Picture this: the year is 2013, Twitter is exploding into the public conscious with more than 200 million active users, and Facebook has a vice-grip on people’s free time across the globe. Social media, once considered an afterthought in any brand marketing strategy, is now on center stage. A fresh frontier to engage with current and potential customers in a way that no form of advertising has done before. Any brand worth its salt hires swathes of fresh-faced analysts to form social strategy teams and capitalize on the opportunity social media marketing presents. But, as with any emerging space, the way forward is not yet clear, and many brands are hesitant to make a bold leap into the unknown. Social media strategies are conservative and in line with traditional marketing: infographics are reposted on Instagram, product launches are promoted on Twitter, and brand Facebook pages are little more than an index of ads that have already run elsewhere. Despite social media platforms’ more casual formats, brand language is still tightly controlled and diluted with formality. The marketing world might be entering a new era, but the big brands still aren’t ready to give up their old tricks.

Now flash forward to 2022: the official Wendy’s Twitter account is telling people to smuggle Frosty’s into children’s movies, Arby’s Instagram is promoting a collab with famous rappers, and Slim Jim is furiously pushing a movement called #LongBoiGang. As a rational and well-adjusted person, you might be asking yourself how we got here? The answer, my dear reader, is memes.

What is a Meme?

So what exactly is a meme? Richard Dawkins first coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to refer to how ideas evolve and are shared across different cultures. Under this broad definition, everything from urban legends to famous sayings could be memes. But, as the Internet began to connect people worldwide, the free exchange of information accelerated like crazy. It opened the door for new methods of conveying ideas, specifically memes as we know them today.

Modern memes can be broadly defined as pieces of media that are copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users. From a conflicted superhero to a distracted boyfriend, these images are retitled and reused by Internet users to comment on everything from personal events to pop culture moments. But it’s not just picture templates that can become memes: halftime shows, hashtags, and even celebrities can all be the inspiration behind Internet memes. 

How Memes Can Benefit Your Brand

But even after being caught up on the history that made memes what they are today, you might still be asking yourself, what can they do for me? Here are four benefits that meme marketing can bring your business.

• Expanding your Engagement – Internet users spend an estimated 145 minutes daily on social media. They’re online to scroll through their pics, jokes, and videos while tuning out everything else around them, meaning you have the chance to capture their undivided attention. Meme marketing also opens the door to even more potential impressions through functions like shares, retweets, and comments.
• Keeping Consumer Attention – Social media users are highly resistant to traditional advertising on their favorite platforms, viewing unprompted commercials and ads as intrusions, not opportunities. But by sharing memes about your brand you can seamlessly slip into their content stream and cultivate more organic user interactions.
• No Price Promotion – The most enticing aspect of meme marketing is that it doesn’t cost a thing. Although hiring social media professionals or paid influencers can do a world of good, anyone up to date on current trends can join the fun post.
• Revealing your Relatability – One of the greatest struggles many companies have with managing their brands is appearing too outwardly corporate or robotic. Memes present a perfect opportunity for brands to communicate with consumers more casually and forge more personal connections in the process.

B2B Meme Marketing Inspiration

From forums like Reddit to social hubs like Twitter and Instagram, much of the content that keeps users returning to popular platforms are memes. If you want to meaningfully engage with consumers in these channels and build a social media strategy that isn’t stuck in the stone age, you’ll need to learn how to make memes. Here are a few examples of brands that succeeded in meme marketing to get your creative juices flowing!

• HubSpot – Fan favorite movies and TV shows present a treasure trove of possibilities for memes that social media users can recognize and connect with.
• RevGenius – Industry/category-specific memes can add a focused and personalized flair to your company’s social media presence.
• Adobe Marketo – Some companies even integrate memes into their trade show/event promotion like this make-your-own meme booth that Adobe Marketo featured to pump up engagement both online and at the event.

Want to take your social media strategy to the next level? Bluetext can help optimize your social media program and ensure you get the most out of your marketing.

So you want to build hype for your campaign? Our campaign strategists at Bluetext have some tips for you. Assuming you’ve already started building out your campaign, you should have an idea of what your goals are. A common goal is to build awareness and excitement. When building excitement ahead of your launch, you want to bring an air of mystery. Balance announcing details of your campaign while leaving enough to the viewers’ imagination. Some effective teaser mediums include social media snackables, physical swag, email campaigns, or teaser trailers. 

