If you own a business or are running a digital campaign for a company, chances are that you must have had to contend with the steep fall of organic reach. In the year 2016, the organic reach of Facebook plummet down to 52%. Authorities were hustled in. Digital Marketers were consulted. And even the social media fanatics were left in a conundrum as to what has trespassed.

Right when the marketers were about to recover from the wreckage, another update stormed the market. In the year 2017, Buzzsumo released an update which resulted in a further 20% drop in social media marketing organic reach. This made things disturbing for the young Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even well-established businesses that expected a greater reach in social media.

It was rather disappointing to hear no updates from the officials of Facebook pertaining to the sudden drop in their social media organic reach. But whatever the case maybe, now is the time to step-up the game and overcome the problem.

The best way to tackle a problem is to deal with it hands-on. And this is what we will be doing here. Here are some expert tips that can help you tackle the decline of the social media organic reach in an organized manner:

• Create Unique Content for Each Platform

More and more users are leveraging social media platforms to interact, connect and built connections with other people. Although Twitter has increased their character limit to 280 characters, this doesn’t mean that you can use the same content on both Facebook and Twitter. It is all about discovering where your audience really is, and how you can deliver your message in a way that will make them listen.

Creating different content for each platform and audience takes time. But yes, everything will pay off once the produced content relates to the audience that frequents that platform.

For instance, check out this pot by ZenDesk:

Now the same link was posted with a twist on a different social media platform.

• Feature Useful Content Even If it is not Yours

Contrary to the popular belief, when we think of marketing, we only think of marketing our products. As the people started experiencing brands, they came to realize that marketing is not just all about bragging about your products and services.

Understand that being social is more about sharing content that is useful to your audience. Regardless of whether the content you post is original or not, you need to study the likelihood of your audience and share content that resonates with them.

By sharing something that engages your audience, you are giving them the reason to trust you. And you are also keeping them updated on what is current in the industry.

It’s a win-win situation that will help align your brand with like-minded organizations in your industry.

• Understand the Social Media Algorithms

As soon as you log-in to any social media account, you are presented with tons of content that you can relate to. How does this happen? Every social media platform notices your reading behavior and interests, and the ingenious algorithms scan for content pieces that are bound to pique your interest.

For a social media marketer, it is necessary to understand how the algorithms work. Because once we get to grips with the inner workings of such algorithms, it can help us leverage them to our advantage and boost our social media organic reach.

On Facebook, the algorithm follows and interlinks everything that relates to your friends, family, and entertainment on the third level. For a detailed description of how this works, you can check the post titled How Facebook Algorithms work, and see how you can increase your organic reach.When it comes to Instagram on the other hand, the pictures you like and comment on, become your favorite content and everything is built around that.

Even though Twitter keeps revamping its algorithm,all renditions are centered on showing you the most trending tweets that are being posted in your region. There are 100,000 ways of helping algorithms evolve. The best approach is to keep an eye on the changing algorithms. Experiment with what is working for you and what is not.

• Keep a Separate Budget for Social Media

The thing about social media budget is that young Entrepreneurs and even small business owners don’t understand how much budget they need to allocate ideally to social media. If you want to boost your social media reach, you need to turn out your pockets and stop being haggardly.Even if you are just starting out, you need to assign a certain budget to social media sponsored posts.

You can even use sponsored posts to be creative with your ad campaigns. For this, you need to study what the famous brands are already doing in the market and the requirements of different platforms. For instance, you need to be mindful of the fact that optimal size for News Feed photo ads is 1200×628 pixels;any other part of the photo will be automatically cropped out and deemed useless. This is how Nature box made the best use of visuals to create a creative copy:

One thing you need to ensure is that separate ads are designed for mobile. Here is how NY Times used an authoritative tone to offer some valuable content on their ad.

Conclusion

The greatest thing about social media is that you have an unlimited power to create, test, and find out what is working for your brand and what is not. These are some of the options that brands are using to engage their audience. They are hugely successful, and if you try them out, you could fill in their shoes.

What do you think? What methods do you use to make sure your products are interacted with? Regale us with tales of your product post mega-hits in the comments below!

