Month: April 2021

Channel Trailer

Your channel trailer offers a preview of your channel so viewers can learn more and subscribe. By default, ads won’t show on your channel trailer, unless your video contains third-party claimed content. If the viewer is already subscribed to your channel, they’ll see your featured video.

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization and then Layout.
• Under Video spotlight, click ADD and select a video for your channel trailer.
• Click Publish.

Customize your channel

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization.
• Use the tabs to customize your channel:

Layout: Use this tab to organize your channel trailer, featured video, and channel sections.

Branding: Use this tab to update your profile picture, banner image, and video watermark.

Basic info: Use this tab to customize your channel name, description, and site links.

Featured video for Subscriber

You can highlight your video or any video on YouTube for your subscribers to watch when they visit your channel homepage.

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization and then Layout.
• Under Video spotlight, click ADD and select a video to feature.
• Click Publish

Create a section

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization and then Layout.
• At the bottom, click ADD SECTION.
• Use the Down arrow to select your content.
• Videos: Choose to highlight posted videos.
• Popular uploads: Choose to highlight your live, past, and upcoming live streams.
• Playlists: Choose to highlight single, created, and multiple playlists.
• Channels: Choose to highlight subscriptions and featured channels.
• Click Publish.

Edit a section

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization and then Layout.
• At the bottom, Click Options on the section you want to edit and select Edit section contents.
• In the edit screen, change the content of the section.
• Click Publish.

Reorder sections on your channel

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Customization and then Layout.
• At the bottom, click the vertical bar on the section you want to move, then drag-and-drop to reorder.
• Click Publish.

Unlocking the potential within YouTube means you can access millions of viewers every day. This gives you a new channel for your promotional videos along with your more generally helpful content. In return, you can boost your overall online presence.

Ok, so a lot of YouTube is soppy cat videos and watching people inadvertently hurt themselves. But the platform does offer quite a bit for businesses to take advantage of, presenting those who embrace it with ample opportunity to:

• Capture more attention
• Garner better integration with social media content
• Nurture a highly-engaged, loyal audience
• Take advantage of the inherent benefit from better search engine rankings

Below, we will see how TOP can help you optimize your videos to increase your YouTube rankings, create engagement and why should you promote and embed your branded videos in your website’s

• Targeting your videos: Understanding searcher intent, keyword research and video creation.
• Optimizing your videos: Creating a branded presence, optimizing titles, tags and descriptions.
• Promoting your videos: Getting real, engaged views on your videos, building links and embeds to your videos.

YouTube ranking factors

YouTube has cited Audience Retention as one of its main ranking factors. In short, this is how long people watch your videos before exiting.

The Audience Retention report analyses:

• Average view duration for all videos on your channel
• Top videos or channels listed by watch time
• Audience retention data for a specific video for different time frames
• Relative audience retention for a video compared to the YouTube average for similar videos

Other YouTube ranking factors surrounding engagement:

• Video comments
• Subscribers after watching a video
• Video shares
• Click-through rate
• Thumbs up/Thumbs down

The most important aspects of ranking well on YouTube are:

• Watch time
• Channel authority
• Positive sentiment & engagement
• Broad match keyword targeting across title, description, and keyword tags

Keyword research

The YouTube SEO process starts just like any content creation process, with a keyword, search query and topic research.

The goal you are trying to achieve here is to understand searcher intent, what kind of information users are looking for and which search terms are relevant to your business and your audience.

As highlighted in MOZ’s keyword research, you should ask yourself…

• Is the keyword relevant to your website’s content?
• Will searchers find what they are looking for on your site when they search using these keywords?
• Will they be happy with what they find?
• And, will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals?

Unfortunately, the free version is fairly limited and you need a pro version in order to unlock the following awesome features:

• Keyword suggestions (variants stemming from your entry)
• Related keywords (not keyword variants, but related, e.g. same semantic area)
• Questions (similar to Answer The Public and the likes, great for Featured Snippet opportunities. etc)
• Prepositions (again, similar to Answer The Public and the likes, great for increasing your site’s chances of appearing in Featured Snippets and ‘People Also Ask’ query suggestions)

Strategies

1. Rename your video file using a target keyword.

Just like you would when optimizing written content, you’ll use an SEO tool to first identify keywords you’d like your video to focus on (you can browse popular YouTube SEO tools below these tips, or just click that link earlier in this sentence).

2. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title.

When we search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That’s often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also clear and concise.

Although your keyword plays a big part in your video title, it also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for. Research conducted by Backlinko found that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have only a slight advantage over those that don’t.

3. Optimize your video description.

First things first: According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it’s okay to use all of that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not to read an essay.

If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That’s why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.

4. Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic.

YouTube’s official Creator Academy suggests using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But you’re not just informing your viewers you’re also informing YouTube itself. Dean explains that the platform uses tags “to understand the content and context of your video.”

That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content’s reach. But choose your tags wisely. Don’t use an irrelevant tag because you think it’ll get you more views in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like “how do I?”).

5. Categorize your video.

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube so it winds up in different playlists and gains exposure to more viewers who identify with your audience.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube’s Creator Academy suggests marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. It’s helpful, the guide writes, “to think about what is working well for each category” you’re considering by answering questions like:

• Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for and what do they do well?
• Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?
• Do the videos within a similar category have share qualities like production value, length, or format?

6. Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link.

Your video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video’s title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video’s content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.

7. Use an SRT File to add subtitles & closed captions.

Like much of the other text we’ve discussed here, subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you’ll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, however, you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos” under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then select how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

8. Add Cards and End Screens to increase your YouTube channel’s viewership.

Cards

When you’re watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an “i” in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which Creator Academy describes as “preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel.”

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

• Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.
• Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.
• Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.
• Link cards, which direct viewers to an external site, approved crowdfunding platform, or an approved merchandise selling platform.
• Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.
• Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.

End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don’t display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature.

YouTube analytics allow you to measure the success of your YouTube marketing efforts. You can use them to monitor your progress toward achieving specific goals like growing subscribers or increasing video views, and identify what works and what flops.

Marketers can track just about everything from the YouTube Studio dashboard, from YouTube channel analytics right down to real-time video metrics. But just because you can track everything, doesn’t mean you should. Especially if you don’t know how to translate raw data into meaningful information.

YouTube Metrics

YouTube analytics tools let you measure just about everything. But it’s not enough to simply record numbers. We breakdown what each YouTube metric measures, why it matters, and how it fits into your overall performance outlook.

YouTube Channel Metrics

Chart your overall channel performance, identify average trends, and get a snapshot of what works best with these YouTube channel metrics.

