Bitly | Blog

Personal Branding Has Never Been Easier

The new platform offers both Custom Bitlinks and Branded Domains to take your personal branding to the next level. Bitlinks (Bitly links) are not only smart and insightful, but they’re also customizable.

Custom Bitlinks make your content stand out in a sea of noise. Branded Domains, on the other hand, put your personal brand out there in front of your fans and followers. And if that alone isn’t  convincing enough, Branded Domains also boost engagement and conversion, driving up to a 34% increase in click-through-rates.

Analytics That You Understand

Our newly simplified analytics dashboard gives you a snapshot of all the Bitlinks you’ve created over the past 30 days and has a beautiful breakdown of your top locations and channels where your audience has clicked on your content.

The clickable graph gives you a 360 view of how your content is performing, both at a birds-eye-view and at an individual link view. When you click on a specific date, you will also be able to see a more granular view of the top links for that day.

What’s Next?

Over the coming months we will start introducing this new Bitly experience to the rest of our users and will make sure that you have all the information you need during this transition.

1. The 10/20/30 Rule

When it comes to presentations, most of us tend to get caught up with length. We want to pack as much information in to keep the reader engaged and make it worth their while. In fact, so many of us suffer from this that Venture Capitalist Guy Kawasaki, who has listened to thousands of entrepreneurs pitch their companies, created a solution after being tired of sitting through these long, drawn out presentations. It’s called the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint: 10 slides, 20 minutes and 30 point font.

Kawasaki says the 10 slides rule comes from the idea that “a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting.” We love this simplified formula, because it forces you to hone in on a set of key points and focus on delivering these well.

A shorter presentation also has two advantages when it comes to lead generation. Readers are more likely to retain your content and reach the last page where you host your CTA.

2. Find Your Aesthetic

Which Fortune 500 CEOs are most social? from Domo

Make your presentations stand out by following a consistent, branded aesthetic. When building out your template, think about fonts, colors and imagery that reflects your brand’s personality. You might want to play around with a mix of typography, vector art and high-res stock photography as well to find the right combination.

Domo’s SlideShare presentations are simple but so well branded that the cover slide is recognizable by the style alone. You’d probably be able to point out a Domo slide even without seeing the logo! Domo’s SlideShare presentations use the brand’s baby blue as the background color and fun vector art throughout. This makes it easier for followers to scroll through their feeds and immediately pick out Domo content.

3. Create A Click-Worthy First Impression

3 Storytelling Tips - From Acclaimed Writer Burt Helm from Ethos3

Cover pages really help set the stage. A good cover hooks the reader in and lets them know exactly what to expect in the slides to come. Let’s take a look at some of our favorite techniques for creating a catchy cover page:

This heavily viewed presentation from Ethos3, “3 Little Things I Know About Storytelling”, uses high-res imagery with a punchy headline in a simple font. To date, it has received over 72,000 views.

The Three Lies About your Age from Sean Si

This other presentation from TEDx Youth, “3 Lies About Your Age”, currently featured on the SlideShare homepage, uses a dynamic overlay of colors, shapes and fun calligraphy to catch the reader’s attention.

4. Repurpose & Optimize

With 60 million monthly users, SlideShare can help you tap into a new audience base. Amplify your existing content by repackaging it in presentation form. The Bitly team uses SlideShare to syndicate our top performing ebooks, webinars and other premium content. We’ve found the most optimal file format is a PDF that’s 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall.

We’ve also found that the six most-used tags on SlideShare are business, statistics, social media, market trends, and research.

5. The Cherry On Top: A Compelling CTA

So now that you’ve created a catchy presentation, don’t forget to follow through with a compelling call-to-action (CTA) in the last page and the caption!

Use a Bitlink to drive readers to a landing page or sales page to further engage them. You can customize the back half to make it even more memorable in case they decide to come back at a later time. In our “7 Ways To Step Up Your Instagram Marketing Game” presentation, we tagged on the Bitlink “bitly.is/igmarketing2016” so that readers who were interested in learning more about Instagram Sponsored Ads could head over to our webinar to pick up more tips on creating engaging content, partner campaigns and more. We can then count the clicks on that Bitlink to see how many people are coming to the webinar from SlideShare.

B2B’s Visual Social Tool

Instagram and Snapchat might rule the consumer world, but SlideShare reigns supreme in the B2B space. SlideShare receives 500% more traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Jake Wengroff, formerly Global Director, Social Media Strategy and Research at Frost & Sullivan, also said SlideShare gave his company thousands of qualified leads a year, and a 50x return on investment.

So if you want to target B2B, there may be no better place to go than SlideShare. And all you have to do is repurpose existing content into an engaging, branded presentation template.

Whether you pronounce the word with a hard “guh” or like JIF peanut butter, you know there’s one for every emotion. They make you laugh. They add impact to your posts. And they actually have been proven to increase engagement (one company, BlueFly, cited a 12% increase in revenue generated from emails with GIFs).

