2016 Social Media Marketing Predictions From the Experts

Are you looking for the hot marketing trends coming in 2016? Do you want to know where social media pros are focusing their attention? In 2015, new platforms made a big splash and several popular networks monetized. To get you ready for what’s coming next, we asked 14 social media marketing experts what to watch [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

A New Formula For Content Marketing That Converts [Step-by-Step]

All content marketers know that to create content that converts, we have to know what has worked in the past and what hasn’t.

But the way most content marketers use that knowledge to plan is still pretty broad-stroke. We scan a few data sets and think, “That post did really well. Let’s do another one like it and cross our fingers.”

What if we could predict the performance of our future content more precisely? What if we could forecast if articles from last Wednesday’s brainstorm are worth writing – and how well they’ll perform?

I think we can.

I propose that with a few key metrics and some simple (enough) math in Microsoft Excel, we can predict the success of a given content idea.

Intrigued? Let’s get started.

Part 1 – Gather the Data

Step 1 – Identify relevant data

There are about a million ways to slice and dice historical data, so it can be hard to identify which stats are relevant and which stats aren’t. There are two main types of data I recommend gathering for ROI Math: content dimensions and success metrics.

Content Dimensions

To be able to observe useful trends over time, you can’t look at just one piece of content. You have to group your content into meaningful categories.

The best way to group your past content is by the variables that you experiment with during the content planning stage. Think about the decisions you usually make when planning content – what the content should be about, how long it should be, who should write it, etc. I call these variables “content dimensions.”

For your first attempt at ROI Math, I recommend sticking to these four content dimensions:

• Word Count Range (i.e. Length)

Word counts vary wildly per piece of content, so you’ll need to translate these into ranges to gauge performance more easily and give your writers more practical targets to hit.

• Author

If you have multiple in-house writers, manage a large pool of freelancers, or frequently publish work by guest writers, author performance will be an important metric to track.

• Content Format

Common format types include reviews, infographics, videos, slideshows, long-form articles, and numbered lists.

• Topic

Common topic types include the vertical, the category, or the service being discussed.

Success Metrics

To measure success, you have to define and quantify it. What do you want above every other goal? When you get what you want, how will you know?

The answer to the first question is up to you. The answer to the second question is success metrics, which you and I are about to define.

For your first time doing ROI Math, I recommend defining success using three main types of measurements: traffic metrics, e-commerce metrics, and any proprietary metrics that are unique to your business.

Traffic Metrics

Traffic metrics are an excellent indicator of success because they represent the customers who are already engaging in your conversion process. Here are a few examples of traffic metrics:

• Unique Page Views (UPVs)
• Clicks per Page
• Events per Session
• Goal Completions

I recommend analyzing just the UPVs for your first attempt at predicting ROI, since it represents your site’s overall success rather than the success of specific campaigns.

If you do select multiple traffic metrics, make sure they’re consistent with each other or your predictions will be muddled.

E-commerce Metrics

I recommend looking at net revenue if possible for your first run at ROI Math since revenue is a very broad indicator and like UPVs, will give you a good idea of your content’s overall success. As you gain more experience, you can add more e-commerce metrics like these:

• Average Order Value
• Number of Items Sold
• Lifetime Value

Proprietary Metrics

To get a more customized view of how your content is doing, think about your main goal again and the metrics you already monitor to gauge your progress toward that goal. Then, single out the one or two metrics that best determine success.

At CLEARLINK, we use answered phone calls as one of our core proprietary success metrics because it is the strongest indicator of a marketing campaign’s success and correlates heavily with revenue.

If your main goal is to become a national brand, you may measure success by how many cities you’re shipping to. If your main goal is to serve more homeless in the community, your key proprietary metric may be the number of clients served. Even if your goal is only to drive your net worth as high as possible, you’ll need a metric more specific than cold, hard cash to be strategic in your content planning.

Time Frames

When you collect these metrics from your reports you’ll want to choose a period that will represent your content well, but doesn’t provide so much data that it overwhelms you. I recommend one of the following time frames: year-to-date, the most recent 6–12 months, or a customized period that you’re particularly curious about (e.g., last holiday season, first 90 days after new hires, etc.).

Step 2 – Set up your spreadsheet

Now it’s time to set up your Excel sheet, where you’ll gather your historical data.

The fastest, easiest way to start your spreadsheet is by using a program like Xenu or Screaming Frog to run a crawl of your site. Once the crawl is complete, export the results and save them as an XLSX file.

The site crawl automatically gathers every single web address on your domain, which you need for Excel to be able to properly pull data from your analytics reports.

However, the site crawl also gathers data you don’t need, so you’ll have to clean up the sheet before pulling in any analytics.

Here’s how:

Delete Extraneous Information

• Delete any rows containing URLs you don’t want to analyze for this audit. For example, the unique URLs of generic stock photos found throughout your site may not be worth analyzing.
• Delete all columns but two: the URI and the word count. If you really want to, you can reevaluate the usefulness of the other columns once you’ve got the hang of ROI Math. For now, you’ll have more than enough relevant info without them.

Add New Columns For Relevant Information

• Create a new column for URLs. The easiest way to do this is to duplicate the URL column and then use Excel’s Find and Replace feature to delete the domain name from each URL (e.g., http://www.JeffBulas.com/blog would become /blog).
• Then create a new column for each of the four basic content dimensions:

1. Word Count Range
2. Author
3. Format
4. Topic

And finally, create a new column for each metric you selected. To review, these are the metrics I recommend adding:

1. UPVs
2. Revenue
3. Proprietary metrics (e.g., answered phone calls)

Once you’re done creating these new columns, your spreadsheet will look something like this:

Step 3 – Fill in the data

Now that you’ve set up your spreadsheet, you’re going to use a combination of brain power, Google Analytics, and Excel’s VLOOKUP function to fill in the data.

Fill in the content dimensions by hand

Fill in the author, topic, format, and word count for each URL. Unless you know your content in your sleep, this step will likely require that you visit each page.

Get your music on – this is probably the most monotonous step in content marketing ROI Math. But I really encourage you to stick it out. The sheer volume of data that Excel interprets automatically, not to mention the precision of your results, will make this task worth the extra time and effort. I promise.

1. Fill in the word count ranges first. Use whatever word count ranges you normally use to assign content to your writers (e.g., 500–750 words, 750–1,000 words, etc.).
2. Fill in the author for each piece of content.
3. Fill in the format of each piece of content. I recommend selecting from as few formats as possible to keep the results manageable.
4. Fill in the topic for each piece of content. Again, I recommend sticking to as few as possible.

Fill in success metrics using analytics data and Excel’s VLOOKUP function

Fill the remaining cells in your spreadsheet by pulling data sets from your reporting accounts. I recommend starting with Google Analytics.