The post The Fall of Social Media Organic Reach – How to Re-Engage your Customers? appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

But having said that, there are some serious myths about Facebook business manager floating in the social media cosmos. Deletion of ad accounts by mistake which caused employees to lose data, creating multiple pixels and losing track of what to conclude with them.

So, let us clear some mist over the dark clouds that are surrounding your business. In this blog post, we will be debunking some misconceptions and myths about the Facebook business manager.

Hold your horses and brace yourself for the social impact.

Myth 1: Facebook business manager is complex than Ads Manager

Remember when you were a kid and you were first introduced to the concept of sentences. At first, you were confused with so many alphabets bundled together to make something out of it.

The Same scenario is replayed when first see the interface of the Facebook business manager. With Facebook Ads manager it was a simple interface with limited options.

But just like your childhood, when you started understanding the meaning of alphabets it was piece of cake for you.

Here the piece of cake is getting familiar with the interface of the Facebook business manager.

Once, you’re comfortable with the setting of Facebook business manager, particularly within the Power Editor, then you will also be able to navigate the Business Manager with ease.

Keep in mind that whether be it Facebook business manager or Facebook Ads manager you cannot use one and ignore the other. Both need to use simultaneously.

The Facebook Ads manager directly connects with your Facebook business manager to centrally locate all the assigned tasks, employees, and their associations. For an effective marketing campaign, you need all the spices in one place, and business manager has them all in one place.

Related: How Facebook Algorithms Work & How to Increase Your Organic Reach

However, one feature that irritates most new users is the outset of permissions in the business manager. There are Business Manager Admins, Page Admins, Ad Account Admins, and the list goes on.

Facebook, sadly did a poor job of assigning permissions in a simple way. And that is why people sometimes, prefer Ads Manager over Business Manager. But, for you, go for both.

Myth 2: Switching to Business Manager is a tedious process

The world is a place of uncertainty. And often we need to do things that seem uncomfortable to us. Same goes for Business Manager. It is not a choice, but a necessity of modern business.

Previously it was a real pain for the ads agency to access ads via client’s personal Facebook account. But with the Facebook business manager, the discomfort converted into ease.

With the new business manager, within an hour, you will have more transparency over your actions and client will be happy to pay you the price which you deserve.

Let us help you get viral on social media.

What you need to understand and make your clients understand is the way new Facebook business manager creates transparency for all to see the impact of the campaigns.

Myth 3: You can operate limited accounts with Business Manager

The Facebook business manager gives you limited account option.

Don’t really know where this myth came from but people are taking it seriously.

There is no such thing as having a limited number of accounts in Business Manager.

Some of you may have run into this limitation issue in the past, as there once was an ad account limit and Facebook would “whitelist” various accounts. If you are still facing issues with ad account limits, it’s clear that something within the Ad Account isn’t linked to the Business Manager properly, or it could be a bug.

Myth 4: Be friends with the client if you want to operate Business manager account

This one is a total fabricated myth which needs to stop right now. While in the past you were required to be friend with the client to run ads for them, and on top of that your client had that option to do the edits in the add, now it is not possible.

The Business manager gives the advertiser complete authority to edit alone without getting interrupted by the client.

This, in fact, is a great feature which lets the advertiser complete control and gives the desired results with their efforts.

Myth 5: Business Manager doesn’t improve your ROI

What gets measured gets improved. And Business manager will help you realize this fact and prove it right.

Related: Here’s How to Create a Compelling Facebook Post that Converts

As a project management tool, Business Manager will help you and your team save time, which in turn saves you and your client’s money. It helps make your workflow more efficient and aids in managing employees more effectively while holding everyone more accountable. With Business Manager, you can quickly check in and take the temperature of all your accounts, all within one interface with less room for error. It brings greater transparency all around and proves your professionalism from the outset.

To conclude it all. You need to understand the latest happenings in the social media fraternity. It is no longer a matter of choice to leave Facebook business manager, but instead it is time to blow with the wind.

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Our digital marketing agency cares more about your ROI than our profits. That is why we are here to turn your ideas into reality. For award-winning websites & game-changing apps contact us now!

