Content Strategy Articles | Frame 316 Media

Designing stories for mobile

-

In the 2018 edition of We Are Social’s report; the mobile phone is still the king of content consumption. With 68% penetration this year from last year’s 66% penetration, it is obvious that more and more content will be delivered and consumed mobile-first. Hence, the reason to start designing stories for mobile.

And to win the mobile content game, you have to be “in” the game.

How do you do that?

Your content needs to be short, personal and shareable.

Short
Much of the internet avoids long format content. And for mobile-first content, make sure it’s visual, and your copy won’t take the whole afternoon to read.

Personal
Always include your own voice in your content. Create content as if you are right there in front of your target audience. Always be conversational in your approach. Don’t preach.

Shareable
Mobile devices are designed in a way that whenever quality content is published, people share it. It takes a maximum of two fingers to do that on a mobile device, keep this in mind when you are designing content for mobile.

And to win the mobile content game, you have to be “in” the game. How do you do that? Your content needs to be short, personal and shareable. #ContentMarketing #Strategy #Storytelling Click To Tweet

Since mobile devices are pocket-friendly gadgets, make sure you design content that is pocket-friendly. Things that your target audience can carry around and can easily remember. The more they remember your content, the more they talk about it with their friends.

Here are some practical applications of designing stories for mobile.

I am breaking it down into a few popular industries in the market today; branding, design, IT solutions & marketing.

Why I choose these? I believe these are an almost oversaturated market and designing stories for mobile in these industries would give you an edge over your competitor.

A mobile-first approach is a content-first approach so you would really need to prioritize content. The heart of your brand is your content. #ContentMarketing #InboundMarketing Click To Tweet

Branding
Branding is a complex web of creativity and market insights. If you are not a visual person, you would think that branding is something that you would get easily bored with. But digging deep into the conversation going around in this space, you would begin to appreciate the value of branding in your day to day life as an entrepreneur.

Designing stories for mobile in the branding space would require a strategy that combines research and your own insights. You can break down your stories for mobile in a couple of sub-concepts; customer experience and brand experience. In your stories, you can tackle how do you bridge these two? How does customer experience match the brand promise that you intend to deliver. Use nuggets of visuals and captions. Use life cycles of user experience. From discovering your brand to learning and all the way to amplifying. What is happening? What is short, personal and shareable content that you can build out of this lifecycle?

Design
The late Steve Jobs busted the myth that design is how a product should look like, according to him, design is how the user uses the product. That is what design is meant to achieve, more than anything else is ease of use. So what type of mobile stories can you create in this space? A simple search on Google Trends will give you the top trending queries in the graphic design space. Meaning, you will know what most people on this planet is trying to find out in terms of design. Start writing something to provide the answer that people are looking for. Over time, you will get a share of the traffic – given that you create quality content.

Some of the content you can write can talk about how your customers can use their mobile devices to create their own content. If you can demonstrate how this can be done in a few clicks, then you are off to creating shareable content.

IT solutions
One of the busiest department in an office in terms of traffic is the IT department. Hence, a company providing IT solutions should look and sound quick, responsive and adaptable. IT solution providers most of the time are stereotyped as the nerdy geeks with a tool in their hand. What if you started crafting content that will go against this norm. Why not look cool and hip and awesome? Try to come up with short videos demonstrating easy solutions for IT related problems in an office environment. Make it trivial and fun.

Marketing
Buffer social puts the icing on the cake, make sure you visit the link below this page to see what the data has to say in terms of shareable content. In the marketing space, there is a lot of conversation about personalization and making your content “human.” According to research, content that is human by nature gets shared the most. If you are a small company, what better way to make your content human by being the “face” of your brand. Give your personal insights, share your success story, share your customer engagement model. You can even talk about the best practices, those you agree to and those you disagree with.

If your content is mobile-first, it translates better to all the devices out there. A mobile-first approach is a content-first approach so you would really need to prioritize content. The heart of your brand is your content. Users go to your website/blogs for content above all things.

In our storytelling for SMEs cookbook, we discussed in a bit more detail how you could craft your own stories. Check out the article if you haven’t yet.

We are interested to find out what you want to learn about storytelling?

