Q4 Content Calendar: Important Dates and Campaign Ideas for Small Businesses

How to Discover Irresistible Content Ideas Using Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and Online Communities

Where and how am I going to find my next great content ideas?

We’ve all asked this question at one time or another.

Developing consistently great content for your social media accounts, blog posts, webinars, online courses, and workshops is a major challenge from both a creative and resource standpoint.

This week on The Science of Social Media, we’re sharing a simple, yet proven formula that you can use time and time again to discover irresistible content ideas using Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and other online communities.

Let’s kick it off!

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How to discover irresistible content ideas [table of contents]

• • Part I: The Formula for Discovering Great Content
  • Part II: Using Reddit as a source of content inspiration
  • Part III: Using YouTube as a massive content search engine
  • Part IV: Other communities and social networks for content discovery

Brian: Hi everyone! I’m Brian Peters and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Hailley: Welcome to episode #112! I’m Hailley Griffis and this week we’re taking a look at a simple formula that will leave you with tons of content ideas for your social media and content marketing. Not just any ideas, though, we’re going to tell you how to dig in and really find the content that your audience will find irresistible from places you might not be using right now, like Reddit, Quora, YouTube, and a few other spots.

Part I: The formula for discovering great content on any network

Brian: I’m so excited to share these with everyone, there are some real gems in here. Let’s get started!

Hailley: To kick it off today, we’re going to look at the exact formula to come up with these amazing content ideas, and then we’ll go through a couple of unconventional networks and the specific steps to take there.

For this formula, it is pretty straight forward and you can definitely use it on several social networks, but we are going to apply it to just a few today to give you an example of what it can do.

Brian: So first up, you have to figure out the topic you’re looking to create content about. Now, you can of course have multiple topics for this, but we recommend only picking one topic at a time when you’re researching.

Topics could be things like social media marketing, or remote work, those are both topics that we might be looking to create content around.

Hailley: I think I could spend hours reading about remote work!

So now we have our topic and next up is to determine what people’s struggles are around our particular topic, and the way to figure that out is different per network so we’ll get into that in a minute, but in general you want to look for words that people use when they’re struggling with something, like:

• “How do you”
• “How can I”
• “Can someone help”
• “Tips”
• “Suggestions”
• “Biggest challenge”
• “Biggest struggle”
• “Struggle with”

So anything that would point to someone having a challenge around the topic you’ve set.

Brian: Now, once you’ve done that, you need to really dig in. Look at all of the comments about that topic, read through threads, really learn about what this challenge means to the people who are writing about it. Understanding this information will help you create richer, more thorough content.

Some questions you can ask yourself are:

• What other problems do people have that are related to the core problem?
• What solutions have worked for other people?
• What solutions have failed?

Hailley: If you’ve done this thoroughly, which we’re sure you have because you are a listener of this show and we know you’re working hard to be a better social media marketer, then you should have a ton of information about the challenge, the core problem, potential solutions, and things that haven’t worked.

Combining this with your own expertise on the subject, you now have more than enough to go off of to create content that will directly solve a problem that several people have shown interest in.

Brian: That’s right, so now that you have all of this information now comes the fun part, you get to create content!

Now whether that content is a blog post, newsletter, video, or a series of tweets or Facebook posts, that all depends on what you want to create and how your audience wants to consume it. We won’t get into that part too much, but the main part of this formula is using all of the information you’ve gathered to create the most informed content possible about the specific problem that you are solving.

Hailley: Finally, the last part of this formula is to publish your content and not only that, but to go back to some of the places where you collected struggles and information from and share that info with those people.

Now we’ve gone really high-level in this section because we want you to know that this is the kind of formula you can adjust and use anywhere on social media, but we’ll give you a few good examples in a minute here.

Brian: Yes, I love this formula. So to recap for everyone listening it went like this:

1. Choose a topic you want to create content around
2. Determine people’s struggles about that content through the use of key phrases like “how do you”
3. Dig in and learn everything you can about the specific problem people are facing as well as the proposed solutions
4. Create your content based on all of your research and expertise; and finally,
5. Share it with the world

Hailley: I love that formula! It just makes me feel like I could turn into a content creating machine if I wanted to.

Now to the fun part, let’s apply this formula to several different social networks and talk about how it works for each of them. These are all pretty non traditional places and we don’t talk about them much on the show so it’s pretty exciting that we get to dig in today!

Part II: Using Reddit as a source of content inspiration

Brian: Agreed! Let’s get started with a network I know we haven’t talked about on the show before because we’ve had people tweet us and ask us to cover it, and that’s Reddit.

Now, I know some social media marketers are super familiar with Reddit while others have never even gone to the website before, and that’s totally fine! So let’s take a quick look at why Reddit is so powerful.

First of all, according to Alexa.com, Reddit is the sixth most popular website on the planet.