As a marketer, there’s a difference between using them and really getting the most out of them, so let’s look at a few best practices:

Know your GIF libraries 

If you’re looking for something to express happiness, for example, a simple Google Images search for “happy GIF” will yield a lot of hits. You can also search this way on Tumblr or Giphy. Twitter recently announced its own GIF search as well.

Keep them PG 

It sounds like a no-brainer, but this is where a healthy amount of pop culture knowledge comes in handy. Avoid using GIFs clipped from inappropriate or violent movies or TV shows, and if you’re not sure, double check with your desk mate.

Keep a folder of favorites on your desktop

  If you’ve spent any amount of time searching for GIFs, you know how great it feels when you find one that really expresses the emotion you want it to. Don’t toss it back into the abyss — save it to a GIF folder on your desktop with an easy to remember filename (you can even organize the folder into subfolders based on emotions), so you can come back to it later.

Use them in moderation

While they are eye-catching, a feed with GIFs attached to every tweet is a bit over-the-top. The “quality over quantity” rule of thumb definitely applies here, so be strategic about which tweets include them — typically, they make sense in more laid-back contexts, like Twitter chats, sharing blog posts with fun content or as a response to folks with whom you have a good rapport. Think: one gif for every 10 tweets.

Make your own

Want to give your product launch a little extra punch? Show, don’t tell with a quick 8-second GIF. We’ve been dabbling with this here at Bitly to demonstrate both our new dashboard and our Deep Links experience. There are a lot of do-it-yourself tools out there like MakeaGif , imgflip and Giphy.

One of the best things we can do as marketers is to test things ourselves. So, go ahead — hunt around, save some favorites and begin incorporating GIFs into your own personal feed. Note any increased engagement, and, once you’re feeling confident, start translating your newly found skills to your company or brand page. You’ll be glad you did.

  What does TexTopia.Net do?

Ken: TexTopia.Net helps businesses communicate with their loyal subscribers in real-time through a “text keyword” approach that generates an instant text reply containing pictures of promotions and hyperlinks that aim to increase sales.   

Businesses can capture cell phone numbers from subscribers across all platforms, from online ads to offline promotions by publicizing their custom keyword to our virtual SMS exchange. We also have an integrated Wait List Me program that businesses, like restaurants, use to inform guests when their table is ready. TexTopia.Net provides the capability to send images and text messages to thousands of subscribers at a time, with a logo and a personalized Bitlink CTA to brand and track the effectiveness of the campaign.

How do you use Bitly?

Ken: When a business first joins TexTopia.Net, we generate a Bitlink specific for the keyword they are following and the guest’s ID. Using Bitly’s Short URL API, we create individual shortened links for these businesses to send to thousands of customers on the fly, while gaining instant access to a complete list of all of the activity generated by the guest in the Bitly dashboard.

Bitly also helps us build stronger relationships with our customers. Often times, a business will ask us, “How many people have seen my information?” or they might question, “They received our TexTopia.Net message, but did they open it?”

TexTopia.Net hosts the landing page, so we can track engagement through the page stats, but Bitly is an independent, third-party platform that adds a layer of credibility to our tracking. So we can use our Bitly dashboard metrics to match up against our own page stats and show proof of ad placement to a given subscriber.

Bitly also tracks dark social, web traffic from outside sources that web analytics tools aren’t able to track. One example of dark social is when someone copies the link from the text message they receive and sends it to their friend. In the past, that friend’s open rate couldn’t be measured, but Bitly is able to attribute that additional click to the campaign as well.

Why is mobile important?

Ken: Current stats are showing that email marketing campaigns on average are opened less than 25% of the time. However, when people hear a ding that their phone received a text, almost everybody looks at their phone to see the message. The average open rate for text promotions/offers is 98% and they are read within 3 minutes of being sent!

The numbers also show that millennials are using their phones a lot. Over 85% of Generation Y owns a cell phone. Texting allows us to connect with them in a meaningful, engaging way.  

We are so excited to be working with Bitly, because we believe that messaging to everyone from Millennials to Baby Boomers across many channels, will be the ‘in thing’ for the long haul. With Bitly,  we are able to deliver these solutions to small and large businesses as the new way to uniquely reach these spontaneous customers in more creative ways than just plain text alone, And that’s fantastic news for our clients.

What are some helpful text messaging marketing tricks or best practices?

Ken: We follow a three tier approach: Engage, Stimulate and Grow.

For a campaign to be successful, you will need to engage the users by capturing their subscription. When you create media messages, include the option to join your VIP club with a Keyword from TexTopia.Net. Using print and digital signage in strategic locations in your store can give your text messaging sign-ups a huge boost as well as offering verbal incentives for guests to join while they are at the point of sale. A restaurant may have their hostess and wait staff ask guests to sign in while they wait to be seated and offer them immediate rewards for joining.

Mobile is also a great tool to stimulate traffic and increase website and recurring store visits. You may invest a lot of money on your website, but people today may be too busy to check for promotions on your website. It’s the tree falling in the forest syndrome. You can update your website and hope that they come back, but nobody will know to check unless you tell them with a text. If you send them a short TexTopia.Net message with a Bitly link that drives them to the exact web promotion you published, they’re more likely to visit your store and ultimately this adds to your sales growth.

