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8 Instagram Reels Tips, Tricks, & Tutorials

MAY 15, 2022

Trying to find your Instagram content flow? Here are some helpful tips, tricks, and tutorials to help you with content ideas and how to actively help you make Reels.

Save Your Stories: If it’s good enough for your stories, it’s ideal for Reels. Just save the pics and videos you were looking for to post for your stories without any stickers or text to repurpose for a Reel video.
Give It a Why: For any Reel you post, make sure you have a reason someone would stick around to watch it. This doesn’t have to be too deep. It could be helpful tutorials, it could just be a joke.
Keep It Frequent!: Obviously we as marketers and creators try to put out the best possible final products they can. But because of competition and experimentation, you gotta keep Reels quantities high. That just means experiment with as many formats as possible.
Keep It “Neat”: Part of putting out a large quantity of Reels is putting out light, interesting content. You may just hit the right audience by putting out short Reels on niche topics.
Cross-Post: Share it to Facebook, too! Seems like a simple tip that people often forget.
Go Hands-Free: Having a phone in your arm can make for limited filming. Try to use your recording devices in ways that gives you a larger space to film yourself in and stay hands-free.
Auto-captions: Between accesibility and user-friendliness, autocaptions are an absolute must. If you have to manually add it, it’s worth it!
Be Original: You can grab inspo and copy formats all you want. But at the end of the day, you have to make content that is true to your brand to make it worth following.

Check out the full YouTube video by Jonny Keeley for more Reels and video techniques to explore.

Branding Across All 5 Senses

MAY 11, 2022

We all know the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. When it comes to branding, sight is usually what comes to mind for getting into a user’s mind. But what if you could be more memorable in more ways?

👅 Sense of Taste: Can you taste a company? We wouldn’t advise trying that. But you can associate taste experiences with brands. While not every brand is going to deliver on that, they can collaborate with brands that can. Experiences, events, gifts, or custom (edible) merch might be the way to go.

👂 Sense of Hearing: We talked all about sonic branding earlier this week. Developing an audio identity that is unique and memorable takes research and thought. It involves taking sounds associated with customer experiences. No sound involved with your brand? Time to make some music.

👃 Sense of Smell: Brands have spent A LOT of money researching “signature scents” and aroma marketing. And there’s some good science to back that since smells are some of the strongest triggers for memory.

👀 Sense of Sight: Visual ads, graphics, and logos are usually where companies put the most of their branding focus. The key is to be consistent with a visual identity.

✋ Sense of Touch: It’s all about feeling. Packaging, user experiences, textures, and physical products themselves should have some sort of tactical experience that is unique to a brand.

Brands who creatively engage all five of the senses are bound to stand out from others. Check out the full Forbes article on multisensory marketing examples from brands like MasterCard and Apple.

11 Landing Page Split Testing Ideas

MAY 10, 2022

Because there are so many variables in converting a sale or lead off of a landing page, it can be hard to pinpoint what to split test.

Possible variables to split test with landing pages:

Conversion goals -If your landing pages include multiple goals, CTAs, or offers, try testing a version of the landing page with only one offer.
Attention ratio – The attention ratio is the number of links on the page compared to the number of conversion goals. Ideally, you want a 1:1 ratio. Test out removing all other links like social media, internal, and footer links.
Message match – Test how closely your LP’s messaging and visuals match where your visitors originated from (ads for example).
Offer – Play with variations that have more urgent or valuable discounts.
Forms – You can test pretty much anything on forms! The microcopy, required fields, and columns are just some of the variations.
CTAs – Copy, color, button-type, triggers, hovers, and placement are popular things to test.
Social proof – You can test if you want any reviews or data present at all, how they look, and how many.
Layout – Your visual hierarchy, placements, and contrast play a huge role for page conversions and bounces so test out layouts with your existing content or rethink your structure entirely.
Headline – Don’t assume your copy is finished until the fat A/B tests sing.
Design – Test an image change or palette variation, but be careful testing out too many design elements at once.
Copy – We talked about CTAs, goals, and headlines. But you may need to test your overall tone, writing style, and formatting.

Remember, A/B tests isolate a single variable, multivariate tests do multiple at one time. Work systematically if you are choosing to go the multivariate route. Check out the full post by KlientBoost for more testing tips!

