Influencer marketing, as a mainstream marketing tool, involves brands paying, or giving free products and services to Instagrammers and other social media leaders in exchange for promotion in a seemingly natural way.

As such, the industry has seen influencer marketing become a booming business with companies now allocating more advertising spend to influencer marketing than traditional mediums such as print or television. With the COVID-19 outbreak seeing more people staying home, this has only increased as audiences consume more content than ever.

Are these trend-setting accounts valuable from an advertising perspective?

Trust is now an increasing issue in the digital world and finding the best influencers for a campaign remains a struggle as the rise of fake profiles, bots and buying likes has brought reputations into question. 

There’s now a common perception that influencers are ‘entitled individuals’ who achieve their status through promoting products they have either received for free or for selfies on Instagram. As a result, marketers have seen stereotypical influencer content driving consumers away.

According to Mediakix, the number one concern when it comes to influencer marketing is engaging with profiles that have been built on fake followers, as endorsements with fake influencers will fail to deliver a meaningful return on investment for businesses and brands.

The number of influencers online is reaching a level of saturation that is making it difficult for even the most successful influencers to achieve cut-through, and brands are likely to see diminishing returns as a result.

A recent article by Forbes suggests the transition is already occurring with pandemic budget cuts. Fewer brands are working with influencers now compared to last year and consumers are already seeing fewer sponsored posts.

Is lack of regulation in Australia encouraging undisclosed sponsored posts?

With little regulation of the Australian influencer market, there are arguments that today’s consumers can’t tell the difference between genuine recommendations and masked sponsored posts.

The Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AIMCO), established in late 2019, provides marketers and creators with guidelines on the legal and recommended procedures behind influencer campaigns. This code of practice covers influencer selection and qualification, advertising disclosure, and recommended metric disclosures to build trust and transparency in online advertising. 

A spokesperson for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said influencers have the same obligations under consumer law as any other form of advertising or marketing. In 2018, the maximum penalty for breaching the Australian consumer law substantially increased to $500,000 for each post from an influencer while it increased to $10 million for a business. 

According to Business Insider, no Australian influencer to date has been sanctioned or faced a penalty from the ACCC for not marking their posts as sponsored. 

Could micro-influencers be the answer?

Marketers, now more than ever, are considering the relevance and engagement of subscribers rather than the vanity metrics of a number of followers and likes across social platforms. With Instagram removing likes, engagement is fast becoming the new impressions and quality content that is real and unstaged is becoming the key to successful marketing campaigns.

This paves the way for micro-influencers who are everyday people with a particular passion or niche and are often perceived as more genuine and trustworthy. These users likely have anywhere between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and offer the perfect combination of intimate engagement and broad reach.

What makes this humble group of influencers attractive is that they likely already have a love for your products and services so will speak about them with authentic excitement and genuinely feel their followers should know about them. Ultimately the result from their followers is a legitimate interest. 

Using micro-influencers will also enable businesses to stretch their marketing budget further. Instead of investing all spend in one social influencer with more than 500,000 followers and getting one or two posts which perform well, businesses could invest in anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of micro-influencers and see their products and services reach a larger and more targeted audience that will deliver higher engagement across a variety of audiences. 

As social media users continue to build their personal reputations online, it’s important for brands to look for ways to build meaningful communities around smaller audiences and engage with people who already have an affinity for your brand.

The post Is The Age Of The Mainstream Influencer About To End? appeared first on SEMA.

Long gone are the more romantic times before computers became an essential part of our everyday lives. Before the internet first appeared, art lovers would sometimes have to go to great lengths to find information about their favourite artists. Of course, this never stopped the entertainment industry from making billions and billions of dollars (Australian or otherwise). Still, the internet has brought much easier access to information on anything you’re interested in.

With the general change in the way that information is distributed and acquired, the marketing techniques have evolved, too. So, if you’re an artist, you better learn how to market your art on social media, as services such as Facebook and Twitter can make or break an artist’s financial stability.

