Digital Connection

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

We live in a digital world that is full of content and marketers are struggling every day to capture the attention of their niche audience. That’s why it is important to have an integrated content marketing strategy.

 According to the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs “80% of B2B marketers have some sort of content marketing strategy in place”, which is a great.

 So it is important to recognize if you as a marketer are using the right tools to capture and engage your audience. Are you using digital advertising, or updating you social posts often and changing up your marketing strategies to attract you audience? Well here are some stats to consider that were taken from the short article 3 Ways Digital Advertising Gives Tactical Support to Your Content Marketing Mission:

In the next three years social media advertising is going to increase exponentially   because it is an easy way for businesses to attract a new audience by using already shared information between users.         

Users who have been re-targeted have a 70% chance of converting.

A bakery saw a 35% gain in conversations and a 330% gain in their impressions when they were on Google’s Display Network. ·

Wordstream says when it comes to re-marketing the more the user sees the ad the more likely they are to talk about it.

It is important to look at these stats and take in to consideration what would be the right type of tools to use when capturing and engaging your audience. Digital advertising for instance can be a great tool to use in your content marketing strategy. The tips below will make sure that you’re getting the most bang out of your buck when it comes to making a successful content marketing stage.

Make a connection with people you already know.

 Marketers always have an idea of the type of audience they want to attract which is called the known audience.

Typically your know audience is more likely to react and interact with your content no matter what topic or idea you bring up. This known audience usually consists of people in your social following like your past and current customers, industry influencers and your brand advocates.

 A prime example of this would be if a Marketing client wanted to launch their new product within their SAS (Statistical Analysis Software). The client already has an idea of their audience but just needed help getting their product notice. This is where I would recommend the re-marketing program.

What this program does is take different pieces of your content and re-market it to different parts of your known audience. Ultimately driving up demo’s of the new software, which was according to the short article 3 Ways Digital Advertising Gives Tactical Support to Your Content Marketing Mission, “a 26% increase from their original advertisement tactics”.

By getting the most out of re-marketing you should spread your message and target your know audience across different channels. Your audience is everywhere so by showing your ad on different platforms you have a better chance of being notice.

Target your unknown Audience

Digital advertising helps brands attract a niche audience by using keywords, interests, topics, titles, companies, demographics and much more.

The advantage to this is that it allows brands to deliver topics and relevant content to an audience you didn’t know existed, opening up new opportunities for your brand/ company. The question is: When is it a good time to use this in your content marketing strategy? A great time to use in your marketing strategy is when you want to drive up sales and create more brand awareness.

A good example of this would be if a healthcare technology client had a major change in their industry and they created a lot of new stuff to adjustments to that change. This type of information would be important to a large audience and it is a great opportunity to attract your consumers with paid promotions. By doing this it creates clients to be better thought leaders and it helps them stay more focused on their goals.

By using these types of targeting methods it will help improve the level of engagement especially when it comes to your unknown audience. This is shown below with the engagements numbers dramatically surpassing the old/ historical method.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Knute Sands wrote a short article called, ”Content Marketing Lessons from Netflix: 5 Steps for Feeding the Content Beast From David Bruno”. In the article he discusses how David Bruno has worked in the content marketing field for 25 years and how he gave a great presentation on content marketing. In his presentation David showed content markets how they can use lessons from Netflix and apply it to their own marketing techniques. One of the first questions he brings up is:

Is Netflix’s considered Content Marketing?

There are several marketers that believe that Netflix’s is a result of successful marketing content but not actual marketing content. They believe that content marketing is meant to increase business leads and results and that Netflix is just a video entertainment spot where people can view movies and shows.

That’s where David and Knute disagree, they believe that Netflix is actually a very powerful content marketing powerhouse. They believe that because Netflix’s is able to mine user date, make content for all types of audiences and also make a profit doing that, that Netflix’s is considered as content marketing. This is shown in the amount of original content they have made, the amount of subscribers they have had and the amount of profit they have.

 The chart below shows the amount of subscribers Netflix has had over the years. In the graphs it shows that the amount of subscribers has increased from 20 million in 2011 to 75 million in 2015, which is much better than their competitors being Amazon and Hulu.

This other chart shows that amount of revenue that Netflix has made over the years which you could see has been increasing each year, especially in 2011.

  The big question is when looking at these graphs why is the profit going up so dramatically while the amount of subscribes is moving so slowly? That’s where original content comes in. It wasn’t until 2011 that Netflix released their own series called House of Cards and their whole business model started to change. Now because of the increase of subscribers and profit Netflix plans to produce 600 hours of more original content each year.

Why us the Netflix model?

We have entered a world where people want on-demand marketing where people want their questions answered instantly and they want it delivered to them on their own channel. That is what Netflix’s has created an “anytime, anywhere, any device” streaming service that people can use. They have even created a suggested titles page which is based on the customers past viewing history. Now what would happen if B2B used the same type of content marketing strategies? Would it help you know when and where your customers want their information? The Information below will help you answer those questions.

Get involved in Data

Data is very important and can take a long time to collect and analyze, but it is well worth it. Data mining is a technique that Netflix’s has used for many years and has helped them to become more successful business.

Media companies are known for following big numbers because they want a massive scale of people to view and adopt their product. That is why they have taken a huge consideration in not just showing the masses interesting content but delivering it to them.  

Consider Netflix’s for instants, Netflix’s has delivered all types of shows for all types of niche customers like Weeds, Orange is the New Black, Hemlock Grove and documentaries like Making a Murderer. All of these shows were produced because of data insight. Netflix’s has not just focused on broad ratings, but they have dug into their own data and have looked at the amount of usage their users have done and also looked at their completion rate stats. Since Netflix’s has used the data collected from their customers amount of usage on Netflix’s it has helped them deliver and produce the right kinds of shows that people are looking for and also producing all types of dedicated fans.

 In the B2B marketing world these types of customers don’t affect them too much. In this type of marketing it is important to use advanced analytics segments to identify the specific customers they are interested in and the types of questions they need answered even if it is a small group of people.

Is Content important to B2B customers?

Content is important to B2B customers cause according to Pardot, “76% of B2B buyers prefer different content at each stage of their research process”. That is why like David Bruno likes to say “we got to feed our content beast”.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

A major problem that many SEO’s and content marketers are dealing with is the duplication of content. For all those who don’t know what SEO stands for, SEO means Search Engine Optimization which is a technique or strategy used to increase more users to your page by having the highest ranking spot on a search engine site, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on.