1. Open Google Analytics and navigate to the All Pages report under Behavior/Site Content.
2. Choose the time period(s) you’d like to analyze and filter out all content from before and after.
3. Display all columns to make sure you don’t miss any key metrics, and then download the data into an XLSX file. (This will not be the same file you are using to calculate ROI Math. You will have these documents open side-by-side.)
4. Return to your original Excel file. For each success metric column, use the VLOOKUP function to populate the cells with the corresponding data from your exported Google Analytics spreadsheet.
5. Repeat steps two through five for any other reporting accounts. As long as your reports include a URL or URI in the export, you’ll be able to integrate the data into your audit.

If you don’t dive into analytics on a regular basis or aren’t familiar with Excel, I recommend tutoring yourself in the VLOOKUP function until you get the hang of it. It’s a fast and extremely reliable tool for cross-referencing.

Part 2 – Do the Math

At this point, you’ve gathered all the data you need. Now you’re ready to crunch the numbers.

Step 4 – Create a PivotTable

To predict future conversion, you’ll need to compare every single content dimension against every success metric and quantify how well each content type has performed in the past. Excel’s sophisticated PivotTable feature can do these comparisons quickly and easily.

Here’s how to create your PivotTable:

1. Select all the data on your spreadsheet by typing Ctrl + A or clicking the triangle in the top left corner of your spreadsheet.
2. Head over to Excel’s Insert tab and click on PivotTable. It should be one of the very first icons on this tab.
3. When the PivotTable dialog appears, select the option to create the PivotTable on a new sheet. It will appear as Sheet2 in your Excel doc.

The PivotTable is another Excel feature that takes practice to understand. If you’ve never used it before, either tinker patiently until you get the hang of it or study some tutorials first.

Step 5 – Use the PivotTable to find averages and variances

Your goal with these Pivots is to calculate two new metrics – the average performance and variance to average of all content dimensions. These two meta-metrics hold the key to predicting how well similar content will perform in the future.

To systematically calculate the averages and variances, complete the following steps for each content dimension and success metric.

Here I’ve used author and UPV as examples:

1. Drag and drop the author field into the ROWS field of the PivotTable.
2. Drag and drop UPV into the VALUES field of the PivotTable. Use the dropdown menu to the right to specify that you want the PivotTable to return the Average (not the Sum, Count, or anything else) of the UPVs for each author.
3. Drag and drop UPV into the VALUES field a second time. Use the dropdown menu to specify that you want the PivotTable to return the average variance of the UPVs for each author.

Each Pivot should look like the below screenshot, with the content dimensions appearing in the ROWS field and the averages and variances of each success metric appearing in the VALUES field.

As you complete each pivot, copy and paste the data to a third sheet formatted with the columns below. Complete all the pivots until you have recorded the averages and variances of each success metric.

• Dimension Type - Shows which dimension type is being analyzed (e.g., format).

• Dimension - Shows which specific dimension is being analyzed (e.g., long-form articles).

• Average UPV - Shows the average number of UPVs within the time period you chose for that specific dimension (e.g., long-form articles have an average UPV of 12,000).

• UPV Variance - Shows how much that dimension differs from the average across your site.

• A column for the averages and variances of each remaining metric

This tab should look similar to the below screenshot:

Part 3 – Plan Winning Content

If you’ve gotten this far in the process, congratulations! You have completed an impressive feat of auditing, pivoting, and formula-writing – and now comes the fun part.

Step 6 – Set the stage for the brainstorm

Everything to this point has been about analyzing past performance. Now it’s time to look forward.

Start a fourth tab to house your ideas for future content. You’ll want to start off with a column for content ideas, followed by columns for author, topic, format, word count range, and average variance of each of these dimensions.

Populate each variance column by using a VLOOKUP function to pull the corresponding values from your PivotTable results. To check if the function is working correctly, type one of your authors into the appropriate column and check your third sheet to verify that the VLOOKUP has returned the same average variance you see in your pivot results.

Step 7 – Brainstorm

As you brainstorm new content ideas, add them to your fourth sheet and propose an author, word count range, topic, and format for each one. You can either do this yourself or have the individual idea contributors add them in.

As you add these details to each row, the VLOOKUP will automatically populate the variance columns and you’ll slowly see trends emerging. It’s like magic, except nerdier.

Now get ready for your hard work to really pay off.

Step 8 – Calculate the likelihood of conversion

Create one last column and label it “Result.” This column is your golden number. This column is the reason ROI Math exists.

To find the values for this column, use the =AVERAGE formula to average all the variances across each row and then subtract 1 from that average.

Here’s what the golden number should tell you:

Based on the historical performance of the proposed author, format type, topic, and word count, the content idea “ROI Math” should convert 8.75 percent better than the average piece of content on JeffBullas.com.*

*Disclaimer: This example is purely aspirational. I have no historical data to back it up.

There you have it. From now on, you can confidently predict the likelihood of conversion for every content idea you have.

Step 9 – Shape your content strategy

ROI calculations are very flexible. If at any point while brainstorming you get a low or negative percentage, you can immediately tweak the content dimensions (e.g., increase the word count, change the format from slideshow to long-form, etc.) to try and improve the chances of success.

Once you’re comfortable with ROI Math and you’re feeling adventurous, you can even go back to the beginning and add additional success metrics (e.g., promotional metrics like links, shares, etc.) and content dimensions (e.g., time of publication, day of the week, etc.). You can even compound the dimensions if you like – for example, you can find the word count range that works best by format vs. the word count range that works best across the board.

The more layers you add to your calculations, the more precise the predictions become. Keep at it until you get a model that works for you and your site.

ROI Math as a jumping-off point

Content marketing ROI Math has helped me sharpen my content planning process dramatically:

• I can now hand-pick strategic publication dates based on the probability of performance.
• I can now assign content pieces to the authors that perform best in each category.
• My brainstorming is more efficient because I already know which formats and topics perform well.
• I manage risks better because I can estimate how badly something might flop and how much it will cost me.

But let’s get real for a moment.

Ideas are surprisingly fickle. Some of our best ideas (according to us) end up producing mediocre results, while run-of-the-mill ideas can be off-the-charts successful. Some of the most successful pieces we’ve published at CLEARLINK started out as high-risk ideas.

I encourage you to use ROI Math for inspiration. Use it as a sanity check, but when decision time comes around, go with your gut, your common sense, or some combination of both. No spreadsheet can replace human intuition.

Treat ROI Math like the living, breathing process that it is. Take chances, make mistakes, get messy, and then learn from it.

Let’s improve ROI Math together. If you have any ideas on alternate use cases or on how ROI Math can be improved, please hit me up on Twitter @daveydemille.