The post Read with Caution: Facebook Business Manager Myths Just Got Busted appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

Layout

Layout allows you create collages by remixing your own photos. The app gives users creative control so you can see your photos in different combinations and give your photos a unique look. The app gives you an option to combine up to nine photos at a time to create a collage, which can post to Instagram. If truth be told, the app is a perfect fit for those brands who are looking to display their best user generated content (UGC), show behind the scenes shots of office and employees, sneak peeks of upcoming products and offers. It is free forAndroid and iOS both.

Hootsuite Enhance

Hootsuite Enhance is an amazing app that offers all-in-one photo editing solution to help you get more engagement, find better content, and create brand awareness. Editing your Instagram photos can dramatically increase the number of views, likes and shares by 21% and increase engagement by more than 45%.

The app makes it easier for users to edit with borders, filters, stickers and overlays, crop the image for each social media channel, source images from the stock photo database and share the image on social media channel of your choice. Hootsuite Enhance is free for iOS.

Have2Have.It

Have2Have.It is an amazing app that bridges the gap between buyers and brands on Instagram. This app allows bands on Instagram to create, schedule, and post images and videos with links to the services or products. This Instagram app allows audience members to discover more products, drives followers directly to your ecommerce business website, and guide customers to make a purchase decision. This mobile app is free for iPhone users and you can give Have2Have.It a whirl for free through their site.

Boomerang

Boomerang allows you to create engaging content with a few clicks. The app shoots a burst of 10 photos and lets you to create a short mini video that loops back and forth GIF style. Boomerang gives digital marketers an amazing opportunity to delight their customers with a fun visual that is completely different from a regular Instagram photo. You can either download the Boomerang app, or take it from within the Instagram app. It is free for iOS and Android users.

Hyperlapse

The app allows you to shoot time-lapsed video to share with your followers. In this digital age of in-app stabilization, you can capture non-shaky video that was formerly impossible without a tripod. In addition, you can playback your videos up to 40 times faster than their original speed. Marketers can use Hyperlapse to show the most interesting side of your brand with impromptu videos, share the case studies for the services or products your brand is offering and surprise your customers with some innovative ways they can use your products or services.

Microsoft Selfie

It is a photo-editing app that has the real potential to enhance your photos which sets this app apart from rest of similar apps. It is available through web, iOS and WeChat. Microsoft Selfie lets brands and digital marketers to improve their digital marketing campaigns by its intelligent photo enhancement feature that intelligently considers skin tone, lighting, gender and different other variables with one click. It can effectively reduce noise by its Denoise feature that use burst shots and its Auto Exposure mode applies automatic exposure correction and photo clarifying.

Instead of having to manually edit every aspect of an image, you can simply save time with Microsoft Selfie photo enhancing features. It is free for Android and iOS users.

Pic Stitch

Mashable awarded Pic Stitch as “one of the top seven photography apps of all time”. It is one of the best photo and video collage apps available that has more than 245 collage layouts and 15 different aspect ratios. You can add music to a collage, customize photo borders, rotate, flip, zoom and order images directly through Shutterfly.

Once you done with editing, you can upload the image or a video straight to Instagram, Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook and Evernote. iOS users can use it for free.

WhenToPost

WhenToPost is an Instagram app that lets you post your Instagram content at a time when your audience is likely to be active. The app helps you create a heat map which tells you the perfect times to post your Instagram content. It provides a countdown to your next best time to share your brand content. The Instagram app also help you to show the graph with the top times of the week to post to Instagram. WhenToPost app is free for both Android and iOS users.

Clips

Clips by Apple lets users make and share short-form videos with special effects, graphics, text and more. The most interesting feature of this app is Live Titles that lets you create animated captions simply by talking as you record using Siri. Clips also uses a specialized facial recognition technology and compares faces of those in your video to those in your phone’s image library. In addition, Clips will find individuals in your contact list and let you share the video with them in a single click. Thanks to Apple’s machine learning technology that made it possible.

