digital marketing?
The most likely marketing impact, Gigya senior vice president Jason Rose told me, would be major step-ups in the quality and use of personalization.
His company is known for its ecosystem supporting social logins, where a website asks if you want to login with, say, your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn credentials. Social logins save time, although the assumption is that you are already logged into one of those social sites. Gigya has also been investigating biometric logins, including Apple’s Touch ID.
Social logins can be useful to sites, because the user can be accompanied by his or her public profile on that particular social network. Websites are supposed to request your permission for which parts of your public profile you want accessible by the new site, although I find that those consents are not consistently presented.
Nevertheless, this kind of login is popular. Rose said that “a third of users who are offered social logins take it.” On the other hand, he reports that half of those who have forgotten their password choose to simply skip logging in, instead of employing password retrieval.
“Frictionless Logins”
Given that usernames and passwords are what Rose describes as “a critical moment of friction,” a variety of developments are challenging the dominance of passwords (and their even more friction-full offspring, two-factor authentication).
They include fingerprint sensors via Touch ID, which currently has limited uses but could become more widespread, and Google’s Project Abacus, which employs machine learning to understand your characteristic patterns of voice, typing, walking, locations, and other factors that form a constellation of you. And biometric IDs like facial recognition could generate the equivalent of automatic logins in physical stores.
Added to social logins, where users leverage again and again their single sign-on for a given social network, it’s conceivable that what Rose calls “frictionless logins” could become commonplace in the not-too-distant future.
Logged-in users could become the norm for site and app visitors, as well as in-store visitors. If so, Rose said, expect to see highly refined — and widely available — personalization as the expected norm.
After all, if the corner restaurant knows you, you might expect they will bring you your favorite drink for that time of day, every time you sit down.
Similarly, users may well expect to be greeted by name, or immediately shown other forms of refined levels of personalization, when they enter any connected environment. The implicit exchange is that users sign in — even if it’s automatic — and get something of value in return.
It “raises the bar” for the expected levels of personalization, Rose said. It will also probably raise the level of definitive details about you, given that your logged in profiles will exist through the Web, the app-sphere, and the physical world.
Those profiles will likely be exchanged, sold, or shared between brands, even if anonymously, and they will be matched more authoritatively than currently between your various selves — online, offline, and in-between, like the self that watches cable TV.
Logging into a Procter & Gamble site
It’s not clear yet how that enhanced personalization might look, but it may be defined by a much wider, definitive understanding of your activities.
As Rose pointed out, brands that typically don’t get a high percentage of logged in users, such as the sites for makers of consumer packaged goods (CPG), could find themselves trying to add value to the influx of logged-in users.
Currently, there’s value in logging into Amazon or Netflix, such as seeing “products like this” recommendations that infer your taste.
There is less incentive in logging into, for instance, commodities-based sites from Procter and Gamble, or an electronics retailer’s, where your visits might be infrequent.
But, if the P & G site automatically logs you in, it can develop personalized benefits that you never considered before, like discounts on those diapers, toothpaste tubes, and chewing gum packs you always buy. Those buying habits can also become a definitive part of your profile, and extended to your automated login at the supermarket.
Frictionless logins, Rose said, can “open up new territory” for marketers. Like the bar in the TV series Cheers, every site, app, store, or restaurant could automatically know your name, plus your likes and dislikes — with only consent required on your part.
The unanswered question, of course, is whether you want to be that well known.
Barry Levine- Marketing Land
We’ve seen several high-profile apps gain beta versions such as Instagram and Google's own Search app. Now Google Maps has joined the Google App having an official beta version, and you can sign-up today!
If you’re an android user who wants the opportunity to test the latest and greatest apps, all you need to do is click the source link below, hit the “Become a tester” button, and update Google Play for the beta version.
You’ll also begin receiving beta versions as updates in Google Play like you normally do for the regular version.
The beta version of Google Maps is version 9.27, up from the 9.26.1 update that recently rolled out to everyone. If you’re already using the Maps v9.30 included in the Android N Developer Preview, then there’s no reason to use v9.27 as you’re already ahead of this beta test. Since this release is so new, what’s included in the v9.27 beta is still a mystery.
The app could be buggy and dysfunctional, so this isn’t for everyone. If you decide the beta version isn’t for you, just click the same link below and this will allow you to opt-out.
May 31, 2016
Google Brings "Promoted Pins" to Maps
Get a good look at Google Maps now, because it may soon start filling up with lots of company logos.
Among a number of announcements coming out of Google’s Performance Summit, the company has announced it is bringing what it calls more “branded and customized experiences” for marketers to Google Maps.