Guest Author: With over 6 years of digital marketing experience, David DeMille has brought a real passion for marketing to his current position as marketing director at CLEARLINK. He focuses on creating data driven strategy, consumer driven content, and a community worth engaging in.

The post A New Formula For Content Marketing That Converts [Step-by-Step] appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

20 Killer Blogging Tools for Customizing Your Content

Getting your blog post images right is crucially important.

Studies have found that 93% of the most engaging content shared on Facebook contains images, and that images have an 80% memory retention rate (compared with just 20% for text).

What’s more, recent eye-tracking studies have shown that internet users are less drawn to stock photos than they are to original visual content, meaning that the wrong type of image can greatly damage your blog’s engagement.

Thankfully, it’s easier than ever before to create custom blog images that’ll really stand out.

There are plenty of programs and resources available to the discerning blogger who wants to improve their blog imagery.

Here are twenty tools that you can use to make sure your blog is as visually appealing as possible:

1. Canva

There are plenty of image editing programs available, but Canva is one of the most widely used – and with good reason.

It’s free, it’s easy to use, and there are plenty of options to make sure that you’re able to manipulate and edit your images without a lot of hassle or effort.

2. PicMonkey

If you find that Canva doesn’t quite suit you, PicMonkey is a great alternative.

It’s got a lot of the same tools as Canva, but it’s slightly easier to get your head around, and it offers more font options, which means you’ll find it better for adding text to images.

3. BeFunky

BeFunky works a lot like both Canva and PicMonkey in the way it lets you edit image files. It also comes with a variety of templates and resources to help you get the most out of your images.

There are plenty of tools in BeFunky to help image manipulation newbies to get started instantly, but the program also has a lot of depth, and can be a great tool for more experienced image editors as well.

4. GIMP

For those who’d like a level of image editing on par with Photoshop, but who aren’t comfortable with the high Adobe price tag, GIMP is often recommended as the best alternative.

The program is a free download and offers just as many options as Photoshop. That said, it can be a difficult tool to come to grips with, and many of its more advanced features may be wasted on you if you’re just after quick and simple edits.

5. Paint.net

Those who are familiar with Microsoft Paint (who isn’t?) but who want something a little more advanced will get along great with Paint.net.

It’s a free download program that makes quick and simple photo editing easy, but it packs a lot of user friendly features that mean you can get more advanced with your edits if you feel the need. If your first instinct is to reach for MS Paint, you’ll probably be better off with this.

6. Easel.ly

Infographics can be a big attention grabber for a blog, but it’s not always easy to create them.

Easel.ly lets you work from existing templates to throw together well designed infographics in a matter of minutes, taking a lot of the hassle out of developing a good layout.

7. Infogr.am

If Ease.ly’s not quite your cup of tea, you might like to try this program instead – it’s incredibly similar, but boasts a different variety of customizable templates.

Infogr.am is simple to use and gives creators a fair amount of control over their finished infographic, and its drag-and-drop interface makes infographic creation as quick and painless as possible.

8. Social Image Resizer Tool

Sometimes all you need to do is crop or change the size of an image.

For uses like this, the Social Image Resizer Tool is invaluable for speeding up the process, meaning you don’t have to fire up an image manipulation program every time you need to trim the bottom off a photo.

The program’s handy list of common social media image sizes is a great resource as well.

9. Recite

Sometimes, all it takes to make your blog post stand out is a few pretty quotes to grab reader interest.

Tools like Recite let you enter text and instantly create a pretty image file, with customizable fonts and colors, to give your article some variety while drawing readers to the important passages within a text.

10. Over

Similar to Recite, Over lets you use text to create images. Its main selling point, though, is that it’ll let you overlay text on top of an image of your choice.

This means that your picture can feature a killer quote from your article, but also can draw in visitor attention through a compelling visual.

11. Quotes Cover

Similar to both Recite and Over, Quotes Cover lets you turn text into images. It’s specifically designed to help with social media cover photos, but its tools can be put to use for any image project.

It boasts a wide variety of options to make sure that your quote stands out as much as possible, so if you didn’t find an appropriate style on the other two sites, this might be the option for you.

12. Pictaculous

Not everybody naturally has an eye for colors.

When designing images, it’s often helpful to know which colors will perfectly complement the photo that you’ll include at the heart of your blog post.

Pictaculous lets you upload an image, from which it’ll generate a color palette based on the picture that you can use to make sure your blog post has a consistent color theme.

13. Ribbet

Collages are a fun way to draw in a user’s attention and make use of several key images at the same time.

Ribbet takes the hassle out of the process of building a collage by letting you upload photos to various templates, meaning that putting together a neat collage won’t slow you down too much.

14. Smush.it

High quality images are important, but it’s also crucial that you keep your page loading times as low as possible.

For that reason, you might find this web-based program a real lifesaver – it lets you upload and compress a file to make it as small as possible, which will help both your SEO score and your visitor retention.

15. Jing

If you’re looking to include screenshots in your blog post, you might want to check out Jing.

Jing is a downloadable program that lets you take screenshots, then quickly and conveniently crop and edit them so that you can show the part of the screen that matters most.

This means that you can get crucial materials for your blog together as quickly as possible, saving time and effort.

16. Skitch

Much like Jing, Skitch lets you easily take screenshots and quickly edit them to the perfect size.

It also lets you add annotations, so you can make sure your images are well targeted and clear of purpose.

17. Fotor

Fotor is a pretty amazing catch-all alternative to many of the other tools on this list. It’s an all-in-one program that lets you edit, crop, and alter images, but it also boasts collage abilities and special tools for creating custom social media cover photos and profile pictures.

This is a great program to save time and to avoid having to run images through several different tools before they’re ready to be uploaded.

18. Imgflip

If you’re looking to create a quick gif to add some simple animation to your site, you might want to check out Imgflip. The website allows users to easily upload videos or still images and use them to create unique gifs, without a lot of the hassle usually associated with creating animation.

19. Pixlr

Pixlr allows you to add a wide variety of filters and overlays to your images.

If you’re looking for a particular style or look for your photos, you’ll probably find Pixlr to be a useful tool.

20. Placeit

To give digital products a little bit of extra authority, you’ll want to take a look at Placeit.

The site allows users to upload images, which then appear within everyday scenario photos, such as people browsing the web or using computers or tablets.

This site makes it much easier to get great photos of your digital products being used in the real world, without having to hire a photographer to take custom photos.