Swipeable

Getting Panoramic shots can be challenging and fun at the same time. Swipeable is an Instagram app that is tailor-made for Instagram users and lets you easily capture and share panoramic and 36-degree view on the platform. The app has an awesome carousel function that can automatically divide your panoramas into square pieces so they can easily be viewed in sequence. This app is helpful for those brands who are trying to capture a bigger product image or lots of people in a single image or show a tour of your new office.
iOS users can use the Swipeable for free.

Capitona

Believe it or not, the right Instagram caption can create an emotional reaction to your content. The Capitona app lets Instagram users come up with some funny, interesting captions in order to engage their audience. You can simply enter a related keyword and the app will give you a list of results showing quotations, sayings and catchphrases. You can simply choose the caption of your choice.

Prime for Instagram

Just like WhenToPost, this app suggests optimal times for users to post your Instagram content. Prime uses an intelligent algorithm to process thousands of data points to determine when your audience is online, their activity, their interaction with you and when you should be posting your content on Instagram. Moreover, the app helps you make sure your followers must see your post, especially when you have something to announce, a new product release update or a high-quality post. Consider using Prime as it can help you achieve your social media marketing goals.

The right tool can help social media marketers to make their brand standout, by enhancing the quality of your Instagram content while saving your time, energy, and efforts.

The post 12 Instagram Apps to Boost Your Social Media Engagement appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

And sometimes you get a creativity block and run out of ideas.

As a social media manager or digital marketer, you will surely find yourself pondering these questions:

•         What type of posts should I share on my company social media accounts?
•         How can I get more brand engagement?
•         How can I share posts in a more creative way?

Here I’ve shared some effective strategies to share content on social media that are proven and tested and help you increase brand engagement.

Let’s get right into it.

1. Turn Your Blog Post into a Video

You have surely noticed that videos get more engagement and views than blogs, images and

links. And to get ideas for videos, look back at your famous and best performing blog posts.

Fetch ideas and data from the blog post and then turn it into short video and share it on your social media profiles. You can use Animoto for short videos and After Effects for complex videos.

2. How-to Video

You can create videos by using an entirely new idea. You can share tips, how-to guides, tutorials, use cases, behind the scenes, user-generated content, upcoming company events or achievements, product launch announcements and much more.

As many social media channels, auto-play videos without sound, it’s a wise idea to add captions to your videos. It is the best way to help your followers understand the video even if they don’t turn on the sound.

3. Live Videos

Live videos are amazing way to increase your traffic, organic reach and engagement. Facebook prefers live videos on its news feed than non-live content. Going live can increase the reach of non-live Facebook posts as well.

“People usually spend more than 3x more time watching Facebook Live videos than a video that is no longer live.”Facebook says.

Going live increases the chances of getting more reach of your non-live Facebook page content, says Michael Stelzner, CEO of Social Media Examiner.

In order to create your live videos, you don’t need to professionally produce or script, all you need is a plan. You can try different ideas in your live videos, such as, take your social media followers behind the scenes, introduce your marketing team, show your work sessions, activities or a tour of your office.

You can read theHubSpot guide on live streaming ideas for Facebook and Twitter (Periscope).

4. Interview Someone

An interesting way to create a fun video is to interview someone. You can do it live to make it more fun. You can use BeLive that allows more than one person to be on the live stream.  There are many free video-editing tools available such as iMovie and Windows Maker, you can try any of them and edit videos.

If live streaming scares you, then simply record the interview with an industry expert, customer, colleague, and upload it directly to Facebook.

5. Try Posting 360 Photos and Videos

If you are all set to try unique things, try posting 360 photos and videos for Facebook. To capture a 360 photo, you need to take a picture that is wider than 100 degrees using the panorama feature on your smartphone and Facebook will convert it into a 360 photo.

If you want to record a 360 video, you can simply tryGiroptic iO camera to record your Facebook Live, Periscope and YouTube Live videos.

Capture a 360 photo of your next event and share it on your Facebook page to get more engagement.

6. Use GIFs

GIFs are another popular way to enliven your posts. Instead of sharing an image with a blog post, try using a relevant and funny GIF in your blog post.

GIFs play a main role in catching your followers’ attention. Attach a relevant GIF to make your Facebook post compelling, tweet or blog post and increase your chances of getting more likes, shares and comments.

