Tips & Tricks

Giphy, the betaworks-backed search engine for gifs, has released a brand new tool that makes sharing gifs on social networks even easier and more efficient. Giphy is a search platform that is based entirely around gifs, with artist profiles so that creators can get more exposure and easy sharing tools for social media. However, without in-line integration on Facebook or Twitter people still have… Read More …read more

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Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Facebook’s iOS Related Content Test Could Be A Boon For Marketers Facebook wants check-ins to be more social, which could be good news for…

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Pinterest was an immediate hit among fashion, food, and design brands, and we’ve seen how others have benefited. With incredible growth and a wealth of success stories, it’s hard to believe that there are still some industries that haven’t embraced it yet. Currently, only a small portion of financial institutions are active on the platform. They might not seem like a match for it, but several financial brands are doing great things with Pinterest.

This is concerning because women, who influence 85 percent of all purchase decisions, make up the majority of the site’s user base. Of Pinterest’s 70 million members, roughly 80 percent of them are women.

The platform has revolutionized the way consumers share information, and making use of it is an innovative way for financial organizations to offer customers visually compelling information about their brand. Here are some themes to focus on and examples of financial brands that have successfully leveraged Pinterest’s popularity.

Create Pins Around Life Stages and Financial Concerns

While your Pinterest account should be a reflection of your brand, that doesn’t mean every pin should be self-promotional in nature. Being successful on any social network requires finding that happy balance between sales jargon and content that consumers will find valuable. So although some self promotion can be useful, your pinboards shouldn’t be loaded with marketing materials.

For financial institutions, rather than pinning your latest credit card offer, consider sharing your blog post about tips for students looking for their first credit card. Consider who your customers are and tailor your content to meet their needs. Money might not buy happiness, but it does provide choices and opportunities. As such, major life decisions are often made with an individual’s current financial situation in mind.

College

In addition to providing tips on establishing credit and avoiding credit …read more

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Why YouTube is the dominant player in today’s music industry

YouTube is the #1 music streaming platform in the world. It’s the #2 search engine in the world. It’s slowly replacing radio, MTV, and many other platforms for music discovery. It’s become a serious revenue source for musicians too (some CD Baby artists have earned more than 40k from YouTube ad revenue). And that’s why YouTube is more important than anything else in your music career — besides the actual music, of course.

But these days it takes more than just a couple music videos to establish a YouTube presence.

According to Lucy Blair:

The days of aiming to create a one-hit ‘viral’ on YouTube as a marketing strategy are long gone. These days it’s more helpful to think of YouTube as your own TV channel. Think of content as programming – and not programming for an album cycle, but a 12-month content cycle.

It’s essential to create a programming schedule and produce regular content to drive subscribers, repeat views and watch time, and to give subscribers a reason to return to your channel.

How do you develop a content strategy, though? And maybe more elementary, what kind of content should you be creating?

Well, here’s a list of twelve different kinds of videos you can create to promote your music.

Still need more inspiration? Check out these 32 viral video ideas for busy musicians.

Now, what should you DO with your videos to build your fanbase using YouTube?

1) Read our “Top 5 tips for music video promotion on YouTube” for the basics.

2) Then check out our Complete Guide to YouTube for more advanced tips …read more

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More consumers are turning to social media for customer service because of its direct and speedy nature. The problem is that as customer service requests increase, companies have a hard time keeping up. In fact, they’re way behind, according to data from social marketing software provider Brickfish.

Eighty percent of companies believe they provide superior customer service online, but a stunning 92 percent of consumers would disagree with that statement, according to the data. And the problems will only continue to get worse, as social engagement with companies is growing nine times faster than the social platforms themselves. More customers than ever are seeking brands on social media.

As for response times, consumers expect a response a lot faster than most companies deliver one. On Facebook, 42 percent of consumers want a response within an hour, but it takes most brands an average of 15 hours to respond.

Twitter is faster, with the average response time for companies just under eight hours, but tweeters are even more demanding with 32 percent of them expecting a response in just 30 minutes.