What other tools do you use for your image manipulation? Share your thoughts and recommendations by leaving a comment below:

Guest Author: Aaron Agius is an online marketer, web strategist and entrepreneur and you can check him out at AaronAgius.com

The post 20 Killer Blogging Tools for Customizing Your Content appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

Snapchat for Business: A Guide for Marketers

Have you heard of Snapchat? Want to use it to connect with your customers? Snapchat is a mobile app that lets you send public or private snaps of images and video to people from your smartphone. In this article, you’ll discover how to use Snapchat‘s features to connect with your customers. The Snapchat Demographic Before [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

How to Handle Customer Complaints Via Social Media

Are your customers leaving negative comments on social media? Do you need a plan to handle customer complaints? Responding quickly and appropriately to negative social comments can help you increase customer loyalty and retention. In this article you’ll find out how to deal with negative comments on social media. #1: Respond Quickly It’s important to [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

How To Prove Content Marketing ROI For Your Business

Content marketing has exploded in the last couple of years. The platforms to create new content, curate existing content, and publish all of it to the right channels have grown and matured. However, in spite of the exponentially higher volume of content that is being churned out by businesses today, the fact remains that the majority of these activities still cannot be directly tied to company bottom lines.

Accountability and revenue attribution are the twin gaping holes in this mega-bucket of content that most businesses are racing to build.

A report by Marketing Score showed that 6 out of the 10 lowest ranked marketing tools from an accountability perspective happened to be key elements of content marketing.

Source

So what gives? Where’s the gap, which once plugged, will show the impact that every content marketing effort has on business metrics? How will you start to more effectively measure content marketing ROI?

Attribute revenue to content marketing

Revenue attribution is the final mile in the process of making content more accountable. With revenue attribution in place, you can clearly see and judge how each content asset performs. You can identify the best performing campaigns from a conversion perspective. You can even single out which sale came from which particular white paper or blog post.

This attribution works for nearly every piece of content you create. Landing pages, emails, video content – whatever your poison, it can be tracked and measured to the last cent with revenue attribution.

Content attribution is an integral part of enterprise CRM platforms like Salesforce. By syncing your CRM platform with your campaigns on web analytics (Google Analytics), email (MailChimp or Aweber), social media management (Hootsuite) or marketing automation tools, you can pinpoint the direct revenue driven by each campaign and each individual piece of content.

Attribution can primarily be of three kinds:

First-touch Attribution: Where 100% of the credit for a closed sale is given to the first content asset the customer interacted with.

Last Touch Attribution: Where 100% of the credit for a closed sale is given to the last content asset the customer interacted with.

Multi-touch Attribution: Where credit for an acquired sale is distributed evenly among all content assets the customer interacted with.

Given a choice, I usually recommend a multi-touch attribution model, as no piece of content is shortchanged and the impact of each one comes out clearly. Instead of the equal credit for each asset as described in the image above, I would in fact place custom weights for each content asset. This process allows you to tweak the amount of importance you place on each content asset from a lead acquisition perspective.

Further reading: 12 Steps to Setting up Your Marketing Attribution in Marketo

Let data dictate the content you create

So you’ve set up your content tracking systems. You know what conversion goals your content needs to hit. You know which channels to prioritize and so on. The challenge now is to develop content that meets these parameters and delivers on the lofty goals you’ve set for it.

Create content that people enjoy. Content that they come back to. Content that they seek out and share with others. Easier said than done.

One way of doing this is by digging into your analytics tool and checking the number of visits to each piece of content, time spent per piece, social shares and so on. Keep a track of the topics that set the conversation going among your audience. Once you know what topics interest them, you can go ahead and create more content along similar lines.

Many marketers would be happy with just measuring and showcasing the number of subscribers they got from their content marketing campaigns. However just measuring vanity metrics like subscriber numbers or shares is missing the ROI point altogether. Need inspiration? Use these two as your primary conversion metrics for judging the efficacy of each content asset:

• Revenue per post
• Revenue per subscriber

This investigation into how your content performs will also equip you with insights about which platforms work best for your business.

Research shows that on an average 5 pieces of content account for 50% of visitor traffic. This means, like in the case of search marketing, content marketing has a significant long tail too. The bulk of your visits and conversions will come from star content assets. It’s your job to identify which ones these are and promote them aggressively.

Optimize your content assets

Each content asset you create is the penultimate location leading up to an inquiry, lead or conversion. Thus, it follows that setting up your content assets to meet your conversion goals is of paramount importance. Even the most brilliant content marketing programs fall flat when the asset itself that assists conversions is not optimized.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate what I mean.

Source

Above you see a Shopify “landing page” that hits nearly all the CRO factors out of the park.

• The core objective of the page is loud and clear with a self-explanatory headline.
• The page focuses on an extremely narrow audience – owners of sites built on Wix.
• The call to action is unmissable in a contrasting color and is placed above the fold. It’s repeated at the bottom of this pretty long landing page, for those people who might have missed it earlier.
• While the audience is narrowly targeted with a feature specific to them, the page is selling the company’s flagship product – an ecommerce website. The relevant benefits are explained clearly and concisely just below the sign up form.
• Clean separators, ample white space and appealing images make the page a pleasure to browse.
• The product trial form is elegant in its simplicity. Who wants to scare away customers with long winded forms, right?
• Testimonials from known celebrities like Daymond John of Shark Tank fame make the product look even more compelling.

All in all, I’d give this landing/lead gen page at least a 9 or 10 from a content marketing perspective.

In closing

If you quiz any marketer about it, they’ll tell you how they wish they could measure the impact of every step they take to promote their business. However, data from a recent survey by CMI and MarketingProfs shows that just 21% of B2B marketers are actually successful in measuring their content marketing success.

It’s time to step away from the majority and join that little group of successful content marketers who know what they’re doing and how they’re getting it right.

Guest Author: Rohan Ayyar is a creative content strategist and CRO specialist at E2M, digital marketing firm par excellence. He doubles up as the resident UX authority at Moveo Apps, a premium app dev agency. Rohan is also an avid business and tech writer, with articles featured on The Next Web, Fast Company, and Adweek.

The post How To Prove Content Marketing ROI For Your Business appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ignore Your Website’s Page Speed

Have you ever landed on a website that seemed to take forever to load?

Didn’t you want to slam your head against your computer screen in frustration?

Have you ever considered that maybe your site is that site and that your web visitors are thinking the exact same thing?

You don’t want to be that site, the one that’s so slow to load that people abandon it before they can take action.

You want to deliver a user-friendly experience that leaves people feeling great about working with you—and page speed factors into that.

Not convinced that you need to speed up your site? Consider these reasons why you should start paying attention to it.

1. It affects your bounce rates

We all love taking a look at our bounce rates because they tell us if our site is working for our audience or not. High bounce rates mean more people are leaving your site quicker while low bounce rates mean you’re doing something right - people are sticking around, giving them more chances to buy from you.

But bounce rates aren’t all about the offer or your site’s design. People are more likely to abandon a slow-loading site, so even if the content on the page is out-of-this-world, smack-you-in-the-face fantastic, it still needs to load fast enough to satisfy visitors.