Hailley: Wow, I don’t think I would have guessed that. That’s amazing. The other thing about Reddit is not only is it hugely popular, but according to statistics published in The Next Web, the average Reddit user spends 15 minutes, 47 seconds on Reddit.com each day, compared to just over 11 minutes for Facebook.com visitors and 6 minutes 23 seconds on Twitter.com.

And the platform is growing at an incredible rate: Reddit had more than 330 million monthly active users as of April 2018, which is up from 250 million in November 2017.

Brian: Plus, since the platform was launched, its users have posted nearly two billion comments and cast more than 16 billion votes.

No matter what topic you’re trying to research, there’s almost certainly a subreddit (Reddit’s name for topic-specific forums) for it. Statista suggests that there are nearly 1.2 million subreddits.

Given its size, engagement and depth, Reddit is certain to have something valuable for you to use to come up with a content ideas.

Hailley: Totally! So let’s apply the formula to Reddit specifically.

First of all for Reddit, start with choosing your topic and then finding the most relevant subreddits around it.

This might take a few searches, especially if you aren’t familiar with Reddit, but in the end you should have several subreddits that at least address some parts of your topic.

Brian: Next up look for people sharing their struggles. This involved diving into the subreddits you’ve found to look for problems that you can solve for users with your content.

You can use the search function for each subreddit to look for phrases that indicate a struggle. We chatted about this a minute ago but quick recap, it would be things like:

• “How do you”
• “How can I”
• “Can someone help”

Make sure to include quotation marks around your search parameters, especially for the multi-word phrases, as that will ensure an exact phrase match.

Hailley: You can repeat this process across all of the subreddits you’ve identified to come up with a list of dozens (or more) potential content topics.

So now that you’ve identified people’s struggles, you can dig in and learn everything you can about the specific problem people are facing to ensure your content thoroughly solves the reader’s problem.

Go through each of the posts that you’ve found where someone is talking about a problem and try to figure out the problems related to the core problems, the solutions that have works and the solutions that have failed.

Brian: Now that you’re armed with your Reddit-mined article idea and the research to build your post around, it’s time to write.

If you’ve completed each step, then you have everything you need for your next valuable piece of content. Whether that’s a blog post, YouTube Video, or even a tweetstorm.

Hailley: That’s it! You’re ready to share your content with the world. Now, one thing we mentioned is that sometimes it makes sense to go back to where you originally found the problem and share your resource.

I don’t have a ton of experience with Reddit but I’ve heard their community doesn’t react well when someone it promoting their own content but I’m not sure how that’s different if you’re adding it in a comment instead of creating a new post around it. I’d say be cautious, and if you’re unsure just stick to the content promotion channels you’re most familiar with.

Part III: Using YouTube as a massive content search engine

Brian: Next up, let’s talk YouTube. Now we did a whole episode on YouTube marketing back in episode #95, but we’re going to quickly go over it as a tool for finding content ideas.

A lot of people don’t think of it this way but YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine — and third most visited site after Google and Facebook

And we as viewers watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos a day, more than Netflix and Facebook video combined

Hailley: Huge potential! So the formula for finding content ideas on YouTube is pretty similar but there some key differences that we’ll chat about.

Once you have your topic and the keywords associated with it for your YouTube search you can combine that with those questions we’re using to determine struggles and start entering them into the YouTube Search bar.

Brian: The key difference here is that because YouTube is really a search engine, you not only have access to the content related to your search term, but it will suggest tons of other long tail keywords based on your search.

This is the same experience for when you start to type a search term into Google and it started suggesting what other popular searches are based on what you’re typing.

Hailley: What’s cool is that YouTube is telling you what people are searching for related to your search! So that’s an extra bit of information to add to your research as you’re figuring out what people struggle with most.

This definitely lends a hand to the next step of the formula in terms of digging in so it should be pretty straight forward there!

Brian: Yes! Once you have all that you can start creating content and sharing it with the world.

I think YouTube is a great place to find content ideas even if the content you’re creating isn’t necessarily video, however, we’ve also had a ton of success with our YouTube channel by implementing this search strategy we’re talking about and uploading videos based on that. Like I said, we do talk about that whole experience back in ep. 95.

Part IV: Other communities and social networks for content discovery

Hailley: Where else might this strategy work?

Well, tons of places.

Another place I think you’d have a ton of success with this is Quora, a place where people specifically go to ask questions about things they’re unsure of. Plus as of 2017 Quora had over 200 million monthly unique visitors so that’s plenty of people that are creating content or asking questions.

Brian: Quora is great for this!

I also think Facebook Groups are a good place to look for content ideas. If you join a Facebook group specific to the topic that you’re writing about then you’ll already be looking at a group of people that are your target audience and all you have to do is find posts where people talk about their struggles.

Hailley: Too true! Okay and the last one I want to mention is Slack Communities, which can definitely be challenging because you have to really search to find active communities, but I think similar to Facebook groups if you join the right Slack community you could be in the perfect place to see the kinds of struggles that people are relaying and see how you can create content to help solve problems for them.