Many content marketer work really hard to create great, compelling content for their audience and they don’t want to get penalized for duplication. According to Matt Cutts who made a short video called How does Google handle duplicate content? States that, “25% of the web was duplicate content”.

Duplication is when a block of content or something written very similar to the original content is found across many different websites. This is a major problem for many SEO’s and causes them to get penalized for this type of action.

The trouble is many crawlers have a difficult time finding the right needed content when there are several different versions of the same information out there. That’s is why they have bots to help decided which content is more relevant to the information you are looking for. The problem with this is the content may not be consistent to what you want and it may not be the version you are looking for. These bots also have a difficult time delivering the right links to the right pages and have trouble sharing those links across those different versions. This then leads to a major failure when it comes to finding the right version of a given query and can cause a major drop in traffic.

This is defiantly a major problem for Google because they strive to be the best search engine out there, trying to provide their users with the best relevant content they are looking for. That is why duplication content is highly penalized.

Not all duplicate content is bad for SEO, but it is good that users are aware of these types of SEO penalties.

That’s why in this article will discuss:

Different types of duplication content

What to do with duplication content

Different techniques to get rid of duplication content

Different Types of Duplication Content that can cause SEO Penalties

There are many types of duplicate content that you should be aware of.

     1. Duplicate product forms

Many E-commerce sites will use the manufactures description of a product for their own product. Which is a major issues because a single product could be used in many E-commerce sites, causing many other sites to have the same exact description causing content duplication.

      2. Copied Content

There are a lot of users especially bloggers who will take comments or quotes from other user’s websites and use it for their article which is fine. You just have to remember to link that original article to your own article. Even when you do that Google may still consider this article as a duplication and they may not use those pieces of content.

      3. Issues with URL’s

Google examines URL’s with www, http, https and .com as different entities even if they all point to the same webpage, which intern causes duplicate content.

What to do with duplication content

There are many steps you can take to avoid duplicate content problems.

      1. 301 Redirect

301 redirect is a great URL tool in finding duplications. What it does is tell the search engine which page is the original page and links all the other versions to the original page. By doing this it creates a collaborated stronger page that is not competing against one another but working together.  

      2. Rel=canonical

This tool is very similar to 301 redirect, but this tool is used in the HTML section of a web page and looks something like this:

<link href=”http://www.mywebsite.com/canonical-version-of-page/” rel=”canonical” />

What this does is notify the search engine that this URL is a duplication of the original content. This tool is especially great when you take a bunch of information from an array of different websites and you can notify the Search engine in an easy simple way that this content is not yours.

Different techniques to get rid of duplication content

There are many techniques and tools out there that you can use to get rid of duplicate content. Below are a couple of those tools:

       1. SiteLiner

SiteLiner is a tool that will help you find duplicate content on your website. All you need to do is add your sites URL and it will give you a detailed report on what content has been duplicated and the performance of that specific content.

         2. OnCrawl

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Having a small business it can be pretty difficult to market yourself in a world that is so technology driven. Don’t worry, there are plenty of tools and resources out there that can help you navigate through this digital world. Below are lists of free social media resources that can help you save time and money when it comes to managing your small business.

Analyzers

1. Headline Analyzer: This is a tool that analyzes how effective your ad is when it comes to reaching you audience in an emotional way. It can determine what emotion your ad is portraying and what type of people it will impact. 

LINK: http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

2. Optimizely: This is a company that tests headlines of different webpage’s to see if they are effective or not. They allow you to test your different headlines and images to see what will create the best results.

LINK: https://www.optimizely.com/

3. Coschedule: This is a tool that gives you a score on your blogs headline and sees how effective it is when being shared on other social platforms. It also scores you on your ability to increase traffic and increase value to your post.

LINK: http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

Content Tools

4. Portent: This is a tool that will help you produce social content for any idea you have. By simply using their idea generator it will help you produce the most optimized blog post and video content.

LINK: https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker

5. Blog Topic Generator by Hubspot: This tool allows you to enter in three topics you want to talk about in your blog and help you generate the best headlines for that post.

LINK: http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

6. National Day Calendar: This tool allows you to be informed on all the National Day celebrations. It is important to be up to date when it comes to these types of event so it makes your business stay more relevant.

LINK: http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/follow-us/

7. PostCreator: This is a tool that helps you generate a brand image for your social platform by simply uploading your logo, picture and message on their webpage.

LINK: https://www.postcreator.com/

Editorial Calendars

8. Optimize Book: This is a calendar that shows the best days when to post on these social platforms. Also, what is their target audience and what are the best topics and keywords to mention in these posts.

9. Brett Snyder: This is a calendar that helps a business come up with the best time to bring up certain subjects, keywords, sources and certain promotional strategies on these social platforms.

10. EditFlow WordPress plugin: This is a tool that makes it easier for people to work together and come up with the best ideas for their editorial calendar, blog posts and comments.

LINK: http://editflow.org/

Image Editors

11. Canva: This is a tool that allows you to create professional and eye catching images by simply allowing the user to drop and drag certain images. They also provide users with free fonts and images if they don’t have any.

LINK: https://www.canva.com/

12. PicMonkey: This tool allows users to design and edit their pictures by adding text to it and by resizing the picture if it is too big.

LINK: http://www.picmonkey.com/

13. Recite: This tool helps generate the most appropriate images for the quote you want to post. It gives you plenty of options to choose from so you can decide on which image you think best fits the message you want to betray.

LINK: http://www.recitethis.com/

14. Meme Generator by imgflip: This tool allows users to create their own meme, by giving them the option to upload or choose from a list of popular images and write their own short funny text.

LINK: https://imgflip.com/memegenerator

Video Editors

15. Avidemux: This is a tool that allows users to do simple tasks when it comes to editing their video like adding transitions, filters and cutting.

LINK: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

16. Movie Maker by Windows: This is a program that is included in the windows package which allows users to add audio, add transitions, cut footage and add fun effects.

LINK: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/movie-maker

17. Lightworks: Is a professional video editing tool that has been used by many Hollywood editing experts in many featured films. Lightworks collaborated with Vimeo to create a free 7 day trial where users can edit and create amazing footage for their social platforms.

LINK: https://www.lwks.com/

18.  WeVideo: Allows users to put their videos up on YouTube and connect them to other social platforms. It also allows users to take certain videos on other people’s platforms and use it for them to post.