Not only did Google recently begin showing ads in the Local Finder, they will now be introducing “promoted pins” or “promoted locations” on Maps giving users the ability to view branded pins alongside or nearby their route.
Google's senior ads VP, Sridhar Ramaswamy has stated “We’re experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations or lunch spots along their driving route.”
Promoted pins are companies that have paid for their logo to appear in your map. Logos could appear as you look at a map, or show up in your driving route. For example, the logo for Starbucks might appear as you follow on-screen map directions.
With the upcoming changes, you may find coupons or even browse inventory when you tap on a logo that prompts the business page to open at the bottom of your screen.
With the upcoming changes, you may find coupons or even browse inventory when you tap on a logo that prompts the business page to open at the bottom of your screen.
Only time will tell what this means for small businesses that can’t out-advertise the larger brands, however it’s natural that Google would want to offer advertisers a more prominent spot in Google Maps. Google is, after all, still a company that makes money by selling ads.
It’s no secret that social media content has become more and more about visual marketing. Why? Because it plays a significant role in attracting people to your content and accelerates sharing.
Do you want to stimulate online growth and drive up engagement, traffic, clicks and conversions? If so, using visual marketing will play a key role in your overall content marketing success.
Creating strong, consistent, craveable and relatable visuals has become a must do in the content marketing world and the push for visual content is only becoming stronger.
Consider the following:
- According to a Citrix report nearly two thirds of the posts on social media are visual content
- A Pew research study found that 54% of all internet users have posted original visual content that they personally created.
- Content with images gets 94% more views than content without, according to another study.
Standing out with visual content is critical, and watching what works for others in your industry can help you create content that drives branding clicks and conversions with your own audience.
In this article are 11 unusual visual content marketing tips to inspire your own endeavors and will also provide you – at the end of the article – with a bonus list of visual content strategies to help revive your tired marketing tactics.
Content that works
First, let’s better understand the characteristics of content that resonates well with your audience and prospects.
Gary Vaynerchuk provides six great insights in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. He says –
- It shouldn’t interrupt the user experience – it should blend seamlessly into their experience, not come across like an ad. Replicate the kinds of experiences that people are looking for in their preferred platform.
- It should be native – in other words, while social media platforms may have some overlap in terms of functions, the audiences and their values can be quite different. While one caters to short content forms, another is for artsy photos. The differences in each make a difference to the audience and, in turn, can make a huge difference to your marketing efforts.
- It doesn’t ask or demand, but offers – It doesn’t ask users to buy or click here but offers something that is of value to them. It offers social content that is in the form of a story.
- It should be bite-sized and snackable – In other words, think micro-content – an example being a tweet for Oreo cookies during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout
- Prove that you understand your audience – Show your fans and followers that you understand them. Everyone consumes culture via technology, whether it be music, videos, GIFs or other media through portable mobile devices. So, create content that shows you understand the issues and news that matter to them.
- Be consistent and self-aware – Every piece of content on social media platforms forms part of your brand identity, and you want your identity to be consistent. In other words, no matter how the story is told, your personality and brand identity must not change.
Keeping this in mind, let us look at 10 unusual ways in which visual marketing can drive branding, clicks and conversions.
1. Create custom tweets
Most tweets get lost in the live feed; however, with some custom formatting, a tweet is likely to catch a reader’s attention. For example, add line breaks or a unique font and/or a visual to add a change to the usual form of tweets. Consider adding emoji or a fun symbol as well.
How to do it
- Sign in to your account.
- Go to your Settings and click on the Design tab.
- Go to the “Customize Your Own” section.
- Click on “Choose File” to upload a background image. Note – images justify to the top left of the screen. Image size needs to be 2560px by 600px and a maximum file size of 3MB.
- Check the box to “Tile Background” if you want your picture to repeat across the background.
- Choose whether your Background position will be left, center or right.
- If your image isn’t very large, choose the background color that will show behind the image.
- Choose a color for links.
- Choose a black or white transparent overlay.
- Click “Save Changes”
2. Make your product real to buyers
I usually skip over commercials on TV or on the web. However, this one ad caused me to stop and watch. It’s a commercial about printers, for an office supplies company, and HP shows how something as seemingly boring as a printer can affect a family. Check it out below.
Discover how your product or service truly impacts the lives of your customers, and run with it. Your audience doesn’t care about your product or service. They do care about how using your product will change their lives. Tell that story.
How to do it
- Get in touch with your customers to find out WHY they use your products and HOW they use your products
- Observe how your customers use your products
- Craft a story around them.
- Share the story directly with them.