Brian: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

If you ever want to get in touch with me or Hailley, we’re always here for your on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. You can also say hi to us anytime and hello@bufferapp.com

Hailley: Also, thank you so much to everyone leaving iTunes reviews! It’s so awesome to read through all your kind comments there – and we actually do read through all of them and go through all of the tweets so thank you again!

Until next Monday, everyone!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 16,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank How to Discover Irresistible Content Ideas Using Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and Online Communities for first publishing this post.

AJ&Smart Has Generated More Than €2 Million in Sales from Social Media: Here’s How

• Product design and innovation studio AJ&Smart has generated more than €2million from clients who first discovered it on social media.
• Ninety percent of AJ&Smart’s new clients now come from social media referrals, replacing word-of-mouth as the #1 source of new business.
• Social media has helped AJ&Smart’s client base to go global.

It was a cold January morning in Berlin, Germany, and Jonathan Courtney was feeling a bit stuck.

Nearly six years had passed since he founded design agency, AJ&Smart. And though the business had been a huge success — winning multiple awards and building a roster of big-name clients — Jonathan felt there was much more to come for his agency and team.

“But what?” he wondered to himself. “How can we take AJ&Smart to the next level?”

After much deliberation, Jonathan made a bold decision.

“Do you really want to do this?,” one advisor asked.

Other CEO friends in Berlin shared similar feelings. “Not only did they not understand it, they thought I was actively damaging the company,” he told me.

So what was it that sparked such impassioned responses from his friends and advisors?

Jonathan wanted to share everything that happened at AJ&Smart on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, giving followers behind-the-scenes access to the agency.

Yet now, 18-months down the line — and despite the initial pushback from advisors — AJ&Smart has generated in excess €2million in revenue from clients who first discovered the agency on social media.

‘We invested almost all of our profits in building our brand’

Whether you love his work or not, Gary Vaynerchuk is hard to ignore in the social media space.

If you’ve ever listened to his podcasts or stumbled upon a few of his tweets, you’ve probably heard some variation of his ‘Document. Don’t create’ blueprint. It was this strategy that encouraged Jonathan to take the plunge into the world of social media.

Trying to create content was always a big issue for Jonathan. He liked the ‘Document. Don’t create’ strategy because it was focused on simply showing people what was happening day-to-day and it didn’t require him or his team to spend hours planning what they’d publish.

“People think that you’re damaging your brand if you’re not being super careful about it. But while other agencies are thinking about what they should post each week and writing their social media guidelines, we’ve produced and published like 20 hours of content in that same amount of time and already have people engaging with it.”

Jonathan Courtney (@jicecream)
CEO & Co-founder, AJ&Smart

Once Jonathan and the AJ&Smart team had decided to embrace social media, they went all in. “We invested almost all of our profits in building our brand,” Jonathan told me.

And though his strategy was a little out there for a creative agency — most agencies keep their cards close to their chest, Jonathan explained during our call — there was a strategic reason behind it.

AJ&Smart helps clients with product design and innovation as well as working closely with the Design Sprint creator (& NY Times Best Selling author), Jake Knapp. But it’s a competitive space.

“We’re in a commodity market,” Jonathan says. “We could compete on price or just rely on the quality of our work. But I didn’t want to do that.”

Jonathan wanted AJ&Smart to stand out alone in the field of design agencies. He wanted the business to have its own brand. “My belief was having a highly engaged audience would benefit us more than simply just focusing on client work,” he explained.

‘Instagram is our social media hub’

AJ&Smart decided to go all in on social media when Instagram launched Stories. “It was a super low friction way to create content and a great way to get started,” Jonathan said.

AJ&Smart uses Stories to be provide an authentic look at what the agency is like day-to-day and tries to show as much of what’s happening in real-time as possible.

For example, in its Stories you might see behind-the-scenes at a client workshop:

Or the team traveling to meetings with clients:

This type of content is super interesting for AJ&Smart’s followers, but it also provides talking points for its clients. “We’ll go into an office of a client and because of Instagram they’ll know the whole journey we’ve gone on to get to them. They always talk about it when we arrive,” Jonathan explained.

When it comes to the Instagram feed, it posts highly curated content that’s focused on design-related hashtags it wants to reach:

Hashtags are important for AJ&Smart to reach its target audience on Instagram. “A huge thing for us is designers following us,” Jonathan explained. “Designers follow us and then when their boss is looking to hire an agency, they recommend AJ&Smart. It’s made sales so much easier for us.”

Instagram has also evolved into a central hub for all of AJ&Smart’s content and it uses the Stories Highlight feature to showcase its content across platforms.

For example, one highlight showcases its podcast:

And another talks about its ‘Innovation Hackers’ Facebook Group:

“We’re big believers in re-purposing and re-packaging content tailored to the platform. We usually find that when someone starts following us on one channel, they’ll very likely soon start following us across our other channels too, which is fantastic. It also keeps us on our toes to always be putting out interesting, fresh content that is specific to the platform.”

