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Are Branded Communities On Your Radar?

MAY 22, 2023

A branded community is a group of customers so invested in a brand that they regularly engage with branded content, connect with other fans, and create content for the brand. Here’s what you should know:

Community-led growth is a growing focus for businesses, with many identifying as “community-centric organizations” in 2022.
This year, more companies are projected to allocate resources to building year-round communities for multiple stakeholders.
The 2022 State of Community Management report showed that 88% of C-level executives had positive views towards community programs, up from 56% in 2017.
Community-based marketing (CBM) has gained momentum for its success in growing brand awareness, generating data, and nurturing connections with prospects, customers, and stakeholders.
McKinsey named community as the “big idea” in marketing for this decade.
Community aligns closely with influencer marketing and employee advocacy, with CEOs becoming high-profile online, and influencer partnerships and campaigns showing favorable outcomes.
Events and community are becoming more integrated, with a focus on providing pre, during, and post-event networking experience.

Dig in to all things CBM at Meltwater.

20 Inbound Trust Signals That Matter to Consumers

MAY 21, 2023

When it comes to consumer trust, these 20 inbound signals add up to the healthy growth of your brand:

Media coverage
Press releases
By-lined articles and op-eds
Blog guest posts
Sponsored content
Celebrity and influencer endorsements
Social media accounts
Social media responsiveness
Google business profile
Google Maps listening
Google reviews
Customer reviews on relevant sites
Glassdoor reviews
Participation in online forums
Participation in industry events
Directory listings
Wikipedia entry
Community involvement
Top ranking for branded search queries
High ranking for industry keywords

How many have you prioritized? Take a closer look at each signal at DMNews.

The New Metrics for Social Entertainment

MAY 17, 2023

Users are turning to social media platforms for more than just connection—they’re here to be entertained. Vanity metrics such as likes and comments don’t mean as much as they used to.

Social entertainment marketing is the new focus for short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. Dash Hudson’s 2023 Social Media Benchmarks report offers these revisited KPIs:

Cross-channel engagement rate: See how each platform’s video’s engagement stacks up against the others.
Average reach (TikTok and Instagram): Measure the average number of unique accounts that see your post to understand your reach and brand awareness.
Retention rate (TikTok) and percentage viewed (YouTube): By measuring the average percentage of a selected video that people watched, you can begin to understand what tactics and content formats work best and where.
Average video views: This is the average number of views each video receives from a user. Users who rewatch your videos have a higher likelihood of remembering your brand.
Average growth rate: Keep a gauge on the average number of followers added to each platform monthly to better understand how you measure up to industry growth.
Average number of weekly posts: Compare your content calendar to the average number of posts that brands share per grouping and industry.

Check out Dash Hudson’s full report for more intel.

6 Tips for Better Email CTAs

MAY 16, 2023

Email CTAs have the tough task of motivating users who didn’t search for you (and aren’t necessarily ready to buy) to take a desired action. Here are 6 tips to write more clickable copy:

Make them want more. To persuade a casual reader into action, tell them what will happen when they click and why they should. To drive users to a whitepaper, for example, consider “streamline your operations” instead of “download” or “learn more.”
Use multiple CTAs. There’s no rule against using multiple CTAs in one email. Use an action-directed CTA and a benefit-focused CTA in the same message.
Surround your CTA with supporting statements. Your copy could ask a question, and your CTA could answer it.
Break the rules. CTAs are supposed to complete the sentence “I want…,” and traditionally they include a verb. But no copywriting rules are absolute. Experiment to find what works best and feels most natural with your audience.
Be careful what you ask for. Email subscribers at the top of the purchase funnel may be put off by “buy now” or another big CTA. Opt for anticipatory language like “discover” to invite action and offer a benefit.
Talk to a person, not an audience. Your CTA should feel like an invitation from one individual to another, not a command from an institution to an audience. If you handed someone a book, you’d say “Check it out,” not “learn more.”

Click on over to MarTech for more examples for gold-standard CTA examples.

7 GTM Stategies

MAY 15, 2023

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy—or your plan to get customers to buy a product or service through product launches, rebranding, or exploring new markets—depend on a mix of these 7 motions:

Inbound-led: In this approach, content marketing through paid, organic, social, and email channels qualifies and routes leads to sales.
Outbound-led: This is a coordinated and targeted account-based outreach led by sales development representatives, 1:1 advertising, and content hubs.
Product-led: This strategy relies on the product itself to drive growth, adoption, and customer acquisition, rather than relying heavily on traditional marketing and sales tactics.
Channel-led: This approach leverages a network of distribution channels—like resellers, partners, and affiliates—to educate and support customers.
Event-led: Conferences, trade shows, webinars, and workshops promote and showcase products or services to a targeted audience in order to generate leads, build brand awareness, and foster connections.
Community-led: This approach builds a community of experts, influencers, and customers around a transformative idea by nurturing relationships, fostering user engagement, and empowering to become advocates.
Ecosystem-led: This strategy leverages the collective value and reach of your ecosystem—or a collection of complementary products and services—to attract and retain customers, drive mutual growth, and provide a seamless solution to the market.