Source:

https://blog.bufferapp.com/shareable-content-social-media-research

https://wearesocial.com/sg/

Storytelling for SMEs, a Simple Cookbook

Robert Cristobal

-

1

Storytelling for SMEs is not as complex as it sounds. It is not expensive. It does not depend on an award-winning agency. In fact, everyone, I mean everyone on the planet can be a storyteller. Some may be good at it; some may be bad at it. And those who think they are bad at it are actually not utilizing their storytelling skills the right way.

The whole idea is that for your brand to be a trusted one; you need to inspire. And this inspiration needs to transcend the usual business relationship engagement#storytelling #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

The whole idea is that for your brand to be a trusted one; you need to inspire. And this inspiration needs to transcend a normal business to client, business to the supplier, and business to potential customer relationship.

Canvass is a Yoga hub, and we crafted the story based on the heart and the art of Yoga.

Storytelling can give your customers a reason to buy from you.

But as an SME owner, you probably have used the universal excuse – “I’m too busy running my business, the day to day operation alone is taking a chunk of my time.”

But let me give you a secret. An obvious one. That statement alone can be broken down into small stories; You are busy, running your business, day to day operation, a chunk of your time.

Storytelling can give your customers a reason to buy from you. #storytelling #inboundmarketing Click To Tweet

Let’s pick up from there and use them as a simple cookbook to kickstart your storytelling. Every good story starts with the right question. And these questions can lead to more engaging “answers.”

Exercise #1: I’m too busy

Guide questions: What makes you busy? How do you manage your time?

Story: “I am driven by my passion to meet my customer’s needs. In fact, I always feel I don’t have enough time to do everything that I need to. This is where teamwork comes in, and our brand values teamwork like no other brand does. Our team consists of our creative people, our front office and of course – You, our customer. Yes, part of the teamwork that our brand encourages is to bring our clients to our team. We work as a team, we serve the same purpose, and we reach your goals, together.”

Exercise #2: Running my business

Guide questions: What are the greatest challenges that you face in running your business? How do you overcome this?

Story: “Running a small business can be daunting at times. Having immediate access to my resources, though limited will not necessarily ensure fluid results. But we never let these limitations hinder our productivity. We tap into each other’s strength as a team, and we build results. Regardless if the process is difficult or not, together we build results. Being small is a challenge, but a company’s size should not dictate it’s potential. Our creativity as a team stems from this belief.”

Exercise #3: Day to day operation

Guide question: What is a normal day like in your office?

Story: “We try to start early and finish early. Our company is not your traditional company who struggle with long working hours. For our team, balance is key. We set priorities, and we meet them. Our team don’t overwork. We set daily goals, and we know how each of us plays an important role to accomplish these daily goals.”

Exercise #4: Chunk of your time

Guide question: Which do you prefer speed or quality?

Story: “As a small company, sometimes we need to work fast, but all the times we work with quality. And quality is at the top of our priority because this is how we can build trust with our customers. This is a lasting legacy that we think we can leave, long before our company has transitioned and we have grown old, we want to be remembered as a company who delivers quality on time.”

Victoria Dental shares how their services goes beyond dentistry

It’s not that difficult to do right? I would like to leave you three things to consider when embarking on a storytelling journey. There are a lot of considerations that you need to take, but these three remain.

Be Authentic

Never fake your thoughts. Let your thoughts translate in the most authentic way through your words. Be real and expect real results. It is better to fail in reality than succeed in mockery. It takes more effort to fake things than being real, authentic and vulnerable.

Never fake your thoughts. Let your thoughts translate in the most authentic way through your words. #storytelling #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

Find a hero

Human beings love heroes. We all need heroes to root for. Just make sure that you avoid making your product the hero. That would make your story too product-centric. That scares people away. Your hero can be something that you believe in, your company values, your challenges, and your aspirations. Start inspiring others.

Be conversational

Lastly, converse. The more conversational you get, the more people will listen to you. Do not preach. The world is already saturated with preachers. People need someone to talk to. Be that person. Personify your brand as someone who is willing to listen and who is willing to converse.

The more conversational you get, the more people will listen to you. #storytelling #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

Storytelling for SMEs has never been this easy.