Let your followers get to know the artist behind the art

Obviously, after opening your account on social media, the first thing to do is to provide the basic information – what do you do, what are your artistic products, and how can people buy them? After describing the essentials, it’s time to work on your marketing. An age-old question among the art academics and fans alike, that’s still discussed today, is: “Can you separate the artist from their art?” This question is now more relevant than ever, as artists are frequently banned from the entertainment industry due to their behaviour. Is it possible to like a film made by a person you know has committed despicable crimes?

The answer varies from person to person, however, you will be able to market your art on social media much better if potential customers and fans get to know you online. If they like your personality, they’ll translate those feelings to your art as well. Not only will they buy your art, but they’ll approach it in a more favourable way. That means that they’ll enjoy your art more, meaning they’ll buy more of it. So, instead of only posting updates on whatever piece of art you’re currently working on, try to show your personality as well.

Connecting with your followers will bring substantial benefits.

How can potential customers get to know you on social media? The answer is obvious. Simply use social media, frequently post updates on all sorts of things you like or dislike, and don’t forget to reply to the comments you receive. Alternatively, you can create a profile that exhibits aesthetic sensibilities that are in line with your art. If you’re writing poetry on the beauty of nature, then post beautiful pictures of nature that you’ve found somewhere or taken yourself. If you’re a writer focusing on social troubles, post relevant news stories. The possibilities are endless.

Post consistently 

The more high-quality posts you publish – the better. However, social media algorithms (especially the ones that Facebook uses) usually provide a lower rank to pages that post inconsistently. What’s more, customers themselves don’t like that either. This means that it is better to post once every day than to distribute 10 posts over a period of two days and then not post anything for the remainder of the week.

Facebook algorithms react more favourably to pages that post consistently.

So, determine how much you will be posting, and then stick to the schedule! Unfortunately, life can get in the way of regular posting. Maybe, you have issues with your health or (to be more optimistic) you’re going away on holiday? Whatever the reason, the solution is in preparing posts in advance. You’ll have to work harder, but don’t be lazy, as preparing in advance can save you lots of trouble later. What’s more, there are plenty of social media management tools that can automatize the process while you’re away (and help you in other ways, too).

Analyse, analyse, analyse! 

Before posting anything, though, you’ll need to come up with your marketing strategy. And to do that properly, you’ll need to know exactly what your goals are at the moment. Are you looking to increase exposure and gain more fans? Or, if you’re satisfied with the number of customers you currently have, your objective could be to increase the number of artistic products that you sell to them. Knowing your objectives is essential because all the tactics you use will need to have a purpose, to work toward achieving those objectives.

Being analytical is very important when you’re determining both your goals and your tactics. Some important factors that will influence your overall strategy include:

• The time of day when your (potential) customers are most often found online. This piece of information will allow you to publish the most important posts at the busiest time of day. Save less important posts, that aren’t as relevant to your current objective, for hours when your customers are not so active.
• Which country do most of your followers come from? Once you’ve determined the country, you can modify your posting strategy accordingly.
• Similarly, what languages do your followers speak? If you’re not from Australia (or some other country where English is the native tongue), and you have fans from all over the world, it’s best to use English instead of your mother tongue.
• Compare the popularity of different posts. That way, you’ll determine what your followers like, and what they don’t like. Knowing this, you’ll be able to market your art much better by giving your audience what they want (the customer is always right, right?).

Connect with fellow artists

Social media allows you to connect with other artists and their art. This can be very useful, and not only because you’ll get to (virtually or otherwise) meet interesting individuals and enjoy their art. Namely, you can find out about their own marketing strategies and learn from them. Sharing practical tips can be very beneficial, as artists (creative as they are) can come up with plenty of original ideas on how to market their art. Furthermore, if you like their art, you can promote them through your account, and vice versa.

Finally, connecting with other artists who’ll tell you what they did when their marketing strategy wasn’t going so well can have a great impact on your morale. The strength is in numbers, and having fellow artists who can give you practical advice on how to overcome harsh times, and simply knowing that you’re not alone, can prove to be of invaluable assistance. Of course, social media marketing is an area where creativity and new ideas can easily flourish. Perhaps you will be the one who’ll share original marketing ideas with other artists who will be listening eagerly?

