Would People Rather Watch an Ad or Share Their Email Address?

Most Americans say they would rather watch a 30-second advertisement in exchange for free content than share their email address with a company, according to recent research from BuzzStream and Fractl. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Would People Rather Watch an Ad or Share Their Email Address?

Most Americans say they would rather watch a 30-second advertisement in exchange for free content than share their email address with a company, according to recent research from BuzzStream and Fractl. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Digital Transformation During COVID-19: How Can Marketers Lead the Way?

Now, more than ever, organizations are depending on digital channels to maintain customer connections and plant seeds for future growth. Here's how marketers can be responsive and provide leadership during this crisis. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Why digital literacy matters for marketers

Remote work and safer-at-home orders are shifting digital transformation plans everywhere into warp speed, and marketers are along for the ride. As digital media becomes the primary (or only) customer-facing means of communication for most organizations, digital literacy is more important than ever before.

Digital literacy, also known as media literacy, isn’t a new concept. The discussion around it has increased steadily for decades. In the context of marketing and business, progressions in television, radio and internet-based communications repeatedly demonstrate the advantage held by media-literate brands.

Who would have imagined, for example, that an innovative company like General Electric would face significant business issues and fail to adapt to changing markets? And yet it did, despite leadership in industries like aviation, transportation, healthcare and energy. The fall was at least partly fueled by reverting to manufacturing in 2008 when more digitally literate companies were rising to the recession’s challenge and diversifying their offerings.

What does the challenge of media literacy mean for marketing today? Let’s dig in.

There are different levels of digital literacy, and marketers have to aim high

We’re entering a new digital chapter at an unprecedented pace. To keep up, marketers need to make digital literacy a priority. But what exactly is digital literacy for marketers?

In a nutshell, it’s using technology to create and ingest content, as well as understanding how the technology works and what creators’ motivations are.

Let’s use Facebook as a micro-example. Being Facebook literate on a basic level would include understanding some of the essential elements of how the platform works, including skills such as:

• How to create a post
• How to find other people’s posts
• The ways posts are prioritized by the Facebook algorithm
• The various reasons why someone might post (connect with friends/family, make political statements, sell a product, etc.)

Being even more Facebook literate might include knowing how to schedule or boost posts, attract followers, create events and/or work with influencers. It may also include knowing things not to do, like spamming comment sections with links to an unrelated product’s landing page.

The more literate a marketer is with the platform, the higher their chances of success and avoiding stalled content. Digital literacy gives marketers a strategic advantage, both over competitors and in the way an audience views their content.

Digital literacy gaps affect messaging

Marketers are far from the only people who benefit from digital literacy. Yet, many people don’t have the tools to acquire it. Some are working to address this. Parents and schools, for example, are increasingly seeking out and demanding digital literacy education. Computer skills classes now go beyond spreadsheets and word processing to include topics like protecting private information online and gauging a source’s credibility, for example.

Still, not everyone takes those classes, and not all those classes cover the platforms marketers use. Until digital literacy is more widespread, some marketers have to do a little extra work to meet their audience where they’re at. A number of government entities have experienced this while increasing digital communications due to COVID-19. Some communications leaders were prepared, while others are still working to find the best ways to clearly share information.

Where can the public access this website/dashboard?

— New Basin (@NewBasin1) May 7, 2020

For marketers, transparency is critical to closing digital literacy gaps. At a time when consumer access to information is high, accuracy and honesty are key. The last thing you want is to be perceived as deceptive.

The age of (mis)information is putting on the pressure

While marketing has moved online, so has journalism. Most major news outlets now even have social media pages, with government entities quickly following suit.

These developments, along with other trends in 2020, have serious implications for marketers.

For instance, while marketers may know that an informational article on their website is part of a sales funnel, readers may have trouble spotting the differences between the post and a news article. The marketing content may be high-quality and contain valuable and accurate information, but ending up on a payment page might make them feel misled.

Consumer literacy can vary and leads to misunderstanding, as journalists know.

If you're a reporter retweeting dubious and potentially dangerous health information, "RTs are not endorsements" isn't an adequate form of social media distancing. Err on the side of not endangering your followers.

— Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) April 5, 2020

Especially in the era of COVID-19, vetting information is critical for a strong social strategy. Contributing to the spread of misinformation through a brand’s platform can ignite serious trouble. Customers don’t want conjecture. It’s essential that media literate marketers take the time to understand the full context of what they’re sharing or referencing in brand feeds, whether that’s reviewing the credibility of the source on a news story or understanding the full backstory of a viral meme.