LINK: https://www.wevideo.com/

Ad Generators

19. Ad Parlor: This tool allows you to design a mockup of your ad so you have an idea what it will look like when it is published on Twitter and/or Facebook.

LINK: http://adparlor.com/ad-mockups/

20. Banner Ads Creator: This tool helps users create ads on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in a matter of seconds. Also, it is really easy and fun to use.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Many content marketers around the world have spent millions of dollars to attract the most challenging audience out there, which happen to be millennials. According to Aaron Orendorff who wrote the short article called 4 content marketing lessons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles states, “that millennials have the largest buying power with $1.3 trillion a year” making them one of the most valuable target audiences out there.

What makes this audience so difficult to attract is according to John Boitnott author of Inc states, “That millennials’ resistance to content marketing occurs when they think the content is unoriginal, boring irrelevant or deceptive. Simply calling it “content” and not “marketing” doesn’t mean they’ll find it more valuable than a typical ad”.

That is why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Effect was invented. Many milliennials have been born and raised around the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, understanding what milliennials were raised upon gives you as a content marketer an idea what milliennials are attracted to.

Each Character in this show, demonstrates different personalities which correlates with the many of the personalities millennials have. By knowing the types of personalities that millennials have will help you as a content marketer make better decisions when it comes to making valuable content for millennials.

Below I will discuss the four characters in the show and the types of personalities they portray. Along with stats and inside information on each character and their relation with the millennials:

Michelangelo:

Michelangelo on the show is known as the artistic turtle that is care free and likes to have a lot of fun. This is pretty similar to many Southern California millenials, who are also free spirited and adventures themselves.

These types of millennial are hardest to attract because they tend to be the class clowns and jokesters of the group. They also spend a lot of money they don’t have on experiences than actual stuff and they don’t stay with their jobs for too long because they get bored to easily.  

So, to market to the Michelangelo’s of the world I would recommend:

To create, collect and share fun content by using memit. Memit allows marketers to gather their favorite stuff and share it across their own teams allowing them to put out the right kind of fun interactive content for these types of millennials.

Create a central website where both internal and external users can interact with one another. These types of millennials like being involved, so create a site you can directly interact with them.

Be fun and lively and make funny meme’s, quizzes and games. These types of millenials like to be entertained and love to be active.

Donatello:

Donatello on the show is known for being the intelligent one; the turtle who loves to design and innovate. He is pretty much known as being the brainy scientist/ engineer of the show. This character relates to many millennials who are also bright and savvy when it comes to technology.

Many of these tech savvy millennials use their smartphones on a daily bases. According to Aaron Orendorff who wrote the short article called 4 content marketing lessons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles states that “more than 85 percent of millenials use their smartphones when making purchase decisions and touch their phones 45 times a day on average”.

So, to market to the Donatello’s of the world I would recommend:

To create content that is interactive between both the online users and the in-store shoppers. Have the content be adaptive to the different conversations that they both have. 

Create how-to do content like live videos which teaches them how to create something. You can also provide live polls and surveys that ask them an array of questions that keeps them thinking. 

Gamify your data and the customers buying experience by making mobile and/ or web apps.

Leonardo:

Leonardo on the show is known for being the elderly and wise turtle who leads all the other turtles into action. Just, like Leonard there are many millennials who are like this who are wise, educated and organized.

Many millennial are between the ages of twenty to thirty years old and have a college education. According to Aaron Orendorff who wrote the short article called 4 content marketing lessons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles states that “0ne-third of older millennials (ages 26 to 33) have earned at least a four-years college degree” which makes up a lot of millennials.

So, to market to the Leonardo’s of the world I would recommend:

Give detailed information about your products features by providing supportive data to back it up.

Look over customer’s ratings and reviews and put them in order of importance and deal with the important matters as soon as possible.

Keep track of their transactions and interactions online. By knowing what products they have looked at and purchase it will help you understand what these smart millennials are looking for.

Raphael:

Raphael on the show is known for being the bad boy of the group; the turtle who likes to get in terrible and have a dry sense of humor. Just, like Raphael there are many millennials who are sarcastic, pompous and self-centered.

These types of millennials love to use social platforms to get attention and stir the pot. According to Aaron Orendorff who wrote the short article called 4 content marketing lessons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles states “ Eight-seven percent of 18-25 year olds in the U.S. use Facebook, Fifty-three percent are on instagram, Thirty-seven percent are on Twitter and Thirty-four percent are on Pinterest”.

So, to market to the Raphael’s of the world I would recommend:

Create content that is story board driven which shows all the sides of your business. The good sides, the bad sides and the artistic sides.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

 Visual content is very influential, especially in this digital era. According to Michigan State University who just did a recent study on brain reactions to visual content states, “The part of the brain responsible for seeing is more powerful than previously believed. In fact, the visual cortex can essentially make decisions just like the brain’s traditional ‘higher level’ areas. This was especially true when it came to Twitter.”

There were two trade shows that took place a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas and Detroit that supported this study. The tradeshow in Las Vegas was called CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and the one in Detroit was called NAIAS (North American International Auto Show). Many people from around the world particularly people in the communications and marketing field gathered to see what was trending in these industries.

Many of the attendees who went to these tradeshows shared most of their information through pictures and videos. At NAIAS many of the attendees shared most of their images on the web and on a variety of social platforms. According to Gabrielle Hughes who wrote the short article 5 Tips to Ensure Your Visual Content Is Seen, showed that most of their images and video that were shared from NAIAS was on:

 Now the question is how do marketers make sure their content is seen on these popular social platforms? Here are the five steps that should be taken to make sure your visual content is noticed.

 1. Create Creative Visual Content

Creating visual content that is compelling to the audience makes all the differences when being notice. You can do that by:

Having infographics or extra content that supports your ongoing series.

Have attention-grabbing headlines and captivating captions for your pictures and videos.

By doing this you are slowly pushing yourself in the right direction in becoming notice and gaining popularity.

 2. Include Data

Going into depth about your information will make you more distinct and notice. You can do that by:

Having date with beautiful visual graphs on it that tell the story of your company.

By doing this it is pleasing your audiences visual cortex while also making them think at the same time.

3. Create a Buzz

Don’t entirely release all your content at the same time, cause some anticipation and tease your audience a little bit so they are wanting more. You can do this by:

Staring a couple of discussion by posting a couple of tweets or comments that your target audience will notice and share. Then once you get the amount of attention you were looking then release your visual content.