7. Harness the Power of UGC

User Generated Content (UGC) has the power to grow your following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and more. You can run a user-generated content campaign to check if the trick works best for your brand.

8. Self-Explanatory Images

Images have now become an indispensable part of any social media post. To stand out from rest of the infinite posts, you’ll have to be little smarter. Use self-explanatory images in your posts to clearly explain the concept without readers having to click on the link and read the full article to get the idea.

While choosing photos for your social media posts, make sure the image makes perfect sense with no caption. Being a digital marketer, you should also ensure that the image you are going to use in your social media posts should contain relevant and insightful content.

9. Use Graphs

Using charts and graphs is another great idea to make your social media posts more interesting.

Your followers can quickly absorb the information through charts.

So, next time when you find an interesting or worth sharing study, turn the statistics into a chart or a graph. Your readers will love reading the insights.

10. Share an Interesting Infographic

Do you know infographics are liked and shared 3X more than other type of content?

Just like images and videos in social media posts, infographics have also gained massive popularity over the past few years due to their helpful, relevant and informative nature.

You can turn your famous blogs into infographics and share it with you audience. There are many tools available to create amazing infographics.

11. Held a Contest

You can entice your followers and generate more engagement by organizing a contest and offering something interesting in return.

Ask your fan base to comment, share a post, tag friends, use your branded hashtags, or post your product photo. The incentive could be a free product, gift voucher, branded t-shirts, mugs or anything interesting.

12. Do a Poll

Another amazing way to increase your followers is to do a poll. Polls will engage your followers, and are helpful in conducting customer research and give away your products for free.

13. Ask Questions

People love to help others, especially the brands they like most. Ask your followers for feedback or suggestions on any idea your team is working on.

14. Use Quotes

Using a quote in your blog post is a good way to summarize the content. You can use a quote that is relevant and includes the main idea of your blog post. Instead of sharing a title of the post, you can use a quote to convey the main idea of the topic.

15. Use Emojis

A fun way to connect and engage with your followers is to use emojis or symbols in your social media posts and make them more appealing.

16. Use Lists

If your blog posts contains a step-by-step guide, list of ideas and useful tips, you can extract the main points and use it in your caption.

This way, your fans can easily learn all the important points from your posts without having to read the entire post.

17. Share Tweets of Your Fans

Another amazing tactic is to share retweets of your fans, customers and followers. This is the best way to show appreciation to your followers who used your brand-oriented hashtags or shared your blog posts.

Find the tweets of your followers who mentioned your brand and retweet it by appreciating their nice gesture.

I hope these creative tactics of creating engaging social media posts will help you come up with more interesting ideas.

The post These 17 Social Media Content Ideas Will Perk Up Your Marketing Efforts appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

But when it comes to LinkedIn etiquette, how aware are you?

LinkedIn is a social network that is different from any other platforms available today. People here act a lot more professional. You should definitely take advantage of this largest professional network especially when it comes to your career. And you need to take care to maintain proper LinkedIn etiquette at all times.

If truth be told, you, me and every smart social media user might even be accidentally breaking some of those LinkedIn rules right now. But there are certain practices of LinkedIn etiquette that need to be followed by every business professional.

For every socially advanced reader, it is important to learn LinkedIn etiquettes and avoid some common mistakes that happen almost every day.

Sending a Connection Request to Your Hiring Manager

It sounds very exciting and tempting to see the LinkedIn notification, your hiring manager at your dream company, viewed your LinkedIn profile, the day before your job interview.
Obviously, you feel so excited. Possibly you send him a LinkedIn request, as he did view your profile. For you, it might be a great opportunity to show him that you really want this job.

Connecting with a hiring manager just before your first job interview, or anyone else that you don’t know at your dream company, is too personal. The hiring manager interview many candidates and it’s not necessary for them to connect with every single candidate.
You can wait until: you get the job offer or the hiring manager connects with you first, or after the interview.

Endorse Someone’s Skills You Don’t Know

I’m sure you, me and everyone has got too many skills, so, does it mean we should just endorse each other. It is highly recommended to avoid endorsing individuals you haven’t worked with. This way it keeps everyone honest and more businesslike.