• Subscribers:

The number of people who have subscribed to your YouTube channel. From the overview section of the YouTube analytics dashboard, you can see how many subscribers you’ve gained over a selected period. Hover over (or tap) the icon to see how this figure compares to your typical subscriber growth.

• Realtime views:

The number of views your last published videos have received in the past 48 hours. This metric is a good way to track the performance of a YouTube Live or YouTube Premiere or recently published video.

• Top videos:

A snapshot of your top performing videos based on views, over a given period. By adjusting the timeframe, you can identify your all-time best performing videos. Or, opt for a shorter time period to see if certain videos have resurfaced.

• Channel Views:

The number of views your channel amassed over a given time period. Beside this metric, hover over (or tap) the icon to see how it compares to the average amount of views your channel receives.

• Channel Watch time:

The total amount of time, in hours, people have spent watching videos on your channel over a given period. You can also compare this stat to your average watch time, by hovering over or tapping the icon.

Audience metrics

Use YouTube audience metrics to understand who watches your videos. Use these insights to inform your content and community management strategies.

• Unique viewers:

An estimate of the total number of people who watched your videos over a given period. Unlike channel views, this metric does not include multiple views from the same person.

• Average views per viewer:

An average of the number of times a viewer watched videos on your channel. This metric includes both views of multiple videos, and multiple views of the same video.

• When your viewers are on YouTube:

A bar chart that displays the days and times most of your viewers are on the platform. Use this info to schedule uploads at optimal times. If you have an active Community Tab, make sure an admin is available to create posts and respond to comments at this time.

• Audience demographics:

Take into consideration the age, gender, and location of your audience on YouTube. This information can help you plan content geared toward viewers, or create content for a segment your current audience is missing. Look also to see if viewers are using subtitles, and what languages are most used, so you can accommodate accordingly.

YouTube Discovery Metrics

How good is your YouTube SEO? Learn how people are discovering your videos, on and off YouTube, and adjust your promotion, algorithm, and keyword use accordingly.

• Impressions and CTR:

An impression is recorded each time someone sees the thumbnail for your video. Impressions click-through rate measures the percentage of people who clicked on the thumbnail to view your video.

A high click-through rate is a good indication your thumbnail and keywords are effective. But you’ll need to check watch time and average view duration stats to see if your video seals the deal.

• Bonus:

Download the free 30-day plan to grow your YouTube following fast, a daily workbook of challenges that will help you kickstart your Youtube channel growth and track your success. Get real results after one month.

• Tip:

Look for similarities between videos that have high or low click-through rates. Do they have anything in common?

• Traffic Sources:

See where and how people are finding your videos. YouTube traffic sources include search, browse features, playlists, and suggested videos—all of which are powered to varying degrees by the YouTube algorithm.

Other sources include Direct URL or External. Click on each source to see a breakdown and drill down further. If you were expecting to see more traffic, consider these tips to promote your channel.

• Tip:

See if people watched your video on YouTube or embedded on a website. Go to the Reach tab and click Advanced Mode. From there, click the More dropdown menu below the date, and select Playback Locations.

• Top YouTube search terms:

Under Traffic Source: YouTube Search, you can see the top search terms that led people to your videos. This should give you a good indication of whether your SEO strategy is effective or needs to be tweaked in some areas. If a video is searched for often, consider adding it to a playlist to help people discover your related content.

YouTube Video Metrics

Whether a big production or a no frills livestream, it’s worthwhile to track individual YouTube video metrics. When you click on a video, you’ll land on a similar dashboard with Overview, Reach, Engagement, Audience, and Revenue tabs only all the data pertains to the video in question.

• Views:

The number of times your video has been watched, including repeat views from the same person.

• Video subscribers:

The number of people who subscribed after watching your video. This metric provides one of the strongest indications that your content connected with viewers. On the flip side, you can also see the number of subscribers lost with a certain video, too.

• Watch time:

The cumulative amount of time people have spent watching your video (or videos). Click See More to have a look at how this figure changes over time. Has your watch time been consistent since you published the video, or are there spikes you can correlate to specific events?

• Audience retention:

See how far people made it through your video. The audience retention report provides you with an average view duration. It also shows you where the views drop off. Notice a big dip? Watch your video to try to understand why people may have left around a specific mark.

• Tip:

Retention will always gradually decline, so focus on abrupt drops. If you see peaks, they indicate viewers are re-watching certain parts of your video.

YouTube engagement metrics

See how and what people are engaging with on your channel. On desktop, engagement metrics can be found under the Engagement tab. On mobile, tap on the Interactive Content tab.

• Likes and dislikes:

While often considered vanity metrics, likes and dislikes can give you a sense of what people thought about your video. If a video receives a lot of dislikes, set aside some time to read the comments and analyze people’s sentiments. Comments are another form of engagement, and can be an invaluable source of qualitative data.

Tip:

Under the Watch Time chart on desktop, click See More to see how many times your video has been shared.

• Card and end screen reports:

If you’ve added interactive content to your videos, these reports will give you an idea of the elements that work best. Have a look at your Top cards and Top end screen element types overall. To see how often people clicked on a card or end screen of a specific video, look at Clicks per card shown and End screen element click rate.

Find definitions for specific card and end screen metrics here.

Top playlists: See what playlists are in high rotation. Track your most popular playlists, total views, average view duration, and watch time. Take a look at Playlist starts and Playlist exit rate for more detail on engagement. To improve overall retention, YouTube suggests putting the videos with the highest retention upfront.

Tip:

Add relevant popular videos from other creators to your playlists to improve discoverability and retention. See what playlists your videos have been added to in traffic sources.

The Overview tab shows you key metrics for your channel. The main graph shows watch time, views, and subscribers. If you’re in the YouTube Partner Program, you’ll also see your estimated revenue over the last 28 days.

In this tab you’ll also see 4 reports:

• Top videos: Your videos ranked by views.
• Realtime activity: Your performance over the last 48 hours or 60 minutes.
• Latest videos: Your performance from your 10 latest videos.
• Typical performance: A comparison of your latest video to your channel’s typical performance.

Reach

The Reach tab shows you your music’s overall reach. The main graph shows how many people saw an impression of your videos or videos containing all or most of your song across YouTube, and how many people then clicked through to watch the videos.

In this tab you’ll also see reports for:

• Traffic source types: Where viewers found the videos on YouTube.
• Top external sources: Traffic from websites and apps that have the YouTube video embedded or linked to.
• Impressions and how they led to watch time: How many people saw the video on YouTube and who then went on to watch the video.
• Top YouTube search terms: Search terms that led viewers to the videos.