By doing this it will build up the amount of attention you were looking for and help you get notice.

 4. Must be Relevant

When making visual content you have to make sure your content is relevant and pleasing to your target audience. According to Gabrielle Hughes who wrote the short article 5 Tips to Ensure Your Visual Content Is Seen, state that people at CES were sharing a lot of visual content in real time. The visuals on the bottom show the most popular content that was shared at CES and the type of attention they were getting.

 The number one visual that was favored by all the attendees at CES was the advertisement by TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield. This company gained a lot of popularity for this photo because it was enlightening, educational and hit a broad audience.

5. Be Timely

Timing is very important when it comes to releasing your content. You must release your content as it happens so it catches your audience’s eyes. You can do that by:

Posting videos and/or pictures as it happens.

If you want more clicks you can repost your content at a later time when a lot of people are online.

By doing this you are able to get the attention of a larger audience and become more shareable. So by setting up multiple posts at certain times it will really help you become more recognized.

 6. Repurpose your content

It is important to repurpose your visual content across various websites and social platforms. You can do that by:

Lengthening your visibility by reposting your visual content several times a day on different social platforms such as Instagram, Vine and Twitter.

You could wait a little longer and post the visual content on Facebook and/or LinkedIn hoping it will eventually turn into a popular newsfeed.

You could also change your captions and headings hoping it will get notice again.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

We live in a world where everyday we are bombarded with thousands of advertisements. No matter were we go, your either seeing billboards while driving to work or online when you visit your favorite webpage and so on. Most of the time most of these advertisements are over looked. That’s why many marketers have changed their strategy and decided to make valuable content that is more memorable and shareable by using influencer content rather than just in your face advertisements.

According to Admin who wrote the short article Content Marketing Tactics: Influencer Content Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices says, “Influencer marketing often refers to celebrities or brandividuals advocating for a brand. Influencer content goes beyond advocacy to focus on the actual content being produced for marketing”. Influencer content marketing consists of both a subject matter expert and influencers (industry authorities) working together. By using the expert’s credible social following, influencer’s content is able to reach a larger audience.

 There are different ways to collaborate with influencers in content marketing:

Influencers can help co-create your content.

The brand can create the content but us the influencer’s quotes or actual contribution.

The brand can create the content and post the content on the influencer’s websites, blogs or other publications they have.

Influencer content has been around for a long time but it’s just recently that it started gaining popularity again. According to Tomoson a popular marketing platform preformed a study that showed that, “businesses are making $6.50 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. In addition, 51 percent of businesses reported acquiring better customers through influencer marketing efforts”.

Influencer content is known to work really closely with earned media. For all those who don’t know what earned media is, earned media is unpaid publicity that is given by a third party from either a customer review, a news article or a social media posting.

 There are many pros and cons when it comes to influencer content.

Pros:

Influencer content programs have been one of the most successful marketing tactics of all time. There are many benefits influencer content has on content marketing:

Influencers have many loyal and trusted followers, making them credible to brand/ business.

Influencer’s content allows you to reach out to a trusted authorities audience and attract more people.

Sometime influencers will market your content for free, if your content is good quality and is meaningful to their audience (fans/ followers).

 Cons:

Even though the influencer programs are very successful there are many downsides to using it for your content marketing. Here are a couple downsides of using influencer content programs:

Influencer programs are very time consuming because it’s all about building relationships and staying connected to keep those relationship’s alive.

 Even though influencers have a very active following its doesn’t mean your message will agree with those followers.

Here are some examples of influencer Content:

 LinkedIn

 The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide on LinkedIn is a very good example of influencer content. This content was created by many influencers and was spread through many social channels. Since there was collaboration with the influencers and its content, it has made this content more visible and more valuable as a marketing solution on LinkedIn and has resulted as a big money break through for them.

 Ray N. Welter Heating Company

This company Ray N. Welter Heating Company (aka HVAC) wanted to build brand awareness and increase engagement with its community by using influencers. Since this company is in a very specific type of industry most of the time influencers tend to be their competitors, so they were somewhat hesitant to use influencer content. There first influencer content was “Thermostat Wars! Local Celebrities Tell Us What They Set Their Thermostat To”. The celebrities that were involved in this campaign were famous local meteorologists, a famous local news anchor, and a famous local rapper. All of them (influencers) having their own social following and bring attention to Ray N. Welter Heating Company. It didn’t take long until this campaign took the number two spot on their webpage, (their homepage being number one) which was great for them because it gave them the brand awareness they wanted and it definitely started community engagement.

 Genealogy Research Firm

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Many people consider content marketing to be content that informs and encourages engagement with its audience, which is somewhat true, but if it doesn’t accomplish a business’s goals then it is not content marketing.

Coke made a video called “Coca-Cola Content 2020 Initiative Strategy Video”, in this video they talk about how they will use content marketing to accomplish their goals for 2020. Coke’s plan by 2020 is to double the size of their business, open their minds to different types of marketing ideas and stories, and also use different types of technology to reach and connect with their audience and even measure their behaviors and activities.

In this video Coke defines content as “the creation of stories that are to be expressed through every possible connection which must add value and significance to their customers lives” (Ch. 6). They also consider content marketing to be liquid and linked ideas. Coke defines liquid as the process of creating ideas so contagious they cannot be controlled and linked ideas as ideas that are relevant to their Business objects, their Brands and their consumer’s interest. Brand Stories is the connection between liquid and Linked Ideas, which in turn starts conversations that grabs the attention of popular culture.

Coke says there are two types of story telling One-way Storytelling and Dynamic Storytelling. One-way Storytelling is the most common way of story telling, which is one dimensional and told from one person to another. Dynamic Storytelling is a multi dimensional way of story telling which spreads brand ideas through different channels of conversations but keeps them unified because they are all enjoying the brand experience. That is Coke’s goal to turn their old ways of story telling (One-way Storytelling) to a Dynamic way of storytelling.

Making this video has helped Coke stay more focused on their goals and has also helped them figure out way to accomplish their goal through content marketing. Having them describe what content marketing is for them has helped them clearly understand what they are trying to accomplish and how to get there.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Marketers for many years have used all sorts of content marketing strategies to attract customers to their products/services like blogs, infographics, webpages, podcasts, videos, e-books and much more. These strategies have worked for years and have generated tones of popularity and success for millions of companies in the U.S. and around the world.

