Digital Intervention

Simplifying the Digital World

social media

Digital Strategies to put in your 2019 Marketing Plan

By on

While there are many digital strategies for marketers, the ones that stand out, are rare the ones remembered. Your clients want to use the tried and true, but they always ask for the “innovative” tactic every year. However, innovative needs to provide ROI. Here are a few strategies (that don’t have the word blockchain in the title) that will be influencing your audiences, and stealing eyeballs. These strategies have been effective for several years, and will be for several more. I recommend you provide your clients with some of the solutions below:

  • Voice activated strategies

  • Influencer marketing

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Live Video marketing

voice

Voice Search

When you talk about change in digital marketing, search has got to be the most chaotic aspect of it all. The “Google algorithm updates” alone have kept marketers awake at night. Now with the entrance of Alexa and Google Home, search has taken on a whole new perspective. Voice search is rapidly gaining acceptance among consumers. Although still in its infancy, voice search is making a huge impact in how we get information, how we purchase products, and how we interact with our environment (home control). See how Merck is Alexa to interact with their patients.

60% of people have started using voice search within the last year.

Planning Ahead

According to ComScore, at least half of all searches will be made via voice query by 2020. That’s not so far away. And it doesn’t mean that we should ignore traditional SEO, either.

The rise in instant answers without search results will continue

You’re going to see a continual rise in instant answers. What is happening is that when a lot of these voice and conversational search queries are coming through, they tend to be longer, and they tend to be seeking out an answer that a device can quickly give you a direct answer to. Things like, what I placed here, and this requires some logic and some understanding from the machines, some contextual understanding, but it’s not that challenging, and the machines are doing a good job of this.

influencer

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing as a strategy has been growing in popularity for the past few years, but new and different types of brands are now starting to take notice. By using social media listening tools a marketer can identify individuals that will help a brand get the word out. There is a defined process to identifying these influencers, and understanding the online conversation around your brand is vital to choosing the right online influencer.

85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations – BrightLocal Survey

influencer

84% of marketers planned on executing at least one influencer marketing campaign during 2017 – Inc.com

ai

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is not new – in fact, you probably already interact with marketing AI when you see ads in search results and on social media. And, 57% of marketers already use AI. However, the use of AI for marketing is only going to grow as the technology improves. 

ai

Examples of AI in Marketing

  • Chatbots
    Chatbots designed to serve one or more purposes to the customers. For example, a chatbot operating in a chat screen of a website, or a bot operating in any social networking website’s chatbox. National Geographic lets you chat with Albert Einstein on Facebook messenger to raise awareness of the launch of its new original series Genius that dissects the psyche of the physicist Albert Einstein.
  • Data analysis
    One of the most useful examples of AI in marketing is data analysis. These days you don’t have to guess what will work for what audience. There are thousands of data points attached to the target audience that can be accurately analysed by bots to understand which message is going to appeal to whom.

AI closes the gap by moving far past human limitations to consume and analyze data on a scale no human can. The “intelligence” in artificial intelligence is the ability to think independently, to grow more knowledgeable from being exposed to more information and to adapt and adjust when things change.

  • Recommendations/content curation
    Predictive analytics allows Netflix to surface and finesse recommendations. This kind of clustering algorithm is continually improving suggestions, allowing users to make the most of their subscription.Uniting information from diverse datasets is a common use of AI.Under Armour is one of the many companies to have worked with IBM’s Watson. The sports apparel company combines user data from its Record app with third-party data and research on fitness, nutrition etc.The result is the ability for the brand to offer up relevant (personalized) training and lifecycle advice based on aggregated wisdom.
  • Content Generation
    A significant portion of sports and finance related articles are already written by machines, not humans. With AI marketing, this trend is poised to spread throughout various other industries. Finance and sports are traditionally numbers-heavy industries, which makes it easy for AI programs to understand the data and translate it into human-readable articles.
    A creative solution would be providing thoughtful answers in real time to customers. Check out Google Duplex coming soon.

google ai

In 2017, marketing platforms collected and stored information such as site usage, browsing patterns, search history and content preferences to create customer profiles and behavior marketing strategies that help marketers create custom messages to address these prospects. But the next step is even more exciting.