Engagement

The Engagement tab shows you what your viewers are watching. The main graph shows you the total number of watch minutes, and on average, how long viewers spent watching one of the videos.

In this tab you’ll also see cards for:

• Top videos and playlists: Videos and playlists featuring your music with the most watch time over the last 28 days.
• Top cards and end screens: Your top cards and end screens over the last 28 days.

Audience

The Audience tab shows you who’s watching. The main graph shows your returning & new viewers, unique viewers, and subscribers.

In this tab you’ll also see reports for:

• Top geographies: Your audience by geography. Data is based on IP address.
• Top subtitle/CC languages: Your audience by subtitled language. Data is based on usage of subtitles/CC.
• Age and gender: Your audience by age and gender. Data is based on signed in viewers across all devices.
• When your viewers are on YouTube: Your audience’s online activity across your channel and all of YouTube. Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 28 days.
• Other videos your audience watched: Your audience’s online activity outside of your channel. Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 7 days.
• Other channels your audience watched: Your audience’s online activity across other channels on YouTube. Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 28 days.

Revenue

The Revenue tab is only available to creators in the YouTube Partner Program  and will show data only for videos uploaded by you.

 The Revenue tab helps you track your earnings on YouTube. The main graph shows how much you’re estimated to earn, the number of videos that are monetized, and your estimated average gross revenue per thousand plays.

In this tab you’ll also see reports for:

• Monthly estimated revenue: How much your channel has earned in the last 6 months. For ongoing months and months without finalized payments, revenue is estimated and subject to change.
• Top-earning videos: Videos with the highest estimated revenue for the time period.
• Revenue sources: How you’re making money with YouTube.
• Ad types: The format of the ad and its buying platform. This breakdown is only available for YouTube ad revenue and impression-based metrics.
• Transaction revenue: Estimated net revenue from transactions, such as paid content and Super Chat, deducting any partner charged refunds for the selected date range and region.

Reasons why Facebook Advertising is hugely exciting for marketers:

• Audience size: Facebook now boasts over 1.13 billion daily active users on 1.03 billion of which access the social network via mobile devices.
• Attention: People spend a lot of time on social networks. The average user spends about 50 minutes just on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger every day.
• Organic reach decline: Organic reach on Facebook has been in decline for a few years now and has almost hit zero. If you want to break through now, Facebook is all but a pay-to-play network.
• Targeting: The targeting options within Facebook Ads is incredible. Business can target users with by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behavior, and much more.

Social media targeting

Social media targeting is a form of online advertising that focuses on social media. Retailers can use this type of advertising and take advantage of the users’ demographics, location, interests, and so forth and target their ads accordingly.

Some of the available targeting options include:

• Location
• Education
• Work
• Financial status
• Generation
• Parental status
• Ethnicity
• Languages
• Connections to specific Facebook pages
• Behaviours

Types of Facebook ads

Image ads

These simple ads are a great way to get started with Facebook paid advertising. You can create one with just a few clicks by boosting an existing post with an image from your Facebook Page.

Image ads may be simple, but that doesn’t mean they have to be boring.

Video ads

Video ads can run in the News Feed and Stories, or they can appear as in-stream ads in longer Facebook videos. Video ads can show your team or your product in action, like this quick demo video ad from IKEA.

Poll ads

This mobile-only Facebook ad format incorporates an interactive component by adding a two-option poll to an image or video ad. You can add a separate link for each poll choice.

Both you and those who answer will see the tally of responses to each poll option.

Carousel ads

A carousel ad uses up to 10 images or videos to showcase your product or service.

You can use this format to highlight different benefits of one product, several different products or even use all the photos together to create one large panorama image.

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads offer an easy way to create short video ads from a collection of still photos, text, or existing video clips.

Slideshow ads have eye-catching motion, just like videos, but use five times less data. So, they load well even for people on slow internet connections. They’re an easy, low-impact way to draw attention.

Collection ads

These Facebook paid ads, which are offered only for mobile devices, allow you to showcase five images or videos that customers can click to buy a product or service.

Collection ads pair with Instant Experiences (more on those below) and allow people to buy your products without ever leaving Facebook. This makes online shopping easy when people are on-the-go.

Instant Experience ads

Instant Experience ads used to be called Canvas. They’re a full-screen ad format that loads 15 times faster than a mobile website outside of Facebook.

Lead ads

Lead ads are only available for mobile devices. That’s because they’re specifically designed to make it easy for people to give you their contact information without a lot of typing.

They’re great for collecting newsletter subscriptions, signing someone up for a trial of your product or allowing people to ask for more information from you. Several automakers have successfully used them to encourage test drives.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads allow you to promote targeted products to the customers most likely to be interested in them.

For instance, say someone has visited a product page or placed a product in their shopping cart on your website, but then abandoned the purchase. With dynamic ads, you can advertise that specific product in their Facebook feed.

This reminds the potential customer to complete the purchase, and can be a very effective Facebook marketing strategy.

Messenger ads

Facebook Messenger ads give you access to the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger every month. When creating your ad, simply choose Messenger as the desired placement. You also need to select Facebook feed.

Stories ads

Mobile phones are meant to be held vertically. Stories ads are a mobile-only full-screen vertical video format that allows you to maximize screen real estate without expecting viewers to turn their screen.

Augmented reality ads

Augmented reality ads use features like filters and animation to allow people to interact with your brand.

For example, the filter could help users see what a shade of lipstick would look like on their lips, or how a pair of glasses might fit their face.

Pros

• Campaigns are easy to track
• Immediate influx of traffic
• Complete control over your daily budget and maximum Cost-per-click
• Instant return on investment (You can easily define a cost per conversion and understand what your profit is)
• More targeting options, including, towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket, and other demographics
• Easier to set up than Google AdWords
• The ability to reach people early on in the buying process, before they are aware of their need, while capturing those who are aware of the need in a subtle way
• You can use images and videos to capture the interest of your target market, helping you to sell your products and services
• CPC is relatively cheap, depending on your industry (On average, no more than $0.61 per click)

Cons

• There is no option to target your ads at certain times within the day or on certain days of the week unless you choose a lifetime budget
• If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be costly, but less so than Google AdWords
• Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can be irrelevant (For instance, we would not recommend Facebook Advertising if someone only served or supplied their products and services to one town)
• Most suitable for those operating in B2C markets
• Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could potentially reduce your goal conversion rate

Facebook offers a variety of paid ad options and placements, but all ads can be broken down into three elements:

• The campaign houses all of your assets.
• Ad sets. If you’re targeting separate audiences with different characteristics, you’ll need an individual ad set for each.
• Your actual ads live within your ad sets. Each ad set can hold a variety of ads that vary in color, copy, images, etc.

