DIGITAL - Cool Tools for Social Media Marketers

Looking for tools or apps that can correct your grammar and spelling, create motion graphics, provide 'caller ID' for email, or create graphics of your Google Analytics data?

Social Media Examiner has come up with 23 Cool Tools for social media professionals.

Everyone has hit publish on a post without realizing there was a spelling or grammar error - sometimes only learning about the blunder when a reader makes a negative comment.

You can prevent those embarrassing mistakes by using Grammarly.

Grammarly, which has free and paid versions, is software as well as a browser extension so you can drop documents to be reviewed or have it correct as you type on the web.

If you are looking for an editor, Editorr has a team of them who will take your press release or post and polish it.

The first 100 words are free, after that you pay for words as you go.

Google Data Studio will take the data from Google Analytics and lay it out in a dashboard with components of your choosing.

Pie charts, bar charts, geomapping - they are all available to step up your social media reports.

Motion graphics are made simple with Ripl which allows moving text, captions, and video.

Want to know the details of a person sending you an email without looking them up? Use Senders.

Senders will give you the person’s name, title, and bio, along with links to his or her Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts.

It shares last tweets, their Twitter follower count, links to the Google search for that person and is free.

You can have some fun with FUNIPICA - a lens you can clip onto your laptop, computer or smartphone which gives you a super-wide lens with a slight fisheye effect.

Want to get close up and personal? Unscrew the top of the FUNIPICA and it turns into a 15x macro.

There are cool tools in the Social Media Examiner post that will publish to Instagram and Twitter, send meeting invitations that include available meeting times pulled directly from your Google Calendar, manage an overload of tabs on your browser and much more.

Read the entire article.

DIGITAL - Not Sure What to Post on Social Media?

It’s like writer’s block, but with social media.

Sometimes interesting content is hard to come by and it is challenging not to become repetitive.

To help social media marketers out, Hootsuite has come up with ten content suggestions to get those ideas flowing.

Ask Relevant Questions

Express genuine interest in your audience by asking for their opinion or thoughts on a topic relevant to your industry.

Take Your Audience Behind the Scenes

Is there anything happening that could be of interest to your audience? Even something as simple as a coworker’s birthday celebration can offer an opportunity to showcase your workplace culture, and create a deeper human connection to your brand.

Shine a Spotlight on Your Customers

A good way to show appreciation to your customers, and have unique content on hand, is by promoting customer profiles or sharing case studies.

Share a Reading List

Think about books you’re actually reading or have read recently, or crowdsource ideas from your colleagues - just make sure it’s relevant to your business.

Look to Popular Daily Hashtags

What is trending that day can give you ideas about what to add to your page that is current.

Compile a Weekly Roundup

This can be top news stories of the week that relate to your industry, corporate accomplishments or statistics for the week, or best photos by your customers.

For all the content ideas, including links to more detailed information, read the entire article.

DIGITAL - Artificial Intelligence Offers Marketing Opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) has fascinated humans for generations, and dystopian futures full of malevolent intelligent robots have remained a science fiction staple since the 1940s, and have only grown in popularity since the term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1965.

Robots and AI - benevolent or violent – still feature prominently in science fiction, but also in speculative fiction and non-fiction, and they are a significant research direction for many technology companies and institutes.

The fear of malevolent AI is on the minds of many, but others see the potential for deep connection and community within benevolent AI, such as in Eugenia Kuyda’s fascinating and heart-wrenching construction of an AI that spoke in her deceased best friend’s voice, using his words.

This is a type AI that drives connection and community, and is a tool for health and healing - a far cry from HAL 9000, and closer to projects like benevolent.ai, that use AI to advance healthcare and search through emerging research for marketable trends.

It is this potential for conversation and connection that makes so much marketing and customer interaction possible in developing AI technologies.

More and more, AI and adaptable bots are part of the fabric of everyday life.

AI is no longer a science fiction trope, it is now a reality. And, critically, AI, or at least learning bots, are a marketing tool that will become increasingly relevant as consumers demand round-the-clock, real-time responsiveness from brands. 

AI is already present within marketing.

AI systems are curating content, making suggestions for products or “people you may know”, analyzing credit and debit card usage to prevent fraud, and even helping people fight parking tickets or keep their housing in the face of housing insecurity and homelessness.