What’s an example of TexTopia.Net in action?

Ken: We work with a number of businesses – some are restaurant franchises, supermarkets, live professional sporting events as seen in the example above for a restaurant, and some others of which may seem more surprising. For example, an interesting case example is a B2B wholesale food company. You might think, why would they use texting? They’re B2B.  

But when you’re a territory manager and have to oversee 100 different restaurants with 5,000 different products, making sure everyone gets the right delivery on time involves a lot of communication. You have to communicate the specials of the week, and then arrange meetings with the customers to get their orders. Since email is not being read and business owners are too busy, they benefit from instant messaging solutions.

This is where TexTopia.Net messaging gets the job done – in a far more immediate manner than making repeated phone calls or sending un-read emails. We connect people faster with telephone integration and call center features. It is simple to build a customer loyalty program through TexTopia.Net messaging, and a more productive method to manage sales for B2B.

Why Are Deep Links Important?

Picture your daily routine on the web. Whether you’re looking for the day’s news or searching for a hip new jacket, you’re probably used to browsing Twitter or Facebook, or checking your email for current content. When you find something you like, you click through expecting to land directly on a page that delivers exactly what you were looking for. On an iPhone or an Android device, you expect to be taken to an app. Unfortunately, this isn’t very common.

And this is a problem because most of the content we consume today is on mobile. U.S. adults spend an average of 3 hours and 8 minutes on the phone each day. And mobile is a tough crowd. 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. The average app loses 77% of its users in the first three days.

What Are Universal Links and App Links?

Over the past year, Apple and Google introduced ways to enhance the mobile user journey, with Universal Links and App Links respectively. These two deep linking protocols allow URLs to seamlessly redirect into an installed app.

Until now, there wasn’t a standard protocol for mobile deep linking and each company would build their app using whichever standard their mobile teams embraced. But this is a lot like using different languages to communicate with each other. It’s hard to understand each other and certain things might get lost in translation. Universal Links and App Links are equivalent to the English language, a language of international commerce.

The way deep links work, if you’re trying to access a news publication on the mobile browser, it will automatically direct you into the content in the app that you’ve downloaded on your phone. If you don’t have the app downloaded, it will bring you to an interstitial page where you have the option to download the app.

Mobile apps make it easier for consumers to engage with content and make purchases. Most importantly, apps deliver the speed that mobile browsers can’t. Web browsers take longer to load content and most consumers wait only 6-10 seconds before abandoning a page altogether. A one second page delay can cost a 7% reduction in conversions.

How Do I Get Started?

Enabling your Branded Domain to be a Universal Link or App Links domain is as simple as checking a box in Bitly and then adding your Bitly domains to your list of supported domains in your app.  Once those steps are done and you have integrated our software development kit (SDK), we will take care of creating the rest of the setup.

How Does It Change My Workflow?

For those of our customers who are currently using third-party tools to create and manage your  links across your organization, you don’t need to change anything.  Once your domain and app is configured in your Bitly account, all of the links managed through these tools will automatically drive users with the app installed into their mobile app.

What Types Of Analytics Will I See?

Since you’ll be enabling links across various marketing channels and devices, your Bitly dashboard will give you a unique view into your brand’s customer journey.  You’ll be able to see how your users are engaging across channels, the value they take away from each touch point and how each of these content pieces work together. Using these analytics you can focus on optimizing your content and not worry about all the nuances of getting users to the right place on every device.

What’s Next?

Apple and Google made great strides over the past year around restructuring their platforms to enable mobile app content to be more native and behave as web content has for years.  

Android adoption will increase as time progresses and Apple introduces a new version of iOS each summer. If the charted course continues as we have seen this past year, we can expect to see more advancements in access to mobile content and tools for app developers to introduce their content to users natively.

Over the last few years, online content sharing and consumption has evolved and our product has evolved with it. We’ve grown into a robust link management platform that connects the dots between various content pieces and channels. Through the power of the link, we’re uniquely able to help our customers see across the myriad places they communicate with their users, whether that’s through social networks, email, SMS or mobile apps.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to let go of features we’ve come to know and love, even if it’s a means to a greater end. But we knew it was important for us to simplify and refocus our resources on building a platform that will empower brands to navigate today’s digital landscape. That’s why we turned to the numbers to understand the impact to our free users, and the best course of action.

It turns out both the Your Network and Public Profile pages make up less than one-third of 1% of pageviews. We also know of the millions of Bitly users less than 100 profiles receive on average more than one pageview per day. 

The lack of usage indicated that it was time to remove these pages to make room for features that would drive even more value. Don't worry, all of your Bitlinks will continue to work and are available through Your Bitlinks. Our goal at Bitly is to make it easier than ever for you to build, measure and manage links. Thanks for joining us on this journey and we can’t wait to see what you build as you transition onto this exciting new platform.

 1. Structure Your Teams by Market

Martin says that structuring your team by target market is the most effective way to build out a social program. “Knowing the local customer is key to social, because you are having a conversation with your clients and prospects,” Martin says. 

She suggests that local agencies can sometimes be necessary if you’re localizing the content, since images and tone may change depending on the region.