When Bluetext recently launched Phosphorus’ Thing Tamer, we decided to keep things mysterious. So, we began with the organic promotion of teaser videos to curate a collection of content for the dramatic launch of a full campaign without sacrificing ad spend. Once our audience’s interest was piqued by compelling graphics and intriguing headlines, we directed their attention to the campaign landing page. This landing page hinted at all things to come and encouraged users to sign up for exclusive notification of the launch. The landing page was designed to be as engaging as possible, with promotional movie posters, two different trailers of the Thing Tamer series, and on-scroll animation to introduce the personified things and interactive carousels to reveal campaign messaging and key stats.   signed up for the email list, they received a thank you email that further teases at the Things to come.

The first trailer named the Beast Trailer worked to establish the problems Thing Tamer solves. Offices with countless enterprise IoT devices are at high risk of being exploited by unsuspecting sources. Each device has its own firmware and unique language making managing all of them a complicated process. Without giving too many details away, we put a spotlight on common problems enterprises face. This was followed up with the second trailer, which starts off by slowly revealing our hero, the Tamer, an IT version of Indiana Jones meets Crocodile Dundee. By shifting focus to our IT guy wearing the Tamer’s hat, users are able to envision themselves as the ones resolving their IoT devices’ vulnerabilities. The teaser strategy allowed for the campaign to slowly introduce the problem with an air of mystery, leaving them craving more for the full campaign to unveil the solution. Separating the story into digestible trailer videos keeps the target audience engaged for an extended period of time, building upon their interest and education with every touchpoint. Not only does it allow for multiple follow-ups and a nurture strategy, but the shortened length of each video also ensures that viewer attention does wane while watching a long-form video. Hitting the viewer with messages one at a time increases the likelihood of memory retention and builds upon Phosphorus’ brand association.  At the end of the day, a successful message is one that users can connect with, and that’s just what we did.

Similar to Thing Tamer’s landing page where visitors could engage with different elements to learn more, the recent The Batman movie had a fun way of building hype ahead of the movie’s premiere. Visitors who found the secret website through a hidden message on the official movie poster were able to talk with the Riddler and solve additional puzzles. Those who solved the puzzles were rewarded with exclusive clips and pictures from the yet-released movie. Once the movie was released, Warner Brothers went a step further and updated the page to reflect the domain being seized by the fictitious Gotham police department. Warner Brothers managed to engage with their target audience over the course of weeks, thanks to a clever Easter Egg hidden in their posters. Being given the opportunity to dive into the Gotham universe in this unique way allowed the audience to connect with the film and get hyped for the official movie release.

Phosphorus also engaged in a few organic social media promotional posts to promote its campaign launch. Social media serves as a great opportunity when trying to build awareness. That being said, Phosphorus didn’t want to spoil too much, so we kept the captions short and used the two trailers and social snackables for the LinkedIn promotions. Utilizing cross-channel promotions and various forms of media increases the likelihood of your users finding your content and engaging with it. Again, at the end of the day, how can you build excitement if your campaign isn’t known? Agencies like us here at Bluetext have the expertise to guide you through the optimal campaign launch.

No two campaigns will be the same, and while the Phosphorus campaign succeeded based on its goals, your success isn’t a guarantee. At the end of the day, your best bet is to engage with a trusted campaign-focused agency to build hype for your campaign launch. Once you’ve launched, we work with you to drive paid marketing and PR efforts, ultimately driving users to engage with your business. Want to learn more about how Bluetext can help your campaign? Get in touch with us here. To learn more about our Thing Tamer campaign, check out the full breadth of our work here.

How can you bring in lucrative contracts for your business? B2B social media marketing can be an underutilized, yet incredibly useful channel, given that 62% of CEOs are present on at least one social platform. B2B social media marketing is the use of social channels to market products and services to business clients. All social channels can be used for B2B marketing, but the strategy for each will differ. It’s essential to know the strengths and demographics of various social platforms to effectively reach the targeted decision-makers. Let’s look at some of the top social media channels used for B2B marketing.

3 Social Media Channels Great for B2B Marketing

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is far more than a recruitment platform; it is a great tool to attract talent, but also can go to great lengths to promote your business. More than 30 million companies use LinkedIn, with the most common age group on the site being middle-aged working professionals (36- to 55-year-olds). Serving as the most popular platform for corporate CEOs, LinkedIn can get your business in front of CXOs and other decision-makers to initiate those B2-B relationships. LinkedIn organic and paid media options are viable opportunities positively showcase your company’s achievements and drive traffic to your website. Your organization can demonstrate thought leadership as an industry leader through blog and news posts on trending topics. Not only can you update followers on company progress, but you can also present the employees who make up your organization when there is strategic value in doing so. This conveys company culture, which is a great indication of whether you might be the right potential business partner. LinkedIn also provides plenty of data to better optimize your social campaign and ensure you’re reaching the right decision-makers.