- Create or facilitate communities where they tend to hangout. For example, on Facebook, you might find that the organic reach of Facebook pages of businesses continues to decline. An alternative that entrepreneurs and businesses should consider is the creation of Facebook groups. It allows members to opt in and to receive direct notifications about updates.
3. Insert embedded calls to action
To generate more engagement or leads, consider adding a call to action button that drives clicks and traffic. While you may have call to actions on your website and blog posts, consider adding them to social media posts like Facebook like in the example shown below.
That way, people reading your post will have the opportunity to click through to it via the call to action.
How to do it
You can use this simple tutorial to do this.
4. Market across multiple social platforms
Share visual content across different social media platforms in formats that are native to the platform.
By regularly sharing across social media platforms, you can convert followers on one platform into followers on another platform, as well being at the top of the mind amongst your audience.
How to do it
Post the same content in formats that are suitable to the audience and in line with the characteristics of each platform.
For example, General Electric in their #TheNextFrontier series posted this across social media platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr.
Facebook:
Google+:
Tumblr:
5. Leverage more from your photos and images
In blog posts, images have been found to increase engagement by 94%. According to an eMarketerreport, photos accounted for 75% of content posted on Facebook with an 87% engagement rate, while other post types received no more than 4% engagement. Adding a photo URL can boost retweets by 35%, according to research by Media Blog.
According to a survey by Software Advice, a social CRM research firm on social media content optimization, the top 2 ways most marketers optimize their content is by using photos or images and including hashtags and usernames.
Images are a great way to showcase your business and brand personality to drive conversions. Cover images on your social media platforms can drive action and sales so it is well worth your time and efforts to spruce them up if you haven’t done so in a while. Not convinced? Check out this case study on UNICEF.
How to do it:
- Using the same cover image across social media platforms reinforces branding and makes it easier for people to feel connected with you and your business.
- Post images that you have created or that you have a right to publish (like this example from the North Face).
- Mix up the types of images you post (e.g., banners, infographics, photos, memes, etc.).
- Take impromptu photos on your smartphone and post them in real time.
- Post “Caption This” photos. For example, post a funny picture on your page and ask your fans to offer their best caption for the photo.
- Avoid “selfies” unless you’re posing with a celebrity.
- Tag people in a photo
6. Manage your content
A challenge for most businesses is the ability to manage the different pieces of content and visuals. Yet engaging in content marketing requires a business to think like a publisher. It requires us to make sure we are making the most of our content marketing efforts and staying connected to our audience. Here is why:
- Content marketing requires understanding our audiences and giving them what they want in comprehensive yet easily digestible ways. It is a strategic process.
- If traffic growth to your site is a goal then make it a focus of your content creation and distribution process
- The editorial calendar makes your plan tangible to all those involved and helps build the accountability and discipline required for sticking to producing content consistently.
- Content that is focused on your audience needs will be welcomed and appreciated by them.
How to do it
A simple yet effective solution is to create and use a content calendar to schedule and manage the different content items. Use what works for you and your work flow, whether it be a spreadsheet, Google calendar, Trello, Viraltag or even a content calendar plugin like CoSchedule.
The biggest benefits to using a content calendar are to help keep your content consistent and relevant; to predict future engagement; helping at the buying stage; as well as helping with accompaniments like associated tweets, landing pages, nurture emails etc. Ensure these elements are part of your content calendar.
7. Crowd source user generated content
User-generated content gives you the benefit of leveraging a stream of content from fans who are constantly consuming – and sharing about – your brand. As a result, you get more credibility and extended reach from the authentic content that your loyal fans and followers share. Red Dress Boutique have tapped into this by running giveaways for customers who share a designated picture on social media.
Nothing showcases the value of your brand better than content shared by your community. It also provides a perspective of your fans’ experiences and interactions with your brand, giving you more insights into your fan demographic and their interests for future marketing efforts.
Rent the Runway, for example, is a business where women can rent high-end designer dresses and accessories for special occasions. The company asked users of their service to upload photos of their Cinderella moments to the site. They soon discovered, however, that users were posting photos to Facebook and Twitter anyway so decided to harness this organic sharing with a branded “Our Runway” campaign.
The campaign has since built a user-generated database of images aimed at helping the person looking to rent a dress find what works well for their body type. According to iMedia, women who view these user-generated photos are 200% more likely to rent than those who view the standard dress shot of a model.
How to do it:
Build an engaged audience with content that your readers find highly contagious and by being responsive to comments, tweets and emails like Frito-Lay’s does on their Facebook posts.
- Find out where your target audience hangs out.
