If so, you should know that a newly proposed Senate bill (the RESTRICT Act) could ban TikTok for all U.S. users. 

Why is that?

Some American lawmakers believe that TikTok contains malicious spyware that leaks personal data from U.S. users to the Chinese government. 

There have also been claims of China using TikTok’s algorithm to spread inappropriate content & misinformation to its users. 

While the security concerns have been around for a while, the heat really began to rise in December of 2022 when it was uncovered that employees from parent company ByteDance were using TikTok user data to track two U.S. journalists. 

The Chinese company promptly fired the employees, but the damage was already done – as the talks of the U.S. government banning the platform began soon after. 

TikTok is an advertising behemoth, with its ad revenue still projected to surpass $6 billion this year. As such, many marketers rely on the video-sharing platform to promote their products & services to Gen Zers. 

If the U.S. ban does go forward, marketers will have to shift their efforts to other social media platforms. 

Stay tuned to learn more about the potential TikTok ban and what it could mean for your digital marketing campaign. 

Why Is There Talk of Banning TikTok?

FBI Director Chris Wray voiced his concern over the cybersecurity threats posed by TikTok in November of 2022. 

He mentioned the possibility that the Chinese government could use TikTok to control the data collection of millions of users or possibly control the recommendation algorithm – which they could use for ‘influence operations’. 

Not only that, but he also pointed out that Beijing could use the social media app to control software on millions of personal devices, granting the ability to ‘technically compromise’ them. 

These are real concerns that the federal government has for America’s national security, which is why they’re now drafting legislation that could ban the use of TikTok. 

Besides the FBI, Indiana’s Attorney General Todd Rokita has filed legal action against the platform for promoting inappropriate content to minors and for misleading customers into believing their data was protected from China. 

The United States already has an active ban on TikTok for all government-issued devices and at some universities. Beyond that, some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have asked Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores. 

It’s clear that the tensions surrounding the platform have been building for quite some time, which led to the proposal of the RESTRICT Act and the DATA Act.

What’s the RESTRICT Act?

RESTRICT stands for Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information & Communications Technology. 

It’s a bill that aims to reduce the risk of foreign technology by giving the government the power to identify & respond to emerging threats. 

It’s crucial to note that the bill doesn’t mention TikTok outright. 

Instead, the bill includes all foreign services that contain personal data from more than 1 million U.S. citizens. 

That means TikTok would definitely apply, as would apps & services from other adversarial countries, including China, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela. 

If the bill goes through, the Secretary of Commerce is responsible for creating processes to find and stop foreign technology products that pose a risk to national security. 

The Act would deliver a devastating blow to TikTok’s US operations, either outright banning the platform or cutting ties with American companies. 

ByteDance has continued to deny storing US data in China, going so far as to spend $1.5 billion on Project Texas, which is the company’s attempt to rebuild TikTok on U.S. servers. To do so, they’re partnering with software company Oracle to host U.S. user data, which should alleviate concerns about sharing data with the Chinese government. 

What’s the DATA Act?

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has devised another measure for banning TikTok, the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act or DATA for short. 

How does it differ from the RESTRICT Act?

Instead of leaving things up to the Secretary of Commerce, the Biden administration would be in charge of sanctioning or banning TikTok if it’s determined that the platform shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government. 

The RESTRICT Act is a bit different in that it establishes systems to penalize & ban all foreign technologies that pose security threats, whereas the DATA Act focuses entirely on TikTok.

How Will Banning TikTok Affect Marketing Strategies?

If you rely on TikTok for advertising, a ban would mean having to rethink your strategy by considering other social media platforms. 

Even if you don’t advertise through TikTok, a ban means the competition on other platforms will suddenly become very fierce. 

Everyone that leaves TikTok will migrate to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, for instance. 

The good news is that many other social media sites have adopted the features that made TikTok so popular, especially for Gen Zers. 

So if you’ve been shooting short-form videos to market your products & services, you can migrate your content to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and SnapChat’s Spotlight tab. These platforms also thrive on quick videos that are 90 seconds or less, and you can add filters, special effects, and music – just like TikTok. 

YouTube (2.5 billion) and Instagram (2 billion) actually have more users than TikTok (1.1 billion), so it’ll benefit your brand to have a presence there as well – even if the TikTok ban doesn’t go through. 

Companies are doing more with less 

A majority of marketing teams aren’t able to increase their budget for this year, but they have more robust year-over-year growth goals than 2022. 

In other words, companies are trying to do more with less, which is why the TikTok ban couldn’t come at a worse time for some. 

Not only that, but with marketing budgets as scarce as they are, marketers aren’t eager to invest in creating content for TikTok due to the looming ban. 

After all, it would be a shame to waste precious marketing resources on creating TikTok videos only for the platform to disappear from app stores in the United States. 

The competition on other social media platforms will see a massive spike if the ban goes through, which will put an even tighter strain on marketing teams. Not only will they have to do more with less, but they’ll have to outdo more competitors than ever before. 

If you have an active Gen Z audience, it’s worth your while to start branching out to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and SnapChat’s Spotlight tab just in case things go south for TikTok. That way, you’ll already have a contingency plan, as your content will be on several different platforms. 

Rethinking your TikTok marketing strategy 

Many digital marketers use TikTok ads at every stage of their sales funnel, not just the bottom. 

While it’s common to think most TikTok ads are looking for transactional intent, that’s not always the case. 

Plenty of brands use TikTok videos to inform & educate their audience to generate leads and build brand awareness. 

That means if the platform does get banned, you’ll need to rethink your strategy for each stage of the sales funnel – and that usually means creating content for different platforms. 

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube each have unique uses for your content strategy. By that, we mean that what works on Facebook won’t necessarily work on Instagram, which means you need to create specific types of content for each platform. 

You can use short videos on Instagram Reels to promote your products & services. You can also use longer-form videos to satisfy informational & educational queries on YouTube to generate leads. After that, a well-optimized Facebook Ads campaign can help you boost conversions for more revenue. 

Whatever approach you choose to take, it’s imperative to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each social media platform. For instance, releasing videos on Facebook probably won’t yield as many views if you upload them to Instagram or YouTube instead. 

Lastly, should the TikTok ban become a reality, you’ll want to remove the TikTok tracking pixel from your website. 

Why is that?

It’s because the tracking pixel is a third-party code that could potentially slow down your website. So if TikTok isn’t around anymore, needlessly keeping the tracking pixel will only hurt your loading times, so it’s best to get rid of it. 

Final Thoughts: The Potential TikTok Ban 

TikTok has been at the center of a lot of controversies lately, and there are now two formal bills proposing its ban inside the United States. 

This has caused growing anxiety among marketers that rely on TikTok for advertising, as the ban would force them to rethink their digital marketing strategy. 

Platforms like Instagram Reels & YouTube Shorts are TikTok substitutes, but a ban will mean the competition will grow in a big way. 

Do you want to ensure that your business stays profitable if TikTok should get banned?

Then you need to check out our managed SEO & managed content services at The HOTH. Our team of digital marketing experts is well-prepared for whatever will come, so you’ll be in great hands with us.      

The post How Would a TikTok Ban Affect American Marketers? appeared first on The HOTH.

It’s easy to see why that is, as 93% of brands report acquiring new customers due to the videos they post on social media platforms. 

Speaking of platforms that feature video content, there are two that undoubtedly lead the fray – TikTok & YouTube. Both boast insane numbers for their monthly users (YouTube is over 2 billion, which accounts for roughly ½ the internet, and TikTok is now at 1 billion). 

As you can imagine, both video-sharing platforms are marketing goldmines for businesses of all sizes. 

Yet, there are some glaring differences, so how do you know which is best for your business? 

It will come down to your target audience, their demographics, and the type of content they like to consume. 

Beyond that, you also need to consider ad costs, ad formats, and their algorithms (to enhance the visibility of your content). That’s why we’ve put together this ultimate comparison pitting TikTok vs. YouTube to help you determine the best platform for you, so read on to learn more. 

Let’s get started!

An Overview of TikTok 

Starting in 2016 as the brainchild of Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, TikTok would drastically rise in popularity after acquiring/merging with Musical.ly (which began in 2014) – a popular lip-sync app. 

Musical.ly worked by allowing content creators to record short-form videos of themselves lip-syncing to popular songs and movies. It proved to be a phenomenon amongst gen Z’ers, which led ByteDance to acquire the company and merge it into TikTok in 2017. 

While TikTok continued to primarily feature short-form lip-syncing videos at first, it has since expanded its format. 

While still focusing on short-form videos, they bumped things up from Musical.ly’s 15-second limit to a 10-minute cap on content. Yet, a quarter of the highest-performing videos on TikTok range from 24 – 31 seconds in length, which is very short. 

Video topics have also matured over time, with TikTok expanding on short musical videos to include:

• Comedy
• Dance 
• Fashion
• Food 
• Education
• Business
• Vlogging 
• Entertainment 
• More 

In short, TikTok creators are only limited by their own creativity. Due to this versatility, using TikTok for video marketing has exploded recently. 

Marketers’ attention led ByteDance to create TikTok for Business in 2020, a platform exclusively for businesses creating videos on TikTok. It contains a wide range of resources for marketers, including case studies, analytics, and the ability to connect with influencers. 

Another reason content creators love to use TikTok is how simple it is to create videos. All you need is a smartphone that can record video, and the app can handle the rest. 

TikTok allows you to add background music, stickers, filters, and more with its editor. Theoretically, you could create a business TikTok video by yourself only using your smartphone, and it could wind up getting millions of views. 

TikTok’s rapid growth: is it now the king of all video apps?

It’s no secret that TikTok has seen explosive growth since acquiring Musical.ly in 2017. 

In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok broke records by becoming the most-downloaded app of all time in a single quarter, with over 200 million installs spanning both Android and IOS. 

TikTok’s viewer algorithm has also proven to be highly addictive, with users spending an average of 858 minutes on the app each day. That’s because TikTok is highly immersive, with a never-ending scroll of continuous content that makes it hard to stop, but it can also increase the chances of users discovering and consuming your content.

While YouTube remains the king of online video, TikTok is riding hot on its coattails, with no signs of slowing down in the near future. In fact, experts have forecasted that TikTok will exceed YouTube by 2024, which is only a mere two years away. 

It’s clear that the TikTok app is a true behemoth with an ever-expanding user base, user-friendly video editor, and addicting content loop – but is it the right choice for your business? Let’s take a peek at TikTok’s key demographics to learn more. 

TikTok’s user demographic breakdown

Like Musical.ly before it, TikTok’s primary user base consists of gen Z’ers, with 41% being between the ages of 16 to 24 years old. 

Why is the app such a sensation amongst younger people?

There are a few reasons why, with the first being how easy it is to create content for the platform. A 16-year-old can easily record themselves with their smartphone and use TikTok’s editor to add music, filters, and other fun effects. 

Not only that, but thanks to TikTok’s giant user base, picking up millions of video views on a 30-second clip is a real possibility. 

For instance, if a younger person has a talent, it’s quite easy to share it with the world via TikTok. 

Next, TikTok’s algorithm is designed to be as addicting as possible, especially for younger people who already have shorter attention spans. After opening the app, they’re treated to a never-ending scroll of raw, authentic, and engaging short-form videos, which is very appealing to gen Z. 

For this reason, TikTok should be on your radar if you’re marketing your products/services to a younger crowd. 

Yet, that doesn’t mean that young adults and older people are completely absent from the platform. While a majority of users are younger, 20.3% of TikTok users are over 40, and they also spend hours on the platform each day. 

What do users look for on TikTok?

As far as the types of content that perform the best on TikTok, the shorter (and funnier) it is, the better. 

Here’s a rundown of the most popular video types on TikTok:

• Entertainment. Many users turn to TikTok to elevate their mood and escape reality, which is why entertaining videos reign supreme. As such, funny or entertaining skits about your products/services are ideal. 
• Dance. Short, viral dance videos are TikTok’s bread and butter, and they continue to rack up millions of views. Creating a unique dance for your business is a great way to attract attention on the platform. 
• Beauty/skincare. If you sell cosmetics, TikTok will be a goldmine for you. There are tons of beauty influencers on the platform, and they rake in millions of views on the regular. 
• Life hacks. People love learning fun shortcuts and new ways to do things, which is why the life hack hashtag has over 50.9 billion views. If you can include a life hack or market your product as a life hack, TikTok is the perfect place to make and release a video about it. 

As you can see, short, fun videos work best on TikTok. It’s not the type of platform where you’d want to release an in-depth training video or guided tutorial, but it’s perfect for life hacks, dances, and quick skits. 

An Overview of YouTube 

YouTube began in 2005 and quickly grew into a worldwide sensation, which led Google to purchase the platform in 2006, only a year after its launch. 

The creation of YouTube marked a significant turning point in history. For the first time ever, anyone could record and upload video content that could potentially get seen by millions of viewers worldwide. 

It didn’t take long for marketers to take notice, as businesses have been making promotional YouTube videos and ads for many years now. 

YouTube ranks as the second most-visited website on the internet, only behind its parent company, Google. It’s also the second-largest search engine, playing second fiddle to Google again. 

The platform has proven to have serious lasting power, as it still remains the most widely-used video platform on the internet. That’s in large part due to YouTube’s:

• Ease of use and accessibility 
• A wide variety of content 
• Massive user base 
• Universal appeal (there’s something for everyone) 

YouTube is also no stranger to making changes to keep up with its competitors. Examples include introducing live streaming to rival Twitch and YouTube Shorts to mimic the success of TikTok. 

There’s also YouTube TV, which is an alternative to cable television, and YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red), which mirrors streaming services like Netflix. 

YouTube’s appeal to businesses 

Nearly every major company has a YouTube channel due to how easy the platform is to use and how many active users it has. 

No matter what your business does, there’ll be an audience for it on YouTube. Every niche is represented on the platform, from health and wellness to home renovations. 

That’s great news for businesses of all sizes, as you can reach your target audience without having to spend a ton of money on a video production team and distribution. 