2. Build a Centralized Governance Plan

“These decentralized teams should operate under a centralized governance plan, developed and administered by a centralized team,” Martin says.

This is critical for organizations that are bound by regulations and can greatly improve consistency in messaging. The central team, Martin explains, approves any and all social media channels that are launched and manages all the administrative processes of social, like passwords and usernames.

Martin says that a central governance plan for social should include:

Page “rules,” including service levels for posting content (frequency and varied types of content) to avoid instances of abandoned social networks  

Crisis management, including response and escalation plans

Social customer care service levels for responding to inquiries

Central process for working with customer care to address comments/questions

Consistent reporting to ensure the channels are performing to identified KPIs

An on-boarding program for local agency support is also helpful for local marketing teams, helping them vet potential service providers

3. For Better Integration, Create a Committee

“I’ve found that an enterprise steering committee is a great way to break silos,” Martin says. That means looking across functions and identifying stakeholders in social media, from legal and security to corporate communications and PR.

“Communicate why each stakeholder is invited to the table and have a thorough RACI chart (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them by sitting on the social media steering committee.”   

Every key function should be included on the committee, so there are stakeholders present who represent each team’s goals.

Analytics & Accountability

Once you’ve launched an enterprise social media strategy that is integrated with every team, you can start thinking about how to track results from a micro and macro level. But what tools should you use? And what kinds of things can you do to make sure every team is on the same page?

Join our webinar with Sprout Social to learn all that and more! In Enterprise Social Media: Tools, Tips, Strategy on 4/28 @ 2pm EST. In the webinar, you’ll learn:

The Critical Metrics for Social Enterprise Teams

The Breakdown & Channels of Your Typical Social Team

How to Optimize Content Per Channel

How to Build a Central Place for All Those Metrics

1) Upload Videos Natively

Native videos, videos that are directly uploaded to Facebook, have a greater reach than any other type of post on Facebook. This means that beyond sharing neat video content from other brands, you have to post original video content.

A recent study also found that Facebook native videos perform better than videos across any other platform. In fact, Facebook videos have higher engagement than videos on Youtube, Vimeo and Vevo.

What does engagement mean? We don’t know technically… but Facebook has said that they count a view as a view after the first three seconds, whether or not the user has turned on audio. Facebook advertisers though, have an extended length of 10 seconds before they are charged for the view. Youtube has also vaguely shared that views are counted after “about 30 seconds.”

Engagement is a hard metric to nail down, especially when native videos on Facebook auto-play when a user scrolls through his or her newsfeed. The auto-play feature means that beyond your headline and thumbnail image, you have the first few seconds to capture the viewer’s attention.

“I honestly would’ve said a year ago autoplay video is the enemy that plagues premium video advertisers,” says Jenny Schauer, associate media director at digital marketing agency Digitas.“Today, however, I think there’s a different story, and Facebook is largely at the root of it. While autoplay in general is still not the most premium or impactful video ad format, if done well it can amplify a video campaign at a scale that user-initiated video could never compete with.”

One brand that does a great job of amplifying video content is TED. This trailer of Pamela Meyer’s TED talk from Pamela Meyer, “How To Spot A Liar”, repackages content from the full-length talk and teases highlights to drive interest. The video catches your attention by starting off with the bold statement of “The person sitting in your very seats is a liar.”

  Hook your audience in by playing around with elements such as music and personalization or by setting up the story so they know exactly what to expect if they keep watching.

2) Build On Exclusivity And Urgency

Stats show that users actually watch live broadcasts 3x longer.

Live streaming is appealing to viewers because it’s authentic, unpredictable and builds on the urgency of “watch it now, or the content will be gone forever.”

Buzzfeed recently posted a 45-minute video of two employees attempting to make a watermelon explode using just rubber bands. At 690 rubber bands, the watermelon exploded and the Internet went crazy. The video accumulated over five million total views.

This video was so engaging, because it not only hooked people in, it kept them there for 45 minutes - the anxiety building with each additional rubberband added. It also got the community talking.

One person tweeted, “Help why am I in a bar watching buzzfeed trying to explode a watermelon.” Another person said that they couldn’t peel their eyes off the screen, “Testing my anxiety threshold watching @BuzzFeed try and pop a watermelon with hundreds of rubber bands via live video.#IMNOTOKAY”

3) Foster Community

Facebook recently posted a few tips for those just starting out with Facebook Live - we’ve highlighted a few of our favorites below. It was extremely helpful to get a walk through of how the feature works from the moment you hit record to the closing line. We found that the product works very much similar to other live streaming platforms you might be familiar with, like Periscope.

What’s neat to note, though, is that you can invite viewers to subscribe to notifications. So the next time you broadcast, subscribers will be notified to tune in.

You can also easily view comments and either reply to them in the text box or respond to them in your stream. It can be fun to keep viewers engaged by saying hi when they join the room or answering their questions by calling their name.

Looking for some more inspiration? Check out https://www.facebook.com/livemap all of the live streams that are happening right now, at this very moment.

