What a Profitable Social Media Marketing Strategy Looks Like (with 4 Real Examples)

We’ve come a long way in the last few years. Back in 2011, the biggest question that people were asking was if social was profitable. Since then, industry conversation has moved from ‘will I see an ROI’ to ‘how to measure social ROI’ and the tools that can help.

Yet, only 15% marketers have proven the impact of social media quantitatively. If you aren’t part of that 15% there could be two potential hitches – you aren’t working with a sound strategy, or you aren’t measuring the right metrics.

[ A sound strategy = targeted content + the right channels]

To eliminate the first possibility, let us study profitable social media content marketing strategies and compare them to our own.

1. ShipServ

Who’d have thought that a maritime e-commerce company would seize the social media opportunity and win at it? Shipping companies seem unlikely to be seeking information on social media, but ShipServ saw this differently. Since no one in their industry had conquered the social space, they moved in full force and established thought leadership in it.

ShipServ supplies software to support shipping companies and connects the industry’s vendors to buyers. In 2008, they were struggling with a host of marketing problems. They were selling technology to people who didn’t consider it necessary and on a limited budget. Creating that change in perception would be a huge task.

They began by studying their audience’s content consumption. They identified keyword themes to work with and planned a quarterly content and SEO strategy. A series of original content was promoted through a host of social media channels, driving traffic back to the main site. The channels they used included their blog, newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and podcasts. They also ran a white-paper series and created a LinkedIn group.

The result?

400% more leads

150% more contact to lead conversions

3 month break even on the social media investment

(Source)

Takeaway tactics

1) Study your audience. One thing that people forget to do is to study how an audience consumes content, where exactly the look for it and what they look for.

2) Consider your content competition when building out a social strategy. One of the social media marketing mistakes that people make is blind-sighting content competition. ShipServ boomed on social because none of its competitors were on it yet. You need to identify a platform that has your audience and isn’t already monopolized by your competition. You need to share content with a unique value proposition.

2. Lyfe Kitchen

For a food industry product, social media marketing may seem like the clear-cut solution. But Lyfe Kitchen is B2B, a restaurant and grocery product line. A few years ago, this company wanted to increase word of mouth on social media and rapidly expand into new supermarkets. What should their approach have been?

The company ran influencer marketing programs, but with a slightly unconventional approach. They chose influencers who belonged to their high-potential target audience across industries – health and fitness, sports, the fashion world, and moms. In addition to this effort, the company also did tastings for a national sports company and magazine editors. The sports management company loved the product so much that they convinced their clients (sports celebs) to get on board. The editors wrote articles and talked about the product on social media.

The result?

Their product distribution grew from 400 to 1400 stores within a few months of the effort. The expansion was a result of direct requests to stock the product.

(Source)

Takeaway tactics

1) Tap into every vertical of your target audience. Don’t restrict yourself to one target demographic or group. Consider all possible consumers when creating your social media content or planning a marketing strategy.

This company considered influencers across so many verticals, from health and fitness to the fashion industry. They even included influential moms, who may have been instrumental in getting distribution to local supermarkets.

2) Look beyond the conventional. Don’t tunnel vision your marketing strategy. If you think laterally you may be able to accomplish more than just your major objective.

For instance, Lyfe Kitchen could have sent free samples to influencers or interacted with them separately. Turning the activity into an event provided a unique PR opportunity, and to make the Lyfe Kitchen experience more memorable and exciting for potential influencers.

3. Crate and Barrel

Crate and Barrel is a chain of American retail stores that sell home furnishings. Wait, so why did they create the ultimate wedding contest? Well, they did it to drive gift registry creation and engage new consumers in the process of it.

Participants were required to create a gift registry with Crate and Barrel to enter the contest (Note: A requirement like this one to enter a contest often introduces legal complexities). After verification of the registry, the participants could move on to the next stage – submission of a photograph and some answers to questions. The contest was then judged by public voting and a panel to pick the winner of a $100,000 fantasy wedding.