Instead, you can use your webcam or smartphone to record commercials, promotional videos, training videos, and whatever else you need for your company and then upload them to YouTube in a few minutes. 

With some clever SEO tactics (YouTube SEO is a very real thing), you can increase your chances of going viral and generating loads of new customers. 

Unlike TikTok, YouTube places a lot more emphasis on long-form video content. By default, the video length cap is 15 minutes for unverified accounts. 

While it’s certainly possible to upload shorter clips (especially with the advent of YouTube Shorts), verified accounts are able to upload videos that are much longer in length and can even be up to 12 hours long. 

This extra length provides some wiggle room for companies that need to upload longer videos, such as training videos or virtual tours of the company. You can also create longer and more in-depth tutorials and guides for your audience, which can help you acquire new customers and leads.

Important YouTube stats 

While TikTok’s popularity is undoubtedly on the rise (and may surpass YouTube eventually), that’s not to imply that YouTube is doing anything wrong – or that they won’t be around in the near future. 

In fact, the statistics show that they’re doing everything right, and they’re still growing at a tremendous rate. Since 2019, the number of channels with more than one billion views has increased by five times, so the platform is definitely still relevant. 

YouTube Shorts is also giving TikTok a run for its money, especially in countries like India. As of 2021, the short-form video app boasted 15 billion daily views worldwide. 

As such, YouTube remains an excellent choice for long-form and short-form videos. The choice to go with TikTok tends to come down to demographics in most cases. Speaking of that, let’s take a look at YouTube’s primary age groups. 

YouTube’s demographics

While it’s been stated that TikTok appeals to the younger generation, the comparison of TikTok vs. YouTube is a bit more complex than young vs. old. 

It’s not that YouTube appeals directly to an older audience, just that it has a broader appeal that encompasses more age groups. Plenty of young people still use YouTube, with the platform appealing to 85% of teens. 

More adults watch YouTube than TikTok, with 81% of adults active on YouTube compared to TikTok’s 21%. 

The older generations also prefer Google’s video platform, with 83% of adults aged 50 to 64 report using it. Beyond that, 49% of adults over the age of 64 also use YouTube. 

While it is true that YouTube reigns supreme for older generations, they still hold clout with younger people, too. If your products and services are aimed at teens, YouTube is a great choice. 

What do users look for on YouTube?

Unlike TikTok, YouTube users flock to the platform to watch longer, more in-depth videos. Quick skits and dances are also popular but to a far less degree. 

For the most part, popular videos on YouTube tend to be more informative and educational in nature. Users also turn to YouTube to learn more about new products and services – with 90% reporting having discovered new brands and products from YouTube videos. 

Here are the types of videos that get the most attention on YouTube:

How-to’s (guided tutorials)

If you’ve ever found yourself stumped on how to perform a task, you’ve likely turned to YouTube to learn something new. Tutorials are insanely popular, and they should account for a significant chunk of your YouTube marketing strategy. 

Educational videos

Besides tutorials, educational videos are also prevalent on YouTube. They could be anything from teaching arithmetic to documenting historical events and more. A great lead generation tactic is to create educational YouTube videos related to your niche. 

Music videos

More often than not, the type of content that generates billions of views on YouTube is music videos. These include official music videos from top studio artists, as well as breakout indie hits. 

Comedy

Just like TikTok, people turn to YouTube to unwind after a long day of work. Stand-up comedy, sketches, and silly cat videos are staples of this genre, so take note of that fact for your future content schedule. 

As you can see, longer, more professional videos are more popular on YouTube than they are on TikTok. 

TikTok vs. YouTube: Ad Formats and Costs 

Do you plan on running ads on TikTok and YouTube instead of or in addition to creating regular content?

If so, check out this breakdown of ad formats and costs from both platforms. 

YouTube Ad Formats 

To run ads on YouTube, you’ll need to choose from one of the following formats:

• Discover ads. These show up on YouTube’s homepage. 
• TrueView (skippable) ads. These are the ads that play before videos (that you can skip after five seconds). 
• Non-skippable ads. These ads play at the beginning, middle, or end of a video – and don’t contain the option to skip. 
• Bumper ads. These are quick, 6-second ads that play before a video. 
• Overlay ads. These are banner ads that show up at the bottom of the page. 

As you can see, you have a lot of options and flexibility when choosing ads to display on YouTube. 

TikTok Ad Formats 

TikTok offers four ways to advertise on its platform:

• TopView. These ads appear at the top of the app once a user opens it. 
• In-feed ads. As the name implies, these ads show up in the middle of a user’s feed. 
• Branded hashtag. A specific hashtag that companies promote creators to make content for. 
• Brand takeovers. This type combines all the ad types above into one. 

While there are fewer options than YouTube, TikTok still has a wide variety of ad formats you can use. 

YouTube Ad Costs

YouTube ads operate on a cost-per-view basis – which means you won’t get charged a dime if nobody views your ad. 

Rates tend to be reasonable, as they range from $0.10 to $0.30 per view. You can also set up an advertising budget that you input into YouTube, and it will cut you off once you reach it, which is a handy way to ensure you don’t overspend. 

TikTok Ad Costs 

TikTok has a different model than cost-per-click, known as cost-per-mile. 

What qualifies as a mile?

One thousand views count as a mile on TikTok, and it starts at $10, which is pretty reasonable. 

TikTok vs. YouTube: The Judge’s Scorecards 

By now, we’ve gone over the primary features, demographics, and ad formats of YouTube and TikTok.

Before we deliver the verdict, it’s crucial to note that the platform you choose should vary based on your target audience and type of content. 

If you’re targeting gen Z’ers with cosmetic products, TikTok is undoubtedly the way to go. The same is true if you target a younger demographic and create shorter, more entertaining videos. 

For businesses targeting adults and other companies, YouTube is the best video marketing platform for your needs. You can create in-depth educational videos, tutorials, and tours of your company. 

Who wins the matchup?

To us, YouTube is still the king of all video apps. It simply has it all; an extensive user base, an easy-to-use interface, longer-form content, and YouTube appeals to all ages. 

Do you need to incorporate a winning video marketing strategy at your company?

Then don’t hesitate to check out our spokesperson video service.  

The post TikTok vs. YouTube – Choose Your Marketing Fighter appeared first on The HOTH.

We’re here to tell you that this app, which is the fastest-growing in the world with 656 million downloads in 2021, is not just for sharing silly dance videos.

Here’s some context: social media giants Instagram and Facebook only had an average of 480 million downloads last year. 

TikTok may not be as large as Facebook (yet) but it’s catching on faster than any other app on the market. 

Why is it growing so quickly?

People love using it. In 2020, 88% of TikTok reviews were positive. It’s possible some users are migrating away from other apps that make them feel anxious or depressed to others that bring them joy. 

The other reason for TikTok’s success is its incredible algorithm that personalizes the experience for every single user. 

If you’ve never thought about using TikTok ads for your digital marketing strategy, now’s the time to consider it. It’s easy to use, affordable, and effective.

Keep reading the rest of this blog to learn more about the app and how you can use it to grow your business!

TikTok 101

Before diving into the specifics of marketing with TikTok, let’s cover the basics.

This Chinese app was first launched in 2018 by the company ByteDance. Known as Douyin in China, it was developed as a video-based app where users can share content like dances, pranks, or jokes.

Most videos are only a few seconds long but users can upload content that is up to 10 minutes in length. 

Shorter content will obviously perform better and TikTok experts recommend shooting for only 7 seconds if you want to hit the algorithm’s sweet spot. 

TikTok operates with hashtags like other apps and specific videos will trend, pushing others to replicate that content in their own unique way. Check out some of the trending videos here.

Like Snapchat or Instagram, TikTok also features sophisticated filters and effects. Users can also search through thousands of original sounds (recorded by users) to use in their videos. 

Many businesses or TikTok influencers will post videos about specific products or services. They allow a user to see how something works and TikTok’s algorithm ensures it reaches someone with that interest. 

The cosmetics industry has been killing it on TikTok but there are also videos on a variety of products.

TikTok gives your business the opportunity to promote its products or services organically, but there is also an ads manager that is similar to the one on Facebook. 

How Do TikTok Ads Work?

Once you’ve created a TikTok account for your business, it’s time to set up TikTok For Business. 

As stated above, the program works similarly to the Facebook Ads Manager. You select a campaign objective (Traffic, Conversions, or App Install) and set a budget.

Marketers are able to create up to 999 ad groups per campaign. 

TikTok also offers multiple placements: 

• TikTok video ads
• On the News Feed apps 
• Pangle Placement 
• Automatic Placement

TikTok operates other apps (BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, NewsRepublic, and Babe) where you can place your ads on the News Feed. 

A Pangle Placement allows you to extend audiences through TikTok’s audience network. 

And an Automatic Placement gives TikTok the power to optimize your ad delivery. 

The TikTok For Business platform allows you to select from three types of bidding: a cap on bidding, costs, or focusing on getting the lowest cost per event. You can even choose whether to separate your ad delivery equally or to go through as fast as possible. 

Another great option is to boost existing content, a quick and easy decision that is also popular on Facebook. 

Who Is TikTok’s Primary Audience?

No social media advertising campaign will be effective unless the marketer running it understands the primary audience on that app. 

If you didn’t know, social media apps have different audiences.

Globally, 35% of TikTok users are between the ages of 30 and 39. The second-largest audience segment of 28% is made up of users between the ages of 19 and 29. 

Women are the majority of users. They make up nearly 60% of the audience. 

While this app is the most popular in China, its other major markets include the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil. 

It’s clear that the primary audience on TikTok are young women. 

Overall, the app is an opportunity for businesses to start cultivating younger potential customers. They may not be a customer immediately but that may change in the future. Brand recognition would ensure that they reach out to you first. 

Some companies are even surprised by how well their products or services resonate on TikTok, even though they never considered targeting younger people directly. 

And one effect of TikTok’s rapid growth is that the population of older users will begin to increase as it did on Facebook. 

TikTok Ads vs. Facebook Ads: How Are They Different?

Previously, if you asked a PPC expert how these two systems were different, they would point out how Facebook is far more precise because they have collected so much data over the years.

That’s been true, until now!

We wrote another blog recently about using Facebook Ads after the iOS14 update. To summarize, Apple devices are now prompting users to decide if they want to be tracked across devices. 

Most users are saying no and, as a result, the data is not as reliable as it once was. It’s also forcing businesses to focus on smaller audiences and 1st Party Data.

We’ve been using TikTok here at The HOTH to promote our services. Ads through TikTok are cheaper than on Facebook and they are effective at finding the right audience.

In our opinion, using TikTok is like the gold rush days of Facebook Ads in 2010. 

There are four available ad options in TikTok For Business: 

1. TopView: the first video users see when they open the app
2. In-Feed Ads: these ads appear in a user’s feed as they explore videos
3. Branded Hashtag Challenge: allows brands to start their own trends
4. Branded Effects: connects brands with stickers, filters, or effects for engagement

What other ways is advertising on Facebook or TikTok different? 

You can only do videos on TikTok because that’s the format (plus it’s only available on mobile devices).

Some Facebook Ads seem to go on forever but successful TikTok ads need to connect with viewers in seconds. Advertisers on TikTok target by interest and the algorithm is more precise the longer someone spends on it.

The average TikTok session is 10.85 minutes! That’s higher than any other social media app.

How To Develop a Winning Lead Gen Campaign on TikTok

Once you’re ready to dive into TikTok Ads, we would recommend setting up lead generation campaigns. Here’s how you do it.

Start by creating a new campaign. As you can see below, you have multiple options.

When you create a lead generation campaign on TikTok, users complete your lead form on the app rather than being sent to a separate landing page.

Your next step will be selecting an audience by age, gender, and location. Check out the top right-hand corner where our selections can potentially reach more than 133 million users.

In the beginning, you have to do your best to reflect what interests your potential customers have. After a few days, TikTok will analyze the data from its algorithm and give you recommended interests.

Some of these recommended interests are relevant (like for us, IT services or Marketing & Advertising) but other interests are ones you never would’ve expected (for example, Agriculture, Forest, Animal Husbandry & Fishing). 

You should still run all of these recommended interests because nothing beats the TikTok algorithm.

Next, you will upload or create your content for the ad. A stellar blog post or lead magnet will work perfectly. 

TikTok also has an incredible editing system in its manager where you can create an effective ad without needing professional help.

You can search through TikTok’s library of music or sounds, and even search by which “tracks” are getting the “highest spend.” Text and stickers can be added as a user would on the app.

After getting the video looking how you want it, your last step is to create a simple landing form to collect customer information. It only takes a few seconds and then your ad can go live!

Like TikTok—Then What Are You Waiting For?

The TikTok app is offering a big opportunity for many businesses to gain more exposure and collect more leads. 

Getting started with this popular app is as easy as opening an account. 

Once you get the hang of navigating the interface, finding trends, and posting your content using its sophisticated tools, you can establish your first-ever TikTok marketing strategy. 

As you read above, it’s cheaper than Facebook and runs off an incredible algorithm to connect you with the right users. 

Do you need help getting started with TikTok For Business? Simply schedule a consultation with our PPC team and we can guide you through every step. 

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In fact, a staggering 93% of marketers worldwide are using social media for business. In 2022, almost 92% of marketers who work for companies with more than 100 employees in the U.S. are expected to begin using social media with their marketing strategy. 

With that said, the remaining content will explore some of the most popular social media trends for businesses, social media strategies, and everything you can expect to see in the coming months. 

Ready to jump in?

1. Growing Demand for Chatbot Communication

On-demand messaging has shifted to more of a preference for customer and service communication. 

With the emerging chatbot trends, more and more industries are choosing to integrate chatbots into their business to be able to deliver continuous, non-stop customer care. But it’s not just for customer care, in fact, AI is expected to cut customer service costs by 50%, 

In fact, according to Gartner, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a mainstream customer experience investment in the next couple of years.” With that said, 47% of organizations will use chatbots for customer service and 40% will even deploy virtual assistants. 