4) Video Is King

There may be a lot of changes to keep up with, but the bigger picture is that video is here to stay. Need proof? Photos now drive the lowest organic reach on Facebook.

Facebook is doubling down on video by even paying video content creators - including big media companies. Buzzfeed and Vox Media have confirmed a partnership with Facebook. Tastemade also recently announced that it will soon broadcast 100, live exclusive videos each month on Facebook.

"We're entering this new golden age of video," CEO Mark Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed. "I wouldn't be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video."

1. A Diverse Social Audience 

As your customer base grows, so will your social media audience. Whether your following grows organically or through some concerted efforts, a bigger audience means a wider variety of demographics and personalities. Not every piece of content will resonate with every reader. 

Here are a few ways to make sure you’re doing your best to engage:

Monitoring Engagement 

Social engagement is key. One key strategy is to figure out which of your large audience actually engages with your social media posts and create content you know will resonate with them.

You can use tools like Bitly and Sprout Social to see where those engaged followers are, when they’re online and what content they’re most likely to share. Use that information to inform your publishing strategy.

Start Listening

You can also listen to social media for trends associated with your brand. 

Figure out exactly which topics and hashtags your customers are most often associating with you and leverage that knowledge to create posts you know your audience will enjoy.

2. Multiple Locations and Languages 

Many enterprise-sized companies have locations all over the world, and with that comes a variety of audiences who don’t speak the same language (in more ways than one). 

While this diversification and expansion is good for the overall business, it poses a series of unique challenges for the central social media team. It is impossible for one person to understand the language and cultural differences of such a large audience.

Therefore, it’s important to have a team of community managers that can respond to social media inquiries in the languages that they arise in and create content that speaks to each individual culture - all while following overarching brand voice and guidelines.

Targeting by Region

For example, McDonalds has more than 36,000 restaurants in over 100 different countries. If they plan to effectively respond to all of their inbound messages, they’ll need to make sure team members are comfortable with the languages and cultures of those locations.

One way to help with this complicated challenge is to create individual social media profiles for each geographic location. Each page should have a content and engagement strategy associated with it and a social media manager who understands the language and culture and is charged with maintaining and engaging on the handle or page.

The number of pages you create and how granular you should approach this strategy should depend on the amount of engagement you’re seeing per location and the amount of social media managers that you have available. 

Though these pages are all separate, you can use a social media management tool to centralize all of the engagement and reporting in one place.

3. Breadth of Product Offering  

Social media managers are required to knowledgeably speak to the products and services their company provides. 

Having an intimate understanding of products helps social managers provide great customer service quickly and efficiently, and should decrease the time it takes for them to respond - which is important, since 42% of customers anticipate a response within 60 minutes on social media.

Large enterprise companies often offer a wider breadth of products than a local shop, so it then becomes a matter of more importance for social media managers at that level to study the products and services that they offer.

Take a brand like Electronic Arts, for example. They offer a massive library of video games, each with an intricate plot-line and list of characters. However, their social media team is able to effectively engage with even the most specific messages with a consistent and relatable voice.

That doesn’t mean you need a ton of different social managers each with different knowledge of products and services offered. Instead, encourage all of your social team to take time out of their day to study your catalog and learn more about your business. You can also build out internal resources like FAQs to help your team navigate conversations on the fly.

As social evolves, so do the challenges that come with it. However, if enterprise brands understand their audience and adapt as it changes and expands, they can reap real benefits for their business. For more tools, tips and strategies for doing so, join our webinar with Sprout Social to learn all that and more!

In Enterprise Social Media: Tools, Tips, Strategy on 4/28 @ 2pm EST, you’ll learn:

The Critical Metrics for Social Enterprise Teams

The Breakdown & Channels of Your Typical Social Team

How to Optimize Content Per Channel

How to Build a Central Place for All Those Metrics

1) Listicles and Roundups

“I've grown my personal Pinterest following to more than 12 thousand followers, largely due to the types of images I create for my blog posts that are optimized to perform well on Pinterest. Vertical images with a little bit of text tend to perform very well, so I create different types of these graphics, including collage style images for gift guide blog posts and simpler blog cover graphics for educational and informational posts.”

Takeaway: Pinterest is, at its core, an organizational tool. Make it easy for your followers to consume your content by breaking down blog posts or longer form content into digestible lists.

Mallory Whitfield, Content Analyst, FSC Interactive

  2) Flat Lay

  “You might already be familiar with Flat Lay, but might not have known the name for it. You can learn more about the history of Flat Lay here. The format of Pinterest allows for the simplicity and clean style of Flat Lay to really stand out. When busier images appear side by side in an infinite scroll grid the details can get lost, but Flat Lay allows each image to visually stand alone.

Find inspiration in other great examples of Flat Lay here.”

Takeaway: Our brains are wired to love organized chaos. The flat lay is a great way to add some personality into your shot. It allows you to sell more than just a product - you’re selling a lifestyle.

Robyn Lange, in-house Curator, Shutterstock 

  3) Keyword Density, Quality, Consistency

  “My formula to success in Pinterest is a combination of three things: keyword density, quality pins, and consistency.