There are great gains for companies that get it right. Seventy-one percent of consumers that receive a quick and effective response are more likely to recommend that brand. If consumers are able to contact a brand on social media, they are 50 percent more likely to make a purchase.

Of course, when responding to customers, it’s important to have a plan.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Facebook and YouTube are now dominating mobile traffic shares in early 2014, as more people shift to a mobile device to upload photos to social networks and watch cat videos.

Facebook and YouTube now account for 32% of data sent to and from mobile devices, according to a report by Sandvine. Individually, Facebook’s share was 26.9% for upstream traffic and had a 14% share for downstream traffic during peak periods in North America through the beginning of this year, while YouTube only had 3.7% share for upstream traffic, but a 17.6% share for downstream.

More about Mobile, Youtube, Facebook, Tech, and Social Media …read more

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Remember the cool kids in school who stayed ahead of trends? Back then, catching up seemed impossible. Today, your cool peers are using social media in cool ways, but the good news is that you can, too! Read the full article at MarketingProfs …read more

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Most active LinkedIn users spend at least three hours per week on the platform, they have free accounts, and they allow their connections to see the rest of their network, according to a recent report from Wayne Breitbarth/Power Formula. Read the full article at MarketingProfs …read more

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In and around Ontario, the war on internships rages on. It’s been a hot topic in the press as of late since 2 Canadian magazines (Toronto Life and The Walrus) dismissed their interns after the provincial government questioned the ethics behind unpaid youth employment. This isn’t the first time internship drama has made an impact in the media – there was the Fox ‘Black Swan’ lawsuit that created quite a swell of excitement in September 2013 and it’s got me thinking.

As an intern you have an opportunity to prove to a company why you deserve to be hired over anyone else. In J.J. McCullough’s article for the National Post titled ‘Why Internships Should be Illegal‘, he likens unpaid internships to “something [that] can be very good for business yet still ugly and immoral.” He even goes as far as to educate young internship victims (eyeroll) on “9 tips for ending your internship on a positive note”. As a business owner who employs unpaid interns, I regularly come into contact with many people who agree with McCullough’s point of view on a practice that is a personal career choice many young professionals make. A wise career choice, if you ask me.

Allow me to add a personal spin. Internships are something I feel very passionately about – at the age of 15, the indie record label Wind-Up Records Canada gave me my first internship opportunity. I remember driving from Barrie to Toronto to be interviewed in their office and being totally amazed. It was in that moment I knew I was exactly where I needed to be and that this opportunity was a great chance to prove myself and start my long career in music. Three months later I was hired on a contract basis to coordinate Lifestyle Marketing, …read more

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Our world is in constant flux. I think we like it that way. It makes us feel alive and allows us to stretch and also to complain. We like complaining, but that is for another day.

The level of upheaval in social media and digital marketing is something that we are becoming accustomed to. It is a good thing. Makes us nimble. Except when it doesn’t. Sometimes constant flux makes us panic and panic makes us pause and flap our arms a little.

One of the earliest skills I remember learning was the ability to crush panic in an instant and pivot quickly. I learned in my first real journalism job that when you panic, you lose time and when you are putting out a newspaper in a few hours time, there is no time to waste in panic-mode. This training has served me well. And because of this training, I’ve learned that the most valuable skill in our arsenal at this moment in time is the ability to pivot.

When you are quick to pivot, you avoid panic, you save time and effort and sweat and heartache. Pivoting is by far, the most valuable skill in our day. Question is: How can we learn to be better at pivoting?

Imagine tangible success

It’s tough to know when to pivot if you have no idea what you’re shooting for. This is beyond setting goals. This is about describing and documenting in real numbers or other tangible ways what success or winning looks like. If you do not do this, you will never know if you should be pivoting. The key to pivoting is knowing that it has to happen. If you have no idea that it needs to happen you will never do it and if you never do it, you’ll never get good at …read more

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The beauty of social media is when global strangers connect and become neighbors. Where digital connections pass through smartphones, pad devices, laptops and more to bring people who would never meet otherwise into a space of not only daily connection, but in some cases, hourly.