No Reason for Connecting

There are many people on LinkedIn who will try to connect with you. But I’m sure they have a real reason for that. But mostly a connection request from a stranger feels weird as you don’t even recognize the person’s LinkedIn profile picture, never met the person, never done business together and has nothing in common.

Perhaps the reason for connecting with an unknown person might be, you were browsing LinkedIn and glanced at someone’s profile, so you thought why not add this unknown to your trusted professional network.

If you want to connect with a completely stranger on LinkedIn, have a reason and something to offer. It isn’t too much difficult. For instance, you read my blog post, or mention that you might need to hire a candidate with the same skills sometimes in the future. A personal message is always far better than to send requests to connect with people randomly.

Finding Your Partner

Some people actually use this professional social network to find their life partners. A report by Chicago Tribune suggests that there is an app called BeLinked that makes it easier to find the right date partner based on your LinkedIn profile. Sounds interesting?

Reddit users say that people repeatedly view the profiles of their crushes or ex-lovers, perhaps, once or repeatedly. Sounds very creepy. If you are looking for a life partner, you are in the wrong platform. There are hundreds of websites, apps and social media networks available that will help you find the right one. But, please keep LinkedIn for professional purposes only.

How to Master LinkedIn like a Pro

If you are offering a job or a new business opportunity, connect with anyone who has the relevant skills. People, love to connect with new clients and love new jobs – in fact. It’s okay to check the profile of someone who is completely stranger to you, as long as your interest is professional. But keep in mind, every time you view their profile, they’ll get a notification.

If you want to connect with a stranger, have a solid reason and something valuable to offer. For instance, you both run fashion websites in the same city and have a same target audience so it might be interesting to partner on a promotion.

If you are looking to build your professional network on Linked, try sharing some interesting content instead of connecting with strange users. Create a thoughtful LinkedIn post so that people find it inspiring or send someone your industry reports so that they can get the idea about your interest and skills.

If you are looking to find your life partner, you are at the wrong place. There are a number of apps and sites that will help you find your soulmate.

Focus on quality of relationships instead of quantity of your connections. Connect with coworkers and other business professionals on LinkedIn in the right manner and get the most out of it.

The post LinkedIn Etiquettes: Common Reputation-Damaging Activities That You Must Avoid appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

Social media channels and smartphones are the perfect storm. We are now captivated and captured by both technologies. They are impacting our daily lives – how we work, play, socialize and perform any action.

So, what are the latest social media marketing trends these day and what they have in store for us as entrepreneurs, business owners, online marketers and most of all, as passionate and complicated humans.

The Rise of Chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence powered robots or you can say conversational agents that are tailor-made to resolve customer’s issues with an intelligent conversation without any human involvement.

In this age of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s all about embedding human intelligence in machines. Facebook chatbots are rapidly gaining massive popularity and are providing a new tool for digital marketers to leverage. These chatbots are the incorporation of automatic chatbots within chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Slack or more.

Chatbots help bands to automate tasks and help in retrieving the important information. They are gradually becoming a crucial way to improve customer experience by providing excellent customer support service and real-time interaction.

In this age of instant gratification, customers are looking for immediate response to their comments and queries. The chatbots are designed in a way that they are able to respond to answer all the queries raised by customers, without human interaction. In addition, they can help in creating a strong relationship with current and potential buyers, without spending a lot of money.

Expiring Content

Capturing the interest of audience is a battle between brands with sufficient budgets and tech-savvy marketers with little budget. The challenge for businesses these days is to stand out and gain attention of users. Now traditional marketing tactics don’t work like they used to do in past.

But Snapchat, the most famous social media platform these days, has decided to work on an entirely different approach. Make content disappeared.

This approach brought the sense of urgency among audience. Users now know that they had a very short amount of time to read or view content before it expires.

This algorithm allows users to watch 10 seconds videos that are disappeared after one view and then it extended to Snapchat stories which last for 24 hours.

Instagram observed this marketing tactic and introduced their own Instagram Stories.

If truth be told, expiring or disappearing content is now part of the ever-changing social media landscape. It’s a new social media marketing trend that brands need to try and test for your upcoming digital marketing campaigns.

