The Top 4 Most Effective Calls to Action on Twitter

It seems that for brands, Twitter followers are growing faster than Facebook likes when compared on a percentage basis.

Some recent numbers from an advertising and analytics start up Optimal show that  when tracking the numbers from 4,330 brands, that Twitter followers grew at a 55% faster rate than Facebook likes.

This doesn’t mean that Twitter is overtaking Facebook anytime soon but the trend is strong and the numbers are looking good for the social media network that has made being short cool.

It is also the social media network that marketers know how to set up and brand but when it comes to effectiveness, the car is still in the garage. Many brands know what to do with Facebook and marketing strategies are well planned and executed. With Twitter the lack of self service ads until recently has made it a playmate you took out for a fun date rather than asked to marry.

Marketing needs calls to action

It’s fun to Tweet but if you want to get results then you need to ask for some action from your viewers and readers. 

Twitter has run some analytics over 20,000 “Promoted Tweets” that were sampled over a 3 month period. The study looked at how various types of Promoted Tweet engagements differed depending on which types of calls to action were included in the Promoted Tweet, as compared to a baseline of Promoted Tweets including no calls to action.

Top 4 Twitter “calls to action”

These are the results showing the top four most effective “call to action” Tweets that the study uncovered.

#1. Ask for a download

Want someone to download your new ebook or app. The tweets that asked you to download increased URL clicks by an average of 13% when this call to action was included.

Twitter recommends the following to increase effectiveness.

• Give clear directions
• Provide an incentive to click
• Use hashtags sparingly to keep the clicks focused on the call to action
• Increase urgency by including a deadline

#2. Ask for a Retweet

If you provide an incentive to retweet such as Cadbury have done in the tweet below then it increases retweets by an average of 311%. As most marketers know that a contest or a sweepstake is a popular type of incentive to encourage a call to action.

Twitter recommends the following.

• Provide context
• Keep it simple, so people know exactly what you want them to do

#3. Ask for a follow

Growing your followers gives you more reach. Add an incentive to follow and you can grow your follower base rapidly. The study showed that Promoted Tweets  that asked for a follow increased responses by 258%.

Twitter recommends these tips to increase effectiveness.

• Highlight the exclusive content eg “You will get exclusive behind the scenes photos if you follow”
• Provide an incentive to sweeten the offer “win daily prizes”

#4. Ask for a reply

Want a response? Then ask. You can ask a question and provide an incentive to response. Your engagement will then show a significant increase. The Twitter study showed that this increased replies by 334%.

Some tips for improved responses.

• Get personal
• Be conversational
• Combine the question with a contest 

What about you?

How is your twitter marketing strategy…. still parked? Is twitter part of your social media markting tactics or is facebook all you’ve got?

Look forward to reading your insights and replies in the comments below.

 

 

Want to learn how to grow your Twitter followers?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

How to Create a Perfect Facebook Promoted Post that Doesn’t Break the Rules

If you’re a social media marketer or advertiser, the odds are that you have run into trouble with getting your company’s ad approved on Facebook’s self serve advertising service.

This is due to Facebook’s 20% rule, which means that any promoted page posts through their services will need to include no more than 20% text. The promoted page post feature on Facebook wants all of its advertisements to have more focus on the images themselves versus the words on them.

With advertiser’s energy sliding away from generating page “likes,” if you can capture the attention of the news feed browser, you’ll be well on your way to generating clicks and business. 

So you need to work out how to stay within the rules.

So what is this 20% rule?

If your text takes up more than 20% of the overall image for a promoted page post, you’ll receive a notification from Facebook in your ads manager stating that your ad has been disapproved. If you have spent a decent amount of time creating the graphic, this can be extremely frustrating (which is why we’re informing you about this). In the image below, you’ll see on the top of the image the text takes up over 30% of the image. Facebook would disapprove this advertisement and you’d have to start from scratch.

At the bottom of the image, that text takes up less than 20% of the overall image so your advertisement would be approved. Facebook is hoping that the image will be the captivating part of the advertisement. Any text you want to include can be added to the status.