The post Are You An Artist? Here’s How To Market Your Work On Social Media appeared first on SEMA.

How often should you revisit your social media strategy and why is it important?

The answer to the first question is simple: you should do it frequently. As to why your social media strategy needs to be revisited, here is a brief summary:

1. To better reflect the data you are collecting from your use of different platforms.
2. Because of the ever-changing nature of the social media platforms themselves.
3. New social media platforms are constantly emerging.
4. Because the attention span of an internet audience is short, always looking for the shiny new thing.
5. Your competition might be doing it better.

Alt. text: A tabletop with a laptop and folders and a woman’s hands holding a cup of coffee and a phone.

Revisit social media marketing strategies in response to past performance

Analyzing the data and feedback you gather from different platforms can be of great help when revisiting your strategy. Looking at the posts that fared best engagement-wise can point you in the right direction. A careful analysis of the content that didn’t do as well can help even more in adjusting your plan. What you should also take into account is the way in which the different algorithms deliver content. Algorithms differ slightly across platforms and this can inform any future posts you plan to make. In addition to this, you should also pay close attention to the makeup of your audience. Making sure your message is formed in the right way to reach your target audience is the key to a successful social media strategy.

The digital landscape is forever changing…

Here is another reason why your social media strategy needs to be revisited often. The platforms you use are always adding new options and changing the way they function in order to stay relevant. Not all of the new features digital platforms add to their repertoire will fit in with what you are trying to say. However, it is important to still find a way to tap into their potential. Of course, you should avoid using anything just because it is new and trendy. Particularly if it doesn’t fit into your overall message and tone. On the other hand, you should follow these new developments carefully. They are bound to come out with something that will surely be useable at some point. At the end of the day, these platforms are trying to cater to you as well. How well you can use them makes all the difference.

Best practice is to make sure you’re always up to date!

As with the new features of the platforms you are using, you should keep a close eye on the new digital platforms that are gaining traction online. Again, the point is not to just jump onto any new thing that appears. However, being present and finding a way to use these new platforms so it makes sense for your business can boost your overall visibility. Sometimes, it will seem impossible to do it right away. That said, they are bound to come up with some feature that will make it easier to make them a part of a typical social media strategy sooner or later.

Grab your audience’s attention!

This is one of the biggest reasons why a reevaluation of your social media strategy is important. The topic itself seeps into other areas we’ve already mentioned. Knowing who your audience is and who you are trying to reach is very important when crafting your message and creating your content. Hopefully, you are always managing to reach new people with your posts, but it is also important to be able to keep your core audience engaged with your posts.

Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. In order to keep your audience’s eye on you, you need to take that into account. The algorithms make this even more difficult. In most cases, they require you to keep a constant presence on the platforms and to be very engaging. Analyzing your past content but also vigilantly taking note of how your new content is doing is the best way to know what works for your business as well as your audience.

The competition

Taking a peek into what the businesses you are in competition with are doing can’t hurt. Quite to the contrary, it can actually make your own marketing plan better. Obviously, you should steer clear of copying anything someone else does, but taking a look into what other similar businesses with a similar audience are doing can inspire you. Whether it’s the tone of their copy, or what visuals they are using, or how they are framing their content, it may help you in your own game.

Why revisit your social media strategy?

As you can see, reevaluating what you’re doing on different platforms can help you do it even more efficiently and effectively in the future. The reasons are numerous but they all point to the same conclusion. Taking into account all the variables of maintaining an effective presence on social media and revisiting what you are doing from time to time will make planning your marketing strategy easier and your content more potent with time.

The post Time To Update Your Social Media Marketing Strategy? appeared first on SEMA.

Making a business stand out is not as hard as it used to be. With the help of some digital marketing experts, everyone can rely on the benefits of social media networking. Making a perfect social media strategy will depend on the nature of your business and many other factors. Take a look at why building a solid social media strategy is important for promoting your business.

What makes an effective strategy?