As an advertiser on Facebook, you can choose the audiences you want for your ads. We offer tools that help you reach people based on traits and categories like:

• Where they live
• Demographics: Like age, gender and more
• Interests: Like shopping, gadgets and more
• Behaviors: Like shopper profiles and offline interests

When people are on Facebook, they may see your ad in News Feed the personal stream of updates from their friends, family and things they care about. Since your ads reach people based on who they are and their interests, they’ll be more relevant to the people who see them.

This is a fairly straightforward process and involves the following four steps:

• Set Up Facebook Business Manager. First, you create a Facebook page for your business. From there you can create a Business Manager account that allows you to run ads for that page. To start go to the home page for Business Manager and click “Create Account” Then log in using the email and password you used to set up your business page account.
• Install the Facebook Pixel. Go to your website and install the Facebook pixel that allows Facebook to identify people who visited your website, create custom audiences comprised of those visitors, and then show ads to them.
• Create Audiences to target users. This tool allows you to create and save audiences that are most relevant to your brand. Go back into Business Manager and select the “Audiences” option from the assets column.
• Create a Facebook Ad from a Facebook post. Now you can try it out. First decide what you want to accomplish do you want more clicks, sales, video views, or leads?

How each tool works is essential to shaping your campaign.

• The Plan section contains tools that help you learn things about your audience and give you creative ideas for running your ads. With the Audience Insights tool, you can find out a lot of information about different audiences on Facebook.
• Create and Manage. Here you find tools for creating your ad and managing your campaigns.
• Measure and Report. When you want to analyze how your ads are performing, check out the tools in the Measure and Report section. For example, here you can create those custom conversions to track whether ads are meeting your business goals.
• This section gives you quick and easy access to key assets that you’ve used to build your ads, including audiences that you’ve saved for ad targeting, images you’ve used, your Facebook pixel, and more.
• The settings area is where all of your account information is stored. Go here to update payment information, your email, and so on.

How to Get Started with Facebook Ads

Ad transparency is important for figuring out the algorithm. The ability for any user to see exactly what ads a Facebook page or Twitter account is running is particularly useful for marketers and businesses. There are three key ways that marketers can leverage this information to their advantage:

• Research competitor campaigns and consumer markets. Seeing all the ad campaigns your competitors are running is invaluable as you consider your own campaign. Visit their landing pages and assess their call to action. What special offers are they running? How long are their videos? Are they trying to attract clicks, drive purchases, or just create awareness?
• Get inspiration for using new ad features. New ad features roll out all the time on Facebook and Twitter. Look to major brands like Home Depot, Target, or Airbnb to see how they’re using new ad features; it’s a good way to see what each feature does and how it works without investing your first dollar.
• Share active campaigns with customers and prospects. Because users can engage with the ads in the same way they would if the ad appeared in their news feed, customers and prospects now have an opportunity to begin a purchase or a signup they might have missed out on.

Strategies

• Provide free content to warm up your audience. Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to differentiate your business and warm up cold audiences. Provide free valuable content that entertains, educates, or inspires your ideal customer. You could use videos, lead magnets (guides, checklists, coupons, etc.), or blog posts, for example.
• Engage people on your email list. Delivering your message via your Facebook ads and email marketing is twice as effective. Customers will see your message in their inbox and when they browse Facebook.
• Retarget website visitors. If you install the Facebook pixel on your website, you can target people who have recently visited your site.

Currently, Facebook says it has over 800 million users in the Marketplace. The plus of Facebook Marketplace is that it’s where people are actively looking for a specific good, which means you have immediate access to an audience that is looking for you.

• Create a campaign objective. Marketplace offers five objectives: reach, traffic, conversions, catalog sales, and video views. Once you pick one you can give your campaign a name.
• Choose placement. Where do you want the ad to appear? Scroll down to the Placements section and pick the settings.
• Create a video ad. In the Ad Creation section, you can upload images as well as a video. Videos tend to outperform static images in Marketplace, so that might be your best option.
• Analyze placement results. Check out how your ad is performing in comparison to other placements. You can do this by filtering your ad reports by selecting “Placement” from the Breakdown drop-down menu.

Targeting

Several experts suggest that Facebook Ads acts purely as a tool to generate demand and spark interest. Generally, we don’t check Facebook with the same intention as browsing on Amazon, Ebay or other similar sites. We probably go to the latter with a clear intention to buy or at least find out more information about a specific product that we already have in mind.

Concerning targeting, possibilities on Facebook are pretty unrivalled. You have the option to narrow down your audience based on demographic variables, including:

• Age
• location
• gender
• spoken languages
• relationship status

You can even choose your advertising audiences based on their level of education, field of profession, and occasion-based information like:

• Birthday month
• expecting parents
• engaged for 1 year
• expats, and many more

Bidding & performance

Similar to Google Ads and other advertising platforms, Facebook operates a real-time digital auction. However, Facebook auctions evaluate advertisements slightly differently – based on their competitive value.

Unlike other advertising platforms, this is not solely made up of the maximum amount you are willing to bid, but also the intrinsic value of the ad: level of engagement that the ad attracts, user experience (for example, likes, comments, negative feedback ). For example, should you bid €3 to have your ad shown at your chosen placement, the magical and mysterious algorithms of Facebook Ads then weigh your ad’s relevance against other competing ads and organic content. The more relevant your ad is to your target audience, the less you need to bid for its delivery.

How do you know if your ad is performing well?

Start with establishing what your goal with Facebook advertising is. Is it purely to maximise the number of clicks and landing page views? Alternatively, is your aim more concrete, and you want people to take a particular action once they get directed to your landing page?

Your next step once you have delineated your goal is to instruct Facebook Ads to begin optimising to deliver your adverts to people who are more likely to take the required action.

Once you have set up your campaign accordingly, the ad will then enter the learning phase, that does precisely what it says on the tin – Facebook uses its algorithms to learn whom to show your ads, to maximise your chosen results. Ad delivery during the learning phase usually is more expensive; however, it should normalise after reaching circa 50 conversions (i.e. your desired actions taken by Facebook users).