Where to begin

You’ll need to decide the overall objective for your advertising campaign. The promoted page post option through Facebook will provides you with the opportunity to target a precise audience. Think of this form of advertising as a billboard. People will only see the image for a second, so make sure that you capture their attention with strong imagery and messaging!
Here are several steps to follow to ensure success with this form of advertising:

1. Within Facebook’s ad manager, make sure you are targeting a precise audience that can connect with your brand. For instance, if you are selling fishing gear, it would be wise to target people who “like” Bass Pro Shop’s fan page
2. Choose a captivating image that will relate to the product you are wanting to promote and will stand out amongst all of the clutter in Facebook’s newsfeed
3. Select your wording wisely. The verbiage can only take up 20% of the image so the choice of messaging will be crucial
4. Include a trackable link within the status that will take people to either a landing page or custom tab within Facebook where you can capture people’s contact information or lead them in the right direction to make a purchase

Can regular Facebook posts include more than 20% text?  

Absolutely! If you are just making a Facebook post geared towards people who “like” your page, you will have a lot more freedom. Text can take up the entire image if that is the angle you are taking. For instance, I like to include quotes about online marketing.

A great way to generate more interaction from my fans is by creating a graphic that shows the verbiage from the quote. While Facebook would certainly disapprove this image if you were to run a promoted page post, it will work perfectly for a generic post onto your wall. Remember; think of your Facebook posts as billboards. The more catchy an image, the more likely someone will interact.

Where can I find examples of promoted page post perfection?

My suggestion is to look at various large companies’ Facebook pages. If a brand has more “likes” than people that can fit into a football stadium, they are taking social marketing seriously. These companies have teams of people dedicated to their social media accounts, so why not learn from those who are at the top of the mountain?

If you are a local clothing store, look to Target, Urban Outfitters and other large brands for inspiration. Make sure though that all of your posts are personable and still convey the vibe of your business.

You’ll see the Target has a perfect grasp on the 20% rule. Their main focal point of the image is different products that Dads would be interested in for Father’s Day. Other than the brand name at the bottom left, there is no text on the image. All of the information is included in the status.
To take this a step further, Target has inserted a trackable link on their status, which means they can see how many people have clicked on this link compared to other posts. Additionally, it takes the Facebook browser to a landing page for Cartwheel promoting Father’s Day which means that the photo, messaging and landing page all resonate perfect which will likely yield in high conversions.

Wrapping it up

Remember, if you are a business wanting more exposure, a promoted page post advertisement on Facebook is a great option. This form of online promotion won’t convert as many “likes” for your page, but more importantly, it will generate great interaction on a specific post and generate clicks to your specified landing page which can result in business. 

Don’t forget, the focal point of the advertisement needs to be the image! If you include text, the messaging needs to be strong and take up less than 20% of the overall size of the image. If you are trying to explain your advertisement, the verbiage needs to be placed in the status. Always include a trackable link that goes to a relatable landing page and you will be well on your way to perfecting Facebook’s promoted page posts.

Guest author: Jason Parks is the Owner of The Media Captain. Follow The Media Captain on Twitter for digital marketing updates!   

 

Want to learn how to market your website and blog with social media?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

 

4 Step System for Increasing Conversion and Sales

So, you’re getting a lot of traffic to your site using social media, SEO and content marketing.

Well done!

But the job is only half done. You need to get sales, sign-ups and conversions as well.

In this article, we’ll take a trip into the wild and look at an actual website and conduct a makeover of their landing page with the aim of increasing their conversions.

This can apply to a website or a blog. What’s more, it can all be done using free tools and a little ingenuity.

First, a little background on the site. It’s for a debt consolidation company called Debt Fix. As you probably know, the competition for any services in the financial space is fierce. All of the big banks want a piece of the debt consolidation pie and there is a specialist debt consolidation company that has the lion’s share of the market. So this is a real-life David and Goliath story and in this instance, there is more than one Goliath. Don’t you love a challenge?