How To Create An Audio Identity with Sonic Branding

MAY 9, 2022

Sonic branding is a way brands can activate emotion and memory in a way that visual or textual cues can’t. Think of how jingles can get stuck in your brain for years, how familiar the Netflix “ta-dum” is, or how hard it is to say Hot Pockets without signing it.

For strong sonic branding, there has to be an emotional fit between the audio identity and the brand itself. So how do you find that fit? Let’s dive into how you can discover your brand’s audio identity with these tips:

Ask Yourself What Sets Your Brand Apart: While this doesn’t work for all sonic branding, sometimes audio comes from a brand trait. An example – Tostito‘s new sonic logo is made from the sound of their jars! What sounds are associated with your brand and consumer experience?
Use the Catch and Release Theory: Your brand marketing should be “easy to think of, easy to buy, and easily thought worth it.” Just like a “catch and release” fish. So brands should compose an audio identity and sonic brand to help capture and hold the attention of their audience
Watch out for the Familiarity Fallacy: There’s how you think your brand is, and how it’s actually perceived. Marketers and stakeholders spend so much time thinking about their brand, naturally they think everyone else does, too. So you have to avoid this Familiarity Fallacy by digging deeper to learn how consumers know/discover you.
Measure the Impact: Market Penetration + Effectiveness + Personality = Impact. Think through your brand’s definition of success in all these areas then measure responses qualitatively.

Audio Content Labs are a bunch of sound geniuses. Check out their full article for the science being how consumers relate to audio and a deeper explanation around sonic branding.

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings

MAY 8, 2022

For the most part, people don’t make purchases based on information alone, and emotional purchases are made more often than informed purchases. That’s where emotional advertising comes to play.

Not only does emotional advertising make more of an impact on audiences, but it also makes your content more shareable because it’s more relatable.

A Few Examples of Emotional Advertising Angles:

Happiness – When it comes to brand association, you wanna keep it on a high note. Funny, happy, entertaining content makes for positive brand association and more sharable content.
Pride – Appealing to your audience’s sense of pride makes them feel good about themselves. This can be in the form of things like activism, cultural topics, and achievements.
Fear – In some cases, fear can be a very effective emotion for immediate action. PSAs come to mind.
Anger – Anger is an approach that can help align an audience with a brand over a problem.
Greed – We live in a consumer society where people tend to want the newest and latest of everything. Raise your hand if you get FOMO easily.

Tips to Implement Emotional Advertising:

Understand your audience’s motivations and preferences by building a buyer’s persona (or two).
Use storytelling to make longer lasting emotional brand association.
Keep it genuine to your brand or consumers will sniff out the inauthenticity.

Sometimes you just gotta hit ’em right in the feels. The full Stevens & Tate blog gives real brand examples using emotional advertising so check it out for more.

Top 4 Reasons Why Case Studies are Important for Your Brand

MAY 4, 2022

In a survey of 121 SaaS marketers, they ranked case studies the #1 most effective marketing tactic to increase sales. That beat out their general website content, SEO, blog posts, and social media!

But it’s not just a piece made for B2B SaaS brands. It’s something every brand can implement for generating leads and traffic or gaining thought-leader clout. Need more convincing to create case studies? Here are the top 4 reasons case studies are important:

They demonstrate your expertise: Case studies are a chance to show off your knowledge in a niche, the results you got for past clients, or just your overall expertise in your general industry. They are also great for standing out amongst competitors that don’t have any.
They can show social proof: Customers love reading what other customers have to say about something before they bought it. So take your best reviews and testimonials and turn them into more advanced UGC.
They can help your sales funnel: If you have a unique product, service, or process, you may need more than a quick 1-2-step to explain it. Help potential customers understand how you meet their needs with real world examples and visual aids in a case study.
They can strengthen customer relationships: It can feel like a big ask for in-depth testimonials or interviews for a case study, but your client may be flattered to help. It shows you value the journey of their project and the outcome.

Case studies can be used for SEO-boosting content, gated content for collecting leads, and can even end up being shared in a way that gets your brand more recognition. There’s really no downsides to making them! Check out the full post by Uplift Content for more case study deets and their checklist for good ones.

6 Tips for Writing Attention Grabbing Post Titles (with Templates)

MAY 3, 2022

Sometimes you just need a little inspiration to get you in the right direction. Designer Blogs put together these 6 tips for making titles and headlines that will grab a reader’s attention. They also gave dozens of templated lines of copy for you to get started.