The contest was promoted on the company’s website, on-site in their stores and by advertisement.

The result?

Over 17,000 applicants, each with a minimum registry value of $2,000 (a net value of $34 million)

Direct access and engagement with the participants wedding guests, potential new customers

(Source)

Takeaway tactics

1) Craft marketing strategies that target both current customers, and new customers through them.

Crate and Barrel could have simply worked with the contest applicants, but the registry angle increased their reach exponentially (Please consider legal complexities before creating a campaign of this sort).

The simplest version of this tactic is to share the contest post to enter (which will give you access to your audience’s connections).

2) Make your unique value proposition exciting. A dream wedding of that value was certain to attract large application numbers. It was also compelling enough to make applicants want to get through stage one – the registry.

4. IBM

The popularity of ad blockers tells us this – people are growing immune to advertisement. In this market scenario, how do you reach your target audience? How do make someone willing to consume your content?

At IBM, it is all about people. The focus isn’t on the corporate blog or Twitter id, but the people who make the company. IBM has over 17,000 internal blogs, and a 100,000 active bloggers running that community. People are more likely to listen to other people than they are to a faceless brand.

IBM trains its social champions. They call themselves IBMers, and they are given the tools necessary to build a powerful social media presence. Thousands of people identify themselves as IBMers on Twitter and LinkedIn. I was surprised to see that the company culture remains with employees even when they leave IBM.

The result?

Over $100 million in crowdfunding

Over 40% in gross profit revenues

(Source)

Takeaway tactics

1) Invest in people. Employees, partners, well-wishers. There are over 40 studies to prove that they are more influential than official brand accounts on social media.

2) Use an employee advocacy platform to help your employees share your content on social. Build a powerful employee advocacy program that can achieve incredible reach and drive impact for your brand.

How to Be Profitable While Marketing on Social Media

So far, we have broken down profitable social media marketing strategies for insights. Now let us explore the basic framework that a social strategy requires to be profitable. Here five tips to help you implement a solid and returning social media marketing strategy.

1. Create awareness

2, Blog

3. Focus on the right platform

4. Collect and use audience data

5. Engage with your audience

1. Create awareness

Irrespective of your industry, brand awareness should be on your plan. Your target audience should be aware of the need for your product/service, what concerns of theirs it addresses and why they should choose your brand over others. Ensure that your business is known for something.

Begin by building a solid social media presence.

Organize your blog

Optimize your social media accounts

Participate in the relevant social media communities

Social media success depends on the value you create. You have to give away substantial value to succeed in a market where so much of it is already free. Do it HubSpot style, help potential clients achieve results by sharing free insights from your experience. Several companies see returns from their credibility and reputation on social media.

2. Blog

People seek help on the internet, and social media. It is no surprise that ‘How to’ is a heavily searched term. Your blog could be a powerful platform to field and answer queries that your target audience has. Like we discussed in the ShipServ case study, it is good to know exactly what they are asking first.

Share your expertise (make it unique)

Partner with bloggers and industry experts to create more value

Spend 20% of your time creating blog content, and 80% of it distributing it (on social, in email newsletters)

Your blog is an anchor to pull and hold your social media traffic. Ensure that the loop is complete though. Write blog posts that drive people to purchase your product/services. You don’t have to be promotional about it, you only have to show readers its use cases.

3. Focus on the right platform

Every platform you build a presence on is an investment of your time and money. Look at your budgeting as a mathematical equation. The variables (spends on each platform) on the left add up to the maximum budget that you have on the right.

Prioritize your platforms by their ROI

Accordingly allocate resources to your prioritized platforms

Track your progress and optimize your spends each month/quarter

Sometimes, the cost of work on a platform doesn’t justify what you earn out of it. In such a scenario, you could de-prioritize that platform and push something else up the priority list. Optimizing your effort and spends in this manner can help increase your overall social media ROI.