- Offer incentives for user-generated content
- Create and encourage the use of related hashtags
- Ask customers to model with your products (or wearing your products)
- Ask people to guest post or be interviewed.
- Ask questions in a visual format to get people engaged like Frito-Lay did with a pop quiz to help fans understand their products better.
- Create a contest around user-generated content. Frito-Lay tapped into the holiday season last year with this contest on Facebook.
- Ask for comments on blog posts via questions at the bottom of your blog post.
- Repost customer reviews on other platforms.
8. Use more video
If you think mastering video is too difficult and not really a priority, consider the following payoffs of using video in your overall content marketing (source):
- 80% of internet users recall watching a video ad on a website they visited in the last 30 days.
- 50% of users watch business-related videos on YouTube once a week.
- 64% of website visitors are likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video.
- 75% of users visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video
- 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week
Not only does video work well on landing pages, but with Vine and Instagram video you can reach your followers and fans on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Videos also allow for the insertion of calls to action. The longer people are on your social media account watching a video, the more likely they are to follow a link and check out what you have to offer. Specialized tapped into the Tour deFrance with its #ItsMyTour campaign involving video segments on Twitter. They were able to double engagement rates from the previous year because of video, and the fact that the company’s bike won 10 of 21 stages. Below is an example of the videos they pushed with Promoted Tweets.
How to do it:
- Your audience is always searching for new information and better ways to perform tasks so be informative.
- Be inspiring, like Upworthy which looks for inspiring stories to share with its large readership.
- Engage with your audience. For example, the Old Spice Man played by Isiah Mustafa answered fan questions on social media via short YouTube videos.
- Capture the moment. For example, when at a conference think about the end result you want before you start filming. Use your smartphone to capture the best tips from a speaker before or after their presentation.
- Be timely – get video content that is related to a current event, and share it sooner rather than later to tap into current interest.
- Keep it short and sweet. Record short videos with Vine or Instagram video and share directly.
9. Take risks
You have probably been told to produce awesome content, which implies that audience engagement rests solely on your ability to write well. Playing it safe guarantees nothing but the status quo at best, so take a few calculated risks that can prompt your audience to admire your businesses authenticity and transparency while they laugh, smile and share.
Buffer blogs post on “What Multitasking Does to Our Brains” really took off and got featured on Lifehacker. In the post, Leo Widrich plays the role of messenger by citing data and research about multitasking, thus creating a Them Vs Data argument. He cleverly used images and photos in the post to keep readers interested and reading. The post, at the time of writing, has a 148 comments on it.
The post on toilet paper orientation is another that resulted in heated debate and received over 12,000 shares. There is even a Wikipedia page on the topic.
How to do it:
- Research indicates that topics that create division within someone’s belief, behavior or feeling of belonging will generally cause them to confirm your stance or disagree with it.
- Consider piggybacking on a popular topic, fad or individual that people are already talking about.
- Use research or a credible source to create a Them vs Data debate as opposed to a Them vs You debate.
10. Tell a story with animated gifs
Animated GiFs are essentially short clips of images that play on a loop. These are a great way to engage your fans and show a little brand personality without necessarily focusing on your product or service. Consider telling a story, convey company culture and add a good dose of humor.
Forever21, for example, used humor that appealed to their audience to get them excited to shop during a clothing sale promotion.
On the other hand, GE – known for innovation – uses animated GIFs like the ones below to reinforce its reputation and company culture.
How to do it:
- Make sure animated Gifs are part and parcel of your overall content marketing.
- Make your own, using tools like Face to GIF, LICEapp, GIMP or Photoshop.
- Consider repurposing old content like webinars, articles or SlideShares into an animated GIF like thisone.
11. Use Photo albums
You can create photo albums on Facebook or Google+ that contain hundreds of photos. These are great for catalogues, and events like conferences or parties. The more pictures you have, the more people you can engage via commenting, follows and re-sharing.
However, as great as photo albums are for organizing photos, generally speaking, few people actually click through an entire collection, even if you break it down into smaller albums.
An alternative could be Flipagram, which is an app that allows you to create videos from still photos and then share them on major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram. Peg Fitzpatrick, for instance, used pictures she took during Social Boom 2014 to create the following:
Over to you
As you plan your visual marketing strategy for this year, you might want to look over your old marketing tactics and make them hip and fresh and in line with your plans for this year.
With this in mind, here are a few additional resources in a visual marketing strategies infographic that provides 65 strategies to help revive your tired old marketing tactics.
Let me know what content tactics you will be employing this year, and what challenges you face, in the comments below.
By: Vinay Koshy- Jeffbulas.com
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