A new content marketing strategy that has gained a lot of popularity is interaction. Interactive content requires users to engage with the media to receive output. This type of media gets customers more involved and makes them feel more valued.

According to Tom Whatley who wrote the short article Five Forms of Interactive Content to Boost Engagement say, “there are five types of interactive content that is gaining popularity they are: Interactive Infographics, Quizzes, Interactive E-books, Calculators and Interactive videos.”

1. Interactive Infographics: For all those who don’t know what Infographics are, they are visually pleasing graphic graphs that show data and information. These types of data helps people retain information better because they are visually stunning and the graphics make it easier for people to understand and remember.

By making these infographics interactive by simply allowing users to scroll on each page to view the information and data it opens the doors for more engagement and also helps them retain information more by making them more active (even if it is just a click or scroll).

What interactive infographics allow you to do is

To indicate the number of pages your inforgraphics has so it is easier to use and move around from page to page.

Allows user to engage with the information by clicking to reveal more information.

 Has a scrolling effect.

Allows users to highlight specific areas of the infographic.

Ceros.com is a website that allows you to build a small version of an interactive Infographic.

For Example: Propoint made an interactive infographic about the history of podcasting.

http://view.ceros.com/propoint/the-origins-of-podcasting-a-1/p/1

What made their interactive infographic so appealing is their use of the scroll effect and the animation that moved around with the scroll effect. By doing this they are capturing the users attention and causing them to be more involved.

These interactive Infographics on Ceros.com is an easy and affordable way to make interactive content and capture your users attention.

2. Quizzes: Most of the time people think of interactive quizzes as Facebook/ BuzzFeed quizzes like “ What Disney Princess are you?” and “ What 80’s rock song best describes you?”. In general most quizzes are used in B2C (Business to Customer) marketing but it is slowly starting to be used in B2B (Business to Business) marketing too.

Having these quizzes help marketers gain information on their customers. It also helps them understand their customers needs, wants and interests, which in return will help them understand the audience better and helps them market their products or services better to fit their needs. These quizzes also increase the level of activity and produce a large amount of leads because of all the interaction.

For Example: SnapApp made a quiz called “ Are you a Content Marketing Zombie?”.

http://info.snapapp.com/Are-You-A-Content-Zombie.html 

The reason they made this quiz was to:

Increase activity by increasing people’s curiosity (making them wonder if they are a content marketing zombie or not?).

Help gather data and information on their customers/ users.

 Provide awareness of customers/ users habits and discomforts.

3. Interactive E-Books: For years the e-book has been a great tool for content marketing allowing customers/ user to read their content when and where ever they want. Allowing them to visit any e-book website and download the PDF’s of any book or article they are interested in and download it to their computer, mobile device or both.

There are many ways interactive e-books gets their users involved one of them is gamification. By having the reader play a game while they are reading the book or article it encourages the reader to keep on reading so they can have a high score or beat the game. Also, some e-books have checkbox’s and videos, which help the reader, stay focus and more intrigued when reading the book or article.

For Example: "How to Build a Startup" by Steve Blank is one of the interactive e-books found on Guides.co. In this interactive e-book they allow readers to interact with other readers by leaving comments. They also let you write notes on each page to help you stay focus. By having an e-book more interactive it makes the information more valuable.

http://guides.co/g/how-to-build-a-startup/3008

4. Calculators: Having text that explains in detail the advantage of buying your product or service could be very beneficial to your customers.

With calculators being more accusable than ever before, it is more than possible to calculate/figure out all those sorts of questions, like what will your customers gain if they purchase your product?, Also, what could they lose if they don’t purchase your product? What would be their ROI (Return On Investment)? and so on and so forth.

By, providing your customers with that sort of information you have to make sure you are exact because the worst thing to do is mislead your customers and lose them for life.

For Example: SilkRoad created a reliable calculator that that calculates how much a company could save if they used automated employees instead of real employees.

http://hr1.silkroad.com/Onboarding-ROI-Calculator

5. Interactive Videos: Video is still the most popular type of content marketing, it is know or having the most amount of interaction and engagement.

Interactive videos allow the audience to engage with the video instead of just sitting there and watching it. People who are watching it though can even interact with it by clicking on things with a mouse or remote, they could also interact by touching the screen (that’s if they have a touch screen).

For Example: The Guardian's "Seven Digital Deadly Sins." is an interactive video that allows the user to explore seven people who use digital media and how it has changed their lives. This media allows the user to choose the person they want to see instead of just watching a long documentary of all the seven people. Also this video shows real time stats of questions that people have answered. This type of interaction keeps people more involved and more focus.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

With 2015 coming to an end there have been plenty of ad’s that have been shared over an array of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Blogosphere. The number one shared advertisement with over 6.4 million shares went to “Friends Furever”.

“Friends Furever” was made by Google’s Android, which had, cute yet funny found footage of animals playing with one another. This advertisement had no original footage in it, all the footage was taken from video already filmed and put together by the famous song “Oooo De Lally” which was featured in the classic Disney’s film Robin Hood.

Droga5 the agency that created the ad for Google was originally not happy with getting funny clips found on the Internet and sticking them together, because they were know for doing original content. But, when they found out how many shares they got, they were happily surprised.

According to Tim Nudd who wrote the short article The 20 Most Viral Ads of 2015 Animals ruled the ad kingdom, but brands also found a higher purpose states that David Droga the head of the Droga5 agency said “ “My natural desire was to create something from scratch,” “But this spot probably created more love in my household than anything I've ever created. It was a challenge to the way we create things. It was found footage that we put the strategy around. And I was always the one standing up and rallying against UGC, to be honest.””

Even though this was against what David Droga and his agency do you can’t mess with the results. This ad had more than 6.4 million shares making it the most popular viral advertisement of all times out beating Activia’s “ La, La, La” World Cup ad string Shakira which only had 6.1 million shares.

It seems like advertisement that stars animals in it are very popular in the virtual world, cause out of the top 20 most shared videos of 2015 four of the videos in the top 10 had animals staring in them. Purnina “Puppyhood” video for instance took the number 3 spot with over 3 million shares, Budweiser “Lost Dog” took 5th place with over 2.8 million shares and Kleenex “Unlikely Best Friends” in 10th place with over 2 million shares and don’t forget Android “Friends Furever” took the number 1 spot with over 6.4 million shares.