As marketing moves forward, customers will expect more interaction, and more responsiveness.

FastCoCreate’s sector forecasting suggests that marketers will strive to “make everything a catalyst for conversation” and AI will be an important part of that process.

There are risks with using AI, as Microsoft learned with the launch (and quick shut down) of Tay. Allowing AI to learn from the internet at large is a significant risk, and Tay learned the worst parts of contemporary human interaction from Twitter.

Marketers will need to be aware and ready to respond quickly to problems in the system, and be conscious of curating and guiding the process or risk repeating Facebook’s error when it’s “on this day” algorithm failed to analyze context and ended up presenting users with ex-partners, unhappy memories, and even deceased pets and friends. Good automation requires good algorithms.

Artificial intelligence is here, and is a fascinating, exciting, and growing field. It will have significant impact on employment and labour, marketing, even health care and education.

The current consumer climate is changing rapidly, and adapting to customer demands through using leading edge technologies – including AI – is an important tool in any marketer’s belt.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - How to Promote Your Product on Facebook

Are you looking for new ways to promote your product that also helps build trust, grow your audience and increase brand engagement?

Social Media Examiner has come up with some fresh ideas in their Five Ways to Promote Your Products On Facebook.

Ask Fans to Show Their Love

Set up a user-generated content campaign where you ask customers to share photos and videos of them using, wearing or talking about your product.

This type of campaign shows your product in an authentic way and can help you reach a wider audience as the post will be seen by all your customers’ friends.

Demonstrate Creative Ways to Use Your Product

Customers want to know and it doesn’t need to be fancy. Simple video demonstrations that you create or customer video that you share work well.

Incentivize Word-of-Mouth Referrals

Create a loyalty program where you can reward customers for referring friends to your business by sharing your page with their Facebook friends.

Build Trust With Ratings and Reviews

Facebook has a ratings tab that you just need to activate.

Make sure when you ask your fans for ratings and reviews, don’t be intrusive or offer incentives and always follow Facebook’s Community Guidelines.

Target Prospects With Facebook Ads

You can use your own company data and Facebook Insights to target audiences similar to your current buyers.

Read the entire article for all the details.

BUSINESS - Jet.com Adds an Edge to Walmart's Online Presence

Walmart’s purchase of one-year-old startup Jet.com is an important acquisition for the company, which has consistently underperformed in the ecommerce market.

The purchase, for over $3 billion USD, gives Walmart access to Jet’s intentional focus on customer experience and their commitment to keeping the customer experience “delightful.”

As Jet’s director of research, Ben Babcock, told Forbes in an interview prior to the acquisition, “The customer experience … must be seamless, consistent, and delightful from end to end.”

Jet has invested significant time and energy into user testing, and staying connected to their customers.

For consumers who may be avoiding Walmart’s current ecommerce offerings because of existing preconceptions about the brand, this refined focus on customer experience may be enough to sway them away from ecommerce giant Amazon and towards something new and exciting.

According to eMarketer, Walmart’s 2016 projected ecommerce growth was only 9.4%, significantly below the projected US retail ecommerce average growth of 16%.

Acquiring Jet gives Walmart access not only to Jet’s customer experience but also to their infrastructure – their warehouses, staff, and shipping operations – but also the brands that Jet has been able to attract and their more youthful, urban profile.

Bringing Walmart and Jet together has the potential to help both businesses.

They’ve each struggled to compete with Amazon, and both have an interest in tackling the online retailer’s market supremacy. Jet has focused on gamified pricing and a fun user experience in their competition with Amazon, while Walmart has relied on their significant brick-and-mortar presence.

By combining forces, it may be possible for the two companies to make a dent in Amazon’s market share.

Despite the hopes for their combined strengths, both brands will remain distinct. Jet’s CEO and co-founder, Marc Lore, will take over Walmart.com in the US and will also continue running Jet.com.

Keeping the brands distinct is one way that both companies can continue to leverage their unique brands while benefiting from each other’s strengths in quieter ways.

Expanding both brands individually and moving more slowly to an integrated public profile will give customers time to adjust, and hopefully provide Walmart with a larger online footprint in the next year.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - Important Facebook Demographics for Marketers

With over 1.13 billion active daily users, Facebook is one of the most important social media channels for marketers.

So it’s vital to understand the demographics of the Facebook user and accurately target your social marketing campaigns.

