Month: April 2017

If you’ve ever wondered when you should be sharing content online, then you should look to your followers. Usually site visitors have a specific time they prefer using social media. Meaning, if you start sharing your content when your users are online, you’ll gain traffic and have an increase in shares.

Sharing on Facebook

According to QuickSprout.com, the best days to post on Facebook are on Thursdays and Fridays. In fact, 86% of Facebook content is posted on these days, and the optimal time to post is early afternoon. You can use the tool Fanpage Karma to find the optimal time tailored to your audience. In addition, engagement rates fall 3.5% below average for posts published Monday through Wednesday.

Additional note: For anyone who’s familiar with the term “TGIF”, the fact that the “Happiness Index” on Facebook spikes 10% on Friday should come as no surprise.

Sharing on Twitter

On Twitter, weekdays provide 14% more engagement than weekends. However, this statistic can be more significant based on separating the user by their location: workplace or home. The reasoning behind this phenomenon is that businesses work with other businesses during the weekdays while consumers explore with brands more during the weekend.

According to Dan Zarella, Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on weekends. Users seem to retweet the most around 5 PM while noon and 6 PM are the best times for achieving the highest CTR. This could be due to people going on lunch breaks. You can use the Followerwonk tool to find the best time to tweet to your audience.

Twitter data indicates that users are 181% more likely to be on Twitter during their commute. They’re also 119% more likely to use Twitter during school or work hours.

Sharing on Pinterest

Fannit claims that the best times to post to Pinterest are Saturday from 2 AM to 4 AM and 8 PM to 11 PM. According to SEJ, Pinterest activity peaks at approximately 9 PM, and the peak time to post on Pinterest for fashion and retail businesses is Fridays at 3 PM

Sharing on Instagram

TrackMaven suggests that Instagram engagement stays consistent throughout the week, with slight spikes on Mondays and a slight dip on Sundays.

During work hours, an average of 22.5 per 1,000 Instagram followers interact with videos posted by Fortune 500 companies. During off-hours, 33.4 per 1,000 followers interact with content.

Sharing on Google Plus

According to Buffer, Google Plus is the most active during the late morning on weekdays. On Google Plus, social media posts tend to do better on Wednesdays at 9 AM in terms of social applause and engagement. By using the Timing+ tool, you can find the optimal time to post on Google Plus according to your specific audience.

Sharing on Linkedin

Linkedin data shows that the best time to share a post on Linkedin is during business hours on the weekdays. After analyzing data from 14 million users, AddThis stated that Linkedin gets the most shares and clicks on Tuesdays between 10 AM and 11 AM. In fact, 93% of B2B marketers rate Linkedin as the top B2B social media lead generation source.

Fannit claims the best times to post to Linkedin are between 7 AM – 8 AM and 5 PM – 6 PM. The worst times, based on U.S. time zones, are on Monday and Friday.

If you don’t believe us, test the data above for yourself!

Facebook has been skyrocketing in the marketing department when it comes to their on-site advertisements. On the whole, the domain receives more than 4 billion video views per day, which not only crushes YouTube’s desktop video viewing numbers, but also the monthly number of YouTube’s mobile video views.

Luckily for marketers, video ads are again and again proven to be one of the most successful Facebook ad campaigns a business can have. According to Adobe, consumers who view videos are 1.8 times more likely to purchase a product/service than non-viewers.

In 2014, Facebook conducted a study with Refinery29 comparing traditional direct response campaigns focused on driving subscriptions to a sequenced story-based approach where the direct response campaign was preceded by a “brand video.” Webinars can also drive traffic, especially with the help of webinar software.

Refinery29 had an 87% increase in traffic to the landing page and a 56%increase in subscription rate for readers who saw the branding video first.

Nielsen also ran a study that showed cumulative brand impact on ad recall increased 74% after just 15 seconds of a video ad, and purchase intent increased 72% after 10 seconds of viewing.

Facebook Video Ad Updates

Facebook has recently updated the way users can interact with video ads – both from a business owner’s and consumer’s perspective.

The updates include:

• Business owners can now choose to create up to six different “video engagement custom audiences” based on the length of time users watch the ad.
• Ad managers can create “lookalike audiences” based off of the interested and behaviors of engaged viewers
• The “video views” objective is no longer needed to create custom audiences. Now, you can use other objectives, such as clicks to website, website conversions, and brand awareness.
• Facebook removed the 1,000-views-per-day limitation, so creating a custom audience is easier.

Using video ads to reach your audience is a quick and easy way to build your brand, with the average cost per video view usually ranging between $0.01 to $0.06 per view.

For some, creating video ads has been a challenge.

Common difficulties include:

• Lack of video/tech skills
• Failure to express brand message via video
• Unsuitable recording equipment
• Misunderstanding of Facebook video ads interface

Fortunately, today’s technology has made it extremely easy to create and run high-quality Facebook video ad campaigns with little to no prior video experience.