It was also, interesting to see that Adidas also had three ads in the top 20 spot for the most shared advertisements in 2015. Adidas: "Create Your Own Game" came in 16th place with over 700,000 shares, Adidas "Unfollow ft. Leo Messi" in 18th place with over 600,000 shares and Adidas: "Take It" in 20th place with over 600,000 shares. Nike, Adidas competitor had not one ad in this top 20 list, which was amazing to me.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Many people around the world have used social platforms inappropriately. They have used it for bullying, sexual harassment, hate speeches, graphic violence and especially to make terrorist threats. Just a week ago at the University of Missouri three 19 year old men posted an anonymous threat on Yik Yak , threating to the destroy the school and hurt black students.

For all those who don’t know what Yik Yak is, it’s an application that allows people to post comments anonymously without having to use a username or password. By doing this people who are reading and liking these comments have no idea who is posting these comments except for where they are located. This app is completely location- based and gives users the freedom of expressing themselves with out being seen/ noticed.

This has hurt Yik Yak in the past because many minority groups have been teased and bullied especially women and the LGBT community. Also, this is not the first time a school has been threatened, many High School’s have been threatened on Yik Yak that is why High school students are not allowed to use this application anymore.

Yik Yak has taken notice of all these terrorist threats and bullying situations going on in their social platform. So, they have taken measures to try and stop it like:

 Making their users agree to terms of services agreements, which state that, "defaming, abuse, harassment, stalking, and threatening are forbidden” and if any of these agreements are violated law enforcement will be notified.

Also, Yik Yak has given users the opportunity to flag messages down that they deem is inappropriate. They can do that by pushing the “downvoting“ button. If the post get’s 5 downvotes the comment is automatically deleted and then looked over by the Yik Yak regulation department.

 According to Bryan Logan who wrote the short article More people are getting arrested for posting anonymous threats on social media, states that Debbie Katz (a civil-rights attorney in Washington D.C.) feels that Yik Yak is not doing enough when it comes to putting an end to this horrific behavior. That these filters and downvoting options that Yik yak provides is not doing much. Instead Katz feels that Yik Yak should be deleting inappropriate comments before they are even posted.

 Katz and her civil rights team have sent letters to the founders of Yik Yak and their investors trying to inform them that they truly need to make a change. That this application is creating a scary/threating environment on these college campuses and that proper actions need to take place so cyber-bullying is put to an end.

Just recently another school threat was posted on Yik Yak by another college student in Alabama, and a month later in happened again in Emory University. Not to mention there were two more additional cases before these two cases happened, which were in Minnesota and Michigan Technological University.

Yik Yak says they are always trying to encourage good behavior in their social platform and that they are constantly trying to change and take proper measurements to better protect their users. But, still is that good enough? Debbie Katz obviously doesn’t think so.

YouTube has also dealt with similar problems on their platform. According to Tracy Tuten and Michael Solomon authors of Social Media Marketing said, a guy named Elliot Rodger had posted a video on YouTube to seek revenge on others because a girl he liked had rejected him, which made him angry and depressed. It wasn’t long till that video was posted, he had gone out and went on a shooting spree killing and injuring many people in Santa Barbara, California.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Around the world there are billions of people connected to the World Wide Web. Out of those people that use the Internet according to eMarketer report, “ In 2013 nearly one in four people worldwide use social networks to communicate with one another. This accounts for 1.73 billion people in 2013 and it is said to increase to 2.55 billion in 2017”. Many of these users are millennial’s born between the early 1980’s and 2000’s.

 Many of these millennial’s have an addiction to their social platforms constantly checking their news-feeds, updating their statuses, sharing photos or even spying on friends and family. A report taken by the Australian Psychological Society say many teenagers suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). This fear of missing out form these Social platforms has caused many teens to have high levels of anxiety and depression.

How the Australian Psychological Society came up with this conclusion was they conducted a National Stress and Wellbeing survey and asked a number of citizens of Australia what stresses them out and does social media contribute to that stress which then in return affects their behavior and wellbeing. They also conducted another survey and asked teenagers between the ages of 13-17 if they suffer from FOMO.

Since they began this survey they said the level of stress, anxiety and depression has gone up exponentially. Saying most of the stress comes from many citizens felling they are missing out on something important especially on these social platforms.

According to Alyssa Navarro who wrote the short Article called #FOMO Leads To Depression And Anxiety In Teen Social Media Users says, “Australian Psychological Society figured out that more than half of all the teenagers involved in the survey or about 15 percent admit that they use social media 15 minutes before bed every night. Also, four in ten or 37 percent of the teen respondents use social media in the presence of others, and one in four teens or 24 percent said they connect to social media while eating breakfast and lunch every day”.

This shows that that most of these teens who were heavy users of these social platforms suffered from FOMO. According to Australian Psychological Society 50 percent of the teens they surveyed said they feared that every moment they are not on these social platforms they are missing out on friends events, jokes and chances to post their own fun experiences on these social channels.

Another experiment that showed similar results was shown in Tracy L. Tuten & Michael R. Solomon book called Social Media Marketing. In this book on page 19 they talk about the University of Maryland conducting a one-day challenge with 200 students in not being able to use their online devices within 24-hours. After the experiment was over the students were required to blog about their experience in not having their devices for one day.

 In this experiment most of the students were blogging about their addiction to these social platforms and how not having these devices to constantly check these social channels gave them “withdrawal’s, frantic cravings, and even made them feel anxious, extremely antsy, miserable, jittery and down right crazy” (p 19).

These surveys and experiments also show that many of these teens feel they have a less rewarding life then their piers. For example when they are at home doing nothing and they are browsing through their news-feeds and they notice that their best friend has gone out clubbing. In that moment the user feels that are missing out on something important and possibly feeling left out.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

For all those who don’t know what Periscope is? Periscope is an app that allows people to record and stream live videos as they happen. The goal for developing this app was so people can actually see what is going on instead of just reading it. This app also allows people to see the world in someone else’s eyes.

Before Periscope became public Twitter bought them out in 2015. This was a big break through for Twitter because this allowed users to not only read what was going on but actually view it. How Periscope is set-up on Twitter at this moment is when anyone wants to post a live stream video they must send a tweet, which allows their followers to view the video on Periscope.

Periscopes new goal is to integrated their mobile app with Twitter more then they already have. According to Kayvon Beykpour one of the developers of Periscope said “ they are doing some extraordinary work to make the play back even more rich and to show up in even more places within the native Twitter experience”(www.adweek.com).