I hope this simple cookbook of sorts will be able to provide you with enough insights on how you can start storytelling. The rewards are endless. Start telling stories and start building your brand in the most engaging way possible.

We highlighted why someone with an active lifestyle should choose chiropractic, instead of showing the textbook content of clinic and doctors.

Do you need help telling your brand story?

Create your first viral video now!

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

1

When was the last time you watched a viral video that makes actual sense? Wait. Yes, you read it right, I was asking when was the last time you watched a viral video that makes actual sense? Or do I need to repeat it for the third time?

What do you remember about the last viral video that you have watched? And how many times have you watched that same video?

This is every brand’s greatest dream – for their content to go viral. For all the right reasons, brand content creators are scratching their head figuring out how to make their content explode on the world wide web. Who would not want to get that glorious feeling of getting that zero to million traffic out of your brand content?

Time Magazine wrote that popularity on the Internet is mostly driven, not by a million one-to-one shares, but rather by a handful of one-to-one-million blasts. Like a Kardashian Instagram post. Popularity is still driven by broadcasts — by publishers, celebrities, and other broadcasters who can reach thousands or even millions of people at once.

But that is just one side of the story though.

A few months back in 2017, this BBC News interview received 25 million views. It was a typical Skype interview with BBC news. Until a toddler entered the room and began tugging his arm. There is no influencer involved, no brand push, just pure innocent luck.

So it is tough to predict the virality of the content. But we have the “signs of the times” at our disposal to guide us and help us understand how to craft video content that has a great chance of becoming viral.

But how do you really create viral video content that is shareable to the point of mania?

Bend the rules.

Don’t be afraid to come up with something strange but compelling. Something that people have not seen yet (just make sure there would be no animals getting harmed in the production of your video). Don’t be afraid to take an unusual approach to the creation of your video.

Try the perfect combination.

Cute + storytelling; dramatic + storytelling; funny + storytelling. Most viral video content has this combination. Remember the Van Damme Volvo video? How about the breakdancing gorilla? These are the best testament of combining storytelling with something enjoyable and resulting to viral video content.

Keep it simple, short but with high-quality.

The challenge is to make something epic under one minute. According to The New York Times, 19 percent of people will stop watching a video after only 10 seconds. And as it reaches the one minute mark the video has already lost 44 percent of total viewership. After the 2-minute benchmark, viewers are already packing their bags to watch the next video that comes their way.

Never spend time to blatantly pitch your product.

Some viral video content has brand exposure, but there is no such thing as a video pitching its product going viral. This is a no-no, you can actually “explore” ways to tell a story highlighting the benefit of your product. But never use the “in your face” approach of showing your product.

Piggyback riding influencers.

Virality is all about popularity. There is nothing more rewarding than having your video content tied up to an influencer with gazillions of followers. Heather Morgan’s process is definitely a must for anyone wanting to get in touch with influencers.

Are you ready for your first viral video?

There are no guarantees when it comes to the virality of your video content. If you can carefully study what worked and what didn’t work, you are in a fascinating spot to be the next internet sensation to go viral.

Source:

http://time.com/4672540/go-viral-on-internet/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/business/11drill.html?_r=2&

Crafting an Effective Call To Action

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

Effective call to action; most marketing tactics either lack this or intentionally skips this. As if crafting an effective call to action is only an option to lure your audience.

What does an effective call to action look like?

With urgency
Demanding
No-brainer

You always need to put yourself in the position where you are the one who is reading the call to action.

On top of a compelling copy, clarity should be your priority. The people you are talking to are busy people, always on the move. Who is more likely to not care about what you are doing.

Emphasize on the benefit.

Avoid using generic text such as “Find out more”, “Click here” or “Download”. Your call to action should be straight to the point. What will they get out of it? “Get the Free Whitepaper”, “Get Free Consultation”. This way, you catch their attention in a split second.

Keep it short.

No matter how compelling your copy is, if the user will have to finish a cup of coffee first before understanding your call to action, then forget about it. Anything more than six words in your call to action would be too much for the intended exposure of your content.

Expiration date.

One way to create a sense of urgency is for you to include an expiration date on your offer. The most effective way to emphasize on the urgency is by adding the word “now” or “today”. This creates a perception that people don’t have much time and they need to respond to your call to action.