I’m sure you’ve all read the stories and case studies about companies like Coke and Red Bull and their amazing tales of digital triumph. But not everyone has multi-million dollar budgets, an international marketing team and a retail brand that has been built up over decades.

Step 1: Get the information you need to win

Luckily, we live in an age of disruption and there is a vast amount of information available online. Google provides an amazing set of tools for people running an online business. Two that you need to know about are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. The difference between them is important.

1. Webmaster Tools

On the one hand, Webmaster tools gives you information on how Google’s search engine sees your site and provides information such as which pages can be indexed and errors on your site.

2. Google Analytics

On the other hand Google Analytics provides information on the visitors to your site. It is a lot more than a hit counter. It provides a vast treasure trove of information on your whole site. It is our slingshot.

 

For those who have never used Google Analytics, it’s pretty easy to setup. You sign up for an account and then Google will provide you with a code snippet that you can insert into each page of your site. If you’re not technical, you can get your web guy to do this for you.

Today’s battle will take place on the key landing page of Debt Fix, which has information on their Debt Consolidation Service. Here’s what the page looked like before the makeover.

 

As a first step, let’s take a look at the page statistics in Google Analytics to see how this page is performing. When you are analysing the performance of a single page on your website, the best place to go to is the Content section in Google Analytics. The important figures to look for are bounce rate, average time on page and the number of page views.

• Bounce Rate: Your bounce rate is the proportion of people who visit this page and then leave more or less straight away – they bounce. The lower the bounce rate the better and a good target for the bounce rate is below 30%. In the case of this page, the bounce rate is over 50%, so we have some work to do.
• Average Time on Page: The average time on page reveals how engaged the user is with this page. The longer they spend on the page, the more they are viewing the content there. Here, the average is over a minute so visitors are engaging with the page, but I’m sure we could do better.
• Page Views: You’ll also want to see how many page views this page gets relative to the total number on the site. The higher the number of page views, the more time you’ll want to spend optimising the page. Being a key service of Debt Fix, this is an important page and so it’s definitely on the action list.

Step 2: Look at the site through the eyes of your customer

When you work in a business day and night it’s really easy to write from the perspective of what you want to communicate to the potential customer. But that’s the wrong end to start from.

It is much more effective to start from the other end and write as if you were a customer visiting your website. So, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the customer. Think of the situation of someone coming to this website who is looking for help with debt. You are probably paying off a bunch of credit cards and other bills. You’re stressed out, tired of going backwards financially and a little embarrassed that you’ve got yourself into this position.

What are you yearning for? Someone trustworthy, someone who gets you, a pathway out of difficulty. We’ll cover the details of how to do this in the next two steps.

Step 3: Write copy that connects

As you can see in the screenshot, the page leads with an immediate call to action – ‘Contact Us Now’. Not bad, it’s direct but probably a little too direct for most people. It’s like the guy at the school dance who just goes around asking girls to dance with him. Sure, it will work eventually but the success rate is pretty low.

Instead, we could use some copy that would connect with how the visitor is feeling.

There are two ways you could go here.

1. One is to connect with the difficulty that they are facing, with a headline something like ‘Are you tired of struggling with debt?’
2. The other way to go is to connect with the difference you can make in their life, maybe using ‘Don’t you dream of having a debt-free future?’

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you which one would work more effectively. The best bet would be to have two landing pages and see which one converts better.

Step 4: Design that connects and makes stuff easy

There’s a lot to good design and I won’t pretend that I’m an expert in it but I do know that the three key components are:

1. Imagery
2. Layout
3. Color

As we saw in Step 2, we want to use these three elements to show that we are trustworthy, that we understand you and can help you. Have a look at the design below and you be the judge of how well we’ve done that.

Another crucial feature of design is that it makes life easy. In other words, it makes achieving your goal easy by simplifying and removing all unnecessary obstacles. I lived in Japan for a while and they treat design as a high art. Craftsmanship is still treasured in Japan even in a modern, fast-paced society. We need to take a leaf from their book when designing web pages and craft them for our users.

You can do that by asking the following:

• What is it that the user would want to achieve on this page?
• What do they need to do that?
• What can I do to make this as easy for them as possible?