Laura Faint (@laurafaint_)
Head of Growth, AJ&Smart

‘If you’re just focused on the numbers, you’re not going to succeed’

Social media success rarely, if ever, happens overnight.

After a couple of months of investing heavily in social media marketing, AJ&Smart had only picked up a few hundred followers here and there. And it took about eight-months in total before potential clients would contact the company saying they found it on Instagram, YouTube or any other social channels.

“If I hadn’t have been patient I’d have given up long before we started to see the benefits of social media. If you’re just focused on the numbers, you’re not going to succeed,” Jonathan explained.

The ROI of social media marketing

Just over a year-and-a-half after AJ&Smart went all in on social media, it’s seeing massive return on its investment:

• 90 percent of its clients first discover the agency on one of their social media channels
• Social media has been responsible for a minimum of €2 million in revenue
• Its client base has expanded globally thanks to its social media presence

“If a company interviews us and two other agencies and the work and costs are similar, they tend to book us,” Jonathan says.

“They will choose AJ&Smart because they can get an insight who we are from social media, they feel we’re an authority because of the content we create and sometimes clients even ask for certain team members after seeing them on stories.”

“Having a strong social media presence is massive for us. To the point where almost every customer coming through our door already trusts us, knows who we are and what we stand for. It’s not only how many of our clients find out about us, it’s usually what convinces them to choose us over our competitors.”

Brittni Bowering (@brittnibow)
Head of Media, AJ&Smart

How to start grabbing attention and winning clients

AJ&Smart has been incredibly successful on social media by being authentic and sharing what goes on at the agency every day. It doesn’t spend hours planning content or creating elaborate, highly-edited videos. Instead, it just shares the processes its team goes through and the work they’re doing.

To get started all you need to do is pick up a phone, open up Instagram or Facebook and start talking about your work and the things you care about.

As Jonathan said on our call: “There’s little or no reason not to be talking with your audience every single day now.”

Find AJ&Smart on Instagram or learn more about the agency here.

Thank AJ&Smart Has Generated More Than €2 Million in Sales from Social Media: Here’s How for first publishing this post.

How to Sell on Instagram: A Stories Strategy That’s Generated ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ in Sales

• Kettlebell Kings has used educational content to build an audience of over 79,000 fitness enthusiasts on Instagram.
• It generates 400-600 new leads per week from social media, with half of those leads coming directly from Instagram.
• ‘Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in revenue can be directly attributed to leads generated on Instagram.

Read on to get the full story and learn exactly how Kettlebell Kings uses Instagram to grow its revenue.

“We all had what I guess you call ‘real jobs’,” Jay Perkins told me.

Back in 2013, Jay worked at Bigcommerce, an e-commerce software provider where he learned about what it takes to have a successful online business.

But Jay could only hold back his entrepreneurial ambitions for so long.

After kicking around business ideas for a year-or-so, Jay and his two business partners decided to take the plunge and launch an online store of their own.

Fast-forward to 2018 and Kettlebell Kings is a leading kettlebell equipment supplier based in Austin, Texas, generating mid seven-figures per year in revenue — with much of its new business coming directly from leads generated on Instagram.

‘Most of our biggest deals and business development relationships have come through Instagram’

There was a time, when Kettlebell Kings first started out, that Google AdWords campaigns and a compelling free shipping offer — “the first of its kind in the kettlebell space,” Jay said — were its main marketing tactics.

Yet as the company grew, social media took over as the #1 way to generate new business and Instagram is now Kettlebell Kings most successful marketing and acquisition channel.

“On average we get 400-600 leads per week from social media, with half coming from Instagram,” Jay told me over email.

When it comes to revenue generated directly from Instagram “it would be in the hundreds of thousands,” he revealed (Kettlebell Kings uses Hubspot to track its conversions).

But Instagram hasn’t just helped Kettlebell Kings to generate one-off sales to consumers, it’s also an important channel for business development.

Jay explained:

“Most of our biggest deals and business development relationships have come through Instagram — we have even signed deals with national gym chains from leads generated on the platform.”

“Most of our biggest deals and business development relationships have come through Instagram — we have even signed deals with national gym chains from leads generated on the platform.”

Instagram didn’t become a lead generation goldmine overnight, though. It took a lot of work.

‘We’re very strict on the posts that go into our feed’

The first step to a successful Instagram marketing strategy is creating content for your Instagram feed that your audience wants to see and engage with.

In the Instagram feed, Kettlebell Kings focuses on sharing educational content and workout examples — this strategy has helped it to amass an audience of over 79,000 followers. It also reposts images and videos from customers and this user-generated content angle has lead to the hashtag #kettlebellkings being used more than 20,000 times on Instagram.