Compelling visuals and buttons.

How you position the button and the color choice will determine if you indeed have an effective call to action. Make sure it is visible without the need to scroll and that the color is contrasting from everything else in your content.

Test what works

Finally, you need to test and optimise your click and conversion results. Test different variations of colors, size, style, copy, images etc. and compare the results. Use the most effective approach once you know.

The only goal you need to have in your mind is that your call to action should compel people. It should cause them to at least stop whatever they are thinking of and do whatever you want them to do. Specifically, click the button.

It takes hard work and persistence to see what works and what didn’t then practice from the best results that you are getting.

Email Marketing, Your Old Friend Who Won’t Go Away

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

Email Marketing, Your Old Friend Who Won’t Go Away

A lot has happened since email marketing was first used in 1978. Back when Gary Thuerk, billed as the “Father of spam” sent the first mass email to 400 recipients. This then results in $13M worth of sales for Digital Equipment Corp. But it was not until 20 years later that the word “spam” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

With the rise of inbound marketing and artificial intelligence to name a few, have email marketing started to become irrelevant?

Or is it still extremely relevant? Especially in producing the desired business results for every entrepreneur?

More than half of B2B marketers say that their most effective channel when it comes to revenue generation is still email.

When it comes to returns for every marketing activity, email marketing is still a force to reckon with. We send out at most two emails per week to our mailing list, not “sales email” but value-added emails. And by doing so, we stay connected to our target audience and take a better position regarding the conversation.

86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.

Social networks are places we go to have fun and be social. That is the advantage of email over social networks in a business perspective.

Email, being both a personal and business space. Business professionals prefer to hear and build their business through email. There is something about reading a business proposition on email compared to reading it from a blog post or a social content. The impact is more personal and the connection to do business is easily established.

Nearly 105 billion emails are sent each day; this number is expected to reach 246 billion before 2020.

The amount of emails being sent each day is insurmountable. It is probably the busiest digital marketing channel. And with the easy access to mobile, it makes sense to design email for mobile. That speaks a lot about the relevance of this “oldest” marketing channel.

Aside from these, email marketing is cost-effective, personal & it reaches almost everybody. Sending email is free, it connects to your audience on a personal level. Delivering the value that is meant for them and there is no telling where your email would reach after hitting the submit button.

Avoid template emails.

Never, ever send template emails. Write specifically as if you are talking to the recipient, make them feel that they are the object of your communication. It does not take long to write what is in your head. Whatever you want to communicate to every specific recipient. Anything that is templated sounds robotic, the way a template email is written gives it away. The person reading that email can easily determine that there are thousands of others who received that email aside from them.

With it’s growing popularity (still), email marketing is definitely here to stay.

I hope by now that you are already convinced that email is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there.

For most marketers or business owners though, email marketing is still a stumbling block. Instead of a solid foundation to which you can build and grow your business.

Here’s a simple list that would help guide you in running your email marketing.

Start with a good email marketing plan.
Incentivise your sign up form. Make sure people have something to download after signing up to your website.
Research on subject lines that work and that failed
Be firm in what you want to write. Make it concise, relevant and easy to understand.
Learn to automate your emails. You would not want to log in 15 times a day, just because you need to send something.

Tap into the potential of your email marketing activity.

So it is quite safe to say that email marketing is like your old friend who won’t go away. It’s just not easy to ignore it. Revisit your email marketing strategy now and build your audience base, your brand through a consistent value-centric approach.

How to Make Your Social Media Advertising Work

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

How to Make Your Social Media Advertising Work

Social media advertising is taking over tv advertising in terms of spending. In the US alone, according to eMarketer, digital ad spending overtook tv ad spending by almost $10 billion in 2017. It is expected to reach $90+ billion and $105 billion in the next two years while tv ad spend will plateau at its $70+ billion ad spend since 2016.

Facebook is the biggest player in digital advertising. And it is a clear indication that social media advertising is the king of this domain. Taking almost 36 percent ($12 billion) of total display advertising in the US, while Twitter and Snapchat take in $545 million and $367 million respectively. It is quite clear why any entrepreneur in their right mind should start investing in social media advertising.