Gender

Pew Research Center’s report on social media users in the U.S. showed that 77% of female and 66% of male internet users are active on Facebook.

While some people claim Facebook users are diminishing, daily usage continues to grow along with mobile users. The switch seems to be from desktop to mobile rather than a shift away from the channel.

Age

According to the Pew study, 82% of internet users who use Facebook are 18-29 years old. 30 to 49 year olds make up 79%, 50 to 64 year olds account for 64% and 48% are over 65.

The rumours of young people leaving Facebook for platforms like Instagram and Snapchat seem to be just that. The prime target demographic for marketers of 24 to 35 years, seems to fit well with the social media channel.

Location

Facebook has more rural users than any other social media platform with 67%. But you are also likely to find them in urban areas (74%) and suburban (72%).

The geographic reach of Facebook is broader than other channels so if you want to market beyond the city and suburbs, it may be for you.

Income

78% of online users with incomes over $75,000 use Facebook.

The next step in Facebook demographics is to use the Audience Insights tool - designed to help marketers learn more about their target audiences, including aggregate information about geography, demographics, purchase behavior and more.

And you can view this information for three different groups of people:

• The general Facebook audience
• People connected to your page or event
• People in custom audiences you’ve already created.

Once you have defined an audience, you can save it and create an ad based on those target Facebook demographics.

The better you know who your audience is, the better you will be at engaging with them and developing strong customer relationships.

DIGITAL - Instagram Demographics for Marketers

When planning a social media strategy, it’s important to know your audience.

Who is using Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram? Demographics will help you determine the type of campaign best for each social media channel.

Instagram is growing at a fast and steady pace and has surpassed 500 million active users - that’s a huge potential audience for your organization.

So, who are these users?

Gender

Pew Research Centre’s report on social media users in the U.S. showed that 31 percent of women and 24 percent of men regularly use Instagram to like, share, and post.

Among teenagers ages 13 to 17 years-old,  23 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys use Instagram.

If your target audience is of the female persuasion, Instagram may be the vehicle for you.

Age

According to the Pew study, 55 percent of all adults in the U.S. using Instagram are between 18 and 29 years-old. The next largest Instagram age demographic is 30 to 49 years-old at 28 percent usage followed by 50 to 64 year-olds at 11 percent.

Instagram is a key channel for engaging young adults.

Location

A well-targeted Instagram marketing campaign will appeal to city-dwellers on the go with 32 percent of users living in urban areas.

You can find 28 percent of users in the suburbs, and 18 percent reside in the country.

Income

Instagram is used by almost all income brackets.

• 26 percent of adult Instagram users make less than $30,000 per year
• 27 percent bring in $30,000 to $49,999
• 30 percent earn between $50,000 and $74,999
• 26 percent make over $75,000 per year.

Instagram is going to continue to grow and evolve, but for now you can assume that if you want to target female, urban dwelling millennials, this digital channel is a good choice.

DIGITAL - The Power of Pet Influencers

Move over Kim Kardashian.

There are a few new players attracting attention on the beast that is social media.

And THESE kittens (and canines) are keeping their clothes on.

They are so-called pet influencers – cats and dogs who, in some cases, make thousands of dollars posing in glamorous photo shoots and doing product endorsements, while garnering throngs of followers on everything from Twitter to Instagram and Facebook.

With last year's pet spending in the U.S. surpassing the $60 billion mark (according to the American Pet Products Association) it makes perfect sense retailers would want to reel in four-legged ambassadors to push their products.

“People have this innate perception pets generate these warm, happy, fuzzy feelings,” Loni Edwards told Digiday.

“Brands are starting to reach out because they make people genuinely happy and they want their ads to make people happy.”

(Chloe the mini Frenchie)

Edwards would know. She is a self-proclaimed “momager” to Chloe, a mini Frenchie, who is hot in the world of online pet influencers brands seek to recruit for advertising campaigns.

Her media-darling doggie has 135,000 followers, has been featured in a Budweiser Super Bowl promotion and collaborated with brands like Vogue, Martha Stewart, Barneys, Bow & Drape and PetSmart.

So popular, the pooch has even attracted recognition from her many fans.

“That was the point at which I realized she was famous,” Edwards says of a New York City moment when a stranger recognizing her canine companion rushed in excitedly for a photo.