4. Collect and use audience data

Google Analytics has a module called ‘audience insights’. Based on visitor data, the module helps you understand more about who you are targeting and helps you identify the groups that you aren’t targeting yet. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter also give you demographics and user interests so you can build an informed content strategy.

Pull audience insights from Google and social media platforms

Keep the insights in mind when creating your content marketing strategy

Tailor content on each social media platform based on its audience demographics

Your audience will make a move only when encouraged by exactly the right content. The more you know about them and the more you consciously use that information, the better your conversions are likely to be.

5. Engage with your audience

There are many ways in which you can engage your social media audience. While you should engage them on your platforms, you should also go beyond them to target your potential audience. They don’t have to be consumers, they can be partners or simply enthusiasts.

Target communities, forums, websites and blogs that are popular in your industry

Don’t sell before your audience is ready. Begin by being useful to them regardless

Engage with your target market and people who have access to them

Consistency is key in a community. You have to establish yourself as an expert and really become part of your community. Becoming a thought-leader us even more effective, but that requires staying ahead of trends and covering the evolution of your niche.

It is possible to generate ample revenue from your social media pages alone, but you require clarity in terms of your goals and plan of implementation. With the right tactics, partners and tools, you can surprise yourself with your social media results.

Image credit: Pixabay.com

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The Top 25 Tools Every Successful Blogger Needs

If you’re trying to make money by blogging, you need to promote and drive traffic to your website through an online marketing strategy. Add these 25 tools to your blogging arsenal to create quality content and accomplish your marketing goals.

Blogging Tools

First and foremost, you need to craft content your audience will enjoy and share. These tools will help you create, edit, and analyze your content.

Google Drive

As a blogger, you’ll have several files, drafts, and ideas floating around your computer. Keep all of your media, documents, and content in one place with Google Drive. If you work with other bloggers or colleagues, this is an excellent tool for collaborating and organizing campaigns, as well.

Grammarly

No one is perfect, not even top bloggers. We all make mistakes, but we don’t want to publish our errors online. Before you hit the looming “Publish” button, run your content through Grammarly. This free grammar checker will catch glaring spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes and also offer suggestions to improve your work.

Hemingway App

In the world of blogging, you want your writing to stand out from the crowd. The Hemingway App helps you fine-tune your content and cut out the fluff. Those who want to improve their writing chops derive a great deal of value from using Hemingway.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Arguably one of the hardest parts of blogging is finding the perfect headline. A headline must be catchy, SEO-friendly, and intriguing enough to drive traffic to your blog. Rely on CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to discover headlines that work for your audience and search engines alike.

BuzzSumo

Understanding what topics and types of content generate top social media engagement is vital information for bloggers. BuzzSumo is an in-depth blogging tool designed to help writers discover relevant topics, top influencers, and other key data including social media insights. Bloggers also use this tool for content inspiration by researching competitors and trends.

Canva

Everyone knows blog content must also be intriguing to the eye. Canva allows bloggers to easily create stunning visuals for blog posts, social media, and other content. The tool also provides simple tutorials for those who need help along the way.

SEO Tools

Once you’ve created your content, you must optimize it to rank well on search engines. These SEO toolsare used by blogging professionals to increase website traffic, improve search rankings, and analyze their content’s performance.

Google Analytics

Every blogger must have a Google Analytics account. This versatile tool offers insight into your website’s performance, traffic acquisition, and audience. Bloggers use Google Analytics to discover what channels their traffic is coming from, how long people stay on their website, and where their readers are located.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin used to optimize a website and blog content for search engines. Everything from the technical aspects of SEO to improving the readability of a page can be accomplished using this handy plugin.

Google Keyword Planner

If you want to rank on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, you need to know what your audience is searching for. Google Keyword Planner provides expansive information about keywords, search trends, and more to amplify your content marketing efforts.

Keywordtool.io

Another popular keyword research tool is Keywordtool.io. Using Google’s autocomplete feature, this tool assists bloggers in identifying potential keywords for their blog content. Best of all, this tool is completely free!