Let’s dive in!

Keep Titles Short & Focused – Try and be as effective as possible with just a few words when you can. A straightforward template: The Dos and Don’ts of _____

Use “How To” Titles – It’s a great way to demonstrate helpfulness to a reader, and even better for SEO purposes because Google loves instructional content. An easy peasy template: How to _____ with _____

Ask Questions – Questions are a great way to resonate with your specific audience. A common Q: What is Going on with _____?

Use Numbers & Lists – Readers love lists that are easy to digest so let them know directly that posts or pages have that. This is another great format that Google loves to reward in search results. A common template: # Proven Ways To _____

Use Solid Action Verbs – Now that you have some frameworks, boost the titles with the right verbs. Some favorites: Build, Create, Generate, Maximize

Use Powerful Adjectives – Pump it up with some adjectives! Just don’t overcrowd your copy with them. Some more favorites: Clever, Proven, Successful

Blog post titles, subject lines, and headlines are your chance at a great first impression. See the full post by Designer Blogs for templates at your finger tips to make attention grabbing headlines.

A/B Testing: Email Elements to Test + Mistakes to Avoid

MAY 2, 2022

There are a lot of variables for email content that can make or break your conversion. But when it comes to A/B testing, many people test subject lines only. Granted, that’s where it all starts for someone opening your email…but what about everyone who opens it then bounces?

Here are different elements that can be A/B tested:

The Sender Name – First Name / Full Name. Person’s Name / Brand Name. Email Address 1 / Email Address 2.
The Subject Line – Subejct Line Option 1 / Option 2. Short / Long Copy. Personalized / General. Questions / None. (And so many other things depending on what you are marketing).
The Preview Text – (Similar to subject lines) Preview Line Option 1 / Option 2. Short / Long Copy. Personalized / General. Questions / None.
The Time of Sending – There are two big questions here: Does timing around a trigger event make a difference? What frequency works – daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly?
The Content – Same sandwich, different meat. Layout 1 / Layout 2. Short / Long Copy. Image Heavy / Text Heavy. Numbers + Stats / None. Personalization / None.
The CTAs – Copy 1 / Copy 2. Placement 1 / Placement 2. Color 1 / Color 2.

Common A/B testing mistakes:

Sometimes you don’t want to do a 50/50 split of your full list. Test a smaller sample first, then determine if A or B should happen to your full list.
On that note, don’t lump everyone together. Test depending on behavior segments.
Form a hypothesis before an A/B test and determine your measurement goals before seeing the results.
Test one element at a time. It’s slow going work, but it will get you the most accurate insight on what is or isn’t working.
Never. Stop. Testing. Things change. So an A/B test may give a certain result one quarter before your engagement changes in the next.

Check our Convertcart’s full blog post for more testing ideas, stats, and brand examples.

A 6-Step Framework for Running Social Media Experiments (+ 87 Ideas)

MAY 1, 2022

We’re getting scientific on ya. Social media and content creation is, after all, an art and a science.

When it comes to getting experimental with your social media, it can feel like you are shooting in the dark. But you can take a strategic approach to how you introduce different content to your regularly scheduled programming.

And it goes a little something like this:

Set Goals: What’s the point of this experimental content? Since no brand ever has the exact same social media KPIs, you have to start with your own and then break down any possible “micro-goals” you have for any given post.
Brainstorm: You may have already started on this step before your goals. This is where you take ideas and form a hypothesis around them. Form a hypothesis with this format: “If we (experiment idea), then (expected results), because (assumptions).” Then as with any marketing initiative, study what others are doing. They may have experimented with you already.
Prioritize: Now start establishing how these ideas are becoming posts. You can break them down with the ICE scoring system where Impact, Confidence, and Ease are scored 1-10.
Test: Go see what happens! Some good testing practices include testing one type of post at a time. Give it enough time to measure its performance (1 week is usually enough).
Analyze + Learn: Time to put the lab coats on analyze the results. What was the post performance? Should you try out different variables with that type of post?
Repeat: Once you have planned, posted, and analyzed a social media experiment that your brand deemed a success, repeat it! You may have to cycle through steps 4 and 5 several times to get it just right.