Twitter
Twitter also can be an effective platform for connecting with customers and developing influence. Through short messages, Twitter can be used to portray your brand’s voice. With Twitter, your business can quickly get out a message to an audience and engage with users in real-time. Twitter has 166 million monetizable daily active users, which are logged accounts that are able to show ads. Unlike LinkedIn, Twitter is predominantly used by millennials, meaning it is great for targeting entrepreneurs and younger professionals who are involved in start-ups. 

YouTube 

With 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors, YouTube is one of the best social media platforms for driving traffic back to your company’s website. Video, as a medium, is a great way to tell your brand’s story and mission. With YouTube, your business can create educational content to display your business’s unique value proposition. People searching for advice and how-to-videos will land on your page, increasing brand awareness and subject matter expertise. Ensure your video is optimized for google search results by placing relevant keywords in the title. 

Even for organizations intimately familiar with social channels, there is a science to building B2B social media marketing programs with the optimal mix of channels, content, and timing. Contact Bluetext to help your organization drive B2B marketing results on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media channels.

Video marketing can be a vital tool when it comes to leveling up your marketing program. Video, as a medium, is an exceptional opportunity to tell your brand’s story and mission using dramatic visuals, voiceover, and music. Video allows you to inject emotion and feeling into your content, something that written mediums like blog posts and product pages just can’t compete with. As some may say, the medium is the message. To humanize your brand and create a memorable connection, audiovisual content can build that bridge. Additionally, the ease with which you can upload your video content to a variety of social media platforms allows you to share your story with as many potential customers and reach as wide an audience as possible. 

Below, we dive deep into the five reasons you need to use video in your marketing strategy and why partnering with a video design and production firm like Bluetext is the right choice for you. 

1. Authentic Video Builds Trust

Perhaps most importantly, video content helps build trust between you and the prospective buyer. Trust is the foundation that drives conversions and overall sales. 57% of consumers say that videos give them more confidence to purchase online. With a great voiceover and a moving music track, videos can provoke a very emotive, and therefore, human response, more impactful than any generic landing page. Having your team on camera explaining your product or service is also a great way to provide prospective customers with a sense of your company culture and why they should work with you. Additionally, video content filmed and edited the right way evokes authenticity and transparency, both key points when aiming to build trust. 

Through our work with Invictus, we produced a video around the story of their unique, military family-oriented mission that resonated with their prospective customers.

2. Explain Difficult Concepts With Ease

We live in a fast-paced visual-based world, where users are less likely to read through a product description and more likely to prefer an infographic or video that explains the solution succinctly. Technology has made us all accustomed to immediate satisfaction in finding the answers we seek. And if users don’t find the information they’re looking for, they lose interest or look elsewhere. Video content reduces the overall effort it takes to learn something new, especially when it may be a difficult concept to understand. If you’re launching a new product or service, explaining its features and advantages will be easier through video than a product landing page. The way the human brain processes information varies by individual, some are more visual learners, some auditory, and even some kinetic. If you don’t have the words to explain your product, the use of animation can help bring any concept to life. An audiovisual medium allows you to effectively reach a wider audience. The quicker someone can understand your product, the quicker the conversion from prospect to a customer will be. 

Through our work with IoT cybersecurity company, Phosphorus, we told the story of their mission and the power of their groundbreaking platform.

3. Google Loves Video Content

There are a variety of reasons Google loves video. Perhaps most importantly, Google places great value in the length of time a user spends on your webpage. If your video content is enticing enough for the user to watch it all the way through, they’re more likely to spend more time watching a video on your site than reading through a lengthy landing page. Additionally, as we know, including keywords in your written content is important in any SEO strategy and helps improve your search rankings. Using the latest Video Intelligence API, Google can catalog the relevant keywords in your videos and increase your ranking in search engine results. Relevant keywords in your video and written content packs the maximum SEO punch into your webpage. Another great reason video content is a great SEO value is as video content can be adjusted to multiple screen sizes, Google ranks this content very high in search results.

4. Mobile Users Benefit

In the world we live in, everyone is glued to their smartphones throughout the day, watching, liking, and sharing content. According to a recent study, 90% of users actually watch videos on their smartphones rather than on computers or televisions. The ready availability of so much video content on smartphones is driving this statistic and will only grow as more and more content is produced. So what does this mean for you? Increasing the amount of video you put into the market will only increase the engagement with your content from prospective customers. Well-produced, informative content will be more likely shared and will lead to increased sales.

5. The Competitive Advantage

Stay one step ahead of the competition by producing video content. A lot of companies are still of the mindset that video content is way too expensive; and sure, some very well-produced content can get expensive when you’re factoring in custom shoots, actors, and multiple 8K cameras. That being said, video content doesn’t have to be expensive. With the right story and a camera as readily available as the one on your smartphone, you can create perfect video content that will resonate with your target audience and lead to many conversions. Being smart with your resources (financial & human) can result in an impressive video that no one would know was built on a budget.