Image: eMarketer

But the nerve-wracking question is, how do you make your social media advertising work?

With so many challenges ahead of you, it would be difficult to develop a strategy that works.

If you are not sure what social media ad is – it is a paid content on your social media network. Each social network provides different ways of setting up your social media ad. And this would require you to spend a wide range of budget considerations.

Here are a few practical tips that you can consider when you start rolling out your social media advertising:

Understand your audience

What is your audience doing? Where are they? Any successful social media advertising starts with the proper understanding of what type of content your audience will respond to. Look at the bigger spectrum of what is happening online, in your competitor’s space. What have they been up to and how do their audience respond? Take note and use these insights to plan a campaign that would get your audience’s attention.

Use your free content to test for your advertising

If you want to start small, audit the content that you are creating right now. Pay attention to what works best in your space. Does your audience react more to videos of you, or videos without you? Are they sharing your visuals more than the links that you share? Based on this information, you would know better where to shift your focus to your paid content.

Always A/B test your ads

Testing your social media advertising is a must, it’s not even an option. You need to run a series of tests to see how the target audience behaves. And base on that test, fine tune your campaign and shift your ad spend to that with the most potential ROI.

Design for mobile

There are over 5 billion mobile users in the world to date. If you are not designing a mobile-ready social media ad content, then you would miss the huge opportunity of tapping into the majority of your target audience.

Use subtle branding

Never overdo your branding, the more subtle your branding is, the more people will pay attention to your paid social content. No matter how beautiful, hip or cool looking your logo is, no one clicks a social ad content because of the logo.

Use high-quality imagery

High-quality imagery works best in paid social content, make sure you have relevant visuals. You can either use decent stock photos or hire a photographer if you have an extra budget. Just make sure that your imagery sticks and speaks loud about your social ad content.

Minimal copy on your ads

Most advertisers miss the mark when they try to use tons of words on their paid social ad content. The more you require the audience to read with those overly dramatic texts, the more the chances of them not noticing you.

Analyze trends and feedback

All of your efforts boil down to this. What was the impact? What do you need to change? How did the target market behave? Based on these parameters, it would be easier for you to make things work, for the better.

It takes two to have a successful social media advertising, listen to what your target audience has to say. Don’t always go on a feeding frenzy, find out if your audience is enjoying and consuming your content. Does it fit their lifestyle? Their life cycle?

The key to a successful social media advertising is to be smart. Plan ahead and execute your strategy based on that plan.

Personalized Content as a Key Marketing Strategy

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

Personalized Content as a Key Marketing Strategy

Personalized content caters to more than half of online users, and it has no signs of slowing down. But are you keeping up as digital marketing matures to a whole new level? Creating content that is tailored to what your consumer needs and where they are on the buying process is key to having a successful content strategy.

Here’s a good advice, for every piece of content that you will create, ask these questions: how will this help your customers solve their challenges. Is the solution you are providing fit for their every need? And how will they get access to your solution?

Personalisation is the name of the game, but should you write thousands of pieces for thousands of users? Of course not, tap into the huge potential of automated tools. Get the result that you want and deliver the right value based on that result.

Personalised content performs better than non-personalised content. Those who are brave enough to put in the extra effort to deliver personalized content is reaping better returns on their marketing investment.

Why?

Personalised content can help you capture the attention of your user.
Imagine talking to your friend and telling him tons of things that he could not even relate to. Like biochemical reactions of ozone in plants. They do not give a crap about that. But if you will talk about something that is personal or relevant to the person you are talking to, then you are up for an interesting conversation.

Personalised content brings the solution right in front of your customers as they experience their problem.
Everyone is asking for a solution to their problems. Especially in the digital space, a lot of people tend to Google every bit of question that would arise from the absurd to the mundane conversation. With personalized content, you are bound to present your brand’s value right where it hits hard the most – when customers are looking for answers.

Personalised content addresses the consumers’ demand for more content from brands.
With content consumption reaching stratospheric level of insanity, there is still a huge demand for more content. Personalised content addresses just that, as the demand grows, so does the need to have relevant content.