Getting Organic Traffic is Important

In past, gaining attention was so easy and straightforward. You easily got likes and shares on Facebook and made followers on Twitter. But now, it is not the case.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media channels are removing sequential timeline updates. Now brands can get online visibility only when they are ready to pull out the credit card. In fact, social media marketing is just becoming another paid media.

So, this will make more and more marketers to go back and follow the digital basics. They need to:

•         Optimize for search engine ranking pages so your band rank on the first page.
•         Creating a list of subscribers so you can reach your audience without using any Google or Facebook algorithm blocking or filtering your content and updates.
•         Working harder to come up with marketing tricks that include growth hacking – a new science of marketing.

So, it’s not necessary to open your wallet for social media marketing every time, it’s time to pursue a multi-channel strategy and get website traffic organically

Automation is now very important

With the rise of social media networks, digital marketing has become complicated and messy endeavor for many marketers. Managing every social media platform has now become important for brands to stay on top of customers’ mind.

This is the reason, apps such as Hubspot, Buffer, Markteo and different other marketing automation software are now become essential for any business no matter, small, medium or large.

These automation tools are smarter, intuitive and affordable for many marketers. If your startup is not using any of these automation tools, think about it otherwise your customers won’t think for a second to prefer your competitors over your brand.

Personalization is becoming Key

As social media tools are becoming smarter and customers’ resistance to paid advertising grows higher, the need of personalized and relevant content becomes more important than ever.

Facebook retargeting and adverts driven by determining by where the visitor have been on the web and their interests are becoming the smart digital advertising tactic for remarketing campaigns. It delivers relevant, personalized content that converts at a much faster rate.

Digital marketing automation and remarketing techniques allow marketers to send the right content to the right customer at the right time. Relevant and personalized content is king for capturing audience attention in this noisy world of data clutter.

Video Streaming

Live video streaming is an amazing way to engage with your audience. This trend is changing how we share our experiences, stories, life events no matter personal or business. Video streaming can also help brands to build trust and credibility online with authentic and relevant content.

Influencer Marketing

Bloggers create content on food, web design, fashion, mobile app development and thousands of other topics. This way, they build loyal followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. They construct credibility and build trust via their authentic content.

Influencers and thought leaders who have built reach globally are the new way to target customers. Brands are now focusing on influencer marketing to reach their potential customers and brand admirers.

Artificial Intelligence

As the data volume increases exponentially, the need of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools with big, powerful processors is getting higher. Artificial intelligence is being used on Google, Facebook and other social media networks that we don’t even bother to notice.

•         LinkedIn uses artificial intelligence to provide better and relevant job matching between companies and candidates
•         Pinterest uses artificial intelligence to boost image search and recognition
•         Facebook tag feature with facial recognition, newsfeed algorithms, friends are all done by artificial intelligence algorithms.

As online marketers, you need to stay updated with these technologies and trends emerge in digital marketing to grow your brand.

The post Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017 appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

Nielsen reports that four out of every five organizations in the U.S. are now leveraging social media to help expand their brand, audience and build a relationship with customers.

It’s no secret that social media has now become the indispensable part of our everyday lives and that its stake in the success or failure of a corporation is growing larger day by day. Using social media marketing can allow small businesses and startups looking to expand their reach to more customers.

Nowadays, people are interacting with brands through social media, therefore, creating a perfect social media strategy and presence on the web is the key to capture the interest of your audience. If done correctly, marketing with social media can bring tons of success to your small business.

If you are a small business owner, or just launched your start up and looking to ramp up your own presence and quickly master the art of social media marketing for small business, then creating a solid social media marketing plan is key.

If you want to connect with more potential customers and market your products and services by using the power of social media? Read these important steps to leverage social media for your small business.

Create a Great Strategy

Behind every successful social media campaign is a solid strategy. Social media is all about connecting with a wider audience. To do that, all you need to intimately understand your existing and potential customers.

Start by determining your target audience. Figure out your customer demographics, interests, behavior, profession, etc. Write down all the details and find images that truly represent your target customers.