Here are a few different types of chatbots that you could see emerging:

• Menu-based chatbots
• Rule-based chatbots
• Keyword recognition chatbots
• Machine learning chatbots
• Voice bots
• Appointment or scheduling bots
• Customer support bots

AI has been reinventing the ways people communicate with businesses and AI is vital for enabling machine learning on e-commerce websites. Going forward, chatbots are predicted to move from simple user-based queries to more advanced predictive analytics-based real-time conversations. 

Actually, the market size of Conversational AI is expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2025. That means its compound annual growth rate is 24%. Additionally, 75-90% of queries are projected to be handled by chatbots by 2024. 

2. Small Networks Will Become Popular for Ads

TikTok isn’t the only “smaller” network catching the attention of brands. Pinterest and even Snapchat are also gaining in popularity. 

According to data shared by Pinterest business, ads on their platform can generate twice the return on ad spend for retail brands, compared to other social media channels. 

While Snapchat isn’t super popular for marketing (compared to Facebook or Instagram) Snapchat advertising statistics show that the potential for ad growth on Snapchat has increased. 

Additionally, Apple made a recent announcement earlier this year that it will block the ability of Facebook to target a significant number of its users. With that said, it is vital for brands to begin looking at other platforms for advertising and new audiences. 

3. Brands Will Adopt More VR and Augmented Reality Technology

This social media trend of 2022 is one of the cooler trends on this list. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) aren’t just for gamers anymore. 

Brands try to offer an exciting, and shoppable experience for their customers and many e-commerce businesses are beginning to adapt to AR-powered shopping. 

Meaning that users would be able to try on products before completing a digital purchase. That will help customers make the best decision for them before buying anything. 

Already, platforms like Snapchat and Facebook messenger allow people to try on hundreds of different filters which can sometimes include updating profile pictures with brand logos or business mascots. 

Top technology experts are beginning to make VR gear more available to people at an affordable price.  That means that you can enjoy an immersive game-like experience. I mean, Facebook already offers a feature called, “Facebook Spaces,” where up to 3 people can engage with each other using a VR device. 

In fact, according to eMarketer, the number of VR users in the US is 57.4 million while the number of AR users is a whopping 90.9 million. It is expected to jump in 2022 in the US to 95.1 million users! 

4. TikTok Will Continue to Grow

While TikTok may not see the same growth as it saw in 2020 during the Pandemic and lockdowns, it doesn’t mean that its growth has stopped. 

In fact, TikTok reached a staggering 1 billion monthly active users in 2021. The company has also been improving the development of its ad platform, making it easier for businesses to create an online presence on the network. 

Here are a few reasons to advertise and expand your brand on TikTok:

• 69% of US teens or Gen-Z are on TikTok
• 90% of users log in every day
• TikTok users spend an average of 89 minutes a day on the app
• 88% of people would like to see more video content from brands in 2022

In addition, the company said that 47% of its users have bought a product because of TikTok and 67% agree that TikTok inspired them to shop even if they weren’t planning to do so. 

Given this amount of growth in recent years, it would be a wise marketing strategy to turn to TikTok as a social media platform, especially if your product or service is geared towards a younger audience. In fact, only 26% of millennials use TikTok. 

5. Reaching New Audiences Will Become a Primary Goal for Brands

When it’s time to build your brand up, you may need to add or change the type of audiences you promote to. Reaching a new group requires precision, research, and expanding on different social media networks. 

According to Hubspot, one of the main goals of most marketers in 2022 will be to reach new audiences. That includes growing relationships with customers and boosting customer service. 

In previous years, these goals were more focused on boosting sales and advertising products. With that said, it’s anticipated that there will be a change in how brands are going to use social media platforms moving forward. 

6. Instagram and Twitter Will Continue to Maintain Popularity

While a lot has been predicted for smaller channels such as TikTok, Pinterest, and Snapchat, one thing is for sure Twitter and Instagram aren’t going anywhere in 2022. 

Actually, according to HubSpot research, Twitter and Instagram will become even more important in the B2B space. In 2022, 70% of respondents said that they plan to increase their investment in Twitter. 

While 63% of B2B businesses plan to increase their ad spend on Instagram. So, let’s take a second to put this information into perspective. A Hootsuite study shows only 49% of B2B businesses plan to increase their investment on Facebook. 

That means more brands are distancing themselves from Facebook and finding new audiences on other social media platforms. 

7. Twitter Will Shift to a Trustworthy News Portal

While platforms like Facebook are primarily used as entertainment platforms, Twitter has always reserved the spot for serious talks on various topics of interest. 

With that said, Twitter is one platform that has always prioritized news stories among other forms of content. 

However, sometimes the authenticity of those news stories wasn’t completely accurate. Which led to controversies on and about the platform. 

In the coming years, Twitter is actually expected to keep a stricter fact-checking process on tweets and fake news. Twitter tends to allow only 100% authentic reliable news sources. 

Twitter has never topped the social media ranks in terms of popularity, however, it has continued to be an important platform. 

In 2022, Twitter is expected to bring more mainstream news media and tends to increase participation from social media users. 

8. Instagram Likes May Die Down

It may be safe to say that 2022 may be the year when digital marketing professionals who focus on marketing trends will need to shift their focus from likes to social trends and content marketing. 

Marketing campaigns aren’t strangers to social media “likes”, but it seems like 2022 might be the year that we will begin to see the “likes” fad die down. It is well known how the constant fixation on social media validation tends to have a fairly negative impact on individuals. 

That’s why Instagram has begun an experiment where they make the like counts private for some users. Although this isn’t an official update, we may see some form of this implemented onto the platform. 

To be clear, Instagram hasn’t removed likes, it’s simply hiding them from public profiles so only the poster can see how many likes a post or Instagram story has. 

9. Paid Advertising Will Become Necessary 

Social media in 2022 means that paid advertising isn’t an option anymore but a necessity. A Hootsuite survey suggests that 43% of businesses point out the decline of organic reach and the necessity to increase paid advertising budgets will be the major challenge for brands. 

Considering that the average organic reach for a Facebook post is just over 5%. With that said, that’s why it’s so important to get your PPC ads right. 

If you aren’t sure what to do, book a call with one of our experts now, we’re here to help! 

10. Social Audio Will Become More Popular 

Clubhouse was launched in 2020 and since then it has become increasingly popular. In fact, in June of 2021, Facebook followed suit by launching its Live Audio rooms, new features, and podcasts in the U.S. Additionally, LinkedIn launched a test of Audio Rooms in January of 2022. 

Brands are listening and taking notes! In Hootsuite‘s 2022 Social Media Trends Survey more than 74% of businesses say that they’re planning to invest in audio-only content such as podcasts in the next year. 

The same study showed that hosting an audio live stream as a thought leader was one of the most popular strategies. 

With that said, the trend has not quite caught as much attention of smaller brands, especially those on a budget because it may not be the most affordable form of content marketing. 

It might only be an audio clip, but there’s still a lot of time, effort, and creativity that goes into creating new content.

11. Local SEM Targeting Will Get More Prevalent 

Local SEM and local targeting have become more popular in 2022 and will continue to grow in the coming years. Local businesses are finding more ways to connect with their target customers by geo-tagging their social media posts. 

In fact, Instagram already lets people look for posts and stories that are in their area. That gives local brands a chance to become more discoverable. 

Additionally, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram give brands the ability to enable target audiences from a specific location through their IP addresses. 

12. Memes 

Memes are everywhere! It’s also really hard to find someone who doesn’t like them. They are one of the most creative short-forms of content creation and it’s really hot in social trends right now. 

In fact, niche memes are a good way for creators to connect with their audience and promote a brand without losing any sense of fun. 

Here are a few ways you can use memes in your marketing:

• Make your memes match your brand voice
• Repurpose existing memes
• Create original memes
• Keep meme types in mind
• Use the best fonts and colors 
• Repost relevant user-generated memes

Here’s an example:

(source: DigitalMarketer) 

13. Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Grow

Influencer marketing is growing at a rapid pace, it’s also expected to keep dominating in 2022. However, the way brands should collaborate with influencers may see changes.

Brands will now collaborate with creator economy and influencers over a series of social media promotion posts rather than just a single post. They may put equal effort into promoting content created by specific influencers. 

Here are a few different types of Influencers:

• Mega-Influencers 
• Macro-Influencers
• Mid-Tier Influencers
• Micro-Influencers 
• Nano-Influencers

In fact, Adam Shapiro from Upfluence believes that influencer marketing will drive online sales by offering an easy shopping experience in the social media landscape. 

Social commerce features are continuing to rise in popularity and online checkouts are becoming more and more available on almost all social media networks. Influencers are vital for converting brand awareness into sales. 

Adam predicts that influencers will lead the way in live social shopping, affiliate marketing, and sharing authentic product recommendations. 

There was a greater focus on networks that provide tools for their creators to better help them monetize and manage their brands or businesses. That will continue in 2022 and become more aggressive with competitors like TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat. 

These Social Media Trends Are Here to Stay

Staying on top of what’s going on with social media is an essential part of building your brand. If you haven’t adapted to any of these trends, it might be time to do so! 

If you need some help with that, schedule a call today!

Also, don’t forget to sign up for free and check out our free SEO tools! 

The post 13 Social Media Trends for 2022 appeared first on The HOTH.

There’s money to be made on YouTube!

Worldwide, this video content platform has 2.6 billion users and is the second large social media app behind Facebook. 

YouTube is also part of the Google family, meaning you can leverage your current SEO and PPC strategies to generate more revenue. 

If you’re new to this app or you’ve never heard of it before, this article will share some key YouTube statistics and explain how businesses make more money by beefing up their video content.

Keep reading to learn everything you’ll need to know about this popular platform.

Fun Facts About YouTube

Let’s start off by sharing some interesting facts about YouTube:

• YouTube earns $15 billion per year
• 500 hours worth of video content gets uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Around 37% of all mobile traffic goes to YouTube
• Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006
• YouTube’s user base expanded during the COVID-19 quarantine
• YouTube Kids went live in 2019
• Users can subscribe to channels and create playlists
• Businesses have the option of live streaming on YouTube

It’s easy to see how exciting it is to be on YouTube. 

From 2005 until now the app has grown into a go-to source for information and entertainment. 

With billions of hours of content now available, we can still go back to answer this basic question: when was the first YouTube video uploaded?

On April 23, 2005, Jawed Karim posted the first YouTube video ever made called “Me at the zoo.” The video featured him at the San Diego Zoo talking about elephant trunks. 

Now it has over 232 million views and he holds the first YouTube account ever. To this day, “Me at the zoo” is the only video on his account. 

Interestingly, Karim was one of the co-founders of YouTube. Besides him, who created YouTube and why?

Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley created YouTube together.

Why was YouTube created? All three men were former employees of PayPal and thought ordinary people would enjoy sharing homemade videos.

They founded YouTube on February 14, 2005, and the company is headquartered in San Bruno, California. 

In its first year, YouTube earned about 30,000 visitors per day but when YouTube became popular in 2006 it grew to 25 million views.

As of today, YouTube is now 17 years old and only continues to grow!

So, who was the second YouTuber?

That video, an 11-second clip about snowboarding, was called “My Snowboarding Skillz.” This was the first video uploaded by a non-YouTube employee, a snowboarder named Matt Michael Wright.

Another huge milestone for the company was the first YouTube video with 10 billion views.

The popular children’s music video, “Baby Shark Dance” from Pinkfong, was the first to be watched over 10 billion times. “Baby Shark” is also considered one of the most viewed YouTube videos.

YouTube Usage Statistics

There are a lot of interesting YouTube statistics that can help you to better understand the platform before opening your own account. 

Here are some of the basics:

How old do you have to be to have a YouTube account?  

You must be at least 17.

What are the most popular categories on YouTube? 

Commentary, product reviews, and tutorials are the most watched content on YouTube. Gaming channels also continue to grow rapidly. How many gaming channels are on YouTube? Over 40 million and the  amount continues to grow every year.

How long is the average YouTube video? 

Video lengths vary based on category but the average video size is 11.7 minutes. It’s also important to note how long a YouTube video can be: a maximum of 15 minutes, unless you have a verified account.

How many views does the average YouTube video get? 

The amount varies based on the type of video content but how-to videos, for example, get an average of 8,332 views. If you’re wondering how YouTube counts views, the play button needs to be pressed by  a verified user and they have to watch a video for at least 30 seconds to be counted as a view.

What YouTube channel has the most videos?

Roel Van de Paar has the most videos uploaded to YouTube. He’s an Australian creator who uploads about a video every minute. Van de Paar has over 82,000 subscribers and he’s uploaded 1.9 million videos. His posts are typically how-to videos that are 5 minutes or under. 

How many YouTube channels have a million subscribers?

A little over 23,000 channels are estimated to have 1 million+ subscribers. 

There are many different categories of YouTube videos. Above we listed the top three categories but there are other popular ones like online challenges, comedy sketches, movie clips, interviews, music videos, sports highlights, and so much more. 

The top YouTube channels in the USA include PewDiePie, WWE Fan Nation, 5-Minute Crafts, and Justin Bieber. 

PewDiePie is a Swedish YouTube artist who posts comedic sketches. And how many total views does PewDiePie have? Over 28 billion! 

Have you ever heard of the Korean musical group Blackpink? They are a pop group with the most YouTube subscribers worldwide with over 74 million. 

Gaming is also huge on YouTube. What percent of YouTube is gaming? Approximately 15% of YouTube videos are about gaming. 

The Basics of YouTube

YouTube offers so many opportunities for businesses to educate and attract potential customers. First, you need to understand how it works so you can easily navigate this highly popular app. 

Most beginners ask how many YouTube accounts you can have. Because it’s part of the Google family, YouTube runs through Gmail and single accounts can only have up to 50 channels. 

Therefore, you’ll have one YouTube account through the Google suite but you can create multiple channels in seconds. 

Once you open a new account, you’ll probably wonder: what do the numbers next to subscriptions mean on Youtube? 

Most people think these numbers indicate your total number of subscribers but rather they represent how many uploads you’ve done that week. 