According to what Kayvon said there were no specifics on when this would be completed or what specifically they would be doing to make this deeper integration much better. Considering what he said, “ within the native Twitter experience” that can mean a lot of things. That’s why Christopher Heine who wrote the short article Here Are 5 Things Marketers Want When Periscope Integrates More Deeply With Twitter A Snapchat alternative is one of them, interviewed four marketers and asked them what changes they would like to see with this newly involved integration between Periscope and Twitter.

Tracy Tuten & Michael Solomon authors of Social Media Marketing, say “ A social media market plan answers the question: How will we distribute our content using social media channels? But it also must answer other questions: How can we engage our target audience in social media communities? What content is valued by our audience? Do they want content that informs? Entertains? How can we develop an ongoing stream of relevant, fresh content? ” (p 65). These are the many types of question that these four marketers are asking themselves when they decided on what measures Periscope and Twitter should take when making a more involved integration.

The four marketers that Christopher interviewed were Ian Schafer founder of Deep Focus, Nick Sheingold director of Laundry Service, Jason Stein CEO of Laundry Service, and Noah Levinson content strategist at Big Spaceship. Many of their integration ideas these four marketers had were compared to SnapChat.

 Ian Schafer founder of Deep Focus believes:

 Periscope should be intertwined with Twitter Moments. That instead of just having Snapchat Stories to share moments. A better alternative would be having Periscopes feeds on a new Twitter moments.

Periscope stats should have a stronger targeting presents on Twitter and vice versa. That data sharing between both social channels should focus on a target audience and present a purpose.

Ian Schafer founder of Deep Focus & Nick Sheingold director of Laundry Service believes:

 That newsfeeds should have live streaming. Instead of having Twitter users send a tweet to their followers to have them watch a live stream video on the Periscope app. They should allow live streaming in the actual Twitter newsfeed. Having people just go to Twitter to see what is actually happening instead of sending the user to another site. By bringing live stream videos to the timeline and having them auto play gets the users more engaged with the media then they are now.

 Jason Stein CEO of Laundry Service believes:

Twitter and Periscope should provide direct messaging. By providing live streaming in a group direct message it gets users more involved with brands and media properties. WeChat is an app that has already done something similar to this by having live streaming NBA games connected with group direct messaging and it has been really successful.

 Noah Levinson content strategist at Big Spaceship believes:

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

All over the world there are billions of people communicating and interacting with one another on some sort of Social platform.

 According to Tracey Tuten & Michael Solomon the author’s of Social Media Marketing say, “Most people are lurkers, people who review site content but don’t actually contribute. They estimate that 1% of a typical community’s users regularly participate and another 9% do so only intermittently. The remaining 90% just observe what’s on the site” (p 115). Even though most users are lurkers then actual participators these social channel still effect people’s emotional connections.

 A recent study taken by the University of Michigan found that some social platforms are more interested in social amusement and positive mood than other platforms are.

 Snapchat for instance was found to be more rewarding than any other social channel and more rewarding than Snapchat was actual direct face-to- face communication.

 This research is one of the first studies to exam people’s mood when using Snapchat on a daily bases. Snapchat is an application that shares and displays visual content, which disappears within seconds.

 People think of Snapchat as being a sexting application but actually Snapchat is used more communally for communicating with close friends in a fun and creative way. Snapchat is also looked at as having less social support than any other social platforms.

That’s why in this study according to Dr. Rick Nauert who wrote the short article Social Media Formats Evoke Different Emotional Connectivity says, “ they recruited 154 college students who used smartphones and did a “experience sampling” — which measures how people think, feel, and behave moment-to-moment in their daily lives”.

They did that by texting the participants the same 5 questions six times a day for two weeks straight and asked them how they were feeling after using their phone during the day.

When doing this study they discovered that Snapchat’s interactions had a more positive emotional reaction than the other social platforms. But, Snapchat’s interactions were seen as being less supportive than the other forms of communication like Twitter, Facebook, emailing, texting and face-to face communication.

In this study they also looked at what aspects of Snapchat might of increased emotional reward. What they found out was Snapchat made people less worried about what they looked like in their pictures because they knew the pictures were going to disappear in seconds.

Unlike Facebook for instance people feel they have to show their best side, because that is were big life events like graduations, weddings and birthdays are posted and recorded. Snapchat on the other hand shares moments not so much life events.

This study shows that most of the participants were more focused on Snapchat than any other platform, which might have been why Snapchat was the main platform to cause the biggest emotional reward.

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

Society believes that millennials are the generation of technology. That might be true, but millenials weren’t introduced to these social platforms until Jr. high or high school. Generation Zers is the most recent group of individuals born and raised on social platforms. Their parents have documented their lives on these social platforms since they were born until they were old enough to manage their own accounts. Generation Zers are between the ages of 2-19 and born in the late 90’s – recent 2000’s.

This generation has lived their lives interacting with this type of technology since they started school. Teachers have used this technology to teach their lessons and required them to turn in their assignments online. Not to mention when they hit their pre-teens a lot of these Zers have their own smart phones, which is always keeping them connected. Since, this generation of Zer’s is constantly using this technology and social platforms to communicate a lot of these people in this generation are getting board and less interested. Millenials and Generation Z for that matter were introduced to this technology at a different more mature stage in their lives making them more intrigued and less fatigued when using these social platforms.

According to Kate Dwyer who wrote the short article titled Why Some of Social Media's Biggest Stars Are Deleting Their Accounts — and Maybe You Should, Too said “In 2006, 55% of teens aged 12-17 were using social platforms. Nowadays, 76% of teens use it, but while there's been an overall increase, the types of social media and how we use them have shifted”. This can be shown by the amount of teens that use Facebook, which is up to 71% and 51% are using Instagram and Snapchat. MySpace has become nonexistent and almost obsolete, giving teens less of an ability to describe themselves and give their profiles more of a characteristic.

People now a days are more cautious of what they post, only putting the best pictures of themselves on Instagram and Facebook. The more risqué and ridiculous pictures of themselves are posted on snap chat because their pictures are deleted in matters of seconds. According to Tracy Tuten & Michael Solomon authors of Social Media Marketing this is called digital identity. “Digital identity [is] the way we represent ourselves via text, images, sounds and video to others who access the Web” (p 82).