Moz Open Site Explorer

To generate a wealth of traffic to a blog, you must have quality backlinks directing people to your website. However, some of these links may also be malicious or damaging. Moz Open Site Explorer shows bloggers what links are pointing to their website along with other crucial link information.  

SEMRush

Bloggers looking to advance their search engine optimization efforts should subscribe to SEMRush. As one of the leading SEO tools, SEMRush provides in-depth analytics, competitor research, display advertising information, and so much more. Bloggers will have an abundance of search marketing information at their disposal with this tool.

Social Media Tools

Bloggers are especially active on social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. To maximize their audience engagement and content distribution on these platforms, bloggers rely on these tools:

Social Sharing Bars

With the goal of offering readers a simple way to share content, the majority of blogs use a social sharing bar or buttons embedded in or near their content. If you look to the left of this article, you’ll notice a social sharing toolbar on our blog. These widgets entice readers to share the content with their friends and followers online.

To add this capability to your blog, use one of these social sharing tools and WordPress plugins:

• AddtoAny
• Social Warfare
• SumoShare
• Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

Once you install any of these social sharing tools on your blog, remind readers to use it!

Social Media Scheduling Tools

Bloggers are also responsible for distributing their own blog content and engaging with fans on various social media platforms. As you might imagine, this can be quite cumbersome. To speed up the process, bloggers schedule their social media posts in advance using a variety of tools. These social media scheduling tools allow you to create posts for specific platforms and assign when you’d like it to publish.

Top social media scheduling tools include:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SproutSocial
• Everypost
• Crowdfire
• Tailwind

Take advantage of these tools by scheduling as much content in advance as possible. This leaves you with ample time to create more content and interact with your followers.

Email Marketing Tools

Another way to drive readers to your blog content is through email marketing. From regular newsletters to announcements, email marketing keeps your audience informed and engaged.

To start your email marketing campaigns, you must collect email addresses from interested readers. WP Subscribe and Optin Forms are both excellent choices for creating subscriber forms for your blog. These forms should be strategically placed throughout your website to entice readers to sign-up.

Once you’ve collected enough subscribers, you can create and send emails through tools like Constant Contact. Remember to only send your subscribers top quality content—never spam!

Bonus Tool: WordPress

We recommend that all bloggers use WordPress to create and manage their blog. WordPress is a versatile content management system that gives bloggers complete control over their content, tools, and website design.

Over to you! What blogging tools do you use? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Right Way to Think About Google

 Oops, they did it again.

Our friend Google caused a panicked rumble through the tech world late Monday afternoon, when they announced they’d be restructuring under a new holding company called Alphabet.

Never mind that this is something companies do all the time. Never mind that there’s no reason to think it will change what’s happening with search in any way. Never mind the weird, April-Fools-looking new domain.

Google can’t really do “normal things,” because every time they make even a small visible change, most of us wonder,

What will this do to my rankings?

Why the collective jumping at shadows? Well, because if your business depends on your search rankings — and we’ll talk about that in a minute — you probably have a certain amount of Google-induced stress disorder.

Key elements change. Abruptly. And secretly. And you’re left scrambling to pick up the mess.

And to be honest, it can get right on your last nerve.

But if it causes you more than a few moments of irritation, you may benefit from shifting the way you think about the web’s favorite 800-pound gorilla.

Here’s how I’ve learned to think about Google (courtesy of advice from Copyblogger’s founder, Brian Clark). Which means when they pull stunts like this — and they do, with some regularity — my pain is limited to a few curse words and some moderate tweaking.

I have five rules for keeping my sanity when dealing with Google.

Rule 1: “What’s my plan if this goes away tomorrow?”

Any time you use a tool from Google (or from any third party you have no control over), this question will help you.

Sooner rather than later, ask yourself what your backup plan is — if and when the tool (or your search ranking, for that matter) dissolves overnight.

You’ll notice that Brian asked and answered this question publicly about the Authorship program way back in April, 2013 — making us all look like Big Damn Heroes when Authorship did, in fact, blow up.