You can start tracking your total subscribers on the channel dashboard or in the YouTube Studio under channel analytics. The app allows you to view recent subscribers or all subscribers. 

Creating and uploading a YouTube video is incredibly easy, and the app provides you with some editing tools to make the best content possible. YouTube Studio allows you to add music, sound effects, subtitles, and to trim content. 

The studio is also the place to create playlists, reply to comments, or look at analytics, which is important so you can find out the best times to post on YouTube. 

Beginners typically don’t know the best day and time to post on YouTube. It also varies based on your channel and what categories you target. 

So what is the best day to post on YouTube? Studies have found that Thursdays to Saturdays are the best days to post. And, as for what time to post, it’s recommended to schedule your uploads for 9-11 a.m.

Of course, checking your analytics is the best way to pin down an exact day and time. 

Once your videos go live, it’s time to sit back and see how many views you get. Users wonder, how often do YouTube videos update but veterans know they change between 24-48 hours. 

Who knows, you may have the most-viewed YouTube video in a month.

And here’s another tip: avoid using YouTube on your mobile device. Does YouTube use data? Yes! And if you’re on a smartphone it could be draining your data. 

Research has found that YouTube uses around 562 MB of data per hour when streaming at standard definition. 

Uploading videos to YouTube and engaging with other users is a lot of fun and can help your business grow, but be careful of content burnout. Veteran YouTubers leaving YouTube often say they can’t keep up with the sheer volume of content creation.

Make sure you set a realistic and sustainable goal for yourself. 

How Big Is YouTube?

Is it worth opening a YouTube account? Is all of the effort worth it?

First, let’s look at how many views YouTube gets a day.

Over 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube daily. That means there is plenty of room for your videos to be part of that mix. 

How many hours of YouTube are uploaded every minute? 400 hours! 

Of course, with a brand new YouTube account you have to establish yourself before you get a ton of traffic. 

The average views on the first YouTube videos are a few hundred. That could increase to the thousands as you start to catch on. 

The average YouTube channel growth rate is about 1,000 subscribers in 22 months. 

Another big question: how many YouTube searches do people make everyday? There are over 122 million active users daily. Those are people searching for content that could match what you have to offer. 

Here is more data to show the size of YouTube:

• YouTube revenue was $19.7 billion in 2020
• The app enjoys a 25-30% growth rate year over year
• How much is YouTube worth? An estimated $160 billion
• How many people work at YouTube? There are 2,800 employees
• Here are some interesting YouTube binge-watching statistics: 37% of users 18-34 binge it daily

Over the years this app has expanded its services. YouTube Red is a monthly subscription service that allows users to remove advertisements. 

If you’re wondering how many accounts on YouTube TV can be used at the same time, they limit your usage to three devices. 

Another perk of this service is offline viewing.

The number of YouTube Red subscribers is $50 million but the company has now started referring to it as YouTube Premium. 

For young people, YouTube is more popular than TV and by that we mean traditional cable packages. Sixty-eight percent of people surveyed said they watch more video content from YouTube than anywhere else. Many others only watch Netflix.

So what is YouTube Premium revenue? At $12 per month for the service, YouTube generates around $600 million. 

That’s only a tiny percentage of YouTube revenue. When you consider YouTube premium vs. ad revenue, there’s no comparison. YouTube brought in $28 billion in 2021. 

The YouTube Partner Program even helps creators by paying additional revenue to them based on the number of people watching their content. How many YouTube partners are there? More than 2 million, according to a company announcement. 

Now you’ve probably heard of another popular video app called TikTok. It’s giving YouTube a run for its money but when you examine YouTube vs. TikTok stats you can see that YouTube has 1 billion more users.

How Much Do YouTubers Make?

Now that you’ve learned all about YouTube, now comes the exciting part! How much do YouTubers make on the app?

And, more importantly, how much can you make off of YouTube?

How much do YouTubers make per view? Once your account is up and running, you can get between $0.01 and $0.03 per ad view. 

It may not sound like a lot at first but it builds up quickly. Just starting, you can be earning between $3-5 for every 1,000 video views (that’s how many views on YouTube get paid). 

You’ll need to get at least 1,000 subscribers and have 4,000 watched hours in the past year. That’s how many subscribers before YouTube pays you

The average YouTube ad revenue is around $18 per 1,000 ad views, which is a different metric. Top talent can earn up to $5 for every 1,000 video views. 

Can you see why it’s so important to create engaging videos?

Here’s the best part, how much is a YouTube channel? Absolutely free! The only thing you may need to invest in is production equipment. But that only depends on what type of videos you want to create.

Of course, a percentage of those earnings will go to YouTube. New businesses on YouTube ask us what percentage of ad revenue does YouTube take?

Advertisers start paying after 1,000 views and YouTube generally takes 45%.

Wondering how much money would you make from 1 million YouTube views? The average amount is over $2,000 but the sky’s the limit (this is also the YouTube monthly income for someone with over 100,000 subscribers). 

That’s how YouTube pays.

To start earning money directly from YouTube, creators must have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year.

Partners and influencers make good money on the platform. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is YouTube’s most paid influencer. He earned $54 million in 2021. His channel specializes in recorded stunts.

Besides MrBeast, the other most profitable YouTube channels belong to Jake Paul, Markiplier, and Rhett & Link. 

Another option for your brand is vlogging. This is creating video blog posts for subscribers. How much do YouTube vloggers make? They make the same income we described above.

What Do People Watch On YouTube?

The secret to being successful on YouTube is to know what people are watching. 

Here are some numbers to consider as you plan future content:

• How many YouTube channels are there? 51 million+
• What’s the fastest-growing YouTube channel? Comedian & gamer AddictedA1 grew his channel by 199% in 2020
• What’s the most subscribed video on YouTube? T-Series, an Indian music network, has 206 million followers, the most subscribers in the world in 2022. 
• The “Baby Shark Dance,” referenced above, is the most watched online video on YouTube.

What can you learn from all of this? For one, comedy and gaming are the most popular YouTube categories. Music videos also make up some of the most popular videos. 

It’s also easy to check YouTube watch stats on videos to see what’s popular and what’s not. 

As you devise a content strategy, think about the YouTube Top 10 Videos:

1. “Baby Shark Dance” by Pinkfong (10.6 billion views)
2. “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee (7.8 billion views)
3. “Johny Johny Yes Papa” by LooLoo Kids (6.3 billion views)
4. “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran (5.7 billion views)
5. “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth (5.4 billion views)
6. “Bath Song” by Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes (5.3 billion views)
7. “Phonics Song with Two Words” by ChuChu TV (4.5 billion views)
8. “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars (4.5 billion views)
9. “Learning Colors – Colorful Eggs on a Farm” by Miroshka TV (4.5 billion views)
10. “Masha and The Bear – Recipe for Disaster” by Get Movies (4.5 billion views)

Check out some of these videos and you may find some inspiration for your content. 

YouTube Content Creator Statistics

Are you ready to join the creator community on YouTube?

How many YouTube creators are there? About 1 million professional creators are earning a living by posting their videos.

Here are the YouTube top 10 creators: 

1. Ryan Kaji
2. MrBeast
3. PewDiePie
4. Dude Perfect
5. Rhett and Link
6. Markiplier
7. Preston Arsement
8. Dream
9. Jeffree Star
10. SSSniperWolf

It can be helpful for you to check out these top YouTubers and get some ideas for your content. 

You’re probably wondering how many subscribers does the average YouTuber have? Data has shown that 96.6% of YouTube accounts have 10,000 or less. 

Pink Fong’s “Baby Shark Dance” is the account who has the most streams on YouTube, but Psy’s “Gangnam Style” had achieved it beforehand, and remained on top for longer. 

Women are also making strides on YouTube.

Yuya, a Mexican beauty vlogger, has over 24 million subscribers. You can be successful with any topic as long as you understand your target audience and produce content that resonates with them. 

Another common question is who has the least subscribers on YouTube? There are several accounts with 100 or fewer subscribers in the categories of travel, healthcare, and news.

The fact is that the 1 million content creators on YouTube are all different and all have unique content to offer. The secret to being successful is finding your niche. 

YouTube User Statistics

Let’s dive a little deeper into audiences on YouTube

How many viewers does YouTube have? Over 2.6 billion in 2022.

That’s a lot of eyes to watch your content. 

To understand the prospective audiences, here are some YouTube audience demographics:

• YouTube age demographics: 77% of 15-25, 70% of 45-64, and 77% of users are 26-35
• YouTube gender demographics: 45.8% of YouTube’s audience is female and 54.3% is male
• YouTube target market: The 15-35 age demographic are the biggest users of this app
• YouTube users by country: India is the top user with 467 million users and the United States is in second place with 247 million users. The next three are Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil
• YouTube viewer demographics: 85% of teenagers in Gen Z use YouTube (the most popular app in that age group) and 70% of Millennials (the next age group up from Gen Z) watched the app to learn something new
• The company’s Premium service has a YouTube user count of 20 million
• How many subscribers does YouTube TV have? Over 4 million
• How many people watch YouTube a day? 122 million active users
• What percentage of video views on youtube come from mobile? With 70% accessing YouTube on mobile, your content needs to be ready

The best way to determine YouTube demographics by channel is to use the analytics tools available in the app. While studies have shown certain trends in audience demographics, you should nail down your exact audience using the data available to you. 

And don’t think that YouTube is losing popularity, the opposite is true. How many people have downloaded YouTube in 2022?

Over 10 billion people have downloaded YouTube since it first launched. 

More recently, the YouTube Music app had 3 million downloads in Google Play and 1.3 million in the App Store. 

Conclusion

Phew! That was a lot of information about YouTube. Things are really exciting on this app and businesses like yours have an opportunity to generate revenue on it. 

Your key takeaways from this data piece should be that YouTube is the second largest social media app (behind Facebook), is video-based, has over 2.6 billion active users, and can help you to boost your brand recognition. 

Opening a YouTube account may seem overwhelming if you don’t have video content experience but not every successful user has expensive production equipment. You can post highly-engaging videos using a smartphone camera. 

Do you need help creating video content for your website or YouTube account?  Give us a call if you have any questions!

The post How Much Do YouTubers Make? (And Other YouTube Statistics) appeared first on The HOTH.

Now, you have a ton of data to work with. You need a way to organize and monitor that data so you can understand how you’re doing and make improvements to your strategy.

In other words, you need to start doing some social reporting.

In this article, we’ll discuss several ways social media reporting can help you improve your social strategy and your business as a whole. Then, we’ll cover the basic pieces of a formal social media report before offering some tips on creating yours.

What Is Social Media Reporting?

As of 2018, nearly 77% of small businesses used social media for several key functions. Post-pandemic, that number is likely even higher. And no wonder, there are almost 4 billion consumers on social media in 2022.

But social media brings in a lot of data every minute, and you need to understand that data to stay ahead of your competitors on social.

Social reporting is how you measure, organize, and present your social media data to gain useful insights. This can be as informal as a spreadsheet with basic data points or a neat, organized report with charts and paragraphs discussing key insights.

Social media reports might be needed for various purposes, which can influence how much effort is required to make one. For instance, you may simply be curious if your current strategy is working and if improvements need to be made.

On the other hand, you might need a more formal report to justify to executives in your company why you should continue with a campaign.

Why Social Reporting is So Critical

Social media reporting helps you understand how you’re doing across each individual social channel, helping you improve several aspects of your social marketing.

Here are some benefits of social reporting:

Optimize your social listening strategy

Social media listening involves monitoring what people are saying about your brand across social channels, looking for broader trends, and strategizing how you’ll respond.

Naturally, social media reporting plays a crucial role in optimizing your social listening strategy. A good social media report will include brand mention data, discuss trends, and dive into explaining why those trends might exist.

This makes it easier to formulate response templates for various types of brand mentions and methods of addressing potential PR crises, among other things, on social media.

Create better content

Social media is an excellent place to share content — whether directly, through posts, or by linking to other content assets.

But to continually improve that content, social media reporting comes in handy.

You can see what content subjects and types get the most clicks, shares, replies, and other forms of engagement. Then, you can create more of that content.

For instance, maybe you learn that a certain content pillar gets a lot of clicks and retweets on Twitter. Investing more time and resources into that subject matter could pay off.

Since social SEO plays a large role in search engine rankings these days, this will bleed over into your search engine efforts as well.

CTA: Need more help with your SEO efforts? Schedule a free call with one of our SEO consultants today.

Improve your post scheduling

The quality of your posts and content are critical, but you also need to get it out at the right times to get the maximum number of eyeballs on it.

Social reporting helps you with that if you’re testing different posting times.

As an example: a social media report could show that publishing your content during the weekdays at 5:30 pm — right when many are getting done with work — gets more engagement than a 2:30 pm publishing time.

Learn more about your customers

Creating a social report helps you see trends in what your customers respond to and engage with — and how they do so.

By investigating these types of posts, you can learn more about your customers. You can find out information about their goals and problems, and how they speak about these things.

That way, you can better tailor your offers and marketing toward their needs and craft social media copy that “speaks their language” better.

Identify and invest in your top platforms

Facebook and YouTube are the top 2 social media platforms in 2022, so you may be focusing on these platforms at the moment.

But you never know, your customers may use other platforms at a higher rate — and maybe they’re more likely to interact with your brand on those platforms.

Social reporting can help you figure this out for sure. You can pick apart the data on each platform and potentially discover that some platforms offer more ROI than others.

Similarly, you can test new social media networks you don’t yet have a presence on, then create regular social reports to see if they’re worth investing in.

Justify social media campaigns

Social media campaigns cost money, so you need to prove there’s a potential return on investment — especially if you have business partners who are reluctant about it.

Creating a detailed social media report helps you prove to them that your strategy is bringing in more customers and growing the business.

Plus, being transparent about any potential flaws or less-than-stellar results and how you’ll address them can increase the confidence of clients or internal stakeholders.

6 Sections to Include in Your Social Media Report

Technically, a social media report can be as informal as numbers on a spreadsheet with a few brief insights. Those are easy to create.