Videos can play a massive role at every stage of the marketing funnel. That being said, creating high-performing video content takes time and effort. Ensure you have the right video content strategy from the get-go and that you maximize authenticity, creativity, and uniqueness. Need support putting together your video content strategy? Contact Bluetext today.

1,300 hours – that’s how long the average American spent on social media in the past year. People are on social media all day every day, with an average daily usage of about 145 minutes. Therefore, it is no surprise that social media has a large influence on us and the decisions we make in both our personal and professional lives. Today, social media is so prevalent that from a business standpoint, it would be a mistake to not take advantage of the medium. 

Social media is a highly cost-effective way to market your brand and yield direct benefits. Social media is great for engaging with customers, keeping tabs on competitors, and developing a strong brand presence. Through social channels, you can heighten your brand’s awareness by cultivating a brand personality and quickly reaching not only existing customers but also prospective customers. Additionally, social media analytics, such as click-through rates, are able to give you timely feedback on what strategies work best to satisfy your intended audience. While it is important for your business to have a strong social media presence, you must also be careful to not overextend your social media program. Some businesses make the mistake of trying to maintain a presence on too many social media networks. Instead, it is best to focus on the few networks that will benefit your business the most.

3 Tips for Determining Which Social Media Networks are Worthwhile

1. Know Your Audience

It is crucial to know who your target market is and what social platforms they prefer. Ask yourself – what demographic is my target audience? Different social media channels appeal to different age groups, therefore it is important to identify what age group your target market falls under. For instance, TikTok has a younger audience with 60% of users being under 25 years old; whereas Facebook draws in a more mature audience, with most of its users being between 25 and 44 years of age. Therefore, if you are specifically targeting Generation Z, Facebook may not be the best route to take. Instead, your efforts should be on networks that draw in more youngsters, such as Snapchat or TikTok. 

On another note, Facebook offers the largest audience with 2.7 billion active monthly users. The app has great features that allow you to customize your social media marketing and better optimize your corporate social presence. You can even go as far as creating a business account, making use of advertising tools and analytics offered. However, depending on the niche audiences you may be trying to reach, it is important to understand the pros and cons of Facebook relative to, say Instagram, where visuals are a key focus and artistic niches are known to excel.

2. Think About Engagement

How do you want to engage with your audience? Each social media network offers different mechanisms to interact with users. Twitter is the best for directly engaging with customers. With Twitter, you can provide short updates about your business and interact directly through hashtags, mentioning users, liking posts, retweeting, etc. The fast-food chain, Wendy’s, for example, has had success using Twitter to create a unique brand voice through their witty interactions with customers. In contrast, YouTube is a strong option for driving traffic onto other web pages. Through analytics, YouTube has proved to increase website traffic, in which users will view an ad/video on YouTube and then proceed to click on the link to your website homepage. 

It is also important to consider how your customers interact with technology. Are they heavy smartphone users? If so, Instagram might be the best application, given that it is pretty much a solely mobile app with 1 billion active users. Channels like LinkedIn are optimal for those whose customers are heavy desktop users. 

Next, it is important to find the right amount of engagement with your customers. You do not want to be too active that you are annoying users, but then also not active enough that you don’t stay relevant. To combat this problem, it is best to have a posting schedule to maintain the right balance. The goal is to stay relevant in the minds of your customers, without irritating them to the point of losing followers. Also, engagement isn’t built on one-way communications; you must offer users an opportunity to participate in the conversation via thought-provoking questions or even surveys. 

3. Consider What You Are Selling 

Of course, your social media strategy factors in what you are selling and who you are selling to. If you are selling a product, then Instagram might be a better choice given its heavy emphasis on visuals. However, if you are selling a service then Twitter might be the better application to use, where the reliance is on words rather than pictures. On the other hand, Pinterest is great for small and niche businesses where you can market directly on the site. LinkedIn is great for B2B firms that are trying to reach business decision-makers who may not be as active or reachable on more consumer-focused social platforms. With LinkedIn, you can promote your business all while positioning yourself as an industry leader and recruiting top talent. Even more so, you can stand out from competitors through thought leadership pieces published on LinkedIn. Blog posts covering how your products/services related to issues pertinent in the world can put your business at the forefront.

In each avenue, social media provides an opportunity for businesses to control the narrative. You are able to pick out what content you want to display and dictate the kind of engagements you have with customers. It is great for reputation management, raising brand awareness, and establishing yourself as an industry leader. Using social media in the right way has the power to transform your business, making your marketing efforts worthwhile. Without a solid social media presence, your business and brand may be absent from key stages of the buyer’s journey or simply missing opportunities to extend overall brand awareness. 