Boosting your company’s profit and making people hear about your work is easier today than it was 20 years ago. With so many social networks available, it’s no wonder most companies use them for advertisement purposes. A social media strategy is making a marketing plan that is directly related to social networks. Building one is what’s going to help your company reach more clients, connect with business partners and discover your target audience. Basically, social media strategy will define how your company will be seen and heard of on social media platforms.

Having a social media strategy is what’s going to help your company reach more clients.

However, not every social media strategy works for every business. Depending on your field of work, you should make sure your social media strategy has specific goals. Creating a social media plan can be complicated, especially if you are running a corporate or an international company. Luckily, there are always reliable experts for digital marketing who could help you make a perfect social media strategy. Investing in a solid digital marketing service can be the best decision you make.

How to make a solid social media strategy?

The first thing you’ll need to do to make a solid social media strategy is to set the goals. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you could get involved in social media marketing more or less. Keep in mind that your competitors are already working to boost their company’s reputation online, so you should get to work and start making your plan one step at a time. There are some essential questions you should consider before making a social media strategy:

If you know the audience you’re targeting, you will know how to promote your business most efficiently.

• What do you want to achieve?
• Who are the people you are trying to reach?
• Who are your competitors and what are they working with?
• What social media strategy will work for your business?

After answering these questions, you should be able to make a basic sketch of your social media strategy.

Setting social media marketing goals

It’s not easy to predict your social media success, especially not in the long run. However, the marketing experts you hire could help you set the right goals.

Get to know your audience

If you know the audience you’re targeting, you will know how to promote your business most efficiently. Experts for digital marketing say that calculating statistics and making the right online connections are keys to having a solid social media strategy.

Get to know your competitors

Before making a good plan for advertising on social media, you should make sure to know who you are competing against. Take a look at the similar businesses around your city and see how they present themselves. Researching competitors will help you make the best social media plan you can.

Learn what works for your business

Not just any social media connections will work for every business. Make sure you know what works for your company and what doesn’t. Take a closer look at the type of clients who wish to connect with you online. Also, you should know which social media networks your clients are using. Knowing more about your audience and your competitors will help you gain an advantage.

The key to success in online marketing is having a good social media plan. Without it, posting just anything online at the wrong time will not bring you any results. This is why you should know in advance what your goals are and who the people you are trying to reach are. No matter how involved in social media you are, there are many reasons for making a good social media strategy.

• Everything’s happening online. Since so many people are active on social media, it’ impossible to stay away from it. If you want to be heard of, online social networks are the best way to do it. Besides, using mobile devices instead of desktop computers is getting more popular every year. If your company can be seen from anywhere in the world, why not do it?
• Social networks grow real fast. Depending on how you engage in your social media networks, you can boost the number of your customers incredibly fast! Not to mention that most millennials these days are highly involved in social networking and purchase online daily.
• Efficient audience targeting. You can’t ever know for sure who the people who see your advertisement are. Luckily, with a solid social media strategy, you can choose who your audience can be. Choose the age, interests, purchasing habits and other relevant information regarding the people you want to target.
• Eliminating the competitors and boosting your company’s reputation. By knowing how competitors organize their posting schedule, you will make a better plan and reduce the chances for mistakes. Every single review on social media counts. More positive reviews and comments about your company should be a part of your social media strategy.

If you want to be heard of, online social networks are the best way to do it.

The rules of social media advertisement are simple – all you have to do is stand out! By offering your customers something different, you will make sure your social media accounts matter and reach way more people. For example, by using software for business growth, you will ease the way you communicate with your clients and appear way more professional. Besides, making a perfect social media plan is impossible without great communication with your team and digital marketing experts. Good luck with making your company stand out and reaching more clients!

The post How Important Is A Solid Social Media Strategy? appeared first on SEMA.

Now, however, social media marketing (SMM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) are luring in companies, corporates, entrepreneurs, and even small mum-and-dad businesses with the promise of high returns and trackable data.

There’s no denying that TV, newspaper, and radio advertising had their day (and still do in some cases), but there is growing data to suggest that SMM and SEO both might be game changers for providing business owners with real returns and real results.