However, you’ll want to create a more formal and visually appealing report if you need to show these numbers to anyone else.

So below, we’re going to explain each section of a formal social media report.

Executive summary

You want to design your report to be readable for both skimmers and people who want to read the entire thing.

That’s what the executive summary is for.

The executive summary gives a brief overview of the entire report and lists a few of the most important insights. You’ll want to mention the report’s purpose and include a few top data points, key insights, the main takeaway, and any planned action steps.

At the same time, avoid diving into the nitty-gritty details — that’s what the rest of the report is for.

Introduction

The introduction will seem similar to the executive summary, but it doesn’t cover actionable insights. Instead, it summarizes the report’s purpose and lists your main social media goals along with relevant comments.

That way, anyone reading the report knows what your data points mean as they get to the later sections.

Performance snapshot

In this section, you’ll want to list a few broad data points or KPIs (key performance indicators) regarding your social media performance. These should be relevant to your goals and the metrics you’re measuring, but don’t get into the fine details yet.

For example, you might list your net new follower count over the period you’re reporting for, total post shares, website visitors, and total conversions generated.

However, you wouldn’t break any of these down yet. That’s for the next section.

Data deep-dive

Here’s where you get deep into the numbers. Essentially, you want to include all the data relevant to the goals you’re aiming for.

Beyond that, you should also compare performance across these metrics to past periods of the same length. For instance, if this is a monthly report, include data from previous months. This will help you visualize trends.

If your report is for a specific campaign, you can also get past data from when you ran similar campaigns to see how you performed. This will be helpful in fine-tuning these campaigns for the future. In monthly and annual reports, analyze the impact on sales and revenue as well, not just soft metrics like followers.

Analysis/Discussion

Now, you have to interpret the data. You want to look for patterns in the data and analyze the impact of different channels and strategies.

For instance, you might notice higher click-through rates on certain posts. Digging deeper, you discover that these posts were all video content about a particular topic.

That could tell you that video content and this subject matter should be a focus when it comes to sharing on social media.

You can also use this section to explore why your performance was better or worse than past campaigns, helping you find ways to improve in the future.

Conclusion

Finally, briefly summarize the data mentioned and insights gained from the report. Also, include a few sentences about how you’ll use the report’s findings to craft and refine future social media strategies. You can even boil things down to a few best practices, and use them to guide future campaigns.

How to Create a Solid Social Media Report

A good social media report should strike a balance between informative, appealing, and digestible.

Here are some tips to make a social report that manages to nail all three.

Know your audience

Not your company’s audience, but your report’s audience.

If you’re preparing this for yourself or a close business partner for routine reporting, you don’t need to be as formal. You can be much more frank about any negatives as well.

However, maybe you include this report in a proposal while seeking a new partner in the business.

In that case, put extra effort into making it visually appealing. Plus, you should change the language of the report to be more persuasive. For instance, emphasize the positive and focus on how you’ll address any negatives.

Define your social media KPIs

You can’t include every single metric in your report, or you’ll waste time and distract your readers. Many metrics aren’t that important anyway.

Instead, define your few most hard-hitting KPIs and focus on these. You want a lot of data in your report, but that data needs to provide you with tangible insights — and you can do that by diving deep into the few most important metrics.

Pick a time frame and reporting schedule

You also need to outline the period you’re measuring because this influences how extensive the report is.

You can run reports every day, but these will likely not offer many valuable insights. Instead, they could simply help you judge ongoing campaign progress. A good mix is to do one weekly and one monthly report.

Weekly reports let you see any immediate trends and results of your posts and strategies. Running a monthly report will allow you to identify larger trends within campaigns or overall social media performance, giving you deeper insights.

Find a good social analytics and reporting tool

It’s pretty tough to manage all social media data flying your way without a good reporting tool.

You want to pick a tool that can easily integrate with every channel you use and offers strong analytics capabilities — like Buffer Analytics, Hootsuite, or others. But make sure it lets you add as many users as you need to see your custom social reports.

It may also be a good idea to invest in a tool that lets you schedule posts to your social accounts as well. This can streamline your social media operations and save you money on other tools.

Regardless, make sure you know exactly what features you need so you don’t overpay for things you won’t use.

Get the formatting right

Formatting a report goes a long way in ensuring people actually read the whole thing and understand what it’s conveying.

That means striking a good balance between text, white space, and visuals like graphs and charts. The latter especially can help break up the report and make it more readable while helping the reader get more out of the report.

Each section should have a clear heading, and feel free to use bold text and eye-catching colors to emphasize certain points.

Tactics like these can help readers gain the essentials while skimming and make it easy to read through and learn the details behind the top insights.

Understand and Use Your Social Data Effectively

You can’t take your social media efforts very far if you aren’t creating social media reports. Social reporting helps you learn more about your customers to optimize your social listening strategy.

As a result, you can create better content and schedule it to be shared at the right times on the right platforms.

Of course, social is just one part of a strong, omnichannel marketing strategy. If you need help understanding your SEO and PPC results (and improving your ROI on those channels), contact our digital marketing experts today.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Social Reporting appeared first on The HOTH.

Your target audience seems to be unaware of your business. Engagement rates are suspiciously low, and your follower count is stagnant. You may even feel like you can’t avoid simply repeating yourself. Finally, you lose motivation and conclude that social media marketing doesn’t work for your niche.

The moral of the story is inspiration alone only gets you so far.

Real content creation begins when you streamline your work processes and take the guesswork out of the equation. You need a sustainable content strategy and a holistic approach to keep hitting your key performance indicators (KPIs) month after month.

By getting better at social media content creation, you’ll also get better at communicating with your audience and understanding their pain points.

Let’s unpack this.

Social Media Content Creation — What Is It Exactly?

There’s a subtle difference between preparing and creating content for social media. Many businesses simply try to retrofit the content of their website into their social media channels and, unsurprisingly, struggle to do so.

Social media content creation means crafting brand-new content and repurposing existing assets for each social media channel.

It is a lot of work, but your efforts will pay off — 83% of Instagram users say that the social media platform helps them discover new products or services, and yours can be among them.

The process of creating content, especially for social media, includes:

1. Monitoring competitors’ activity and their content strategy.
2. Spotting industry trends.
3. Analyzing customer needs and their pain points.
4. Developing and maintaining a recognizable tone of voice and visual style.
5. Finding the right type of content for every stage of the funnel.
6. Sticking to an optimal posting schedule.

Not to worry: you can simplify or even fully automate some of these processes — we’ll tackle this topic in the following sections.

Why social media content creation has never been more important

Being salesy on social media is so 2012.

Consider this. Most consumers mainly use the internet to find information, stay in touch with friends and family, or consume entertaining content.

Instead of forcing their audience to consider purchasing from them right away, business owners use social media to go the extra mile by engaging in a two-way conversation with them.

And rightfully so. Over half the consumers said they’re more likely to trust brands that produce relevant and engaging content.

But there’s more to it.

Creating quality content for social media content also helps you:

1. Spread the word about your business.
2. Cement your brand’s authority.
3. Grow your audience.
4. Build a community around your brand.
5. Get high-quality traffic.
6. Encourage engagement.
7. Share your brand values.
8. Boost brand advocacy.
9. Attract and hire new talent.

How to become a social media creator for your own business

Why spend time and hard-earned money on freelancers every time you need a short talking-head video or a simple infographic?

No one knows your product or service better than you. That’s why it makes sense to invest in your own content-creating skills.

You can begin with hands-on Skillshare or Domestika courses on strategizing and photo editing for Instagram or mastering TikTok, depending on where your target audience is. Nail the basics.

Then, start building your social media content creator setup.

Purchase the necessary editing tools, apps, filters, presets, a good mic, and a ring light — and you’re good to go. Don’t get carried away with the gear. As your social media presence grows, so will your toolkit.

Social media content creation tools to have at your fingertips

These are the main social media content creation tools you’ll need:

• Social listening tools: Discover new brand mentions and gently spy on your competitors to see the gaps in their content strategy and get ahead of them. Check out Brand24, BrandMentions, and Mention.
• Scheduling tools: Plan and auto-publish your content to make sure it goes live exactly when your target audience is the most active. Check out Buffer, Later, and Planoly.
• Editing tools: Give your content a professional look and feel in a few clicks by using template-based mobile editing apps. Check out Canva, Splice, and Unfold.
• Link-in-bio tools: Present your products or services using a lightweight landing page created specifically for social media. Check out Linktree, Linkin.bio, and Tap Bio.

10+ Types of Social Media Content to Focus on in 2022

Don’t despair over poorly performing static photos — we’ve gathered top trending content ideas and formats you can start implementing immediately.

• Stories: Use more informal time-sensitive content to show what your brand lives and breathes.

• Interactive content: Try Q&A sessions, polls, surveys, contests, quizzes, challenges, and infographics.

• Educational content: Demystify industry secrets and complex niche topics with the help of digestible explainers, how-tos, and tutorials.

• Behind-the-scenes content: Give your audience a sneak peek of your work process.

• Customer success stories: Share real stories of how your product or service has made someone’s life easier.

• User-generated content: Showcase authentic endorsements beaming with brand love.

• Reels: Show your products or services in action to give a perspective of who you are and what your business is about

• Live videos: Prove your credibility and make your brand more approachable by regularly going live.

• Downloadable assets: Capture leads on social media by sending them a download link in exchange for their email address.

• Interviews with niche experts and opinion leaders: Publish them as podcasts, YouTube videos, or Instagram videos to boost your brand authority.

• Long-form content: Feature in-depth articles and guides on your social media and incentivize your followers to visit your website blog.

Try HOTH Blogger to get professionally-written long-form content for your blog.

How to Build a Sustainable Social Media Content Strategy

A sustainable social media strategy is one that you can maintain for a long time. To achieve that, let’s forget about ever-changing trends and algorithms for a minute and focus on the essentials instead.

The following steps will help you improve your existing social media content strategy or create a new one from scratch.

1. Define your target audience and their needs

Think big, start small. Create a customer avatar by describing your typical follower or customer.

Specify these characteristics:

• Age group
• Lifestyle
• Pain points
• Needs and goals
• Values
• Concerns and challenges
• Employment status
• Tastes and hobbies

Feel free to adjust this list as needed. If you are, for example, a tax lawyer, you may want to target those who identify themselves as entrepreneurs or self-employed. On the other hand, this information won’t play any role for a bakery owner who’s just trying to attract pretty much anyone from their neighborhood.

2. Perform a competitor analysis

Use social listening tools to find your direct competitors on social media. It’ll help you discover new opportunities and learn a thing or two from them.

Pay attention to their:

• Tone of voice
• Preferred channels and content formats
• Promotion strategy
• Audience engagement
• Targeted topics
• Brand advocates

Discover your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and use that knowledge to distinguish your own brand from them.

3. Find the right channels for your business

The answer to which channel you should use will likely derive from the customer avatar that you’ve created two steps earlier. Based on your target audience’s portrait, you can easily pinpoint the social networks they use the most.

Nevertheless, you can’t go wrong with YouTube. There’s a reason it’s the second-most preferred video channel among social media marketers, with 69% using it, a single percent below Instagram at 70%.

This also shows how Instagram is rapidly turning into a video-first platform, when 70% of social media marketers are already experimenting with short videos on the platform — often in the form of Instagram Stories. You can repurpose videos from YouTube and publish them on Instagram or vice versa.

4. Create an evergreen content plan

Make a comprehensive list including all types of social media content your brand could potentially use, from educational carousels to live videos. Then, organize them based on their efficiency and how difficult they are to produce.

You can also add another dimension by specifying which stage of the funnel they cover.

Here’s an example.

1. Awareness stage content: Hacks, tips, ideas, explainers, and infographics.
2. Consideration stage content: Product reviews, comparisons, UGC, templates, FAQs, tutorials, and eBooks.
3. Decision stage content: Customer success stories, Q&A sessions, and walkthroughs.

If you invest a bit of time in creating a similar timeless content plan for your niche, you’ll never run out of ideas on what to post on social media.

5. Schedule your content in advance

Scheduling is the only way to make sure your posts go live at optimal times and that your account stays on your audience’s radar. A content planner should become your best friend or, at least, a helping hand.

When you plan your content ahead of time, you get a chance to double-check every little detail, from adding a relevant location to tagging the right accounts.

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Scheduling also allows you to plan your social media feed visually, which is especially important for visual-first social media platforms such as Instagram.

6. Promote your content

“Publish and pray” isn’t a viable strategy for social media — informative but underpromoted posts can get left in the dust.

Every time you share a valuable piece of content, give it an initial boost to make sure it gets noticed before being buried under the newer posts.

There’s more than one way to do it:

1. Start a paid campaign.
2. Get your content featured on larger niche accounts.
3. Collaborate with niche experts and co-promote each other.
4. Work with niche influencers.
5. Crosspost your content pieces if the format allows it.
6. Get your teammates involved.
7. Tag every expert or source you are mentioning in your posts.
8. Ask your audience questions to spark engagement.
9. Add your social media feed to your website.

7. Measure, analyze, and improve

Start tracking your social media performance from day one. It’s crucial for understanding whether you are reaching the right audience and boosting the right type of content.

Major social media platforms have built-in analytics tools, but they may not be intuitive or convenient enough. If that’s your case, try the aforementioned content scheduling tools.

Many of them allow you to pull data from different platforms and analyze it in one place. They’ll automatically determine the best time to post and the best posting frequency for your accounts. They can also generate personalized recommendations to help you expand your reach and drive engagement.

Debunking Myths About Content Creation for Social Media

There are a lot of misconceptions swirling around the topic of social media content. Let’s unwrap some of them.

Myth 1. Hashtags are dead and gone

What they say is true. Overstuffing captions with high-competition hashtags doesn’t work — your social media posts will attract bots and get drowned out by other publications in a matter of seconds. Also, cluttered captions and comments just look messy.

