The Key Ingredients To A Powerful Social Video Content

Marketing videos were perceived to be the next big thing in social marketing, but that’s already a thing of the past. Social videos have now taken social media platforms into a different wavelength, reaching far more audiences than a regular block of informative content, and engaging more viewers to like, share or repost brand-initiated videos.

According to Wyzowl 2016 statistics:

• 88% of businesses say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy
• 76% of businesses that used videos believe that it provides a good ROI
• 93% of businesses who use videos believe that it has increased user understanding of their product or service.
• 72% of businesses who used video believe that it has improved the conversion rate of their website.
• 36% of businesses believe that they’ve received less support queries as a result.
• 62% of businesses believe that video has increased the amount of organic traffic they receive.

This trend has progressed rapidly and will reach higher lengths in the years to come. Undoubtedly, it is one of the newest additions to your promotion tool kit. But you might still have doubts regarding the effectiveness of this type of marketing. Is it really worth your time to promote your business through this means? Will it be as effective for you own business, as it did for competitors?

4 Of The Best Ingredients For A Content-Rich Video

Short 60 Seconds

Nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer to watch videos under 60 seconds. Attention spans are short and you want to keep viewers engaged, therefore keeping yours in between 30 and 90 seconds long is ideal. Here’s a few ways to ensure you hold the audience’s attention:

• Keep the word count to a minimum if your video includes text. Viewers should be watching what it’s about not reading through it.
• Use numbered lists or bullets to keep people engaged. This helps make the content easy to follow.
• Get the right pacing. Not too slow, not too fast.

Optimize Based On The Platform Needs

The goal is to deliver the best experience. Where will you post the video? Facebook? Instagram? Or YouTube? Will it be viewed in a laptop or on mobile phones? Here’s how you can nail it.

• Consider mobile views first. 65% of video views happen on mobile devices, so think mobile first.
• Assume people watch without sound. Make the content speak for itself without the need for sounds.
• Use the recommended aspect ratio or the square aspect ratio (1:1) since this size is compatible with most platform.

Descriptive Texts or Subtitles

Silent viewers make up most of the viewers, since most of these people are on the move, in public places, or in areas where loud sounds can be considered a nuisance. Here’s how you can make a silent 60-seconds short video:

• Subtitles matter. Without sounds, subtitles will help viewers follow your content without listening to it.
• Include description. Users must know the context of the video to give them more reason to watch it. Or if they need to watch it with the sound on.

Clear Call To Action Sets Things In Motion

Call To Action or CTA ensures that engagement doesn’t stop after the video is over. It guides viewers to the next step, whether to go to the homepage, the product landing page, or the Contact Us page. Here’s how to create an effective CTA:

• Use actionable terms. The audience should know what to do after taking in the content. Use terms like learn more, find out, or discover.
• Put out a clear value proposition. If you want viewers to take the bait, give them something to valuable.
• No business jargon. Keep it simple, straightforward, and actionable.

The Key Ingredients To A Powerful Social Video Content

Like most SEO marketing campaigns, combining all these effective ingredients and you’re on your way to brewing an engaging, actionable content.

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3 Signs That Tell You Need Multiple Social Marketing Accounts

Managing multiple social media accounts for marketing, lead generation, and traffic drive may be a strenuous job. Jumping from one account to another can be tiresome and there will come a time where an internet marketer gets tired of jumping between tools. In this post, we will discuss the Pros and Cons in managing multiple pages, and why having more might be necessary for your business.

The Pros and Cons Of Social Media Marketing

All internet marketing efforts do not necessarily lead to success, often times it is a trial and error method to test out which tactics work in generating leads from the targeted audience. Now, find out the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple accounts for your business campaigns.

Advantages

Grouped Audiences. By using different pages, you can talk to various types of audiences. There’s no need to limit your content to maintain a balance so you can reach out to everyone. This is especially helpful to businesses that service both the company and the customers.

Specific Topics. There are brands that tackle different topics. Take National Geographic as an example. Nat Geo is one account, and then it has sub pages like Nat Geo Wild and Nat Geo People, which discusses different topics to different target audience. While all of the branch accounts feed into the parent account’s posts, audiences are still given the freedom to follow their preferred topic.

Location-Specific Service. Multi-location companies which serve unique needs in their individual local store may find multiple social accounts easier to manage.

Disadvantages

Customer Confusion. There is a big risk of dividing your audiences instead of embracing a bulk number of potential leads. Multiple accounts may confuse visitors, specifically, which account should they follow? The main business page or the account they care about?