If you are only starting with Facebook Ads, you must know some basic terms, that help you  evaluate your ads’ performance:

• Impressions: The number of times your ad gets delivered to a Facebook user for the first time
• Reach: The number of people that your ad has been delivered to on Facebook
• Clicks: The number of times your ad has been clicked on
• CTR or Click Through Rate: This is the percentage of clicks on your ad out of all the impressions it has received
• CPC or Cost per Click: The average cost that you have paid for each click
• CPA or Cost per Acquisition/Action: Average cost per whichever action you have defined as a conversion. This can be a newsletter signup, website purchase.
• Frequency: The average number of times that your ad was shown to a Facebook user
• Attribution: Different marketing-related steps that a user takes before making a purchase

An online community is a group of people who interact with each other on an online platform. These communities can range from the 1+ billion-person Instagram community to a 10-person community of coffee lovers that rates artisan cafes in their city through a private Facebook group.

There’s a huge range in how an online community can scale, and understanding what type of online community is the most beneficial for your brand is the first step in building your own community.

Branded communities.

This type of community is the opposite of a public social network. You’ll need to provide more than an email address and password to get inside of the community. Imagine SOHO house, or a private members club, but online. You’ll need the right credentials (experience, common interests, location, etc.) to have access to the community even if it’s on a public social media platform.

Public social networks.

Think Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok even Vine (RIP) was a massive online community. Public social networks are online communities that only require someone to have an account to be part of the community. There aren’t many guidelines or restrictions when it comes to who gets to be part of this type of community.

Advantages

Increase engagement.

Online communities can boost your engagement in several ways. If you’re the blogger we wrote about earlier who has grown a substantial following on Instagram, having your community tag you in their Instagram story to share a daily win, how they’re using a product, etc., boosts your engagement. You can also have people comment on your Instagram posts, post in your Facebook group, reply to your tweet, etc.

Product feedback.

Similar product complaints or questions in your online community should never be passed over. While they are great for reducing your support costs, they’re even better at improving your product in exactly the way that your customers want.

Don’t let these complaints and questions get lost take note of them and put them on your “Product Improvement Notes” to-do list.

Reduce support costs.

Inside your online community, look for patterns about the before-state of your customers as well as their after-state. Their after-state comes once your product has solved their problem. Your goal after-state for your customers and the actual after-state may differ if your customers are running into issues with your products.

Your online community can not only be used to answer questions that customers might have, but can also be used to see what reoccurring issues customers are having and fix them. This will reduce the number of tickets coming into your customer support team.

Get to know your customers.

You can also use this megaphone to understand the before-and-after state of your customers. You’ll notice patterns in the way they describe their problems that you can use to improve your copy. This makes the copy more relatable to your customer avatar and shows them that this product is the one they’re looking for.

Drive product innovation.

Your customers are the best people to tell you what product improvements need to be made. They can tell you what they love, what they hate, and what they never use. Your online forum is a megaphone for your customers as to what you can do to improve your product for them.

Public community:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• G2 Crowd
• GetApp
• Quora
• Discourse
• Glassdoor
• Slack

Building Process

Choose a platform for your community.

There are two types of forums: one revolving around shared interest and the other that is more informational in nature.

With a shared-interest forum, you’re bringing together people who happen to be interested in a common topic where they can explore and connect with each other on a larger range of topics. Collaboration between members is key here.

Informational forums are largely used when you want to create a space for the community to search for and share content related to your product, service, or designated topic in one location.

Once you’ve identified the use case and the type of engagement you’re after (i.e., customer support operations or brand loyalty), you’ll want to start looking at detailed features that would support your community goals. These can range from:

• Deeper analytics
• Ease of use and good user interface
• Customer support
• Platform flexibility
• Integrations
• Mobile

2. Develop a launch framework.

When determining what business problem you want to resolve with your community, consider the following.

Are you looking to:

• Increase your customer satisfaction ratings?
• Decrease costs related to customer support?
• Increase demand of your product/service?
• Identify and mobilize influencers and advocates?
• Increase collaboration?

Knowing these answers will make it easier for you to identify why you are launching your online community and help you align its purpose to your intended goals.

3. Identify key internal stakeholders for the community.

After determining the need for forming your community, your next step is to identify your company’s stakeholders. You can consider three categories of stakeholders:

1. Those who will be managing the community. For external facing communities, this group of stakeholders may include the community manager, marketing department, and/or customer support. The stakeholders may vary greatly for internal communities.
2. Those who will be impacted by the community. If your community is external facing, marketing is generally involved because the answers you are seeking will have the most impact on them. If there is feedback from the community regarding product improvements, product management may also be involved.
3. Upper management. This stakeholder is the person who is responsible for the community and all that are affected by it. Usually, an executive could be an operations manager or a CMO who oversee all digital experiences.

Another way to go about identifying stakeholders is to lump the role of the community manager along with the social media management role. Your marketing team, operations department, customer service, or perhaps a specially created department may be put in charge of the community launch. In this instance, each department is likely to put focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) that are meaningful to them.

Marketing KPIs

• Market share
• Customer sentiment
• Mobilizing influencers and advocates
• NPS: Net Promoter Score

Operations

• Operational efficiency
• Reducing support costs

Customer Service

• CSAT: Customer Satisfaction Score
• NPS

Product Management

• Product testing
• Market research
• Beta testing
• Customer feedback

Typically, only one person will be tasked with the community launch. However, by leveraging resources and other talent within your company, your launch can be less stressful and more successful.

4. Set up your community.

Making a decision on what platform to use for your community is the first step. If you are launching the community on your own or taking a team approach, you will want to make sure that you or your team are familiar with the software you will be using. This is a good opportunity to play with a demo or go through some hands-on training.

After you and your team have a good understanding of the software you’ll be using, you can move on to making some setup decisions. These include:

• Keeping your community pre-launch private. You do not want outsiders having access to your community until you are ready, so make sure to enable your privacy settings.
• Displaying a list of recent discussions for the forum on the “homepage view.” New members or first time visitors may be more apt to join in the discussion if they see what is trending in your community.
• Creating your initial categories. Remember, your initial category list is not carved in stone and you should avoid creating too many categories at the start. Keep it simple and let your categories evolve. This will help keep a handle on discussion noise.
• Reviewing the sign-up process for members. The easier the process is, the more likely people will want to sign up for your community. You should consider a setting up a single sign-on (SSO). It is also important to thoroughly test your sign-up process before the pre-launch.
• Defining the roles your staff and members. Decide what roles will be included within your community, such as moderators or super members. Consider who on your staff will be the community’s admin, moderators, or community manager.
• Assigning permissions for roles. You will need to assign and test permissions to the roles you create. For example, you may restrict new accounts from posting pictures or links.
• Deciding which features will be enabled. This includes plug-ins, add-ons, and other features that are integrated into your online forum. Some features may not be needed right away, but others may be crucial to getting your team the data they need.
• Setting up gamification. Start thinking about the perks you want to reward your members with. This could be badges or other types of recognition for different achievements, such as being a beta-tester.
• Implementing your theme. You will want to tie your forum into your brand. Do not settle for impersonal default settings. For example, utilize your company’s color scheme and add other personal touches.
• Configuring spam controls. Take advantage of your software’s spam controls. Test the controls against a baseline of your trusted users. Adjust the settings as needed if you find that valid content is being labeled as spam.
• Setting up outgoing email. Decide what email address will be used for forum notifications. Review your welcome and registration emails to make sure they say what you want.
• Testing. You need to test everything before over and over until you are happy with all the parts of your forum. As you get closer to launch-time, your testing should become more stringent. Consider all types of probably scenarios and prepare yourself beforehand that not everything will be perfect. Get ready to decide on a launch date.