But hashtags are still vital for Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, especially when it comes to sharing a trend, starting a challenge, or inviting social media users to take part in a competition. The secret is to stay away from overused hashtags and use medium- and low-competition or custom tags instead — tags that are 100% relevant to what you’re posting about.

Myth 2. You must always stick to a rigid posting schedule

A fixed content plan is extremely helpful for maintaining consistency. But, in times of turmoil, it may come back to bite you.

Here’s a cautionary tale for all businesses on social media.

The wave of BLM protests in 2020 encouraged major brands on Instagram and other platforms to take a stand in support of racial equality. But some US-based big businesses kept posting regular stuff and reacted to the events in a generic way or didn’t weigh in at all.

For many Instagram users, it looked like those brands were just trying to wait out that period. Unsurprisingly, they ended up being criticized for turning a blind eye to social issues.

The key takeaway here is to allow your brand to react to global events and trends instantly and never prioritize content over your own audience. It will only strengthen your customer bonds.

Myth 3. Influencer content always beats UGC

Sponsored content, effective as it is, can’t compete with user-generated content (UGC) when it comes to authenticity.

Influencer fatigue is real.

As every influencer post turns into a brand endorsement, social media users start looking for more authentic, down-to-earth creators, activists, and needle-movers.

UGC has an important advantage — it’s more relatable. And don’t worry if you have a small audience, If anything, a small number of followers practically guarantees the unbiased nature of the content.

But how do you maintain authenticity while also reaching out to a new audience?

Here’s a solution.

When looking for sponsored content opportunities, search for niche influencers to attract and retain a genuinely interested audience. Instead of choosing a big name, reach out to a local industry expert with around 15K dedicated and engaged subscribers.

Social Media Content Creation Made Easy

We get it — creating professional-looking content, especially video content, is easier said than done. Whether you and your team are camera-shy or editing a video in Adobe Premiere feels like rocket science to you, we’ve got you covered. Give us a call, we’re here to help.

The post How to Get Better at Social Media Content Creation in 2022 appeared first on The HOTH.

But here’s the thing:

Companies are shifting more of their budgets on social media, which means that it’s harder than ever to stand out. Social media ad spend is projected to exceed $200 billion by 2024.

But just randomly creating a few posts won’t be enough to grow your following.

So how can you reach and connect with your audience on social media? How can you promote your products or services and drive more sales to your business?

A solid social media campaign can help you do both at scale.

This article will cover what a social media campaign is and provide real-life examples of effective campaigns. We’ll also explore how you can create and launch your own social marketing campaigns without breaking the bank.

What Is a Social Media Campaign?

A social media campaign is a coordinated effort aimed at helping your business meet its marketing objectives using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It involves running a campaign with a specific outcome and measuring those results over time.

A well-executed social media campaign can help your company:

• Raise brand awareness
• Promote your products or services
• Gather data about your market
• Drive inbound traffic
• Generate leads and sales

Social media provides you with the opportunity to engage with your audience.

When people follow and interact with your brand, they’re more likely to make a purchase. In fact, 77% of people said social media inspires them to get more information about a product or brand.

The Getty Museum offers a good example of a social media campaign. At the height of the pandemic, many places (including museums) had to close down to slow the spread of the virus.

The Getty Museum came up with a creative campaign to take advantage of stay-at-home orders and engage its followers.

The rules were simple: choose your favorite artwork, find a few things around your house, and attempt to recreate the artwork.

(Image Source)

What made the campaign effective is that it encouraged user-generated content (UGC) — content created by people instead of brands. UGC is often more relatable than any content a brand or company creates. And here, the barriers to participating were practically nonexistent.

Needless to say, the social media campaign was a huge hit. People responded in droves and shared their own hilarious comparisons, including this recreation of “Madonna and Child.”.

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Instead of coming up with its own content, The Getty Museum got hundreds of unique submissions from people who suddenly had to stay at home. The most popular entries got over 1,100 retweets and almost 10,000 likes.

This example shows how wide-reaching a social media campaign can be. Of course, the type of campaign that you run will largely depend on what your goals are.

Let’s take a closer look in the next section.

Social Media Campaign Goals That You Can Set (With Examples)

And it’s not just brand awareness; platforms like Facebook and Instagram can support practically every marketing objective.

Here are different goals that you can set for a social media campaign. We’ll also provide real-life examples for each.

Raise Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness is important for any company as it represents the first step in the sales funnel — a set of steps that prospects go through to become a customer.

One channel that consumers use to find and learn more about new products is social media. In fact, 43% of consumers have used social media to discover a brand.

One way that companies raise brand awareness for new products is with branded hashtags and influencers or Celebrities, which is what Innocent Drinks did with its #definitelyblue campaign.

It even got Duncan James from the band Blue to promote its drink — pun intended.

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Whether you’re launching a new product or entering a new market, an effective social media campaign can help you raise brand awareness and drive interest.

Increase Website Traffic

Adding links to your site from a social media campaign is a great way to attract more traffic. You could create resources that help your audience learn more about certain topics and add links to your content for visitors to click through.

Here’s an example of a keyword research guide that we shared on our Facebook page:

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Visitors on our page can see the post and click through to learn more. Likewise, you can share resources on your social media profiles and drive traffic to your website.

Generate Leads and Sales

No surprises here. A strong social media campaign can help you spread the word about new products or services that you’re launching to generate sales.

Even global brands like Starbucks turn to social media to attract new customers. One example of how the company builds hype around limited-time products is its Unicorn Frappuccino campaign.

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The drink was only available from April 19th through April 23rd in 2017. But within only a few short days, the hashtag #unicornfrappuccino received over 150,000 posts.

The result?

The drink led to an increase in same-store sales for the second quarter by 3% — which is a lot when you hit Starbucks’ scale.

Of course, you don’t need to have colorful products to increase sales on social media. But you need to find a unique approach to create an effective campaign to generate sign-ups and leads for your company.

Boost brand engagement

Brand engagement is a measure of how many people are interacting with your posts. Examples include likes, shares, and comments.

A good example of how social media can help boost brand engagement comes from Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign. Apple created the hashtag #shotoniphone and challenged iPhone users to share their best photos.

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Users could have their photos featured on Apple’s social media channels and even earn a licensing fee for their work. With over 24 million posts (and counting) on the hashtag #shotoniphone, it’s safe to say that the campaign was extremely successful.

Create a Community

An effective social media campaign can help you create a community around your brand.

As an example, consider Instant Pot — a brand of multi-cookers that combines multiple cooking options in one device. The company created a group on Facebook, which now has over three million members.

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Having a community around your brand can be a huge asset. It lends more credibility to your products or services, especially when others are talking about them in a positive light.

Now that we’ve covered different examples of social media goals that you can set let’s look at how you can create your own campaign.

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Campaign in 5 Steps

Whether you’re looking to promote a new product, increase brand engagement, or generate more leads, you need to develop a plan first to help your campaign succeed.

Follow these steps to create and launch an effective social media campaign.

1. Research Your Target Audience

The first step to creating a social media campaign is to have a clear idea of who you’re targeting. This will enable you to create content that resonates with your audience.

A good exercise here is to create a buyer persona — a profile that describes who your target audience is based on market research. Personas enable you to put a face to your customers and help you personalize your efforts.

Ask the following questions to help you learn more about your audience:

• Who are they? Include demographic information such as age, gender, location, income, and education.
• What type of content do they engage with? Determine topics of interest and create content categories based on your research (blog posts, listicles, videos, etc.).
• What are their pain points? Describe the common challenges your audience is trying to and how your products or services can help.
• What platforms do they use? Identify the social media platform your target audience primarily uses (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.).
• Where do they go for information? Identify the primary sources your audience uses to gather information when making a purchasing decision.

Of course, you don’t have to gather this data from scratch. Use data about your existing customers to help you develop a buyer persona.

If you’re already active on Facebook, be sure to check out Facebook Audience Insights to gather information about your followers and how they interact with your brand.

2. Decide on a Social Media Campaign Goal

You should always aim to tie a social media campaign to a specific goal. Defining a goal will help keep you accountable and make it easier to measure your efforts.

Here are goals that you consider for your social media campaigns:

• Increase brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Acquire leads and customers
• Boost brand engagement
• Strengthen your community

Start by setting a broad objective to lay the foundation for your campaign planning. Then use the SMART framework to bring more focus and clarity to your goals.

SMART is an acronym that stands for:

• Specific: Saying that you want to increase brand awareness is too broad. Any goal you choose should be as specific as possible — like growing your audience by 10,000 followers.
• Measurable: Quantifying a goal makes it more impactful and makes it easier to track your progress. Define the metrics that will help you measure success.
• Achievable: When setting a goal, it has to be an objective that your team can reasonably accomplish with the resources they have.
• Relevant: This is where you need to think about the bigger picture. Any goal that you set for your campaign should align closely with your business objectives.
• Time-bound: Finally, goals should have a clear target date. This will help your team prioritize their efforts and keep the campaign on track.

Let’s say that one of your marketing goals is to raise brand awareness. An example of a SMART goal might look something like this:

• “Boost post impressions on Facebook and Instagram by 20% within six months.

Once you’ve defined a clear goal, you can get to work on creating a social media campaign.

3. Identify the Social Media Channel(s) You’ll Use

There are an endless number of social media channels that you can use to promote your brand. But unless you have a giant budget and experienced team, you should focus on one or two channels first.

Some of the most popular channels include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• Pinterest

Understanding your target audience is key here. What channels are they most active on?

For example, platforms like Snapchat and TikTok tend to be popular for younger audiences, while channels like Facebook and Instagram are more popular among millennials.

This graphic from Pew Research Center provides a helpful breakdown of each platform:

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Something else to consider is what your marketing goals are, as some platforms are better for raising brand awareness and generating sales than others. Take a look at your competitors to get a sense of the channels that you should launch campaigns on.

Try not to spread yourself too thin here. It’s far better to provide more engaging experiences on a few social networks than to just be present on ten.

4. Plan and Create Your Content

Content is at the heart of every social media campaign.

Ensuring that your content appeals to your audience is a top priority. Fail to engage your users, and they’ll scroll past your content or lose interest in your campaign within seconds.

Here are some ideas that you can get started with.

Run a Contest

Running a contest can be a very effective way of increasing brand engagement.

It involves giving something away for free and providing details on how people can participate (usually by following your page or using a hashtag). Once the contest is over, you announce a winner and notify them directly.

Here’s an example of a giveaway that Shea Moisture ran on its Instagram page:

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When running any kind of contest or giveaway, make sure that you adhere to all official rules for each platform.

For example, if you’re running a contest on Facebook or Instagram, you must state that it’s not associated with either company. You also must include clear guidelines and any restrictions that may apply.

Create an Educational Series

People don’t just use social media for entertainment. They also use social channels like Facebook and Instagram to learn something new.

Here’s an example of a video tutorial that Sephora posted on its Instagram page:

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The video also includes details about the products that are featured so that viewers can search for them on Sephora’s site and make a purchase.

Creating an educational series can position your brand as a trusted source of information. What does your target audience want to learn more about? What are some of their pain points? Use these answers to create educational content.

Collaborate with Brands or Influencers

Co-marketing gives you the opportunity to work with another brand. It can also help you reach a new audience when done right.

An example is the unusual collaboration between Forever 21 and Taco Bell when they launched a limited-edition Forever 21 x Taco Bell clothing collection.

The companies used the hashtag #f21xtacobell to build hype and spread the word.

(Image Source)

While it makes sense to work with brands or influencers in your industry, this doesn’t always have to be the case (as shown from the example above).

Encourage User-Generated Content

Encouraging user-generated content is a great way to get your audience talking about your brand. This content can come in the form of photos or videos.

As an example, Trello ran a campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #WhereITrello where it invited customers to share photos of their workstation for a chance to win swag.

(Image Source)

Consider offering a free gift to increase engagement and incentivize participation.

Create Bite-Sized Videos

In 2022, the average consumer watches a staggering 19 hours of online video each week — mostly on social channels.

Short “bite-sized” videos are becoming an increasingly popular format, especially for platforms like TikTok, which feature videos from 15 seconds to three minutes.

Even Instagram has jumped on the bandwagon with Instagram Reels — short video clips that users can create and share with others.

Here’s an example of a short clip that Krispy Kreme posted to its Twitter:

(Image Source)

These types of videos don’t have to be that complicated either. Plus, you can easily share one video across multiple platforms to increase your reach.

There’s no shortage of ideas that you can try to inspire your next campaign. However, the examples above offer a great starting point. Others include jumping on current trends, hosting ask me anything (AMA) sessions, and conducting live streams.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you create content for your campaigns:

• Experiment with different formats: Don’t limit yourself to just one format. Include other types of multimedia in your campaigns, such as images, videos, and even live streams.
• Maintain consistent branding: Whether you’re creating a campaign on one platform or multiple, keep your branding consistent across all of them.
• Create a unique hashtag: Creating a branded hashtag helps you keep track of interactions with your audience.
• Focus on one message: Sharing the same message across multiple channels will help you reinforce your message and improve brand recall.
• Automate your posting schedule: Use social media tools like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule your campaign posts in advance and monitor brand mentions.

Finally, 46% of consumers say that one of the top traits that make a brand best-in-class on social media is audience engagement.

By directly engaging with customers on social media, you’re building stronger relationships and giving them more memorable experiences. Ask your audience questions, share their posts, and respond to their comments.

5. Track and Measure Your Results

Tracking and measuring your result is absolutely key. If you don’t measure how your campaigns are performing, you’ll have a hard time determining what worked and what didn’t.

Here are some of the most important metrics that you should track:

• Impressions: Impressions are the number of people who have seen your content or posts in their feeds. Note that one user can count for multiple impressions.
• Engagement: Engagement includes likes, shares, and comments. A high engagement rate can help you measure the effectiveness of your content. Social listening is key to tracking detailed engagement metrics.
• Video views: Video views is the number of views that your videos get on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
• Followers: Followers is simply the number of people who have seen your content and decided to follow your page. It’s a good indication of your audience growth rate.
• Traffic: Traffic is the number of visitors who viewed your content on social media and clicked through to your website. If one of your goals is to drive more traffic to your site, you’ll want to know which channels are most effective.
• Mentions: Mentions are the number of times that your audience tags your brand in their posts. Monitoring mentions is a good way of measuring brand awareness.
• Conversions: Conversions can be anything from product sales to software trials and sign-ups. Keeping an eye on these metrics can tell you how effective your social media campaigns are. Use UTM tags or tracking link shorteners to effectively link sales or leads to social media campaigns.