When it comes to internally-produced content, striking the balance between helpfully informative and transparent usually means including clues like clear branding to help audiences identify the type of content they’re looking at and its source. That can help avoid a brand reputation nightmare, and even build trust.

Digital literacy helps everyone delineate authentic content from conspiracy theories, even ones with well-produced the YouTube videos. As media creators and distributors, marketers must take steps to respect their audience’s need for relevant, accurate information.

Even marketers have to keep learning

Consumers aren’t alone in the ongoing effort towards media literacy; marketers are right there with them. With fake or poorly-sourced news appearing in everyone’s feeds today, we all have our work cut out for us when it comes to staying informed.

Even without a worldwide pandemic, complacent marketers can find themselves just as left behind as anyone puzzling through digital media. An attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” towards new social platforms or trends in messaging is tempting when campaigns are running smoothly, but can leave marketers blindsided when things change. You don’t want to be left scrambling to understand a new platform or feature well after your competition has begun successfully using it in their marketing.

Platforms and messaging styles fall out of fashion, and results can dip if an effort isn’t made to stay on top of changes in the social space. Take TikTok, for example. Up until 2018, the platform couldn’t outpace Musical.ly, a lip-syncing video app, in the US. After a merger of the two platforms, however, TikTok suddenly rose in popularity and downloads spiked significantly once stay-at-home orders were issued across the country.

Rather than dismissing rising trends, marketers should investigate them earnestly, as several brands have with TikTok. Digital literacy means making ongoing efforts to understand new platforms and practices. It keeps marketers on their toes—and relevant.

Of course, that doesn’t mean jumping into every trend hoping to ride the wave to the top. Understanding new platforms and practices doesn’t necessarily mean participating if it doesn’t match your brand’s needs. That’s why when it comes to trends, brands must favor relevance over reach. Consider what’s needed right now for your brand and your customers, and let those needs guide decisions.

Increasing digital literacy = improving understanding

One of the best ways to understand digital tools, of course, is to use them. This not only builds familiarity and reveals how the competition presents itself on a platform but also opens up a new perspective: that of the audience.

Seeing things from a customer’s perspective is as old a tactic as secret shoppers and proof copies. That’s because it works. Marketers benefit from using the platforms they work in. Organizations often even hire or tap in-house native users to leverage their digital literacy.

Staying on top of media trends this way keeps marketers at the forefront of customer sentiment and interest. What’s on customers’ minds? What questions are they asking? We can only address known customer needs, and digital media platforms provide a helpful window. By paying enough attention, trendspotting improves marketing content.

Sound like a lot of work? It can be, but tools are available to ease the burden. For example, in the case of social media, social media automation can simplify multi-platform posting. Meanwhile, social listening tools display all marketers need to know about engagement on easy-to-digest dashboards.

This is about more than just knowing your target audience. It’s also knowing what they’re thinking, what struggles they’re experiencing and how their behaviors are changing. With this more granular data, marketers can make more informed decisions for their brand.

Data makes a difference

In order to understand customers, you need data. Fortunately, to say digital marketing platforms today are data-rich is an understatement. Social media, in particular, is ripe with customer information, so much so that social media security is a hot topic for both marketers and national security leaders.

All of this (carefully protected) data, however, drives evaluation and improvement. Consumer literacy may stop at knowing how to use tools and how to tell the difference between a friend’s travel post and a travel agency ad. For effective marketers, it requires a bit more, like knowing how to gather, analyze and present data.

Reporting on marketing efforts helps marketers and others in an organization understand the effectiveness of media campaigns, allowing for even deeper digital literacy and more success. Fortunately, automation and listening tools like the ones mentioned above reduce the time and resources necessary to generate worthwhile reporting.

Adapting in the age of digital literacy

Marketers have always had to be creative; it comes with the job. Marketing in the digital age simply means transferring those skills to the technology available today.

Digital literacy for marketers doesn’t have to be difficult. To learn a little more about tweaking that creativity to fit modern marketing, try checking out 9 skills every social media manager must have.

This post Why digital literacy matters for marketers originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How to Improve Instagram Post Engagement: 4 Tips

Do you want your Instagram content to perform better? Wondering how to optimize your Instagram feed posts? In this article, you’ll discover how to design and deliver Instagram posts that improve engagement on Instagram. To learn how to optimize your Instagram posts for more engagement, read the article below for an easy-to-follow walkthrough or watch […]

The post How to Improve Instagram Post Engagement: 4 Tips appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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Who’s who in the identity resolution vendor landscape?