The stats don’t lie. Just a one-second decrease in load time could mean 11 percent fewer page views.

Furthermore, 25 percent of consumers abandon a site if the page doesn’t load within four seconds, and 46 percent of users will never return to poor performing websites.

Even if they get past the first page, the slow speeds can annoy users to no end. Of the 70 percent of online shopping carts that are abandoned annually, 46 percent of shoppers cite slow site speeds as a reason. That results in $3 billion in revenue lost each year, reports Hubspot.

2. It’s a Google ranking factor

In 2010, Google announced that site speed would be used as a ranking factor. While it’s not as strong a factor as relevancy, it still matters, and it may just give you that little extra push to put you ahead of your competition on search result pages.

In addition to using page speed as a ranking factor, slow pages affect how fast Google can index your site. That means it may index fewer pages overall, which will affect your rankings.

So if you want Google to send more traffic your way, you’ll want to look toward speeding up your site.

3. It impacts your conversion rates

Because people will abandon slow loading sites, conversions and profits will be lower the slower your site loads. Plus, faster sites tend to show up higher on Google rankings, which means the search engine will bring more traffic your way.

For every one second delay in page speed, you could see 7 percent fewer conversions and a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction.

Let’s take some examples of how faster pages mean better results:

• When Amazon decreased their page speed by 1 second, it resulted in a 2 percent increase in conversions, which means more profit!
• Mozilla saw the benefits, too. When they decreased their page speed by 2.2 seconds, they saw 60 million more Firefox downloads per year.
• Shopzilla managed to decrease their page speed by 3 seconds. That resulted in 25 percent more page views and 7 to 12 percent increase in revenue. Plus, they needed 50 percent less hardware to run the site!

The evidence is clear. If you want to see higher conversion rates and profits, you should start by speeding up your website.

4. It’s an indication of the quality of your web host

There are a lot of reasons why your website might be slow. If you’ve tried everything you can by combining stylesheets, compressing images, deleting unneeded plugins, etc. and you still can’t pinpoint the problem, the culprit may be your web host.

That’s because your user’s request has to connect with the server in which your website is hosted, but not all servers are created equal. For instance, shared web hosting typically means slower websites because there are multiple sites on one server using up the same resources.

The problem is that if your site is slow due to your web host, it’s an indication that other aspects of your host may not be top-notch either, such as storage space available, tech support, and other features.

While it may be of no consequence right now, you’ll start to notice the other lacking elements as your site grows and you choose to expand your features.

If your web host is the culprit, consider switching web hosts before your site grows to the point where you’re desperate for a better option. Research web hosts before you switch. Once you do, you should notice faster web speeds.

Bluehost is an example of a trusted web host with a good speed record.

What is a good page speed?

In general, you’ll want to keep your page speed below 3 seconds. 2 seconds is even better.

Ideally, your website should load in under 1 second.

3 to 7 seconds is pretty average, but you’ll also lose conversions and revenue if you leave it as-is. Anything higher than 10 and you know that something is wrong with your site! You’ll want to diagnose the problem and fix it as soon as possible.

Start by testing your page speed at Pingdom to see where you’re at. Then, you can help your page speed along by minimizing http requests, optimizing images, choosing a better hosting package, and reducing the amount of plugins you use on your site among other tactics. Consult with a web developer if you need help diagnosing your problem and fixing it.

While many site owners are focusing on web design and copywriting, too many are forgetting about the important factor of pace speed. Don’t ruin your users’ experience with a slow loading site!

How fast does your site load, and how will you improve your page speed?

Guest Author: Robert Mening is a web developer and designer from Sweden who helps people to build websites on http://websitesetup.org. He loves to chat about WordPress and marketing, you can get in touch with him via Twitter -http://twitter.com/robmening

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post

The post 4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ignore Your Website’s Page Speed appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How to Use Influencer Marketing for Your Retail Business

One of the hottest marketing trends for the coming year is something called “influencer marketing.” Basically, influencer marketing means working with influencers — people who have a large social media and/or real-life following and are able to influence their followers’ purchasing decisions.

If you’ve ever bought something as a result of seeing a blogger wear it, use it or review it, influencer marketing has worked on you. How can influence or marketing work for a retail business? Here’s a guide to getting started.

Set Goals

As with any type of marketing campaign, you need to specify your goals for your influencer marketing effort before you get started. In most cases, you’ll want to do more than attract more likes or followers to your social media accounts. You want to drive real-life actions, such as visiting your store, visiting your website or making a purchase. These should be measurable goals.

Find Your Influencers

You’re probably already aware of influencers in your retail niche, whether that’s baby clothing, gardening supplies or women’s apparel. You can also use hashtags or keywords to find influencers in your niche and/or your local area. Spend some time on social media searching for bloggers or YouTube stars who meet these criteria: 1) they have a big following, 2) their followers are in your target market, and 3) their content is relevant to what you sell. Klout is a good tool for quantifying someone’s social influence.

Nurture a Relationship

Just as when pitching the media with PR, don’t go in cold to approach an influencer. Get to know them first by posting relevant comments on their blogs, retweeting their tweets or sharing their Instagram pics. The goal is to get on their radar. In the meantime, you’re also learning more about what kind of content they create, which will give you ideas for how you could work with them.

Make Contact

Once the influencer has some awareness of you, reach out with an email specifying how you’d like to work together and why you think this could benefit both of you. Don’t be overly vague or coy about what you have in mind. Spell out what you would like the influencer to do for you, what you can do for them in return and how this will benefit both parties. You’ll probably have to reach out a couple of times to get a response — influencers get a lot of pitches. Be patient.

Here are some ways you can work with influencers:

• Send the influencer free samples of your products for review.
• Ask them to share photos or videos of themselves using/wearing your products.
• Host an event, either online or off-line, with the influencer. For example, if you sell women’s clothing, you could host a tweetchat about fall fashion trends, or have the influencer make an appearance in your store to help customers style their clothing.
• Offer to write a guest post for their blog or trade posts (i.e., they write a guest post for you and you do one for them).
• Send the influencer products to use in a contest or giveaway. Influencers love this, because it enables them to get their followers more engaged. You’ll love it because it will boost awareness of your store.
• Create a special promotion with the influencer, such as offering a percentage off to followers who use a code you provide when visiting your store.
• “Takeovers”: Have an influencer take over one of your social media accounts for a day or week, such as posting on Instagram or Pinterest on your behalf. This can help boost your social followers immensely.

Be open about the goals you have in mind for your campaign — the influencer can’t make it happen if he or she doesn’t know what you want.