Learning all about these two marketing methods can take some time, and some people also struggle to understand whether SEO affects social media or vice versa.

Here’s everything you need to know about this new, revolutionary form of marketing for businesses – and whether social media marketing has an impact without SEO.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the act of using a social media platform (such as Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook), and websites, to promote your products and services. A more traditional name for SMM was e-Marketing.

Search engine optimisation is a series of steps to make your website more visible on the internet without spending any money. The goal is to enjoy organic – or free – clicks to your site with the strategic use of metadata, graphics, keywords, hyperlinks, and more.

How do the Two Marketing Options Intertwine and Impact Each Other?

Social media does not tend to impact your search engine rankings, but it can do wonders for the effectiveness of your SEO processes. It can help improve your internet visibility – ensuring all the right people see you appear in their chosen search engine, and it can bring additional traffic to your website.

Being present on social media, using Social Media Marketing, can also increase your brand recognition, enable you to get a broader reach with your content, and even help with local SEO too.

How Does Social Media Marketing Work on its own?

Without even considering SEO, getting involved in social media and SMM optimisation can help your business benefit from tremendous success. Firstly, you need to do the following:

1. Outline goals – what do you want to achieve?
2. Determine your target market
3. Establish where on social media you will find your target market
4. Discover what message you want to portray to your potential new customers

Once you know the direction in which you want your social media presence to head, you can begin reaping the immediate rewards. Social media has an impact, without even bringing SEO into the equation, in the following ways:

• Drives web traffic
• Helps you to build conversions
• Establishes brand recognition and awareness
• Enables you to interact with your target audience

But, what about WITH Search Engine Optimisation?

It’s clear to see that building a social media presence for your business is going to be helpful, but when you partner it with SEO, you are going to see even more benefits – including those listed above.

Once you establish yourself on a social media platform such as Facebook – or even YouTube, you are offering your business a chance to get even more visibility on a search engine than ever before.

Now, when someone searches for you – or uses strategic keywords that align with your business image, your website, and social platforms will appear (and hopefully near the top). Without a presence on social media, this would not happen.

What’s more, upon searching for anything relating to your business, social results show up as a web page – even if it’s technically not a web page once you click on the link.

For example, if you post a tweet that correlates with what someone is looking for on a search engine that will show up as an individual search result.

One of the most significant impacts that social media marketing (SMM) has in connection with SEO is being able to capture and track external links. You can share a hyperlink to content from your website to your social media page, and then use Google Analytics to track its success in bringing people to your webpage.

Social media marketing (SMM) does have an impact without SEO. However, both SEO and SMM work better together rather than apart. If you are going to get more involved with either social media or search engine optimisation, you will find there are far more benefits in linking the two instead of doing one or the other.

Search engine optimisation can help you to build a better search engine presence with optimal brand recognition. But social media marketing can use the power of the people to increase click rates to your website on anything you post on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.

You are going to get a significant impact with either SMM or SEO, but it will be fireworks if you use both!

The post Does Social Media Marketing Have An Impact Without SEO? appeared first on SEMA.

Digital Marketing

This is a popular program these days. It helps a student to get hired in today’s work market. Here, you will find the courses with its topics. It will help you in understanding the ecosystem of digital marketing, i.e., from content strategy to paid analytics and advertising.

Course includes:

• Search Engine Marketing
• Content Strategy
• Display Advertising
• Measure and Optimize with Google Analytics
• Social Media Advertising with Facebook

Facebook

Facebook’s certification is a program that teaches you Facebook and Instagram marketing. It helps in teaching how to utilise the best Facebook’s tools to achieve your business goals. Facebook courseware are:

Course includes:

• Campaign Optimization
• Ad Targeting
• Creative Best Practices
• Purchasing Ads

SEO with Google AdWords

The Google AdWords Certification is a program that makes you learn about the basic and intermediate SEO skills, and content ranks in search engine results. With the completion of this certification, you will be able to learn how to create, implement, and bring out an ad campaign by using Google AdWords.