Check out MarTech for the recommendations and metrics you need for a successful GTM strategy.

You Should Leverage Employee-Generated Content

MAY 14, 2023

Employee-generated content (EGC) is content created or shared by your brand’s best advocates: your employees.

Here’s why you should include EGC in your content strategy:

On average, employees have 10x more followers than a brand’s account.
Employee-shared content gets 8x more engagement than content shared through branded channels.
Employee posts get re-shared up to 24x more than a branded post.
92% of consumers trust people they know for referrals above any other source.
93% of consumers find UGC to be helpful when making a purchasing decision.
The use of UGC results in 29% higher web conversions than campaigns without it.
Customer reviews are trusted up to 12x more than marketing content.
Consumers find UGC 9x more impactful than influencer content.
86% of Millennials trust that UGC accurately reflects a product’s or brand’s quality.
Millennials think UGC is 35% more memorable than other types of content.
And 84% of millennials stated UGC had an influence on their decision to purchase.
90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands to support.
70% of consumers place peer recommendations above professional copy.

Take a closer look at the pros and cons of EGC, best practices, and examples at Post Beyond.

Best Practices: LinkedIn Posts (2023)

MAY 10, 2023

The Creativity and Innovation Network has offered these new best practices for posting on LinkedIn, based on algorithm data from 2,000 LinkedIn posts published this winter:

Suggested post frequency: 1 to 3 times per week

Optimal time between posts: 18 hours minimum

Format with highest reach: PDF

Optimal number of hashtags: 2 to 6

Most heavily weighted interactions: Comments and shares

Comments: Don’t be the first to comment on your post; answer user comments within 12 hours

Ideal character count: 1200–1800

Mentions: Don’t mention more than 15 accounts in your post

Emojis: Limit to < 10, and never more than 4 per line

Editing: Don’t edit your post within the first 10 minutes of publication

Check out the infographic at Social Media Today for more info.

4 Tips for Better Polls and Surveys

MAY 9, 2023

You know we love a good poll around here. If you’re not using polls and surveys to better understand your audience—and create hyper-relevant content—you should be. Here are 4 tips to start:

Know the difference. A poll poses one brief, multiple-choice question. Polls allow you to gauge the general sentiment or majority opinion of your audience. Conversely, surveys may include dozens of questions across a variety of topics. Questions may be formatted as yes/no, short answer, multiple choice, ranking, and more. This option is effective for collecting deeper insights into your audience’s preferences and motivations.
Use polls and surveys for data… and for fun. If you’re looking for actionable data, use a tool to create a poll or survey that collects and organizes responses for you. However, you can utilize native social media polls or simply ask your audience an open-ended question to spark engagement.
Know your objective. As with any formal analysis, it’s important to identify the purpose behind your poll or survey before going live. What insights do you hope to gain? What assumptions do you hope to prove or disprove? Understanding your goal will help you refine your copy and ultimately provide more accurate results.
Ask the right questions. For objective results, your questions must be worded in such a way as to not sway the respondent in any direction. Additionally, consider how the format of your question will influence results. A multiple-choice question limits users to predetermined responses, while open-ended questions have the potential to allow users to expound upon an opinion.

Check out Search Engine Land to learn how to turn polls and surveys into great content.

6 Must-Have Email Marketing Automations

MAY 8, 2023

Drive incremental growth with these 6 under-utilized automated email series:

Post-purchase or post-shipment: Engaging with a user after their purchase—through shipment details, upsells, customer service information, and brand/community content—can increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.
Welcome or account creation: Sending tailored welcome emails to new subscribers is an opportunity to set the tone and frequency of communication. Mixing promotion-heavy messaging with messaging that builds brand connection can improve time to purchase and purchase frequency.
Birthday or anniversary: Celebrating birthdays and customer anniversaries through automations offering freebies and exclusive discounts will nurture brand connection and affinity.
Abandon cart: If a user makes it all the way to a full cart on your platform, they likely need only a nudge or reminder to complete a purchase. Abandoned cart email series are a crucial revenue driver and can significantly increase total conversions and revenue.
Browse abandonment: This step in the purchasing journey takes place before a user makes it to the cart. At this stage, upselling to users interested in a specific product or category can increase revenue.
Re-engagement / “We miss you”: Move low-engagement subscribers into a re-engagement workflow to nurture them back into high- or medium-level engagement, rather than continuing to send them frequent emails, which can be detrimental to sender reputation and overall engagement rate.

Get the full scoop at MarTech.