Choosing the right social media network to promote your business is crucial for success. Contact Bluetext if you are interested in perfecting your social media presence. 

TikTok — the clock is ticking on traditional advertising strategies. As conventional methods wane, a new star player, TikTok, is making waves. At inception, TikTok gained a sticking association with Gen Z via dance videos & lip-syncing parodies. It’s true, TikTok is a popular platform for many teens or young adults to create and send entertaining video content. However, this platform is not just a fleeting fad, but very much here to stay and continue to evolve. 

Like any trend, TikTok’s high number of young users caught the attention of older demographics. All wanting to know “what the cool kids are doing”, TikTok’s user base matured. As of March 2021, research found that teenagers are only 25% of the TikTok audience. Who are the rest? Well, it’s a pretty even split of users in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, with even a significant slice of people 50 years and older!

A more diverse user base brought new opportunities, as marketers observed new niche categories rise in popularity. For example, trending hashtags such as #financetok or #taxadvice providing financial advice to users during tax season. Just one of the many unique use cases of the social media platform, as everything from investing to cleaning hacks, has been reenergized by the fun, engaging nature of video clips. 

So what does this mean? Well, it’s time that digital marketers begin to take TikTok seriously. Here’s why:

1.Video Content is on the Rise

Video content is on the rise — and won’t pause anytime soon. That’s why popular video publishing platforms, TikTok and Vimeo, have joined forces to become an advertising powerhouse. Recent updates have integrated Vimeo creation tools with TikTok AdManager. This enables businesses of any size to create and publish ads directly to TikTok Ads Manager. Effectively breaking down prior production banners, smaller and medium-sized businesses can easily create and distribute engaging video ads at low cost. Going a step beyond, Vimeo offers ad templates specifically optimized for the TikTok platform. Known as Spark Ads, this format allows businesses to take organic content and quite literally re-energize ads on a new short and snippy platform. 

2. Self-Served Success

Speaking of the TikTok AdManger, a few of the hallmarks of this platform are the self-service ad publishing, creator marketplace, and other features that empower content creation. With an easy-to-use publishing experience, it allows for more experimentation and freedom with campaign concepts, creative or targeting. The format pushes brands to make their advertisements everything they should be: short, succinct, and engaging. Time limitations force marketers to cut the extraneous details that users wouldn’t retain anyways and hone in on a single direct message. It’s like the bootcamp marketers didn’t know that they needed.

3. Live it Up

That’s right, TikTok has jumped on the trend of live streaming video content (thank you Instagram & Facebook). While this has playful applications, it’s also a prime opportunity for commentary from thought leaders and brand ambassadors on new product launches, industry events, or current trends. Live stream content has been popularized on alternative platforms (looking at you, Facebook & Instagram) for hosting Q&As and panel discussions. New TikTok features allow both the scheduling & promotion of a live-streamed event but also co-hosting to allow for multiple speakers. This creates a split-screen view and allows hosts to interact one-on-one with another, and with live audience comments.

While the first wave of use cases for these features may be tied to e-commerce and pop culture, it will be the next wave of marketing pioneers who bring a more practical flavor to the platform. Facebook and Twitter started out as purely ‘social’ social media platforms, but look what business opportunities have arisen from there. TikTok will be no different, and the businesses that invest now in their video content creation and production skills will have the upper hand.

Need to amp up your video & social media marketing? Contact Bluetext to learn more about our creative & digital marketing services.

You’ve spent months working with a video design & production company to write the perfect script, find the right voice-over actor, polish your storyboard, and so much more. Now, you have a video that captures your brand essence and you want users to see it. So what’s the best way to get impressions on your video? As a premier video design & production company, we know there are countless options for getting your video in front of users. 

With over 2 billion users and more than a billion hours of videos watched daily, YouTube is one of the best ways to ensure your target audience finds the video content you’ve produced. To truly understand just how powerful YouTube can be as a platform, it’s important to understand the basics. Keep reading to learn more about YouTube advertising and it’s different kinds of ad formats.

What Type of YouTube Ads are There?

YouTube Ads are controlled through the Google Ads platform, allowing advertisers to maximize their reach. Through YouTube Ads, you can decide whether you want your video to appear before, during, or after the video a user is watching. The six primary ways you can advertise through YouTube are:

1. Skippable in-stream ads
2. Non-skippable in-stream ads
3. Video discovery ads
4. Bumper ads
5. Masthead ads
6. Outstream Ads

Let’s take a look at each one.

Skippable In-Stream Ads

If your goal is to drive website traffic and/or conversions, this is a great option for you.