The metrics that you should track will depend on what your goals are.

For example, if your goal is to raise brand awareness, you’ll want to monitor metrics like impressions and audience growth. But if you’re looking to boost engagement, you’ll want to track metrics like shares and brand mentions.

Track the metrics that are important for you. Then once the data comes in, you’ll have a better idea of how well (or poorly) your campaign performed. Use these insights to continue refining your strategy and creating new campaigns in the future.

Conclusion

With billions of users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it’s no surprise that more companies are turning to social media to promote their brands. However, making a few posts here and there just isn’t a viable strategy.

The good news is that an effective social media campaign can help you stand out and reach your target audience.

But if you’re just looking for a way to reach consumers at the bottom of the funnel and drive more sales, a search-based campaign using PPC and SEO might be a better option.

Looking for help with your online marketing campaigns? Schedule a free consultation with our marketing consultants to learn more.

The post How to Create and Launch a Social Media Campaign in 2022 appeared first on The HOTH.

But did you know that it can also boost your SEO?

You may have heard that social media has no effect on search engine optimization, but that’s a myth. Social SEO can improve your search engine discoverability, build brand awareness, and even increase your conversion rate.

If you haven’t been doing social SEO, don’t worry — this list of nine easy strategies will help you get started.

What is social SEO?

Let’s start with a quick definition of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO refers to actions you can take to improve your search engine ranking and the quality of your search engine traffic — anything you do to show up on the first page of Google for your dream keywords.

Social SEO focuses on using social media to enhance your search engine performance. It’s a branch of SEO that’s often neglected, but it can help you improve the quantity and quality of your organic traffic.

What are the benefits of social SEO?

Some of you might still feel skeptical. You’ve heard that social media backlinks don’t have any SEO juice.

Whether or not social signals affect your site’s search ranking on Google has been hotly debated for years.

But even if there’s no direct effect, social media can indirectly benefit your SEO efforts in several ways. Let’s go through a few reasons why you should care about social SEO.

Social media is a search engine

When people talk about search engine optimization, they usually mean optimizing for Google.

The other traditional search engines, like Bing, lag way behind in terms of market share.

But social media sites like Facebook are also search engines — and they’re very popular. Facebook alone has nearly 2 billion daily active users.

The question is: are people using social media to search for products?

One study of fashion consumers says yes. 41% of them use Facebook to learn about and discover new products. 35% use Instagram, and 21% use Pinterest.

In the 16–24 age group, social media is actually more popular than traditional search engines for researching brands.

With a good social presence, social media search engines can send new customers to your website.

Social media pages can rank

If you type the name of a business into Google, what results are at the top of the SERP?

If the company has a website, that will probably be first. But the brand’s Facebook page or other social media pages also often rank near the top.

In some cases, social media business pages even rank for unbranded keywords.

You should assume that search engine queries might lead to your social media pages and make sure they have the information that searchers are looking for.

Social media increases brand awareness and reputation

People are more likely to click your SERP listing if they know who you are and have a good impression of your brand. Social media can help with that.

A social media presence builds awareness of your brand and makes you look more legitimate and trustworthy.

Social media helps you learn about your audience

Engaging with your audience on social media can help you learn more about them.

What type of content gets the most likes and shares? What are people saying in the comments?

This is knowledge you can use in your SEO efforts. For example, if lots of people on Facebook are asking a certain question, people are probably googling it too. Write an article on the topic to bring those searchers to your site.

Social SEO prepares you for the future

Google’s algorithm changes all the time. It’s very possible that social signals will take on greater importance in the future.

Social media is an integral part of today’s internet landscape, and it continues to grow. By 2025, social media is expected to have 4.41 billion users.

Google knows that, and we can expect that it will continue to adjust how its search engine interacts with social media sites.

What those changes will look like is anyone’s guess, but optimizing your social media presence will put you in a good position for any updates.

9 top social SEO strategies for 2022

Social SEO doesn’t have to be difficult to understand. Follow these nine simple social media marketing strategies to boost your search engine optimization efforts.

1. Fill out social profiles completely

For each social media platform that you use, make sure you’ve filled out your business information completely.

There are a few reasons this matters.

First, it simply gives the user the best experience. Remember that some people might find your social media account before they’ve seen your website or any other information about you.

Whether they’re looking for your phone number, a description of your business, or a link to your website, it should be easy to find.

Secondly, some of this information might appear on a search engine results page. For example, Google listings for Facebook pages can include the business location, description, review ratings, number of page likes, and more. You should make sure your profile isn’t missing any of this information.

If you don’t have the bandwidth to register and complete all of your social media profiles, we can do it for you.

2. Go beyond Facebook

Don’t get us wrong — you should be on Facebook. It’s still the most popular social media platform in the world.

But other social media sites and apps are up and coming, and businesses are increasingly investing in them.

62% of marketers say that Facebook is one of the most important platforms for reaching their business goals — a clear majority.

However, that number is down from 78% the year before. Meanwhile, the number of marketers who say TikTok is important has increased by 700%, and the number who chose Snapchat is up 1200%.

3. Use keywords

Keywords are the first thing many people think of when they think of SEO.

You can use keywords for social SEO too. And unlike Google, not many people are thinking about keyword research and optimization on social media, so it’s less competitive. Here are two ways you can use keywords on your social media pages:

Use keywords in your business description

All of the major social media sites have a spot for you to summarize who you are and what you do. Include one or two of your most important keywords in this blurb.

It will help people find your page on the social media platform. It may even help them find you on Google.

Include keywords in your posts 

A common SEO strategy for websites is to center each piece of content around a keyword or two that you want it to rank for.

You can do the same thing with social media posts.

Consider your ideal audience and think about what they might be typing into the Facebook (or Instagram or Twitter) search bar. Build posts around those keywords.

4. Don’t skip (or overuse) hashtags

Hashtags can be a valuable tool for social media marketers. They increase the visibility of your account and your posts.

But more isn’t always better. An excessive list of hashtags in your social media post looks spammy and distracts from your main message.

It’s best to select a few important hashtags for each piece of content you post. Just like SEO keywords, you should think about search intent. Here are a few ways you can pick hashtags:

Check out what your competitors are using.

Brainstorm hashtag ideas by looking at popular posts by your competitors or influencers in your niche. Click each hashtag and see what comes up. Do the results fit with your brand image?

Look at trending hashtags.

Some social platforms, like Twitter, have a list of currently trending hashtags.

If none of the trends are relevant to your brand, don’t force it. But if you can think of a clever way to incorporate a popular hashtag, it could bring a lot of new traffic to your page.

Create your own hashtag.

You don’t have to use existing hashtags. You can create something new — a hashtag associated with your brand alone.

A unique hashtag doesn’t do much good if people aren’t interested in it, though. The best branded hashtags invite social media users to participate.

A great example is Red Bull’s #PutACanOnIt campaign, which had people take pictures of Red Bull cans in various scenarios.

It spread brand awareness while encouraging social media users to engage with the brand. Creating your own hashtag can be part of a larger content pillar strategy on social media.

5. Include high-quality images and video

Some social media platforms are specifically focused on video (like TikTok) or images (like Instagram).

But videos and photos are essential on other platforms as well. They make your posts more attractive and noticeable.

They’re also more popular than text posts. 68% of social media users prefer engaging with images, and 50% prefer video.

6. Engage with your audience

Social media is supposed to be social.

That means you should be responding to questions and comments about your business and products on social media. Make posts that encourage your followers to join the conversation and share or retweet your content.

The advantages of interacting with your social media follower include:

• You create a positive impression of your business
• You learn what your audience likes and what concerns they have
• People are more likely to remember your brand when you interact with them

7. Work with influencers

So far, we’ve talked about how your own social media accounts benefit SEO.

The same principles apply to social media influencers. These accounts can build awareness about your brand, help your business show up in searches, and drive traffic to your website. 48% of marketers say that their return on investment (ROI) from influencer marketing is better than other marketing channels.

If you’re interested in working with influencers but haven’t done so yet, the first step is to find the right partners.

The best influencer isn’t the most famous person on Instagram — does Selena Gomez’s audience really overlap with yours? It’s someone whose audience is similar to your ideal customer and whose typical content matches your brand messaging.

You can find potential influencers by searching hashtags or keywords relevant to your brand.

Once you’ve identified an influencer you’d like to work with, make them a pitch. It helps to really get to know the influencer’s content before you reach out to them. What’s their usual format — unboxing videos? Reviews with photos?

Let them know which content of theirs you like and ask if they’d be interested in working on something similar for you.

8. Track social shares, and boost the most popular content

Tracking how often your content is liked and shared gives you information that you can use in your SEO efforts.

For example, if a particular post gets a lot of attention on Facebook, you could develop new content for your website on the same topic. It can give you ideas for keywords to focus on for SEO (or PPC ads).

You can also continue to promote the popular post on social media. It will get more shares, which means greater visibility for your brand.

If the content getting shared on social media is from your website (for example, a blog post that you posted on LinkedIn), you know that it resonates with your audience. It might be time to further optimize that content for search engines.

9. Listen to social conversations

Another way to find out what your audience thinks about you is to listen to conversations on social media.

That means you pay attention to what other social media users are saying about your business and industry. One way to do this is by searching social platforms for keywords and hashtags.

There are also social listening tools, like Hootsuite and TweetDeck, that help you monitor your brand mentions in real time.

Conclusion

Social SEO is an often overlooked element of search engine optimization. A few tweaks to your Instagram or LinkedIn profile can help your page rank on search engines and increase the quality of your traffic.

Anyone can do social media SEO. But managing so many social profiles — not to mention doing traditional SEO work — can be too time-consuming for a lot of small business owners. And you’ll get a better ROI if you work with a professional.

We can help. Schedule a call with an SEO expert today.

The post 9 Social SEO Strategies to Build Your Authority in 2022 appeared first on The HOTH.

As a result, B2B marketing relies heavily on lead generation, content marketing, and nurture campaigns to draw in potential customers and guide them through each stage of the buying process. 

Out of all the marketing channels you can use for B2B (SEO, email marketing, etc.), there’s one that you definitely shouldn’t ignore – LinkedIn marketing. 

Why is LinkedIn advertising and content so effective for B2B marketing?

For one, LinkedIn is the #1 platform for generating leads, and every 4 out of 5 users drive business decisions at their companies – both of which are perfect for B2B marketing efforts. 

It’s also one of the largest social media platforms in existence, with over 875 million users worldwide and over 58 million companies (which is a goldmine for B2B marketers). 

For all these reasons (and more), 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as a part of their content marketing efforts. 

Read on to learn what you need to know to keep your B2B company competitive by constructing a LinkedIn marketing strategy. 

What’s LinkedIn Marketing All About?

Starting in 2003, LinkedIn has been the quintessential social media platform for business professionals. Ever since the beginning, its purpose has been to help professionals network, build their careers, and share their ideas. 

It’s the largest professional network that exists today, which is why it’s such a valuable marketing tool. 

It’s also far more effective at generating targeted leads than Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

LinkedIn marketing uses the platform to foster new business relationships, raise brand awareness, share content, generate leads, and drive traffic to your website. 

The platform is well-aware of its power for marketers, which is why they provide LinkedIn Analytics for marketers. To access them, log in to your company page, and select Analytics from the drop-down menu. Important note: To view your analytics, you must be set up as an admin or an analyst. 

The metrics you get to view within LinkedIn include:

• Total number of page views 
• Unique visitors (excludes multiple visits from the same user) 
• Visitor demographics 
• Video views 
• Reactions
• Comments 
• Shares 
• CTR (click-through-rate) 
• Engagement rate 
• Follows 
• Total followers
• Organic followers
• Many others

All these metrics and filters make it effortless to keep track of your marketing efforts, which will heighten your chances for success. 

LinkedIn marketing is so popular because the platform allows users to shape their marketing strategy however they want, which is something you won’t find on other platforms. There are also numerous other perks, so let’s take a look at them now. 

The Benefits of LinkedIn Marketing Campaigns for B2B  

Besides its built-in analytics, LinkedIn has some unique marketing advantages that place it in a class all its own. 

That’s especially true for B2B companies, as LinkedIn’s features are perfect for nurturing customers through a long sales cycle. 

While LinkedIn may seem similar to other social networks like Facebook at first glance, it’s completely different. If you’re in charge of social media management for your B2B company, you should place more emphasis on LinkedIn marketing than you do on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Here’s a look at some of the unique benefits you’ll enjoy from using LinkedIn to meet your B2B marketing goals. 

Reach a more professional audience than other platforms 

TikTok and Instagram are fantastic platforms to target if you’re after a younger audience. Yet, most B2B companies will need to target older business professionals, which is why LinkedIn is the way to go. 

LinkedIn members tend to be older and more professional than users on Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram. Instead of listening to their favorite influencer to find out which shoes to buy, LinkedIn users are more concerned with expanding their network, learning about new products and services, and connecting with other professionals. 

LinkedIn users also have higher levels of education and income than the other platforms, so you’re more likely to run into managers, executives, and other key decision-makers, which are ideal targets for B2B campaigns. 

The proof?

36% of US adults aged 30 to 49 use LinkedIn, and half of all adults with college degrees use the platform. 

If you advertise on the platform, your ads will reach a whopping 160 million users, which is an insane amount of exposure. 

Lastly, 52% of buyers list LinkedIn as being the most influential channel for them when conducting research. 

These statistics are proof that LinkedIn is the top social media platform for reaching a professional audience and guiding them down your sales funnel. 