Did we think that would happen? Actually, we didn’t.

Were we prepared when it did? You know it.

Ask yourself right now what you’ll do if Facebook disappears tomorrow, or Twitter, or your Google search results position, or your pay-per-click campaign.

When tools and programs disappear in the online world, they often do so literally overnight. You need a solid plan in place for when that happens.

Rule 2: Google owes you nothing

Ranking in the search engines is not a civil right.

You don’t “deserve” to have your content found by Google. (Or Bing, or Yahoo, or anywhere else.) That’s not a service that Google has promised you.

Weirdly enough, Google won’t even promise you that they’ll accept large amounts of your money to run advertising on their AdWords platform. They can take that away any time as well. Without necessarily giving you a reason.

Too often, we think that because we put a ton of work into being found on the search engines, that we are somehow entitled to that juicy position on the results page. It doesn’t work that way.

The greater your sense of entitlement about what companies like Google owe you, the more frustration and anger you’ll feel when you get smacked. Which you will, if you’re in the game long enough.

Rule 3: You owe Google nothing

You also don’t work for Google. They don’t send you a paycheck or have you under contract.

Whether or not you want to abide by their thoughts on best practices is completely up to you — and you should make that decision like an adult, weighing the pros and cons and keeping Google in its proper perspective.

Spending hours picking apart every syllable Matt Cutts may utter, trying to understand what he thinks the definition of is is, and making violent changes to your business model because Cutts mentioned he likes or doesn’t like something, is a sucker bet.

Refer back to Rule #2. It doesn’t matter how many hoops you jump through. Whether or not you do everything “the way Google wants,” (which you usually have to guess at, because they have no interest in telling you), they don’t owe you that search result.

As I’m fond of saying, Google is a lot like that really mean girl from high school. Your best shot at getting her to like you is to ignore her while you go about getting social sharing, links, and publicity because you’re trying to reach people. The less you care about what she thinks, the better light she tends to see you in — because real people already like you.

(And if she never gives you the time of day? Meh, you don’t need her anyway. Truly.)

Rule 4: Use the tool for what it’s good for

None of this is to say that having a good search result isn’t helpful. It can be, especially for some topics and business models.

We earlier recommended including the Authorship markup on content because it was quick and easy to do with Genesis, and the potential looked promising.

All of our SEO recommendations work that way. If you can tweak your content without messing it up for your human readers, and without putting every hour of your day into it, go ahead and do that. Use a few simple tools that will let you get your content optimized efficiently.

And if your company has the resources to hire a strong team that devotes all of its time to search, that’s fine as well. But don’t do it if you can’t genuinely afford it, and don’t do it if you can’t weather the inevitable storms.

Recognize that search is a long game. Put it in its proper place. Use other ways to connect with and engage your audience. And if a great search placement shows up over time, that’s terrific.

Rule 5: Serve the audience first

This is the granddaddy of them all.

Google robots don’t have credit cards. They can’t buy your product or service.

Instead of trying to serve Google, serve the people who will eventually become your customers. Create content that interests them and meets their needs. Make it useful. Make it entertaining. Give it some real time and attention.

The audience is where everything good comes from. Google is just one way for that audience to find you.

P.S. Same as it ever was

A slightly different version of this post was originally published in September 2014, when Google had just killed the Authorship program. And it might get republished later, when they do something else that causes a collective heart attack.

We created a new image, and I wrote a new introduction. After the words “you’re left scrambling to pick up the mess,” the only edits I made were changing the word this to it and adding a quick clarifying phrase in the first point.

Why do I point this out? Because nothing’s changed, and nothing is likely to change.

Google is going to shift. Sometimes abruptly. That doesn’t mean you need to go along for the ride. Develop a sustainable approach, and leave the panic attacks and the dysfunction behind.

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How to Make Sure Automation Is a Game-Saver Not a Deal-Breaker

THE concept of automation refers to the usage of tools or software to help marketers with their daily tasks, which can often be repetitive and time consuming. As such, automation in internet marketing represents a perfect way to handle more tasks in less time, which makes marketers more efficient and more focused on some other creative tasks.