Key takeaway: User-generated content

“Back in 2016, we started to embrace user-generated content for our Buffer Instagram account. In the first year, this strategy helped our account grow by almost 400% – 4,250 to 21,000 followers. Now we have over 40,000 followers.”

Brian Peters
Digital Marketing Strategist

“We’re very strict on the posts that go into our feed,” says Jay. For a post to make it to Kettlebell Kings’ Instagram feed, the content must:

• Feature good use of a Kettlebell Kings product
• Show good form (when using the kettlebells) 
• Provide a ton of value to the viewer (helping them to learn something new, improve their technique) 

But with stories, Jay believes there’s more freedom to post less-polished content at a higher frequency.

Kettlebell Kings can also repost and feature more of its customers using stories than it can within the feed. “We can repost 10-12 customers who tag us on a daily basis through stories,” says Jay. Being reposted by the Kettlebell Kings account is highly engaging and rewarding for those featured and it also encourages more and more customers to share their content on Instagram.

Here’s how that strategy plays out…

Within the Instagram feed, you might see a video of a perfectly-executed kettlebell workout:

Or a shoppable, high-quality image of a Kettlebell Kings product:

Then on Instagram Stories you might see a Kettlebell Kings customer working out:

But how does this all translate into leads and revenue?

Instagram Stories: The lead-gen secret weapon

Now we move onto the conversion focused part of this strategy.

Here’s how Kettlebell Kings drives hundreds of leads per week directly from Instagram.

1. Share engaging content to stories

First, Kettlebell Kings will share content to Instagram Stories. Often these posts will be workout examples or reposts from customers:

On average these stories will be viewed by around 10 percent of Kettlebell Kings’ followers, sometimes up to 15 percent if there’s a CTA in a feed post to ‘check out stories’.

2. Include swipe up CTAs to drive traffic to a landing page

Next, Kettlebell Kings will include a CTA to ‘Swipe Up’ for workout examples or more content within one of its stories posts:

Writer’s note:

The Instagram Stories ‘Swipe Up’ feature is now available to all Instagram business accounts with 10,000 followers or more.

If you don’t quite have 10,000 followers, here are some resources to help you grow your account:

• 10 Proven Tactics To Grow Followers and Engagement
• A Complete Guide to Instagram Marketing: The Playbook That Drives Results
• 9 Powerful Time-Saving Tips to Help Grow Your Brand on Instagram

Ash Read
Managing Editor

Once a viewer swipes up, they will be taken to a landing page or an article where they can read more about a topic and enter their email address for more exclusive content:

These pages tend to convert visitors to email addresses at around 25-45 percent, depending on the traffic source. So 100 visits would generate between 25 and 45 new leads, on average.

3. Create custom email flows for each landing page

Finally, once the visitor has shared their email address it will be entered into one of many email workflows Kettlebell Kings has designed to serve helpful emails about kettlebell workouts and techniques from experts.

“We have unique workflows depending on how someone has entered our system,” Jay explained. All its workflows are about building value and trust with new leads. Kettlebell Kings purposely includes product photos in its emails but rarely sends offers or tries to make a sale. Instead, providing high quality content is the number one goal.

Due to the work Jay and his team put in ensuring Kettlebell Kings’ Instagram feed is always filled with fresh, engaging content the company constantly has batches of new followers — “about 1,000 new followers per week right now,” Jay says — to check out its Instagram stories and enter into its email funnels.

Over to you

This strategy has generated ‘hundreds of thousands’ in revenue for Kettlebell Kings and there’s no reason you can’t also implement within your own social media plans.

How does your business use Instagram stories? Let me know in the comments below.

Feature image: Vibetality / Kettlebell Kings on Instagram

Thank How to Sell on Instagram: A Stories Strategy That’s Generated ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ in Sales for first publishing this post.

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads Enable Marketers to Engage Propsects with Ads Automatically Personalized to Them

LinkedIn now has more than 500 million users and if you want to reach business decision-makers, it could be the perfect place for you to market your business — especially with the addition of a new, personalized ad format.

Introducing Dynamic Ads

LinkedIn has released a new ad-type called Dynamic Ads. In the Dynamic Ads launch blog post, LinkedIn’s Ayusman Sarangi explains:

“Dynamic Ads help you build deeper relationships with your audience by automatically customizing your ad creative with the publicly available information from LinkedIn member profiles. With this added visibility and scale, you can create more memorable experiences with the people that matter most to your business.”

With Dynamic Ads you can personalize the ad creative to feature member profile details such as their photo, first name, company, and job title. LinkedIn says this will “capture your audience’s attention in a way that standard display ads can’t.”

Early results sound promising too as LinkedIn has shared that Dynamic Ads have shown up to 2X the click-through rate of traditional display ads.

Here’s an example of how LinkedIn Dynamic Ads look on its website:

Using Dynamic Ads across your customer journey

With Dynamic Ads, you just need to write your ad copy, set up the creative and then LinkedIn will automatically personalize your campaign for each person you target.