Consider These Stats and Facts

live video

Live Video, because it’s Live – Instant Gratification

Like AI, live video is nothing new, but it’s growing exponentially. Everyone wants a piece of Facebook Live.

And, it isn’t just popular with marketers. People love watching live video too. In fact, 80% of users said they’d rather watch a live video than read a blog post, while according to Facebook, live video gets 3x more views.

Here are a few tips for getting started with live video:

  1. Use live video at events to give followers a behind-the-scenes look at the event.
  2. Show off holiday displays and sales in live video.
  3. Use live video to introduce your followers to your employees.
  4. Advertise an exclusive sale or promotion to anyone who watches your live video.

Consider These Stats and Facts

  • The $127 billion autonomous vehicle market is being driven by AI. That’s how much the self-driving car market is expected to be worth worldwide by 2027
  • 76% of smart home speaker users conduct local searches at least once a week—with 53% performing daily searches
  • Live video is more appealing to brand audiences: 80% would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts.

How AI is changing Business: A look at the limitless potential of AI 

Facebook or not to Facebook – that is the question

By on

In recent weeks the Facebook scandal has made people rethink their purpose and desire to be on Facebook, or any social media for that matter. But I’m here to give you a digital intervention. I feel your anger and frustration. And I considered heavily to delete my account as well. Not because of the scandal so much, but because I’ve grown tired of its extra baggage. But a few enlightening articles later and some deep thought, I’m back in the saddle again.

I think there are several good reasons to keep Facebook, but you should have a new perspective on Facebook. And use Facebooks strengths and get rid of the weaknesses. So below are a few reasons to keep your Facebook account. And then a few ways to clean your account up and give you a new perspective.

If after this you’re not happy, just delete the account. Just realize what you’re giving up and losing.

Facebook analyticaThe Facebook Scandal in 10 seconds

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is not so complicated, but it is a mess.

  • A Cambridge University researcher created a personality quiz app for Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of people took the quiz, and because of the way Facebook worked at the time, millions of their friends also had their data collected.
  • The researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, then sold this data to Cambridge Analytica, a company specializing in data mining. Cambridge Analytica then sold that data, allowing political parties to target people during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
  • Facebook has since tightened the rules on how apps collect data on users and their friends, but the damage has already been done. And people are outraged, leading to some deleting their Facebook accounts.

Enter – the angry FB’er.

But before you hit the delete button on your account, consider the positives of Facebook and learn how to tighten up your privacy. Remember, more detailed personal data has been stolen/hacked by thieves this year than the data they got from Facebook – Check out Equifax

“143 million people has their personal data stolen from Equifax”

Reasons to stay on Facebook & Social Media

1. Facebook Helps You Stay in Touch

The reality is that Facebook is one of the main reasons families are more in touch now than ever before.

This is especially true for adults who grew up in a world without the internet and without social media. According to the Pew Research Institute,

“a quarter of all adults surveyed reported that they feel the internet and cellphones contribute to closer family relationships than they had when they were growing up.”

2. Facebook keeps you Informed – Quickly

Ever since Facebook became so widely used, I’m sure you’ve noticed how often you hear about breaking news on Facebook first. Whether it’s a social crisis, a weather disaster, a celebrity death, and unfortunately something like an active shooter, you’re far more likely to discover the news on Facebook. And getting news first-hand from the sources is invaluable and tends to be more accurate.

3. Facebook Helps You Feel Supported

Whenever you’re going through a tragedy or other difficult time in life, sharing your experience with others is a powerful form of therapy. Personally, I don’t always like using it for this, but many do. For some people, either the isolation of a disability or living in a remote location makes attending such support groups difficult, if not impossible. Being able to connect virtually truly is a gift for them.