Here, we’ve reduced the amount of information on the page and focused the design around connection and then offering a pathway to action – a telephone consultation or online chat.

Presenting the new landing page

This is how the new landing page looks after its re-design and we have implemented the four key steps.

1. Getting the information we need to win
2. Looked through the eyes of the customer
3. Written copy that connects
4. Created a page design that connects and makes it easy.

So, that’s it folks – a real-life before and after makeover of a landing page. Will David beat Goliath? You betcha, the great thing about the web is that you can keep making changes until you find what resonates with your audience.

What about you?

How would you go about improving a landing page? Looking forward to your comments and reactions. We’ll share the results with you as they become available.

Author bio: Peter is a digital producer and social media strategist working at Quantum. You can connect with him on Twitter @PeterLightbody

 

 

Want to learn how to drive traffic to your website and blog with social media?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

How to Achieve Fun, Fame and Fortune Blogging

I don’t know about you but sometimes this blogging gig can be a chore.

Long lonely hours of writing and editing, coming up with the inspiration for the headlines and sitting down to do the work while your friends are out partying. Just getting started is a challenge. What do you want to blog about? Will it work? How do I set up this WordPress technology thing.

Writers block lurks every day. It doesn’t just afflict the beginner but the best. These are some of the challenges that confront us all.

So why should you start and why persist?

Why you should start

When starting, the reasons why are sometimes nothing more than a curiosity driven by a passion for the topic. Sometimes it is the intersection and synergy of multiple motivations. Maybe leave a legacy and learn along the way.

Here are some of the reasons for blogging that I hadn’t really considered when I published for the first time.

1. Your brand awareness will grow
2. Open doors to global opportunities
3. Create business networking opportunities
4. Position you and your brand as a thought leader and expert
5. Website will rank higher in search engines
6. Learn a lot about your business and yourself
7. Build an online asset that doesn’t sleep
8. Grow as an individual and as a business
9. Provide lifestyle freedom
10. Gain access to free crowd sourced marketing

I am sure there are more but there is something for everyone. Done right it does contain fun, a possible 15 minutes of fame and more and the promise of fortune.

Achieve one of those…then it is worthwhile.

Who has the money?

In looking around it starts to become apparent that there are many ways to make money from new media (blogging). It is not a singular approach but a matrix of multiple opportunities and tactics.

Blogging has evolved rapidly because of the social web and in the past was driven by building email lists which took a lot of time. With the advent of social media their marketing and growth have been supercharged.

Global reach and influence at the speed of a tweet, a Facebook share or a viral video.

To make money from a blog in 2013 you do not have to be a Huffington Post. There are many ways to make a living out of blogging that can enhance your current business and lifestyle that are within everyone’s reach.

Here are 11 different business models in this Slideshare presentation with case studies.

What is the framework for success?

Here are 10 key elements you will need to succeed at your blogging.

1. Focused plan
2. Memorable branding
3. The platform you own
4. Design that works
5. Blogging and website hosting that runs 24/7
6. Creating and packaging your content
7. Grow your social networks
8. Optimise for search engines
9. Network and build promotional partnerships
10. Build an email list

Six takeaways

Need to boil it down then the here are the core takeaways.

1. Focus
2. Start
3. Publish
4. Grow your networks
5. Package your knowledge
6. Market & Promote 

What about you?

How is your blogging journey? Started, stalled or are you well on your way. What have been your biggest challenges?

It is not a get rich quick scheme and if anyone that tells you it is then hold tight onto your money and run!

Look forward to your insights and stories in the comments below.

 

Want to learn how to create and market a successful global blog with social media?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

 

How To Use Pinterest’s Bold New Look

As we pass the halfway point of 2013, Pinterest’s rapid growth shows no signs of abating.

According to Reuters, Pinterest has amassed 48.7 million users since its inception three years ago and a study by SimplyMeasured reveals that 69 of the world’s top 100 brands now have Pinterest accounts.