Dynamic ads are available in three different formats — Follower ads, Spotlight ads and Content ads — and can be used across your marketing funnel to connect with prospects at different stages of their journey.

At the top of your funnel, you could use Follower ads to build brand awareness, engagement and convert target audience members into engaged Company Page followers.

Procore Technologies has used Dynamic Ads for brand awareness as it expands its presence across the globe and the brand’s Social Media Marketing Specialist, Heather Barnhart, explained to LinkedIn:

“Our need for brand awareness in each region was imperative. LinkedIn Dynamic Ads were a great way to quickly create personalized follower ads targeting the exact audience we are looking to attract.”

With middle and bottom of funnel prospects, you could use “Spotlight” or “Content” ad formats.

Spotlight ads allow advertisers to showcase products, services, events, and more. And when members click on your Spotlight ad, they’ll instantly go to your website or landing page.

The third Linkedin ad-type, Content ads, can be used to generate leads or drive content download conversions.

LinkedIn says that Content ads can be used to “bring a relatable touch to content promotion.” In its own ads, LinkedIn likes to place the author’s picture in the creative to humanize the ad and show that there are real people behind every piece of content it creates:

Note: Content ads are currently only available to businesses with managed LinkedIn advertising accounts. 

Will you be using Dynamic Ads?

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads are now available directly in Campaign Manager and within Campaign Manager, you can also leverage A/B testing to optimize the performance of your ads.

What do you think about this new advertising format from LinkedIn? Is it something you’ll be experimenting with? Let us know in the comments.

Want to learn more about growing your business on LinkedIn? Check out our recent episode of The Science of Social Media on growing your LinkedIn Company Page:

Thank LinkedIn Dynamic Ads Enable Marketers to Engage Propsects with Ads Automatically Personalized to Them for first publishing this post.

Negotiation Tips

Does your business often suffer from being “too expensive”?

If you sell anything directly, you undoubtedly have encountered this at some point in your business journey.

The key is that you can circumvent this problem by negotiating like a true pro. No matter what it is that you sell, you can demand top prices if you frame it right.

Recently I provided a little insight into this very idea for Fit Small Business. Actually, a whole bunch of experts from a wide range of industries added to the article.

Check out the post here for tips on negotiating your prices like a boss.

The post Negotiation Tips appeared first on Cloud Inspector Web Design.

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A New Facebook Guide to Creating Video, The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Looking to catch up on the latest social media news, but short on time? We have you covered! This week (episode #110) we’re chatting about all of this and more:

• According to an interesting article from Digiday, Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. After years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing their pitch to Instagram, Stories, and Messenger engagement.
• Facebook interviewed some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.
• YouTube requires a unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter. We have some really interesting YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube.

Join 17,500+ weekly listeners for the Buffer podcast, The Science of Social Media, where we bring you the latest and greatest in social media marketing news, updates, stories, insights, and actionable takeaways.

Let’s dive in!

A new Facebook guide to creating video, the shift to Instagram Stories ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube facts you can’t miss [complete podcast transcript]

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Hailley Griffis and Brian Peters.

• Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger
• Part II: A Brand New Facebook Guide to Creating Video
• Part III: 5 Interesting YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Brian: Hi everyone! I’m Brian Peters and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Hailley: Welcome to episode #110! I’m Hailley Griffis and this week we’ve got an exciting episode on the docket for you this week. Tons of interesting things to talk about in the world of social media, including a brand new guide from Facebook on creating videos, the shift to instagram stories and messenger, youtube, and more!

Brian: Usually these news-style episodes are filled with things that have already happened on social media, but this week we’re looking towards the future and how your brand can stay relevant on social media in the coming weeks and months.

Hailley: Let’s kick off the show!

Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Advertising and Messenger Engagement

Brian: Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. Well, they are according to a really interesting article from Digiday.

Essentially, after years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing the pitch to Instagram.

Hailley: Brand marketers have somewhat cooled off on the news feed as an advertising vehicle because they are beginning to see it as little more than a place for less-premium direct response ads, said four ad buyers interviewed for the Digiday article.

Many big advertisers have noticed that Facebook hasn’t been able to make brand budgets work in the news feed because of content competition and saturation, and so it’s doubling down on its strengths — which is performance.

Brian: The Facebook news feed’s original selling point was about being reach-driven, but as Digiday mentioned, over time brand advertisers have had growing concerns about the news feed being a “brand-safe” environment and whether ads there are actually seen in the feed.

Users are also pulling back from Facebook in favor of Instagram.

According to Merkle, ad-spend growth on Instagram has quadrupled (roughly 177 percent), while Facebook ad spend has only grown around 40 percent in Q2, compared to a year ago.

Hailley: To add to that, Facebook’s market value last month dropped by $120 billion — the largest ever corporate loss in history — when it announced that growth would slow.