Skippable video ads play before, during, or after a video and users have the option to skip the ad after five seconds. As such, advertisers are only charged when a viewer watches 30 seconds of the video (or the full duration of the video if it’s shorter than 30 seconds) or interacts with the video. With this in mind, it’s important to keep your ad short, sweet and to the point. Don’t bury your main points 25 seconds in the video, but rather front load with interesting content that hooks a user and encourages that conversion action. Alongside skippable video ads, advertisers have the option to display a companion banner in the top right and a video overlay CTA button in the left. Needless to say, skippable video ads can be great for a lot of reasons.

Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads

Given the nature of non-skippable in-stream ads, this is a great format if you’re aiming for a lift in brand awareness. With 76% of users skipping ads out of habit, it can be worthwhile to run ads that don’t have an option to be skipped. However, with non-skippable ads, you need to be confident that your video is strong enough to hold your audience’s attention for the full 15 seconds. Given that viewers have to watch the full video, these ads typically have higher CPMs than other formats on YouTube.

Video Discovery Ads

Video Discovery ads are best for product and brand consideration. Just like Google paid search ads, YouTube Discovery Ads display alongside organic YouTube search results. As a more native approach, if your video appears relevant to users, people are more likely to watch it. Alongside a thumbnail of the video, these ads allow for three lines of text to help provide users with more context and information. The text opportunity is great, because it ensures that a user consumes some brand messaging even if the video isn’t played. Furthermore, in the best case scenario, the description text further encourages the video play action, and eventually results in a lead or conversion. 

Bumper Video Ads

Are you looking to capture viewers with a short, memorable message? Then bumper ads are for you! At only 6 seconds, bumper ads are a quick, snappy way to leave viewers wanting more. Billed on a CPM basis, these ads are best for building brand awareness, given that they are also non-skippable.

Masthead Ads

Masthead ads are a fantastic way to drive awareness for a new product, service, or event for a short period of time (i.e. a trade show). While most YouTube ads are purchased through the Google Ads auction, masthead ads are bought on a reservation basis. By buying on a reservation basis, masthead ads give you more control over your budget (buy impressions at a fixed rate), greater visibility (guarantee the placement of your ad), and better brand awareness (reach a wide audience).

Outstream Ads

Outstream ads are another great tactic for boosting brand awareness and bringing users to your site. With over 40% of YouTube viewers watching content on their mobile devices, a mobile-first ad campaign is a smart approach. Outstream ads, for example, are mobile-only and play on partner sites and apps outside of YouTube. While this might seem counterintuitive at first, this actually allows advertisers to expand their reach to publishers such as CNN and Forbes. In addition, users are more likely to view outstream video ads by over 25% when compared to instream ads. 

Knowing that there are so many options for YouTube ads, it can sometimes be overwhelming to know what format to select. It’s important to start with your goal, and work backward from there. Better yet, consult a digital marketing agency for advice on the best ad format and strategy for your business. If you’re interested in working with a video design & production company to create your next video or need help figuring out how to promote your videos, contact us here!

Over the past several years LinkedIn has moved beyond being a tool used solely for job searching. It has cemented itself as a home for people who are passionate about their work to share news and successes with former colleagues and other connections. It has also become a hub for social selling and a platform for increasing brand awareness––for personal and organizational brands alike. 

While it is a social network, the rules and norms on the platform are much different than other sites like Facebook and Twitter. You will see hashtags and (professional) selfies, but you won’t see clickbait political headlines or an onslaught of memes. And if you do, you might be connected to the wrong people!

As part of a holistic PR strategy, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for sharing company news, amplifying earned media and owned content, and leveraging relationships. The following 10 tips will help set you up for success on LinkedIn, professionally and personally: 

1. Update your company page, or create one if you’re not one of the 30 million companies using LinkedIn. Make sure to add or refresh your logo, header image, company description, and tagline, ensuring all graphics are properly sized for each location. Pay attention to the details here. Imagine you’re talking directly to a potential customer or employee. What do you want them to know about your company? What does your tone convey?

2. Update your personal page and encourage others, especially company executives to do the same. Employees are the face of your brand, and employees with full profiles look less spammy when engaging with others on the platform. Here’s a short checklist of items to update: 

1. • Make sure each section is filled out and current.
   • Include a professional picture that’s more recent than your last driver’s license photo.
   • Add a cover image.
   • Connect with the right people. Current and former colleagues are good. But, also look for sales prospects, industry and thought leaders. 
   • Extra credit: Make your headline say something about you other than your job title. Make it interesting, funny, ask a question. Let people get to know you a little in 10 words or less. 