Additional Work. If you lack the resources to handle the extra work brought by different accounts, then this is definitely not suited for your marketing needs.

For additional marketing tips, visit www.neovora.com/

Do You Really Need More Than One Social Media Account?

Whether you’re a one man team, a group of marketers, or an agency; consider these signs that might prompt you to create more accounts for the business.

#1 Customer Support Invades Your Feed

An online analysis shows that Millennials are most likely to voice out their concern on social platforms. Approximately 59% of Millennials say they’d use social to address an issue, and the remaining 51% say in-person interactions as their most likely choice. Moreover, a study shows that 42 percent of consumers complaining in online platforms expect 60 minute response time.

If your feed is mostly about customer support or if you find that addressing complaints and issues is taking up the majority of your account’s post, you may benefit from starting a separate support account.

#2 Essential Automated Posts

Automated posts, for followers and users, often equate to shadiness and unworthy of trust. This can be damaging to a brand’s image in so many different levels. But there are instances when automated posts can come helpful. This is generally true for topics like technical updates, weather alerts or content curation.

There are accounts solely intended for server updates and service statuses. What’s important is it will be made clear what the account is for and a link to the customer support, or the main account will be included in the bio. This will give users a clear idea which account to check for updates and where to go when in need of customer assistance.

#3 Multiple Departments or Locations

Brands, service businesses, and companies or institutions that have multiple departments, or operate in multiple locations, can benefit from having separate social accounts. The audience is given the liberty to follow the page that serves their interest and will have access to the right information. It’s also ideal for promoting better targeted ads.

A localized site is often perceived to generate more leads, drawing local customers in. This is why Google is adamant in localizing searches for the sole purpose of providing convenience and better search results to every user.

There are many reasons to consider when adding new social accounts into your list. In the end, you want to make sure you’re doing this for the right reason, and not because your competitor is doing it. Once you’ve made the decision, plan it out thoroughly and leave a little margin for error. For similar informative blogs, visit the Neovora homepage.

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5 Social Media Marketing Habits To Drop

Social media is a fast growing, fast moving platform. What’s hot on Monday morning could become old and irrelevant Thursday night. The attention given to a viral post today could be directed to another tomorrow.

The Time website listed viral videos with the most views in 2016. Number two on the list was Piko Taro’s Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen. Who didn’t feel the urge to dance along the upbeat instrumentals and repetitive lyrics? Who hasn’t watched the 12-year old Ukelele player, Grace VanderWaal, who got a golden buzzer on her America’s Got Talent audition? Or Adele’s Carpool Karaoke who showcased her legendary vocals while driving through the English streets?

The fame these videos gained lasted for several days, or up until the next viral video came out. Given how fleeting this kind of fame is, as a marketing strategist for your brand, how can you trigger a lasting interest in your target audience? Or rather, what you shouldn’t be doing on social media that could potentially scare away leads.

What You Might Be Doing Wrong

Let’s look at what you could avoid doing when you start the engine on your ultimate marketing strategy.

Avoid jumping on every trend.

Many brands often jump into trending topics and popular memes to stay relevant or force themselves into a conversation. Just because it’s popular and people are talking about it doesn’t always mean people will want to hear from you on the topic, especially if it isn’t relevant to your brand or service. It could turn people off and your marketing efforts will fall flat. Always ask yourself this: Is what I’m sharing really relevant to my brand?

Don’t ignore active and responsive audience.

Although social platforms are a great promotional tool, it isn’t just a place where you can promote the best qualities of your business. It’s a social networking platform that encourages a two-way conversation. Use it instead to interact with your followers while promoting your brand. Allocate time for audience engagement, encourage them to share a feedback, and initiate discussions about your business and their experience.

Social accounts shouldn’t be set to ‘private’.

There are still businesses these days who keep private social accounts to secure a brand handle. But people won’t be able to find you this way. Just because they aren’t following you online, it doesn’t mean they aren’t searching you up on Google to see what your social media activity is all about. Plus, private accounts may convey several things – lazy staff, shady transactions, or negative feedback?

Visit the Neovora page for more tips on social marketing.

Automated ‘thank you’ messages sound distant.

Automated messages are a thing of the past. It can come off as impersonal and distant, like getting a marketing email you don’t want in your inbox. And, no one wants to talk to a robot, it doesn’t feel real. People nowadays are always glued to their mobile phones, socializing with the world through the internet. It only takes a seconds to send a quick reply, react to a post or share a post. You can show the same courtesy by sending an actual ‘thank you’ message.

