Tinker With TikTok to Thrill Your Target Audience

Are you still wondering if you should include TikTok in your social media marketing strategy? Well, consider this: App Annie’s 2022 Mobile Forecast report says TikTok will surpass 1.5 billion users this year. 

Undoubtedly, the trending challenges, funky dance moves, quirky cooking demos, hilarious animal features and silly pranks are influencing mainstream culture and attracting a massive audience of followers globally. Among all the creative content on the platform, there are plenty of opportunities for you to meet your business goals, add to your social media marketing strategy and boost your brand messaging.

To get you started, TikTok has shared the following infographic with a new guide that offers an activation strategy for both organic and paid content. So, go ahead and experiment with new content that can help you connect with more of your target audience.

Write This: High-Quality Content Solves Customer’s Problems

content is king handwritten on blackboard

There is no doubt that “Content is Still King.” But if you are unfamiliar with the formula for producing high-performing content, you will never bear the crown as a content marketer.

The Shakespeare quote “uneasy is the head that wears a crown” is spot on when it comes to content marketing. Whether it’s a blog post, e-book, video, podcast, landing page or social media copy, you need to ensure your content strategy evolves continuously. In a report, Tailor Insight lays out more content marketing trends for this year that include building those critical connections by repurposing content that takes your customers through the buyer’s journey and solves their problems. 

My favorite recommendation from the report is to do what you do best. In other words, find your niche and focus on producing high-quality content over quantity. Keep in mind how your target audience consumes information. Do they prefer short or long-form videos, articles, to-do lists or infographics? Lastly, but certainly not least, create authentic, unpolished content that matters. Your target audience wants to see you without your corporate mask or movie makeup.

Try these strategies, and you will rule content marketing!

To post, or not to post: COVID-19 Communications

To post, or not to post: that is the question! Is it appropriate to post marketing content during this difficult time? Will “business as usual” social media messaging appear insensitive or tone-deaf? Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many communicators are now struggling with how to engage their target audiences. Media Frenzy Global, a marketing agency,  provides some answers with this helpful infographic.

 

Brand Marketers Increase Content Creation Efforts Amid Online Competition

Today’s ever-changing digital landscape presents a wealth of opportunity as well as new challenges for brand marketers. The problem is that the rules of content creation have changed. In the past, writing a 500-word blog post with keywords and hyperlinks was sufficient to generate or convert leads. The good news is the essential components of a good story remain the same. However, the process of telling it in the digital age has evolved considerably as new technologies have emerged. As more organizations create more online content, it will become more and more difficult to establish meaningful connections.

According to eMarketer’s 2018 B2B content marketing report, 84 percent of U.S. companies with at least 100 employees that distribute non-promotional content for marketing purposes will utilize digital content marketing next year. There is no doubt that this revelation will inspire brand marketers to find more creative and innovative ways to cut through the online clutter to maintain their target audiences’ attention in 2019.

“For B2Bs, content is a vehicle to engage their audience of prospective buyers and customers across the life cycle,” Jillian Ryan, senior analyst at eMarketer said on the website. “When planned strategically, content can work hard for B2Bs throughout the funnel. For example, it can serve as an awareness building mechanism to bring new decision-makers into the fold through lead generation. But it also has the ability to educate and enable existing customers.”

In March 2018, The Manifest surveyed 501 U.S. digital brand marketers and found that 22 percent of respondents said their content marketing improvement goals include more original content and visual components. Check out the infographic below from eMarketer that provides an overview of their online competition:

Influencer Marketing: International Superstar Matt Mcconuaghey or Mechanic Mary Smith

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

By Malkia “Kia” McLeod

Would you prefer to discuss purchasing a new car with the international superstar Matt McConaughey or the friendly mechanic Mary Smith? When it comes to influencer marketing, the answer is key to reaching your target audiences on social media.

Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective tactics in terms of “cutting through the clutter” and creating a community of brand advocates. The trend, however, for many brands is to use micro-influencers as brand ambassadors to engage their target audiences instead of the big-name macro-influencers or celebrities.

“People connect with micro-influencers because of their authenticity and honest perspective,” the Vice President of beauty brand partnerships at Influenster Laura Brinker told eMarketer. “They feel as if they are a person just like them. And with authenticity at the core of what brands desire, they’ve started looking more toward smaller influencers with higher engagement rates.”

According to the 2018 eMarketer report, “Global Influencer Marketing: What Platforms to Use, Policies to Follow and the Paths to Purchase Around the World,” micro-influencers generally have 1,000 to 10,000 followers. So what happened to tapping into the millions of Kardashian followers to sell makeup or a purse?