Vendors providing identity resolution tools run the gamut from giant publicly-held companies to smaller pure-play venture-funded providers.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The social media marketer’s guide to YouTube marketing

With 2 billion unique users watching 1 billion hours of video every day, YouTube offers an excellent platform to market your business. Add that to the compelling nature of video in marketing and you have a winning combination. In fact, video marketing has helped marketers to increase traffic, generate leads and reduce the number of support calls.

So there’s no doubt that leveraging YouTube will help you achieve all of these goals and more. This post shows you some of the most essential steps for YouTube marketing and how you can get the most out of the network.

1. Create and brand your YouTube channel

If you haven’t already, make sure you start by creating a Brand Account on Google. When you create a Brand Account, you can authorize members of your team t0 manage your YouTube channel; something you won’t be able to do on a personal account.

Ideally, pick a channel name that’s either similar or consistent to your business name so it’s easy to recognize. And don’t forget to upload channel art that aligns with your brand’s visual identity.

2. Understand your audience

Marketing on YouTube is mainly about creating content to reach and engage a target audience. And for that, you need to know what that audience likes. What kind of content do they want from you? When are they most active? Where is your audience mostly based? How often do they expect to get new videos from you? All of this and more will help you craft a winning YouTube marketing strategy.

The YouTube Analytics tab will provide you with valuable insights into your subscriber demographics and watch time. This will help you identify which regions of the world your videos are reaching, what time people are viewing your videos, how old your viewers are and what gender you mostly reach. Use these insights to plan your YouTube content strategy.

You could also take a YouTube survey asking your viewers what they’d like to see from you as Cut did in the following post on their Community tab. They sourced a poll to their audience asking which mother-daughter pair they’d like to see in an upcoming episode. It’s a clever way to use your audience’s input in your content. Additionally, the comments on your videos can also help you understand your audience and further inform your YouTube marketing strategy.

3. Learn from the best

While understanding your audience will give you an idea of what content to create, it won’t necessarily help you get ahead of the competition. For that, you should look directly at your competitors and learn from their YouTube marketing strategies. What are they doing right and how can you replicate that? What mistakes are they making and how can you capitalize on that?

Find your competitors’ channels and watch their most popular and least popular videos. Try to identify what resonates with the audience and what complaints they have about those videos. Beyond judging the content for yourself, you could even go through the comments to see what people are saying. Also, think about the content that you find interesting and informative. Would you watch your competitor’s videos and find the content valuable? Use these insights to inform your YouTube content strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re competing with the following video on designing an abandoned cart email. You can see that there’s no video description, which you can capitalize on by creating a compelling description for your video. Plus, the comment shows someone complaining that there’s no proper intro in the video. Capitalize on this as well by creating intriguing intros on all your videos that call out the real life problem you’re solving for your viewers.

Additionally, go through your competitors’ video descriptions (if any) to identify the keywords they’re using. If you find any that could be relevant to your channel, use them for your YouTube SEO. You could apply the same research strategy on your favorite YouTube channels as well.

4. Nail your YouTube SEO

While marketing on YouTube is mostly about creating quality content, optimizing your videos for visibility is equally important. It won’t matter how entertaining your videos are if people can’t find them in relevant search results. That’s exactly why you should invest your time and effort into YouTube SEO.

At the least, your YouTube marketing efforts should include the basics of YouTube SEO, such as:

Optimizing your titles and descriptions with keywords

In many ways, the YouTube search engine works similar to the Google search engine. It will prioritize high-quality content that’s relevant to the search term. And one of the ways it will determine the content’s relevance in a search is through the terms and phrases in your video titles and descriptions.

For example, see how the top search result for “juggling football” is a video titled “soccer/football juggling tutorial.” It specifies that the tutorial is about juggling in soccer specifically and not about juggling in general, making it relevant to the search. A brief look at the description also shows that they’ve used multiple variations of the keyword there as well.

Use your competitor research from earlier and conduct keyword research to discover the most relevant search terms your target audience is using. Then use these terms seamlessly into your titles and descriptions for a better chance at showing up in the right search results.

Creating eye-catching thumbnails

It’s not enough that your videos show up in relevant searches; you also need people to click on them so YouTube can further determine your content’s relevance. That’s where your video thumbnails enter the picture. Your title may give people an idea of what your video is about, but your thumbnails give them a glimpse of your video quality.

So make sure you use customized thumbnails that instantly catch the eye and compel people to watch your videos. Select an appealing image from your video as the thumbnail, then add graphics, text overlays and filters as needed to make the image pop.

Cross-promoting your videos

Since the number of video views plays a role in YouTube SEO, you should also get viewers to watch as many of your videos as possible. So try cross-promoting relevant and related videos by displaying end screen recommendations at the end of your videos. Here’s an example of Great Big Story recommending related videos within their Around the World playlist series. Make sure the recommended videos lead to a logical progression of content that your user will be interested in, such as a playlist.