And so with places to show ads in the news feed running out, Facebook is looking to their pride and joy, Instagram, to help accelerate growth quickly.

Brian: Facebook executives, with all that is going on, said they are looking to fine-tune their pitch.

In short, and I thought this was a really great way to look at the current ad ecosystem, Facebook’s news feed is being sold as a product for performance advertisers.

Instagram, with its short-form video Stories and visual content, is more of the brand-building play.

And Messenger is for brands interested in customer relationship management. Which, as we’ve talked about in the past, is extremely important in today’s day and age.

Hailley: Agreed. It’s a lot of the reason we’re putting so much time and investment in building out and enhancing our product Buffer Reply. We think that customer service, monitoring, and brand management will be a critical piece of marketing strategies moving forward.

But of all of the advertising options within the Facebook ecosystem, Stories is the one that Facebook sees as its next big revenue driver.

Stories is now used by 400 million daily active users, according to Instagram.

Brian: I think one of the most interesting part of Stories, besides it’s incredible growth is the idea of vertical video, which is still relatively new to so many brands.

So demand for the Stories ads product is still low, but I really believe that we will soon be at a point where a good chunk of brands and budgets are using Stories as an ad platform.

Hailley: One of the things that Instagram’s really has going for them is even though their total audience is smaller than Facebook’s (about half), engagement is super strong.

And I think that’s in part because it’s a highly visual platform where brands are almost forced to create beautiful content. Because if they don’t they won’t be able to compete with those that do.

On the Facebook side, as we discussed in episode 109, brands have seen engagement in the news feed drop since shifting to prioritizing user interactions over brand content earlier this year.

Brian: According to interviews in this Digiday article, Instagram’s engagement can be three times higher than on Facebook and cheaper to reach. Which we’ve definitely experienced first-hand here at Buffer.

For example. Greg Allum, global head of social at Jellyfish, found that the CPM (or cost per 1,000 reach) on Stories is four to five times cheaper than Facebook’s news-feed ads.

And for marketing software company Kenshoo’s clients, the average price for Instagram Stories ads seen 1,000 times was $4.70 versus $5.34 for standard Facebook ads. Not a huge difference, but noticeable, especially at scale.

Hailley: It’s pretty clear that Facebook is heavily focused on improving the creative for Instagram Stories. It does seem like they’re launching a new feature every week over there.

And so for lots of brands and small businesses that means working more through influencers and improving their creatives. Creatives being video quality, audience targeting, product ads, and other things.

Eventually, of course, Instagram hopes to double down on revenue by pointing big ads budgets towards Instagram TV. The next evolution of Instagram Stories. We’ll keep you posted on that here on the show.

Part II: A brand new Facebook guide to creating video on social media

Brian: Video is an opportunity that keeps growing, and it’s evolving faster than ever. Vertical, square, landscape, whatever the format, the data shows that people LOVE consuming video content on social media.

Hailley: Recently, Facebook spoke with some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.

We thought we’d share a few of our favorites here with you today.

Brian: At the very top of the Facebook list of best-practices is this idea of delivering personalized experiences at every touch point for your audience with video.

Which sounds great, but what does that actually mean?

On the organic side of things, that means investing in brand awareness campaigns. More often than not, people aren’t looking to be sold to, at least they don’t think they are.

Hailley: By creating content that’s focused on brand awareness, not sales your business can accomplish a few things. One is that you’ll grow engagement and trust. Top-of-the-funnel content is much more likely to be shared by users.

By simply getting in front of potential customers on social media, you’ll help to increase the chances of actual sales down the road.

Brian: Exactly, and that might mean educational types of content, fun, entertaining content, contests, rewards, and more. In this stage you’re focusing on providing informative and valuable interactions with customers.

Once you’ve got your brand awareness campaigns running, that’s when you can begin to focus your efforts on moving people down the funnel.

Retargeting users who have previously viewed and demonstrated interest in your product by visiting certain pages or even added an item to their cart, is a great way to help them along.

Hailley: Right, and the video content at this stage shouldn’t necessarily be sales-focused either, though it could be. Aim to give these folks reason to take the next step by inspiring them to purchase or learn more.

But be sure to be consistent with your brand and your overall narrative. At every part of the customer journey, you should be considering the relationships you are building with your audience.

Are they seeing random, conflicting ads from your brand? Or are they seeing one, cohesive story?

Brian: And I know we’re not all used to creating humorous content, BUT, a breakdown of 250 video ads from 22 brands on Facebook found that humorous videos can drive a 70% higher video completion rate for informational videos and cost 60% less than emotional video ads.

Which really goes to show the psychology of people on social. I feel like when I see a funny ad I relate to it a lot more, and in turn, relate to the business a lot more. I might even share it with a friend.

Hailley: Another great tip from Facebook in this study was that you should aim to present your brand within the first 1–2 seconds of the video.