However, one can never be too careful with automation, as it’s a thin line between automation being a game-saver and becoming a deal-breaker. While online tools help you automate tasks that can help you save the day and do much more than you would have been able to without the usage of the tools, the reality is that this can quickly turn into a missed opportunity to generate leads, as you fail to establish a personalized relationship with your target audience.

Be careful about the types of tasks you optimize

The most common types of tasks that are automated include social media marketing, email marketing and lead generation. Since the tasks involve a lot of repetitive activities, performed daily, it’s completely reasonable to use software that will do the tasks on your behalf. Using various types of automation tools and software available online, marketers get an opportunity to significantly reduce the time they spend on daily tasks, time that can be better invested into other creative processes and into development of company goals. In this sense, marketing automation has lately become a strategy most marketers turn to when they get overwhelmed by the extensive amount of daily tasks.

What some marketers tend to do is to automate most of the process, which is where the problem might occur. Automation helps you save a lot of time, but a task that is completely automated can soon start to seem out of context. For example, automation helps you share your blog content on social media regularly, where the automation software can share the content automatically for you based on the schedule you have set up. However, there is no way to automate the replies and interaction with social media users. If you focus your social media strategy solely on automated tasks and neglect establishing your presence through interaction, this can soon become a strategy that doesn’t generate results. This is why it is necessary to establish a perfect balance between automated and manually handled tasks.

Set up a plan of action

In order to make sure that marketing automation is profitable investment for your company, you need to set up a plan of action and decide which types of tasks you want to automate and which tools you want to use to achieve those tasks. Therefore, determining the goals you want to achieve through marketing automation is a necessary step in order to be able to analyze the performance you achieve through this process.

Some marketers choose to integrate automation process in their social media marketing, some choose email marketing as the best place to start, but regardless of the assignments, every marketer needs a plan in order to integrate automation into these processes successfully and really notice valuable gain from implementing automation into this activity.

Monitor the automation process

When you automate a certain task, such as email marketing, it is important to monitor this process on a regular basis. This means that you should go through the email templates and make sure everything is perfectly fine with the content inside the template, that your content is up-to-date, as well as that the message is in accordance with the overall business strategy. By doing so you increase the chance of users getting a message that is truly relevant, and this relevance of content will determine if you’ll be able to generate conversions or leads in your campaign.

In this case, you should consider automation a tool to help you reduce the time spent on email marketing, not as a way to avoid doing it completely, as this is the kind of approach that leads marketers into the situations where the strategy will fail to bring results and they are left wondering whether automation was even worth their time in the first place.

Analyze the performance of automation

Apart from monitoring, analysis of the automation process is also a crucial part of making this process a game-saver. The analysis of the performance you gain through automated activities helps you determine whether and to which extent they are paying off. If you notice great performance and considerable amount of conversions and leads generated through automated tasks, this means that you’re doing a great job, and this is a strategy that really suits your business model and the approach is perfectly aimed at your target group.

On the other hand, detecting poor performance is a signal that something is off and you need to act on it, as poorly designed automation process can be a deal-breaker, causing you not only to lose potential customers, but to potentially gain negative feedback from the online community. At this point, the next step is to determine why automation is failing for you. Perhaps you’re not sharing relevant content. Perhaps you’re not successful at engaging the audience and you struggle with poor click-through rate. Perhaps your timing is off. All of these are potential issues that might be causing poor performance.

Successful marketing automation

Finally, you need to understand that successful marketing automation is about concentrating on your customers and recognizing the fact that marketing automation is simply a way to scale success, which is necessarily based on a personalized approach and connection you are able to establish with your audience. Leveraging automation process in the purpose of learning more about your potential or current customers and being able to recognize their need is a step toward realizing that need and successfully fulfilling it. Once you’re able to do that, marketing automation becomes a game-saver and a way to fully exploit the potential this type of strategy provides.

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