Also, you should cross-promote your videos using other social media platforms to get as many views as possible. In some cases, you might even find opportunities to embed your YouTube videos on relevant blog posts. Here’s the same Great Big Story video posted on their Twitter profile:

Great Big Story senior producer Beryl Shereshewsky checks in with seven people in seven different countries who show us how they prepare their perfect cuppa. ☕️

We sample all of it—from Japan’s matcha to Argentina’s mate. https://t.co/d8Dyj6pxTh pic.twitter.com/VhdhrDRmPO

— Great Big Story (@greatbigstory) May 8, 2020

5. Have a consistent publishing schedule

Consistency is the key to YouTube marketing success. Creating and editing quality content takes time, so you may not necessarily be able to publish a video every day. But make sure you have a posting schedule and follow it religiously.

This will give your audience an idea of when they should expect your content and help you engage them more effectively. The more content you publish, the more opportunities for engagement you’re opening up. This could eventually help you gain more visibility in people’s feeds. Plus, having a proper publishing schedule makes it easier for you to plan your content and schedule videos ahead of time.

In fact, you could use the calendar view option on Sprout Social’s YouTube publishing tool to better plan your video content alongside your social content. This will help you visualize your overall or single-network content schedule and understand your post volume across the week or month, so you can seamlessly make necessary adjustments.

6. Offer captions and subtitles in multiple languages

According to YouTube, about two-thirds of a channel’s views will come from outside the home country of the content creator. So even if you hadn’t intended to build an international audience, there’s a good chance your channel already has viewers who speak other languages besides English.

Effective YouTube marketing involves catering to this existing audience and enhancing their experience as well as attracting more viewers who share similar characteristics. This makes it crucial to provide closed captioning and translations of your content. Based on the insights from your YouTube demographics data, find out which countries your viewers come from and prioritize English and other languages accordingly. Also, adding closed captioning assists with making your videos accessible to all viewers.

If you’re worried about the cost of translating your content, note that you don’t necessarily have to spend a dime. YouTube lets you crowdsource translated captions from your fans for free. For this, go to the Creator Studio and turn on community contributions under “Subtitles.”

Keep in mind, you can always provide subtitles or closed captioning with or without timestamps yourself. Just upload a supported transcript file in the Advanced settings of your video options.

7. Partner with influential creators

With hundreds of thousands of loyal fans, influential YouTubers have the power to effectively market your channel and products. Consider partnering with them to amplify your YouTube marketing efforts. Collaborating with YouTube influencers gives you an opportunity to reach a new audience as well as provide some credibility or endorsement behind your products.

The actual approach and campaign type may vary depending on your end goal and your product. Is it brand awareness? Newsletter signups? Or farther down the marketing funnel?

For example, TruAudio partnered with What’s Inside?–an influential YouTube channel with over 6.8 million subscribers–to promote their products. The channel provided viewers with an in-depth look at how the product works and linked to the product homepage in the description.

But if your plan is to promote your YouTube channel or a specific video on your channel, you could also get the influencer to share those relevant links in the description box as well. You might even co-create a video with the influencer and publish it to your channel instead, depending on your goal and approach to YouTube influencer marketing campaigns.

8. Invest in YouTube ads

While proper YouTube SEO can go a long way, solely relying on organic reach won’t get you scalable results. For that, you need paid advertising to reach a highly relevant audience through means other than YouTube search results. Invest in YouTube ads to promote your content and products through other channels and drive more viewers to your channel.

You have the option of running a few different YouTube ad types and expand your reach by keyword or audience. Run a few different paid ad promotions to test which is successful for your goals.

Perfecting your YouTube marketing

The steps outlined in this guide show you some of the essential steps to get started with YouTube marketing. But note that to perfect your efforts, you should consider YouTube marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy instead of a standalone initiative.

For instance, include videos into your overall content strategy  to create a perfect balance  with other content formats. And add YouTube into your overall social media strategy so you can seamlessly manage it with other platforms.

Learn how to easily integrate YouTube into your existing social social media strategy with our free social media toolkit.

This post The social media marketer’s guide to YouTube marketing originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Google Assistant’s ‘confirm with voice match’ gives new meaning to ‘contactless payments’

Intriguing new feature could simply be a test or the future of shopping on the Google Assistant.

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Let’s hope COVID-19 isn’t a ‘mass extinction event’ for small businesses

SMBs spend billions annually on digital advertising and marketing services.

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