Pinterest is an image based social network, which means you need to work to ensure Pinterest users can actually find your content.  This means that every pin, board and board description should include at least one keyword. You can also include your biz's top three keywords in your bio to get your profile in some broader user searches.

On Pinterest, content is king.  You should only be pinning quality content.  This means the pin click-through link should work, and the pin image itself should be aesthetically pleasing and inline with your brand.

Lastly, be consistent. To keep your content appearing in your followers feeds, you need to post consistently and frequently.  Start off posting 5 pins a day, and increase your daily pins until you're posting anywhere between 15 and 20 new pieces of content per day.  

Takeaway: Pins have long lifespans. Amplify this by posting quality content that’s branded and keyword optimized.

Ashley Migneault, Blogger, To The Wild Co.

  4) Board Covers

    “When it comes to being successful on Pinterest, a strong visual presence is absolutely where it’s at. And what’s the first thing any potential followers see on your profile page? Your board covers!

Make sure your profile and board covers provide a glimpse into your brand’s lifestyle.

Even though each board is bound to have a different focus, try to give your covers a cohesive visual style. Experiment with either muted or bright colors across your profile, stick with one color palette, consider creating dedicated graphics for your boards, or even create a color fade effect across all board covers. Get creative and keep the look of your profile consistent!

Consider changing your board covers frequently to give your profile a quick visual overhaul.”

Takeaway: Switching out your board covers can be a great way to refresh the look and feel of your profile. Consider how the colors work together for different seasons and campaigns.

Hanna Wheeler, Talent & Production Manager, Loop 88

  The Changing Landscape

  Photo from TechCrunch

Pinterest has been experimenting with new formats for brands to further engage with their followers. Last month, Pinterest launched “How-to-Pin”, a dynamic tutorial pin that shows step-by-step instructions. This makes it easier for businesses like home improvement stores and food blogs to share content and provide value to their community.

There are also rumors that Pinterest is experimenting with video ads that autoplay when a user scrolls over the pin.  

It looks like the platform is following in the footsteps of other big social media players, building features that will encourage users to stay in-app.

But among all the changes, one thing is for sure - Pinterest is great for studying purchase intent. 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases. 31% of all online adults use Pinterest, versus 28% of online adults who use Instagram. Pinterest can tell brands a lot about their customers’ interests, pain points and needs.

As social commerce continues to grow, Pinterest will be a platform marketers should keep an eye on.

“[Pinterest’s] growth may be more limited than other services, simply because what you do on Pinterest—find and pin things that you like—isn’t necessarily something that large numbers of people may want to do,” writes Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst at eMarketer in their “Pinterest for Marketers: What You Need to Know.” report. “[But] in a year when marketers are starting to worry about ‘dark social’ platforms where most conversations are private, there’s a polar opposite—Pinterest.”

“[P]ush the boundaries when it comes to being creative with your content internally on the platform and externally off it.

Internally this includes providing a variety of different types of content in your snap stories, custom themed content for different days of the week, and utilizing internal features such as filters to make your snaps more visually enticing.

As for external content, be sure to leverage pre-existing followings on other social platforms for content distribution to build your following.”

Everette Taylor, CEO MilliSense | Snapchat: everettetaylor

“Don't be afraid that Snapchat content disappears. Remember that time before DVRs when you had to drop everything you were doing just to catch your favorite TV show? If you missed it, it was gone.

If done well, people will tune in, anticipate and consistently check up on your brand's Snapchat channel to watch your exclusive content because it's not something that they can set aside for later and forget. Snapchat is bringing back that scheduled anticipation and the viewers will stay up-to-date with your brand.

Also, Snapchat is not Youtube, Vine, Facebook or Instagram - don't use it like it is. Don't just post static pictures like Instagram, or boring, non-interactive videos that can also be posted on Youtube or Vine. If you plan on doing that, just use the other social media that those content are intended to live on.”

Cyrene Quiamco, Snapchat Storyteller and Founder of the 11th Second | Snapchat: cyreneq

”Snapchat has popularized authentic and personal stories. Stories are a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of friends and celebrities, and the candid nature of the medium is unfamiliar to brands who are used to producing content that is carefully planned, executed and edited.

If brands want to break into Snapchat, they need to bring a personal touch to the content they produce while still having it be specific or unique to the brand. A brand that does a good job with their Snapchat account is Everlane.

In their Snapchat Stories, Everlane lets fans know about new clothing lines, when their office will be open to the public, and they answer questions from fans. All of this is done through the storytelling of the two protagonists (and Everlane employees) Isadora and Red and that is the key: have real people behind the Stories and get them in front of the camera. You can’t do personal without people.”

Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator, entrepreneur and overall good guy. | Snapchat: justinkan

“Tip 1: Know your audience

While Snapchat doesn't give you detailed information about who's watching your snaps, you can quickly gauge what type of content to post by testing it out. Snaps that typically are consumed by Snapchatters fall into categories like humor, fun facts, tips and tricks, contests, games, stories, and skits.