Too many hashtags is a crowd.

Because users can easily find your brand through hashtags, which is especially true in platforms like Instagram and Twitter, one might tend to overuse this marketing effort excessively. Excessive hashtags can give a spammy vibe or cause confusion if you’re using ones that are irrelevant to your post. This could potentially lead to an increase in the wrong kind of followers – mostly robots or people only interested in being followed back. A good move is to have your followers focus on what you’re saying instead of what you’re ‘hashtagging’.

5 Social Media Marketing Habits You Should Stop Doing

There really is no firm rule on the Dos and Don’ts of social media marketing. Although keeping in mind these five habits to drop when outlining your next content, chances of putting out a more effective post is higher, plus the potential for a better response from your audience is greater. Now, start improving those posts and become more effective!

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How To Create A Pinterest Infographic That Bring In Results

Infographics have become a highly effective tool for many brands to promote their business, product line, services, and other general information they want to throw out there for the public to read and take interest in. They are a great means to disseminate information simply because the important points are given emphasis through a compact and concise compilation of information.

For several years now, Infographics have been popular on Pinterest and they continue to drive massive shares and traffic back to websites and blogs.

If this is a social media marketing channel you want for your business, learn how to create effective Infographics that actually bring in results. Is there a specific formula to creating a visually stunning and equally effective informative visual graphics? What should be included in the post?

5 Effective Components That Actually Works

Sophia Bernazzani wrote: “According to BuzzSumo, articles with an image once every 75-100 words got double the number of social shares as articles with fewer images. More specifically, infographics are shared three times more than other types of content.”

Additionally, she said, “images are the second most popular type of content among viewers of all ages. Furthermore, research shows that website visitors pay attention to information-carrying images more than images that are simply page decoration.”

Now, here are the components for creating an effective infographic:

1. Choose a Popular Topic

The topic of your infographic matters. It really does! Travel and food images do extremely well on Pinterest, given the huge number of users interested in these industries. In Google, there are about 13 million searches on Pinterest for food and about 12 million for travel. And the number of searches in these industries grows each day. However, just because you picked a popular topic doesn’t mean your content will become popular instantly. It has to offer more than just a popular topic. It must have something (or several things) that someone would read and share.

2. Either Be Fun, Challenging, or Informative

An infographic has a clear angle: it’s either to make the audience laugh, answer their questions, help them achieve something, or perhaps, improve their habits. The most common reactions triggered by popular and frequently shared infographics are:

• Funny or Cute – the content made the reader laugh or giggle.
• Challenging – the data presented gave an “I need to do something” feel.
• Useful – it’s informative and useful.
• Motivational – it can motivate the reader to achieve something.
• Interesting – it offers new information and learning.
• Surprising – the content gives a pleasant surprise factor, or something totally unexpected.

3. Simple Informational Infographics Always Work

Aside from selecting a popular topic that will pull people in, your graphic should also make information easy to digest. Users don’t want to get lost into a complex presentation of graphs and charts. Here are a few ways to present simple but informative texts:

• Make a list. A List infographic uses bullet points or number to organize information. They are an easy read and quick to understand.
• Timeline. This is best when outlining events, showing a process, or telling a story.
• Step by step. Closely similar to a List but it’s more on outlining a process which is perfect for DIYs, workout steps, cookbooks, and how-to’s.
• Simple statistics. Although it may contain graphs or charts, it mainly focuses on the key numbers of the statistics with big visuals like icons or logos.

4. Appropriate Fonts Matter

One of the biggest mistakes in creating infographics is using the wrong font. This is especially true for mobile users. If the text font is too difficult to read, people will skip and scroll over the next post. These days, the serif fonts are widely used. Although, this choice is subjective and may not work for all types of information. Choose one that fits the theme of your infographic. Visit http://neovora.com for more marketing tips.

5. Stick To The Brighter Colors

Using the right color is a powerful design element because it helps you convey emotion, add contrast to the design, and create themes. But using the wrong ones can dilute the visuals of the idea you want to convey. For starters, yellow or red shades are a good way to go, but make sure that they’re applicable and sensible to the topic. Greens and oranges are healthy colors, and blues are great for building trust.

Leverage As Many Different Media As You Can To Capture Market Share

Presenting your brand as an authority is critical when building a loyal following. We do this by teaching through various means and channels, especially using vibrant, educational infographics. They aren’t so difficult to make if you follow some guidelines, and if you do them right, your market reach can expand further than you thought possible!