3. Strategize. It sounds simple enough to think through what you want to post before you post it… but, also consider which business units outside of marketing––especially HR/recruiting––may lean on LinkedIn for before moving forward. As a part of strategy discussions make sure to consider: what goals you want to accomplish on the platform; who you are trying to reach and what content they will find most interesting; how often you intend to post and at what time of day; and if you will have any budget to put behind your efforts. Another good idea when setting strategy is to take a look at how competitors, partners, and other industry leaders are present on LinkedIn, emulate what you like, and take note of how you can stand out.

4. Plan your posts. Most marketers find it best to map out a content calendar for all social platforms, including LinkedIn. That way you can ensure cohesion and alignment across channels, make sure you are properly promoting the content and news coming out of your company, and ensure that you’ve got something set for every “post day” coming up. From there you can augment with timely or spur-of-the-moment posts.

5. Post, post, post. Just like on every other social media platform, posts with rich media––photos and videos––perform better on LinkedIn. A couple of quick tips for posting on LinkedIn: 

• • Keep copy short and to the point.
  • Call out any stats or facts and figures.
  • Ask questions to engage the audience.
  • Include hashtags only when they make sense.
  • Respond to comments.

6. Hit your target audience. With the organic targeting option for posts, page admins can target based on follower profile data, including industry, job title, seniority, and geography. While ads can be even more highly targeted, make sure that you’re setting this built-in tool properly to help you get your content in front of the right folks.

7. Optimize your page for search. Once your company page is up to date, the next step is making sure it’s easily found. Think about your potential customers, what would they use when searching for your product or services? By inserting relevant keywords throughout your company description, filling in your specialties, and adding hashtags to your company profile it can help you be found–on and off LinkedIn.

8. Use LinkedIn’s analytics. With this built-in tool, page admins can track post metrics to see what’s driving engagement and what’s not to help adjust the content calendar accordingly. You can also monitor the keywords being used to find your page, see which sections visitors engage with most, see who’s interested in your company with visitor demographics, and check your page performance against that of your competitors.

9. Add LinkedIn buttons. Adding a LinkedIn icon to your website, newsletter, email signatures and other places where you interact with your target audience will help increase awareness of your page and make it easier for them to follow you.

10. Explore ads. LinkedIn’s advertising is so robust it deserves its own tips list, but as part of an initial foray into the platform, it can’t be ignored. Ads allow you to target incredibly specific markets or groups of people to make sure your message is getting through. With sponsored content, sponsored InMail, or text ads you can amplify a strong piece of content, widen your audience, or draw specific attention to your brand on pretty much any budget.

It would be relatively easy to spend your week digging into the nooks and crannies of LinkedIn. It’s a huge platform with the ideal user base for social selling and targeted advertising. However, the above 10 tips should give you a guide on where to get started to support your PR strategy. 

If you’re interested in learning more about using paid advertising, better promoting your posts, generating leads, or reaching other goals on the platform we are ready to help. And follow us on LinkedIn! 

There’s a reason why it’s called social media. People are connecting digitally, so naturally, there will be some level of engagement incorporated into social media platforms. Without engaging activities such as liking, commenting, or sharing, posts are simply just media, which from a digital marketing perspective, doesn’t hold much value for improving brand awareness and engagement.

So why is social media engagement important and how do you set your brand up for success in the social media sphere? Well, we first need to understand what engagement is.

What is social media engagement?

Social media engagement is a measure of how people are interacting with your social media accounts and content. Say you post a piece of thought leadership on your company’s LinkedIn account. That’s great, but once you hit “Post” that content is sent out into the social media ether and onto your follower’s device screens without much visibility into their reactions. This is where engagement becomes crucial; it provides valuable insights. The term can cover a broad range of actions across any social platform on a piece of content. For example, engagement might include:

• Likes and Favorites
• Comments, DMs, Replies
• Shares and Retweets
• Saves
• Clicks
• Mentions

These metrics give you insight on which posts are resonating most with your audience. Though, engagement is also crucial for how your overall brand is perceived by social platforms themselves.

Why is social media engagement so important?

Engagement is so important because, frankly, social media platforms say so. Social sites have built algorithms to place the most relevant content for users in front of them, and they continue to get smarter as users continue to engage with content. Likewise, posts that get higher levels of engagement (both in numbers and in meaningful interactions) will be prioritized over those with simply the most likes.

As Facebook explains, “Interacting with people is associated with a greater sense of well-being… On the other hand, just scrolling through your Facebook feed, passively reading or watching without interacting with others, tends to make people feel worse.”

How do I make meaningful content?

The first step is understanding that there is not a universally correct answer for “meaningful content”. Meaningful is subjective, so it’s important to consider what specifically would be meaningful to your audience.  To keep your engagement on the rise, you need to invest time into your social media strategy. Digital marketing agencies, like Bluetext, are particularly skilled at identifying, researching, and marketing toward your target audience, giving you the avenue to boost your engagement.