While those are all positive reasons, you should give your account a spring cleaning and check your settings. Spring Cleaning your Facebook Account is a great idea right now. Here are a few things you can check up on.

facebook spring clean

6 Things you can do to Improve Your Privacy

1) DO A PRIVACY CHECKUP

Another new feature on Facebook is the “Privacy Checkup.” The three-step process walks you through the privacy settings and shows you how many third-party apps have access to your information. When you log into another app with Facebook, that company gains access to everything you’ve shared on Facebook including personal information, posts and friends lists. You might be surprised by how many apps you’ve logged into with your Facebook ID.

Click the question mark for a drop down to settings.

Then click on Privacy and you’ll see the areas you can adjust.

Also, its good to check your Facebook App Settings to see the third parties that have access to profile data through these steps. Go through all the third-party apps you’ve logged into and delete anything you’re not using regularly. Especially if you’ve never heard of them. I know this call seem a bit much but really its a 1/2 hr worth while. Heres a video that is good at walking you through.

2. CLEAN YOUR POSTS

Moving forward, you should be taking better care to how you reply and what you say – if you care about what others think. But if you need to go back in time, there is an App for that. Scrubber is the one third-party app you actually want accessing your information because they’ll track down all those inappropriate posts and help you delete them. According to their website, Scrubber will find and flag;

  • Posts containing profanity
  • Flag posts with innuendo
  • Flag posts with mentions of drugs or alcohol
  • Scan through comments your friends make on your posts.
  • Flag political and religious posts (which we think are fine, but flag since our users have asked for it)
  • Allow you to search for custom keywords like the name of an ex, boss, family member, or coworker.

3. RE-ACCESS THE PEOPLE YOU FOLLOW

While you’re cleaning up your posts, consider the accounts you follow or the people you’re “friends” with who are just cluttering up your feed. Do you really care about what your high school lab partner is doing right now? If not, delete. Do you follow a bunch of accounts from that time in 2012 when you were really into skydiving, but have since moved on to other things? Unfollow. Take ten minutes off from mindlessly scrolling through your newsfeed and mindfully scroll through your follows to get rid of the people you just don’t need updates on.

4. USE YOUR BLOCK BUTTON

Take it one step further and use your block button to eliminate any negativity that’s ruining the online experience for you, especially on Twitter. People can be harsh, but thankfully, websites and apps give you a way to literally shut out the haters. If you don’t want to hear from someone, block them. Simple as that.

5. POST THE THINGS YOU ACTUALLY WANT PEOPLE TO SEE

Social media is about connecting and it’s a great way of staying in touch and networking. Update the parts of your life you want people to see. With all the Facebook talk, don’t neglect places like LinkedIn where you want to keep your job and experiences up-to-date in case business opportunities come along. Remember that sharing some info on social media can be a good thing. Just make sure you have control of it.

6. MAKE SEPARATE LISTS

Click on “Friends Lists” and you can make many lists like Family, Family all, Work, Friends and Friends all. This allows you to send the post to whom you want and to whom you don’t want to. You can name it what you want and add who you want. You can also add people to multiple lists.

While this is a great feature, I suggest keeping it simple. If you have to overthink who you are sending to all the time that can be a challenge as well. Just the basic groups will do.

 

Well thats it. Even if you’ve done a few things above, you are ahead of the game. A good percentage of FB users do not make any changes. 

Be aware, be moral, be social.

keep calm and be social

Influencer marketing is here to stay

By on

Influencer marketing has been growing in popularity for the past few years and is becoming a strong player in the marketing tool kit. By using social media listening tools a marketer can identify individuals that will help a brand get the word out. Understanding the online conversation around your brand is vital to choosing the right online influencer. You can start with simple less costly tools seen here, before moving to more expensive, but comprehensive tools like Symplur, Traackr or Brandwatch. They will segment and narrow down your search for the perfect Influencers.

influencer marketing

There is a defined process to identifying influencers, and you’ll need more than one tool to get the job done, but the payoff can be very beneficial. Here’s a few benefits and key objectives to discuss with your clients.