But Chloe has by no means cornered the market.

The pet influencers realm is a dog-eat-dog world pitting several pets - which happen to be particularly cute - vying for Internet popularity.

Toast the King Charles, Nala the cat, Loki the Wolf Dog and Sir Charles Barkley are downright divas – appearing in photo shoots which pull in between $2,000 to $3,500 per endorsement deal.

Given the top dogs, so to speak, on the Instagram social media platform boast more than a million followers apiece – it pretty much goes without saying it offers a sort of exposure which translates into an ideal marketing tool for companies looking to cash in.

Industry insiders say, advertisers working with pet influencers are barking up the right tree when employing the animals to try to ramp up their advertising appeal.

Loki the Wolf Dog, a prime example of how it works, starred in a Mercedes Benz's virtual reality campaign for its 2017 GLS SUV.

“Loki and his story aligned particularly well with our SUV portfolio,” says Mark Aikman, general manager of marketing services for Mercedes-Benz USA.

“Our research has shown that a large number of SUV owners have pets.”

The top 5 animal influencers according to digiday are; Nala-cat, Marutaro, tunameltsmyheart, marniethedog and jiffpom – bona fide celebrities posing with pop stars, taking in movie premieres, promoting pet charity events and even making appearances at Black Lives Matter rallies.

“You’re essentially merging the two biggest trends — social and pet memes — and tying that with branding,” Speakr founder and CEO Marco Hansell is quoted as saying in digiday. “It’s the perfect formula.”

 

Pet influencers show no sign of waning but instead gaining popularity.

There are now management agencies that exclusively handle pet influencers.

Speakr, (which “fuels the most impactful campaigns in social for the world’s largest brands” and sees “more than 60 major brands leverage our technology platform and influencers network,”) saw a 200 percent growth from 2014 to 2015 in pet requests.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

DIGITAL - Tools to Create Awesome Social Media Images

(photo from Pexels)

Images get people’s attention and motivate them to click, like and share on social media.

They are one of the most important components of successful digital marketing.

To help you create awesome visuals, Social Media Examiner has compiled a list of free tools that give your images a professional look.

Start With High-Quality Royalty Free Images

There are now dozens of free image resources out there.

Pexels and Unsplash both offer thousands of high-resolution images for free and without the need for attribution. Unsplash focuses more on landscapes, while Pexels focuses on business and technology collections.

Find the Perfect Colour Scheme

Adobe Color CC takes the guesswork out of picking colours. It helps determine complimentary colours for your visual content.

Take Advantage of Pre-made Icons

With Flaticon, you get free access to over 144,130 (and counting) PNG icons which can be customized.

Reveal Optimal Contrasting Colour

ColorZilla is a Google Chrome plugin that allows you to see the hex, RGB code, official name, and gradients for any colour within a browser window. Use the Colour Picker function to find the best contrasting colour for a call-to-action button or to emulate a peer’s designs.

Find Perfect Font Combinations

With Femmebot, you can access 25 of the top font combinations from font experts and see how these combinations look with graphics and images, as well as formatting.

Put it all Together in a Visual Content Tool

Free visual content creation platforms like Canva, Google Drawings, and PicMonkey are great options to actually create the content after using the aforementioned tools.

Whether you’re working with videos, GIFs, infographics, slide decks, or posts, these free tools can help you boost your images along with awareness and engagement.

Read full post here.

DIGITAL - Mobile Marketing; How to Aquire, Engage, Convert and Retain Users

Mobile is the way of the future.

This was predicted by technology trend analysts about eight years ago and it has proven to be true.

What they got wrong, however, is how quickly mobile would take over. Mobile use is growing much faster than experts initially anticipated.

Businesses are feeling the pressure to jump on the mobile bandwagon now - before they fall too far behind their competition.

But where do you start? How do you create an app? How do you develop a mobile marketing campaign that will drive value and revenue over time?

Localytics, an analytics and marketing platform, has The Beginner’s Guide to App Marketing ebook available at no charge to answer these questions.

Starting with the definition of ‘App Marketing’, progressing through analytics, marketing goals, measurement and improvement, the guide also provides more resources to learn about mobile and app marketing.

For those marketers wanting to understand and demonstrate the impact of mobile marketing, read the Forrester Report - Beyond ROI: Showcasing the True Impact of Mobile Marketing.