Courses include:

• AdWords Fundamentals
• Search Advertising
• Display Advertising
• Mobile Advertising
• Video Advertising
• Shopping Advertising

Twitter

Twitter is a best social media marketing certification program that helps to promote your business worldwide. According to a report, there are 335 million monthly active users over Twitter. Twitter had released its first Twitter Flight School to marketing agencies such as WPP, Starcom Media Vest Group, and Omnicon; being an immense success. If you want to become a successful social media marketer, you may opt for this certification program.

Courses include:

• Way to form and manage objective-based campaigns
• How to integrate Twitter into a TV campaign?
• Steps to drive website traffic and conversions

Pinterest Propel

Pinterest is an adequate means for all size businesses and sectors. Propel is a 30-day program presenting one-on-one training by Pinterest’s ad experts. This certification program concentrates on creating and controlling an ad campaign, online conversions, tracking sales, and generate leads.

This course module covers the following topics:

• In setting up a business account
• In-depth information about Promoted Pins
• How to create and edit your ads

Email Marketing

It is a process of sending commercial messages to an individual or group of individuals via email. Each email sent to a customer can be said as an email marketing. It is the best way of being a better marketer in this digital world. You can target your customers online. To get more knowledge about email marketing, you need to pursue email marketing certification by the best and reputed institutes.

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These are the top 6 certifications that are listed by assignment help online social media researchers. You can choose any of these programs to enhance your online social media marketing knowledge.

The post 6 Brand Certifications to Make You a Better Social Media Marketer appeared first on SEMA.

In fact, the 2017 State of Social Marketing Survey revealed that measuring ROI was the biggest challenge for 58.7% of social media marketers.

It isn’t hard to see why.

Although social media is a great platform for brand promotion, it’s difficult to gauge how effective your marketing efforts are. For instance, you can’t tell for sure if the Facebook video you’ve spent time and money on production has generated any revenue.

Since you’re devoting valuable resources for your social campaigns, you deserve to know if they’re actually paying off. Fortunately, measuring social media ROI is easier than it looks.

What is Social Media ROI and Why Measure It?

Social media ROI is when your business gets back the resources you invested in your campaigns.

You need to measure your ROI to know which of your social media strategies work and which ones don’t. In doing so, you’ll get these advantages:

• Find out which strategies you need to improve on.
• Check the impact of any changes on your social media goals.
• Avoid wasting resources on things that don’t produce results.

However, social media ROI isn’t just about revenue. Other metrics like brand awareness and engagement also matter, even if they don’t directly result in sales. If you look at ROI based on revenue alone, measuring it becomes difficult and unrealistic.

5 Steps to Measure Social Media ROI

Here are five actionable steps you can take to measure social media ROI.

 Set SMART Social Media Goals

What do SMART goals mean? Ask yourself these questions:

• Specific: Are your goals clear and precise? If you want to increase your reach, which social channels and how many followers per channel are you targeting?
• Measurable: What are your metrics for tracking progress? Want to increase retweets? Do you want to improve your customer service metrics on social media?
• Attainable: Can you achieve your goals with your available resources? Look at the goals you’ve achieved in the past and set your new goals based on them.
• Relevant: Are your goals relevant to your business? Make sure to align all social media goals with your business goals.
• Timely: What’s your time frame? Set a deadline per goal to keep yourself and your team accountable.

Consider these examples of SMART goal examples:

• X new followers on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram every week/month/quarter
• X% increase in newsletter signups by [deadline]
• X% increase in contact form completion by [deadline]
• X% increase in online sales in the next X weeks/months/quarters

Define Your KPIs for Each Goal

A key performance indicator (KPI) measures how well your campaigns are performing based on your goals.

While you can use various KPIs or metrics, it isn’t practical to waste your time measuring everything. Instead, choose only the KPIs that align with your SMART goals.

Focus on these key social media metrics:

• Reach: How far does your brand message reach your audience? This factors in your fan count, traffic from social media, and impressions (number of times your ad or post appears on social media feeds).
• Engagement: How do people interact with your brand on social media? This metric includes likes, shares, comments, brand mentions, clicks, profile visits, and active followers.
• Leads: How many of your engaged followers show interest in buying from you? The number of inquiries on your product or service is a good measure of your lead generation efforts.
• Conversions: How many of your leads actually purchased from your company? How many first-time buyers became repeat customers? Your conversion rates are the ultimate indicator of your social marketing success.