Tip 2: Repurpose your content

One thing I learned while working at BuzzFeed Video was the power of repurposing your content. When you write a blog post, create a video around that post. From that video make a cut for Facebook, YouTube, Vine, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Your one piece of content now feeds audiences on multiple channels.”

Chris Coleman, Social Media Superhero | Snapchat: itschriscoleman

“Snapchat users like brands, but they love people — real people — more. Consider handing your account for a week to an influencer in your community or platform to take over. It gives your brand a first-person, authentic narrative.

Last February, we asked social media influencer and photographer Alen Palander to take over our Stories during his trip to Southeast Asia, and this doubled our number of views and screenshots!”

Klassy Goldberg, Social Media Editor at 500px | Snapchat: the500px

“I started using Snapchat a couple of years ago, drawing random monsters, and it became my signature. I’ve found that the stories my followers engage with most are the ones where I ask them to draw with me even if it’s not something they typically do or specialize in!

It’s actually pretty hard to draw on Snapchat, but it makes it even more rewarding for me because I’m able to create big stories with small tools. I think it’s awesome that brands have started to tap into this - I’ve worked with several international brands on illustrating stories now. Social media users are always looking for something new, so illustrating stories on Snapchat can be a way to keep them engaged.”

  Georgio Bassil, Snapchat Illustrator | Snapchat: georgio.copter

Impact That Lasts Beyond The Snap

The candid, ephemeral nature of Snapchat might be intimidating for brands who are used to planning and preparing content. But you should embrace the vanishing act! Disappearing messages can be used to drive a sense of urgency and exclusivity. It can be a unique opportunity to show the faces and personalities behind your brand or product. The key is to use each 10 seconds to build on one another, into one big conversation that tells the greater story of your brand.

Instagram Marketing: From 0 to 100

Only 36% of marketers regularly use Instagram, which means the hand-wringing about “organic” Instagram marketing is premature.

Even among the marketers that do use Instagram, there is probably a lack of coherent strategy. You still can’t include links in any photos. 

The only time you can link out of the app is the URL section in the bio, which means you have one chance to send followers back to your website or a landing page. (And if you’re doing that, make sure to use Bitly to track your Instagram traffic!)

Without any linking capabilities, brands essentially could only feature photos. That’s worked pretty well for any company that has visually pleasing products. Others, well… there are a lot of office shots.

But Instagram shouldn’t be relegated as a “behind-the-scenes” kind of social channel, where marketers only post the monthly party or workshop photo.

Instagram has more monthly active users (400 million) than Twitter (300 million).  Think about that. The big three, in order, are now Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. LinkedIn has 400 million monthly users, but only 20% log into the social network each month.

Given Snapchat’s booming growth, the next year or two may see more shuffling.

Social Media is Paid Media

Like all social channels today, Instagram is trending toward a paid approach. In this case, though, it’s a good thing. Without links or buttons, any Instagram post could really do was drive users to the link in a company bio or build brand awareness.

Instagram’s algorithm changes the way that users see content, which means this an opportunity for brands to get started with Instagram marketing strategies that give way to true, trackable ROI.

The real question is: how do you create Instagram ads that are effective? And how do you nurture a community on Instagram that you can reach both organically and through paid?

Recently, we hosted a webinar with AdRoll, one of the first companies to partner with Instagram on paid ads. We covered that topic and more. 

In “Instagram Marketing in 2016: Organic, Paid, Partnered” you’ll learn: 

- The Instagram Marketing Landscape

- Organic & Paid Instagram Strategies

- Use Cases & Examples

1. Keep It Simple

Medium’s recent study showed that the optimal read time is seven minutes. When you think about this, along with the fact that reading online is 25% slower than reading print, there’s not very much time to engage with your reader.

Keep your reader from bouncing by making it easy for them to scan - break up your paragraphs into three sentence chunks. We try to do this on the Bitly Blog and know a few others in the industry do this as well. Margot of The Word Factory says that writing short distills your thinking.

2. Borrow From Buzzfeed

Listicles work. Research has shown that our brains are intuitively drawn to lists because they’re easy to process and retain.

Next time you’re writing a blog post, try out the headline formula “[X] Ways To Solve [pain point]” or “X [solution] You’re Not Thinking About”. These headlines are highly clickable because you’re directly addressing a pain point and following up with several actionable solutions. Listicles are also great for SEO. Concrete numbers are a huge draw for someone who’s casually browsing, because they know exactly what to expect and what they’ll learn.

3. Tune In On Social

Use social media monitoring tools to tune into what your customers are talking about and deliver. Listening in can identify bottlenecks in the user journey, hesitations about the product, or other pain points that can easily be solved by creating some content to address it.

There are plenty of tools out there, but Mention and Simply Measured are two handy examples to check out. Mention tracks brand mentions across social networks, blogs, landing pages and other websites. Simply Measured is great for keyword analysis, hashtag tracking and keeping tabs on conversations.

4. Get Creative With Visuals

So this one isn’t writing per se, but it’s just as important, if not more! Visuals are no longer optional when it comes to creating content. Colored visuals make people 80% more likely to read a piece of content. Support your writing with high-quality screenshots of use cases, behind-the-scenes photos or more detailed video shots of your product.