5. Begin a soft launch.

Once you are satisfied with the workings on your community, it is time to get ready for a soft launch. The purpose of a soft launch is to get your community ready for your full and public launch.

A great example of a soft launch is from BigFish Games with the introduction of their new game: Dungeon Boss. While preparing for the launch, they placed their app in the Apple Canada store and drove users to their community forum in a closed and private environment. They got a lot of customer feedback, some of which was incorporated into the Dungeon Boss game title. Consequently, when they launched worldwide, it became one of their most downloaded games.

Your soft launch should occur in three stages:

1. Preparing for the Soft-Launch

At this point, your community should be ready to be launched. All test content has been removed and any known issues have been fixed or have been scheduled to be fixed. It is time to pre-populate your community with quality content that will spark discussion and make good use of your existing content. Start off with at least 10 discussions using your existing material. Recruit your colleagues to get the ball rolling with these discussions. Tone is important, so you will want to set the right tone before moving on to the internal soft-launch.

2. Internal Soft-Launch

The purpose of the internal soft-launch is to identify problems using trusted people from your organization, colleagues, and friends before your forum goes public. While they are trying out your community, they can provide you with valuable feedback and report errors they find before moving to the full launch. This phase will allow your moderators an opportunity to learn how to use the tools that will be used in your forum. Any training deficiencies should be addressed and additional training provided if needed. Request feedback from your internal users. Then, set a deadline to move to the next phase: your public soft-launch.

3. Public Soft-Launch

This launch should be limited to a select audience that you will encourage to give you feedback on your new community forum. To form this group, try requesting volunteers from trusted customers, creating a banner on your website, or including a mention of it in your company newsletter. During your public soft-launch, address the following questions:

• Who should you include in this group?
• What problems do you want to solve while in this beta stage?
• What is needed to transition the community to live status
• What is your hard deadline to take your community to fully live?

Your goals should include:

• Getting the public involved
• Refining your community
• Receiving feedback
• Ensuring that your moderators and team are comfortable with the platform

6. Promote your community.

Once you have your date set, it’s time to get the word out to your target audience. The best way to do this is to take advantage of your existing presence online. Promote your launch all over your website, through email communications, and by having your sales team and customer service reps tell your existing and potential customers about the launch.

Here are some more tips that will help you drive the first 100 members to your community:

• Invite your contacts. No, it’s not always fun to bombard your family members, friends, or professional contacts about something you’re working on … but it works.
• Discuss with everyone and anyone. Get in the habit of talking to people everywhere you go, especially if your community is centered around a broad product or service that has value for many people.
• Enlist the help of new members through gamification. Ask your growing, early group to help you broaden the network by inviting their friends, colleagues, and digital connections. You can encourage this through contests or reward systems integrated into your platform.
• Partner with influencers. Collaborating with a related and complementary company can be an effective way to promote your new community and welcome new members who like both products and services.

Being one of the best professional networks, LinkedIn is a hub of job seekers and potential hires. You can post your job opportunities to find the best talent, source potential candidates, as well as build your professional network.

In addition to this, you can leverage LinkedIn to present your company as the best place to work for your potential hires. You can speak about your company culture with the help of photos, videos or gifs. You can also share blog posts written by your employees on your LinkedIn page and showcase your talented team and rich company values to your potential candidates.

A strong employer branding helps you in delivering the right message to your target candidates. With the help of your recruiting team, you can plan out your employer value proposition and take the required steps for effective recruitment marketing. You can depict to your potential hires how it is to work for your company and help them in making an informed decision.

Whether it is your company website or your career website or social media platform like LinkedIn, your employer brand speaks for your organization. Building your employer brand on LinkedIn should be an ongoing activity. Read this blog to learn how to build your employer brand on LinkedIn.

Best Employer Branding Examples on LinkedIn

Many companies today have successfully implemented the right employer branding strategies to build their employer brand and attract the right talent. In this blog, you will find the best examples of companies who are doing their best to strengthen their employer branding on LinkedIn.

1. Canva

Canva simplified the complex process of designing professional images with their easy-to-use online designing tool. It offers you thousands of design templates to simplify the task of designing images for you.

Canva’s LinkedIn Page is as engaging and interesting as their careers site. They are making the best use of their LinkedIn page to showcase their company culture and attract the best talent for their jobs. In addition to having a dedicated section to jobs, their LinkedIn page also has a section showcasing life at Canva HQ. This certainly boosts their employer branding efforts by a great deal.

Canva’s LinkedIn page offers a glimpse of their work environment, company culture and what they have in store for their employees. Firstly, they share informative blogs about interview tips, resume writing, personal branding and much more. Secondly, they give the authorship of their blog to their employees and ask them to share their experience working at Canva.

In addition to sharing the news about the company’s achievements and festivity wishes, Canva has adopted a new way of promoting their job openings. They share an amazing video along with their job openings on LinkedIn. These job ads certainly make Canva stand out and boost their employer branding.

2. Spreetail

Spreetail is a successful eCommerce website delivering a great shopping experience to their customers. They deal with selling products for the styling and redecorating of homes and gardens.

Spreetail’s Career Page gives us visual proof about how much they value their employees. Employee happiness and satisfaction is something that Spreetail does really well. They give prospective job seekers a glimpse of how it is to work for them.

As we all know, LinkedIn is one of the best professional networks to find the top talent for your roles. Spreetail leverages their LinkedIn page to advertise their job openings. They craft their job ads with clear and concise job descriptions speaking about the role and responsibilities in simple language.

3. HubSpot

HubSpot helps businesses simplify their sales and marketing efforts with a host of tools like search engine optimization tools, content management tools, social media marketing tools, and a Sales CRM.

The hiring team leverages the company’s LinkedIn page effectively to promote themselves as an employer of choice. Their employer branding strategies are fresh, creative and innovative. The HubSpot Team speaks about their company culture, the work-life as well as glimpses of their office environment on their LinkedIn page.