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Boost Your Marketing Creativity With These Top YouTube Tips

YouTube is the one of the largest video sharing and streaming platform in the internet world where millions of videos are being shared every day, by every one, from every where. Viewership of this platform is in the millions each day, and is often the starting point of media assets (and other media content uploaded on the site) to become popular or go viral.

In a statistic post, it shows how wide is its user engagement and audience reach. The statistic shows how influential this platform is and how it has become a part of the everyday lives of its users looking to relax and wind down. Here are a few fun facts about YouTube you shouldn’t miss:

• The total number of people who use YouTube – 1,300,000,000.
• 300 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute!
• Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
• It gets over 30 million visitors per day.
• More than half of the views come from mobile devices.
• 6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV.
• The total number of hours of video watched each month – 3.25 billion.

How YouTube Boosts Your Creativity

In many ways than one, we all have different platforms to choose from to maximize our marketing efforts. Yet considering the hours spent in video streaming (mostly by mobile users), you shouldn’t miss the chance to test your creativity and how you can persuade audiences to watch your content and possibly subscribe to your channel.

1. Use Keywords To Capture Traffic

Much like the most common SEO marketing strategies, when it comes to YouTube keyword research the process is focused on finding alternative terms to include into the title and description. Although keywords matter in searches, it shouldn’t be the focus of your content. It should help enhance your content.

There are great options powered by Google Suggest to mine keywords. There’s also a useful WordPress plugin that will generate keyword ideas based on Google Auto-Complete right inside your post editing dashboard. Additionally, this plugin can help you come up with video content ideas while composing an article. Learn more about keyword traffic by reading a few of the recent  Neovora blog posts.

2. Create an Eye-Catching Design

Internet users, and especially mobile users, have very little patience. They take less than 2 second to decide if your content is worth waiting for it to load. Therefore, it’s critical that every video design be unique, an attention-grabber, and most specially, it should be interestingly fun. The point here is to not just create likable videos, you also have to aim for more clicks to earn engagement. Fortunately, there are many online resources which make this easier with video creation and editing sites, most of which have free or trial versions.

3. Analyze the Competition

Competition analysis is necessary in any content marketing campaign. By knowing your competition, what works for them, how their campaign differ from yours, and what they do effectively to promote brand awareness and engage viewers. You can also gain content ideas from competitor videos for your next posts, and it wouldn’t hurt to take note of their media assets that aren’t selling to the target audience. http://neovora.com offers more helpful tips on competition analysis.

And don’t forget about the native tools within the your YouTube account that you can use to boost your creativeness. Here are a few you can definitely use:

The Analytics feature – You can monitor the performance of your channel with up-to-date reports and metrics in Analytics. Useful data is available in different reports such as Watch time, Traffic sources, and Demographics.

The Series Playlists – “A series playlist allows you to mark your playlist as an official set of videos that should be viewed together. Adding a video to a series playlist allows other videos in the playlist to be featured and recommended when someone is viewing a video in the series playlist. YouTube may use this information to modify how the videos are presented or discovered,” – taken from the YouTube Help page.

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How Instagram Stories Can Help Increase Audience Reach

How can an Instagram feature which disappears after 24 hours can help increase your audience reach? How can you reach more people when your marketing content just lasts for a day? How will this initiative help introduce your business to new prospects?

“If the Instagram feed has become a place for only the most polished, pre-produced photos and video, then Stories could be a way to add some authenticity to the content that appears in the feed. With Stories, brands have a chance to take their followers on a journey and tell the story behind the posts in their feed. This technique could be used by brands of all sizes and industries too. Imagine seeing a brand new post from Nike featuring a well-known athlete pop up in your Instagram feed, and then being able to go behind the scenes with that athlete directly afterward or even see some exclusive footage of the shoot in their story,” says Ash Read on his recent post.

How Businesses Can Benefit From IG Stories

Instagram Stories is one of those channels that is equally attractive to both regular users and businesses. Whether it’s about sharing fun, lighthearted content, to drive sales traffic, or promote a marketing campaign; it offers fair exposure to your followers, plus a window to maximize this opportunity to increase reach, and eventually customer engagement.

Stories will most likely become an integral part of Instagram. Given that there is high willingness from users to engage and a format that demands user attention, it has:

• High engagement rate with 150 million daily users actively using it. About 15-25% of people who see a Story link will likely swipe up.
• No competition since it takes up a full mobile screen. You’ll have the viewer’s full attention without anything above or below your post to tempt them. And it plays continuously.