Next, create a message that you want to convey with your social media marketing efforts. Based on your target audience, what are the main problems or issues you can address to solve? Write key marketing messages you want to communicate to your audience.

Carefully create profiles for your audience to convey your message to them. Now figure out which social media channels they prefer most. Because every social media channel is different. Each one has a different audience, focus, and cadence. Therefore, it is important to understand the differences so you can expand your social media marketing efforts on the right channel.

Incorporate Sharing Button on Your Blog

If you treat every social media network as an individual effort, your success will be limited. Your all social media channels should work together to help you achieve your marketing goals. Your website is your brand’s face. Coordinate your social media marketing efforts to get an audience to your website where they can read your website content, buy your products or services.

Use your company blog to establish your brand voice and share quality, informative articles. Indeed, it is a great opportunity to engage with your audience and leads them through sales funnel. You can optimize your website and blog for social media by simply adding a few things to your web design.

If you want people to follow you on social media, then you need to make sure you display social media buttons prominently in your sidebar, header or footer. These icons link directly to your profiles so your visitors can follow you immediately on social media.

You can add a CTA button at the end of your blog posts asking visitors to follow you on different social media platforms. When people read valuable content, they will surely share it with their followers. And if you don’t have sharing buttons, chances are your visitors will likely click away and you will be missing out on a great opportunity to reach a wider audience.  

Start with Realistic Goals

Okay, now you have defined your target audience and you know the channels to reach them and you have also optimized your website. What’s next? It’s time to get social.

Social media marketing success takes time, energy and determination. Set yourself up for success by starting with small, realistic goals. Start with one or two platforms. Incorporate social media into your daily routine. Turn off all the distractions and set aside time to manage your social media accounts. Post something interesting in different time slots.

Use a timer to track your social media activities. Create an editorial calendar and keep track of original and curated content that you will share from time to time. Your ultimate aim is to solve your readers’ problems by providing them useful information. When you share relevant information, people come to check your blog as a guide.

You can use social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social to organize and monitor your social media performance and activities.

Social Listening is Key

Social media interactions are happening all around in real time. Believe it or not, social listening is a great tactic to monitor what your audience is saying about your brand. Carefully respond to every comment, mentions, and feedback. Respond negative comments in an amicable way to turn haters into leads.

You can use Mention app to monitor the web and social media channels and check out who mentioned your brand name or any target keywords.

To stay active on social media, you need quality content. Therefore, set up a process for organizing and collecting quality content that provides value to your readers. Feedly is an amazing way to collect great content from around the web that is related to your industry. Trust me, it will greatly help you to find out relevant and informative content to share.

Create an Action Plan for Your Daily Social Media Activities

Once you have a steady stream of content to share, you are all set to post and engage on social media. Create a plan for your social media activities and stick to it.  

Join different groups and communities and actively participate in conversations by asking questions and posting something informative. Above all, stay active on social media. Success isn’t about chance, it’s about careful planning, great strategy, and powerful tactics.

Go For Paid Marketing Techniques

If you want to accelerate your social media marketing efforts, it’s worth your time to get the most out of some paid marketing options.

Facebook offers a robust number of advertising and remarketing solutions to help businesses generate more sales, website traffic, brand exposure, and customer engagement.

You can also use Twitter for social advertising to promote content and accounts both. LinkedIn also offers a myriad of opportunities to reach a specific audience. You can use sponsored updates to feature to boost your brand visibility.

No matter if you have a small budget, there are some paid social advertising options that can produce great results (increase your online visibility and success on social media) in a low budget.

Measure Your Results

It is important to analyze your results and find out which tactics are working best and which are not. Tracking performance data can help you measure your growth, engagement, and sharing.

Keeping track of which social media platform is driving the most traffic is important. Google Analytics can help you monitor website traffic and interaction on your website and blog.

In addition, track and measure your performance is important to stay on top of your social media marketing plan. Sprout Social can help you create metric reports that can help you analyze and manage your performance.

Key Takeaways

When using social media for your small business or startup, keep all the above-cited points in mind. Start your social media marketing efforts by defining your audience and choosing the right platform to reach them. Do your homework, integrate your social media buttons and links, share valuable content and keep regular track of your social media performance.

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