Just the way they have shared their culture code on their website, their LinkedIn page also has a short presentation of their company culture. They also showcase some engaging blogs written by the team as well as employee testimonials.

4. Slack

Slack is an instant messaging and file sharing platform that helps teams collaborate with each other seamlessly. Founded in the year 2009, Slack Technologies designed and developed Slack so that ambitious teams could work together.

Slack is an equal opportunity employer and believes in having a diverse workplace employing talented individuals from various backgrounds and experiences. The Slack Team is making the best use of its LinkedIn page to build their employer brand.

5. Zappos

Zappos.com is a leading eCommerce company selling apparel and footwear from thousands of brands online. Located in Las Vegas, Zappos has been growing since its inception in 1999. Currently, the Zappos family consists of approximately 1500 Zapponians.

Zappos.com is slaying at their employer branding efforts. Through their company’s LinkedIn page, Zapponians walk us through their brand, their company culture, and their beliefs. The lively office environment, the perks they offer and the amiable team make Zappos an employer of choice.

Zappos LinkedIn page is constantly updated with fresh content that boosts its employer brand by a great deal. In addition to sharing their active job openings, Zappos takes efforts to post pictures of their latest outings and events. Their LinkedIn page also mentions about their company culture in pictorial representations. Zapponians use quirky and funny captions in their posts which reflects their fun work environment and talented team.

Process

1. Update your Linkedin company page

When is the last time you took a look at the content on your Linkedin company page? Does it reflect your company’s mission or values? Are you proactively promoting the right content? Is it up to date? Answering these questions is the first step to leveraging Linkedin for your employer brand.

Data from Hootsuite shows that complete company pages receive 2X more visitors than those that are incomplete. This means something as simple as reviewing and updating your profile can give a quick boost to your employer brand.

2. Diversify your content

It’s important to keep a consistent tone to build your employer brand, but remember to diversify your content. On Linkedin, you can post updates, photos, videos and more. Be sure to use a diverse mix of content formats to keep your audience engaged. Linkedin is also a great place to display employee-generated content (EGC). Starbucks prioritizes ECG specifically with the #tobeapartner campaign which highlights their employee experience.

3. Share company culture content

People on Linkedin want to know about your business. It’s the perfect place to highlight your mission, employees, and culture. Instead of strictly using ads alone to promote your company, you can create content that gives users an inside look at your business. This increases the likelihood of organic engagement.

One company that does this well is Zendesk. When you visit their Linkedin page, you’ll see a great mix of business content and company culture content. The feed includes photos from charity events, meetings, and even holiday parties. They also use a branded hashtag to group these posts and make them easy to find on the platform.

4. Use sponsored content

Posting sponsored content is another way to boost your presence fast. It allows you to get your message in front of a targeted audience and ensure that you get more eyes on a post. However, you shouldn’t treat sponsored content the same way you treat other types of ads. You can use sponsored content on Linkedin to stand out and help your business reach specific goals.

5. Create a seamless candidate experience

Linkedin is likely the first place many candidates will go to when they want to learn about your business. Having great content on your page and on Linkedin contributes to building a strong brand.

6. Encourage employee advocacy

Remember, your employees’ individual Linkedin profiles also contribute to your employer brand. If your employees are active and have a complete profile, it shows that they’re engaged at work. This can make your company more attractive to potential employees and have a positive impact on company culture. All of these can help you build a strong presence on the platform.

Facebook marketing refers to creating and actively using a Facebook page as a communications channel to maintain contact with and attract customers. Facebook actively provides for this, allowing users to create individual profiles or business pages for companies, organizations, or any group attempting to develop a fan base for a product, service, or brand.

Facebook as a platform for growing your business:

• Has global coverage. Over 1,5 billion users visit Facebook daily. About 2,3 billion every month. More than 7 million active companies create ads for this massive audience.
• Offers highly targeted paid ads. With Facebook Ads, you can tailor your promotions to a specific audience based on gender, age, location, job, interests any demographical or behavioral data, which users willingly share with Facebook.
• Makes organic reach possible. If you don’t have resources to utilize Facebook Ads, build relationships organically by sharing materials that bring value to people on your Facebook page. Your posts will show up in the newsfeed, though the high level of competition will make it harder to build an audience naturally.
• Allows integrations with other marketing channels. Facebook marketing is not a single isolated system. You can combine it with other marketing channels, like email marketing, mobile marketing, search engine marketing, and Facebook Messenger ads, to develop a promotion mix that will increase your brand outreach.

Featuring nearly a billion potential customers, every business should be using Facebook. It is at least as essential as having a business web page and actually much easier to create. Whether you represent a big brand or a small business employing only a handful of people, you can bet that some portion of your customers are already on Facebook. Commonly, Facebook marketing is used by:

• Food, electronics, home goods, restaurants nearly any kind of brand can be promoted through Facebook, turning passive customers into active fans who follow news of promotions and developments, and who share with their own friends.
• Local businesses. Whether a business is family-owned, or a franchise of a larger company, a Facebook page can be used to turn a local customer base into a fan base that more commonly visits your store.
• Musicians, celebrities, authors, syndicated columnists anybody who makes their money through being known wants to be known by as many people as they can on Facebook.
• Non-profit organizations. Charities, political groups, and public service campaigns can all leverage the natural sharing capabilities of Facebook.

Internet Marketing Managers

• Promote company engagement with social media, including Facebook
• Coordinate Internet marekting campaigns, including Facebook, Twitter, company blogs and websites, and affiliate programs
• Establish goals and metrics for marketing efforts through Facebook, and evaluate success
• Assign and monitor teams to create content for the company’s Facebook page

Advertising and Promotional Managers

• Develop promotional videos and other content that can be posted to a company website, and shared through Facebook
• Create advertising slogans to represent products and brands
• Manage specific promotional assignments, such as conducting an online contest for Facebook fans
• Advertise internally as well as externally, so that a company’s employees are more likely to become a part of the company’s Facebook fan base

Public Relations Managers

• Write short-form press releases to post to a company’s Facebook page
• Identify trending attitudes towards a company, and craft messages to respond
• Develop spotlight stories for particular people or products within the company, which can be shared on the company Facebook page, among other places
• Develop a narrative for the company