  1. Expanding your brand’s reach
    Growing an audience is a long-term task, but you want it to have as many growth spurts as possible. Partnering with an influencer expands your reach more quickly than some organic methods.
  2. Generating user-generated content
    Partnering with influencers to create content together takes some of the content creation off your own team’s plate.
  3. Drive traffic
    Whether an influencer is promoting you in a website review or in a tweet, including a link back to your website will drive their audience to check out your brand.
  4. Improve SEO
    In addition to driving traffic, quality backlinks can help improve your website’s search rankings and traffic. By generating backlinks from influencers who have high authority websites, you can improve your SEO game.
  5. Boost your reputation
    A trustworthy source goes a long way in shaping someone’s opinion. Influencers are highly trusted by their audience, so an endorsement or partnerships can go a long way in building your brand’s reputation.
  6. Finally – Helps to Drive sales
    According to AdWeek, surveys have found that 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions.


Closer look at the Influencer

Using social media influencers in your marketing is the practice of building relationships with the people who can build relationships for you. Whether an influencer’s audience is small or large does not mater as much that they can reach your audience via their blogs and social networks that your brand may not be able to. Your targeted audience needs to trust your influencer. YouTubers like Casey Neistat reviews his products in a unique way. Even if he likes it he faults it, but when he talks about a product, it increases sales. It’s definitely not the 1970’s style of advertising. Take a look at his style here.

85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

influencer

Clothing and beauty brands have had great success with using micro influencers and major celebrities for a while now, but now brands like Amazon, and even healthcare are getting in on the action. People are more apt to make a purchase after reading reviews or listening to an influencer. As you research influencers you’ll uncover a competitive landscape for your client too.

According to a study by Adweek, 75% of brands engage with influencers as a part of their main marketing strategy.

Components of an influencer marketing strategy

  • Identify the topics of influence that speak to your brand’s target buyers.
  • Vet the influencers who are a good contextual fit with your brand. Look for content quality, reach, engagement and an alignment of values with your brand.
  • Relate and engage with your target influencers via email and other social channels. Ask them to partner with your brand and offer them compensation to create mutually beneficial relationships.
  • Measure all earned media and identify which influencers and which topics lift your brand the most.
  • Repeat. Once you’ve identified who and what works best for your brand you can build a stronger influencer marketing strategy each time around. You should have around 10-15 to pick from, and you’ll get 2-3 solid influencers.

influencer-marketing
Map the influencer landscape

Before reaching out to influencers or building a list, you need to understand the influencers in your industry. Map out the different segments. Are they leaders in their fields? Do they report the news on a regular basis? Do they create content or are the passive viewers?

influencer mapping

When mapping the landscape, track these areas:

  • Where do conversations and shares about your topic take place? How social is the market?
  • What motivates people in your market to promote content about your topic?
  • Is activity concentrated among a few publishers, or is the market more fragmented?
  • What’s the author model for key publications? Do they have in-house journalists, regular contributors, guest bloggers – or a mix of all 3?
  • What’s the background of the popular authors in your space?

At the end of the day, the time you spend creating the right strategy and identifying the right influencer, the more impactful influencer marketing will be. Remember that honest dialogue generates true relationships.

Social Media Analytics Tools and Reporting

By on

If you have ever wondered how effective your engagement is doing on Twitter, I have some tools for you to check out. And if you’re running campaigns or researching on Twitter there are some phenomenal FREE tools. And wrapping that all up for a report to your client is vital.

First off, if you want to look at just your account, the analytics that comes with Twitter is very informative. But make sure you have it turned on. Here is a link on how to activate your analytics and see your engagement activity.

twitter analytics

The next tool is called TweetReach

  • This tool is great for researching Twitter accounts or #Hashtags. Simply, type in any keyword, hashtag, or username, and TweetReach returns a snapshot of analytics on your search, including charts and graphs for:
    • Reach
    • Exposure
    • Activity
    • Contributors

  • twitter reach

    Twitter Reach can help identify influencers on Twitter through their tweets associated with a keyword and how much they influence.

  • It’s quite useful for checking in on mentions of your Twitter username and tracking branded hashtags and industry keywords.