Personalised content results in unique customer experiences.
Every customer is a unique customer. That is why they deserve a unique experience, be it in the awareness stage or the acquisition stage. Personalised content helps content creators provide unique customer experience. And customers who benefit from these unique experience are most likely to stay loyal to your brand.

This 2018, it is in our best interest to create personalized and user-centric content.

Implementing and integrating personalization into your inbound marketing strategy is not an easy task, but there are tons of automated marketing platforms out there which can help you streamline your personalized content strategy.

How ready are you for AI-powered content marketing?

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

How ready are you for AI-powered content marketing?

AI-powered content marketing is making the rounds of almost every content that you see online nowadays. What was once a concept that you see in Hollywood movies is now becoming a norm. A means to reach many people, a means to grow your business. Are we witnessing a complete take over from artificial intelligence?

By 2018, Gartner predicts, 20% of all business content will be authored by machines. Rocco, an AI-powered content marketing tool can help suggest fresh social media content that your followers can engage with.

Skynet, anyone?

Ok before we all freak out and say “woe is me, a mortal blogger” I think it’s in our best interest to start embracing this technology, start reading and learning.

This means that the marketing game will change and it’s going to be fun, productive and challenging.

As business owners, or digital marketers. What can we start considering at this stage regarding an AI-powered content marketing?

AI-powered content marketing can help you serve up more relevant content and ultimately a better user experience for your users.
It is impacting every piece of marketing technology including email marketing, social media, content, and engagement.
Personalised content delivered out of the bat because of AI-powered content marketing.
Prediction in marketing can tell content marketers what a reader would want to read or would click on next. Wait, this is the part where I go to my kitchen and drink a glass of water. This is just beyond me.

Now to bring us all back to planet earth. Here is a fair warning; we also need to consider that though AI-powered marketing may ease the execution of content creation or marketers – it may not always create an ideal experience for users. CMI shared in one of their blog posts that we need to be careful not to be too aggressive with personalization – all your marketing messages and content experiences should seem natural to users.

Mark Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures adds “Content creation that follows the inbound methodology really requires a human touch, which is one area in which AI use could prove challenging. Automated direct messaging and LinkedIn InMail campaigns should still feature some level of personalization to be effective. So in these cases, AI should be handled with care. Copy automation is not a fully functioning capability for most marketers currently, but in the future, this could also impact the quality of content and the voice of a brand.”

So where and when do we start? The internet serves as the tree of knowledge in our modern world; there is no business question that you can’t find the answer when you search for it. There are tons of books about AI-powered marketing in the bookstores nearest to you. I guess it’s a matter of being motivated to break out of the mold and decide to take drastic and brave steps to explore unfamiliar territories.

9 Marketing Video Mistakes that would Make You Scratch your Head

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

9 Marketing Video Mistakes that would Make You Scratch your Head

Avoiding the usual marketing video mistakes in your content strategy is not an easy feat. A marketing video yields incredible results, but it takes a lot of planning and thought-organizing. There are tons of options out there when it comes to what tools you can use, but if you are not careful enough you might use up a huge amount of time and effort and end up doing obvious marketing video mistakes.

It’s not a secret that by 2019 80% of all web traffic will be video, so what does that mean for your business?

Knowing what to avoid will most likely help you get off to a good start.

In this blog post we are rounding up the most obvious marketing video mistakes that entrepreneurs do when it comes to video marketing.

1. Not willing to invest

Anything that you will be doing to promote your brand would require a certain amount of investment – whether it is your time doing research, creating content or even just doing an elevator pitch, it all requires some form of investment. What are your options for producing your video content? If you are not really that video savvy, find a friend who can do it for you in exchange for a pair of movie tickets or find someone whom you can collaborate with. Youtube has tons of tutorials that can help you start from something if you need professional help our team will be willing to help you out.

2. Hard selling

No one wants to stare at a computer monitor, a tablet or a smartphone watching a bow-tied, pomade covered hair with expensive suits “sell” them a product. It’s a waste of energy to even produce a video that would just hard sell to the audience, the internet owes it to the pause button that videos like this are manageable.

3. Lack of clear message

What do you really want to say? Halfway through your video are you still mumbling about things that your audience don’t even care about? For our production workflow, we usually start with a simple spreadsheet with a list of topic or story ideas, then we do our research and build our own insights based on those research. When the camera starts rolling, make sure you got your act together.