Hot on the heels of the Pinterest business-focused rollouts that we covered earlier, namely account verification, business pages, and the new web analytics tool,  there have been a flurry of updates in recent weeks that have left many business owners scratching their heads. So if you’re feeling a tad confused about Pinterest’s new look and its rich pins, you are not alone.

Here’s a whirlwind tour of the key features of both updates and some pointers on how to use them for your business.

#1. Navigating Pinterest’s New Look

Pinterest has been testing its new look since the beginning of the year but the fact that it isn’t permanent yet is telling.

When the new design first launched Pinterest received a flood of complaints from pinners for removing many of their favorite features, notably Mentions and the Pinned By feature that let you see who had pinned that item.

Many users were disgruntled that they could no longer see the pinning chain and felt that Pinterest was making it harder for them to connect with others.

Pinterest promptly did a U-turn and reintroduced some of the most popular features.

The new look is still being tweaked so certain functions don’t work quite as well as they should. You are not obliged to adopt the new look (yet), but each time you log in, Pinterest will nudge you with this reminder: 

Remember, once you hit Get It Now you won’t be able to revert back to the old look.

Why The New Look?

The aim of the new design is to encourage “discovery” through a bolder cleaner look and much bigger pins. Now that the frames between images have been removed, some people may find the close-ups too intense.  Depending on your screen size, it can certainly send your eyes funny!

 The important point with the new look is to be extra careful when selecting images for Pinterest’s new look. Make sure they are big, bold and engaging. 

1. Pin Options On Home Feed

If you hover over a pin, you now have only 2 options not 3. The bigger Pin It button has replaced the previous Repin but the Like icon remains. You can still click the Like button twice to Unlike an image if you change your mind.

At the bottom of the image you can see who pinned the image and the board on which it was pinned. More than ever, you should take care to select an on-brand username and name your boards using catchy, keyword-rich titles that capture the essence of that board and encourage click-throughs. 

The Comment feature has disappeared from the home feed entirely, but you can still access it when you click on the pin to enlarge it.

Remember that “pins” don’t just include static 2D images. Pinterest also lets you pin video from sites like Dailymotion, TED, YouTube and Vimeo using the Pin It button. 

2. Enlarged Pin Features

As before, clicking on the pin gives you the supersized version of the image. Here you can see how many repins and likes the pin has received and the original source with full URL. 

See the Send button on the far right? This lets you share the pin with others, either a fellow pinner by adding the @symbol before their Pinterest username or using their email address. 

The button next to it with the small arrow icon enables easy sharing to Twitter, your Facebook profile (alas, not your business page!), email, and interestingly, embed it into your website using a new Pinterest widget builder. 

At the bottom of the page, Pinterest offers a host of related images under the heading People who pinned this also pinned to encourage discovery. 

This Amazon-style feature is designed to help you connect with like-minded pinners and find interesting pins and boards.   

3. Pinterest Page & Activity Feed 

To access your page, just click on your name on the far right and a drop-down menu will appear with several options including your Boards, Pins, Settings and Analytics. 

The small button with the two pin icons on the far right of your page is the new location of your activity feed.  Just click on this to see when someone follows you or your boards, repins, likes or comments on your pin, or mentions you. 

Your activity feed can provide you with a surprising amount of intelligence about your Pinterest audience. 

Which boards are attracting the most attention? Which pins are getting the highest amount of engagement i.e. repins, comments and likes? Who is your content resonating with? 

Check it daily and combine it with the web analytics tool, (only accessible via the new look) to help you dive deeper into your Pinterest marketing. 

4. Settings

Pinterest now gives you two places to edit your settings. 

Your general account settings such as password, email notifications etc are located in the top right-hand menu we covered earlier. 

But if you want to edit your personal information (username, bio, location, social media information and URL) then you need to head over to your About section and click on the small pencil icon in the bottom right-hand corner. 

5. Search

Pinterest has also upgraded its search feature. The old buggy functionality has been replaced with a smoother, slicker version that includes “auto-suggest”, making it very similar to Google search. 

Instead of typing a keyword into the search box and waiting forever for the results, Pinterest now provides alternative, highly searched terms that can help you narrow your search. 