Here are three quick steps to help boost your engagement:

• Be social. You shouldn’t just post something and not engage with your audience, especially after they put in the time and effort to respond to you. Take the time to reply to messages, comments, and engage with other brands online.

• Have a consistent voice. Remind yourself that different audiences prefer different styles. Take a look at your target audience and establish a voice that may be most interesting to them and less so your personal taste.
• Know the social algorithms. Make sure you understand how the algorithms work on the different platforms to ensure you are taking advantage of how they operate. For example, some platforms, such as LinkedIn, factor in the timing of engagement on posts with how great the reach will be. Others, like Instagram, don’t incorporate timing into their algorithms.

Looking to boost your social media engagement? Request a consultation with Bluetext today to see how you can expand your reach.

The Latest in LinkedIn

LinkedIn is taking users’ ability to “connect” to the next level.  This week LinkedIn is rolling out new profile features that will empower a whole new segment of users with the opportunity to become content creators and professional influencers. The professional networking platform announced the unveiling of a new “Creator Mode” to build their voice and audiences.

Social Platforms Taking a Cue from One Another 

These new features are the latest of many social media shifts, as we notice a trend of social platforms taking cues from one another. Especially following almost a year of exclusively virtual networking, the media landscape is rapidly expanding to include a number of opportunities for professional and personal success. The rise of micro-influencers on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Clubhouse, etc. has earned the trust and loyal following of their audience members for a particular subject. There is no shortage of creative innovation on these platforms, with professionals having to develop unexpected use cases. For example, did you know personal finance TikTik was a thing? Yes, there is a growing community of young professionals offering personal finance and investment advice to followers of #FinTok or #StockTok. This just serves to show that social media platforms have much deeper opportunities for content creators than showing off their latest recipes and dance moves. With rising competition from emerging platforms, such as the audio-only app Clubhouse, or viral sensation Tik Tok connecting niche interest communities, LinkedIn is debuting similar features to remain the mainstay for professional networks. Users can now create stories (taking cues from Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat), weigh in on trending topic hashtags (#thankyou Twitter), and now become content curators with “Creator Mode”. 

Creator Mode & Influencer Opportunities

The new “Creator Mode” for LinkedIn allows users to pin specific hashtags to the top of their profile to signify the themes they frequently post about. With creator mode enabled, the presentation of profiles is altered to emphasize the hashtags directly under job titles. This moves up the “Activity and Featured” sections to highlight posts and links that a user shares before the “About” bio boxes. This shifts the content hierarchy from a self-written bio, to a curated collection of user-generated content. This allows users to focus their profiles on niche genres and topic areas to own a small space as thought leadership. In a nutshell, “Creator Mode” offers users an opportunity to connect on a more meaningful level to targeted audiences, therefore promoting themselves to influencers amongst their community. 

Additionally, users can “Follow” these influencers rather than adding them to their personal networks. Now instead of feeling uneasy sending network invitations to a complete stranger, users can follow their favorite thought leaders just as easily as on other social networks. 

What else is included in this update? LinkedIn users can upload video cover stories, creating an interactive introduction to their profile. Much like a Facebook or Instagram story, the cover story can be initiated to play on the click of a profile photo with an orange ring. The uniquely new aspect of these cover stories is what is known as the “Harry Potter effect”, where the video will autoplay silently in the profile photo frame to signify available video content. These new features will help propel the already growing importance of video-based content on social platforms. Many users see this new video feature as an opportunity to promote themselves with a personalized pitch of their skill sets. Almost like a precursor to a job interview, it grants users the opportunity to conduct a virtual elevator pitch with all of the personality and zest of in person. 

What Creator Mode Can Do For Companies

These new updates will be big for companies of almost any industry, but especially in B2B technology, cyber or complex services. Many of whom have been prioritizing thought leadership of leadership and SMEs through whitepapers, research, and media opportunities as means of generating industry attention to their brand.  “As our ecosystem has been growing, and as we’re seeing the world of work changing, we’re seeing that content is now a core part of how professionals interact with not only their own jobs but their industries, their peers, and their communities,” Keren Baruch, group product manager for creator strategy at LinkedIn. 

Last year 62.1 million LinkedIn users reported logging in at least once a month. This statistic is expected by researchers to jump to 64.7 million in 2021 and reach 70.9 million by 2024. The popularity of LinkedIn is expected to grow significantly, especially as users realize the unique opportunity to take control of their professional success and promote their achievements like never before. The barriers of entry for powerful brands and thought leaders have been lowered, which levels the playing field for companies of any size to become influential industry leaders. 

Are you the next micro-influencer of your professional space? With the support of social media and PR agency, Bluetext, you could be! Contact us to learn more about our digital marketing and PR services.