So typically you might save your logo or branding until the end of the video, but adjusting the video creative to the first 1-2 seconds can help to improve brand lift.

And make sure to tell your story with visual descriptions, including text overlays at the beginning which can provide important information and context to viewers. Studies show it helps to increase view time by up to 30%.

Brian: One part from this study that I found interesting is when they talked about video length. And I don’t know why I didn’t expect Facebook to say this, but they cited that to capture attention, remember that 6 and 15 seconds are the new digital standards for video.

So super short, actionable videos are where it’s at in 2018. Shorter videos tend to perform better for capturing newer audiences’ attention and can develop brand awareness.

Hailley: Yup, concise messaging and videos are absolutely the focus these days.

We should pretty much assume that the viewer is unaware of the video content starting out. Which means you have to give them a reason to stick around.

And when measuring the success of your videos, focus on relevancy score. Relevancy determines if your audience is stopping to watch your videos. Whether you’re running direct response or branding campaigns, you need the content interesting right off the bat.

Brian: Yes, relevancy score is the main thing we look at for all of our advertising content, particularly when it comes to brand awareness. A score of 8,9 or 10 is great for top of the funnel campaigns.

And typically, we get scores of 9 or 10 when we boost organic posts or user-generated content.

I think it’s because this type of content is less intrusive compared to produced ads. Users are more likely to engage longer with ads that mimic the other content in their News Feed

Hailley: Exactly and this goes back to to truly understanding your audience. We’re living in a mobile-first generation and our campaigns should cater to that behavior.

For example, people are making on-the-spot decisions via their phones, does your video reflect that?

Consumers are reading reviews and doing research, does your video incorporate social proof?

Brian: Such a great way to think about it, Hailley.

Today, consumers have incredibly high expectations for right-here, right-now experiences and they are increasingly making last-minute plans. Make sure you’re brand reflects those behaviors.

And speaking of mobile, Facebook recommends to not be afraid of the 3-second rule. Basically that the first 3 seconds is as long as it takes for people to decide if they’ll continue watching or not.

Try and capture the viewer’s attention at the beginning with a strong hook.

Hailley: And of course, if the theme or atmosphere of your content calls for a longer-form video and its performance is delivering high returns, don’t be afraid to push the limits of each advertising channel.

You should absolutely be experimenting with different types of videos, lengths, styles, and format. Each brand is unique and will experience different results based on their audiences.

So just as a recap here for everyone:

When you plan, shoot and produce branded content, start with social media and mobile viewing in mind.

Brian: Exactly and make sure your creative idea can be conveyed in as little as 6 to15 seconds

Challenge yourself or your creative team to show how the video can get the same message across in a shorter timespan.

And lastly, always include captions if your video has dialogue or voiceovers. That keep your audience around and watching for longer.

Part III: 5 Important YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Hailley: If you’re ready to hear more about video, perfect, because we stumbled upon some pretty amazing YouTube facts you just can’t miss as a business or brand.

But like all platforms, YouTube requires unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter.

Brian: With that, we’ve got some really awesome YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube. And if you find these interesting, you’ll love episode 95 where we talk about strategies that helped us grow our channel by more than 59% in 30 days.

Anyways, back to the stats. First is that comments are directly related to the ranking of your YouTube videos. The more comments a video has the higher it typically ranks.

Hailley: Second, longer videos heavily outperform shorter videos on YouTube. Get this, the average length of videos that rank on the first page is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.

And that goes back to YouTube being as much of a search engine as it is a social media channel. User intent is super high and so they’re willing to spend more time watching content to learn.

Brian: This next stat is obvious, but worth mentioning, and that’s that video views have a significant correlation with video rankings. In order to get more views to improve rankings, you have to make sure that you include keywords in your title, meta tag, and description as well as optimize the video for YouTube with things like length, keyword, research and more.

Again, all covered in episode 95 of this show.

Hailley: Next up is that subscription driven videos have a reasonably strong correlation with video rankings. In other words, videos that lead to subscriptions rank higher. That’s why you always see people asking for a subscribe at the beginning and end of their videos.

It’s a great tactic.

Brian: Last but not least, approximately 20% of the people who start to watch your video will leave after the first 10 seconds.

And this one does relate to most social media channels. You gotta’ create a killer intro with a solid hook in the first few seconds to keep people around.

Hailley: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

If you ever want to get in touch with me or Hailley, we’re always here for your on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. You can also say hi to us anytime and hello@bufferapp.com

Brian: Yes we would absolutely love to hear from you all. Fun fact, we just surpassed 17,000 weekly listeners here on the show. Big shoutout to you all for, well, being awesome.

And a huge thank to everyone leaving iTunes reviews! Wherever you may be tuning in from and reviewing around the world, you hold a special place in our hearts.

Next two weeks we’re chatting LinkedIn strategy and content discovery – a few you won’t want to miss. Until then everyone!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

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About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 17,500+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

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