After each influencer marketing campaign, be sure to track the results. You can use Web and social media analytics tools to see how many new visitors the influencer has driven, or use in-store codes to track the number of in-person visitors inspired by the influencer. If you have an eCommerce component to your store, allowing the influencer to post your product images with links to buy them is an excellent tracking method.

Building relationships with key influencers can pay off in many ways. Keep those relationships going, and both you and your influencer will benefit enormously.

Leader and Followers Image via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Use Influencer Marketing for Your Retail Business" was first published on Small Business Trends

10 Ways to Use the New LinkedIn Mobile App

Have you tried out the new LinkedIn app? Do you want to make the most of its features? The new LinkedIn app makes it easy for marketers on the go to do nearly everything they’d do on a desktop from a mobile device. In this article, I’ll share 10 ways to use the new LinkedIn [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Brick-and-Mortar SMB’s: 5 Tips for Marketing on a Budget

While the most recent numbers haven’t been officially released, the U.S. is likely to have well in excess of 30 million small businesses currently surviving (see the latest SBA stats [PDF]). If you listen to Rand Paul’s thinking, only about 3 million of them have a chance of skirting through the next few years without losing their shirts.

Marketing your business is the only way to keep the cash registers “cha-chinging,” and marketing for maximum sales at minimal cost to your bottom line is essential to getting any SMB off the ground and profitable in the shortest time possible.

Here’s my 5 marketing on a budget tips for all you SMB owners out there:

1. Use Local Classifieds

This goes for online and offline media. Craigslist and Kijiji are still alive and well. People from all walks of life use them for buying and selling. You can post for free on these sites to get a feel for the buzz you’re capable of creating, but you will eventually want to step it up and use their respective promoted ad feature and actually pay to have your ads displayed at the top of local searches. Love this guide from Entrepreneur.com, it’s an all-encompassing Craiglist advertising primer that everyone should read!

Plenty of folks do still read the paper, though it’s a definite shame that in a world so digitally-inclined, we still feel the need to kill a tree just to share information! Definitely spend a few bucks taking out classified ads in local papers to promote your business and stretch the purse-strings a bit further, and take out one-page ads to promote special sales or events your business will be hosting.

2. Forget the Local Yellow Pages Directory

Don’t buy a subscription in the local yellow pages! Please for the love of all that’s holy, this advertising medium has been slowly and efficiently strangled out of existence over the last few years. They used to have the same proportions and page-count of an encyclopedia in some areas, now they’ve withered down to about the size of a magazine.

This is because people are searching for everything online. Even grandma and grandpa can’t resist the urge to have whatever information they want about a product or service immediately at their finger tips. When that yellow pages sales rep calls and tries to sell you on how effective their platform will be for getting you more sales, tell them to lose your number!

3. Get on the Mobile Bandwagon

Good golly, if you’re not advertising via mobile, what’s wrong with you? Mobile advertising was practically made for small businesses to thrive! QR codes are a definite must, to make it easy for customers to reap the incentives you offer during sales, compare pricing, and take advantage of ongoing promotions you can offer them.

There are tons of generators to be found online for free, offering static one-off codes or dynamic codes that can be edited on the fly to keep customers better informed. I like this one, though there are many to choose from. Don’t forget to build out your own mobile app, another relatively free and easy way to keep in touch with customers and keep those Benjamins coming into the cash register.

4. Don’t Dive Into Paid Social Advertising Too Quickly

Use social media to build your brand by actually interacting with your existing and potential future customers. So often, uninformed SMB owners rush to build a social account, add everyone they can as a friend or contact, then promptly start to flood each post with ads for this, that, and the other. This can actually work IF you have an established brand, but most people will take this as a sign that you have nothing more than a product to sell and will quickly tire of seeing your greedy, sales-driven posts.

To engage with people socially, you have to offer them free information — or entertainment. That’s the only way to get shares, likes, retweets – etc. Encourage followers to ask you pre-sale questions and after-sale support requests. Follow the 80/20 rule (or 90/10) and leave the pushy sales tactics to the car salesmen of the world. Creating a YouTube account and offering free informative vlogs related to your product or service is another great way to build your brand for nothing (but your time, of course!)

5. Fire Up a Blog

Why wouldn’t you have a blog? If people like you, they’ll be more inclined to buy from you and that’s what marketing’s all about, right? Even if you own a mom and pop convenience store, a blog is still a great way to touch base with locals and show them your personality.

Talk about interesting customers you’ve met (with their permission first), show people how your business is run like a family – showcase your employees and tell people about their hobbies; make them human and not just a person who sells a product or service to customers in the store. Sales in most industries appears to be trending toward customers wanting a human interaction, with real people — give it to them with a thoughtful, informative blog.

Store Owner Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Brick-and-Mortar SMB’s: 5 Tips for Marketing on a Budget" was first published on Small Business Trends

YouTube App Rolls Out Interactive 360 Video: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week Google Introduces Interactive 360-Degree Storytelling on YouTube: Google brings Google spotlight stories to the YouTube app. This new storytelling [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Accomplishing Goals: A Guide to Getting Stuff Done

Did you set goals for the new year? Want to be more successful setting and achieving your goals? To discover how to accomplish goals, and to hear about the Kickstarter campaign for his new book, I interview John Lee Dumas. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Content Marketing Outsourcing: The Agency Vs Freelancer Question

Richard Branson once said: “Everything in your business can be outsourced, if you’re not emotionally attached to doing it.”

Indeed, any project type can be outsourced, including content creation and distribution.

CMO.com cites 10 reasons when outsourcing your marketing is a better choice than doing it yourself.

Here are five of them:

1. You don’t have the time or expertise.
2. You don’t have the technology.
3. You want to lower your marketing costs.
4. You’re on a rapid growth trajectory.
5. You’ve just expanded your business to operate in another customer channel or geography.

As your business grows and your content marketing needs become too much to tackle in-house, consider outsourcing.

Freelancer vs. content marketing agency

One question foremost on businesses’ minds when deciding to take the outsourcing route for their content marketing is:

Should I hire a freelancer or an agency?

This article will explore the advantages and disadvantages of hiring freelancers over agencies, and vice versa, so you can hopefully arrive at the best possible decision when confronted with the same dilemma.

Option 1: The freelancer

Freelancers can come in handy for any project type – writing, administrative assistance, design, data entry, or transcription services.

And with job sites like Freelancer, Upwork, and Craigslist carrying a diverse and massive pool of freelancers from all over the world, depending on your objectives and the amount you’re willing to pay to achieve them, there’s a freelancer that’s just right for you.

Advantages

1. Skill

You can hire freelancers for a specific skill set your full-time employees don’t possess. That said, you can hire as many freelancers with certain skill sets (e.g. subject matter experts, writers, editors, designers, video creators, community managers, and social media professionals) as you need.