Three Things To Keep In Mind

While video quality is important, your video’s content will determine whether or not you’ll make the sale. You could make a low-quality video, but if your content makes a connection to the viewer, then you’ve won.

If you’re still worried about making a less-than-attractive video, just remember people are on Facebook scrolling through their newsfeed in search of fun, natural videos that their friends or relatives shared – not a perfectly polished commercial.

The First 10 Seconds are Crucial

Facebook video ads are usually displayed on users’ newsfeeds (desktop and mobile) on auto-play, muted. This means you’ll have to grab their attention for them to hear what’s going on in your video. The best Facebook videos can tell a meaningful story with or without sound, though your goal is to get viewers to click on your ad.

A great way to highlight important parts in your video is to add a text overlay that gives the viewer a call-to-action i.e. “Click to hear important message,” or “Click to learn more.” Thanks to Facebook’s “add captions” button, you won’t need fancy video editing software to add an overlay.

Educate, Demonstrate, and Entertain

The more you educate, demonstrate, and hopefully entertain your audience, the more people will trust your company or brand. Higher value equals more shares.

When viewers share your video, you’re receiving free views and impressions. Bonus, Facebook will realize that your video is doing well and reward you with cheaper views, cheaper clicks, and ultimately more impressions.

The Call-to-Action Must Appear Natural

The key to creating a successful ad is to make your CTA not only seamless, but as natural-sounding as possible. A “soft” CTA, for example, is a great way to hook your viewers.

“Soft” CTAs ask your viewers to perform an action that isn’t your main goal, but a step towards it. For example, “Learn More” is a soft CTA that brings people to your website or landing page, instead of a direct-to-purchase page. “Hard” CTAs, however, are up front about your product, i.e. “Purchase Our Product!”

Steps To A Successful Video Campaign

In order for your video to be successful, it should be engaging. Your video, whether it’s short (15 to 30 seconds) or a traditional commercial style video (30 seconds to two minutes), should grab your viewers’ attention, build their interest, show your brand’s credibility (without sounding arrogant), and end with a natural CTA.

Once you’ve figured out what kind of video you’re going to create, choose an objective that aligns with your ultimate goal – whether it’s likes, conversions, clicks, views, etc. Then, create an ad set based on your target audience.

Your ad should feature tight and compelling copy. There are three different categories of ad copy that work with video ads: short copy (copy where the reader doesn’t have to click “read more”), long copy, where the viewer needs to click “see more” to read the entire post, and LAC (long-ass copy) – thank you, Ralph Burns – which is copy long enough to be a blog post.

Once your ad is live, you can start to monitor its performance by using the “customize columns” dropdown menu in the Ads Manager to filter out the unnecessary metrics. You can also use the “search” feature to quickly select the metrics you want to analyze.

When you do this, you’ll see a list of options on the right side of the window. Here, you can remove undesirable metrics that can clog up your report.

Important metrics to think about are:

• Cost per conversion (lead, registration, purchase, etc.)
• Cost per video view (10 seconds and three seconds)
• Duration of video viewed

You should also pay attention to the placement of your ad – desktop vs mobile, newsfeed vs right column.

Ilan’s Weekly is a (sorta) weekly email full of small hacks and tricks you can use to grow your business and increase sales.

Written and curated by Ilan Nass, founder of Taktical in New York.

GROWTH HACKS:

Smiles Get More Sales:

An interesting experiment.

One marketer wanted to A/B test what photo of him on his landing pages would generate more profits:

• #A: Serious Face 😐
• #B: Smiling Smiling 🙂

Smiling face won 🙂 and generated:

• +1.3% more sign ups
• +9.9% more sales
• +10.7% more total profits

Source: https://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2012/10/23/abc-split-test-the-power-of-a-smile/

Scoop Up the Emails of All Your Facebook Contacts!

Who would think, that adding an investor, prospect, or influencer as a friend on Facebook, gives you access to his email. It was a big surprise for me today. Here is how you can get emails:

1. Go to “Yahoo.mail – sign up”
2. Right after a successful signup you will be offered to import contacts from Facebook. Choose it.
3. After the contacts are imported, click “Skip setup”.
4. Enter “Contacts”. Abracadabra! Emails!

In the App Store, First Impressions Matter:

1. 60% of users won’t swipe past your second image. Show your strongest images first
2. Switching app screenshots can increase install rates by more than 35%. Use different copy in each screenshot
3. Only 2% of visitors click to expand the “Description” which means 98% of visitors don’t see past your first 30 words. Make those words count!

Source: https://www.slideshare.net/maorgad/10-killer-app-store-marketing-tips

IN DEPTH ARTICLES:

How to Make the Customer the Hero of Your Story

Best Answer to “Sell Me This Pen” I Have Ever Seen