Invision’s blog pairs big, high-res photos with short paragraphs and click-to-tweet quote blocks. This makes for a clean, minimal reading experience and showcases their design expertise.

Lowes hosts a visually-driven DIY blog with tips on building and simplifying household projects. The brand features short video tutorials that allow users to watch content and follow along while working on these projects.

Looking for more visual inspiration? Check out these composition tips to create great photos on Instagram and beyond.

5. Get The Right Eyes On Your Content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help improve the quantity and quality of prospective customers that find your content. Why are both of these metrics important? The volume of traffic increases your chances of conversion, but the quality of your readers is what helps ensure a higher lifetime value.

Use a tool like Google Adwords Keyword Planner to research popular keywords or gauge the performance of your target keywords before weaving them into your content. Customizing the back half of your Bitly link can also help boost organic search rankings!

6. Write With Your Readers

Tap into the historical behavior of your customers to create personalized content. Segment readers by how much they’ve previously engaged, or by demographics such as age, location and gender. Even just looking at page views or clicks can help determine what content is most popular among your audience.

Spotify segments top users and sent them a thank you email with an exclusive early-access offer to Charles Kelley’s upcoming tour. This is smart because it not only makes users feel special, but also plays on the urgency of “limited supplies” and “limited time only”.

Supercharge your segmentation efforts by tracking your data across channels. Consider how prospects engage on various channels throughout the user journey and map out your content in a way that drives them closer to purchasing with each step. Deliver more of the right content to the right customer at the right time.

7. Win Their Trust

70% of consumers look at product reviews before making a purchase. Social proof is a blessing and a curse for marketers. It’s an extremely powerful tactic, but it also has to be monitored closely since social media makes it easier than ever to share honest feedback.

Win your prospects over by partnering with influencers and featuring stories from real people in community. Don’t forget to track results from these partnerships to measure success and ways to optimize future campaigns.

Last year, Boxed Water teamed up with influencers Jamie King, Megan DeAngelis and Aidan Alexander to launch their campaign with the National Forest Foundation: The Retree Project. For every Instagram photo posted with the hashtag #Retree, Boxed Water planted two trees. They drove over 9,500 photos with the hashtag!

Beyond proving that they sell a great product, this Boxed Water resonated deeply with consumers. The campaign established them as a socially conscious brand who is providing like-minded consumers a way to drink packaged water that’s better for the environment.

Always Keep Testing

Above all, the best conversion rates come from testing. The industry and your customers’ needs are always shifting, so your strategy will need to follow suit as well. As new social media platforms emerge, experiment with different ways of delivering your content. Conversion can come from any channel, not just your blog.

Want to learn more about how to track engagement and conversion? Watch our webinar “How to Measure the Content Marketing Metrics That Matter.”

The Social Customer

You usually can’t point to individual social posts and attach a dollar value to them. Instead, you have to dive deeper into the details to figure out how social media influences behavior and, ultimately, all those conversions.

So join Bitly & Simply Measured on Thursday, April 7 @ 2pm EST for a webinar all about social ROI.

In “Beyond the Share: Proving the True Value of Social,” you’ll learn:

The Landscape of Social Metrics Today

The Reporting Structure of Social Teams

How To Set Up An Attribution Model

How to Show the Company the Value of Social

The Future of Social ROI

It’s called the Idea-Details strategy and it was developed by my husband and writing teacher, Steve Peha, to make writing easier for young kids. It’s so simple, even adults can use it!

The Idea-Details™ strategy creates the framework we need to include just the right amount of detail. It helps us quickly define the most important thing we want readers to know and identify the key details that meet their needs and overcome their objections.

Here it is at a glance:

The strategy gives us the opportunity to do our thinking first, so we can focus more energy on conveying the core information effectively.

Using the Idea-Details is easy:

1) Spend 5 minutes—tops!—making notes on the chart.

2) Create a complete sentence for each detail.You don't have to have one of each type as shown in the example. Try for three to five total.

3) Tune up the sentences for use as micro content like tweets, Instagram captions or bullet points for a slide deck. Add more sentences for each detail to create blog posts or Facebook and Linkedin updates.

Here’s how I used it to prepare this post:

One big plus about the strategy is how it helps us identify what matters most so we can leave behind interesting, but less important, details more appropriate for longer content. 

In my case, I crossed off three topics because I knew I couldn’t cover them all well enough in the word count for this post. Time wasted? Not at all! I can use the leftovers for related content like social updates or a blog post. But even if I can’t repurpose those bits, all I’ve “wasted” is a few seconds. Still better than lots of rewrites of a full piece.

Use Bitlinks to Support Writing Short

Bitlinks are another terrific tool to help us write short. Use them to cut down on character count and make the URL more memorable. Keep customized Bitlinks to 14 characters or less, so the whole custom URL appears in the tweet, like this:

Strategic use of Bitlinks gives us a few more precious characters to tell our stories. And the Idea-Details strategy provides the discipline we all need to work out our thoughts in a way that leads reliably to short-form copy that’s potent, informative and engaging.

Looking for more insight? Check out my writing short presentation on Slideshare.