If you already have a roster of freelancers to tap into, you can award projects to those whom you think are best qualified for the job.

2. Flexibility

When business is on the upside, keeping full-time staff to perform needed tasks and other activities is an advantage. It’s a different story, however, when the amount of work fluctuates.

Freelancers, on the other hand, can be hired per project or for a limited time. If you no longer need their services, you’re not obliged to keep them. You can always rehire them when business booms again.

 3. Lower costs

Freelancers have less overhead expenses compared to their agency counterparts, which explains why they normally charge less than the latter.

 Disadvantages

 Limited availability

There’s a saying among those seeking lifelong partners that goes, “All the good ones are probably already taken.”

This also applies to freelancers, who are known to juggle multiple projects and multiple clients.

There are good, dependable freelancers, and there are also those to avoid like the plague. Good freelancers take it upon themselves to regularly update you of their progress, while others can disappear into thin air when it suits them, without any way for you to contact them.

 A procedure that’s not entirely off your hands

Creating an organized, committed, and cohesive team of freelancers from different parts of the world, from different time zones is no easy feat. Face-to-face relationships with fellow workers are a necessary ingredient for successful teamwork.

This being the case, you must have the right tools and strategies in place for your team to effectively bond, collaborate, and communicate.

Also, if you hire multiple freelancers, you will have to take on the role of project manager to ensure everyone is on the same page.

 Time-consuming selection process

Choosing the most qualified freelancers involves time and attention. You will have to look through their work portfolios, ask for samples, and even check with their previous clients if they can be relied upon. As freelancers come and go, the vetting process will have to be done repeatedly.

Also, freelancers may be limited in terms of the things they can do and are willing to do. Often, the good ones are experts in their fields and possibly won’t take on projects that are beyond their field of specialization.

 Where to find freelancers

 Social media

LinkedIn is a good place to start when looking for freelancers. You may also post job openings to your Facebook or Google+ business pages.

If you have an email list, inform your subscribers of the opening, requesting them to also send your email to people they think are qualified, particularly if they themselves aren’t in the market.

 Job boards

There’s Craigslist, Upwork, and Freelancer, and they’re worth looking into if your content marketing budget isn’t much. Then again, like most marketers have already realized, you get what you pay for.

You can also look into advertising at Inbound.org, Smashing Magazine, and Problogger.

On blogs/online publications

Freelance content writers and marketers use guest blogging or run their own blogs to showcase their expertise and market their services. Take time to scour relevant blogs for skilled freelancers.

 Option 2: The agency

Freelancers, in general, work alone. Agencies, on the other hand, are composed of a group of people who are experts at certain fields. They can even be a team of skilled freelancers working together.

Agencies can range from three-member teams to full-service marketing agencies handling hundreds of content marketing projects simultaneously.

Advantages

Dependability

Content marketing involves a wide range of skills. The Content Marketing Team Matrix by Chris Lake, DueDil’s VP of Inbound Marketing, presents 16 roles and their required skills. Most people possess two or more of the said skills, but those who possess all of them are a rare gem.

Agencies, generally, are a one-stop shop. And they already have the necessary communication and collaboration tools in place, all you need is to lay down your objectives and expectations, and then measure their output against your ROI benchmarks.

Expertise

Besides being made up of a team of experts, agencies use specialized marketing tools and strategies to grow your digital presence on various channels. The tools at their disposal can include integrated reporting software, social media analytics tools, SEO software, even subscriptions to stock image sites.

Agencies also have structured processes and can easily scale.

Time savings

Because agencies are made up of multiple people with varying expertise, with a project manager to monitor each member’s progress, you don’t need to find and select the right people to create your own team.

Disadvantages

Higher costs

Compared to keeping an in-house content marketing team or organizing a team of expert freelancers, agency services generally cost more. In his article on Quick Sprout, Neil Patel says:

 “Typically, you’ll need to be spending at least a few thousand before an agency will take you on as a client.”

A process that’s completely off your hands

Delegating content marketing – and most other business processes, for that matter – to outside providers is an entrepreneur’s dream. However, there’s always the chance that an agency’s output, particularly if they’re not as familiar with your business and industry as you are, won’t hit the right note with your more savvy prospects and customers.

Hiring content marketing agencies specializing in your field is the safer bet.

Time invested on your projects may not be adequate

While this is in no way a generalization, agencies working on several projects at the same time may not afford you the dedication you expect of them, particularly if you’re not a “big fish”. Also, once your contract expires, you don’t get to keep their services until you renew your contract with them.

Conclusion

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of all customer-brand relationships will be made without human interaction, which further reinforces the increasing value of content marketing.

If you’re not equipped with either the expertise or resources to tackle content marketing in-house, know that your budget, objectives, and the effort you’re willing to put in are essential to figuring out if it’s a freelancer or an agency you need to hire.

As to the lingering question of whether an agency is better than a freelancer, all I can say is this: I know of companies who have expressed disappointment over agency performance while lauding the efforts of independent freelancers.

Guest Author: Mariame Bakkouri is in charge of content marketing and public relations at Cloudswave. She loves writing about entrepreneurship and marketing. Follow Mariame on Twitter and LinkedIn.  

The post Content Marketing Outsourcing: The Agency Vs Freelancer Question appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How to Extend the Life of Your Social Media Content

Wish you didn’t have to keep creating new content? Do you need a better return on the content you create? Having a plan in place for posting, and repurposing your best content will give your content a longer life and make the most of the time you spend creating it. In this article you’ll discover how [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

9 Of The Best Places To Leverage Mobile Video Advertising

With the world having more than two billion smartphone subscribers, it is no wonder that mobile video ads are also rapidly growing. According to data from eMarketer, mobile video ad spending in the United States jumped from $720 million in 2013 to $1.5 billion in 2014 – doubling in value in just a year.

But the growth does not stop there: By 2018, mobile video ad spending is set to quadruple to a whopping $6 billion.

Mobile video is booming because it works. In fact, Millennial Media found that mobile video ads were five times more engaging than traditional standard banners. What this means is that every mobile marketer should at least explore video advertising. This article could be a good place to start.

Mobile video advertising on social media

Mobile and social are a match made in heaven. Everyone seems to be on Facebook, Twitter, or some other kind of social media network these days – especially when they are using their mobile devices, as the following pie chart shows:

When it comes to advertising, a study conducted by Opera MediaWorks and comScore revealed that viewing mobile video ads on native environments (where ads look like the regular content in terms of content, format and style – like on social) improves performance metrics such as mobile ad recall, purchase intent, and favorability. This explains why many social platforms are upping their video ad offerings lately.

The following networks dominate the scene.

Here’s what they have to offer:

1.  Facebook

Mobile advertising accounted for around 76 percent of Facebook’s revenue during the second quarter of 2015. Facebook has already run successful brand campaigns for companies like Under Armour and Procter & Gamble.