Track Your Progress Using Analytics Tools

Failing to use analytics is one of the social media mistakes that can set you up to fail.

A critical step in measuring your ROI, tracking your campaign’s progress involves using the right analytics tools for your different social channels.

Here’s a quick look at some free useful tools for social media analytics:

• Google Analytics

The easiest way to set up and track your social media goals, Google Analytics lets you monitor the number of visitors on your social media landing pages through tracking codes. You can also set up an event-based goal to check the number of times a user clicked on a social sharing button on your website.

• Twitter Analytics 

Twitter’s built-in analytics platform provides valuable insights on your audience growth and engagement in terms of clicks, retweets, favourites, and mentions over a 28-day period.

• Facebook Insights 

A powerful social media analytics tool, Facebook Insights measures reach, engagement, and other key metrics of your fan page. Its various graphs help you understand what people did on your Facebook page, as well as how well your videos and events are performing.

• Instagram Insights

This Instagram analytics tool helps you measure your Instagram marketing success through metrics such as likes, comments, mentions, profile visits, and conversions. To access Instagram Insights, you need to upgrade to a Business account.

Assign Monetary Values to KPIs

How much are you willing to spend on getting a lead, a follower, or a click to your website?

Whatever your social media goals are, be honest about your budget. You’re in for a huge disappointment if your ROI doesn’t meet your expectations.

Here are the different ways to assign values to your social metrics:

• Customer lifetime value: How much value will your customers bring to your business over time? This entails computing the average profit you earn from a customer.
• Conversion of each customer’s lifetime value: To know how much each potential visit is worth to your business, multiply a customer’s lifetime value by your conversion rate.
• Average sale: If you want to increase sales, compute the average purchase through your website and use that as the monetary value  

Now, you should be ready to compute your ROI for each social media campaign.

Here’s a simple formula to measure social media ROI:

(Total Revenue – Total Investment) x 100 / Total Investment

The total revenue includes metrics such as conversion rate and customer lifetime value.

The total investment refers to the amount spent on your social media campaign, including ad spend and labour costs.

To compute your ROI quickly, you can use this social ROI calculator.

Once you’ve measured your social media ROI, compare the results with your business goals to see if you’re actually meeting them. Benchmark them also against your competitors, so you know where you stand in the competition, whether you’re ahead of or lagging behind other companies. 

If your ROI is negative or far from your competitors’, take it as an opportunity to improve. Revisit your strategies and re-allocate your budget to other channels or tactics.

Takeaway

Sometimes, a change of perspective is all you need. While social media marketing doesn’t bring immediate profits, it adds value to your business through brand building. You can then use this as the foundation for other strategies that would then directly affect your bottom-line.

Are you happy with your social media ROI? How do you measure it? Let’s learn from each other and share your thoughts below!

The post How To Measure Social Media ROI Accurately appeared first on SEMA.

There are a growing number of social platforms introducing increasingly video-focused algorithms, meaning that social video is fast becoming a tool that businesses can’t ignore. Audience engagement levels with social media are reaching new heights with 15 million (over half the population) Australians watching at least one video on YouTube a day and 43 per cent naming video as their primary reason for using social media.

However, building visibility online can be tricky when your audience’s attention span is less than a goldfish’s (one second less to be exact). To that end, the guys at One Productions have put together a useful infographic that outlines how long your next video should be. It includes key information about the state of video engagement in 2018, as well as some great tips and tricks regarding how to tailor your video’s length to each social media channel. It also outlines how analytics can be used to monitor your video’s performance and shape future video content.

The post How Long Should Your Next Social Media Video Be? | Infographic appeared first on SEMA.

Over the past year, a number of advertisers have expressed concerns over the placement of their ads, with hundreds of advertisers actually pulling their advertising in early 2017 when their ads were placed alongside hate and extremist content.