As we reach forward to a new generation that is striving to connect everyone to this great platform called the internet, we see corporations rising such as Internet.org and Google Fiber. An internet connection in every home, in every land. Free wifi everywhere we go. Connection is increasing and it’s time for you, the small business owner, to take this community based platform serious.

If you are a plumber one of the first things you’ll learn is how to do a service call. You wouldn’t ever consider going into someone’s house talking about pipes, PVC and copper. No, your best foot forward would mean taking the time to have conversation, engage with the customers and service their needs as you do so. This same model works today brilliantly on social media.

The “Loving Your Customers” model that I have been teaching for more than 5 years now is not new and it’s not limited to just a brick and mortar business. The struggle comes in when a succesful business that knows how to truly care for people begins to believe that they must behave differently, put on an internet marketing front and try to become something they are not.

If you own a clothing boutique and you offer free hemming, fashion tips and even special bonus’ with every purchase, the customer will drive over an hour just to look around your store. People will linger through your clothing racks and they’ll enjoy the fresh smells of your boutique for one simple reason: they love being there with you. …read more

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Before joining the team here at MailChimp, I worked at interactive agencies and as a freelance website designer. After we handed a finished website over to a client, they would be able to log in and edit their own copy through a content management system. This was great, but it was rarely the case with the email campaigns we managed. Most of the time, we managed lists, designed templates, and sent campaigns on the client’s behalf. If they wanted performance reports, we had to fetch them ourselves—the client seldom even had access to log in. Sound familiar?

I’m sure some agencies are never gonna give up total control over their marketing efforts, but I wish I could’ve helped our clients become more independent. Thankfully, MailChimp believes in empowering our users, and our collaboration features make it possible to work together with your clients without feeling like a monkey in the middle.

Set up multi-user accounts

Once you’ve created an account for your client, the first step is to hand over the keys. Visit Account settings > Users & account details to invite anyone from the organization that might want to help out. You can even choose access levels to limit what each user can do.

A single login can be used to access multiple accounts, so be sure to invite yourself and your agency coworkers. Using the same login to join all of your clients’ accounts will let you access everything from one dashboard and easily switch between projects.

Collaborate seamlessly

Your design requirements may necessitate crafting a completely custom email, but when you’re just getting started, we highly recommend beginning with a drag and drop template. They’re mobile-friendly and much easier for HTML-averse clients to customize themselves.

Once you’re working on a campaign, everyone looped in on the Design step …read more

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Have you ever stopped to think about what people remember about you after they meet you the first time? Is it something intentional? Or is it different for every person? I’ve spent a considerable amount of time “working” on my personal brand. I say “working” with a pretty ridiculous amount of sarcasm, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

There is a ton of content out there on personal branding and frankly there is some pretty decent stuff out there. But I have a short-cut to building your personal brand and it all comes down to one thing.

What Makes You Memorable?

Seriously, I don’t care what you want to be an expert in or what your specialty is. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether you were memorable or not. And I have a little secret. Being memorable doesn’t come down to the words you practice for your speech, the great ideas in your blog posts or any of the other things that we think defines our brand. It comes down to what strikes people as unique and what stands out above everyone else in your space.

I remember in full clarity the first time I spoke at a larger social media conference. It was at the Inbound Marketing Summit in 2010. Believe it or not, Chris Brogan had enough faith in me to take a chance and gave me a speaking slot. (Thanks Chris!) I sat through a full day of sessions and got on the stage right after lunch. Needless to say, minds had been stretched to their consumption limits and I realized that I had to do something a little bold to stand out because energy was waning. The audience at IMS was a push the limits casual but insanely smart group. It had a …read more

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Google AdWords is undoubtedly a viable medium for attracting qualified leads. But to fully take advantage of the opportunity, you need to track and monitor for both online and offline conversions. Read the full article at MarketingProfs …read more

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