When running a mobile video campaign on Facebook, you can choose between Facebook’s Standard Video Ads, which are targeted the same way as regular Facebook ads, and Premium Video Ads, which allow advertisers to drive branding objectives while reaching a large audience – in the hope of unlocking big advertiser spend from top brands.

Premium video starts playing without sound but when tapped, it expands into a full-screen view and sound will start. These ads are bought like spots on television as they are based on TRPs (Targeted Gross Rating Points) to reach a specific audience over a short period of time.

You can target people based on location, demographics, interests, behaviors, and connections. Just recently, Facebook announced its support of the auto-play video ad format, as well as multi-image carousel ads and dynamic product ads. Videos can go as long as 45 minutes.

Facebook follows a flexible payment scheme that suits your daily budget, starting at a minimum of $5 per day. Ultimately, average CPI (cost per install) figures vary greatly depending on gender, age, interests, OS, and country.

2. YouTube

YouTube is the undisputed king of video content, so it makes a lot of sense to advertise on the platform. It boasts one billion unique users per month on mobile, with the average YouTube viewing session lasting a stunning 40 minutes. Viewers are targeted using the same AdWords Interface being used by Google.

YouTube has several ad formats, which include Mobile Roadblock, InStream Video Ads, and Brand Channel. Roadblocks allow you to see how many people viewed your ad on YouTube mobile for one day. InStream ads run when users play a video from a premium inventory partner on the Android YouTube app. Brand Channels are great in promoting brand engagement for both Android and iOS users. Video ad formats include skippable and non-skippable video ads.

Videos can run up to 45 minutes and performance can be measured using a built-in YouTube Analytics system. It has an average cost-per-view ranging from 10 to 30 cents.

3. Twitter

Since Twitter has always been a mobile-first platform, ad revenues from mobile advertising climbed as much as 88 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014. With a total of 700 million monthly users, the company can target users based on geography, gender, language, keyword, interest and username. You can also modify targeting settings according to mobile plan carrier, OS, and users on WiFi.

Brands can upload and distribute their own video ads by using Twitter’s Promoted Video, which appear in a user’s Twitter timeline. Some video clips appear as pre-roll or mid-roll ads. They can also auto-play.  In July, the social network allowed advertisers to drive app installs directly from promoted videos.

When it comes to cost, Twitter uses a cost-per-view buying model, which means you will only get charged when a user plays your video.

4. Instagram

Instagram enjoyed huge success when it introduced its video program in mid-2013, and it is expected to pull in $2 billion in mobile ad revenue next year, thanks to its 200 million monthly users. It makes use of native video ads that pretty much look the same as user-posted videos, which can now be viewed as landscape for a more cinematic feel.

The only difference is that it contains a “Sponsored” tag on the upper right corner. With a new video length of 30 seconds, you can adjust targeting according to various demographics like age, country, and gender.

One of the brands that first used Instagram’s video ads is Fox, which used the Marquee ad type to promote its newest horror series, “Scream Queens.” Marquee pushes the promos in front of a large number of users, helping advertisers reach a huge number of users quickly.

Mobile video ads in Instagram are not yet widely available, though the platform is currently working towards an ads API and tying up with Facebook’s ad buying interfaces. Marketers who have already tried the video advertising program say that they’re paying as little as 2 to 3 cents per view.

Mobile Analytics for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube campaigns

There are only two ways to measure your mobile video campaigns – whether app install or re-engagement – on the above social networks: you can either go in-house as all offer built-in analytics tools, or work with official mobile measurement partners that are used mainly to get deeper attribution and marketing analytics, and to compare all marketing channels, ad networks and campaigns in a central dashboard.

5. Snapchat

Boasting over 100 million monthly active users – the vast majority of whom are millennials – Snapchat uses the “disappearing model,” in which photos and videos uploaded by users vanish within a set limit of time.

Snapchat video ads appear in a user’s friends list under the Recent Updates section. Just like a normal Snapchat message, users need to tap the ad to play the video in full. This unique method of holding to play can help you know exactly at which point a user stops watching the ad.

Another way to run a video ad on Snapchat is through Discover, its news section. Ads automatically play as the user swipes to view the next piece of Discover content, although they can easily be swiped away if the user doesn’t want to watch the ad.

At present, targeting is limited to country, age and gender. It has a standard price of two cents for a 10-second video, but premium ads can run longer.

6. Pinterest

Instead of videos, photo sharing platform Pinterest uses Cinematic Pins, which are GIF-like animations that play backwards and forwards every time the user scrolls up and down. These are around 30 to 50 frames long – short enough to be played before the user scrolls past the ad.

At present, Cinematic Pins are not yet fully available for advertisers, although it is currently testing with select ad partners. It will be releasing a pricing model that allows marketers to pay for Promoted Pins based on engagement. Pinterest also has its own analytics platform, but it has not yet been upgraded for Cinematic Pins.

Mobile video advertising on mobile ad networks

In order to maximize reach and diversify your advertising efforts, you should always try to find a mix of social and “standard” mobile ad networks to work with. There are many networks out there that include video ads in their offering.

Here a few leading ones:

7. Vungle

Dubbed as “the leader of in-app video advertising,” Vungle is the top choice for web developers like Zeptolab and Mobjo. It uses programmatic advertising technology that automates buying, placement, and optimization of media inventory.

Vungle Premium is the company’s latest offering when it comes to mobile video ads. It has two main features: Vungle Score, which acts as a quality indicator that allows you to identify popular apps for advertising opportunities; and Vungle Billboard, which helps you find desired target audiences.

8. AdColony

Owned by mobile ad company Opera, AdColony is a leading mobile video advertising and monetization platform. According to the company, its instant-play video ad technology means that unlike other networks, there’s virtually no load time regardless of connection strength or device type.

9. AppLovin

With video making up about 35 percent of its business, the ad network is embracing data and real time programmatic advertising. The company claims that its algorithm allows for better targeting, increased conversion and reaching about 70 percent of your customers within just a week.

To sum up, mobile video advertising is red hot. It’s where a lot of marketing attention is going to these days, with more and more news about its effectiveness – particularly on mobile – coming out. To remain competitive in a hyper-competitive environment, it appears video is a must-have weapon in today’s app marketer arsenal.

Guest Author: Shani Rosenfelder is a senior marketing manager at AppsFlyer. He has over 10 years of experience in key content and marketing roles across a variety of leading online companies and startups. Combining creativity, analytical prowess and a strategic mindset, Shani is passionate about building a brand’s reputation and visibility through innovative, content-driven projects.

The post 9 Of The Best Places To Leverage Mobile Video Advertising appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.