Jump forward to 2018 and Google has announced three significant changes to YouTube advertising, in a bid to re-instill trust in their advertising network.

New Criteria for YouTube Monetisation

In the past, channels were required to reach 10,000 views before they would be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), however, it has become clear that additional signals are required to determine if a site should be able to display ads. Instead of basing acceptance purely on views, channels will now be judged based on their channel size, audience engagement, and creator behaviour.

As of January 2018, new channels will need to have reached 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time over the past 12-months to be eligible for YPP. As of February 20, 2018, these changes will also be rolled out to existing YouTube channels that are already part of the YPP.

However, it doesn’t stop there! The platform will also be monitoring signals like community strikes, spam and other abuse flags, to ensure each channel is complying with YouTube’s policies. New and existing channels will be subject to ongoing evaluations, and any channels who breach their community guidelines will be removed from the program. If a channel receives three strikes, their channel and associated accounts will be removed from YouTube indefinitely, which is in accordance with their current guidelines.

These changes are expected to prevent spammers and irresponsible users from gaming the system in order to monetise inappropriate or unsuitable content. While a number of channels are expected to be affected, 95 per cent of channels within the YPP won’t be.

Updates to Google Preferred

Google is also updating Google Preferred, to ensure it’s offering both the most popular content and the most highly vetted.

The channels included in Google Preferred will now be manually reviewed, and ads will only run on videos that have been verified and meet the platform’s ad-friendly guidelines. Channel reviews will be finalised in the US by mid-February, and by the end of March in all other countries where the program is offered, including Australia.

Simpler, More Transparent Controls for Advertisers

In the coming months, Google will be introducing a three-tier suitability system that allows advertisers to reflect on their view of appropriate placements for their brand, while also understanding potential trade-offs.

Transparency over where ads will be running is also a major priority for the tech giant. They are currently in the process of developing third-party brand safety reporting on YouTube, which will help increase advertisers’ trust in YouTube’s network. This program is currently in beta mode with Integral Ad Science, and a beta mode with DoubleVerify is expected to launch soon.

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In the coming weeks, users will begin to see fewer viral videos and news articles from media companies and more content, like personal photos, from people they actually know.

In an interview, the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the changes are intended to maximise the amount of content with “meaningful interaction” that people are consuming while using the popular social media site.

Zuckerberg said that after studying the posts that have stressed or harmed users in the past the company wants to reduce the visibility of this “passive content”.

“We want to make sure our products are not just fun but are good for people,” he said.

“When people are engaging with people they’re close to, it’s more meaningful, more fulfilling,” said David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook. “It’s good for your well-being.”

Facebook has been under fire for months over what it shows people and whether it has negatively influenced millions of its users in the past. There has been speculation that its algorithms have prioritised misleading news and information, leading to political discourse in many countries, especially during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Publishers, non-profits, and small business (among other groups) have expressed concern over the changes, as de-emphasising their posts will impact their ability to reach their customers. Facebook’s vice president of product placement, Adam Mosseri, has acknowledged that “there will be anxiety” from partners and publishers.

There are also questions as to whether these changes will cause users to spend their time elsewhere, as they won’t be seeing as much viral content appearing in their news feeds. Zuckerberg claims to have anticipated this, and feels that as long as users feel their time on the social media site is better spent, the business will ultimately benefit.

Zuckerberg’s announcement comes after his lengthy post on Facebook on January 5. In his post, he outlined how he wants to protect the “community from abuse and hate, defend it against interfering nation-states, and making sure that time on Facebook is well spent”.

“My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018 on a much better trajectory,” he said.

In a recent interview, Zuckerberg said many of the discussions about Facebook’s responsibilities to the online community “prompted the company to get a better handle on some of the negative things that could happen in the system”.

According to surveys the company has conducted, people have said they felt the site has shifted too far from personal content and has been focussing too heavily on publisher content.

“This big wave of public content has really made us reflect: What are we really here to do?” Zuckerberg said. “If what we’re here to do is help people build relationships, then we need to adjust.”

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