“In recent years, traditional celebrity endorsements have taken a back seat to brands’ influencer-created content,” CBS Moneywatch Platform News Editor Lauren Meltzer said in a related article. “So stars like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian have been replaced by that familiar, yet unfamiliar face that popped up in your feed moments ago.”

The goals of an influencer marketing campaign, just like any other campaign, are to create brand awareness, increase social media engagement, improve conversions, and gather analytics. It’s all about empowering your customers and moving them through the buyer’s journey.

The micro-influencer influencer role is to act as your brand ambassador by having those one-on-one personal, real-world conversations across multiple channels—meeting audiences how, when and where they want.

So who will it be for your brand? Before you start thinking about your influencer marketing campaign and the best micro-influencer, read the articles below:

• Micro, not Macro: Rethinking Influencer Marketing
• Instagram Dominates the Influencer Market
• Four goals of an influencer marketing campaign
• Use Influencer Marketing to Achieve Your Nonprofit Goals
• How to use influencer marketing to meet your company’s goals

Social Media Blunders: Hire a PR Firm

Without a PR firm to develop and implement a social media strategy, business owners are prone to make a few mistakes. Today, social media continues to be one of the most effective marketing tools. But used the wrong way, social media networking sites can negatively impact your business and cause the company to lose its customer base. The following infographic from Bianchi Public Relations, “Top Five Social Media Mistakes of Professional Service Firms,” illustrates the potential damage.

Maybe It’s Time to Check Out the Competition

Now that you have officially joined “the rat race” to capture your share of the 72 percent of American adults—using social media— attention, have you identified your metrics? Are you meeting your ROI expectations?

After all, you developed a strategic plan, joined a few social media networks, hired a social media specialist, and established a substantial fan base. And you are using services like Google Analytics and YouTube insights to measure the efficacy of your online presence.

What else can you do?

One suggestion is to check out your competitors’ social media presence and ask yourself the following questions:

1. What strategies are they using to recruit loyal brand promoters? i.e., promotional contests, coupons, etc.
2. How are they converting visitors into customers?

Read More:

• The 4 Types of Content Metrics That Matter
• Calculate Your Blogging ROI in 9 Steps
• Awesome Things That Brands Did On Social Media In 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]
• Content marketing metrics can be confusing and preoccupy your time, so start by selecting a just a few fundamentals to measure.

Teens leap to Mars, while adults remain on Earth (Part Deux)

(Source: elitedaily.com)

• Good day youth marketers! Just in case you missed my last post, “Teens leap to Mars, while adults remain on Earth,” I decided to do a quick recap for you.

  This time, however, I decided to add some statistics that offer further insight into our fickle little bunch or what many marketers are referring to as the most skeptical and challenging to reach generation than before.

  The following stats—assembled by Digiday—are just another attempt to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering many marketers: how do you capture and hold the attention of Generation Y or the millennials?

  • There are about 79 million millennials in the U.S. versus the 48 million Generation Xers (born between 1965 and 1980). (ComScore)
  • Millennials will make up 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2030. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  • 27 percent of millennials are self-employed. (The Millennial Generation Research Review)
  • 80 percent of millennials sleep with their phones next to their beds. (The Millennial Generation Research Review)
  • Millennials send about 20 texts per day. (Pew Social Trends)
  • The purchasing power of millennials is estimated to be $170 billion per year. (ComScore)
  • 56 percent of millennials think technology helps people use their time more efficiently. (Pew Social Trends)
  • 14 percent of millennials use Twitter. (Pew Social Trends)
  • 31 percent of millennials said they earn enough money to lead the kind of life they want, versus 46 percent of Gen Xers. (Pew Social Trends)
  • 41 percent of millennials have no landline at home and rely on their cell phones for communication. (Pew Social Trends)

Influencer Types and Engagement Strategies

The Business Insider’s Cooper Smith asked: “Who Wields Real Influence On Social Media?”

The answer is straightforward: Those who have leveraged a variety of platforms to build a community, empower advocates and attract a substantial fan base have become the most successful influencers on social media. For example, pop star Lady Gaga has quickly become the queen of the social scene with 23 million albums sold, five Grammy awards, 35 million Twitter followers and 56 million “likes” on Facebook.

How did she do it: According to Forbes, Gaga and her manager, Troy Carter, focus their efforts on just one percent of her fan base. So the real question is: How can you replicate Lady Gaga’s success? Traackr, an online search engine that finds social media influencers, believes they have an answer and a service that addresses these questions.

Check out the following Infographic to find out what motivates each type of influencer and understand the best ways to engage them.

Traackr identifies influencer types and suggests engagement strategies targeted to each type of influencer.

Read more:
Who Wields Real Influence On Social Media?
Building Loyalty The Lady Gaga Way: Focus On 1% Of Your Customers