For time-starved pinners, there is also another bonus. Have you ever tried searching for your own pins but didn’t want to wade through hundreds of other peoples’ images? 

Now you can type in a keyword like social media and Pinterest will offer you the option to search all pins containing the word social media in the caption or filter out your own using the Just my pins option. 

Some Tips

• Use the enhanced search feature to find targeted followers based on your top keywords or niche, or add a city, state or country for local searches. 
• Do you want to gather intelligence about your competitors? Just add their brand or name into the Pinterest search box to see their pins, boards and page and followers.

#2. How To Use Pinterest Rich Pins

This newly launched feature shows great promise, particularly for online merchants and ecommerce sites. Rich pins provide more information than normal pins and currently there are 3 types of rich pins available: products, recipes and movies.

According to Pinterest, rich pins take desire and discovery one step further by providing dynamic data that encourages purchasing.

Pinners can now “buy the couch, rent the movie or bake the cookies they see” because they can view real-time product pricing, availability, cooking time, ingredients, ratings, reviews and location  without clicking to find the source and potentially landing on the wrong page, or finding that the item is unavailable.

Nordstrom is one brand that has taken advantage of the rich pins feature. Notice how the image below shows detailed at-a-glance information about stock availability and where the product can be purchased. 

Several big brands such as Target, Wholefoods Market, Good Housekeeping, Sony and Walmart have already got on board with rich pins, but so too have smaller sellers on Ebay and Etsy. It’s still early days but I believe this new feature bodes well for different types of vendors and products.

How To Start Using Rich Pins

Pinterest requires you to do 3 things before you can access rich pins;

1. Rich pins only work on the new look so you must switch over first (which is why I’ve covered the new design in this post).
2. Site owners must prepare their meta tag information before they can access rich pins. There are a few ways to do this, and they are outlined on the Pinterest developer page.
3. Once you’ve chosen the correct type of rich pin for your business – product, movie or recipe – and you are ready to test the rich pins feature, you must validate your rich pins so that Pinterest can approve them.

Key Benefits Of Rich Pins

Paul Chaney provides an excellent overview on the benefits of rich pins for online sellers, which I have summarized below:

• The pin-to-purchase process is more streamlined. Customers can view all the pertinent information on Pinterest and are more likely to click-to buy if it’s effortless.
• The potential to lose a sale due to a broken link or stock unavailability is greatly reduced.
• Customers can make informed decisions on the spot, which will not only send targeted visitors to your website but they will be more inclined to buy.
• Pinterest rich pins pull real-time information directly from your site which eliminates the need to write lengthy product descriptions for each pin or constantly update the details thereby saving you time.
• Already pinned images can easily be converted to rich pins provided the meta tag information has been added to the source page. 

Final words

As Chaney says, in spite of the tech requirements, rich pins are worth applying for because they offer an opportunity for ecommerce businesses and online sellers to link their products directly to their pins.

Rich pins can transform your Pinterest business page from a place of inspiration and discovery to one that also brings real commercial benefits.

While rich pins may be taking Pinterest one step closer towards monetization – they may well start charging merchants for this privilege – this new feature is also making social commerce a reality for many businesses, large and small.

Pinterest is playing a particularly important role in this new trend because of its unique demographic; the average users are women aged 30-49 with considerable disposable incomes, widely considered by marketers as the sweet spot.

There is a strong sense that there are more changes to come. Rich pins along with the previous updates and the launch of a new “developer’s page” provide clues about Pinterest’s intentions. Is it about to turn into a fully-fledged platform?

I for one will be watching closely what Pinterest does next.

What About You?

What do you think about Pinterest rich pins? Is this a feature you will integrate into your business? How have you found Pinterest’s new look? 

Guest Author: Tehmina is an entrepreneur, business strategist and Pinterest marketing expert. You can connect with her at EpreneurTV where she blogs about building an online business. You can also download her free ebook to learn how to master Pinterest in the shortest time possible.

 

Want to learn how to market your blog with social media?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

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