Benefits

• Precise targeting. You already know that Facebook allows users to deeply segment their audience but let’s take a closer look at the options available. Within demographic targeting, you can select an audience with a particular income, education level, life events, relationship status, or job. You can look for customers, taking into account their interests, such as their preferred entertainment, sports, hobbies, and shopping habits. Also, you can reach clients based on purchase behaviors, intent, device usage, etc.
• Increased website traffic. With this platform, you can drive your audience directly to your website. Moreover, these people will be higher quality leads than users who land on your site organically because they already know your company. Hence, you have more credibility in their minds. Encourage your followers to visit your site to find out more about your products. Besides, when linking to a site, Facebook generates a full-size image if your site page has one. So, it will attract many users’ attention and help you boost website traffic.
• Variety of ad formats. Facebook provides businesses with excellent opportunities that allow them to showcase their products from the best angles. Ads on this platform include both text and visual formats. You can boost your post by turning it into an ad, produce stories to show your behind-the-scenes, make a slideshow of your new collection, use carousel ads to demonstrate up to 10 products linking to the corresponding pages, etc.
• Customer support. A lot of people prefer to connect with a brand via social media. Phone calls have become a thing of the past. Create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger to communicate with users based on their popular queries keywords. They can include “price,” “delivery,” “payment options,” “purchase,” “book,” etc. You only need to develop a scenario based on users’ FAQs and write the answers. Your chatbot will imitate the real conversation. As a result, your support team will have time for more complicated issues and you can automate routine tasks.
• Positive impact on SEO. Some marketers claim that social media influences search rankings. It’s believed that robots take into account your data in the About section while ranking. Moreover, your social media engagement contributes a lot. Shares, likes, and comments tell Google that people are interested in your brand and engage with it. Although there is no exact proof, it isn’t superfluous either.

A Twitter marketing strategy is a plan centered around creating, publishing, and distributing content for your buyer personas, audience, and followers through the social media platform. The goal of this type of strategy is to attract new followers and leads, boost conversions, improve brand recognition, and increase sales.

Creating a Twitter marketing strategy will require you to follow the same steps you would if you were creating any other social media marketing strategy.

• Research your buyer personas and audience
• Create unique and engaging content
• Organize a schedule for your posts
• Analyze your impact and results

1. Customize and brand your profile.

When someone looks at your company’s Twitter profile, you want them to automatically know it’s yours. Meaning you should customize and brand your Twitter profile with your logo, colors, and any other recognizable and memorable details you want to incorporate. There are a few locations in which you can customize your profile.

• Handle: Your Twitter handle is your username (for example, our handle is @hubspot) this should include your company’s name so your followers, customers, and fans can easily search and find you on the platform. You create your Twitter handle when you sign up for an account.
• Header: The header on your Twitter profile is your background image. You might choose to create a unique image for your header, use your logo, or another branded image.
• Profile picture: Your Twitter profile picture represents your company’s every move, interaction, post, and tweet on the platform. It’s the image that sits above your bio and might include a picture of your logo, company’s initials, or CEO.
• Bio: A Twitter bio provides everyone who visits your profile with a brief synopsis of what they’re about to see in 160 characters or less. It might include your mission statement, a blurb about what your company does, or something humorous and engaging.
• Website URL: Beneath your profile picture and bio, there’s a location where you can include your URL to direct traffic straight to your website.
• Birthday: In the same location as your URL, you can insert your company’s birthday or the day when the company was founded, so your audience gets to know your business on a more personal level.

2. Create Twitter Lists.

A Twitter List which any user has the ability to create and view is an organized group of Twitter accounts you’ve selected and put together in specific categories. For example, at HubSpot, lists include Leadership Experts, Top Marketing Experts, Top Business Podcasters, and more. When you open a Twitter List, you only see tweets posted by the accounts on the list.

Twitter Lists are great if you want to follow only specific accounts. You might segment your lists into groups such as business inspiration, competitors, and target audience so you’re able to easily review their posts, interactions, and content.

3. Host a Twitter Chat.

You can schedule and host a Twitter chat to engage your followers, discuss a topic, create a sense of community, and ask your audience for their opinions or input on something you’re working on.

To host a Twitter Chat (or TweetChat), you’ll need to choose a topic, set a time and date for the chat to occur, and create a hashtag for the chat. You can share this information with your followers in a tweet, on your website, in your Twitter bio, and wherever else you choose.

4. Advertise on Twitter.

Advertising through Twitter is a great way to reach your audience. This will make your tweets easily discoverable by thousands of people, helping you increase your influence and following. You can do this through promoted tweets or Twitter Ads.

Promoted Tweets

Promoted tweets make your tweets appear in the Twitter streams or Twitter search results of specific users. This is a great option for anyone looking to get more people on a specific webpage. Your business will pay a monthly fee as long as you’re promoting a tweet.

Twitter will put your promoted tweets in a daily campaign targeting the type of audience you want to reach as previously indicated in your settings. All Twitter users have the ability to interact and engage with Twitter Ads the same way they would with your organic content.

Twitter Ads

Twitter Ads is a great option if you’re using different types of tweets to achieve one goal for your business. It’s ideal if you’re looking to grow your base of followers and brand awareness significantly through the platform.

Your business can decide between different objectives when it comes to your Twitter ads including app installs, video views, and website conversions, as well as audience targeting for your campaigns. This decision will impact the price you’ll need to pay to run your ad.

5. Drive traffic to your website.

Twitter can help you direct traffic to your website there are a number of ways to include your website’s URL on your profile as well as add links to your web pages and blogs in your tweets. Here are some ways you can use the platform to direct traffic to your website to help you increase your conversions and sales.

• Add your website URL beneath your bio on your Twitter profile.
• Incorporate links to your website in your tweets.
• Retweet any content that includes direct links to your website and/ or blogs other people have shared.
• Embed tweets on your website with a Twitter Timeline.
• Set up Twitter Ads to drive users to a specific landing page on your site.

6. Use Twitter Moments.

Twitter Moments are collections of tweets about a specific topic or event. They’re like a “best of” collection of tweets regarding your topic of choice. For example, Twitter’s Moments section includes “Today”, “News”, “Entertainment”, and “Fun.”

7. Get verified on Twitter.

You might choose to apply to get your Twitter profile verified depending on the size of your company and your industry. Twitter states they typically only accept requests for account verification if you’re in “music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas.” If Twitter accepts your application and verifies your profile, a badge with a blue checkmark inside of it will appear next to your handle. This symbolizes an authentic account.

Marketing

• Use keyword targeting in your Twitter Ads
• Implement hashtags
• Organize a content sharing schedule
• Create a Twitter campaign
• Write a strong profile bio
• Use images and videos
• Interact with your followers
• Share media mentions
• Keep an eye on your competitors’ Twitter accounts
• Focus on followers’ interests and needs when creating content
• Promote your events
• Check your direct messages regularly
• Keep track of your analytics