Since, others all over the world have access to our pages people are putting their best versions of themselves online, making people believe they are doing well. Having this online persona takes a lot of time and effort and causes a lot of people to leave these social platforms because they don’t have that much time in the day to contribute to these online images of themselves. Lena Dunham is a prime example of that.

Lena Dunham better know as a 29 year old actress and screen writer of the HBO series called Girls, has handed over her 2.81 million followers to her staff, so they could help her post tweets more frequently and responding to tweets more quickly. Lena Dunham says she still loves being active on her account and occasionally composes some tweets for her staff to post, but the lack of time she has in the day and the awful/ hurtful comments she would receive caused her to hand over her account to her staff.

Jaden Smith, Will Smith’s child had a similar problem. Jaden Smith who is 17 years old just recently got rid of his 140-character platform, so he could obtain more privacy and escapes the public eye.

The different between Lena Dunham who is a millennial and Jaden Smith who is a generation Zer, is that Jade Smith is aware of his personal brand and wants his own personal privacy, which he hasn’t had. Lena on the other hand is somewhat new to this type of social platform and needs a staff to help her monitor her profile, so it is not out of control.

By: Jennifer Steenken ( Marketing Expert )

Since YouTube started in 2005 it has provide a social platform for people to express themselves and communicate with one another globally. Over the years billions of user are watching and using this platform to make short videos.

 According to YouTube’s statistics, “YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views”. With millions of people making videos, YouTube now has an incredible amount of followers in excess of one billion. This has given them an unprecedented amount of viewer power and revenue from ads subscriptions.

 YouTube has generated a lot of its income by selling advertising space most of the ad’s being interruption disruption. According to Tracy Tuten and Michael Solomon authors of Social Media Marketing interruption disruption is, “ when they have your attention [when your watching your short video] and they interrupt the programming to bring you a commercial message” (p 20). When watching a short video on YouTube a user is required to watch a commercial even before they can watch their short video.

 YouTube is not the only ones who are generating an income from this social platform, but so are many of the famous user posting videos on this website.

 Forbes magazine know for ranking many of the top billionaires in the world is now taking a look at ranking YouTube’s stars. Their income is measured by their operating income before interest and taxes are deducted.

In Nov. 2nd issue Forbes ranked YouTube’s top-earning stars from the highest to lowest:

1st.) $12 million: Felix Kjellberg aka “PewDiePie”.

2nd & 3rd.) $8.5 million: Tied between Ian Hecox & Anthony Padilla aka“Smosh” and Benny & Rafi Fine aka “The Fine Brothers”.

4th.) $6 million: Lindsey Stirling.    

5th & 6th.) $4.5 million: Tied between Rhett & Link and Olajide Olatunji aka “KSI”. 

7th.) $3 million: Michelle Phan.

8th, 9th &10th.)  $2.5 million: three-way tie between Lilly Singh aka “Superwoman”, Roman Atwood, and Rosanna Pansino.

 YouTube’s number one earning celebrity in 2015 was Felix Kjellberg, a 25-year-old video gamer from Sweden. He is know for being a video game comedian, who screams a lot and records himself playing video games.

 His channel on YouTube called “PewDiePie” according to Ross Miller who wrote the short article called PewDiePie's response to making $7.4 million is exactly why he's so successful says, “he has up to 37.7 million subscribers and over 9 billion views”. This amount of attention has made Felix Kjellberg a wealthy celebrity merely over night.

 YouTube’s number two and third spot are between Ian Hecox & Anthony Padilla aka “Smosh” and Benny & Rafi Fine aka “The Fine Brothers”. Both of these duos are comedians that bring funny short videos to their avid subscribers. Lindsey Stirling comes in fourth place famous for her dancing violin videos.

Rhett & Link and Olajide Olatunji aka “KSI” are tied in fifth and sixth place. Rhett & Link are famous for comedy songs and acts and Olajide Olatunji is famous for being a video game reporter. Seventh place Michelle Phan is famous for doing make-up tutorials. Tied in eight, ninth and tenth place Lilly Singh aka “Superwoman”, Roman Atwood, and Rosanna Pansino are famous for their pranks and comedy acts and short cooking videos.

It is important for business’s to set a strategic plan when wanting to use social media as a marketing output.  If the strategic plan is well thought out and made correctly it can truly be a helpful tool for a company.

 According to Tracy Tuten and Michael Solomon the authors of Social Media Marketing say, “the steps for making a successful strategic plan are:

 Conducting a situation analysis and Identify key opportunities.

 State objectives.

Gather insight into and target one or more segment of social consumers. 

Select the social media channels and vehicles.

Establish an activation plan using other promotional tools (if needed).

 Execute and measure the campaign.” (p. 51)

By taking these specific steps when making a strategic plan it helps a company stay more focus and helps a company accomplish their goals more effectively.

 One of the most important parts of the strategic plan process is the execution and measurement of the campaign. It is hard for companies to know which social media platforms are working and which ones aren’t. It’s even hard to know what social content is creating brand awareness, revenue and providing business opportunities.

 A way for a business to conquer these challenges is by making a verity of reports, which will measure the performance of these social media sites towards their own business success.  Having this data will help a company realize which content is resonating with the audience, which social media platforms are more productive than the others and what steps can be taking when changing content in the near future.

 Brian Honigman author of How to do a social media audit believes these three templates, will be great tools for the company to understanding which social media platforms are working.

Hootsuite

Buffer Social Media Report Card

Hubspot

Hootsuite is a great starting template to help a company get organized. This template has many steps to help a company get their social platforms organized and on track when it comes to their goals and mission statement.

Hootsuite has also designed a template that helps a company ask themselves the right questions when organizing a social media strategy, almost like a SWOT analysis. These templates can be modified for a specific business and moved forward to help future social media strategy decisions.

Buffer Social Media Report Card shows how well a company is accomplishing their social media strategies. This program monitors every time a company is mentioned, how many clicks, favorites and retweets they got. The Buffer Social Media Report Card can also be personalized to fit the data the business already has on each social media platform.

Buffer also provides a large list of other social media templates to help companies stay on top of their social media efforts. Many of these templates are commentary calendars, strategy publishing, copywriting templates and much more.

Hubspot is a marketing platform that highlights all the data collected from the report card month after month and charts all the results on an Excel template.

 These charted results show how well a company is performing in each social media platform and it also helps a company compare each months results to each other. This makes it easier for companies to show their progress to team members, project managers and stockholders.