My next favorite tool is called Followerwonk. This tool helps you;

  • Dig deeper into Twitter analytics: Who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet?
  • Find and connect with new influencers in your niche.
  • Use super-actionable visualizations to compare your social graph to others.

The TechGuy is doing better than me 🙂

The last free tool to show you is a tool called Keyhole.

Keyhole is a social media monitoring and campaign tracking service with a real-time, visual dashboard. It offers monitoring for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram- of hashtags, URLs and keywords. It provides insights such as demographics, location and topic clouds that can be used for identifying influencers. For hashtag and keyword tracking, it provides a wealth of information such as reach, top posts, share of posts, and more. For account tracking, you can monitor your brand’s or competitor’s engagement on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. 

keyhole

 

Reporting back to your clients

A social media report is simply a collection of data and stats. But sometimes you can find yourself in “analysis paralysis'” meaning to much data. And then you need to explain int in a relevant way to your client.

Which data and stats should be on there? And why? Here is a good place to start.

The answer likely depends on your specific social media strategies and goals.

  • Followers tell you the number of people who wish to connect with your brand. The benefits of followers are for the reach of your content, the social proof of your brand’s popularity, and in some cases a simple vanity metric to boost your confidence!
  • Clicks tell you that the content you’re sharing is of personal interest to the user. Clicks send traffic to a URL and establish your social profile as a great resource for curated content.
  • Retweets tell you that the content you’re sharing is perceived as potentially interesting to one’s followers. The benefits of retweets is for advanced exposure to people who aren’t your followers and social proof that you know what you’re doing on social media.
  • Favorites are somewhat of a wild card. The benefit of favorites is as a social proof metric, and beyond that, it’s a bit hard to tell what people are thinking when they favorite because there are so many different strategies and reasons (curation, appreciation, bookmarking, etc.). On some channels, favorites/likes may surface the content higher into the News Feed.

Twitter counts engagement anytime someone clicks anywhere on the tweet, including:

  • retweets
  • replies
  • follows
  • favorites
  • links
  • cards
  • hashtags
  • embedded media
  • username
  • profile photo
  • tweet expansion

But you can do less and more points of contact based on your strategy. The other factors to producing a solid report is choosing a timeframe and presenting “what good looks like” vs your brand.

Which timeframe is most valuable to you?

Here’re the timelines that have come up most often in our discussions:

  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Quarterly
  • From campaign start to end

Here is one way to display your social media stats.

 

Here is another dashboard example and you can download a template from their website.

Doctors Figure out Medical Mysteries with a Mobile App

By on

The Figure 1 app has been labeled the “Instagram for doctors” and has hit 1 million subscribers. Figure 1 is used by doctors and healthcare students from a variety of specialties including medicine, nursing, and dentistry. Figure 1 said its free online mobile tool – used by medical practitioners around the world to share images of patient ailments and seek the opinions of others – has shared its medical images more than 1.5 billion times on its platform. The company estimates two-thirds of North American medical students now use the app, which is also used by institutions.

download Figure 1 on google play
Click to download
download figure 1 on itunes
Click to download

Doctors can now use direct messaging to their peers

Users typically share images of challenging or classic cases, and often seek help from the Figure1 community about how to treat patients, or even diagnose them. But now doctors can use peer to peer direct messaging for instant commentary and advice. This is a time saving measure and can be a valuable point of care situation. 

What about Patient Privacy?

Figure 1 has to make sure patient privacy is a priority for healthcare professionals, and they have designed Figure 1 to maintain privacy.

In a Figure 1 profile, you can identify a name, workplace, and other information about yourself. However, you must remove identifying details related to patients from any case you post. (For example: faces and tattoos.) Click here for more information. There is also an automatic face-blocking feature detects faces and blocks them, and the manual block feature allows you to quickly and easily block anything else that might identify a patient.

doctors and figure 1Doctors can upload cases with comments and photos.