Use industry-specific variables for superior audience targeting 

Another benefit of using LinkedIn for marketing is how specific you can get when targeting your audience. 

Facebook prides itself on its audience targeting, but it only uses interest and behavior-based factors. While that’s more robust than other platforms, it can’t hold a candle to LinkedIn – which uses tons of targeting variables, including the following:

• Job title 
• Seniority
• Job function 
• Company name 
• Company size 
• Industry 
• Skill
• College degree type and name 

As you can see, these variables allow you to get hyper-specific with audience targeting, which is an invaluable feature for B2B marketers you won’t find anywhere else.

With these variables, you can pinpoint the exact type of business and professional that you want to target. For example, if you sell software solutions to financial companies, you can tweak your variables so that your ads only display for key decision-makers from financial firms (supervisors, managers, executives, etc.). 

Even companies that are more consumer-based can benefit from LinkedIn’s incredible audience targeting variables, especially if they sell to specific job titles. 

Take advantage of unique advertising types 

LinkedIn ads have some truly unique features that differ from the typical social media ad fodder. 

Like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, LinkedIn allows users to leverage traditional sponsored posts, text ads, and sidebar ads to generate clicks, leads, and conversions. Yet, while that’s all the other platforms offer, LinkedIn is only getting started. 

One of its most unique advertising types is its built-in Sponsored InMail that integrates into the internal messaging system. 

What’s that?

It’s essentially a way to integrate email marketing techniques into your overall LinkedIn strategy. The messages are highly similar to emails in nature but with a twist. LinkedIn’s InMail features open and click-through rates that are superior to traditional emails. 

So if you plan on sending nurturing emails, try sending them through Sponsored InMail instead for a higher CTR. 

This isn’t the only type of unique advertisement you’ll get to run through LinkedIn, either. 

Single-image ads 

These ads appear in users’ LinkedIn feeds and contain a stand-out image to attract attention. 

The ad will seamlessly transition its dimensions depending on whether the user is on a desktop PC or a mobile device. JPG, PNG, and GIF file types are all accepted with a limit of 5 MB. 

Video ads 

These are especially useful for B2B marketers, as you can include a video ad at every stage of the buyer’s journey. 

The duration is impressive here, as videos can range from 3 minutes to 30 minutes, giving you plenty of time to inform and educate your audience. 

The video must be an MP4 and no larger than 200 MB to upload. 

Carousel ads 

Carousel ads are a great way to tell a story through a series of images. The possibilities are near endless here, from listing different product options to listing testimonials and everything in between. 

File types must be JPG or PNG with a max file size of 10 MB. 

Event ads 

Do you have an important business conference or seminar coming up? Then you can use an event ad on LinkedIn to promote it to your audience. 

Event ads feature a high-resolution image and a brief text description along with the following:

• The event name 
• The date and time 
• The location 
• A list of LinkedIn users that are either attending or are interested 

Due to LinkedIn’s amazing audience targeting, its event ads are a great way to get the word out about an upcoming conference, seminar, or celebration. 

Document ads 

This type of ad is unique, as you get to attach a document to it. This is an incredible way to generate B2B leads, as you can include opt-in email forms and messaging lists. 

You’re golden as long as the document is 100 MB and less than 30 pages. 

Accepted file types include PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, and PPTX. 

Lead gen forms 

Last but not least, LinkedIn has lead generation forms you can use to acquire leads straight from the platform. 

That means you won’t have to waste time directing users to your website before acquiring them as a lead. 

These pre-filled forms contain vital contact information fields that are superb for generating leads. You’ll be able to collect user names, email addresses, phone numbers, and more. 

Superior Lead Nurturing Capabilities 

Besides all the unique advertising formats on LinkedIn, it also features incredible lead nurturing. After all, if you can’t guide a lead down your sales pipeline, you won’t stand a chance at converting them. 

That’s especially true for longer B2B sales cycles that require follow-up emails and relevant content that helps clients ultimately make a purchase. 

Traditionally, this type of nurturing was limited to emails. However, LinkedIn includes a tool specifically for lead nurturing called the Lead Accelerator. 

What makes it special?

It enables you to track your most promising prospects while sending them targeted ads and messages explicitly geared at them. 

You can even segment your audience based on how they engage with your content. 

Lead Accelerator features 

For example, you can send a series of targeted messages to leads that only interacted with your homepage. Since they’ve only seen an overview of what you have to offer, sending them more specialized content (such as more significant details about a product or service that’s likely to solve one of their problems) is the way to go. 

Conversely, you can send different messages to leads who interacted with one of your product pages. Since they’ve shown interest in something you sell, you can send them content that’s aimed at converting them, such as:

• Product use cases 
• Customer testimonials 
• Case studies 
• Price comparisons 

As a bonus, your ads and messages can reach your audience anywhere online. The platform also supports A/B testing, which will help you discover the types of ads and messages that resonate the most with your audience, which will boost your conversion rates.   

The built-in reporting makes it easy to track your success across every stage of the buyer’s journey, so you’ll be able to make any necessary adjustments. 

The Lead Accelerator enables you to target both known and anonymous leads, expanding your reach. 

In short, LinkedIn’s Lead Accelerator should be a staple tool of any B2B marketer due to its effectiveness at converting leads. 

B2B marketing is notoriously challenging, with 95% of web visitors bouncing before providing their email addresses and 80% not opening nurturing emails. With the Lead Accelerator’s features by your side, you can nurture your audience in other ways besides relying on email. 

LinkedIn has superior conversion rates than other platforms 

The final benefit we’ll mention is LinkedIn’s fantastic conversion rate. This is due to many of the benefits we’ve mentioned so far, such as the Lead Accelerator, audience targeting, and unique types of ads. 

Here’s a quick comparison of LinkedIn’s conversion rate with other major social media platforms and search engines:

• Twitter: 0.9%
• Google search: 2.58%
• Instagram: 1.85%
• LinkedIn: 6.1%

As you can see, LinkedIn’s conversion rate obliterates the others, even the mighty Google search. 

The Basics of LinkedIn Marketing for B2B Companies 

Now that you know why LinkedIn is a worthy marketing tool, it’s time to learn how to develop a winning strategy for your B2B business. 

First, you’ll need to get a grasp of the basics before moving on to more advanced features and techniques. 

That includes things like:

• Hashtag research 
• When to use a LinkedIn company page over a LinkedIn profile 
• Post content of varying lengths 
• Staying consistent with your publishing schedule
• Sharing external articles and blog posts

These are all crucial concepts to master, so let’s take a more in-depth look at each one. 

Hashtag research 

You can think of LinkedIn hashtags as similar to SEO keywords. Just like keywords, they’re terms you use to increase your visibility to your target audience. 

Also, like keywords, you need to conduct some research before placing hashtags in your content. 

Choose the wrong tags, and you could wind up placing your content in front of the wrong people. 

How do you conduct hashtag research?

Start by inputting a generalized hashtag into LinkedIn’s search bar. For instance, if you’re in financial software, try searching for #financialsoftware. Take note of how many followers the hashtag has, as well as how often it’s getting used. 

From there, start getting more specific with your hashtag searches while paying attention to who’s following them. 

Some examples include #financialtrackingsoftware, #financialanalytics, #financialfreedom, etc. 

Hashtag research tips 

Don’t place too much emphasis on hashtags that have high numbers of followers, as it’s not the most important metric. 

Instead, focus on finding hashtags that relate to your products and services and have followers that you think would be interested in what you offer. Hyper-specific hashtags may reach a smaller audience, but they’re more likely to convert. 

As far as how many hashtags you should target for each post, 3 is the magic number. You should opt for two broad tags and one niche tag to get the best of both worlds. 

If you’re drawing a blank hashtag-wise, LinkedIn has a workaround that only a few people know about.

When viewing a hashtag, click on the ellipses (…) next to it, and select Discover New Hashtags. This will direct you to the Discovery Hub, which contains dozens of related hashtags and topics. That can be a real lifesaver if you’re having a hard time finding hashtags related to your niche. 

Our final tip for hashtag research is to always place your hashtags at the END of your content. They differ from SEO keywords in this regard, as you want to refrain from threading them throughout the post. 

When to use a LinkedIn Profile vs. a LinkedIn Page 

Next, it’s essential to know that LinkedIn profiles and pages have different features and serve different functions. 

The first difference is that users can follow a LinkedIn page without sending a connection and waiting for approval. That comes in handy whenever LinkedIn users share your page with their connections, as they can all follow and interact with your page straight away. 

Another distinction is that pages are primarily for companies, and profiles are primarily for individuals. 

Not only that, but LinkedIn profiles have the ability to send private messages to connections asking to join your network. The ability to engage in one-on-one conversations is particularly attractive for consultants and coaches, so they’ll definitely want to use a LinkedIn profile. 

A profile is also the way to go if you take a more individualized approach to business. If you prefer interacting with your clients personally, you’ll enjoy the features that go along with a profile more than a page. 

You can also leverage both to get the best of both worlds. You can list your occupation on your personal profile and link to your company page. That way, whenever a prospect views your profile, they’ll see a link to your company, too. 

For most B2B marketers, a company profile page will suffice, but you can make use of personal profiles to interact with your clients through messages, which can be effective. 

For instance, if one of your prospects is having second thoughts, it can be advantageous to have the ability to chat with them through LinkedIn. That way, you can address their issues personally and continue directing them down your sales pipeline. 

Create a mixture of long and short posts 

To achieve thought leader status in your respective field, you should use a combination of short-form and long-form LinkedIn posts. 

If you only release longer posts, you risk being seen as too verbose by your clients. Every time they see one of your posts, they’ll know that they need at least 10 whole minutes to spare to read it, which can be cumbersome for your readers. 

At the same time, longer posts are the best way to educate and inform your audience, so you shouldn’t ignore them outright. 

Shorter, punchier posts do a great job of getting to the point, which readers will appreciate. Yet, if you only release short posts, your prospects may feel that you lack substance and expertise. 

The solution?

Use a mixture of long and short posts to keep your content fresh. Another tactic is to mix things up with the occasional high-resolution image, video, or infographic – as these types of visuals are excellent for engaging your audience and holding their attention. 

Maintain a consistent publishing schedule 

We’ll start with the good news first. LinkedIn is a much more relaxed platform in terms of content release schedules than search engines. 

That means you won’t have to wear yourself out trying to post two to four times a week on LinkedIn. That’s because content on LinkedIn has a notoriously long lifespan, much longer than most other social media platforms. 

TikTok and Snapchat’s content begins to decay immediately due to the nature of their platforms. Twitter content only lasts for 15 minutes, and you can squeeze about 6 hours out of Facebook. 

On LinkedIn, however, content stays relevant for up to 24 hours, which is certainly impressive. 

While LinkedIn doesn’t require 24/7 posting, it needs a healthy amount of consistency. 

That’s because a consistent schedule builds trust in your network. If they can rely on consistent release dates from your brand, you’ll be the first company they look to whenever they need something. 

Whether you post once a day or once a month, do your best to stay consistent with your release schedule and then monitor the results. After a while, take note of which times yield you the most engagement, and make those times your regulars. 

Share external links through LinkedIn 

Instagram and other social media platforms don’t allow you to share external links to other websites, but LinkedIn is different. 

It’s entirely possible to share external links, not only to your website but also to others. That means you can share blogs from your business partners, as well as other helpful content for your audience. 

Besides driving traffic to the sites that you link, this technique serves another purpose – networking. 

Similar to guest blogging for SEO, linking a business page from a colleague (including crediting them, of course) can lead them to share your post with their audience – introducing your brand to new prospects. 

Advanced LinkedIn Marketing Tips

Once you get a handle on the basics, you can take things up a notch with LinkedIn’s more advanced features. 

These include the Matched Audience feature, LinkedIn Groups, and using traditional SEO tactics to bolster your campaign. 

The Matched Audience tool 

The Matched Audience tool is your secret weapon for audience retargeting. That’s excellent news for B2B business owners because the chances are high that customers WILL NOT convert on their first visit to your company page. 

In fact, only 2% of first-time website visitors convert, leaving 98% of visitors that do not. The Matched Audience tool lets you target the remaining 98% to improve your conversion rates. 

With the Matched Audience tool, you can upload existing accounts and mail contacts, and you can retarget website visitors to give them a second chance to make a purchase. 

LinkedIn Groups 

Are you having a hard time connecting with your target audience and discovering what they’re talking about?

Then you need to leverage LinkedIn Groups, which are groups of individuals from your niche. 

Whenever you take a peek at a new group, you get to see an overview of its highlights, which will help you gauge how active it is at the moment. 

By joining relevant LinkedIn Groups, you’ll gain invaluable insights into your target audience‘s behavior, desires, and needs. 

The best part?

It’s completely free to join a group on LinkedIn, and groups are massively powerful networking tools, so don’t hesitate to use them. 

Make your LinkedIn page SEO-friendly 

Last but not least, using SEO best practices will increase your LinkedIn page’s visibility on search engines, which can generate more traffic, leads, and sales. 

So, in addition to doing hashtag research, throw some keyword research in there as well. You can use our free keyword planner tool from The HOTH to make things easy. 

Use it to uncover some relevant keywords in your niche, and then place them in strategic locations on your LinkedIn profile, such as:

• The headline
• Your work experience
• Your summary 
• LinkedIn posts 

Using these keywords in the right spots can increase your chances of expanding your influence across the internet. 

Final Thoughts: LinkedIn Marketing for B2B Companies

By now, you should better understand how to use LinkedIn to market your B2B company and acquire new leads. 

LinkedIn is so popular amongst B2B marketers for many reasons, including its superior lead generation, unique ad types, and advanced marketing features and analytics. 

By leveraging these features, you can take your B2B marketing efforts to the next level without putting in too much effort. 

Do you need a winning B2B SEO strategy for your business?

Then you need to check out our excellent managed SEO services at HOTH X. Our team consists of SEO gurus with tons of experience, so don’t hesitate to book a consulting call today.     

The post The Do’s and Don’ts of B2B LinkedIn Marketing for 2023 appeared first on The HOTH.