You can find more social marketing tips from the most recent Neovora blogs. Now let’s tackle how this feature can benefit your brand.

When Users Create UCG

Encourage viewers to create user-generated content (UGC), which they will share on their own profile, while adding your recommended hashtag. To achieve remarkable results from this strategy, the first Story should be a summary of what the users would like to see. Then share multiple examples of customer images with with your brand in it, while the last slide should contain a call-to-action (CTA) for user to share and create their own content, plus a reminder to attach your brand hashtag.

 

Hashtag Stickers Work

Recently, Instagram released two types of Stickers – hashtag stickers and location stickers. You will be needing a branded hashtag for your business to make this work. Including your brand hashtag in a Story sticker will help you achieve an increase in reach and brand awareness. It encourages viewers to share their own UGC with your branded hashtag.

Users can then click on the hashtag, see all the posts, including yours. That’s an extra boost to your content. When your Story gets featured in the discover section and users click on your hashtag, this will offer stronger introduction to your brand which could lead to them checking out more of your posts and a possible follow.

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4 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid At All Costs

4 Critical Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making

While social media is changing and providing more conversion opportunities for businesses, not all marketing efforts work. It has been established by online marketers that not all tactics considered as traffic drivers work for every service or product. In fact, media marketers throughout the course of their career have had marketing fails.

A few of the epic social media marketing fails earlier this year have been listed down by entrepreneur.com. The list includes:

United Airlines – The company hasn’t been having a good year. Things started when passengers took (and shared) video of a man being forcibly dragged off a plane by security when he was randomly selected — and declined — to forfeit his seat for airline maintenance workers.

Dove – In its ongoing effort to redefine popular beauty standards, Dove made a controversial move to reshape its shampoo bottles to reflect different body types. To many women, this indirectly confirmed that there was a “best” or “right” body type, after all. The question raised was, Do you choose the bottle that matches your body type?

Adidas – This fail boiled down to a simple – and probably innocent – but very poor choice of words. After this year’s Boston marathon, the company tweeted out, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” inadvertently recalling imagery of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Learn From These Mistakes

The successful growth of any business shouldn’t rely solely on a specific set of strategies. Like most businesses making a name online, pay attention to your metric and determine the best time your target audience is mostly actively engaged with you. Also, it’s important to avoid making these four mistakes or you might lose more prospects rather than gaining leads:

1. Don’t invest time on multiple social media platforms.

Every additional platform your business adds equates to spending additional time, thus requiring more effort from you to promote customer engagement. To prevent yourself from committing this mistake, first determine which site gives you more leverage when posting your business and non-business related posts.

Also, not all of these platforms can help you maximize your audience reach. Some just don’t have the enough number of the active target audience.

2. Don’t post the same content across multiple business pages.

Tailored content increases reach and engagement. In every social media website, page navigation varies as well as the different expectations active users have. A good example is when using hashtags. On Instagram, hashtags are effective in catching and directing attention to a post whereas on Facebook, it doesn’t have the same effect.

Avoid posting the same content. Try to add variation like changing the title, altering the description, or changing the angle or focus of your post. The more unique it becomes, the more fitting it becomes to your chosen social media site.

3. Don’t just share your own posts.

Content curation is one effective means to promote your brand. Too many or too frequent posts to your own brand or product can come off as annoying to some users, which might trigger disinterest and unfollows. Try to follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your posts should share relevant, educational, helpful, and useful information from the rest of the world… while only 20% should be brand-oriented. Neovora has found out that by posting content from other sources in the same industry, the fan base actually increased as well as the audience reach.

Content from authority sites or businesses increase awareness of your own brand, and following to your page or subscription to your site. Visit www.neovora.com/ to learn more about business branding and promotion.

4. Always respond quickly to questions and comments.

Prospects want a reply to their question right away. When they take the time to type in a question or comment, it means you have something of interest to them. But without a quick response, they can easily move on to the next business that offers a similar or the same product or service. According to research:

• 75% of people are likely to share a good experience on their own profile,
• 70% of people are more likely to use the brand’s product or service,
• 65% of people have more brand loyalty,
• 25% of people are less likely to go to a competitor.

People who reach out to a brand for customer service expect a reply within 60 minutes. Providing informative replies to every question is also an effective way to let your prospects and customers know they are important to your company.

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