Once a case is uploaded, a medical officer and team of moderators at Figure 1 perform a review of each case to verify that all identifying information has been properly removed from it before it is shown on Figure 1. However, if you think that a case, comment, or description on Figure 1 may identify a patient (or supplies information that risks identifying the patient), you can report the case, and it will be immediately removed until our medical officer reviews it. Should a case be deemed to potentially identify a patient, Figure 1 will immediately and securely destroy it, and we will alert the healthcare professional who uploaded the case accordingly.

Whats the future for Figure 1?

Now its ambition is to become the dominant online platform for doctors, or “the operating system of health care,” said Boris Wertz, a Vancouver venture capitalist who has backed the company.

The app can be used for teaching, learning and for patient point of care.

Dr Joshua Landy, co-founder of Figure 1, said “you work in teams, you learn in teams, you study in groups and everything is about bouncing the ideas off, learning to see other people’s perspective and learning from your peers.”  You will be able to share the knowledge of healthcare professionals through the network but also around the world.

He said that since they started the app in 2013, they have millions of healthcare professionals in 190 countries using it. “The ability to be able to reach out to someone in the moment that you need information and receive it means that you could access this worldwide network of healthcare professionals who are there to help you with your case.” All this provides better patient care, shorter wait times and hopefully lower costs in the healthcare system – in theory. It would be great if patients could share photos with a team of doctors to get insights and diagnosis. Check out the article on apps to connect with your doctor.

The All New Flipboard App has a Smart Magazine

By on

“I like it.” Flipboard just rebranded themselves and changed their focus. From what I’ve seen, it looks pretty cool. They have created the smart magazine that gives users more control of their content. What Flipboard is great at is the UX. The functionality of the App is very cool.

flip pagesThese guys set the standard for what cool news could look like but was touched out by the big guys. I’d say they’re back with a new trick. Check them out.

Download on Android

Download on Apple iOS

Below is the announcement and video from Flipboard. The video does a nice job of showing what you can do.

Overview of Flipboard


Getting started with Flipboard

From Flipboard Blog:

Announcing the All-New Flipboard, the Place for All Your Passions

Flipboard 4.0 is a response to our ever-growing ecosystem of publishers, Flipboard Magazines, topics and more. With over 30 million magazines created, thousands of publishers on our platform, and tens of thousands of topics—plus input from social networks like Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn—we re-imagined Flipboard to more effortlessly get you to the things you love. Long-time readers who follow lots of content should find a more streamlined experience, while new users will be able to dive right into their passions with minimal setup.

At the heart of this edition is the Smart Magazine, a new way to organize the world’s stories, curated by experts and enthusiasts, into continually updating collections that can be personalized by you. Your Smart Magazines have a sleek new ‘shelf space’—the Home carousel—for quick access to important and inspiring content about your passions.

Here’s how it all works:

  • Swipe left to add a passion to your Flipboard. Let’s say you pick “Photography.”

  • Now pick what kind of photography you like. In this example, we picked #Leica, #StreetPhotography and a magazine curated by our photo editor called “How to Shoot.” (Please note: General stories about the topic are turned on by default, but you may turn them off at any time to further focus your feed.) Press “Done.” Flipboard will then generate a Smart Magazine just for you, with similar stories clustered together.
  • You can also build your own Custom Magazine, which allows you to be even more precise about what’s in the content mix. Create a personal or group magazine where you can add your favorite stories, or make a Custom Smart Magazine that includes content from any source, person, publication or even hashtag you like.
  • Your Home carousel houses up to nine Smart Magazines. Your profile area, located behind your avatar in the top right, hosts everything else you’re following on Flipboard, plus the ability to search our entire platform.
  • The more you interact with Flipboard, the better your experience will be: the algorithm learns from what you follow, heart and add. Liking great content helps your friends and followers, too, as those stories are more likely to surface to them.
  • We’ve got even more tips and tricks in this post, including how to further hone your Flipboard and ensure that our system continues to deliver the best possible stories to you.We hope you’ll find the all-new Flipboard to be as multifaceted as you are. As complex humans, our passions define who we are, and your Flipboard is no different.~The Flipboard Team

Connect with us