4. No call to action

The deadliest of all digital marketing mistakes. Whatever the marketing activity is, having no CTA is a brand suicide. You need to always lead the audience to do something after watching your videos. Be it a link to a blog article that would solidify the thought and bring your target customer closer to the right side of their buyer’s journey. You need to have a CTA

5. Not optimizing your videos

When you categorize your videos, make sure that you use relevant keywords, titles, tags, and description. Google and Youtube both search the metadata that goes with every video uploaded on the web. Never skip this process.

6. Boring videos

Whatever your topic is, there is no excuse for boring videos. It should be considered a crime, wasting time on the internet. Your videos should have a purpose, and it needs to be engaging. Even if your topic is a bucket of white paint, there is not much about it when you think of it – but find a way to not make your videos boring, if you need to dip your camera on the bucket of paint, do so. That would be an excellence POV shot.

7. Not having a strategy in place

Find out why you are doing videos in the first place, don’t waste your and our time. Plan ahead, map your thought process and align it with specific goals.

8. Not tracking your videos

Where does your video go? Are people even watching it, make sure you track the results. Analytics provides objective data that you can use to improve your videos. Make use of these tools and improve your marketing video reach.

9. You are the center of the universe

One of the most obvious of the marketing video mistakes that content creators do is making themselves the center of attention. Avoid talking about yourself for a full 3 minutes, it’s not really helping anyone, not you, not me, not anyone. These videos should be about addressing a problem that your target customers might encounter, it should not be about grandstanding.

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or you are just starting to figure out the ins and outs of your business, you definitely need to take a portion of the web traffic we mentioned earlier by wrapping your head around the first, proper, informative, engaging and entertaining video that you have to produce.

Hopefully, you will begin to avoid these mistakes and be a better storyteller to help you avoid doing these marketing video mistakes.

What are you waiting for, gear up and wear your film director’s hat and let the camera start to roll. Most of all, if you have done videos already, make sure to share it to us and we will be more than glad to provide you a constructive feedback.

Which social media network should you choose?

Blogs

Robert Cristobal

-

0

Which social media network should you choose?

The thin line that separates offline and virtual life gets thinner by the hour and the conversation that has been going on covering this topic ranges from the mundane to the extreme. And due to the varying impact that social networks have on people’s lives on a daily basis, it is safe to say that social media is here to stay.

According to Statistica; 71 percent of internet users were social media users, and this figure is expected to grow.

Broadbandsearch has Facebook as the top contender for the most widely used social media platform. Having attracted a huge chunk from the 2 Billion internet users monthly. Gaining the highest number of user accounts and user engagement; Facebook remains a social network force to reckon with. Youtube comes in close second with 1.9 billion monthly users. Interestingly enough, Twitter is at the 11th spot with less than 400 million.

For Statistica though, Pinterest being the most recent newcomer was the fastest independently launched site gaining up to 10 million monthly users. Instagram logged 700 million monthly users while Tumblr covers more than half of it as 368 million monthly users. Twitter is playing catch up with 328 million monthly users. LinkedIn being the oldest in the pack is at 100+ million monthly users.

What do these numbers mean to you as an entrepreneur?

So what if Facebook has dominated the social media space, what’s the catch? “What’s in it for me?”, says the skeptical entrepreneur.

It means a lot – that is if you want to grow your presence, connection, and prospects. If you are an entrepreneur with a brand that you believe will change the world in its own little way, then most likely you are somewhere right now at this very moment. You can be either in a newspaper directory, an online forum, a community website, on printed flyers. You are practically anywhere, and you should be. But if you are not on social media, you are missing a lot.

It’s a matter of what you want to say and when you want to say it to who you want to say it to.

That’s the basic discipline in running a successful social media strategy. It’s high time to up the game in your social media presence and start writing, reading, sharing, engaging. My goodness! Just start anything at all.

If you are based in Singapore, we conduct coaching and workshops for SMEs, and we encourage you to tap into this opportunity if not similar opportunities to get you started in the social media game.

Do you have anything specific in mind this year? Post your comment below. We want to hear from you.

Statistica

BroadbandSearch